by Holly Rayner
“Look at the sun on the water,” Clay said quietly.
Gwen nodded. It was beautiful.
“I’m glad you talked me into this,” she said. “It would have been a shame to have missed this view.”
The boat turned, causing them to fly in a wide arc out to the side and lose some altitude.
“Look,” Clay said, pointing off into the distance. “Are those dolphins?”
Gwen looked in the direction he was pointing. Sure enough, a moment later, something large and gray crested above the water’s surface.
“I think they are,” she said, excited. “Maybe we’ll have a chance to see them up close later, when we’re back in the boat.”
“I never thought I’d have a Christmas like this,” Clay said. “Flying above the Bahamas and watching dolphins.”
“I never imagined anything like this either,” Gwen said. “I’ve had about as many different types of Christmas celebrations as you can think of, but nothing close to this one. This holiday is one I’ll always remember.”
Clay gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s not over yet,” he told her. “We’re just getting started.”
Clay’s surfboard flipped over for the fifth time in a row, spilling him into the roll of a wave. He came up sputtering.
“You must have done this before,” he called to Gwen, who stood on the beach watching him, her board in hand.
Gwen shook her head. “I swear, it’s the first time I’ve touched a board,” she said. “I guess I just have good balance.”
“Yes, she’s a natural,” their instructor said. “Try widening your stance on the next one, Clay.”
“I’m going to go again too, all right?” Gwen asked.
The instructor nodded. “You don’t need any help,” she said warmly.
Gwen dragged her board past the breakers and began to paddle out to where the bigger waves were cresting. Turning, she pulled her feet up beneath her, hopping into a squat on her board the way she had been taught. She leaned in the direction of the waves, allowing them to carry her forward.
Her body seemed to know what to do, how to respond when the wave caught her and began to lift her. She steered the nose of her board back and forth, experimenting with the techniques she’d learned. She knew that she wouldn’t be any good on the kind of large waves she saw people surfing on TV, but the moderate waves here on the far side of Green Turtle Cay were manageable. She allowed the one she was riding to carry her all the way back to shore, passing Clay just in time to see him wipe out again.
He groaned as he surfaced. “I need a break,” he announced. “Paddle out with me, Gwen.”
“I thought you wanted to take a break,” she said, confused. “Wouldn’t you rather go in to the beach?”
“No,” he said. “I like the waves. I’d just rather lie out on them for a while.”
The instructor smiled. “There’s a lifeguard on duty,” she said. “Make sure you return your boards when you’re finished.”
Clay nodded. “Thanks for the instruction.”
“It was my pleasure.” She grabbed her own board and headed back up to the surf shack.
Clay and Gwen took their boards out beyond where the waves were breaking. Clay sat astride his as if it was a horse, allowing the swells to lift him and drop him as they passed, and Gwen followed suit.
“You do seem comfortable in the water,” Gwen observed. “I can’t imagine there are many beaches in the Texas Panhandle, but you seem like you’ve spent time in the ocean before.”
“I have,” Clay said. “My father and I went to Padre Island every year when I was growing up. I never had surf lessons—I guess that’s probably obvious—but I spent a lot of time swimming in ocean waters. So I’m used to the waves. Actually, I was a little bit disappointed at how tame the waters are on the other side of the island, at the beach in front of our hotel.”
“I like these waves too,” Gwen agreed. “I thought I would be afraid of them, but I’m really not.”
“Is this trip your first time in the ocean?” Clay asked.
“It’s my first time in waves of this size,” Gwen said. “I spent some time with a family that took me on day trips to the beach, but the waters were always tamer, and I was never allowed to go in very far from the shore. Which made sense, since I didn’t know how to swim back then.”
“You didn’t?” he asked. “But you swim very well now.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I learned as an adult. I signed up for lessons at the community pool.”
He looked impressed. “That must have been tough,” he said. “Trying to learn something new like that as an adult, I mean. Something most people learn in childhood.”
“There’s a lot of that kind of thing when you grow up in the foster care system,” she said. “You don’t get the same childhood experiences that your peers have had, so you either play catch-up or you skip a few things altogether. I’ve never been on a sports team, for instance.”
“Neither have I,” Clay said.
“You haven’t? Isn’t that something most kids do?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was so busy after school working on the ranch that I didn’t really have time for extracurriculars. And my father always said that I didn’t really need any more physical exercise than I already got wrangling cattle.”
“I can see his point,” Gwen said. Clay certainly was muscular and well-built, and she would have been hard-pressed to make the argument that he wasn’t working out enough. She thought back to last night in his bedroom and felt a shiver of pleasure.
In a way, she thought, the two of them were the same. Of course, he had grown up with a father, and she hadn’t. But to hear him describe it, his upbringing on the ranch had been isolating, and he had had to learn to depend on himself in many of the same ways she had.
She found herself wishing that they lived closer to one another. Very soon, she would be back in New Orleans, and he would be in Texas. They’d never see each other again, in all likelihood.
