The Edge of Paradise: Christmas Key Book Three

by Stephanie Taylor

  Holly takes a few steps away from Bonnie and Sinker as they banter. She might find the pirate’s demeanor abrasive, but Bonnie is a big girl. Besides, Holly knows that nothing can stop the freight train that is Bonnie Lane when she has her sights set on a man.

  “Holly!” Holly turns to see Bridget coming her direction. She’s wearing a white lace wrap dress with jagged edges on the hem and the cuffs, and she has on white ankle boots to match. The look is more 80s-era Madonna than pirate, but Holly mentally grants her an A for effort.

  “Hi, Bridget.” Holly’s stomach sinks. The unresolved feelings she has about her ex swirl in the pit of her stomach like battery acid and motor oil, feeling just as heavy and corrosive as she plasters a smile on her face and greets Jake’s new girlfriend.

  “Great party. It feels like Halloween!” Bridget is holding a bottle of beer in one hand.

  “Shh, don’t let the pirates hear you calling their outfits ‘costumes’—they get very touchy about that. I found out the hard way.”

  Bridget’s face goes serious, her mouth forming a delicate O. “Really?”

  “Yeah. That one over there offered to ‘love me so hard I’d wake up with scurvy.’” Holly nods at one of the pirates.

  “Gross,” Bridget whispers softly, eyeing the group of men that have to look—to her—like a bunch of grandfatherly docents at a pirate museum. “Thank God I have Jake. I’m sure he won’t let any of them give me a disease.” Her expertly made-up eyes widen comically. “Omigod, wait, I hugged one of the pirates on Main Street yesterday—do you think he already gave me scurvy?”

  The huge bonfire crackles loudly behind Bridget, sending up sparks into the night sky. Holly looks over to see Jake tossing logs onto the flames. “If your teeth start falling out or you wake up with a rash, go see Dr. Potts,” Holly says sagely, patting Bridget on the lacy shoulder of her dress.

  “Okay, I will.” Bridget nods, holding her beer in front of her chest.

  There’s a simplicity to Bridget that throws Holly off: on the one hand, she has a look of naïveté in her eyes that is completely disarming, and on the other, there’s a calculating flash that appears every so often when it seems like no one but Holly is watching. It’s been hard for Holly to separate her feelings about Jake from her feelings about Bridget as a person.

  “You might want to check on your girlfriend,” Holly says to Jake as she steps through the loose sand, grains of the powder sticking to her black suede boots. “She’s worried she might be catching an eighteenth century seafarer’s disease from all these salesmen with plastic swords.”

  Jake frowns at her. “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Any new holes pop up that I should know about?” Holly stops next to the bonfire to watch as Jake rearranges the burning logs with a long stick. “I’m kind of worried that one of the islanders is going crazy and trying to dig their way to China. If anyone is frothing at the mouth, then I think we might have a culprit,” she jokes, pretending to eye everyone warily. Jake pokes the fire, not taking the bait.

  “No new holes,” he says.

  “What’s eating you?” Holly takes a step closer, hoping he’ll confide in her.

  “Nothing. I’m good.” Jake jams the long stick he’s using on the fire into the sand. “Everything is bueno,” he says unconvincingly.

  “Okay, if you’re sure…”

  “I am.” He gives her a tight smile. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else about the holes.” Holly stands there, completely puzzled, as Jake leaves her to go and stand with Bridget. The fire crackles loudly again, and she jumps a little.

  Off shore—way past the banks of Candy Cane Beach, where the dinner party is taking place—Holly can see the masts and sails of the pirate ship that their guests have anchored out in deeper water. She wanders to the edge of the shore to look at the ship. It’s massive against the blue of the night sky, and the off-white canvas of the mainsail stands proud under the moon. The Coast Guard has granted special permission for the boat to stay anchored there for four days, and Cap had run back and forth in his much smaller boat to retrieve the pirates and bring them to shore when they’d arrived.

