There's Always a Catch: Christmas Key Book One

by Stephanie Taylor

  There’s Always a Catch

  CHRISTMAS KEY, BOOK ONE

  STEPHANIE TAYLOR

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Taylor

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  For Jaime and Lyndsey: you're always my

  first readers and biggest cheerleaders—thank you!

  “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business;

  we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”

  —Gwendolyn Brooks

  CHAPTER ONE

  Holly pulls skirts and tank tops from her closet, tossing them onto the floral print duvet. The air-conditioning is cranked up high inside the tidy beach bungalow, the curtains drawn against the stagnant outdoor heat. The rooms feel crystallized with an iciness that cuts right through the humidity of summer on Christmas Key. A black and white wedding picture of Holly’s late grandparents looks on from the nightstand, the closed-mouth smiles on their smooth, young faces both innocent and knowing. She holds a stretchy pink dress up to the front of her body in contemplation. It’s short and looks good against her tanned skin, but it’s the dress of a woman whose heels click on the pavement during a night out in the big city. It’s the dress of a woman who eats tapas on South Beach and dances until dawn. It is a dress her mother would wear. It is not the dress of a woman about to present a plan for civic and economic development to a group of white-haired senior citizens who survived the Great Depression and WWII.

  She tosses it on top of the discard pile and keeps searching.

  A small mesh bag full of seashells sits on the nightstand, and a crumpled up speeding ticket rests on the floor next to Holly’s sweaty shorts and t-shirt. Her golden retriever, Pucci, is hiding his big, shaggy body beneath the bed, huddling next to a forgotten page of the Miami Herald from 2011 and a chewed up rubber flip-flop.

  Holly’s bare feet slap across the cold tile floors as she mutters aloud to herself. The speeding ticket is ridiculous, nothing but another power struggle between her and Jake. She grabs a white sundress from a hanger; it’s more dressy than her usual island attire, but not so much that she’ll feel like she’s in costume as she stands before her friends and neighbors at the village council meeting. Holly puts Jake out of her mind and instead ransacks her armoire in search of her favorite bikini, opening and closing drawers as she hunts for it. It’s been her lifelong habit to substitute swimwear for underwear (just in case she feels like taking a swim in the tropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the day, which she occasionally does), and now she needs the right bikini top to wear as a bra under her dress.

  Holly stands in front of the window over her dresser, yanking at a bikini string in a futile attempt to free one top from a pair of mismatched bottoms in the tangle of bathing suits that she holds in her hand. The clothesline she’s strung between two palm trees in her backyard catches her eye; sure enough, dangling from the line in a neat, colorful row like the flags of so many tropical countries, are all of her favorite suits.

  She closes her dresser drawer and cups her full, bare breasts in the crook of one arm before walking out to the yard to grab the swimsuit from its clip on the line. After almost thirty years on a partially-uninhabited island, Holly is of the mind that extreme modesty is mostly unnecessary—much like having any sort of formal rules about undergarments—so she strides barefoot across the wide blades of the St. Augustine grass in her backyard. Her long legs and unkempt hair give her the appearance of an Amazon gliding through a tropical garden.

  Sunlight filters through the lush jungle of trees in her yard, the sounds of the ocean crashing onto the shore in the very near distance. The air smells of citrus. Holly stops to admire the deep tangerine-hued skins of the pineapple oranges growing on the tree near her back door, dangling from the branches like so many juicy Christmas ornaments.

  “Mornin’, Governor,” a voice calls out. Leo Buckhunter sits on his porch just beyond the low bushes that divide their two yards.

  “Buckhunter.” Holly flushes immediately when she realizes that she’s not alone. She tightens her grip on her bare chest and turns her back to him. “I didn’t see you there. And for the record, I’m not the governor,” she says, though she knows he’s only trying to annoy her. In the few years that they’ve been neighbors, Buckhunter has taken every opportunity to get her goat. Holly is usually in the mood to dish it right back to him, but something about being topless in her front yard in broad daylight leaves her feeling too exposed to come up with a suitably snappy comeback.

  “Of course you’re not. No self-respecting governor would run around in front of her constituents with her coconuts in her hands.”

  Holly rolls her eyes, turning her attention to the string of bikinis on the line. “Well, this is Florida, so I wouldn’t rule anything out when it comes to politics, Buckhunter. Will I see you at the meeting this afternoon?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Though hopefully we won’t be seeing quite so much of you,” he tosses back, raising his dented tin cup to her. He sips his coffee, the gray-blonde mustache above his goatee twitching with amusement.

  Buckhunter sits comfortably in the rocking chair he’s crafted from the driftwood that washes up on Christmas Key’s shores. Leo Buckhunter—though almost everyone on the island refers to him by last name only—is something of a mysterious character. He always wears the same half-smile on his face, lines etched into his rugged skin by years of laughter and sun. His eyes are the clear blue of a chlorinated pool, but with the depth and gravity of the ocean.

