Love on the Jersey Shore by Richard Natale

Author:Richard Natale [Natale, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626395510
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

❖

Over the next few weeks, Claire came by regularly with and without Sandra. Sometimes she popped in to get a peek at the latest installation and other times just to chat. Often she arrived bearing gifts, baskets full of homemade goodies, gourmet-type sandwiches, and salads.

“Oh, that’s very nice, but you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” Frank said.

“This? Oh golly gosh, just a little nosh,” she’d say, as if she’d whipped up nothing more elaborate than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“I remembered that you said you liked avocado and I saw this recipe,” she said as she lifted the lid off a picnic basket. “You must give me your honest opinion. My husband, Brian, says my little culinary experiments are fairly hit and miss. The sweetheart, he eats every last bite just to please me. But if you don’t like it, just toss the whole thing in the trash. I won’t be offended. Honest injun.”

Claire frequently punctuated her speech with delightfully archaic phrases like “honest injun” and “golly gosh” and when Frank chuckled, she became self-conscious and laughed along. “Well, thanks for humoring me and not rolling your eyes like Robert does,” she confided.

“Oh, come on. I bet you have Robert wrapped around your little finger,” Frank opined.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said, lowering her voice as if they were sharing a family confidence. “He just doesn’t know it, though. So it’s just between us, understood?” she added, a little flirtatiousness coloring her voice.

Frank zipped his lip to ensure Claire of his complicity, not that he had the slightest intention of engaging Robert in conversation.

Frank was quite taken with Claire and looked forward to her visits. She reminded him of a lady from a bygone era—genteel, well-mannered, always in good humor, yet with a contemporary spin, nothing prim about her. When Frank asked what had attracted her to Brian, she quipped, “Well, I have cold feet, and he was the best foot warmer of the bunch.” Then she thought about it for a moment and, with a wry grin added, “he has other marvelous qualities as well, not all of them suitable for discussion in mixed company.”

Despite his suspicious nature, Frank was finding it increasingly difficult to believe that Claire had a hidden agenda. If she did, she concealed it better than the rest of the family. No one could fake being that genuine, even a master-class inveigler.

If only Robert were more like Claire and less like his aunt, whose icy formality grated on him. Mrs. Stevens was forever prancing about, glancing wary-eyed in his direction as if she was checking to make sure he and his workers weren’t sloughing off or helping themselves to some lumber or gray stone. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the job was being paid for in installments, and he was well ahead of schedule. Barring any unforeseen changes or recalcitrant inspectors, he was on track to complete the project by mid-fall.

Once the interior of the new residence began to cohere, Mrs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.