Desire on Deadline

by Lucy Lakestone

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A Letter From Roxanne St. Claire

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lucy Lakestone

  Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Roxanne St. Claire. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Barefoot Bay remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Roxanne St. Claire, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  DESIRE

  ON DEADLINE

  A Barefoot Bay Kindle World Romance

  by

  Lucy Lakestone

  VELVET PETAL PRESS

  Florida

  ≈ A Letter From Roxanne St. Claire ≈

  Welcome to Barefoot Bay Kindle World, a place for authors to write their own stories set in the tropical paradise that I created! For these books, I have only provided the setting of Mimosa Key and a cast of characters from my popular Barefoot Bay series. That’s it! I haven’t contributed to the plotting, writing, or editing of Desire on Deadline. This book is entirely the work of Lucy Lakestone, a talented author I handpicked to help launch this new program.

  I knew I could trust Lucy with the Barefoot Bay world, as she’s a Florida girl just like I am. When not writing our tropical-set stories, we frequent the same beaches and share a love for romances set in our home state. I have no doubt it was her background in journalism that had this keen-eyed reader spot the fact that tiny Mimosa Key had two hometown newspapers and immediately saw that as the opportunity for a little conflict, a bit of danger, and a whole lot of love. Lucy Lakestone brings color and vivid storytelling to every page, and she’s once again spun a romantic mystery that I promise will make you want to kick off your shoes in Barefoot Bay . . . and fall in love!

  Roxanne St. Claire

  P.S. If you’re interested in the rest of the Barefoot Bay Kindle World novels, or would like to explore the possibility of writing your own book in my world, visit www.roxannestclaire.com for details!

  ≈ Part 1 ≈

  The rumble shook Roz Melander right to her bones.

  “It’s too early for a thunderstorm, isn’t it?” She looked out the front window of the tiny coffee shop, still feeling the boom. Her nose for news longed to sniff out a story in Mimosa Key that might rival what she’d left behind in Baltimore.

  “I don’t know what that was.” Lily, the pretty blond clerk who greeted Perky’s morning customers, handed Roz her iced mocha. Since her return to balmy Florida, Roz craved cold treats, from her coffee to a cone at Ms. Icey’s. They constituted the one vice she allowed herself, the only one she had time for.

  “Maybe my brother drove by,” Lily added. “His old Charger backfires all the time.”

  “Maybe,” Roz said, handing over the toll for her morning caffeine and narrowing her eyes at the man who’d just set the door jingling.

  The door and her nerves.

  She hadn’t been properly introduced, but she knew his byline in the Mimosa Times: Alden Knox. While Roz struggled to save the staid Gazette — the newspaper had just cut back from daily to weekly publication and refocused on online news — the newer Times chased scoops on the celebrities flocking to the Casa Blanca Resort at Barefoot Bay, on the northwest end of the island.

  Alden nodded at Roz, then flashed his million-dollar smile at Lily. “Morning.”

  “Your usual?” the clerk said, standing straighter, pushing a lock of blond hair out of her face, suddenly the embodiment of Perky’s name.

  “As long as it’s hot,” he purred in that damned smooth voice, no mistaking the double entendre.

  Why does he rub me the wrong way? Roz thought. And then she had to mentally disengage the concepts of rubbing and Alden Knox.

  He didn’t make it easy. He had to know how attractive he was, and that made him all the more annoying. His clothes were impeccable — jeans that clung in all the right places and a white, button-up shirt whose partially rolled sleeves showed off muscular arms and an enviable tan. Under dark, expressive eyebrows, his cool gray eyes took in everything with an almost sleepy disregard. The angles of his face weren’t sharp, but they were masculine, from his long, straight nose to his strong chin, framing a deliciously formed mouth. His dark brown hair was precision-cut, just long enough to tempt a woman to run her fingers through it — some lonely, needy woman who was an easy mark for that debonair act.

  Not her.

  Roz had another agenda. One: Save the family business so her ailing mother would have something viable to sell. Two: Cover the news while running circles around this guy. Three: Get the hell back to the city and the investigative team so she could salvage her career.

  “Working on anything interesting?” Alden was still exchanging money for coffee, but it was clear the question was directed at her.

  It was the first time he’d ever spoken to her, and just the shock of hearing a modicum of interest from him stunned her into silence. Roz met those piercing gray eyes, and her breath hitched.

  And then the sirens started.

  Alden’s perfect right eyebrow shot up at the sound. Roz shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant.

  “Maybe I am now,” she replied as she pushed out the door.

  ≈≈≈

  Alden smiled again at Lily, Perky’s pert clerk, and casually sipped his coffee on his way out into the cool February morning. He didn’t want to look as if he were running after his rival.

  He’d seen Rosalind Melander, as her byline called her, four or five times a week since he’d moved to Mimosa Key a month ago, in January. It took him less than a day to figure out who she was. After all, her Gazette had only three journalists who did all the reporting, editing and photography. His newspaper, the Mimosa Times, had five. It wasn’t hard to discern who was writing what by power of deduction.

  And after he saw her, he needed to know who she was.

