Barefoot Dreams

by Roxanne St Claire

  “The farther we get from the brush, the better,” he said to Lila.

  “But if we go too far, it might hit the water.”

  “Water or brush would suck. We have to aim for the open grass right there.” He pointed toward a field in the distance. “Two more minutes, and we should be there.”

  “And then I’ll—”

  “We’re going to turn now,” Zoe called. “We have a report of a thunderstorm over the gulf. Not visual yet, but—”

  “A thunderstorm?” Lila asked, gripping Gabe a little.

  Zoe gave her a bright and reassuring smile. “No worries about your wedding, Lila. It will be here and gone like most Florida storms, and it will leave the air clear and gorgeous for your beachfront vows, I promise.”

  “But how far is the storm?” Gabe asked, since they still had to drop the ball, find the egg, and get Lila and Rafe into rushing water. He swallowed the darkest, vilest words he could think of, and they just didn’t do the trick to cover the sheer idiocy of this day.

  “We have an hour or so, maybe more,” Zoe said. “But I’m not taking chances. Say your…whatever you came up here to say. I’m moving us back to the landing site as best I can.”

  Which would mean in less than a minute, they’d be over the scrub.

  “Do we have to find the egg after we drop it?” he asked quietly in Lila’s ear.

  “I don’t know the rules, Gabe. But I’ll feel better knowing it worked.”

  “Okay.” They had to drop it now.

  Gabe glanced at Zoe again, who was still watching them. “Uh, if you don’t mind?” He made a circle with his finger, gesturing for her to turn around and give them privacy. “Lila and I have to…”

  “Pray, yes, I heard.” There was just a tiny note of skepticism under her sweet smile. “We aim to please the newlyweds, or about-to-be’s…but we also can’t risk lightning, which is always ahead of a storm. Make it fast.” She and her technician turned their backs.

  “Time to pray for favorable winds, blondie,” he whispered, pulling the puffy blue ball out from his jacket and maneuvering their bodies to shield it if Zoe happened to sneak a peek.

  Lila checked Zoe again, then nodded. “Now, fast.”

  They both leaned over the edge as he held the ball out. The area below wasn’t wide open; there was a road, a few houses, the goat farm and stadium to the north, and, of course, the trees. They’d have to hit a bull’s-eye for it to be easy to find.

  He waited, then opened his hand to let the toy ball go.

  He watched it bounce on air, suspended for a split second, then flip so the heavily taped side was angled down. Then it fell slowly through the air.

  And drift toward the brush and trees.

  “Damn it,” he muttered.

  “Shhh. We’re praying.”

  The ball floated west, right over the edge of a thicket of impenetrable scrub, making Gabe grunt in disgust. How the holy hell were they supposed to get in there?

  “Watch, watch,” she whispered, nudging him. “Track it as best you can in case my phone breaks. Remember where it is.”

  He knew that and did that, but he wasn’t optimistic.

  She looked up at him once it landed, lost in a forest of sharp-edged, thorny brush and spiny saw palmetto plants. “Can we find it, Gabe?”

  “Of course,” he said with far more certainty and bravado than he felt.

  “And the egg?”

  “Will be intact.” He hoped. God, he hoped. Not that he believed in this crap, not one tiny bit of it. He glanced at Lila, who looked at him with love and trust and respect.

  He couldn’t let her down.

  Half an hour later, Zoe let them down, gently. They were a mile from the scrub field where the ball had dropped, so they accepted the ride to Gabe’s car, then drove up the western road and made it to within walking distance of where the locator on his phone placed Lila’s.

  “My phone is still functioning, so that’s good,” she said.

  “Would that count for the curse?” Gabe asked.

  “You mean if the egg broke? Maybe. Let’s just find it and get home before this storm hits.”

  Gabe glanced up at the gunmetal-gray skies, fat storm clouds gathering with purpose now. He shifted his attention to his phone, tracking Lila’s. “Okay, forty feet…that way.” He pointed directly into a thick forest of spiny, sharp-needled brush nature designed to scratch anyone who came close. “And if you say one thing about wearing the wrong shoes, I’ll go in barefoot.”

