“I’ll give you a tip,” Ty drawled. “Tomorrow, when you go out on the beach, look up at the stairways. Most of ’em have metal address numbers attached to ’em. Ours even says EBBTIDE, although you have to really get pretty close up to see it.”

Ellis leaned her head back against the railing and stretched her legs out on the deck planks, which still retained some of the heat from the sun. She wanted to jump up and run down the walkway, back to her room, away from Ty Bazemore. But she was exhausted. Physically and mentally.

Ty sat back in his chair and looked at her expectantly. Waiting for her to blast him again.

“Maybe,” she said, after a couple minutes of awkward silence, “maybe we could just pretend tonight never happened. You could go back to your garage and computer, and I could go back to … whatever.”

He got up from his chair and sank down onto the deck beside her, sitting so close that they were brushing shoulders.

“Why would we want to do that?” he asked. “I mean, was there any part of tonight that you enjoyed?”

“Seriously?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “Are you telling me you had a good time tonight?”

“You didn’t?”

“I asked first,” she pointed out.

“But I paid.”

“Okay,” she relented. “Are you sure you want me to go off on you again?”

“Why not? Everybody else does.”

“As far as first dates go?” she said, brushing at the sand on her shorts and her legs. “This was pretty awful. Catastrophic, you might say.”

He tilted his head and looked at her. “If you had to pinpoint it, where would you say it all started to go wrong? The jacket? I guess it has gotten a little short in the sleeves.”

“The jacket was fine,” Ellis said. “Except for the dry-cleaner’s tag attached to your right sleeve.”

“You coulda said something.”

“You could have told me you own Ebbtide,” Ellis said. “So we’re even. Anyway, it was a first date. You don’t tell that kind of stuff on a first date.”

“Oh.”

Ty went back over the evening in his mind again. “I did notice you didn’t eat very much. So, you didn’t like the restaurant? I considered a steak house, or Italian, but then I thought, seafood. Who doesn’t like seafood at the beach?”

“I loved the restaurant,” Ellis said, hesitating.

“But?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Swordfish. Ugh. Hate, hate, hate swordfish.”

“Again, you could have said something.”

“I was trying to be polite,” Ellis said.

“Next time, just tell me what you want to eat,” Ty said, exasperated.

“Next time maybe you could ask me what I want to eat. Wait,” she said. “There’s going to be a next time?”

“I only ordered the swordfish because it was the most expensive thing on the menu,” he went on. “I was trying to impress you, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Really?” She tilted her head and considered him. “That’s sweet.”

“Okay. Aside from the swordfish, and the dry-cleaner tag, and the finding out about Mr. Culpepper thing, what else was bad?” Ty asked. “You know, so I can improve on my technique.”

Ellis rolled her eyes. “It’s not your fault, I suppose. But it’s still pretty awkward running into your old girlfriend and her husband when we’re on a date.”

Ty made a choking sound. “That wasn’t an old girlfriend.”

“No? You could have fooled me. I definitely sensed some history there. Also hostility. Not so deeply repressed hostility, I might add.”

“Oh, Kendra and I have history, all right,” Ty said ruefully. “If you consider two years of marriage to be history.”

“Marriage? You were married? To her? For two years?”

“It seemed a lot longer at the time,” Ty said.

“Wow. Just … wow.” Ellis said. “How long have you been divorced? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Ellis hugged her knees to her chest, to warm up a little. “She’s beautiful.”

“She certainly thinks so,” Ty agreed. “And I guess most people would agree.”

“You must have thought she was pretty at some point,” Ellis said. “You did marry her.”

“We dated in high school, got married after college,” Ty said. “Everybody always said we were perfect for each other.”

“And then?”

“Kendra is the kind of girl who always has a plan,” Ty said. “I guess she gets that from her old man. Boomer used to be in politics, was in the state house, like that. Now he concentrates on running his law firm. And his daughter’s life. And that’s fine with Kendra, fits right in with her plans.”

“But it didn’t fit with yours?”

“It did at first,” Ty admitted. “Law school seemed like a great idea. I made decent grades in high school and as an undergrad. We got out of college, worked for a couple years, mainly so I could save money to go back to grad school, but then Kendra got the bright idea we should go to law school together. I thought, why not? We both applied to law schools. Kendra got accepted a bunch of places. Me? Looking back on it, I think Boomer probably pulled some strings to get me in at Carolina. He was on the board of visitors.”

“And then what? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ancient history now,” Ty said with a shrug. “It just wasn’t a good fit for me. Kendra and I were doing okay. We lived in a ratty little apartment off Franklin Street, and we were starving law students, just like all our friends. Or at least, I was. Kendra had a separate bank account, and her daddy kept it filled up all the time. So we fought about that. And a lot of other stuff. And by the time I was halfway through my second year, I knew, absolutely, that law school was not the place for me. But I stuck it out, finished the year. Then, when I told Kendra I was dropping out, she announced that she was dropping me.”

“Ow,” Ellis said. “Ryan?”

“I prefer to think of him as Fuckface,” Ty said. “They were on the law review together. According to Kendra, things just … happened.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Ellis sympathized.

“She claimed they were ‘just friends,’” Ty said. “Of course, when she moved out of the rat hole, she moved in with him. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.”

“Again, ow. What did you do then?”

“I got a job working as a glorified office boy at a stock brokerage firm in Chapel Hill. Kept my eyes and ears open, started doing some trades, and figured out I kind of liked it. Turns out, I’m an information junkie. The guy I worked for taught me a lot, and I hit some lucky breaks. I stayed with his firm for a couple more years, then moved to Charlotte to work for another couple years. But I always missed being on the coast. I lived lean, saved my money, and eventually moved back here to Nags Head.”

“To Ebbtide,” Ellis said.

“Nah. I moved in with my dad,” Ty said. “Ebbtide belonged to my mom’s family. When my grandmother died, she left it to my mom’s brother, my uncle Ralph. He lives out west and didn’t really have much interest in the place. He was gonna sell it last year. By that time, real estate prices here were in the tank, and I’d managed to squirrel some money away, so I got the bright idea to buy it and keep it in the family.”

“I think that’s nice,” Ellis said. “Has your family always owned it?”

“Always,” Ty said. “And until I bought the place, virtually nothing had been done to it in all those years. Turns out, the joint is a money pit. It needs a new roof, new plumbing, new electrical. And you see the shape the kitchen and the bathrooms are in. I moved in right after I bought it and started working on it, but then the stock market did a nosedive, and I ran out of money.”

“The economy sucks,” Ellis said sympathetically. “I know, that’s what happened to me at the bank I worked for in Philly. We got swallowed up by another bank, and everybody in my department got pink slips.”

“Have you got another job lined up?”

“Not yet,” Ellis admitted. “I’ve got résumés out, but…”

“Yeah,” Ty said. “I feel your pain. When I first moved back here, I tried finding a job, but let’s face it, Nags Head ain’t Charlotte. It’s all about tourism here. Anyway, I’m tired of working for other people. I’d rather figure it out on my own, even if I have to live on next to nothing while I do that. That’s why I moved into the garage apartment and started renting out the big house. But it was too little, too late.””