  If pressed, Holly would almost call him sexy, but the fact that he’s nearly twenty years older than she (her mother’s age!) puts an end to that discussion. Not to mention that there’s absolutely zero attraction between them. Buckhunter is sharp and funny, but even after three years on the island and countless nights of drinking and conversation, no one really knows where he’s from or what his real story is.

  With her sun-dried bikini in one hand and her chest still covered by the other arm, Holly tries to look as composed as possible. Because, really: why should she care what Buckhunter thinks? He might be out there minding his own business on his front porch while she galavants around topless, but, technically speaking, it is her island. She walks back to her own house as casually as a woman strolling the aisles at the grocery store.

  Putting aside the aggravation over the speeding ticket and the embarrassing accidental peep show she’s just given Buckhunter, the morning has actually gone quite well: tasks have fallen away from her to-do list with ease, and
last minute details are sorting themselves out as if in the hands of some benevolent, unseen force. It’s been a flawless operation from the moment she swung her feet off the bed and set them on the cold tile floor at dawn. Well, flawless until she saw the flashing lights of the island’s only police cruiser behind her on Main Street. In actuality it’s less of a police cruiser and more of a souped-up golf cart with red and blue flashing lights, but because it clips along the sandy streets five miles an hour faster than any other golf cart on the island, it does carry some authority.

  Even now, thinking about Jake pulling her over fills her with irritation. Holly had watched the grimacing face of her ex-boyfriend as he stepped out of his police vehicle and approached her own hot pink golf cart, strutting up to the driver’s side of the cart, eyes shielded by his reflective aviator-style sunglasses. What Holly couldn’t see—what was blocked from her view, but what she knew was there—was the hurt in Jake’s eyes that burned through her like a beam of sunlight focused on an ant through a magnifying glass.

  “License and registration,” Officer Zavaroni said, his tone void of emotion.

  “Jake,” Holly said. “You have got to be kidding me.” Without thinking, she’d placed one sandaled foot on the pavement, ready to stand face-to-face with her ex and talk like adults.

  “Ah, ah, ah—you stay put.” Jake held out a hand, his big palm blocking her. He arranged his body so that his imposing stature was evident, one hand straightening his holster as he stared her down.

  Why Jake even wore a holster was beyond her, but he’d told the islanders (with much bravado) that carrying a Smith & Wesson on his hip was necessary to make visitors aware that the island was being protected, and to keep them safe in the event that a stray alligator reared its ugly head. It had always made Holly nervous, that gun, and whenever he stayed at her place, she’d forced him to put it away in a pink Victoria’s Secret box that she kept on the top shelf of the linen closet. Something about stashing a gun in a box that looked like it should be filled with cupcakes or panties just made it feel less dangerous to her.

  As a boyfriend, Jake had always humored her and tolerated her quirks; Holly loved that about him. He’d laughed about her single-minded passion for Christmas Key, and admired the way she stubbornly devoted herself to the things she loved. Theirs had been an easy and satisfying relationship, and she’d never wanted things to change.

  Holly waited in her golf cart, hoping he’d crack. The muggy Florida heat pulsed all around them with a heartbeat of its own as she sat on the seat that she’d covered in a pink and green Lilly Pulitzer print fabric. Perspiration formed on her upper lip, and a bead of sweat wound its way down her cleavage like a snake. She could feel the adventurous drop of sweat leaving a trail of wetness in its wake.

  “License and registration.” Jake stood over her. The memory of him on one knee on the beach came back to her.

  Holly waited as long as she could afford to, given her busy schedule that day, but Jake’s stance was unyielding. She shook her head and reached for her purse.

  “This is ridiculous, Jake, and you know it.” Holly shoved her license at him and flipped down the sun visor of the golf cart to find the registration she’d clipped there.

  “I’m going to need you to get out of the vehicle.” Jake stepped back, pointing at a spot on the pavement. Heat rose from the blacktop in visible waves, and Holly knew he was punishing her for her hesitation that night on the beach, for her wide-eyed stare as the moon glinted off of the diamond ring that he’d held between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Morning, Jake. Holly.” A white-haired woman in a housecoat and bedroom slippers approached with a tiny white dog on a leash. “Eight a.m. and it’s already hotter than a billy goat’s ass in a pepper patch, isn’t it?” The older woman pursed her lips.

  “Morning, Mrs. Agnelli.” Jake stepped back, tipping his black baseball cap in her direction.

  Holly smiled at Mrs. Agnelli as she passed, but remained in the cart defiantly. She stared hard at Jake. Was this sort of passive-aggressive confrontation what it had come to between them? The break-up itself had been far easier than working out all of the kinks that came with sharing space (and not sharing space) on what was turning out to be a relatively small island.