  She just huffed out a sigh. “Please put that jacket on that we had in the balloon. You’re going to get cut by the thorns.”

  “I take it that means you don’t want to change your mind about going in there to find the ball.”

  She shot him a look. “Of course not. We’re going to find that ball, confirm that the experiment worked, and then—”

  “I am going in there, blondie. You’re not getting a scratch on that gorgeous face on your wedding day.”

  Exhaling, she agreed with a nod. “And I swear I will be your love slave for the rest of your life.”

  “Wait, didn’t you already agree to that? It’s called a wedding.”

  She rolled her eyes and nudged him. “Look. There’s a bit of a clearing. Go on, Gabe.”

  The jacket did nothing to protect his lower legs, exposed in shorts, but he powered through the thorny bushes, keeping one eye ahead and one on his phone to be sure he was going in the right direction.

  “The locater can only get me so close,” he called back to Lila. “Then I have to get lucky.”

  “Then get lucky,” she said. “I’m happy to come in and help you look.”

  “Don’t even think about it.” He peered at the nearly impenetrable brush, wishing like hell they’d had a neon ball for sale at the Super Min, but the bitchy owner “didn’t like brightly colored balls,” and it had taken everything Gabe had not to tell that old crustface to suck his brightly colored balls.

  He covered his face with his jacket-protected arm, cracked a few branches, bloodied his right hand, and gave in to a heartfelt “fuuuuuuck” when a thorn ripped his shin.

  When he looked down at the injury, something caught his eye a few feet away. Something small and white and out of place in a Florida scrub patch. Popcorn.

  “Come on, Gabriel Rossi,” Lila called, urging him on. “You can do this.”

  Popcorn meant he had to be close. It also meant the ball burst open, but they’d expected that. But he hoped all the popcorn and plastic wasn’t gone. He bent down, looking for a trail of white popcorn, but seeing none.

  “Gabe?” she called when he didn’t answer. “What did you find?”

  More popcorn. A small pile of it. Shit. He shoved back branches and fronds, searching from one side to the other just as the sky flashed white with lightning.

  “Gabe, hurry,” Lila called.

  More popcorn, some plastic, and…a shred of a blue ball with tape on it. Damn it. This was not good. He’d have to persuade her not to believe in this crap. He had to. She was too smart for this.

  “Gabe?”

  He took another step and stabbed his hands into some brush to get them out of the way, landing on something soft and…plastic. The rest of the ball.

  “Gabe?”

  Only then did he realize she’d come closer and was no longer yelling. He straightened and turned, catching a glimpse of Lila’s blond hair when another light flashed in the sky, but no thunder, so the storm couldn’t be that close.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  She pushed through some more brush. “You found the egg, didn’t you? And it’s broken.”

  He looked down, rooting for the words to make Lila see reason, just as she took another step closer. And he spied the egg in the last layer of plastic an inch from her other foot. Intact. One step and—

  He dove forward to stop her from taking that step, pushing her to the side just as her foot landed…six inches from the egg. She shrieked, an
d they both tumbled off-balance, falling into a thorny cabbage palm. He fought to cover her face with his chest, both of them landing half inside the bush.

  “You almost stepped on it,” he said.

  “Did I?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She let out a breath, eyes shuttering as another bolt of lightning flashed. They looked at each other, silent, both counting, until the thunder. “It’s about five miles away, but moving fast,” Gabe said. “I’m going to get up first, then help you up. Don’t move until I have my eye on that egg.”

  She nodded, and he pushed himself to his feet, squinting at the spot where he’d seen the plastic-wrapped egg. “Okay. I see it. You won’t step on it.” He reached for her and helped her out of the scrub, brushing a black palmetto bug off her shoulder without telling her what he was doing.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Roach?”

  “Massive.”

  “Shit. Get the egg.”

  He turned to it, carefully getting on his knees to scoop up the bubble-wrapped egg.

  “No yolk,” she whispered over his shoulder.

  “No joke,” he fired back, slowly tearing back the plastic to reveal a perfectly unbroken egg. “Son of a bitch, I hope Rafe is that smart in physics.”

