by Tara Rose
He waved a hand in the air. “Don’t think twice about it. So…does that mean you’ll have dinner with us?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’d love to have dinner with you both. We close at six on Fridays, so I’ll meet you there about six-thirty.”
After they left and she moved onto the next patient, Mattie nearly ran after them to tell them she’d changed her mind. Was she truly ready for this? She’d avoided deep conversations with everyone since returning, but she knew she couldn’t do that forever. Sooner or later, someone was going to put two and two together, and ferret out the truth from her.
But she didn’t want that someone to be either Rey or Felipe. It was better to let her teen fantasies of them remain as her version of reality. Because she’d already believed her dreams had come true and she’d found everything she ever wanted, and then her world fell apart. She couldn’t handle any more reality yet.
Chapter Two
Rey loved his lizard. Not as in happily-ever-after love, but because he was the ultimate pet. Feed him some bugs every few days, make sure he has fresh water, and scoop out his poop twice a week. Easy. The special night and day lights were on automatic timers, and he even had them set to keep working via the generator if the power went out. When you lived on an island one hundred miles off the Louisiana coastline, you got some pretty nasty storms, and they usually knocked out the power for a while.
He and Felipe had bought the pair of agamas from a Santeria priest who came to island every month or so to see Phyllis Trudeaux. She was a voodoo priestess with her own shop downtown, and she kept in close contact with practitioners of voodoo, vodun, and Santeria scattered across the Caribbean. Rumor had it that her grandniece, Petra, was coming to Sybaris Cove to live and help Phyllis with the shop, now that Nita, her granddaughter who used to have that role, was otherwise occupied.
Nita Trudeaux was a sub to Mark Raleigh and Brett Durante. Mark and Brett had both put their homes up for sale, and the three were building a house close to downtown, and near the beach like Nando Durante, Leta Da Costa, and Graham Raleigh lived. Nita didn’t want to live too far away from Phyllis, who was seventy years old and had raised her from the time her parents died when she was only a toddler. If that wasn’t true love, Rey had no idea what was.
“So, who keeps Bruce?”
Felipe’s question pulled him out of his reverie. “I don’t know. We may have to flip for it.” He and Felipe lived close to each other, but Rey knew that Felipe was just as attached to Babs as he was to Bruce. “I guess we didn’t ask Doc Ramon the right questions.”
Felipe scrolled through his phone as they drove. “We could have found what Mattie told us on Google if we’d bothered to look.”
“We’ll have to sell our homes and build one together, I guess, like Mark and Brett did.”
Felipe gave him a sideways glance. “What made you think of them?”
Rey pointed. “Phyllis’s shop.”
“Oh. Right.” Felipe put his phone back on the dash. “So, Mattie looks fabulous.”
“She does. And I’m surprised she took us up on the dinner invite.”
“Why? We were friends with her. Still are.”
He glanced toward his friend. “The rumors…her ex-husband…the reason she got divorced…”
“Rumors. You just said it. Let’s wait and see what she says about him and what happened.”
“If she talks about him.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just happy we’re going to have dinner with her.”
Rey shook his head and smiled. “Down, boy. It’s only dinner.”
“Oh right. You still have some drool on your chin, by the way.”
Rey laughed. “Fuck you.”
“Classy comeback. You think that up all by yourself?”
Rey navigated his Jeep into his driveway. “Okay. Let me just get Bruce back inside and settled, and then I’ll be right out. Do you want to call Alaina and tell her we’ve decided to take the rest of the day off?” Alaina Pembrooke ran the sales department now, along with Mark, but Mark was off today.
Felipe grabbed his phone. “Sure. I’m on it. But we still need to figure out who’s going to keep Bruce and Babs.”
“I know.” Rey got Bruce settled into his aquarium, and then he thought about what Felipe had said. The rumors about Mattie going through a messy divorce had been circulating for months. Felipe knew her ex-husband, Clay, from business connections in Alabama, but he’d never paid much attention to the man for the same reason Rey hadn’t.
Neither man had wanted to know the man who’d won Mattie’s hand because she was the woman who got away, for both of them. Popular and pretty all through school, they’d both been idiots and shied away from her because she’d always had a guy or two hanging around. What they hadn’t known until shortly after graduation was that she’d never seriously dated any of them.
Her life plans had been firm for years. College and then veterinary school. She’d had her heart set on it since she’d been a kid. And that meant leaving the island. The same curse that kept him and Felipe on this rock had kept Mattie from becoming too attached to any man who showered attention on her. She hadn’t wanted any part of making an impossible choice to leave one behind.
She also hadn’t wanted to be emotionally tied to anyone else on the island, even if they weren’t part of the curse, because she’d never planned on returning. That little tidbit hadn’t been part of the rumors about her divorce. Those were things they’d both learned from her various family members after she left to attend college in Georgia.
But she was home now, and he suspected that whatever had happened with Clay had driven her to change her mind. He wanted to find out what that was, but he also knew he’d need to tread carefully. He and Felipe both would.
Because if the rumors were even partly true, Mattie had been through hell and back in the past three years. And the last thing he wanted to do was add to her pain. He’d let her get away once. He didn’t want to risk it again, especially if she was home to stay.
