by Kate Stewart
“Watch him.”
I pressed my phone closer to my ear. “Watch him?”
“Yes. He’s just been through the worst divorce. Almost a year of fighting. He left home without a word to anyone. His father and I were frantic. He won’t take my calls. Just please check in with him each day. Make sure he’s okay.”
I lived in the house next door, there was no way it would be hard for me to check on him and the commission alone had me speaking up. “Of course.”
“I’ll send the money right away. Whatever he needs, invoice me. If he stays longer than a few weeks, we’ll be down.”
I highly doubted Ian wanted a visit from his parents, but it wasn’t my place to say so. “Yes, ma’am. Can I ask… actually never mind.” I had to admit I was curious, the image of his tortured gray eyes flashed through my head.
“He wanted the divorce, he asked for it. I’m not sure what happened.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Ian is a good man, a very good man. I’ve raised an amazing son. This… running away is not like him.” I thought back to a year ago when I showed up to my parents’ sanctuary with nothing but the clothes on my back, my purse, and my passport.
Back inside my house, I sat in my living room, opened the table side window and listened to Simone as she began to sing her lullaby. “If any place can make him feel better, it’s this place.”
“I’m so worried.” She was crying now as I gripped the phone tight, hearing my own mother’s voice from a year ago. “Koti, you can’t just run away. You need to face this head-on.”
Thinking back to the worst day of my life, I spoke from experience. “This island frees people, Rowan. I promise I’ll look after him.”
“Thank you, Koti.”
“Call me anytime.”
“WHAT THE FACK!”
In the midst of a foggy, wine-induced dream, I snapped to and looked at my bedside clock.
4 a.m.
Groaning, I grabbed my body pillow and cradled it between my legs as I heard repetitive banging in the house next door.
Everything went quiet for a few minutes before I heard another enraged growl. Pulling myself from the bed, I moved to my window where I saw every light in the Kemp house had been turned on.
“Okay, Ian, have your freak out and go to bed.” It was going to be a long night if he had insomnia.
Another loud clatter had me jumping away from the glass, while his growls grew louder.
“What in the fack! Eish!” It seemed his native tongue made more of an appearance when he was angry. “Fok hierdie plek!”
He stormed onto his porch with a broom in hand looking back at the house and tilting his head as if he were straining to hear. I moved out of sight before I turned my light on as he slammed his way back into the house. Another series of bangs had my head pounding. I moved to my kitchen and grabbed a bottled water when I heard the repeat thwack of his back door. Realization dawned, and I began to laugh when the door slammed again.
“Oh Simone, you’ve got yourself a new victim.” I grabbed a new pair of noise-canceling plugs from my nightstand and marched over to the porch where Ian paced. With a heated glance my way, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. “The facking smoke alarm is broken. I’m…” he tapped his forehead. “Gatvol!”
“Gat what?”
“I’ve had it! Never mind. It’s the alarms, we need to have them checked.”
“No…”
Ian, still in his slacks and undershirt, glared at me. The porch light illuminated us in weak shadow. He was a beautiful man, even with a vampire tan and the slight bulge around his waist. His thick, gelled, dark-brown hair was scattered from a day of running his hand through it and feathered over his brow. He’d grown up pretty… and pretty bitchy.
“Don’t tell me no. I’ve been listening to the screech for hours. I’ve dismantled them all!”
“Ian,” I said carefully, as I closed the few feet between us like I was cornering a very angry six-foot-plus mouse. “It’s not the smoke detectors.”
He scrutinized me in my shorts and thin halter top, sans bra. “Brilliant, just brilliant. You manage this property, right? How does anyone get any sleep here?!”
“If you will just listen—”
“Are you mad, woman? I have been listening! I’m certain it’s the alarms.”
“It’s not—”
He moved toward me his lips upturned. “Listen—”
“No listen, Ian, it’s—”
“Shush!”
Pressing my lips together he craned his neck until his eyes widened. “Hear it? Don’t tell me that’s not an alarm!”
