by Wendy Wax
Her clients had been Greek grocery tycoons well beyond their prime who wanted young, firm flesh still well within its sell-by date, captains of industry looking for smart, but not too smart, blondes, brunettes, or redheads who possessed a laundry list of physical attributes, personality traits, and other intangibles, which Nicole had cataloged in her database and managed to provide.
In the process she’d built a name and a fortune. Both of which she’d lost when her brother’s Ponzi scheme had caused her to be plucked from the A-list party circuit like a tick from a pedigreed poodle.
The dream mirrored real life as the partygoers’ expressions slid from genial to knowing. Their greetings became barbed. Their eyebrows arched upward and the eyes beneath them narrowed. Their shoulders turned as cold as the peaks of the Himalayas.
Suddenly she was naked before her dream audience. Her vintage gown puddled in a heap at her feet. She shivered. Her bare flesh goose-bumped with embarrassment and shame. Every inch of her was exposed.
Nicole awoke naked but not cold. A soft breeze skimmed over her. Slowly she opened her eyes and saw the sheer bedroom curtains billow gently like sails filled with warm air and morning sunlight.
The whine of a Jet Ski and the more insistent buzz of a motorboat floated in on a salty breeze. Her eyes drifted closed. She did not want to get up. Or pack her things and load her car for the drive down to the Keys.
She could, in fact, lie here forever in Joe Giraldi’s bed.
That thought had her eyes flying open, her feet hitting the floor. She found her robe and pulled it on, then washed her face and brushed her teeth, careful not to look too closely in the mirror lest she see a glimmer of neediness reflected back at her.
It wouldn’t do to get too close or too comfortable.
There was the scrape of metal on the pool deck. Nicole poked her head outside.
Special Agent Joe Giraldi sat at the table they’d dined on the night before. His dark hair was still wet from the shower, but he was dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. A tie she’d bought him was knotted at his neck. FBI-issue sunglasses covered his probing brown eyes.
She could see her own reflection in the mirrored lenses as she approached.
“Good morning.” He smiled as she sat and tucked her bare feet up underneath her. Without asking he poured her a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table.
“I thought you’d already be gone,” she said. He was a financial crimes profiler and traveled often. “Didn’t you have an early flight out?”
“I got a later one.”
She sipped her coffee and kept her gaze out over the bay, but she could feel his eyes on her behind the mirrored lenses.
“Did you really think I’d leave without saying good-bye?” he asked.
She shrugged and took another sip. “I would have understood.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you understand half as much as you think you do.” He said this calmly, in a matter-of-fact tone that was hard to argue with.
She studied his face, which was strong and masculine like the rest of him. The fall and winter had passed in a pleasurable blur interspersed with bits and pieces of unavoidable reality. Heart Inc. was all but dead, her efforts to resuscitate it so far ineffective. A book deal had been offered, but she wasn’t sure the money was enough to convince her to admit just how stupid she’d been and how completely she’d been betrayed by the person she’d loved above all others.
The Miami Herald sat on the table in front of Joe. He tilted it toward her so that she could see the page he’d been looking at. It held a large photo of Kyra Singer and her mother, Maddie; Dustin Deranian; and Avery Lawford on the front stoop of what was identified as Chase Hardin’s house. Dustin’s face was visible over his mother’s shoulder. The photographer had gotten a clean shot of Avery Lawford in a skimpy T-shirt that strained against her breasts and cutoff shorts that revealed just how curvy even a short pair of legs could be. A leather tool belt was slung low across her hips.
Nicole pulled the paper closer to get a better look. “Oh, God. Deirdre is bound to be giving Avery fits about being caught dressed like that. And Avery will dig in her heels but she’ll be just as horrified.” Nicole rarely ventured out without full makeup, her version of armor. But refinishing floors and sweating your ass off during a renovation in the tropics didn’t exactly keep a girl ready for her close-up.
“It’s about time everyone got used to the fact that anyone standing near Kyra and her son is fair game,” Joe said.