  The moon is nearly full, and it hangs over the calm waters, sending glitter skittering across the waves. The whole scene looks like the cover of a pirate’s adventure novel. Holly watches the wooden hull of the ship with its darkened portholes. Way up high, she spies the crow’s nest of the ship, tethered in place with lines for support. A long rope ladder runs from the nest to the deck of the boat, and Holly can see clearly from shore that a man has climbed the ladder and is observing everything from a perch in the nest.

  She squints into the distance, trying to make out which of the pirates is on the boat, but all she can see is the flicker of moonlight against the gold telescope he’s got trained on the island. It’s unsettling, the feeling of being watched from afar, and a shiver runs up Holly’s spine. She folds her arms over her chest and takes two steps back.

  There are moments like this one that somehow deflate her overall dream just a little; things that remind her that they are, in fact, inviting complete strangers to their island by hosting fishing excursions and pirate weekends, but it’s a necessary risk if Holly has any hope of making her island a real tourist destination and of creating a self-sustaining economy.

  Holly keeps her eyes on the ship as she walks away from the shoreline, heading back to the knot of people laughing near the fire.

  Chapter 4

  The island is quiet the next morning. Holly brews a fragrant pot of coffee in her kitchen, watching the breeze play with the trees outside her window. It was unsettling seeing a person watching them from way off shore the night before, but she’d felt the dark moment leave her as soon as she’d gone back to the bonfire and been pulled into Bonnie and Sinker’s banter. By the time Joe Sacamano pulled out his acoustic guitar and started strumming every jaunty song and pirate ditty he could think of, Holly had loosened up considerably and was making the rounds and chatting with everyone.

  The electric kettle whistles on the cool, marble counter top, and Holly walks across the room in her slippers to pour the boiling water into the French press. With the coffee steeping, she moves out to the front porch. Pucci follows at her heels.

  It’s a crisp winter morning and she hugs her sweatshirt around her body, peering at her uncle’s house across the grass. Leo Buckhunter has turned out to be an amazing uncle and friend in the six months that they’ve known about their blood relation. Holly smiles at the closed curtains of his bungalow; if he isn’t up yet, it probably means that Holly’s best friend, Dr. Fiona Potts, has spent the night at Buckhunter’s.

  She was amused when Fiona had nurtured a crush on the rangy, somewhat mysterious man who’d turned out to be her mother’s half-brother, but it makes Holly happy to know that a) her best friend has found someone to make her happy, and b) the man living next door on what she’d always thought of as “family property” actually has the right to do so.

  Holly blows out a puff of breath and watches to see if it will form a cloud in front of her. It doesn’t. This is the only time of year where things occasionally get chilly on the island, but it’s entirely relative: when the normal temperature hovers in the upper seventies and skyrockets into the nineties, a 50-degree morning feels stark and wintry in comparison.

  “Should we go for a walk after I pour my coffee?” Holly asks Pucci, looking down into his brown eyes. She knows the answer to that question is always yes, so she puts her Yankees cap on top of her unbrushed hair, trades her slippers for the beat-up Converse on the front porch, and pours her coffee and some half-and-half into a travel mug. “Let’s go, Pooch,” she says to him, leading the way down the front steps in a pair of gray sweats that she’s chopped off above the ankle.

  The forested side of the island always feels like the safest place on earth to Holly. When Frank and Jeanie Baxter bought Christmas Key in the 80s and decided to move there permanently, they’d spent a small fortune runni
ng utilities to the island and making it livable. Holly’s entire childhood was centered around the development of the island, and the years of her life are marked in her mind not by ink marks on a doorjamb, but by which islanders moved to Christmas Key or which business opened the year she turned seven, or ten, or thirteen. By the time Frank and Jeanie both passed away, Holly was back from college and ready to take on the running of the island. In fact, she was more than ready: Frank had been grooming her for the task for years, and the knowledge he’d imparted, combined with her deep love of the island, are what makes her a passionate and devoted mayor.