  She smiled up at him. “Or is as persistent, keen-eyed, careful, and determined as his father.”

  “You’re right. That beats the crap out of physics. Now let’s—”

  Something buzzed and flashed on the ground underneath a palm frond. “My phone,” Lila exclaimed, bending over to grab it. “I thought for sure we’d never find…oh, there’s a text from Poppy. And Chessie. And Nino. And, oh God, Gabe.”

  His heart dropped, realizing he’d been so focused on his task that he’d ignored those texts on his own phone. “What is it?”

  “Rafe left the villa and nobody knows where he is.”

  Another merciless bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, followed by a deep, deafening rumble of thunder. But Gabe heard only the sound of his own voice as he dropped his head back and howled in fury.

  Chapter Seven

  As they drove back to the resort, the skies had opened up to a torrential downpour, blurring the world as if Lila were looking through tears. She wasn’t. She refused to cry. Refused to panic, shake, blame, scream, fight, or cry. She would not cry.

  And Gabe, of course, went to work. Driving through the rain, he instantly set Chessie up as the point person working the phones at the house with his parents, Nino, and Poppy. Everyone else in the family, plus Luke and a few of his security team, had gone on an organized search of the grounds and beach.

  Oh God. The beach. Would Rafe go there alone? Why would he leave? Everyone was so focused on finding him, they’d yet to get the whole story on why or when or how he left. That was the answer to finding Rafe, Lila knew.

  “Get Poppy on the phone,” she said suddenly to Gabe and Chessie, who was on speaker.

  Gabe threw her a look, no doubt thinking like she was. “And Nino,” he added.

  Chessie didn’t hesitate. “Of course. Hang on.”

  While they waited, the phone on the console between them, Gabe reached over and gave Lila’s hand a squeeze. “The Rossis and Angelinos are on this,” he said. “You couldn’t have a better search team.”

  She nodded, staring ahead. “Why would he leave, Gabe?”

  “Have you met that kid?”

  “He doesn’t act out for the fun or attention,” she said. “Yes, he’s a handful. Yes, he’s a risk-taker. Yes, he’s daring and fearless and five years old. But he doesn’t do things to get attention. He does them for a reason. What would be his reason for sneaking out of the house in a thunderstorm?”

  “The rings,” Gabe said without hesitation. “He must think he knows where they are.”

  “I am here,” Poppy said, her Jamaican accent broken by a hitch in her voice. She was crying, Lila knew. And if she was crying, Nino must be heaving great big Italian sobs and throwing his hands in the air.

  “I am, too,” Nino said, surprisingly cool in this situation. “They won’t let me go out and look for my own great-grandson. Gabriel, tell them I can look for my own great-grandson!”

  “Calm down, old man. We need you right where you are. I know Chessie said Mom was the last one to see him, but all we know is he went to the bathroom and disappeared. So do you think he sneaked out on the pool deck and left?”

  “What do you mean ‘we think’?” Poppy asked. “The boy went to the bathroom, and there’s a door to the pool, and every single person in this family who was here was in the living room. Do you think he was kidnapped?” Her voice rose with a whine.

  “And you can see the whole pool deck from the living room,” Gabe said, ignoring the suggestion.

  “Which means he intentionally hid from sight,” Lila added. “He wasn’t exploring or curious or trying to freak everyone out. He had a destination. Where? Were you talking about the lost rings before he left?”

  “No, sir,” Poppy assured him. “Your parents and Chessie and Mal and little Lita were playing Candy Land to help cheer up Rafe because his arm hurt so badly.”

  Lila closed her eyes, immediately gutted by the thought of how much that poor child had been through today, guilt pressing down. Not that she could control her dreams. Or had had any idea those dreams were bad mojo.

  “What else? What were they talking about in the living room?”

  “Who had Plumpy,” Nino said.

  “Was Rafe losing the game?” Gabe asked, tapping the brakes and swerving suddenly as they came up on an unexpected puddle from the deluge.