They sipped their coffee in silence. The man sweated the truth out of criminals for a living. She had no doubt that he was reading her every thought far better than she could.
“Any word on what kind of house or ‘high-profile individual’ you’ll be dealing with?” he asked.
“No.” She set the paper aside. She needed to get dressed and pack up the car. She sat where she was. “Just that we need to be in the Upper Keys by four and we’ll be contacted then. There’s no telling where we’ll actually end up. Or how high a profile the homeowner has.”
“I could probably help narrow things down. You know, run a list of potentials for you.”
She imagined he had already done this but had learned not to offer anything that wasn’t asked for. This was the good news/bad news part of dating an FBI agent. They could find out anything, but they were damned hard to lie to.
“Thanks. But I wouldn’t want to deprive the network of the ‘money shots’ of our surprise. After all, that’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Her smile was tight. Lord knew, they were underpaid for the amount of embarrassment that went along with starring in what had been turned into a reality show against their will. But none of them could afford to walk away from it. In fact, they needed to do everything they could to make sure the show was picked up for another season.
“I’ll get down when I can.” Joe leaned over and kissed her. “And I hope you’ll come up whenever you need a break.”
“Thanks.” They stood and carried their coffee cups and the carafe inside. She walked him to the door, where he picked up his carry-on and turned to kiss her good-bye.
“I’ll see you soon.” Joe watched her face, but she had no idea what he was looking for or whether he found it.
Nicole took her time packing, dawdled over lunch, then loaded everything into the Jag, which was pretty much all she had left of her former life.
Later, as she backed out of Giraldi’s driveway and headed toward the highway, she tried not to think about all the things that had been left unsaid.
In her experience it was better to say too little than to say too much. And definitely better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing.
Chapter Three
They practically tiptoed out of Tampa early the next morning before the paparazzi came back. Dustin, who’d woken way too often during the night, was still half asleep when Kyra buckled him into his car seat, and Kyra wished she were, too. Maddie climbed into the driver’s seat clutching a travel mug of coffee, took a sip, and started up the minivan. “And we’re off!” she said far too happily as they fell in behind Avery’s bulging Mini Cooper and the two women shoehorned into it.
Kyra yawned and laid her head against the window as they picked their way through morning traffic then headed east across the state to pick up I-95.
“What a gorgeous day!” Maddie’s every pronouncement rang with the kind of good humor that demanded an exclamation point. “I can’t wait to see the Keys! All the travel guides I picked up are on the backseat if you’re interested. I thought reading up on all of the keys would be a good idea so that we’d be prepared for wherever we end up.”
Kyra blinked sleepily. Yawned. She was nowhere near ready to face the day her mother seemed to be embracing so joyfully, and it wasn’t just because Dustin had fussed during the night. Madd
ie’s mood had lightened with each mile put between them and Atlanta. Kyra knew her father had fucked things up royally, but even so it was disturbing to see just how much the proximity to her father and the life they’d lived had been weighing her mother down. And how much she seemed to be looking forward to the challenges ahead of them.
Maddie turned on the radio and began to hum along. Kyra’s eyes fluttered shut on the thought that if her mother’s mood lightened any further, she’d be floating above the minivan instead of sitting inside it by the time they reached Miami.
When she woke hours later her mother was still humming. Dustin whimpered in his sleep. His long lashes flew open and his face scrunched up. He began to cry.
“Yikes,” Kyra said. “Are your teeth still hurting you, little man?”
Dustin poked his thumb into his mouth and began to suck mightily.
“Hold on, Dustin. Help is on the way.” Pulling the backpack that served as diaper bag and holder of all things Dustin into her lap, she rooted around until she located the teething ring. “Here you go.” She handed it to him and watched him shove it in his mouth and begin to gnaw. “Do you want to read a book?” He nodded vigorously, and she pulled out a board book about boats that Chase had given him. “Boog!” he said, his mouth still clamped around the knobby rubber ring.
Once he was settled, Kyra looked around. “Where are we?”
“We’re on the Florida Turnpike headed south.” Her mother was smiling. “According to the GPS we just keep going until we hit U.S. 1. Did you know that U.S. Highway 1 starts at the northern tip of Maine and goes all the way to the Monroe County courthouse in Key West, which is Mile Marker Zero? That’s the very southernmost tip of the continental United States.”
“Cool.” Kyra knew she should be glad that her mother sounded so happy, but Maddie’s eagerness to embrace her future was even more disturbing than seeing her father with his new girlfriend, Kelly. And that was truly cringe-worthy.
“What happened to Avery and Deirdre?” she asked, seeing no sign of the Mini Cooper.
“They got off a couple of exits ago for gas. Since it’s a pretty straight shot we decided not to worry too much about caravanning.”
Kyra yawned. Her stomach rumbled. The teething ring dropped out of Dustin’s mouth and he began to kick his legs. “Can we stop soon? I think it’s time for a diaper change. And I wouldn’t mind grabbing something to eat.”
“Sounds good,” Maddie said. “I could definitely use a pit stop. And we should probably go ahead and top off the gas tank.”
“I’ll drive after that,” Kyra offered with what she hoped would be a last yawn. “I just need to get some fuel and caffeine in my own tank.”
As soon as they switched seats, her mother took what turned out to be a major collection of travel guides from the backseat, arranged them in her lap, and began to spout Florida Keys factoids at an alarming rate. Dustin did his share of pointing and babbling as they passed Homestead and skirted the Everglades, stuck in a line of slow-moving cars inching their way south. But each piece of Keys trivia or history that her mother shared was laced with a degree of excitement that soon set Kyra’s teeth on edge.
“It says here that ‘keys’ comes from the Spanish word cayos, which means ‘little islands,’” she said. “They’re composed of coral and limestone and there are forty-two bridges connecting them. In fact, the Overseas Highway is built on what was once Henry Flagler’s overseas railroad—that was what first connected the Keys to the continental United States.”
Kyra smiled and nodded. No comment seemed required.
“Oh, look!” Maddie pointed to a sign barely two minutes later. “We’ve just officially crossed into the Conch Republic—the ch is pronounced like a k so it sounds like ‘konk.’”
“Kunk!” Dustin said.
The story of how the Keys seceded from the United States in April 1982 to protest the U.S. Border Patrol roadblock and car searches for drugs and illegal immigrants that were impacting tourism followed. “And then they declared war on the United States, surrendered a minute later, then applied for one billion dollars in foreign aid.” Her mother laughed. “Isn’t that awesome?”
“Absolutely,” Kyra said. “Totally awesome.”
Kyra stole a look at her mother. Who had always played by the rules, been the responsible party, done the right thing. And was now completely enthralled by political shenanigans that were little more than a publicity stunt.
“I bet you don’t know what a conch is!” her mother said.
“Then you would be right.”
“It’s a large marine snail—a mollusk—and a staple food in the Keys. That’s why they call someone who was born and raised here a Conch.”
“Because they look like snails?” Kyra asked, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
“I can’t wait to try conch chowder. And conch fritters. And . . .” She flipped through one of the books on her lap. “You wouldn’t believe what all they can make out of that snail.”
Maddie buzzed on with excitement. A veritable mosquito of happiness that Kyra wanted to swat at.
“Did you know that Key Largo used to be called Rock Harbor?”
“Um, no. But I loved the movie,” Kyra said. Bogie and Bacall had had an affair on the set of their first film just like she’d had with Daniel. Only no one had gotten evicted from the film—or pregnant. And Bogart had left his wife for his costar.
“According to this guidebook, in 1948 local officials talked the post office into changing its name to Key Largo to capitalize on the movie,” Maddie said. “Even though they shot the whole film on a soundstage in California and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall never even set foot here.”
Her mother flipped through a magazine. “Oh, my gosh! We just missed the Bogart Film Festival! But they have the African Queen, the boat that was used in the Bogart/Hepburn movie, on display. It even goes out for tours occasionally.”
“Af Keen!” Dustin chimed happily.
Still fighting the urge to slap down her mother’s happiness, Kyra simply smiled and nodded. Fortunately as the mile markers slid by, Kyra’s irritation began to ebb. It was hard to stay cranky when confronted with the incredible expanse of sparkling turquoise water and the crisp blue sky that met it. Mother Nature had definitely known what she was doing when she laid out the string of islands, decorated them with tropical plumage, and then squeezed them in between not one but two luscious bodies of water.
“The keys take a westward turn right around Marathon,” her mother said with one eye on the map that she’d pulled, accordion-like, out of one of the guidebooks. “And right after that is the famous Seven Mile Bridge.”
“Bitch!” Dustin exclaimed, the teething ring forgotten for the time being.
Both of them turned their heads around.
“I think we’re going to have to work on his pronunciation,” Maddie said.
“Are you kidding? I think we should record it for playback the next time we hear from Tonja Kay.” Kyra couldn’t help smiling at the thought. “What did you say, Dustin?”
“Bitch!” Dustin gurgled.
Kyra’s ponytail whipped in the warm breeze as all three of them laughed.
The sun glinted off the water and Kyra folded the sun visor down in an attempt to cut the glare. They’d lowered all the windows so that they could catch the ocean and Gulf breezes. Perhaps it was time for someone to design a convertible-topped minivan. That, too, made Kyra smile.
“The railroad and hundreds of people, many of them World War One vets working on a road project and who were in the process of being evacuated, were wiped out by a massive hurricane with two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and an eighteen-foot tidal wave in 1935. There’s a monument right around Mile Marker 82, where we’re supposed to check in.” Maddie looked around tentatively. “How could they evacuate even today? I mean, this is the only wa
y in and out.” She snapped the guidebook shut.
“It’s May. If we’re lucky we’ll be in and out before August, when hurricane season gets serious,” Kyra said, though all of them knew that the network wouldn’t object to the ratings bonanza that another hurricane like the one that had menaced Bella Flora would provide.
“Do you want me to text and see if Nikki or Avery and Deirdre have heard anything yet?” Maddie asked.
Kyra looked at her mother. “Um, no. Thanks.” Maddie had sent autocorrected texts requesting “dick measurements” and revealing plans to serve meals composed of “baby black bugs.” One slip of either thumb could launch a search-and-rescue mission.
At Mile Marker 83 they passed Whale Harbor Marina—a complex of wooden buildings and docks on the Atlantic side. The fly bridges of fishing boats poked up into the sky, and signs advertised charters for fishing as well as a watering hole and restaurant called Wahoo’s.
The urge to spoil Maddie’s fun had passed, but now that they were almost at the appointed rendezvous point, Kyra was ready to see the house they’d be working on or at least find out where in the Keys they’d be.
A text dinged in. “Can you see who it’s from?” Kyra asked.
“It’s from the network,” her mother said. “Rendezvous point adjusted to Mile Marker 79.5,” she read. “Bud N’ Mary’s.”
“What’s a Bud N’ Mary’s?” Kyra asked.
Maddie leafed through her guidebooks. “I’m not sure. It could be a restaurant or a bar. Or a hotel. Or . . .”
Kyra’s eyes scanned from right to left, bay side to Atlantic. A strip mall with a visitors’ center/Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of small buildings slid by. An angular sign straight out of the fifties announced the Islander Resort across the road on the left. A large wooden mermaid marked the entrance to a place called the Lorelei on the right. She slowed down as they passed what she thought might be the Hurricane Monument.
Along this stretch of the Overseas Highway new and shiny rubbed elbows with old and funky. Her mother appeared spellbound. “Oh, look, there’s the Cheeca Lodge and the Green Turtle Inn. They’re in my guidebook.”