* * * *
Their plan was to work from home the rest of the afternoon, and then meet downtown for their date with Mattie. As soon as Rey drove him home, Felipe logged into his work station from his home computer and pulled up the e-mails he’d exchanged about eighteen months ago with Clayton Hale III.
Clay worked as a contracts attorney for Bitsy-Grant Communications, a family-owned company that parented multiple smaller corporations, including Schoolgirl Paddles. The latter was a fledgling fetish shop that had contracted with Phoebe’s Playthings. Felipe had the Southeast territory which included Alabama, and he’d brought in the account.
Several months after landing the account he learned that the man who handled the original paperwork on that deal was Mattie’s soon-to-be-ex husband. And now the divorce was final, after two years of court battles that were so drama-filled they’d made the local papers in Huntsville.
Of course, that might have had more to do with the fact that Clay’s parents owned half the neighboring town of Madison, and could trace their families back to the original settlers of that burg. There was nothing juicier to local media than a scandal involving one of the richest families in town.
“That’s for sure,” he muttered. Every Durante and Raleigh on this island could relate to that. Only their scandals usually made the news stations up and down the Gulf coast, especially if the stories had anything to do with the curse. That was both the reason they could all trace their families back to the origins of the island, and why every male descendant was stuck on this rock.
As he read the e-mails, looking for clues that would help him figure out if the rumors about why Mattie had divorced her super-rich husband were true, he let his mind wander to the curse. Alaina had shared with them recently that her friend Jan, a professor of ancient languages and cultures at Pepperdine, was very close to translating all the documents that had been passed down from cousins Agapito and Iago Durante. The current generation of Raleighs and
Durantes called them clues, although Felipe often wondered if they weren’t simply trinkets that led to a dead end.
She’d already used what most of his cousins called the mother of all clues, Shona Durante’s diary, to help her translate the language in many of the documents. She’d also been successful in uncovering the names of loa, not demons as was previously believed, on two medallions owned by Jagger and Estevan Durante.
Given all the information Jan had been able to unearth, Alaina felt certain they would soon know which demon or demons had cast the curse, who had summoned them, and how it could be lifted. There were some who believed it had already been lifted, or even that it was never real to begin with. But the latter theory didn’t explain how Iago and Agapito, along with brothers William and Robert Raleigh all died while trying to leave the island just as the curse said they and their male descendants would.
It didn’t help that two recent events had everyone wondering, whether they were descended from the Raleighs and Durantes or not. A few months ago, Liam Raleigh and Estevan had been able to swim underwater while wearing scuba gear and rescue police sergeant Santos Augustine from a trapped storm drain. And they didn’t die, much to the joy of Santos’s sister, Jade, who was Liam and Estevan’s sub.
And two weeks ago, Tom Raleigh and Merrick Durante had gone out to Little Cove, the small island about fifteen miles south of Sybaris Cove, in a speedboat driven by Irwin Balloux. Irwin, his siblings, and their parents owned and operated Cove Cargo, where Ivy Balloux was a pilot, and now sub to both Merrick and Tom.
Felipe didn’t have all the details, but Tom’s sister Nadine had pulled a nasty joke on the triad and stolen Ivy’s phone to send a text to Merrick and Tom, making them believe Ivy had taken a package to the island on a delivery and was hurt. They panicked, refused to wait for the police, and went out in one of the company’s two boats to rescue Ivy, who in reality had never left Sybaris Cove.
And they didn’t die. In fact, the trip to and from Little Cove was routine. And no one knew how they could have done it and lived, which led many residents to now believe that the curse had never been real. They surmised it had only been an elaborate story told by the descendants of the original four Raleighs and Durantes to explain their deaths.
But Felipe wasn’t convinced of that. For one thing, William, Robert, Iago, and Agapito weren’t the only four Raleighs or Durantes to die while trying to leave the island. For another, he’d seen all the clues and heard all the stories. He’d read parts of Shona’s diary, which was written in English, not the blend of ancient languages like some of the documents that Jan had finally translated.
Shona had been Iago’s eldest daughter, and she’d started writing down stories about the curse from a young age. There was no reason to believe she’d made all that up, or any explanation why she would have. So it followed that if Shona’s diary was real, the rest of the clues were, too, as was the curse itself.
But for now, Felipe wasn’t looking for clues to the curse. He was looking for the reason Mattie was back home, and being very quiet about the circumstances behind it. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t lusted after her. When he’d heard she was coming home, and that she’d bought the clinic and its practice from Doc Ramon, he’d been both thrilled and intrigued.
And then the rumors had started. Rumors which had Felipe so angry at Clay that he’d been ready to defy the curse himself and travel to Alabama to pay the man a little visit. “Man” wasn’t the right word. Because a real man doesn’t spray paint degrading names on a woman’s body, or make her crawl on her hands and knees through feces, simply because she had to go to work for an emergency.
The accusations he’d heard ranged from the truly bizarre to ones he’d heard before from stories of battered women. Couple those with a family who stood behind Clay, who believed he could do no wrong, and who made sure to tell the media that Mattie was nothing but a gold digger descended from a family of servants, and you had a recipe for disaster. Mattie’s name and motivation had been dragged through the mud.
