Page 160 of These Summer Storms

Just enough to make things interesting, if she was being honest.

Just enough to tell her that he wanted her, money be damned, family be damned, world be damned. Just enough to take her to bed and show her how much.

She stretched luxuriously, sitting up and running her fingers through her hair, shivering with pleasure at the memory, wishing he was there to show her again.

Before she could seek him out and convince him to do just that,Alice’s gaze fell to the windows of the tower—the cloudless sky, impossibly bright and cerulean, belying the massive storm that had uprooted trees, secrets, the family, and the island itself.

And Alice.

Maybe for the best.

She got up, digging in her suitcase for black yoga pants, a ribbed tank, and running shoes, pulling her hair up into a ponytail before catching a look at herself in the mirror and changing her mind, letting it fall loose around her shoulders—the only blessing of a week in air thick with the sea was a headful of beachy waves that would have cost hundreds at a salon in the city.

Downstairs, the power was back on, and she found a pot of coffee already made (someone was a hero), and she poured cream and sugar liberally (she deserved nice things) as she stared out the kitchen window at the place where her father’s oak once stood and now lay flat across the lawn. It was hard to believe it had fallen, that tree that had seen so much more of this island and its secrets than any of them ever would.

A helicopter coming up the Bay pulled her from her thoughts, the whirr and growl of it louder and louder until it flew low past the house, whipping up the rain that hadn’t burned off the grass yet—a great black harbinger of…something.

Whether it was good or bad, she couldn’t say, but Alice could count as well as the next girl, and knew that anyone who arrived on the island today was likely to be part of Franklin’s game. It had been a week since her father died and the game began, and Alice was still there, on the island, as requested. The rest of the family had completed their tasks, and the inheritance was activated, if the original rules were to be believed.

Not that Alice would believe anything about her father’s game until she witnessed it come to pass. Stepping out onto the empty back porch, she made her way to the white seashell path that wound toward the helipad, curiosity getting the best of her. How would it all end?

Who would win?

Franklin, probably.

The island, definitely.

The door to the helicopter opened and Alice stopped at a distance,waiting. It was a comfortable moment for her—she’d done it a hundred times before. Her father made that hour-long trip from the roof of the Storm building on Park Avenue South, or the roof of the Storm apartment building on Park Avenue (proper) nightly in the summer. An hour door-to-door, the helicopter was a luxury he’d adopted the moment he could.

When they were little, Alice and Emily would watch from her bedroom window (a control tower fit for an air traffic princess) for the sleek black Leonardo to come up the Bay, then run to beat Franklin to the helipad. They’d wait where Alice stood now, all grown up, for Franklin to step out from under the still-spinning blades, and the muscle memory of all those nights of waiting brought her a wild thought.What if he was inside?

It would be a helluva game. And after she was through being furious with him, she’d be over the moon that he was back to give them another chance. A do-over.

But there were no do-overs, and Franklin wasn’t in the helicopter. That said, this particular helicopter manifest did not disappoint.

She lifted her coffee cup in salute. “Hi, Tony.”

“Alice.” He raised a hand, but didn’t move from his place beneath the slowing blades, as though he thought she might tell him he wasn’t welcome.

Men were so silly. “A lot happened yesterday; we missed you.”

“Yeah,” he said, not looking away from her, the steadiest man she could imagine. Perfect for her sister. “I couldn’t get back.”

Excitement and happiness grew in her chest. “Want to come in and—”

The kitchen screen door banged open in the distance, slamming hard against the gray cedar shingles (they were getting a workout this week), and they both turned to look. Alice couldn’t help the smile that broke at the view—Greta looking decidedly un-Greta-like, in running shorts and aStorm Inside™ tee, tearing across the grass toward them.

Not really toward Alice, though.

Toward Tony.

Big, silent, immovable Tony, who made a sound in his chest thatAlice identified immediately as relief. She stepped out of the way as Greta blew past her, throwing herself into Tony’s arms. His enormous hands caught her, lifted her, held her like he’d been away forever—like he’d been to war.

And then they kissed like they’dbothbeen to war.

Maybe they had been. Seventeen years of it.

“I’m sorry,” Greta said in a panicked whisper. “I’m so sorry. I was afraid and I should never have—”