  He’d first encountered her at the Super Min, where she was telling the grumpy lady who ran the place that the Gazette should be placed above the Times in the rack.

  Alden hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Ms. Melander, as he’d come to think of her. There was something about her no-nonsense attitude that precluded the use of first names.

  He didn’t know if it had been her provocative curves, the captivating color of her long, reddish-brown hair or the green flash in her hazel eyes, but something about her stopped him like a red cape whipped in front of a bull. He stuttered to a halt, panting, scuffing the ground with his feet, at least on the inside.

  On the outside, he pretended a definite lack of interest and, after she left, charmed the shopkeeper into displaying the Times on top.

  Most women seemed to love Alden whether he showed interest or not. But whenever he was around Ms. Melander, whatever he did, he just seemed to piss her off.

  Maybe they were rivals, but it was a small town, and it didn’t hurt to be friendly, did it? Each time Alden watched her lush pink lips purse in frustration, he longed to be very friendly indeed.

  They crossed paths only here, at the coffee shop, or where their divergent beats intersected. A zoning meeting on the new baseball stadium? Sure, he’d be there, scrutinizing the formerly “Naughty” Nate Ivory and its other billionaire investors for the kind of celebrity news that did well locally and nationally online. Ms. Melander would cover traffic issues and whether the goats on the stadium’s property would produce enough poop
to sour the island’s pristine environment. Dull stuff, really. The kind of stuff he used to cover when he started in journalism, before everything went wrong and he went to work for the tabloids instead.

  It was the well-heeled owner of his last publication, the National Eye, who’d decided he wanted to start a hobby project on the island where he was building a mansion. A newspaper would be a way to inject his opinion and friends into local politics and society. Thus the Mimosa Times was born, and eventually, Alden was invited to come on board. The weekly made its reputation when his colleague Julia landed an exclusive about Naughty Nate, an infamous playboy, falling in love.

  Somebody had to fall in love, he supposed. Alden would rather fall in lust. He’d done so regularly in South Florida, until he’d burned out on vapid women about the same time he’d burned out on chasing sordid gossip.

  Yet here he was, chasing a different flavor of gossip — and this time, he hoped, he was doing it the right way. The stories Alden and Julia wrote for the Times were mostly harmless, happy fluff pieces that made their backers and readers happy. Even the celebs, lulled into complacency by the gorgeous weather and beaches, didn’t seem to mind them.

  As a bonus, the hours were a lot less horrible than they’d been at the National Eye. One of these days, Alden might even write that novel he’d been pondering for years. Maybe it should be about a journalist, he mused. A pretty, stuck-up journalist who was driving him crazy.

  His office at the Times was just down the street from Perky’s, a block away from the Gazette, and he picked up his pace when he got out of the coffee shop. He didn’t see Ms. Melander anywhere, and that was just as well. The sirens probably signified a house fire or a car wreck or something, nothing he’d be interested in covering, unless someone famous was involved. Though there had been that curious noise just as he’d parked at the office.

  He’d get back there and listen to the scanner first to see what he could glean before heading out on a wild goose chase. Julia didn’t come in till the afternoon, because she had a charity wingding to cover in Naples tonight, and the sports guy was probably hounding baseball players for quotes. His editor and their photographer might be around, though. At least at his paper they had a photographer to shoot most of the photos and reporters to write stories, not like that mess over at the Gazette, where everyone did everything. Money helped. Like Citizen Kane, the Times’ deep-pocketed founder thought it might be fun to run a newspaper.

  Alden walked past the Gazette office, studiously ignoring the quaint stucco building, but he couldn’t ignore the sound of a car peeling out of its space a moment later and hurtling past him. He knew that car. He had an eye for them. It was Ms. Melander’s little silver hybrid, and she was in a hurry.

  Alden increased his pace and walked into his much more modern office, where the ad and design staff was busy on the first floor. He trotted up the stairs to the second and sat at his mildly messy desk, with its piles of magazines and newspapers, notebooks, a foot-high bust of Shakespeare wearing a Barefoot Bay Bucks cap, a half-eaten can of cocktail peanuts and one well-hidden volume of seventeenth-century poetry. He turned up the scanner and took another gulp of coffee.

  John, his editor, leaned back in his chair in his glass-walled office, chewing gum and frowning into the phone. Alden waved at him, but John waved him off, as if he were swatting away a fly. Alden smiled. He liked John, an old-school editor who never stopped longing for the days when news was news.

  An unusual note of excitement in the local cop transmissions caught Alden’s attention. The deputies didn’t have much of a filter, and for that he was grateful.

  He grabbed his reporter’s notebook and wrote down key words as he heard them on the radio: boat . . . smoke . . . possible explosion . . . This was getting interesting, even for him. Coast Guard . . . Gulf of Mexico . . . It sounded as if the sheriff’s deputies were deploying a boat to investigate something, and the Coast Guard was already on the scene.

  And then he heard: This might be one for the coroner . . . possible guest at Casa Blanca . . .

  One thing was almost certain about guests at the Casa Blanca Resort & Spa. They were rich. And sometimes, they were famous. Which meant that, for the Times, they were news.

