“I’m glad. Derek sounds scary.”
“He is. He really is.”
“Do you need to be there, Nick?” I said it because I needed to. I tried to sound sincere.
He shook his head vigorously. “No, my friend has it under control. I need to be here.” He held up his phone and turned it off. “With a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”
Meow. Time for lucky number seven.
Chapter Eleven
By the next morning, I was at the point where Nick could practically just look at me and I’d have to add one to my running total, and I’d completely lost count of what number we were on.
We ordered room service early—for some reason I was ravenously hungry, God knows why—and then dressed for the day. Three cheers for the just-in-case bag. We brushed our teeth side by side in the bathroom and Nick retrieved a bottle of Estee Lauder moisturizer from the depths of his shaving kit. I took it from him and raised my eyebrows.
He shrugged. “Years of surfing with no sunscreen.”
“Kind of a girly brand, isn’t it?”
“Show me where it says ‘for women only.’” He held it out for my inspection. “Just because I’m a man shouldn’t mean I can’t use the good stuff. And you weren’t calling me girly an hour ago.”
Good point. “Here, let me put it on for you.”
I stood nose to nose with him and massaged the lotion into his face. His eyes closed. I kissed each temple, his nose, his chin, his forehead.
“You are the perfect woman, you know.”
“And it only took you this long to notice.”
He swiped his nose against mine Eskimo-style, then grabbed a hibiscus blossom from the bowl on the bathroom counter. He smoothed my hair behind my ear with one hand and slipped the hibiscus behind it with the other. My heart thudded in my ears. I didn’t ever want to leave that room, but we had to check out soon. Our plan was to visit Annalise in the daylight before grabbing lunch at the must-see Pig Bar, where Local swine guzzled nonalcoholic beer. Then we’d head to the airport at the last possible second to make it in time for his midafternoon flight. After that, there was no plan, and I didn’t want to think about it.
Nick walked back into the room and packed his bag while I unfolded the St. Marcos Source that had come with our breakfast. The headline read “Police Rule Fortuna’s Death Bad Luck.” Apparently, they theorized, Tarah Gant had slipped and hit her head in some freak-accident way when she was closing things up the night before she was found. I cringed and read further. “Ms. Gant’s family expressed outrage at the quick closure of the case. ‘Something not right about how Tarah die. Her baby’s daddy fight dogs, bring the wrong kind of people dem around. Police not even questioning him. She deserve justice.’ Bart Lassiter, executive chef and one of the owners of Fortuna’s, declined to comment other than to wish the family and friends of Ms. Gant his condolences.” The overwrought “family” quote had Jackie written all over it. I was glad to disassociate from the whole scene.
“You ready?” Nick asked.
I dropped the paper. To leave this room, and him? Never. But I said, “I am.”
He opened the door and I crept out into the sun, blinking like a mole. We walked to the truck and Nick threw his bag in the back. I got in the driver’s seat, where a surprise was waiting for me: a single red rose tied with a white ribbon. I picked it up and the sharp thorns bit into my flesh. “Ow,” I said as Nick got into the passenger side.
“What is it?”
I held the flower out to him and he took it. “I had a visitor.” I turned on the ignition.
“Didn’t you lock the doors?” He rolled down the window and tossed it out, his jaw set.
Had I? I thought so. But I’d never given Bart keys. “I must not have.”
“I’m becoming less fond of Bart,” Nick said.
I felt guilty and a little sorry for Bart. Breaking up is a bitch, and even bitchier if you’re the one being broken up with.
Nick reached for my hand. “I can understand why he wouldn’t want to let you go.”
I sure wished he would, though.
We talked all the way from the Reef to Annalise, stopping by Ava’s house – she wasn’t home – to pick up Oso on the way. I told Nick more about Annalise and the spirit that had lured me out of my old life and into this new one. “Tell me the truth. Do you think I’m nuts?”
