Luke looked surprised, and Callie wondered if she’d been rude. Maybe he’d wanted to stay, have a few more drinks, but she hadn’t planned on all this—any of it: the lunch, the talking, meeting him. She needed to go.
Luke flagged the bartender.
When he came over, Luke asked for the bill and one of the navy shirts from the ceiling, to Callie’s complete astonishment, holding up his empty plate. “I couldn’t let you leave without getting that matching shirt,” he said with a wink. The bartender grabbed a shirt and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said to Luke with a smile.
Once the bill was delivered, Callie packed the rest of her burger into a “to go” box. “I’m going to put in an order for my housemate and her son before we go, if that’s okay. They asked me to get dinner for them tonight,” she said, reaching across the bar and snagging a menu.
Luke stood up, a line forming between his eyes as he rooted around in his pockets. He peered down under the barstool before looking up at her with mortification consuming his face. “I don’t have my wallet.”
“What?” she said over her menu.
“Let me just run out to the truck. Be right back.”
She ordered two burgers to go, as she waited for Luke to return. She’d actually enjoyed herself today with Luke, and she couldn’t wait to get back to tell Olivia all about it. She’d never believe that Callie had ended up having lunch with the guy from the cover of Outer Banks Sports Magazine.
Luke came jogging back over, looking uncertain.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“My wallet isn’t in the truck. I just called the surfboard shop—I left it there when that reporter came in and distracted me.”
“Thank God. At least it isn’t lost,” she said with relief.
“Well, yes, but I can’t pay for our lunch.”
“Oh!” she laughed. “No worries.” Callie reached into her handbag for her wallet as she peered down at the total. “Will you just add this to my bill for the ‘to go’ order?” she told the bartender as she handed him her credit card.
“I’m so sorry. I feel terrible.”
“Don’t feel bad,” she said.
“I do! I asked you to lunch and then made you pay. This might be an all-time low here for dates.”
“It’s not a date,” she said quickly.
He regarded her curiously. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll take you out again. A do-over.”
A little hum of excitement rang in her ears. “You don’t have to do that.” The bartender brought her the bill and she wrote in the tip and signed her name.
“Let me.”
Callie had a lot of work to complete on the house. She couldn’t just leave Olivia to do it all. And they were already pressed for time, trying to get The Beachcomber open by the autumn. She really didn’t need this kind of distraction.
“You can’t let me leave you on this note. Please allow me to redeem myself.” He was grinning at her in that way of his that made her heart patter.
She swallowed and cleared her throat, inwardly scolding herself for what she was about to say. She’d sworn off dating. She was too busy. “Okay.”
His grin widened. “Fantastic. How about tomorrow night?" He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Let me get your address and your cell number. You’re at… The Beachcomber?”
She gave him her contact information, and he typed it into his phone.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“You really don’t have to go to all that trouble. I can just meet you somewhere.”
“It’s fine,” he said, as if picking up a girl he’d only just met was something he did every day. But maybe he did. He grabbed her “to go” boxes. “I’ll take you back to your car,” he said as he led her toward the door.
Three
“There’s some extra wood paneling stacked in the closet of one of the upstairs bedrooms,” Olivia said, clapping the dust off her hands as Callie came in through the front door with the boxes of burgers and the T-shirt draped over her arm.
Callie lumped the T-shirt on the side table and went into the kitchen to put the food in the cooler they were using until the new refrigerator was delivered.
“Would you help me pull it all out tomorrow so we can take it to the dump?”
“Yes,” Callie said, her mind still on Luke. She walked back into the family room where Olivia was wiping down the etched glass globes from the new chandelier they were putting up in the dining area.
“You okay?” Olivia said, stopping to look at her. “What took you so long?”
“I went out to lunch,” she said. “I didn’t have time to get into it on my text to you—everything went so fast and there was a lady in the restroom rushing me…”
Excitement swelled in Olivia’s face and she set the globe down next to the T-shirt on the only small table in the room. The rest of the furniture hadn’t been delivered. “I know that look. You’re all rosy-cheeked and flustered,” she said. She cocked her head to the side and studied her friend.
“I went to lunch with someone. You’ll never guess with whom,” Callie said, the sound of it still surreal as she rolled the name over in her mind. She and Olivia had shared many conversations like this over the years as they’d grown up, but never had she had an answer like this one.
“Who?”
“Luke Sullivan.” She said the name slowly for emphasis.
Olivia’s mouth dropped open and she covered it with her white paint-splattered hands, the dust rag still entwined in her fingers, before running across the room and snagging a newspaper that they’d been using to protect the hardwoods from falling paint. “This guy?” She pointed to a photo of him, wearing swim trunks and no shirt, standing next to a bikini-clad model of a girl, aboard an enormous luxury boat.
Callie nodded. “He got me this.” She grabbed the T-shirt and held it out to Olivia. They traded the paper and the shirt, Callie studying the photo of Luke and trying not to stare at his perfectly shaped chest as Olivia frowned, attempting to make sense of what was in her hands.
The subtitle of the article read:
Luke Sullivan to take over Sullivan Enterprises. What could this mean for the Outer Banks’s largest real estate company?
With the shirt still in her hands, Olivia pulled the two beach chairs they’d been using for makeshift seating over, setting them up in the center of the nearly empty room—their usual spot for meals. Once the shock had left Olivia’s face, she set the shirt in her lap and pulled her hair out of the rubber band, shaking it free, her long, red ringlets falling across her thin shoulders. “How did you manage to go on a date with Luke Sullivan when you were just running out to get sandwiches?”
Callie was struggling to answer her friend; she was too busy scanning the article.
Luke Sullivan, local playboy slated to take over… Father and founder of Sullivan empire Edward Sullivan having second thoughts about retirement… speculation regarding the motivations of his son Luke. Does he have the drive to take on a company of this magnitude?
Playboy? she thought, confused. What had all that family talk been about then? Had he been just saying things to make conversation? Or had he been saying what he thought she might want to hear?