  “He doesn’t care if he loses!” Nino insisted, always the first to defend Rafe no matter what he did. “That wouldn’t make that child run away in the rain.”

  He was right, Lila thought. “What else was going on?” she asked. “Think, you guys.”

  “Nino was cookin’,” Poppy continued. “I was in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher.”

  “What were you talking about?” Lila urged.

  “Mister Luke called to say he was sending someone to get the golf cart because of the storm. The resort puts them all away when the rain is bad. No mention of the rings, I promise.”

  Lila gnawed on her lip, trying to think like Rafe would.

  “He’d been in the golf cart,” Gabe said suddenly. “I totally forgot that. When we got to the villa this morning, he ran to the golf cart parked there and sat in the front seat and pretended to drive. Remember, Nino?”

  “I do, but as soon as we called him, he jumped right out like a good boy,” Nino said.

  “But maybe he lost the rings there,” Lila suggested, leaning forward. “We never checked when we were looking for them. Did you?” she asked Gabe.

  He shook his head.

  “Then that’s where he went,” Lila said. “To the golf cart garage.”

  Which wasn’t a garage at all, but a large overhang in the resort parking lot where the half-dozen golf carts were charged or stored when not in use. The whole area was a mess of construction now as they built a retention pond and expanded the parking lot.

  “We’re pulling up to the resort now,” Gabe said, accelerating through another puddle. “We’ll go right there.”

  “Some of the carts are being used to search for Rafe,” Chessie called out, obviously still nearby the phone and listening to every word. “So if he went there, they’d have seen him.”

  Maybe, maybe not.

  “What’s he wearing again?” Gabe asked.

  “Blue shirt, shorts, sneakers,” Lila answered as another bolt of lightning cut through the sky, followed almost immediately by thunder. “Hurry, Gabe!” The storm was directly over Barefoot Bay now, making Lila’s heart thump against her ribs.

  Her baby boy was out in a deadly storm. With a broken arm. Trying to find the rings he lost because his heart was in the right place. She blinked against tears. She would not cry.

  Gabe pushed the GTO to its limit, s
pitting rooster tails of water. “All this rain will flood that construction area.” He threw her a look, his eyes a reflection of the pain burning in her chest. “If that little son of a bitch falls in…”

  She closed her eyes, picturing the section of the resort as they barreled closer to the main entrance. Flash flooding in the parking lot had been such a problem this year that management had opted to build a retention pond at the far end of the lot. But they’d just dug it out, and right now, it was little more than a deep and muddy ditch, or probably a small pond, with all this rain.

  Gabe whipped the car into the parking lot, headed straight for the yellow and white striped awning, as far away as it could be. Gripping the seat, Lila leaned forward, peering through the thumping windshield wipers, which were essentially useless in this downpour.

  Lightning flashed again, a bolt clearly visible in front of them, making Lila shriek and cover her mouth as she realized they’d almost been hit.

  “We have to get to him!” she ground out.

  Gabe, silent, undaunted, powered through the lot, slamming on the brakes so hard the car fishtailed wildly. He ripped off his seat belt and shoved the car into park.

  “Stay here!” He threw open the door and leaped out into the rain before Lila could even voice her argument. Stay here? Was he out of his mind?

  She unlatched her seat belt almost as fast as he had and opened the door, instantly soaked. She didn’t care.

  “Rafe!” she yelled, spitting and blinking against the rain.

  Gabe was already running toward the covered area where the carts were parked.

  As she caught up to him, she saw one of the carts lurch forward. “Rafe!” she screamed again.

  “Mummy!” His little voice was barely audible in the downpour. But she heard it. “It’s stuck! My foot is stuck!”

  He was stuck? Or the gas pedal was? Gabe moved in front of her in a blur just as another white-hot bolt of lightning cracked not fifty feet away, blinding and vicious, making every hair on Lila’s body stand.

  Ahead of her, Gabe was thrown to the right from the impact of the bolt hitting the ground.

  She heard Rafe scream again, the metallic smell of ozone and fear nearly suffocating her as she ran. The only thing she could see was the roof of one golf cart headed straight toward a fifteen-foot mudslide.