I twisted my hair around my finger and remembered how I used to get my finger stuck in it. My mother’s scolding echoed in my mind: “If you need something to do with your hands, put them to work, but get them out of your hair, Katie Connell.” Unfortunately, I had no work to put one of them to.
Well, I could . . .
But even thinking about that made me blush.
Nick’s answer pulled me out of the rabbit hole I had fallen into, and surprised me. “Nope. I believe there’s more out there than we can pick up with our five senses. Maybe it’s because I grew up near the water. It gives you a sense of this incredible power, of the existence of things we can’t see.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Like mini tornadoes in the middle of the night on a back porch. Or identical dreams of palm readers.”
“Exactly.” God, I loved that man. As we drove up the center-island road on the edge of Town, I pulled the truck to a stop to let a line of schoolchildren march across the road to their bus stop, a row of daffodils in yellow shirts and green skirts and shorts. “I want to hear more about your business. What do you call it?”
“Remember I told you about my college band?”
“Stingray?”
“Right. I named the company Stingray Investigations, like a sting operation and as a nod to the other me. People seem to like it and remember it.”
“That’s brilliant.” A passing truck honked at me. It was one of my contractors. I honked back like a Local.
“Thanks,” Nick said. “My work is internet intensive—well, that and phone—and I can do most of it from anywhere. My assistant, LuLu, is trustworthy, and even better, likes being trusted with responsibility. Our offices are modest and we have low overhead, which has been key. It took a lot of careful planning, but it’s working out.”
“I’ll bet you planned for half an eternity,” I said, and punched him lightly on the arm.
“Hey, I think things through. When the situation demands action, I act.”
“I just wish you’d acted a little sooner about us.”
“Well, you did tell me I was a foolish boy for thinking you would be interested in me last time I saw you.”
I scrunched my face. “I don’t think I called you a foolish boy, but point taken.” I changed lanes to avoid a rooster escorting two hens across the road and was careful to avoid the goats grazing on the other side.
He laughed and shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s a difference between emotions and emergencies for me.”
Not to me, there isn’t, I thought. Oh, well. “You’re here now.”
“I am. And I’m sorry. I wish I had gotten here faster.”
We drove up the last section of winding road toward Annalise. Tarzan vines hung from the branches of the trees that grew over us in a closed canopy. Elephant ears climbed their trunks. The vines knocked into my windshield in a crazy drum solo as we drove under them. I turned in the gate and we passed through a forest of towering mango and soursop trees with avocado and papaya trees in their shade. Passion fruit vines crawled up the tree trunks.
“This is like something out of a movie,” Nick said, shaking his head, a smile growing on his lips. He rolled down his window and we breathed in the scents of bay leaves and fermenting mangoes. The smell was intoxicating.
We pulled up the driveway between the bright beds of crotons I’d planted the week before. The bushes alternated orange and yellow, then pink and green, one after another. In the center of the beds by the kitchen window stood my new little banana tree. I parked beside Crazy’s multi-colored pick-up truck, which was behind Rashidi’s Jeep.
“Look,” I
said, pointing to the base of the tree. A green iguana stood there chewing, like I’d posed him.
“That’s so cool,” Nick said.
We hopped out, and so did Oso. The other dogs clustered around to inspect him. Crazy, also known as Grove or William Wingrove, was stalking around behind his workers, hurling abuse at them in a way no continental ever could have gotten away with. I shouted a greeting and he walked over to us. If Crazy found it odd that I was holding hands with someone new, he didn’t say anything, for which I was grateful. I made introductions.
Crazy wiped his dusty hand on his jeans and stuck it out. “Good morning.”
Nick shook Crazy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Crazy shook his head. “Only Mrs. Wingrove call me sir. Crazy will do.” He turned to me. “Railings dem going up on balconies today. Gonna finish the kitchen, too. Three weeks, Ms. Katie, three weeks.”
“Thanks, Crazy. That’s great. Hey, you haven’t seen my keys, have you? I might have lost them here last night.”
