“Welcome! I’m Lola and this is my space. I hope you’ll enjoy looking around,” said a woman from the back of the room where she was hammering at a frame on a long wood table. She was every bit as gorgeous as Mirra and Jolie.
“Hi, Lola. Your space is beautiful, as are you,” Avery said.
Lola shot her a smile. “That’s sweet of you. Are you here on vacation?”
“Something like that. He’s working – but I’m on a reality show. I can’t say it has been the most relaxing,” Avery admitted, studying a trio of black and white photographs of cactus and birds.
“Ah yes, the show’s been the talk of the town,” Lola said. “You’re working on it, then?”
“I’m the producer,” Roman agreed.
Lola studied him for a moment. “Doesn’t seem like your type of gig,” she said.
Avery shot her a look. The woman was a good read.
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m a photographer. We study people. And you, good sir, do not scream ‘reality television producer’ to me.”
“I am and I’m not,” Roman grinned. “I’m good at producing them, but my heart lies in nature documentaries. I’m planning for this to be my last round of reality television – I’d promised a friend I would help. The money’s good, and I’ve invested wisely, but it’s time to let it go and keep exploring what I’m passionate about.”
“That’s a smart approach. We can’t all make it straight out of the gate,” Lola nodded. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you all the jobs I had before settling here.”
“This shop is great. Do you make all the art here?” Avery asked.
“Some of it. And I bring in local artists. I think it’s important to showcase all the talent the island has to offer.”
“These necklaces are stunning.” Avery stopped in front of a few necklaces hanging from a driftwood hanger. One in particular caught her eye – a polished shell with a single pearl nestled inside, hanging from a delicate silver chain.
“My friend Prince makes them. He calls them mermaid shells.” Lola winked at her and Avery felt her heart flutter.
“I’d love this one.” She picked the necklace up.
“Here, try it on,” Roman said, and moved to stand behind her. Lifting her hair, Avery shivered as his fingers brushed her skin, heat trailing from his touch, and felt the cool pendant settle between her breasts.
“How does it look?” Avery said, turning to find Roman hadn’t moved. The moment drew out for a second as his eyes met hers, then trailed down to the pendant nestled at her chest.
“It’s beautiful. Perfect for you… you look like a mermaid,” Roman said.
Avery ducked her head, a smile flashing across her face. “Thank you,” she said, and stepped back, turning to examine a few handwoven bags. Picking up one that she knew Ruby would love, she wandered back to where Lola was finishing off the frame she was working on.
“I’d like to get this necklace and the bag, please.”
“Actually, I’d like to buy the necklace for you.” Roman stepped around Avery, and Lola beamed up at him.
“That’s very nice of you. Do you want to wear it? It comes with a nice wooden box that’s been carved in the shape of a shell as well.”
“We’ll take the box as it’s quite pretty, but the lady can wear it if she’d like. I’d also like to buy the print up there,” Roman said, and pointed to a large panoramic shot of the ocean. The photographer must have been standing in the water, because Avery could see both the brightly colored fish underwater and the palm trees and sand above it. It was a stunning shot. “Can I have it shipped?”
“Of course. I ship, but it’ll take a few weeks,” Lola said, and pulled out a pad to jot down his address. “This is a great piece; I’m sure you’ll love it.”
“It’s for my mother. The most important woman in the world to me,” Roman said. “She deserves to look at pretty things.”
That was who he’d been talking to that one day, Avery realized as her fingers trailed over the necklace. Here she’d been half-convinced he had a girlfriend in the background, when all along he was just a mama’s boy. Nothing wrong with that, Avery mused; family was just as important to her.
“Don’t we all? Art is a great gift,” Lola said, ringing him up and then quoting Avery for the price of the bag.
“This is for my sister,” Avery said, knowing Ruby would love the bag.
“She’ll love it,” Lola promised. She waved goodbye to them as they left her shop.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Roman said.