I stood with my hand on my hips, cupping his remedy—the earplugs—in my palm. Shrugging, I made my way off his porch. “Fine, it’s the alarms. Good luck with that.”
Marching into my house, I slammed the open window and turned on my AC. Even with the added white noise from the unit, I could hear the frog, who’d taken up residence in the thick brush behind the Kemp house, begin to sing. Simone, my sweet Coqui Frog, who I’d lovingly named after Nina Simone, appeared to me on one of the plants next to my porch after a three-week fight. Simone sounded very much like a smoke alarm with dying batteries. But Ian and his head-biting ass would just have to find out the hard way.
Welcome back to St. Thomas, Mr. Kemp.
Some horses you could lead to water and they would still walk straight through it believing it was a mirage. Such was the case with my angry new neighbor.
Still, angry was better than sad. And if Ian was about to fight the good fight, he needed that fire.
I fell asleep a few minutes later to a more muted, “What the fack! A frog?!”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Kevin! This is unacceptable!”
I opened one eye and groaned before I pulled a pillow over my head.
“Rubbish! And she made sure of that!” Ian was growling into his phone and must have decided his back porch was the perfect place to vent. I looked at the bedside clock.
7 a.m.
I pulled myself from the comfort of my cloud and made my way outside, slamming my screen door and eyeing him from my porch with my hands on my hips, in hopes that would be enough to stop his tirade.
“Oh, bullshit! That’s bullshit!” He paced on the sand yard purposefully ignoring my presence and plea for peace.
“Excuse me,” I whispered on the wind. I needed to grow some balls and fast when it came to moody Mr. Kemp. I didn’t do well without my sleep. Years of sleep depravity in New York followed by a year of rested bliss had changed me.
“This is inexcusable! What I want, what I want? I want you to do your facking job!” Ian’s accent had turned into a strange mix of pissed off Texan with a lash whip of South African. He stood in boxer briefs pacing as he ignored me. He was tall, disheveled and shirtless. The extra weight he carried did little to take away from his appeal. On any other day, I might have enjoyed the testosterone-filled man parading in front of me.
“So facking wrong! Eish! All of this is wrong!” More silence, then, “That should have been brought to my attention a year ago!”
Ripping my eyes away from his muscular thighs, I found myself screaming along with him. “Hey, take that brawl inside, crocky!”
Ian glared at me and I swore he bared teeth as he made his way up his porch steps. I was dismissed as he began his pacing on the faded wood giving me a view of his muscular back.
“A little louder, I don’t think everyone on the island is awake yet,” I muttered as he continued his rant.
“Fine. I want a call within the hour.” Ian ended his call and threw his cell on one of the porch chairs before opening his screen without glancing my way.
“Hey!” I interjected as he paused his retreat and glanced my way. “Look, buddy, I’m all for getting a point across, but can we not do it at seven in the morning while our neighbor is sleeping?”
“Fine. Right.” He slammed the door behind him.
�
��I accept your apology!”
His voice drifted through the open windows in his living room. “I didn’t offer one, miss.”
“Koti. My name is Koti and you damn well know it. And from what I remember you were all about formalities and manners, Mr. Kemp, so how about showing some common courtesy?”
The only way to get privacy between our two houses was to shut them up completely. Even then, without a little white noise, you could hear a lot.
Fact: People have a lot of sex on vacation. A lot of sex.
The rumble of Ian’s voice drifted through the air. “It’s rude to listen to other people’s conversations.”
“As if I had a choice!”
“Who’s screaming now?”
“Well, we’re both up now anyway, thanks to you.”
He stayed mute as I growled from my own porch.
Koti Vaughn, you need this commission.