“No, but I tell men dem. We all watch for them.” He went back to berating his crew.
Rather than retrace our steps from the pitch-dark tour through the side door the night before, I wanted to start Nick at the front of the house. He looped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me as we made our way there. I slipped my arm around his waist. We fit together so perfectly that I moved carefully so as not to break the connection. We stayed melded together as we walked up the stone and red-paver steps.
The front entrance was regal, with island-traditional mahogany double doors that I had commissioned from a local carpenter. A mahogany-framed hurricane-proof window crowned the entrance. I stopped at the top step and slipped out of Nick’s arms so I could press my face against the pillar and breathe in the air. The trade winds were blowing briskly from the east and the sun-drenched porch felt almost cold. Nick leaned into me from behind with his arms raised over our heads and pressed his hands and face to the pillar as well.
“She’s magnificent.”
At his words, I felt a soundless hum. Annalise. Hopefully it meant she would be a supportive friend, rather than a jealous lover. “She likes you, too.”
Nick turned his face so his mouth touched my ear. “I’m glad. Very, very glad.” The current from the house was growing so strong that my body vibrated. “I can feel her through you,” he whispered.
Damn.
“Ms. Katie, where you want to put the—oh, didn’t mean to interrupt, sorry,” Crazy said, coming through the front door.
Reluctantly, I peeled myself out from between the pillar and Nick. I was out of breath and pretty certain I was flushed, but I was too high on the experience to care.
Crazy stared at me, then said, “No rush. I talk to you later,” and walked back into the house.
Nick lifted my hair and kissed the nape of my neck. “I don’t think he’s going to look you in the eye for a week.”
I opened the door and we stepped into the foyer. Our voices laughing together filled the high ceiling, making a new sound altogether, like an enchantment. Adding Nick to the chemistry with Annalise was magical so far.
I steered him left. “Office, with great views.” We went to the south window to look out on the stone ruins of the sugar mill for a few minutes until I led him out the other side of the office to the next room, a half bath. “Company potty, sans actual potty.”
“Details,” Nick said, and winked. We walked back to the master bedroom, painted a cool mud-mask green. He grinned. “I recognize this room.” It was the most completed room in the house, except for the kitchen. Nick marveled at the compact bathroom. “What a good use of space.”
“I couldn’t move the walls, so I did the best I could with the footprint I had,” I said, standing with my hands on the edge of my beloved six-foot-long claw-footed jet tub. “The tub was too expensive and takes up too much space, but I love it, so I left everything really open to make up for it.”
“I think it was a great purchase. Full of possibilities.”
I could think of a few myself, possibilities that had never occurred to me with Bart. But Nick? Hubba hubba.
“Come see my closet,” I said, and took him by the hand.
I had made a dressing room and closet out of a long rectangular space that, oddly, was open to windows all along one side. I’d install curtains soon. I didn’t know what the original builder had planned to do with it, but I liked the idea of choosing my clothes in natural light.
“What’s this hole?” he asked, pointing to the base of a corner.
I knelt down to look. A five-inch-square hole three inches deep marred the surface of the wall. It looked like someone had chiseled it out with a screwdriver. “How strange. I have no idea. I’ll have to ask Crazy.”
I stood and brushed the concrete dust off my knees. We left the master suite, and I walked to the center of the great room and tried to paint a picture of the original Annalise for him. “Except for the tongue-in-groove cypress and mahogany ceilings, it was all concrete. And really dirty. Imagine a whole lot of poo. Horse, bat, insect, you name it.”
“I can’t believe you came in here, much less bought her.”
I laughed. “It has been difficult at times.”
He looked over my shoulder into the kitchen, then walked in and grabbed a box of Clorox Wipes off the brown and green granite countertop. “I knew I’d find these somewhere in here, Helen,” he said.
Helen, as in Helen of Troy. My heart felt like it would explode with happy.