Avery froze, looking at the back of his head as he rounded the Jeep. This was her moment to be honest with him – as a friend – that she wasn’t who he thought she was. She opened her mouth to speak, then gasped as a fat raindrop hit her head.
“Uh oh,” Roman called. “Get in! Cloudburst!”
Avery scampered to the Jeep just as the skies opened up, bucketing them with sheets of rain. Despite their best efforts, by the time it was done they were almost completely drenched, and laughing so hard that Avery had to wipe tears from her soaking wet face.
“I can’t believe it’s sunny again already,” Avery gasped as Roman pulled away and drove to the road that would take them to the other side of the island. “What kind of rainstorm is that?”
“An island one,” Roman laughed. “So much for putting the canvas on top to protect us.”
“Well, it does protect from the sun.” Avery laughed and looked down at her coverup clinging to her body. Looking at her new necklace, she ran a thumb over the pearl. “Thank you for my necklace. That was really sweet of you.”
“Of course. I like knowing you’ll have something from me,” Roman said, then clamped his lips shut.
The silence stretched out between them as Avery pondered what he meant by that, then she shrieked when the radio blared music after they turned a curve in the road.
“That scared me,” Avery laughed, her hand to her chest.
“Spotty island transmission.” Roman chuckled, then shifted into a lower gear as they began a bumpy descent down a dirt path. Avery kept quiet and hung onto the roll bar, grateful for her seat belt as they jolted their way down the track to a small but pretty sand beach. Irma was right, Avery mused; this did look like its own tiny paradise. The water was calm, stretching like glass to the horizon.
“Ah, I see,” Roman said, driving along the sand. “There’s a wave break really far out, which essentially makes this a calm little pool of water.”
“It’s perfect,” Avery decided.
“No, now it’s perfect,” Roman said, stopping the Jeep and looking at her. Avery met his eyes in confusion, and for a brief moment she thought he might kiss her. Then he said, “Look.”
Turning, Avery saw that the cloudburst had moved out to sea, and the sun’s rays hit the rain at the perfect angle to form a rainbow.
“Oh…” Avery breathed. “Yes, now it’s perfect.”
Chapter 30
“Since we’re already wet, should we get in the water?” Roman asked, pulling out a bag of snorkel gear from the back of the Jeep. The sun was back out and the water was calm, barely a ripple marring the surface, and Avery tamped down on the anxiety that threatened to kick up. There couldn’t be calmer swimming conditions, she reminded herself, and she used to love going in the water. Maybe now would be a good time to start working through the phobia she still carried from the accident.
“Sure, but you’ll have to teach me to snorkel,” Avery said, pulling her soaking wet coverup over her head and laying it across the hood of the Jeep to dry in the sun. Turning, she caught Roman looking at her simple emerald green sport bikini. Ruby had always rolled her eyes at this swimsuit, calling Avery ‘Sporty Spice,’ but Avery liked that it kept all her bits covered while allowing freedom of movement. No strings or ties to fuss with. She might as well have been wearing a sports bra. Avery could just see Ruby shaking her head now. She chuckled – she missed her sister deeply.
She was looking forward to when she could get her phone back and communicate with the outside world again.
“Have you never snorkeled before?”
“Oh gosh, ages ago on the lake we used to go to in the summers. But there’s not much to see in freshwater lakes.” Avery laughed. “Just a few bluegills and a mucky bottom.”
“I was lucky. I grew up close enough to the Florida Keys that we could go down for a weekend here and there. There’s some good snorkeling in Key Largo if you can get out to the marine park. Up closer to shore is mucky though.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Ah, I was a trailer park kid.” Roman shrugged, though Avery could sense an edge to his words. “Just Mom and me. She did the best she could, but we didn’t have a lot. Those trips to Key Largo weren’t often, but she’d certainly scrimped and saved so that we could do them.”
