Picture This by Jacqueline Sheehan

Author:Jacqueline Sheehan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2012-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Natalie

The next day Natalie walked into the cottage and saw a pile of Rocky’s clothing on the couch. She’d met the boyfriend for the grieving widow. Deleting his phone message hadn’t been good enough. She knew how to handle men, knew their essential weak spots. That was no longer the problem. The real problem was that Hill took far too much of Rocky’s attention.

“Natalie, I’m meeting Hill in Portland tonight, and we’d like it if you would join us. Come on, it would be fun,” said Rocky.

“Do you mean, do I want to go on a date with you two? No.”

Rocky had washed her hair and blown it dry with the hair dryer, something Natalie hadn’t seen her do in the two weeks she’d been on the island. Usually Rocky was a wash-and-go gal. She was primping too much; she had tried on two different pairs of pants and had finally settled on a skirt. A skirt?

“Wait, I guess I can come with you,” said Natalie.

Rocky paused in midstroke as she rubbed lotion on her legs. “Good. This will give you a chance to get to know him.”

Oh yes. Getting to know him was just what she wanted.

They met Hill at the dock on Commercial Street in Portland, where he had parked his truck. He looked uneasily at Rocky. “The truck isn’t an easy fit for three people,” he said.

“I can sit in the middle, I don’t mind,” said Natalie, getting in before protests began. She squeezed in, letting one leg press casually against Hill as she straddled the two bucket seats. “See, this works for me,” she said with a smile in her voice, a young-little-girl smile that no one could object to.

Rocky got in and leaned forward to speak to Hill. “We’re only going to the park, it’s not like we’re going to drive forever. I think we can all manage,” she said, fastening her seat belt.

Hill gave her a sideways glance and started the truck.

“Can I put my bag behind the seats?” asked Natalie. Why would they say no?

Turning slightly away from Rocky, she picked up her canvas bag with her left hand and reached up and over Hill’s shoulder. The side of her left breast grazed his arm. Contact. He flinched and moved away. Two white-and-gray gulls examined the heel from a baguette on the sidewalk. One lifted off with the bread in its beak.

“Where did you say we’re going?” asked Natalie.

“A free concert in Deering Oaks Park, just on the other side of downtown. Tonight it’s some fiddler.”

The traffic on an early summer evening had swelled with people cruising for parking. Hill buzzed his window down and leaned his left elbow out. “I only brought two lawn chairs,” he said. “If you’d told me that there would be three of us tonight, I would have thrown another chair in.”

At the grassy congregation of kids, families, dogs and couples, Hill did exactly what Natalie imagined a good boyfriend would do: he offered her his chair,

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