Tainted by Brooke Morgan Page A

laughed.
    â€œSo goodnight, Holly Barrett. I’m glad I have the chance to see you again.”
    â€œGoodnight, Jack Dane. And I’m glad too.” She hung up the phone, but kept looking at it, smiling, remembering a line from a Fred Astaire movie her parents used to love: Chance is the fool’s name for fate.

Chapter 4
    The Lobster Pot was anything but a fancy-schmancy restaurant. Midway between Shoreham and Buzzards Bay, it was squeezed in between an abandoned cranberry factory and a Waterslide Park on a road that had once been the only way to get over the Bourne Bridge to Hyannis and beyond. In Holly’s youth, this road had been full of knick-knack shops, cheap motels, a mini golf course, and a variety of restaurants with names like Mamma Mia’s Pizza and Surf ’n’ Turf Delight. Amazingly enough, it still was full of them: Holly couldn’t work out how these little businesses could survive now that a highway bypassed them, avoiding all the traffic lights and stores and delivering all those potential customers straight onto the bridge.
    The planned mega-mall that Henry so loathed was half an hour’s drive away. Gap, Starbucks and their ilk were waiting to descend, but at least they wouldn’t be wiping out the Windmill Mini Golf Course or the old faded, falling-apart yellow house next to it, the one with a cardboard sign saying “Nancy’s Fortune Telling” in the window. Only recently, Holly had told Henry she’d always wanted to have her fortune read at Nancy’s but was too afraid. “I’m scared of it for some reason, I don’t know why.”
    â€œPossibly because it is scary,” Henry said. “I’ve been told Nancy has a wart on her face the size of a cauliflower. I’ve also heard that if you’re a man and fold a twenty-dollar bill the right way, you’ll get a lot more than your fortune told.”
    How old was Nancy now? Holly wondered. And would she be visiting the new mall, checking out Victoria’s Secret, maybe?
    She pulled into the Lobster Pot parking lot, took a brush out of her bag and tried to tease her curly, dark, shoulder-length hair into some form of cohesion. Rain had arrived in the morning after a mass of clouds had moved in overnight. It hadn’t stayed long, but had left behind a misty, wet air—the kind that made hair go wild. When Anna was visiting in weather like this, she’d spend most of her time with a ceramic hair tongs, ironing her long hair back into its perfectly straight shape.
    Holly had put on a little lipstick and a little eyeliner, a white blouse Anna had once said really flattered her and a nice pair of black jeans. There was no point in dressing up too much for the Lobster Pot, which was part of the reason she’d chosen it. This was the first “date” she’d ever been on. She tried not to think of the novelty of it and decided it wasn’t really a date, anyway. Just two people having dinner together.
    No big deal, Holly. Stop worrying, just get out of the car and try to act like a normal person who isn’t scared out of her mind at the prospect of spending a few hours with a man. Go. Open the door and walk to the restaurant. Now.
    Five past eight. Would he be there or would she have to wait?
    â€œHey.”
    She heard the voice and felt a hand on her shoulder simultaneously.
    â€œHey.” She turned. Yet again his good looks hit her, so hard she stepped back a pace. “Did you just get here? I didn’t see you in the parking lot.”
    â€œI should tell you I smoke the occasional cigarette. Very occasional, I promise. I was smoking over there at that picnic table when you drove in.” As he pointed, she thought of how she had brushed her hair in the car. At least she hadn’t put on any make-up using the rear-view mirror.
    â€œI’m sorry if smoking bothers you.”
    â€œIt’s not a problem. My grandfather smokes