  Alden practically flew down the stairs and out to the street, cursing his dilly-dallying. He ran to his well-seasoned, tomato-red BMW convertible and cranked it up.

  “I’ll be damned if she gets the story first,” he muttered as he headed east.

  ≈≈≈

  Roz zoomed into the harbor lot and squeezed her car into a tiny space as close to the boats as she could get. Actually, the space might have been for a motorcycle, but she was press, and sometimes, she needed to be a jerk and park up front. This was one of those times.

  Two Collier County Sheriff’s deputies’ cars were double-parked, and she knew from what she’d heard on the scanner that the cops were too busy with other things to ticket her.

  It was a beautiful day, a lot nicer than a February day in Baltimore would have been, cool and sunny with a brisk wind. The causeway to Naples soared over the frothy blue Intracoastal Waterway just to the harbor’s north. The waves were choppy, but they didn’t look as if they’d cause a boating accident, especially a loud one.

  Roz walked out to the slips, looking among the yachts, speedboats and sailboats for the action.

  There they were, two deputies, hands on hips, chattering away near the harbor office.

  She plucked a camera from her bag and got a couple of shots of them talking before they noticed her, then exchanged it for a notebook and approached.

  “Jimbo!” she called out, and the deputy closest to her, with a powerful build and a thick head of golden-brown hair, turned to her and squinted.

  “Roz? I heard you were back,” he said, his sunburned face breaking into a grin. “Have you been avoiding me?”

  “Of course not. It’s great to see you, Deputy Rogers,” she said, reverting to a more formal address for Jimbo, one of the guys she used to hang out with at Mimosa High. “I’m Roz Melander,” she added, addressing the other officer, a young female deputy with black hair secured in a neat bun. “I’m with the Gazette.”

  “Melanie Cinder,” the officer said flatly. Not a fan of the press, Roz presumed.

  “So you’re here about our explosion?” Jimbo said as his colleague frowned.

  “Is that what it was?” Roz asked. “I heard a noise and then the sirens, and something on the scanner, so I thought I’d see what was happening.”

  “We’re still investigating,” Deputy Cinder said.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t publish anything I can’t confirm,” Roz said with all the sincerity she could muster. “What can you tell me?”

  “Nothing official,” Deputy Cinder said, eyeing Jimbo with a “don’t you dare” look.

  “Look, if you don’t attribute it to one of us, I can tell you a little,” said Jimbo, shrugging an apology to his colleague accompanied by a smile that would’ve made Lady Macbeth roll over. “We’ll get you an official statement later.”

  “OK. No problem,” Roz said. Deputy Cinder sighed.

  “The Coast Guard’s investigating now,” Jimbo said, “and our department has a boat out there, too — in the gulf, northwest of the island by eight miles or so. A couple of fishermen called in after we all heard that bang this morning. Said there was a bunch of smoke, but they didn’t want to get too close after they saw all the debris.”

  “Debris? What kind of debris?” Roz was writing fast, hoping she could decipher her own handwriting later.

  “Boat pieces. And I mean pieces. Apparently they haven’t found anything bigger than a skateboard, though it’s early yet. I hope there are survivors, but it doesn’t look good.”

  “Any idea who was on board?” Roz had heard the mention of Casa Blanca on the radio but wanted to see what Jimbo said.

  “I can’t really tell you our theory just yet,” he said. “But — the Coast Guard was able to find deb
ris with a number and part of a name. It looks like the boat was from Consummate Catch.”

  “That charter fishing tour company that’s been marketing itself all over the place?”

  Deputy Cinder nodded. “That’s the one. Based in Naples. They’ve been dropping brochures everywhere, including Casa Blanca. Apparently rich guys like to fish.” She looked over Roz’s shoulder, and her eyes narrowed again.

  “Good morning, officers,” came a familiar, deep, silky voice, and Roz cursed under her breath. She turned to face Alden Knox. “Ms. Melander,” he said, nodding at Roz as he stopped beside her.

  She said nothing, just tried to ignore that bit of fresh breeze he seemed to bring with him, the way the morning sun defined the captivating angles of his face. He had a small digital audio recorder in his hand.

  “So I gather there was an exploding boat this morning,” Alden said, jumping right in. “Was someone from the Casa Blanca Resort on board?”

  Jimbo suddenly became less talkative. “We won’t have that information until the families have been notified. If there are casualties, that is.”

  “I’m told there were at least two deaths,” Alden said.

  Was he bluffing? It was Roz’s turn to scowl. What was his source? And then she realized that Jimbo had said “families.” If there were no survivors, at least two people were dead. Astute on Alden’s part, she had to admit.

  “Like I said, we won’t know anything until later this afternoon. The Coast Guard is investigating now,” Jimbo said to Alden. “Who are you with again?”

  “My apologies. Alden Knox with the Mimosa Times.” He peered at the deputies’ name tags. “Nice to meet you, Deputy Rogers, Deputy Cinder. Anything you can tell me? What caused the explosion?”

  “You’ll find out when we do, I suppose,” Jimbo said, politely obtuse. “I was just telling Ms. Melander here that we won’t have a statement until later.” He grinned at Roz. “Maybe we can get a cone sometime, Roz.”