“Busted,” I said, then, “Good morning,” to the three men installing my new stainless steel appliances. In the islands, it’s customary to call out a greeting upon entering a room, or even just a building.
“Good morning, miss,” they rang back in chorus.
“You sound like an island girl,” Nick said.
“Yah mon,” I replied. “Except that Rashidi and Ava would beg to differ.” I stood in the center of the action in the kitchen admiring the subzero refrigerator. “Looks great, guys,” I said.
“Thanks, miss. We working hard, so tell Crazy, now,” one said.
“I will, Egg.” I really liked Egbert. He’d been the only bright spot of working with my original contractor, Junior, whom I’d had to fire after less than a week. Luckily, Crazy picked up Egg for his crew. Unluckily, Junior still claimed I owed him money. I disagreed.
Nick turned around in a circle, taking in the details of the cherry cabinetry and the gaps where appliances would soon be installed. He stopped. “I want to get my hands on her. I want to be part of this.”
Jealousy tugged at me when I realized he was referring to Annalise. “We want to let you.” I was referring to her and me. “She was abandoned, you know. The old owner is in prison. I think she likes all the attention now.”
I showed Nick my music room next, a smallish room in the front corner of the house off the kitchen. It was the perfect size for my grandmother’s piano and a few more instruments, a couple of microphone stands and some sound equipment. I had painted it a cool aqua and the windows gave it an abundance of eastern morning light. Tall, narrow cathedral windows lined two sides of the room and a big flamboyant tree right outside the front windows provided shade. The peacock flower was the best tree in the yard, and the view out the window was through its leaves and orangish-pink fronds into the valley beyond. Ava and I had tested the acoustics in the room and found them perfect. I could picture Nick and me there, instruments around us, hand-written music and lyrics on a yellow pad in front of us.
“You’ve got room for my bass stand in this corner,” he said. “We could write some music together, you know. Are you any good with lyrics? Because I’m hopeless.”
Now my heart did explode, shooting out millions of sparks that became yellow butterflies descending into lazy circles in my stomach. I threw my arms around him.
“Was that a hug or a tackle?”
“Both. I have to make sure you don’t run away.”
; “I’m not planning on it.” He hugged me even tighter, but I didn’t complain. This is what John Mellenkamp meant, I thought. Hurt so good, for real. But it got better when Nick said, “I can’t even tell you how all of this amazes me, how you amaze me. I can see the mark of you everywhere in here. And it’s not just that, Katie. I can see what you’ve done with yourself. I’ve always had a thing for you, you know that,” which I hadn’t ever been sure of, but was really glad to hear, “but still, you’ve surprised me. In a good way.”
I had no words. I just tried not to cry as I said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I soaked him in, the setting, our connection, the universe spread out around us, and the sensation of my heart so large and buoyant it was floating above us like the sun. It was pretty darn wonderful. Day one of the rest of our lives. I inhaled with my eyes closed, memorizing the moment, and prayed nothing would come along to screw it up.
Chapter Twelve
We walked back into the kitchen just as Rashidi entered it from top of the stairs to the basement, where he kept up a temporary bedroom.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning, Rashidi. Did you find my keys?”
“No, sorry.”
“Rats. Well, do you remember Nick?”
“Yah mon,” he said.
To Nick, I said, “That’s how it sounds when someone from the islands says it.”
Rashidi walked toward Nick with his open hand raised outward at chest height and chimed in, “Not-Bart, you sure you know what you getting into with this one? She got a smart mouth on her and she known to do some crazy things.”
I cringed at the “Not-Bart,” but Nick didn’t. He raised his hand and he and Rashidi clasped them and leaned in for a chest bump, some kind of secret man-bro handshake ritual. Having no testicles myself, I have never had the urge to greet someone by pretending I’m about to wrestle them to the ground.
“What she needs is a strong man and a firm hand,” Nick said, and he ducked before my swat even came near his head.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 6