Additional details could wait until they were face to face.
“Hah. He’s cute. The diver is cute,” Sheila snickered, immediately changing the subject. Her sister wasn’t known to stick to one subject for very long. If she couldn’t get answers or results quickly, she’d move onto another topic. But here, she was taking an interesting turn that Tabitha hadn’t been expecting.
Even though she was glad Sheila’s mind had been diverted from the disaster scenario, how was it that her sister had sussed out that Spencer was cute? Should Tabitha…?
“How do you know?” Tabitha asked, amused.
“You make him sound cute. You said he’s nice. Nice is cute.”
“If you say so,” Tabitha giggled.
Ah, screw it. She’d spill a little to Sheila.
“But yes. You’re right. He’s very cute. And he’s really sweet, too. His name is Spencer Sothard. Before he rescued me today, we met over dinner last night and hit it off. He’s in the Merchant Marine and?—”
“Wait. Let me look it up.”
The phone went clunk as it hit a hard surface.
Tabitha chuckled. It was par for the course that when Sheila was presented with a new fact, she immediately had to Google it.Tabitha would be patient. It wouldn’t take long for Sheila to get the gist of what a Merchant Mariner was.
Several minutes later, far longer than Tabitha had imagined it would take, her sister’s bright voice came back on the line.
“Heiscute. Spencer Sothard. He’s from Maine. He has seven brothers. I like his eyes.”
“Wha…? You searched Spencer?” Tabitha was incredulous.What the frick?
“Do they call him Spence?” Sheila continued, undeterred. “Does he like cats?”
Tabitha laughed, because what else could she do? Her sister was a scream. “I haven’t asked him about either of those things, yet,” she admonished humorously. “But Ididmeet one of his brothers. He?—”
“Which one was it?” Sheila rapped out. “Trask, Vincent, Kyle, Mason, Julian, DeAngelo, or Seifer? I bet it was Vincent.”
“How…? Never mind. I don’t want to know how you found all that information so quickly. But no. It wasn’t Vincent. The brother I met is DeAngelo, but they call him Buck. He’s with the Coast Guard.”
“I knew that. I knew it. I should have guessed. He was my second guess. But Vincent is in the Navy. He was my first guess. I looked them up. They’re all cute. Cute, cute, cute. Are you going to marry Spencer and move far away from me?”
Oddly, there wasn’t any angst in Sheila’s voice when she asked.
“Of course not, Sheila,” Tabitha assured her. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m never leaving you, remember? We talked about that.”
“Then how will he be your boyfriend”
Sheila was relentless when she got an idea in her head, and so she persevered. “You can’t have a boyfriend in Maine when you live in Florida.”
Well, damn. Wasn’t that exactly what Tabitha had been worrying over? She drew in a deep breath.
“Yeah. It would be tough. But he’s not living in Maine right now. He’s all over the Atlantic with his job, so there’s no immediate problem. He’ll just visit when he’s down in our neck of the woods.”
“That’s not the way it works, Tabbi,” her sister stated belligerently. “It’snotthe way it works. You both have to be in the same place. Boyfriends and girlfriendsalwayslive in the same place.”
Tabitha didn’t correct that assumption, but she needed to nip this in the bud before Sheila got too worked up over it.
“I tell you what, Sheels. After Spencer and I spend more time together over supper tonight, I’ll ask him what he has planned for his future. Once I know, we’ll try to figure something out, okay?”
That’sifSpencer had even contemplated trying to keep whatever was between them, going.
“Figure it out. Yes. It has to be figured out. I can help. I’m good at figuring things out.”