No wonder she’d left Alabama to wait for the divorce to be finalized. If the rumors of what Clay had done to her were true, he hoped she’d be able to open up to someone and talk about it, even if that didn’t turn out to be him or Rey. Because Mattie was an extraordinary woman, and she deserved only the best in life. He’d always thought so. Bright, pretty, and never without a kind word or gesture toward man or beast. It had been no surprise to Felipe that she’d ended up as a vet.
He brought up an online company brochure for Bitsy-Grant Communications and frowned at the picture of Clay. He was one of those men who had a million dollar smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Everything about him screamed money and phoniness. His CV read like the kind you might find on a university professor who had been a child prodigy.
Felipe wondered how much of it was real, starting with graduating from Tulane University Law School with the designation of Order of the Coif, meaning he’d been in the top ten of his class. That would be easy enough to verify, as would most of the stuff on the CV. And even if all of it was true, brains didn’t make him a great guy.
Felipe closed the website. He’d look for something specific later after dinner with Mattie. Maybe she would let something slip about Clay, maybe not. He wasn’t going to make this evening uncomfortable for her, no matter what. He was so happy to see her back on the island, and it went without saying that Rey was as well.
So Felipe was determined to have a wonderful time tonight. It had been far too long since he’d been on a date, and even though technically this wasn’t one, he was still thrilled to be going out with her. And the fact that his best friend was coming along only made it better.
Chapter Three
Mattie finally chose a charcoal gray sweater dress, and wore tights and her short boots with it. She surveyed the finished product in the mirror, wishing she hadn’t given away every piece of clothing she’d owned while married to Clay. She’d had some beautiful clothes. The ones he hadn’t torn or cut off her, that is. But she hadn’t wanted one physical scrap of evidence that might trigger memories to accompany her back home, so she’d donated everything that was still wearable, and thrown out the rest.
This wasn’t her favorite outfit, but it was classic and fit her well. It wasn’t a date, and she kept reminding herself of that as she chose jewelry to try and make the dress appear less drab, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take her time and look nice. She knew that Felipe and Rey had both had a crush on her in school, although her relationship with them had never crossed the line past friendship. And while she tried not to let thoughts of what if creep in now, it was nearly impossible not to.
But if she’d stayed on Sybaris Cove, she wouldn’t be a veterinarian. And that was something she’d dreamed of doing since she could remember. You could have come back home after school and worked for Doc Ramon. Yes, that was true. But she’d had her own reasons for not wanting to return home. Now, one of those reasons was gone for good, just like her marriage to Clay.
Mattie finished putting on her jewelry and shook her head to clear the memories. None of them were allowed in tonight. She was going to have a good time and not dwell on events from her past that couldn’t be changed.
The walk downtown from her condo wasn’t short, but she made it anyway because she preferred to be outdoors as much as possible, even when the weather was cool. It cleared her head and helped her deal with the claustrophobia that her therapist in Georgia said was part of dealing with trauma.
Since returning home, she’d seen the two psychologists that practiced here on the island, and she was still working through getting to know both so she could decide which one to keep seeing. Since they were the only two, Mattie had little choice but to pick one, unless she wanted to make a trip off the island once or twice a month.
By the time she arrived at Lady of The Night, she’d pushed aside the memories from her past once again and walked into the bar with a smile on her face. Felip
e and Rey were already waiting, and they both stood to greet her. She let her gaze wander over them, unashamed at checking them out. They were handsome, charming men, as were most of the Durante and Raleigh men. There was no harm in looking, but she wondered if she’d ever be ready for more again.
“We ordered drinks and an appetizer already,” said Rey. “I hope that was okay.”
“It’s fine.” She took the seat across from them. “If the food is still like I remember it, everything here is fabulous, so it doesn’t matter what I eat. What did you order me to drink?”
As if on cue, Neeva Macey showed up with a tray, and placed a Hurricane in front of each of them, as well as water. When she left without a word, Mattie shook her head. “I see Neeva is still as friendly as I remember her. What about Kirstie? She still here, too?”
“Yep,” said Felipe, laughing as he raised his glass. “And still just as surly as her sister. To old times.”
She raised her glass, and then clinked it against his and Rey’s, although drinking to old times was likely to dredge up the past all over again. She took a sip. “Yummy. Hurricanes didn’t taste this good in Georgia or Alabama.”
“From what I hear,” said Felipe, “no one makes them as well as Laila and Justin do.”
“What about their youngest daughter?” asked Mattie. “Giselle? Is she still working here, too?”
Rey shook his head. “She’s a sub now to Kade and Elliot. The three are building a club on the property Kade and Elliot own, next to their homes.”
“What kind of a club?” She remembered Kade Durante and Elliot Raleigh. “And I thought they worked for Phoebe’s Playthings?”
“They did,” said Rey. “But when Asa forced them to choose between Giselle and their jobs, they quit.”
“Wow.”
“Yep. And now they’re building a club that will feature Cuban music, food, drinks, dancing. They were inspired by a Cuban music concert they attended at Striker Amphitheater last summer.”