Minutes after my first sip of coffee, I found my calm in the crash of the waves on our shared beach. Ian made his way onto his porch dressed in his slacks from the day before, his own cup in hand. Wrinkled and wrecked were the best words to describe him and I couldn’t help the tug of recognition of the state of his distress yesterday. Mustering up some patience, I made another effort to extend the olive branch. “I’ll be by with your groceries at noon. I didn’t get a chance to check your water levels so let me know if you’re running low. My phone number is in the book on the counter, text me if you want me to pick up anything else for you.”
His reply was a curt nod.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you at noon.”
“That bad, huh?” Jasmine’s eyes surveyed me in my zombie-like state. I managed to throw on a sundress and applied some sunblock and deodorant before I made it out of my house. I left the state of my wet hair up to my Jeep.
“Nice hair.”
“Bite me and he’s a nightmare. He’s hurt, but hard to sympathize with. He spent half the night putting holes in his ceiling and the morning screaming into his cell phone.”
Jasmine filled a fresh cup of coffee and put it on my desk. “Is he hot?”
I sat back in my chair and winced due to the building throb in my skull.
“He’s a headache.”
“A hot headache?”
“He’s handsome, I guess.”
“Handsome? Who says handsome?”
“I just did.” I rolled my eyes as I logged into my desktop. “I know what you’re thinking and trust me, you don’t want to meet the ass. The first thing that came out of his mouth was that all women are liars.”
“So, he’s handsome?”
“Very handsome, and very pissed off. He taught me how to snorkel when I was six. He was cute then. He’s handsome now and completely standoffish.”
“Hmm.” Jasmine chewed her lower lip and scrutinized my face. “Sounds like an opportunity.”
I ignored her by typing an email reply to a new renter.
“Koti.” It was a demand. I met her soft brown eyes over the screen. There wasn’t a trace of humor anywhere. “You’ve barely dated since you’ve been here. Don’t you miss sex?”
“I told you… I fooled around enough in New York. I’m happy with being alone. It’s what I want for the moment. And my angry neighbor is not the one to saddle up with.” She planted her ass on the edge of my desk and covered my busy hands.
“I worry about you. You are completely anti-social. No TV at home, what do you even do?”
“I read, I take long walks down the beach, I drink wine, I attempt to play the piano, and I get a lot of sleep. I’m fine.” It was the truth. The absolute truth. I’d found calm. I wanted to keep it.
“Fine, but a little flirtation wouldn’t hurt.”
“Trust me, he’s not the one to flirt with. He’s either yelling or grunting. Anyway, I spoke to Mrs. Kemp. She’s going to double our commission and cover the difference of the Margulis mansion.”
Jasmine perked up. “Really?”
“Yep, the only stipulation is that I have to keep an eye on him and it looks like I have my work cut out for me.”
Jasmine bit her hot pink lip. “Do you think he would… you know,” her eyes bulged, “hurt himself?”
I bit the edge of my nail and she slapped it away, it was a peeve of hers. “The way he looked yesterday… it was awful. But no, I don’t think so. Not after the fight I saw in him this morning. He seems as angry as he is hurt. He’s divorced, but his mother said he was the one who wanted it. I don’t think it has to do with his ex, but who knows.”
“Huh,” Jasmine said as she looked at me thoughtfully.
“He probably just needs a break. I’m bringing his groceries in a few hours and I intend to tread lightly. I’m going to make sure we get this commission.”
She lifted a brow. “Going to get creative?”
I shouldered my purse as she gave me a suggestive wink. “You are such a backhoe.”
I PARKED MY JEEP AS Banion came out of his flower shop to greet me.
“Hey yank, you still look fresh from the boat.”
“Liar!” I accused, as he opened my door. “I passed the one-year mark. I’m officially a local.”
“Yank-key,” he said, adding more charm to the word with his thick island accent. “What ya need today?”
“Three bouquets please, we have a busy day.”
“Maybe four?” He looked over at me with a knowing smile. “One for you.”
