by Lena North
“Okay, okay,” I said placatingly. “All you had to do was ask, Papi.”
He glared at me because he had done that, repeatedly, and I smiled happily at him.
“Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I could –”
“Tomorrow,” he said and coughed again.
The burns on his leg were healing, and it would take time, but the damage to his lungs would heal too, Nicholas told me. Roark had been less exposed to the fire because it had started in Joao’s part of the house and he’d also gotten out faster so they would send him home in the next few days. Dupree would have to stay for at least another week.
We kept the bar open because people needed a place to gather, and feel that things would return to normal again. Toby, my cousin from the d’Izia side, had told his boss at the hotel he needed time off and when the man grumbled, Toby quit and was now working in the bar with Lippy and Ban. I’d be back to working when I felt comfortable leaving my father, but Dupree would need time to recover so for the rest of the summer, Toby would be at the bar. He told us he’d hated his boss, the hotel and his job in general and would figure something out when the season was over.
Joao had been to the hospital every day, but since they confirmed within hours that the fires had not started from natural causes, he worked around the clock, so we hadn’t seen much of each other. Then they discovered someone had thrown army style grenades into the houses, and something in the smoke had kept Roark and Dupree sleeping as the fires started. If Joao hadn’t called out to them, they would both have died. That sent chills down my spine. Arson was one thing, but attempted murder?
I told Joao immediately that I knew who’d done it. It had to be Sebastian. They kept track of him, and he was on the mainland attending a fund raiser the night of the fire, but I didn’t care. Joao argued that it could be someone holding a grudge against him, and I shook my head. He didn’t know my ex, but I did and hurting me by hurting people close to me had Sebastian written all over it.
“Charlie, please leave me alone for a while,” Dupree said quietly. “Joao is on his way to pick you up.”
“What if you die?” I asked just as quietly.
I hadn’t meant to voice my fears and turned away to hide my tears.
“Pretty sure the two of you won’t let me,” he said.
We hadn’t talked about what happened, and I hadn’t been sure what to tell him.
“You remember?”
“Ban told me.”
Of course.
“I –”
“It was the protector, Charlie, but it was you too. I don’t remember much, and it’s blurry, but I remember hearing you shouting at me to breathe. Felt you, inside. Warm and steady, breathing with me.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he rasped out. “I’ll die when my day comes, but I’m not afraid. My day won’t come because of some criminal. The two of you won’t let that happen. I’ll be old and grumpy when I take my last breath.”
A tear leaked out of my eye, but I smiled.
“Okay,” I said which was inadequate but the only thing I had to say.
“Sunshine?” Joao murmured from the door.
“He’s kicking me out,” I said with fake sadness, mostly to hide my emotions. “Doesn’t want me here.”
“That’s right,” Dupree snapped with equally fake anger. “Want to go to the toilet without worrying my daughter hears what I’m doing.”
I blinked and stared at him. Seriously? He’d almost died, and he worried I’d hear the splash from whatever he did in there?
“Gotcha,” Joao said, and when I turned to look, he wasn’t laughing. “I’ll get her out of here. We’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Dupree muttered, but added softly, “For everything.”
Joao nodded, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the chair. Then we went to his house on the bluff. I hadn’t seen the house in daylight and stopped to stare.
“Roark let you have this?” I wheezed out.
“Technically, no.”
“Technically?”
“I’m the oldest, so both this house and the duplex were mine. Didn’t like that set-up, so I asked Roark which one he wanted. He wanted the duplex, which was good because it was the one he was getting anyway.”
I nodded stupidly, and only listening partially because I was still staring at the big, white building. He chuckled and shuffled me inside, up the stairs and out on the terrace we’d been on a few nights earlier. The view was magnificent. Around the house was a surprisingly large garden, and I could see stairs leading down to the beach below. The ocean stretched out in front of us, and to the left, I could see all of Croxier.
“I can’t believe you own this,” I said. “It’s amazing.”
“Uh, Sunshine,” Joao muttered. “You might want to take off the rose-tinted glasses and actually look at it.”
I turned around slowly. Yes, the magnificent house was still there. The view was there. To the side of the house in the lush garden, I could see a patio and a smaller house which looked like a garage.
“It’s amazing,” I repeated.
“The amount of work needed to make it even remotely okay is enormous,” he countered.
I looked at the place again, and yeah, the house needed scraping off and some paint. The patio below was overgrown and needed to be replaced at some point in time. And that point was probably yesterday. The garden looked like no one had been in it for the past five years, which likely was accurate, and the fence toward the bluff needed to be painted. Or replaced. Or both.
“Still amazing,” I insisted. “Needs a little paint and a mower.”
“Plumbing’s fifty years old and might implode any day. The whole place needs to be re-wired, and the road leading up here is full of holes, so it needs to be scraped and re-filled.”
Yeah, I’d noticed the issues with the road, but I hadn’t realized it was a private one.
“Okay.”