It had been a long time since Gwen had found a friend who understood her so well.
Actually, she wasn’t sure she ever had.
That afternoon, when they were finished at the beach, they returned to Clay’s suite. Clay offered Gwen the use of his shower, which she gladly accepted, happy to get the sand and salt water off her skin. When she emerged, wrapped in a hotel bathrobe, it was to find him on the phone with the room service line.
“We want a shellfish bar set up in this room,” he said. “Crab, lobster, oysters, shrimp, the works.” He covered the phone with one hand and turned to Gwen. “You do like shellfish, right?” he asked.
“I love it,” she assured him.
“Send up a cheese selection as well,” he said. “And…do you have bruschetta? Yes, some of that. A bottle of champagne, a carafe of ice water, and…hmmm.” He turned to Gwen again. “Do you want anything else?”
“Maybe some fresh fruit?” she suggested.
“Yes. Perfect.” He spoke into the phone again, then hung up. “Dinner will be here in about an hour. What do you want to do in the meantime?”
“Let’s see what other movies they have,” she suggested.
They curled up on the couch and Clay gave the remote control to Gwen. “Go ahead,” he said. “You choose something. Whatever you want.”
She settled on a favorite Christmas movie from childhood, a classic that had been enjoyed by many of the families with whom she had lived over the years. Clay smiled as the title came up on the screen.
“This is one of my favorites,” he said.
“Mine too,” she agreed.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She laughed, allowing him to do so.
“I’m still kind of damp,” she warned.
“Oh, I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll get in the shower myself once we’ve eaten.”
They watched the opening act of the movie. Eventually, they were interrupted by a knock at the door. Gwen, who was
still dressed in nothing but a bathrobe, retreated into the bedroom just as a maid came in, Gwen smiling bashfully as they briefly made eye contact. From inside, she heard the maid speaking to Clay and setting up plates, her stomach rumbling at the aroma of buttery shellfish and warm bread.
Finally, the door closed. “You can come back in,” Clay called.
She did so, and gasped. A veritable buffet had been arranged on a table that hadn’t been there at all when she had left the room. A stack of plates sat at one end.
“I think he thought I was having a party,” Clay said with a grin. “Anyway, help yourself.”
“We’ll never eat all this food, Clay!”
He shrugged, grinning. “If there’s one day of the year we can justify treating ourselves, surely this is it.”
They filled plates with food and returned to the couch to enjoy the rest of their movie. Clay opened the bottle of champagne and poured them each a glass.
And Gwen reflected that this was the most enjoyable Christmas she had ever experienced—not because of the expensive hotel room or the fine food, but because of the company. For the first time in her life, she truly felt like a part of the celebration.
Chapter 6
Clay
Another movie and another bottle of wine later, both Clay and Gwen were warm, cozy, and sleepy.
“Should I go back to my room?” Gwen asked him.
“I’d like you to stay over again,” he said. “Of course, if you’d prefer to leave, that’s all right. But I’m having a good time.”
She smiled. “I’d like to stay too,” she said. “I just didn’t want to overstay my welcome.”
“Oh, believe me, you haven’t,” he assured her. Right now, he felt as if he would never grow tired of her company.
Gwen looked over at the buffet. “I feel bad that we didn’t eat more of that,” she said. “I hate to see it go to waste.”
He nodded. “I’ll call down for some takeout containers,” he said. “I’ll pack up as much as I can and put it in the refrigerator. Then we can have some of it for breakfast tomorrow, and you can take some with you when you do leave.”
“Good idea,” Gwen said. “Would you mind getting me a blanket?”
“Are you cold?” he asked her. “I can adjust the thermostat.”
“No,” she said. “Actually, I like that it’s a little cold in here. I just like the idea of bundling up. It feels more Christmassy.”
He nodded. That made sense. He grabbed one of the throw blankets off the foot of the bed, returned to the couch, spread it over her, then bent down and tucked the ends around her. She giggled.
Clay went back into the bedroom and picked up the phone. He pressed the room service button and asked for some takeout containers from the restaurant to be brought to the suite. “You can just leave them outside the door,” he told the staff member on the other end of the line. “Knock to let us know they’ve been delivered, and we’ll take it from there.”
“We can have someone come and box up your food for you, sir, if you’d prefer it,” the voice offered.
“No, thank you,” Clay said. He wasn’t into the idea of a hotel employee coming into the space he had carved out with Gwen. He was afraid that the presence of an extra person would ruin the atmosphere.
He hung up the phone and was about to return to the living room when he felt the cell phone in his pocket buzz.
Annoyed, he pulled it out. It was Dave calling, of course—but why would Dave be calling him on Christmas Day? Surely he had something better to do than to bother Clay on his vacation.
Clay pressed the button to end the call without answering it and returned the phone to his pocket. Whatever Dave wanted, they could discuss it tomorrow. Or, better yet, it could wait until Clay had returned home from his trip. He couldn’t imagine anything could be that important.