“That’s sweet of her. It sounds like she wanted to give you some nice memories,” Avery said. Then she almost swallowed her tongue when Roman peeled off his t-shirt to reveal an actual eight-pack of muscles rippling down his chest. She’d known he was muscular, hadn’t she? She’d been plastered all over his chest earlier in the week. But seeing it with her own two eyes was a whole different thing, and Avery found her mouth had gone dry.
“She really did,” Roman said, placing his shirt next to hers and holding up a bottle of reef-safe sunscreen. “Have you applied?”
“Um, no, actually, I forgot,” Avery admitted.
“Turn around. You’ll fry with that pretty white skin of yours,” Roman said.
Avery turned, trying to focus out on the horizon and not on the strong hands that were currently gently caressing her shoulders.
“I guess I always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about being the poor kid at school,” Roman continued, and Avery snapped back to attention. She was trying not to stretch and purr as his hands moved down her back. “Used to get in fights, that kind of stuff. Mom was getting worried. I had this one teacher, though – he saw potential in me, and put a camera in my hands. It was something I could channel all that pent-up angst into, you know?”
“Sure, I get it,” Avery said, feeling a very different kind of pent-up angst building inside her.
“Pretty soon, I stopped caring about being the poor kid and started caring about finding beauty in the world through my lens. It started small, like trying to find beauty in the trailer park. I’d look for people who grew flowers on their stoop, or tended little herb gardens. That kind of thing. Slowly I started expanding my scope and began to explore the Everglades, which is where I really got hooked on the whole nature documentary thing. My first paid gig was producing a documentary on the pythons that swim in the Everglades. That was pretty intense.”
“There are pythons there?”
“Sure are,” Roman said. He handed the bottle to Avery over her shoulder. “Can you do mine now?”
“Oh, um, of course,” Avery said, turning and staring at the broad expanse of his back. An intricate tattoo was etched across his shoulders, a stunning, almost tribal, design of a lion. For some reason, she hadn’t been expecting him to be a tattoo guy, and couldn’t help remarking on it.
“I like this,” Avery said, tapping the lion.
“Thank you. It was to commemorate the first production I did for National Geographic. We were shooting to bring awareness to a conservancy for lions that had been abandoned by circuses. They couldn’t go back to the wild, and needed to be retrained and homed in a safe place. There’s this cool organization that takes care of them and teaches them how to lion again.”
“How to lion again?” Avery laughed.
“You know… work in prides together. Hunt for food. Be outside. Be free, really. Well, as free as they can be. Luckily this place has acres of land for them to roam. It was really an incredible experience,” Roman admitted. He turned when she tapped his back to let him know she was done.
“That’s incredible. What an experience to have been a part of that.” Avery smiled up at him. “That’s something I’d like to do more of. I feel like I contribute on a small scale – through my job, for sure, with creating more environmentally friendly structures and practices. And I do my best at home and around our city to raise awareness with recycling and all that. But I’d love to learn more about getting involved with struggling animal populations and so on.”
“I’d be happy to send you some information on a few of my favorite organizations,” Roman said. “Maybe someday you’ll visit them.”
“I think I’d like that,” Avery said, “But really, what a dichotomy between producing a reality show and covering abused lions. How do you… I don’t know…”
“How do I live with myself?” Roman laughed, running a hand through his hair.
“No, not that. I mean you could be doing a lot worse, like filming those girls-gone-wild tapes or something.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” Roman said with a laugh. They wandered down the beach, giving their sunscreen time to soak in. “I think – well, you want me to be honest?”
“Sure, go for it,” Avery said.
“I think I’ll probably always have a bit of that poor kid living inside me. I know what it feels like to go without. I know what it feels like to be hungry. I know what it is to eat canned beans – if we were lucky, that is – or survive on a bag of rice and dried lentils for weeks at a time. My mom always added spices and flavors and made things fun, but I wasn’t dumb. I knew we barely got by. The one time we ate out for dinner? On my graduation from high school. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more proud of me. We went to Applebee’s and I had a steak. I’ve eaten much better steaks since then, but I’ll tell you what – that Applebee’s steak? The best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Where’s your mom now?” Avery asked, touched by the story.
