You Had Me At Goodbye. Jane Blackwood
and they were getting a bit worn, but riders actually tried to catch the brass ring as the horses whirled about the hot, wooden barnlike building.
Kat adored the carousel, and she made certain to ride it at least once every time she came to the island. Of course, Brian always refused and told her she looked ridiculous riding on it without a child, but Kat didn’t care. She’d ridden the thing at least half a dozen times and never gotten that blasted brass ring.
She knew the place well enough to know that midday in July was the absolutely worst time to enter the carousel because it was always teeming with families and the temperature inside soared into the nineties. It was the worst place to be on a hot summer day if you were over the age of twelve. Kat brought Larry directly to the carousel.
It was a hot madhouse, the music seeming nightmarishly loud above the screaming of a little black-haired girl who apparently wanted to go on the ride again. Her parents looked sweaty and harassed, and they were probably wishing they were anywhere else on earth at that moment.
“This,” Kat said with a flourish, “is normal people.”
“Good God.”
“And this is what we look like, what we do, what we are.”
Larry looked at the screaming little girl, at her parents who were trying to push her stroller through the thick crowd, and turned around and walked back to the street. Kat jogged after him.
“How are you ever going to learn about us lower classes unless you mingle with us?” she asked innocently.
“I do not find you amusing.”
Kat sighed. “I really would like you to ride that thing. We’ll come back sometime at night. It’s open until ten, and it’s a lot cooler and a lot less crowded then.”
“I don’t understand the attraction. Those poor people looked miserable. What would make them do that?”
“It’s the oldest carousel around. You’d be riding on a bit of history. And…it’s fun,” she said a bit defensively. “I know it seems stupid, but if you ride the carousel enough, you get really good at grabbing the rings. You can get two or three at a time, and your chances of getting the brass ring increase. It’s a game.”
“Perhaps later.”
Kat shook her head. “You’ve got to try it. Then you’ll get hooked. Your problem is that not only are you a snob, you’re also a stick-in-the-mud.”
Larry stopped walking, making the wave of people behind them part and go around. “Are you saying I’m boring?”
“Well, yes.”
“Because I don’t want to ride a child’s amusement ride in sweltering heat?”
“Yes.” And Kat thought, Brian was the same way. She could never get him on the carousel, no matter how much she’d cajoled. Of course, that had only made her want to ride again and again. Her little rebellion. And here was another guy, too stiff, too concerned about what others thought to look a little bit ridiculous and have a little fun.
“I assure you I am not boring.”
“If you say so.”
“Refusing to ride a carousel means nothing. It doesn’t make me boring, and it doesn’t make me a snob. It makes me practical. It was too bloody hot in there. Besides, the line was too long.”
Kat tilted her head at him and studied his expression, trying hard not to notice how drop-dead gorgeous he was. Not that she was attracted to him. No right-minded woman with a broken heart would be attracted to any man. And she was a right-minded woman—who, okay, dammit, was attracted to him. At present, he was a hot, sweaty, gorgeous guy. Poor man was used to England, Kat thought, which had to be a heck of a lot colder than Martha’s Vineyard. His near black hair was glistening with sweat around the edges, making it curl. Her hair drooped in the hot, steamy weather. He must have followed her eyes because he swiped at his hair.
“Is it always so hot here in the summer? I thought islands were supposed to be cool.”
Kat forced herself to look away and began studying a group of teenage boys enthusiastically washing down a large recreational fishing boat with an ancient green hose.
“It gets cool at night. Are you saying you’ll go on the carousel when it’s cooler and the line is shorter?”
“Ah, the carousel. I don’t see why not. I want to.”
“Oh.”
Lawrence looked down at her shining, open face and almost grimaced. He did not want to ride a carousel; he loathed the entire idea of it. But for some reason, Kat’s disappointment got to him. She had him saying he wanted to—wanted to—ride a bloody carousel when he didn’t.
“Let’s walk,” he said abruptly and stepped directly into the path of a little girl, making her ice cream cone fly out of her hands and onto the sidewalk. The scream that came out of her mouth was so piercing, Lawrence thought he had somehow broken one of her bones. He was horrified and immediately bent down to see what damage he’d done, moving his hands along her arms and legs to find any obvious injuries. That only made the girl scream louder until he thought his eardrums might burst.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking up at the girl’s parents and recognizing them as the same tortured pair he’d seen in the carousel.
The two rushed to reassure him. “It’s the ice cream,” the mother said. “She dropped it. It’s all right; she’s not hurt.” The father tried to comfort the girl, which simply produced another earsplitting scream.
Lawrence looked around frantically—he wasn’t sure for what—and he spotted an ice cream shop—Mad Martha’s—with a line ten people deep.
“Excuse me,” he said, pushing his way to the front. He spoke to the crowd of sweaty tourists wearing T-shirts and baseball hats. “That little girl screaming over there lost her ice cream because of my carelessness, and I was wondering if I could cut in front of you and buy her a replacement.” En masse, twenty pairs of eyes turned to the little girl and her now mortified parents. When they gave a collective “awww,” Lawrence knew he had them, and he smiled.
Kat watched in amazement as the crowd stepped back in unison and let Larry walk to the front. It’s that smile, she thought. And the accent. Deadly combination.
Holding the ice cream like a hard-won trophy, Larry bent at the waist and presented it to the little girl, who was still wailing about her lost cone as her mother threatened never to buy her an ice cream cone for the rest of her life if she didn’t stop screaming immediately.
“Miss,” Larry said, “a replacement.”
“No.” And she swatted it down, out of his hand, and directly onto Larry’s expensive-looking shoes.
“Kristy, apologize to the nice man,” the mother said, horrified that her child was behaving so abominably.
“It’s quite all right,” Larry said, smiling politely and grimacing only slightly when the devil child screamed again.
“Sorry,” Kat said to the parents, as if the entire episode was Larry’s fault, and tugged on his arm.
“Good God,” he said when they were finally away from the family. “That is why I will never have a child. Did you hear her? I think I’ll be hearing those screams for the rest of my life.” He looked surprisingly upset about the entire incident.
“She was probably just tired.”
“Yes, she was tired. She was hot. Children are always something.”
Instead of handing the tissue to him, Kat bent down and cleaned the shoes off herself without a second thought.
“She probably sensed you hate children. Animals and children are like that, you know.”
“Animals and children love me, typically. I’m