“Front door will fall off if you sneeze in its vicinity, the kitchen was old when I was a kid and both the downstairs restroom and the master bath up here have the awesome color of avocado.”
Yikes.
“Um.”
“All the floors need sanding down except the ones which are tiled. They need to be replaced.”
I stared at him.
“The roof is sound, though.”
He was laughing openly, and the sun made his eyes look the exact same shade of blue as the sky. Standing there with his dreads and those broad, tanned shoulders, he was the hottest thing I’d seen in my entire life.
“The mattress inside is fully functional,” I said, stepped in and put my mouth on his neck, just below his ear. “I think,” I breathed and let my tongue swipe over him. “But we might want to check?”
“Sunshine,” he murmured, and I felt his hands slide over my back to cup my behind. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard in a very, very long –”
“Yowza! Looking away,” Roark called out behind me. “Sorry. Walking away.”
There was a scuffle, I heard how Tina choked out something and sighed.
“Raincheck?” I whispered into Joao’s neck.
“I can kill them?” he offered, and I started laughing. “I’m actually not joking,” he shared when I turned.
“Hey,” I chirped, narrowed my eyes at Roark, who hadn’t left as promised. He was leaning against the door, looking a bit pale. “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”
He grinned, and Tina looked away.
“What?” I asked.
“They’re currently one nurse short at the hospital,” Tina said. “They let Roark leave earlier.”
“I can’t believe it,” I snapped. “My father is in that hospital and want him to be taken care of. I’ll call them.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Roark said.
“You’d better believe I will,” I muttered and star
ted moving. “How the hell could they –”
“She was sent home.”
I scowled and reached for my phone.
“It’s apparently frowned upon when nurses engage in certain… activities with the patients.”
I froze. My goddamned papi.
“He didn’t?” I asked weakly, although I knew he had.
“Did,” Roark confirmed.
“Oh, God.”
“They were in the room next to mine, so I know for a fact that it’s what she said,” Roark muttered, and Joao started laughing.
“They’ll take care of Dupree. Tina offered to work a shift there, but they said they’d manage,” Thea said as she walked through the door. “We brought food. It’s in the room I assumed was the kitchen.”
The room she assumed was the kitchen?
“Let’s eat,” Joao said. “We’ll do it in the place you’ll have to imagine is a patio.”
***
We had a small fight when Roark announced that he would sleep on his boat. I told him he’d just been released from the hospital, so he’d stay at the house with us, something Joao immediately agreed absolutely would be the case in the unlikely event hell froze over within the next ten minutes. Roark started laughing, and I glared at Joao.
“He’s your brother.”
“I know he is, Sunshine.”
“He needs to be taken care of,” I snapped.
“We’ll be busy, won’t have time to take care of him.”
“My goddamned ex almost killed your brother so if you think we’ll be… you know what, when he needs care, then think again.”
“We don’t know if it was that assclown, and the hospital thought he was fit to leave so he’ll be good on the boat,” Joao countered, and added, “So we’ll totally you know what.”
I scowled, but before I could tell him to do something anatomically impossible to himself, Tina shared that Nicholas had ordered her to take Roark to their place. Since Nicholas was a doctor, I felt okay with the solution and only huffed out of principle.
“You seem sure it was your ex,” Roark said.
“He does shit like this,” I said but didn’t elaborate.
I could have told them how one of my friends in Prosper had come to me in tears because someone had poisoned her dog. And how Sebastian had said that perhaps someone as sour-faced as her deserved what had happened, and suggested that maybe I shouldn’t spend as much time with her. The look in his eyes plus the fact that she hated him and had told me to dump him more than once told me that he’d been behind what had happened. If it had only happened once, I would have doubted what I’d seen in Seb’s eyes, but I had several other stories like that and I did not want to talk about them.
“How would he even know where either of them lives?” Thea murmured. “He was on the Islands for less than an hour. And even so, people would perhaps point out Dupree’s house, but no one would reveal where anyone on the police force lives.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “How did he even find me so fast? We fooled that group who recognized me in the bar. I know we did. They were laughing and acting perfectly normal. Why did they go straight back to Prosper and tell him?”
Joao straightened, muttered, “Give me a sec,” and walked off with his phone.
I heard him talking to someone for a few minutes, and then he came back looking absolutely furious.
“It could be your damned ex behind this, Charlie.” He looked to the skies and inhaled. “One of the guys in that group talked to me. He’s with Prosper PD, and he saw… never mind. He knew you are who they thought you were. Said he wouldn’t talk to the douche, that he’d try to keep them away from you and he’d call me if something came up. He did, so that’s how we knew Sebastian Lievens was coming to the Islands the first time. I talked to him again right now, and he confirmed that they were in town for a wedding. Stayed at the hotel where it was held for the rest of the visit.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked when he just kept looking at me.
Then he mentioned the name of the hotel, and I swallowed because my ex could be involved in this, but so could his.
“Mimi,” he confirmed.