But almost immediately, the phone began to buzz again.
Exasperated, Clay pulled it out and accepted the call. “What?” he asked.
“Clay?” Dave’s voice came over the line. He sounded very far away.
“You know it’s me, Dave,” Clay said. “You’re the one who made the call. What do you need?” If his friend was about to ask him for more money, to purchase yet another property before Clay returned home, Dave was going to be disappointed. Clay had had enough of Dave’s trying to run this enterprise without his involvement.
“I have some bad news,” Dave said.
Clay sighed and closed the door. Apparently he was going to be on this call for a while and he didn’t want to distract Gwen from being able to watch the movie.
“What’s the problem?” he asked when the door was closed. He crossed the room and took a seat on his bed.
“We lost the properties,” Dave said.
Clay thought he must have misheard his friend. “We lost which property?”
“The properties, plural,” Dave said. “All of them.”
“We lost all of them?” Clay struggled to make sense of that. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, we lost them?”
“They were never really ours,” Dave said. “It turns out the land we were buying on was a protected historical site. There’s a big developer trying to acquire all the land in the area, to build a couple of golf courses, and the realtor I’ve been working with was involved in that.”
“Did you know?” Clay asked. “Did you know it was a protected site?”
“Of course I didn’t know, Clay. What do you take me for?”
“You said you were going to be responsible for the legwork on this.” Clay felt as if he had missed a step going down. “You said you were going to find out everything we needed to know, and all I would have to do would be to front the money. This was your responsibility! How could you not have known?”
“It’s not as if the realtor was upfront about the situation,” Dave defended himself. “They were lying to me, making me believe that everything was fine.”
“How did you find out otherwise?” Clay asked.
“I tried to call them today. I was supposed to hear from them yesterday before the office closed for the holiday, and I didn’t hear anything, so I tried to get in touch. When I couldn’t get an answer, I drove by the office to see if they were open, and a woman told me the head of the company had been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“It’s illegal to buy and sell federally protected land,” Dave said.
Clay felt as if his mind was racing to catch up with what his friend was telling him. “So what happens now?” he asked. “Can we get the money we invested back? Do we need to file suit against the realtor? What are our next steps?”
Dave was quiet.
“Dave?” Clay urged. “Tell me what we need to do. Tell me I haven’t lost a hundred thousand dollars to this mad scheme of yours.”
“The money isn’t what you should be worried about,” Dave said.
Clay felt a chill. “What should I be worried about, then?” he asked.
“You and I might be criminally liable,” Dave said.
“What?”
“Like I said, it’s illegal to trade in federally protected land,” Dave said. “And even though we didn’t know the land was protected, we did purchase it with intent to resell it. I even had offers from the golf course developer. He was the one who bought the first property we fixed up.”
“You didn’t think something was suspicious when the same person offered to buy multiple properties from us?”
“I don’t know!” Dave said. “I thought maybe he was doing the same thing we were—you know, upgrading the homes and flipping them. It’s not like we made a ton of improvements to them. We just took them up a notch. If someone wanted to, they could buy the homes we had worked on and make them really nice. They could sell them for a mint. That’s what I thought was going on.”
“You should have looked into it!” Clay was seething. “I trusted you to do the research on this, Dave. And now you’re telling me…what, that we mi
ght go to jail for this? Should I be talking to my lawyer?”
“Honestly…” Clay heard Dave swallow. “You’re out of the country.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe you should stay in the Bahamas.”
“Maybe I should stay in the Bahamas? You mean, permanently?”
“You can’t be arrested as long as you’re there,” Dave pointed out.
“And what about my father’s ranch?”
“Is it worth getting arrested over?”
“I can’t believe this.” Clay was shaking with anger. “I can’t believe you’ve put me in this position. I trusted you, Dave. I let you handle my money. I let you make these arrangements. How could you screw things up this badly?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I was tricked, all right? I thought everything was aboveboard. What reason did I have to doubt it?”
“You should have looked into it.”
“Maybe so,” Dave said. “But I swear, it never even occurred to me that anything shady might be going on. I thought everything was fine.”
Clay sighed. “I have to go.”
“What are you going to do?” Dave asked. “Are you going to come back to the States?”
“I can’t talk about this now,” Clay said. “I’ll call you later.”
He hung up the phone before Dave could answer and set it on the bed beside him.
Was his friend right? Could he really be arrested and held accountable for this? Even though he hadn’t known anything about it, hadn’t been present when the purchases were made or signed any of the documents?
It was done with my money, though. There was no hiding that fact. Clay’s money had been used to illegally purchase federally protected land.
It’s not just Dave who should have done his research about those properties, he thought dismally. I had a responsibility to look into what we were buying, too. I should have read up on the area. Instead, I allowed myself to be complacent and to trust that Dave knew what he was doing. It’s my fault just as much as his.