“Perfect.” Ushering me inside he began to gather the bouquets, taking stems from various buckets he kept in a small cooler. He had the roughest looking florist shop in St. Thomas but made the most beautiful bouquets. I always told him if I ever struck it rich, he would be my lone investment. He was highly underrated and undervalued due to the state of his shop, but the locals knew. And though I’d spent six summers in St. Thomas over the course of my life, I could honestly say I was becoming an expert at navigating the potholed pavement.
“When are your parents coming, yank?”
“Thanksgiving, I pray.”
“You have not spoken to them?” He peered at me over a handful of orange and purple stems. One desperate and lonely night when I had first arrived on the island and just gotten my job with Jasmine, I’d spent a few drunken hours with Banion spilling the events that led me to St. Thomas. He hadn’t let me forget the night of verbal diarrhea, nor the physical vomit I had christened the floor of his store with. Not my finest hour, or week, or month.
“We talk.”
“But do you really talk?” Banion was ridiculously tall to the point of being intimidating. His charcoal-colored skin and dark eyes were only softened by the sincerest of white smiles and a smooth voice.
“We talk. They still badger me to go back.”
“And you want to stay?”
“I’m staying,” I insisted, adding a few pink sprays to the mix. Banion shook his head. “No, the green.” I pulled a few green stems from the basket as he wrapped the leaves around the flowers and tied them without a binding.
“Beautiful,” I said, amazed at his handiwork.
“One day, when you have the time, I’ll show you how to tie the flowers.” He pushed the bouquets into my hand as I handed him the cash. Banion was old school, person-to-person was his motto. It was also one of the reasons his flower shop wasn’t as widely known. But I understood it. My motto was very much the same. In fact, if you googled Koti Vaughn, you would see closed social media accounts. Being connected used to be the bane of my existence.
Years of conditioning—prep school, followed by a five-year stint in college to get my masters—had been wasted. I was one business move away from making myself immortal before I choked. Well… before I got a reality check. And in the Virgin Islands, on one of the mountains, surrounded by sea, I was a property manager dolling out bottles of wine and Banion’s bouquets to the ones who had gambled and won.
One day-poof. Dream job, gone, swanky apartment, stripped away. I went from being the real estate wolf of Manhat
tan to the black sheep of St. Thomas.
My piece of the Big Apple had a worm in it.
Like Ian, I spent the first day in St. Thomas staring at the ocean in the safety of my parents’ rental house.
Life was fucked in New York.
But in St. Thomas…
“Don’t forget yours,” Banion said, handing me another armful of beautifully tethered stems.
Thankful to be jerked out of the debilitating cold of my past life, I hugged him before I stepped out into the warming sun.
I set the bags down on the porch one by one before I knocked and got no answer. “Ian?” Knocking again, I pressed my face to the living room window. The house looked abandoned. “Shit.” I gripped an extra key that I’d taken from the office since Ian had stolen mine the night before and let myself in. Aside from a crumpled blanket on the edge of the plush white couch, the place was empty. In hopes that Ian was somewhere wandering the beach, I began to unload the groceries and replaced the bottle of red I’d stolen and added an extra. I skipped the customary liquor bottles to avoid a drunken tirade. The man was already off the rails, I wasn’t about to add strong alcohol to the mix.
I was a hypocrite of sorts. I drank like a fish when I arrived on the island in ashes. I added a few things to the list to keep Ian fed and put out several items I knew he hadn’t brought with him—shaving cream, a razor, deodorant, body wash, shampoo, and extra toilet paper. Just as I’d finished unloading, he walked through the door with several shopping bags in hand. He paused when he saw me standing next to the counter.
“Hi.”
Eyes averted he spoke low. “Seeing as how my parents own the home, I won’t be needing your services, Koti.”
“Well, this request came directly from your mother.” I surrendered the last rental key on the counter. “And I told you I’d be by with groceries.”
“And I rather hoped you’d left by now.”
I bit my tongue as he moved past me and set his bags down. I eyed the contents and saw several shirts and pairs of shorts with tags. I hid my excitement that he was staying. Not because he was ideal company, but because of the financially worry-free months ahead of me.