“I put her up in a lovely little two-bedroom house just off the water. She refused waterfront – said it was too fancy – but she likes the house. I wanted to get her something bigger and nicer, but she said she didn’t want to clean anything bigger. She’s happy as can be. Has a couple neighbors she plays mah jong with, a little dog she walks every night, and her very own vegetable garden. I would produce a thousand more reality shows if it meant I could keep her happy like that. Luckily I don’t need to, but I would.”
“You’re a good man, Roman. It sounds like your mother raised you right,” Avery said.
Roman laughed. “Well, she’ll tell you a few stories about my more troublesome years. But we all have those, right?”
“Erm…some of us.” Avery shrugged a shoulder.
Roman’s mouth dropped open. “Don’t tell me you never got into trouble!”
“I mean… like, what counts as trouble?”
“Drinking? Smoking pot? Making out in the backseat of a car with the quarterback? Breaking curfew? Taking your parents’ car out for a test drive?” Avery kept shaking her head no until Roman threw up his hands.
“Woman! You need to live a little.”
“I did return a library book three weeks late one time.” Avery pretended to hang her head in shame.
Roman groaned. “Well, now, I see we’ve got some making up to do,” Roman decided.
Avery hesitated before continuing to walk into the water. “I don’t want to get into trouble in the water, please,” Avery said, her voice stiff. Roman paused, studying her.
“That’s fine; I can respect that. How about we spend some time testing out the snorkel masks in the shallows for a little bit then?” he asked, his eyes on hers. He’d left his sunglasses on the shore and she could read the questions he had. She just wasn’t ready to answer them.
“Perfect,” Avery said, then surprised him by kicking a spray of water at him. She laughed at the shock on his face. “Okay, see? I can be a little trouble.”
Avery’s heart skipped a beat as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, running until they were waist-deep in the water.
“I should toss you righ
t in,” Roman threatened.
“Please don’t,” Avery begged, half laughing, half worried, trying to force the panic down.
“You’re lucky I’m a gentleman,” Roman said, and let her slide down his body, every last inch of her grazing his skin. She narrowed her eyes up at him.
“Not that much of a gentleman.”
“Well, you know, a work in progress.” Roman grinned. “Now, masks. You’ll probably want to pull your hair back. Snorkel goes on the right. To start we aren’t even going to swim – we’ll just put the mask on, bend at the waist, and put our faces in the water. You can work on breathing through the snorkel, and if it freaks you out, just stand up. Easy, okay?”
“Right, got it,” Avery said, repeating over and over to herself that she was fine, this was no big deal, and she could stand up at any moment. Placing the mask on her face, she tightened the strap and put the mouthpiece of the snorkel in her mouth. Bending over, Avery put her face in the water. She giggled when she saw a tiny silver fish darting by her toes. Otherwise, there was nothing to see other than that she needed to touch up her pedicure. It was hard to be panicked, Avery realized, when she was in three feet of crystal-clear water, with the sun on her back, a muscular guy at her side, and all the time in her day to ease into snorkeling.
Standing up, she looked at Roman as he stood up as well. She burst out laughing, the snorkel dropping from her mouth.
“You look ridiculous,” Avery said.
“Oh? You think you’re looking all sexy with a mask on? Because you look just as ridiculous,” Roman teased.
Avery laughed again. “Okay, got it. Snorkel masks are not the most flattering.”
“Nope. How’d it go, though? You want to try floating? I’ll stand next to you while you do it.”
“Just float? Face down and breathe?”
“Yup, saltwater is extra buoyant. So long as you breathe, you’ll float just fine along the top,” Roman promised. Avery nodded, and he said, “I’ll be standing right here in case you have any issues. Promise.”
“Thank you, sorry for being nervous.”
A Good Chance (The Siren Island Series Book 3) Page 17