Page 21 of Deadline

“After lunch.”

“One more minute?”

Placing her hands on her hips, Amelia gave six-year-old Hunter the look.

She got a very downcast “Okay” as he waded out of the surf. “We were just starting to play.”

She draped a beach towel over his shoulders and used a corner of it to dry the saltwater off his face. “Funny that I always seem to make you stop just when you’re starting to play. Race you to the umbrella?”

She took off in the direction of their camp up the beach, where Grant was already rummaging in the picnic hamper. She slowed in order to let Hunter overtake her and smiled as she watched his strong young legs churning.

The sand was warm against the soles of her feet. There was just enough breeze to counteract the sun’s heat. She deeply inhaled the salt air and smiled over the simple pleasure of being here, on the sea island, her favorite place on earth. The courtroom and the taxing testimony of yesterday seemed far removed. God bless the judge for granting her five whole days before having to return to court and face cross-examination. She’d determined not to think about the trial or the disturbing memories it evoked and, instead, to enjoy these last official days of summer with her sons.

Who, at the moment, were squabbling over a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

“I want this one.” Grant, who’d just turned four, clutched the plastic-wrapped sandwich to his chest in an effort to keep his brother from snatching it.

Removing her wide-brimmed straw hat, she ducked beneath the beach umbrella and dropped down onto the quilt. “Hunter, leave Grant’s sandwich alone and choose another. They’re all alike.”

“Exactly alike.” Stephanie DeMarco joined them, setting a small cooler between the boys to help defuse their spat. “Who wants a Capri Sun?”

Amelia had hired the twenty-year-old to be the boys’ nanny for the summer, and it had proved to be an ideal arrangement for everyone. Stef, as she preferred to be called, was a college student majoring in elementary education. Having grown up in landlocked Kansas, spending three months on an Atlantic beach was her idea of heaven. She’d come with impeccable references.

Having Stef living with them, and more or less on call twenty-four/seven, had enabled Amelia to live in her beach house on Saint Nelda’s Island for the entire summer, rather than having to go back and forth between the island and the mainland only for weekend stays. Stef kept the boys occupied while Amelia worked in her upstairs office for a few hours each day. If her presence at the museum was required, she had child care while she made the round trip to Savannah by ferry.

Thanking Stef for the drinks, Amelia thought again what a godsend the young woman had been. The boys adored her, but, being no pushover, she was strict about baths, bedtime, and behavior. During the day, she kept them busy and entertained with educational projects and ample playtime.

An easy relationship had developed between the two women, more like a friendship than that of employee and employer. As she passed Amelia a bottled iced tea, Stef shook her head with derision. “Beats me why you come to the beach at all, covering up as you do. You look like Lawrence of Arabia.”

Amelia didn’t take offense, but laughed with self-deprecation as she plucked at the damp hem of her sheer caftan. “I used to tan when I was younger.”

“I know it’s bad for you. But I love to be bronzed.”

Amelia assessed Stef’s voluptuous shape, barely contained inside the two pieces of her bikini. “Bronze looks good on you,” she said, to which Stef laughed.

After lunch and as soon as Amelia had slathered the boys with more sunscreen, they grabbed their pails and shovels and headed toward the shoreline. “Don’t get in the water until I’m down there,” she called after them.

“Want me to take a shift?” Stef asked.

“Thanks, but they haven’t had much time with me the past few days. I’ll stay with them if you’ll go to the store.”

“Sure. I saw your list on the kitchen counter. I added plastic wrap. Have you thought of anything else?”

“Lightbulbs. The one on the back porch is out. And don’t rush back. I’ve been gone a lot this week. You deserve some ‘you’ time, and I need quality time with the boys.”

“Thanks, boss.” She saluted Amelia as she started toward t

he dunes that separated the house from the beach.

Amelia joined Hunter and Grant and together they waded into the surf. “I thought this beach ball had a leak,” she remarked as she tossed it to Hunter. The last time she’d seen the colorfully striped ball, it had been lying deflated in a corner of the porch.

“It got fixed.”

“Did you thank Stef for doing that?”

“She didn’t do it. It just got fixed,” he said. Then, “Watch, Mom!”

He executed a belly dive, which Grant imitated and came up choking. They played in the shallows until they were good and pruney, then trooped back onto shore, where Amelia oversaw the building of a sand castle, complete with turrets and a surrounding moat that she filled with seawater. “A moat was used to protect the castle from attacking enemies.”