I snatched it out of his hands, then shook off the sand and salt. “Is that…”
“A memory stick,” Blake finished for me. “Did any water get into the bag?”
“I can’t tell.”
He unzipped the upper pocket of my parka and tucked it inside, before re-zipping it. He pushed his wet hair back, then scooped me up. “Why don’t we go check?”
I hung on as his long strides ate up the beach.
Talk about zero to one-twenty.
“If you fall and break our necks now, I’m going to haunt your ass forever.”
He just kissed my forehead and kept on going.
Chapter Eight
BC: It’s not going to dry out any faster if you shake it.
I stuck my tongue out at the vicinity of Blake’s office, then returned the little plastic dish to my desk. To be on the safe side, we’d put the memory stick in rice to make sure no moisture would destroy what was on it.
GC: Did you finish that account yet? You’re too slow today.
BC: It’s already in your folder. You like when I go slow.
My cheeks flamed. No way was I answering that message. When I looked up, Jack was staring at me.
“Are you dirty messaging the boss?”
“No.” I minimized the window.
“Uh-huh.” Jack leaned his hip on my desk. “Since we have that late meeting tonight, we figured on ordering dinner. Do you want Thai or a sandwich from Mancini’s?”
“That’s just mean. How am I supposed to choose?”
The message window at the bottom of my screen blinked.
BC: What does he want?
GC: Dinner.
BC: Oh. Thai.
I shook my head at the screen. Always with the orders. “Blake wants Thai.”
“Vi, too. You’re the swing vote.”
I shrugged. “My usual for Thai, I guess.”
“Bah.” Jack made a face. “I want a turkey club.”
“We’ll get Mancini’s tomorrow.”
He shrugged. “What if I don’t want it tomorrow?”
“Does this face look like I care?”
He sneered at me. “Hanging out with Blake is making you mean.”
I laughed. “Maybe he is.”
He tapped the rice container. “Did you drop your phone in the toilet?”
“Shut up.”
“What? It’s a valid question.”
“No, Jack. Rice has other uses than saving a cell phone.”
He lifted it the dish and I grabbed it out of his hands. “No touch.”
His eyebrow shot up. “All right. Geeze.”
“Sorry. Just something that could be important.”
“Is that a memory stick? How the hell old is it? It looks like something I used ten years ago.”
I placed my hand over the top. “That’s why I’m being careful with it.”
“All right, all right.” He frowned. “If you need any help, let me know.”
“I will.”
“Okay, meet you down in the conference room at four.” Jack waved at Blake because we both knew he was watching.
BC: Awful long time for an order.
GC: Don’t you have work to do?
BC: I’m caught up.
GC: Well, I have work to do. I work for a slave driver.
BC: I heard he’s a nice guy.
GC: You heard wrong.
BC: I’ll remember that during raise time.
GC: I’m worth more than your glass warehouses combined, buddy. Don’t you forget it.
BC: Truth.
I grinned at the screen. Every once in a while, he surprised me.
The next few hours were a series of volleys between myself and Blake. We worked well as a team, and since the cove, we’d had a tenuous break in the tension between us.
The information gleaned in the diary was sketchy at best. It mostly seemed filled with gossip and code. My grandmother had odd little names for people, and she had ebbed and flowed on the frequency of her updates.
Sometimes it was nearly daily, and other times there were months between entries.
I recognized a few of the code names from living with Annabelle, but some were downright maddening. I knew they were people from Marblehead, but I couldn’t decipher her more cutting remarks.
And to be honest, learning about this side of my grandmother made my stomach hurt. The problem with diaries is that they’re truly never meant to be read. Private thoughts are definitely not politically correct.
Especially hers.
Frank dissertations about sex, politics, and the spending habits of the moneyed elite of Marblehead were especially eye-opening.
The fact that I knew far more about my grandmother’s sex life as well was a bit harder to read. She’d been enamored with two different younger men.
They didn’t even get real names. A simple B and B2 were listed. B was well over fifteen years ago.
She also spoke of a boy who was fascinated with me. Summers had been spent at my hometown’s school until I’d been old enough to get into advanced art programs.
I was racking my brain to remember any boy who had taken a special interest in me, but my memory was just blank. When I got involved with glass, I became pretty well blind to all other things. Especially in the timespan that my grandmother documented.