Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews Page B

surprise. Dorie had never been one to pass up an adventure.
    “What?” she said innocently, catching their meaning. “Why do we have to do anything at all? I’m just enjoying being here, spending time with you guys. Anyway, hang gliding is expensive. You forget, I’m living on a schoolteacher’s salary. A private school too—which doesn’t pay diddly, I might add.”
    Ellis jumped to her feet. “Dorie’s right,” she said. “This is perfect beach weather. I’m gonna go put on my suit. If nothing else, maybe the saltwater will heal my flea bites.”
    Julia looked at Ellis’s outstretched legs. “Eww! Disgusting! Have you contacted our landlord?”
    “Mr. Culpepper? Repeatedly,” Ellis said. “I sent him another e-mail just before I came downstairs. If I don’t hear from him by lunchtime, I’m going to just find an exterminator in the phone book and tell Culpepper I’m going to deduct it from the rest of our rent. And I told him how unhappy we are about the mildew and the ants.”
    “And the crappy mattresses, I hope,” Julia added. “I haven’t slept on a bed that lumpy since I went hosteling in Belgium after high school. We’re paying enough rent for this dump that we should at least be able to expect a decent bed.”
    “About the rent,” Dorie said hesitantly. “I really think Willa should offer to go ahead and pay her share, even though she did cancel.”
    “Did she offer to reimuburse us?” Julia asked.
    “Not yet,” Dorie admitted.
    “Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for her to offer,” Julia said. “Even though good old Arthur is swimming in dough. It wouldn’t occur to darling Willa that the rest of us might be out-of-pocket because of her.”
    “I could ask her,” Dorie volunteered. “But you know Willa.”
    “We do,” Ellis said briskly. “So we won’t count on her chipping in. If she does, that would be great; if not, no biggie. Like I said, I’m seriously thinking of renegotiating our lease on Ebbtide. The place is totally not what he advertised.”
    “I think it’s kinda sweet,” Dorie said. “Did you know, in the daylight, you can look through the cracks in the floorboards in that bathroom under the stairs and see little fiddler crabs crawling around in the sand under the house?”
    “Sweet Jesus!” Julia said. “I am never using that bathroom again.”
    “Oh, Julia, quit being so damned British,” Dorie said impishly. “You grew up in Savannah, Georgia, just like the rest of us. It’s not like you never saw a fiddler crab before. Or a cockroach or an ant.”
    Julia stuck her tongue out at Dorie. “Screw you. I might have grown up living around creepy-crawlies, but that doesn’t mean I want to live with ’em as a grown-up.”
    *   *   *
    Ty had been watching the waves off and on since sunrise. They weren’t really that big, but it was a break—he’d been sitting at his computer for the past twenty-four hours, researching cholesterol and statin fighters in every online medical journal he could find. He was no scientist—hell, he’d barely passed high school chemistry—but this new drug Hodarthe had come up with sounded like it could be a winner.

    He’d done well the previous day with a start-up company in California that was doing interesting things using recycled glass in commercial concrete applications, so he had some funds, and he was poised to take a position with Hodarthe. But damned if he hadn’t just received another e-mail from Ellis Sullivan.
    He chuckled to himself as he reread her latest missive. “WTF? Fleas!” Little old Ellis was turning out to be a real ballbuster. He found himself scratching at a phantom flea bite even as he read. She was right, though. He did have to do something about the fleas. If they got too out of hand, he’d never get rid of ’em, and they might just chase away Ellis and her girlfriends. He couldn’t afford to lose a month’s rent.
    Much as he hated to, he picked up the phone and called