  “I said out, Holly,” Jake demanded. There were deep rings of sweat under the arms of his crisply ironed uniform. At the end of the day Jake had always come over to her place and showered, walking around shirtless for as long as possible and nursing a beer as he cooled off in Holly’s air-conditioned house. She’d seen him do it a hundred times, and had always admired his broad, muscled chest as he threw his uniform into the clothes washer in her laundry room, running a hand over his flat, hard stomach while he chose a spin cycle.

  “Jake, I’m sorry, but I’m really busy. I’ve got a lot to do this morning.” Holly pushed the sweaty hair across her forehead with her palm. “And if you want to get technical, there really is no out when it comes to a golf cart. I am essentially already out by virtue of the fact that there is no in. In fact, I’m basically sitting on a bench with wheels.” Holly kept her bare thighs firmly planted on the seat.

  Jake glanced around Main Street, sliding his sunglasses off with one hand so that he could look her in the eye. “Listen, I just want to talk to you, and you haven’t been returning my calls.”

  “Is that against the law? Not calling you back?” she snapped, regretting her tone instantly.

  Jake recoiled. “No. Of course not. But we have this…thing going on between us, and I want to talk about it.”

  Holly reached down to release the parking brake, the desire to escape flooding her body. “I really don’t think we have a ‘thing’ going on, Jake.”

  He lowered his voice. “Did you or did you not let me stay the night at your house last month?”

  “We both had too much to drink that night. That doesn’t mean we’re getting back together.”

  “Well maybe it should mean that.” Jake lifted his chin an inch.

  She tapped her thumbs against the steering wheel, waiting for him to move out of her way. “Okay, maybe it should mean that, but it doesn’t. What it means is that you and I shouldn’t be drinking rum together on a hot summer night while we listen to the Eagles.”

  Jake inhaled deeply, nodding like he agreed with her. “Holly Baxter,” he said, disappointment in his voice. “I have no option but to ticket you for failing to obey the traffic laws of the island.” Jake flipped back the cover of his ticket book and began scribbling, copying down her license number as he slowly chewed the piece of gum that he’d held lodged between his back molars. Jake’s square, defined jaw worked visibly as he wrote, moving rhythmically like a cow chewing its cud.

  “Look, Jake, if you want to ticket me for saving us both from making a huge mistake, then go for it. But I’m pretty sure it won’t hold up in court. We both know I didn’t break any traffic laws here. You’re just punishing me for not being the woman you wanted me to be.”

  Jake scrawled his signature at the bottom of the ticket with a flourish, tore off Holly’s copy, and handed it to her. “You blew through the stop sign.”

  When he acted like this it was hard to remember the Jake she’d loved. That Jake had stayed up late into the night with her, feeding her cold pasta in bed, listening to her talk about all of the things she wanted to do with the B&B, and all of her hopes for the island. She’d been charmed into thinking that a man who’d chased her around the yard with a garden hose under a starry summer sky, hosing her down with laughter as he drunkenly called her his little spumoni, his tasty cannoli, his dolcezza, was the kind of man who’d support her need for independence, but she’d been wrong.

  It wasn’t long after her grandfather—her beloved grandpa, the man who’d pruned and coaxed a slithering, swampy island into a holiday-themed village for his family and friends—had passed that Jake started talking about her selling the B&B and moving to Miami. He’d complained about the jungle-feel of the island, a
bout how the average age on Christmas Key had to be at least seventy-eight (in fact, it was seventy-three), and he’d lamented the fact that he’d never see “real action” as a cop on an island full of old people and box turtles. It was then that Holly realized that, while Jake loved her, he didn’t really love her island. And that had been the deal breaker.

  “I expect that in the future, Holly,” Jake pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose slowly, “you’ll consider the laws of our streets important enough to obey. That stop sign you drove through was placed there for a reason.” He pointed down the street with two fingers like a flight attendant giving the emergency exit speech before takeoff.

  Holly waited for him to soften again so that she could be nicer—she knew she needed to be nicer. After all, this was the guy who’d rubbed her feet as they watched The Bachelor together; the one who had cried when his grandma passed away in New Jersey before he got the chance to say good-bye; the man who’d given her a bouquet of hand-picked flowers every month on the 17th because that was the day they’d had their first date—and as she watched his handsome face, she felt the familiar heat of attraction seeping through her core. There was no question that she was attracted to him: at six-foot-one, Jake was a hundred and ninety pounds of dark, tanned, Italian testosterone. His voice was deep, and his eyes burned with desire.

  Jake said nothing, but for a brief instant Holly knew that their interaction could have gone either way: she could have easily gotten out of the cart and thrown her arms around him, or she could have driven away.

  She put the golf cart in gear and pulled back into the street.

  Without slowing down, she pushed the accelerator to the floor, rounding the bend in the road.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Holly rushes through the door of the B&B, keys jangling in her hand, hair still wet from her lightning-fast shower. Instead of blowdrying it, she has her damp locks tucked under her New York Yankees baseball hat. Her clean bikini peeks out from under the shoulder of her white linen summer dress.