Read Online Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews - Free Book Online Page B

think I’m a pervert?”
    “Yesterday I caught you pissing off that same deck. Today you’re up there staring at us. What’s your name, anyway?”
    He was taken off guard by her question, and before he knew it, he was actually telling her. “My name is Ty Bazemore. Why do you ask?”
    She nodded, seeming to memorize it. “Ty Bazemore. Is that it? Not Tyson, or Tyler?”
    “Just Ty,” he said. “What’s your name?”

    “None of your business,” she said. “What are you doing up there on that porch?”
    “I happen to live here,” he said indignantly.
    “Does Mr. Culpepper know you’re staying up there?”
    He managed to suppress a smile. “Culpepper knows all about me.”
    “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” she asked.
    “Come to think of it,” he said, looking down at his watch, “I do.” He started to go back inside, but then he thought of something.
    She was halfway down the beach stairs.
    “Hey,” he called. “Why do you want to know my name?”
    “So I can Google you,” she called back, not bothering to turn around. “And I intend to run the tag on that Bronco too, Ty Bazemore.”
    “The perv’s name is Ty,” Ellis reported when she got back to the girls. “He claims he rents the garage apartment from Mr. Culpepper.”
    “What makes you think he’s a perv?” Julia asked, thumbing through Vogue.
    “He was peeing off that deck!” Ellis said. “Right there in front of God and everybody.”
    “That doesn’t make him a pervert,” Julia said, dog-earing one of the pages. “It just makes him a guy. My brothers used to pee off the second-floor porch at the house at Isle of Hope when they were kids. It was like a contest. Peeing for distance, they called it.”
    “My brother did the same kind of stuff. And sometimes, when Stephen’s in the backyard mowing the grass, he’ll pee behind the garage,” Dorie volunteered. “He doesn’t think I know. I think it’s kinda funny. Didn’t your brother ever do anything like that?”
    “Baylor wouldn’t have dared. My mother would have had a cat-fit,” Ellis said. “I don’t care what you guys say, I’m keeping an eye on Ty Bazemore.”
    “Mmmm,” Julia purred suggestively. “I’ll help.”
    “Me too,” Dorie said. “He’s adorable. He’d make the perfect summer fling for you, Ellis.”
    “As if,” Ellis said.
    *   *   *
    At lunchtime, the girls trooped back up the dunes to the house.
    “I’m starved,” Julia announced. She was leafing through a thick booklet advertising local shops and restaurants. “Where shall we go for lunch? Seafood, right? The fish we get in England is crap. It’s the one big thing I miss about living in Savannah. Do you guys remember my mom’s fried grouper sandwiches?”
    “I remember her she-crab bisque,” Ellis said. Unlike her own mother, who was strictly a meat and potatoes, canned peas, and cherry Jell-O kind of cook, Catherine Capelli had been a fabulous cook. “And I’d give anything for another plate of her spaghetti with the Italian sausage that she’d make in the wintertime.”
    “And those little yeast rolls she’d make, dripping with garlic butter,” Dorie put in. “And all the different kinds of cookies she’d bake every year at Christmas. She’d fix a huge plate for each of us to take home to our families. It’s a miracle we all didn’t end up fat little piggies after eating your mama’s cooking all those years, Julia.”
    “She could cook, there was no denying that,” Julia said lightly. “But you still haven’t told me where you want to go have lunch.” She rifled the pages of the booklet. “Awful Arthur’s? Barefoot Bernie’s? Dirty Dick’s?”
    Ellis picked up a manila folder she’d left on top of the microwave. “Let’s see. I’ve got coupons for Mako Mike’s and Freaky Freddie’s. Buy one entrée, get a second free.”
    “You guys go,” Dorie said. “Maybe I’ll just fix myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly