by Wendy Wax
He angled his head to gauge the sun’s position. There was plenty of time before sunset—once a time of day he’d enjoyed almost as much as sunrise—except that now he spent a good part of “the show” battling his thirst for alcohol while he watched the sun sink into the bay. He had no idea how long it was going to take to separate alcohol from the pleasure of sunset and absolutely no interest in sharing that evening struggle with any of them.
Back in the day he would have just said no. Or stalked off, which would have been even clearer and far more satisfying.
“Why don’t we just do the grounds and the outbuildings for now?” Tommy suggested smoothly. “That’ll give you tonight to get settled and we can tour the house in the morning when the light is good.”
Will cut a look at his son, oddly pleased. He’d have at least one more night to pretend that none of this was happening.
The little boy looked up. The child’s mother lowered her camera, letting it hang from a strap on her shoulder, and reached for the child. When she had him she turned so that his face was hidden from the network camera.
“Why don’t we start at the back of the island and work our way toward the dock?” Tommy suggested. Before Will could object or bail out on the tour altogether, Tommy was leading the way down what had once been the main driveway.
At the northwestern edge of the island, the three-car detached garage sat in a clearing near the narrow strip of fill that had once served as a land bridge to U.S. 1. The electric poles that had been placed along it could still be seen above the dense foliage and water that had obliterated the road.
The three-bayed wooden structure housed his Jeep and a rust-riddled riding lawn mower that hadn’t been used in this millennium. Several boat motors that Hudson used for parts had been propped against one wall. Broken gardening equipment and assorted junk was stacked throughout the space in no discernible order, and oil covered the floor. An outside staircase led to the second floor, which was the same size as the garage and had balconies facing east and west. Part of it had been finished for the cook/maid he’d employed for a while. It had a small sitting room and a bedroom and bath.
“How come there’s no road anymore?” the redhead called Nicole asked.
“Didn’t really need it,” he replied with a shrug.
“It’s not actually completely . . .” Tommy began, but for once he obeyed Will’s cease-and-desist look. They didn’t owe these people an explanation for everything—or anything—as far as he was concerned. “The backup generator is over there near the utility shed.”
Will looked down at his watch and tried not to think about how thirsty he was. He’d managed to ditch the little white stick while they were tromping through the overgrowth. He pulled another Tootsie Pop out of his pocket and led them back down the path. At the fork he cut over toward the dock on the southern edge of the island.
“What’s over there?” the older blonde asked, gesturing to the path he hadn’t taken. Toward the one building he had no intention of showing them.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said, but she was already turning the other way, peering through the tree branches and leaves and vines. He had no idea how she’d spotted it through the overgrowth that screened it from the path. The others followed, forcing him to turn back.
“It’s adorable!” Deirdre said. “And so quaint.” It might have been Christmas and Easter all rolled into one, the way she carried on.
The small one-bedroom house had been here when he bought the island, a squat single-story building built of coral blocks, called keystone, that were set in a mosaic of rectangles. It was topped by a simple gabled tin roof. A bamboo pole fence slip-knotted loosely together with rope bounded it on three sides and left gaps that you could see through. It sat on a small rise and overlooked a wide swath of ocean. He happened to know that the small porch commanded the best sunrise view on the island.
“Why is there a padlock on the door?” Deirdre asked, as if being allowed on his property somehow entitled her to ask whatever the hell kind of personal questions she wanted.
“I would have thought that was pretty self-explanatory,” he said. It was all he could do not to ask her what part of “keep out” she didn’t understand.
“What’s inside?” Avery asked as the video guy swung his camera lens Will’s way.
The cameraman’s fingers moved subtly. It had been a while since he’d had cameras regularly shoved in his face, but he could tell the guy was zooming in for a close-up.
“It’s my studio,” he said as if it couldn’t matter less. Even though he hadn’t set foot in it for what felt like a lifetime and sometimes almost managed to forget that it existed.
“Will we be renovating it?” Avery asked.
“No,” he said in a tone intended to end the conversation.
“But why not?” Deirdre asked, clearly missing or ignoring his tone. Which was just one more indication of how very far off his game he was.
“Because even once the main house becomes a bed-and-breakfast”—his throat actually tightened when he said the words—“my studio will still be off-limits.”
No one went into the studio anymore. Especially not him. And it was unlikely anyone ever would again.
They looked at him, not understanding. Except for Madeline. Who had probably read that damned article about how he hadn’t written or recorded in more than a decade. Her big brown eyes held questions he had no intention of answering.
“Tommy can show you the rest,” he said with a curt nod. Then he turned and headed back to the house, ripping the wrapper off the goddamn Tootsie Pop as he went.
Chapter Seven
Nicole and the others watched William Hightower stomp off. Afterward, his son herded them back onto the sandy, root-strewn path and led them in the opposite direction.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said in apology. “He’s not used to doing anything he doesn’t want to.” The tone was disapproving. William Hightower’s son was apparently not a member of his father’s fan club.
“You mean he doesn’t want us to renovate?” Maddie, who probably actually had been a card-carrying member of said fan club, was clearly disappointed.
“I’d say about as much as a double root canal,” Nicole said. “Without anesthesia.”
“Well, he’s had plenty of Novocain in his day,” Thomas said. “It’s about time he had to deal with reality.”
“Not that reality TV comes anywhere close to that,” Avery pointed out.
“Amen to that,” Nicole agreed. Lord knew, they’d learned that lesson the hard way.
They came out at the dock area and he led them into the boathouse. Water lapped at the pilings that supported the structure, giving the space an echoey, cavelike feel. A sporting goods store’s worth of fishing rods, gear, and tackle was stacked against and hung on the back wall. A pile of wooden traps had been stacked in one corner. The hum of a chest-high freezer sounded disturbingly jarring in contrast to the lapping of the water against the dock and retaining wall.
“What’s in the freezer?” Avery asked.
“Bait and fish. It gets filleted out on the dock and stored in here.” Thomas opened the top to let them peer at what might be a lifetime supply of seafood.
Dustin reached a hand out toward the rods. “Ish,” he said.
“My starter rods might be around here somewhere,” Thomas said. “I was pretty young when I dropped a line for the first time.”
Maddie looked alarmed.
“No hooks,” Tom said. “Just a bobber and lead weight. I’m pretty sure I never actually caught anything—most likely it would have been a physical impossibility, but I didn’t know that ’til I was older.”
“That’s great that your dad taught you to fish,” Maddie said.
Thomas snorted. “He was way too busy partying for that. Hudson taught me. He was Will’s original fi
shing guide. They’ve been friends for a long time.”
On the surface the spare, soft-spoken Hudson and the larger-than-life rock star seemed an unlikely duo, but she and Avery and Maddie weren’t the likeliest of friends, either.
Thomas led them out of the boathouse and up the stairs to the stilt structure that perched over it. A narrow porch ran across the front of the rectangular building, which hung out over the dock.
“Wow, you could fish right from the porch.”
“Happens all the time,” Thomas said after showing them the interior, which was one huge rectangle of space. A storage closet ate up half of the room. The other had been furnished with a bed, nightstand, and small dresser. A door led to a utilitarian bathroom that no woman would willingly set foot in. The kitchen was even less enticing.
“Hudson uses this space when he wants to stay over,” Thomas said.
They walked back out onto the porch, where the view out over the dock was expansive. The boat that had brought them there bobbed slightly where they’d left it. The smaller boat the network crew had used was tied nearby. Nicole gazed westward, over the two houseboats and the Overseas Highway, where the sun was already slipping in the sky.
“Sunset’s not far off,” Thomas said as they watched the sun ease toward the water. The sky began to go pale as if all the color had been leached out of it and sucked into the sun. “The sunrise and sunset views from the island are equally amazing. The Lorelei over on the bay side has a sunset celebration every night with music and entertainment and tables on the beach. Morada Bay does the same, but it’s a little fancier crowd.”
“How would we get there?” Nicole asked, wishing they were there right now.
“We’ll have to work that out, I guess,” Thomas said.
Dustin stuck one thumb in his mouth and began to suck on it. Maddie yawned.
Troy and Anthony leaned back against the railing and shot it all. For the moment Kyra seemed to be more into shooting her surroundings than trying to shield Dustin from the network camera.
“I’m ready for a bed and something to eat,” Nicole said. “Not necessarily in that order.”
There was a general murmur of agreement.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Troy and Anthony move.
“You can see the whole island from up here.” Avery leaned out over the railing, which Nicole sincerely hoped was less rickety than it appeared.
“Can you show us to our rooms?” Nicole asked, more than ready to unpack and relax. “And tell us where we can find food?”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice any other structures on the island. Are we staying in the main house? Or are there guest cottages tucked away somewhere?” Maddie asked.
Troy began to pan his camera from out over the railing up to them. So far in Nicole’s experience this was never a good sign.
“I thought the network would have explained the sleeping arrangements,” Thomas said carefully. He looked so uncomfortable Nicole wouldn’t have been surprised to see him whip out a Tootsie Pop.
“The network prides itself on never explaining anything they might be able to surprise us with,” Deirdre said.
Nicole followed Thomas’s gaze and the network camera’s lens. Over the railing and down along the dock.
“Actually, you’ll be, um, staying on a houseboat,” Thomas Hightower said.
There was a silence as they processed this. Following the camera lens, Nicole spied Deirdre’s luggage piled on one of the houseboat’s decks.
“The crew is staying on the other one.”
“Holy crap!” Avery said.
“This is a joke, right?” Nicole studied Thomas’s chiseled face but saw no hint of humor in his dark eyes.
“The network crew is on the smaller one. You’ve got the bigger houseboat—it has multiple sleeping areas, a complete bathroom, and a kitchen/dining/living room combination. You’ll have it all to yourself.” His voice trailed off as they stared down at the houseboat in horror.
“All five of us and Dustin on that one boat?” Maddie asked.
“Yes.”
“And how many bathrooms did you say it has?” Deirdre asked.
“Why, um, just the one?” Thomas’s response turned into a question.
They stood frozen and silent as they all took it in.
“But there is a port-o-let, too,” Thomas was quick to assure them. He pointed beyond a grouping of bushes to a dented phone-booth-shaped object. “Plus the houseboat has a rooftop deck and air-conditioning units. And the galley kitchen has a refrigerator that’s stocked with groceries.”
Troy and Anthony didn’t bother to hide their smirks.
“Jesus.” It was the only completely formed word that sprang to Nicole’s mind.
“The network seemed to love the idea,” Thomas said, moving away from the railing—and them—as if in self-protection. “They thought it was perfect.”
“No doubt,” Nicole said. “Stuffing us on a houseboat tied to an island sitting in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is absolutely perfect. Absolutely perfect for them.”
Chapter Eight
They stood wedged into the main cabin of the houseboat surrounded by closed doors and built-in cushion-covered ledges that were supposed to pass for furniture. Moving would have required orchestration or at least a game plan, neither of which any of them seemed able to muster.
Troy and Anthony were pressed against the bulkhead recording their first sight of their floating barracks. To say that it was a tight fit was like saying that the Atlantic Ocean, on which they bobbed, was just a little bit damp.
“Well, it’s compact. And kind of ingenious, really,” Maddie said, running a hand over the galley’s ancient Formica countertop.
“I feel like a sardine,” Nicole said. “And it smells kind of fishy here, too. Does your glass really always have to be so . . . half-full?”
“I can’t believe they think they’re going to get away with this.” Deirdre was pressed against a door that Nicole hoped led to a heretofore-unnoticed second bathroom. A cosmetics case was locked in Deirdre’s arms. The rest of her luggage was piled up on the deck.
“They already have. And last time I checked there was no ‘no houseboat or island makeover’ clauses in any of our contracts,” Avery said. She gave Deirdre a look. “Unless your agent managed to slip one into yours?”
Deirdre remained silent.
“Didn’t think so,” Avery said.
“Well, the kitchen is small but it seems to have pretty much everything,” Maddie said.
“Yeah,” Kyra said. “It kind of reminds me of that Barbie Dream Kitchen I had. Or wait, maybe that was the Easy-Bake Oven I’m thinking of.” She’d sat Dustin on the dining room table, a Formica rectangle surrounded on three sides by a vinyl-covered banquette. The space was so small that hiding him from the camera was pretty much out of the question.
“Well, at least there’s a blender.” Nicole eyed the small, if ancient, appliance on the counter. “And I have a bottle of rum in my bag. Did anybody bring anything to blend with it? Not that I wouldn’t consider drinking it straight from the bottle right now.”
“No, but I’ve got Diet Cokes in the cooler and some snacks,” Maddie said. “Let’s see what we’ve got and figure out the sleeping arrangements. Then we’ll take some food and drink upstairs and watch our first Keys sunset.”
In addition to the built-in dinette, a compact kitchen ran along the hull, forming an L in the corner. Shallow cabinets were arranged around a narrow rectangular window and beneath the counter. There was a built-in microwave, a cooktop, and a compact refrigerator. A very small, very ancient television sat in a cubicle.
“I’m pretty sure that the dinette and the couch convert into beds,” Maddie said as if this were a good thing.
“I’m going to hold out for something that resembles an actual bedroo
m,” Nicole said. She’d slept on the floor when they renovated Bella Flora and in far worse circumstances as a child; a bed and a door meant something to her.
“Okay,” Avery said. “Let’s see what lies behind door number one. Can you all move so I can get that door open?”
They inched to their left so that she could reach the door closest to the kitchen counter. Avery pulled it open as far as she could, given the wall of bodies in its way. “It’s a shower room.”
“By itself?” Deirdre asked. “Is that all that’s in there?”
“Well, there are two hooks on the wall.”
“Great.” Nicole groaned.
“And door number two?” Maddie asked.
“Sink, vanity with mirror, toilet.”
Maddie managed to peek over Avery’s shoulder. “Gosh, that’s small. I mean, compact. Or is that ‘efficient’?”
“Well, at least the shower and the toilet/vanity area are separate. That means more than one person at a time can be doing something,” Avery said.
“But there are five of us,” Kyra said. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank God Dustin is still in diapers and won’t need to get potty trained in here.”
“If there’s not another bathroom tucked away somewhere I may have to start wearing diapers myself,” Nicole said. “I will not be using that port-o-let.”
“It’s not like we’ve never shared a bathroom before,” Maddie said.
“Yeah,” Avery conceded. “I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the bathrooms at Bella Flora or the Millicent. They were a wreck, but they were real bathrooms.”
“And they were on land,” Nicole added. “A distinction I never fully appreciated before.”
They thought about this while Avery pulled open the remaining doors.
“That’s it for bathrooms,” Avery said. “But it looks like there are three sleeping spaces—I’m not sure they deserve to be called bedrooms.
“The first one has a set of bunk beds. And . . .” She peered in the opposite doorway. “This one has what looks like a full-sized platform bed. And a couple of built-in cubbies on the wall.”