She had been an event planner at that hotel. They would have interacted with her several times over their weekend in Croxier.
“She knew Sebastian was on the Islands,” I said quietly. “In the coffee shop. She told me my boyfriend was on the Islands so I could leave you alone. But how would she have known?”
He closed his eyes briefly, and I took hold of his hand.
“I think it’s safe to say that we both have the worst exes ever,” I said with emphasis.
I’d meant for it to ease the tension and make him smile.
He just sighed and said, “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t they set this house on fire?” Tina asked. “If they wanted to hurt either or both of you then why not this place?”
“Mimi doesn’t know about it.”
“What?”
“Didn’t tell her about it.”
“Really?” I asked, trying hard to keep the smugness out of my voice.
“Never occurred to me that I should,” he said with a wry grin. “Not even when I was about to –”
There was a long uncomfortable silence, and I was pretty sure I knew what he’d been about to say. I just couldn’t believe it.
“You were about to, what?” I said when no one said anything at all.
“Maybe we should leave?” Thea murmured.
“No way,” Tina said bluntly. “You were proposing to that cow, Joao?”
“This is too much,” I said weakly, and started laughing, although it was likely slightly hysterical, and I felt my eyes burn but refused to give in to the tears.
“Sunshine, don’t –”
I turned to look at Joao, and he stopped talking when he saw my face.
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t realize,” I whispered.
“Realize what?”
“That you loved her.”
“I didn’t.”
I blinked.
“But –”
“Thought we’d be comfortable,” he said, looking embarrassed and unhappy as he muttered, “Figured it wouldn’t be bad.”
“That was pretty dumb,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “You saved me.”
Oh. He’d realized himself that being comfortable wasn’t good enough and had broken up with her before we started something, so it wasn’t true. It was still an adorable thing to say.
“Literally,” he clarified. “I had said half the sentence when Uncle Nico called and said he had an emergency I needed to deal with. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I figure I’d just ask her another day, or whatever. Then I went to Uncle Nico and Aunt Paulie’s house… and found you there.”
I blinked.
“No,” Tina breathed out, watching him with the same stunned shock I felt.
He nodded.
“No wonder she hates me,” I said. “You all think she’s dumb, but she isn’t. She would have known what you were about to ask her, Joao. And later, when you told her Dupree’s daughter was in Croxier? Whatever lies you shared, she would eventually have put it together and figured out why you had to go to an emergency visit she heard nothing about later.” I laughed again, and again hysterically. “First, I ruin her being proposed to, and then I snatch her grand prize right out of her grubby little hands. I would hate me too.”
***
Joao
He knocked hard on Mimi’s door, ignoring the button next to the door surrounded by a swirly decoration in pink and blue. He watched it while he waited, and wondered if she would have tried to put something like that outside his door on the house by the beach. What would she have done when she heard about the house on the bluff?
“Wh –”
“Mimi,” he said, trying to hold a burst of anger back as he moved forward and into her condo. �
��I’m going to have to talk to you about a couple of things.”
The place was small, and he recognized some of the furniture from her home in Croxier. The floral pattern on the couch looked out of place in the box-shaped living room in an apartment building close to, but not quite in the business district.
“Are you here to let me apologize?” Mimi asked quietly.
“No,” he said immediately. “Have you been in contact with Sebastian Lieven?”
He saw the answer on her face and tightened his grip on the envelope in his left hand. His right hand went into the pocket of his jeans, forming a fist.
“Who?” she asked.
“Do not shit me, Mimi. Not this time.”
She must have seen on his face that he meant what he said because she paled and swallowed.
“Okay. Yes. I’ve talked to Sebastian. He called me, and when I moved into this place, he came for a visit.”
“Why?”
“Why not? You didn’t want me, but others do, you know.”
He swallowed the ugly words he’d been about to say because behind the anger, he saw sadness.
“Did you tell a group of people about her? At a wedding in Croxier a few weeks ago.” She started shaking her head, and he cut her protest off. “I want the truth, Mimi.”
Their eyes locked, and he watched her in silence. He used to think she was pretty. Cow’s eyes, Snow had said, and it hadn’t been nice, but he had to admit she’d had a point.
“They were talking about her,” Mimi said defiantly. “About the coincidence, and how everyone had a twin. They said…” Her face twisted into an ugly mask, and she hissed, “They said it couldn’t be this Lottie they knew because the girl at the bar was the hottest thing they’d ever seen. Said it wasn’t a surprise a man had put his tongue far down her throat. I knew you were there and I thought it was you.”
He pressed his lips together, both at the thought of Roark’s tongue having been where it had been and in anger because of what she was saying.
“You should have known it wasn’t me. I was unhappy with the games you played, but I’d made a promise, and I keep my promises.”
“I heard it had been Roark a few days later, but I’d already told one of the women that Charlie had lived in Prosper. She called Sebastian immediately, but they laughed about it. It didn’t seem to be a big deal.”