  Holly sips her coffee now, ambling down Cinnamon Lane with Pucci by her side. The rising sun is behind them to the east, and its rays poke fingers through the thick trees, splintering the shadows with light. Holly can already hear the rush of the waves racing to shore, only to break and retreat again. Pucci takes off at a slow jog as they near the sand, but Holly keeps walking, holding her mug in front of her chest. She smiles at her dog’s enthusiasm.

  Pucci stops just beyond the tree line, his hind end in the air as he sniffs inside the branches of a low bush. The smile fades from Holly’s face as she gets closer; a pair of battered leather boots are sticking out into the sandy path.

  “Hello?” she calls out. No response. “Good morning!” Nothing.

  Pucci backs up from the unmoving body, planting himself in front of his mistress. He assumes a protective stance, though an aging golden retriever isn’t the most intimidating creature.

  Finally, a loud groan and an unintelligible string of words come from somewhere inside the bushes. “Who’s out there?” the man grumbles.

  “It’s Holly Baxter. I run the B&B and I’m the mayor of the island.” She sets her coffee mug on the sand, twisting it to wedge the bottom of the cup in place. “Here, let me help you.” Holly puts her hands on the ankles of the man’s thick boots, pulling firmly as he pushes his body out with both hands. When he finally emerges, red-faced and bleary-eyed, he scowls up at her.

  “And you are?” Holly asks, ignoring the look on his face.

  “Brian Bedowski.” He pushes himself to his knees and waves away the hand of assistance that Holly offers. With some effort, he gets to his feet. “I own a State Farm agency in Pensacola.”

  “Ah, Brian Bedowski,” Holly says. “Not Mad Jack Barnacle? Or Captain Patch O’Malley?”

  “Nope,” he says sheepishly. “Just Brian Bedowski. Of the Cleveland Bedowskis.”

  “Of course. The Cleveland Bedowskis. The most well-known branch of the tree, I assume?” Holly bends over and picks up her coffee mug, scratching Pucci between the ears to let him know everything is okay.

  Brian considers this. “Well, we do own all the Burger Kings on the west side…”

  “That’ll do it.” Holly scrutinizes Brian closely. He’s wearing dusty black pants tucked into his equally dusty boots, and from beneath the placket of his partially unbuttoned shirt peeks the front of a faded black concert t-shirt. “Metallica?” Holly guesses, nodding at the letters that are visible across his chest.

  Brian looks down. “Yeah,” he says. “Big metal fan here.” He nods rapidly, his thinning, sandy blonde hair barely covering a reddened scalp. “I make a better Metallica fan than a pirate,” he laments, buttoning up his shirt to cover the band name.

  “I think you’re doing fine,” Holly says, taking a sip of her coffee. “I mean, you passed out after a night of beer and cigars and then slept in a bush on an unfamiliar island. I bet Captain Kidd did that once or twice.”

  “And probably Sir Francis Drake,” Brian adds, warming to the idea. He trips on a wayward branch as he follows Holly. “Hey, how far am I from civilization?”

  “Not far: you fell asleep about a hundred yards from my house. And my uncle lives next door,” she adds, not wanting Brian to get any ideas about showing up at her house for a visit. They walk back towards Holly’s house together with Pucci still watching Brian warily. “Hey, what’s your pirate name? You don’t want me calling you Brian in front of your buddies, do you?”

  “I guess not,” he says. “They call me Bucko Chumbucket.”

  Holly wrinkles her nose. “Ew. That’s not a good name.”

  “I know. But my wife made me be a pirate. The other guys think I’m kind of a joke, so Sinker named me Bucko Chumbucket.”

  “Huh. Okay. So why did your wife ‘make’ you become a pirate?”

  Brian kicks a shriveled piece of husk that’s fallen from a palm tree. “Because she thought it was weird for a dude in his forties to spend all his nights and weekends playing Space Invaders and eating Burger King,” he admits. “But the Burger King is free—I have a special pass that lets me eat at any BK I want, no charge.” Brian is clearly under the impression that this is a point in his favor.

  “Bonus,” Holly says. “So, this wife—what’s her name?”

  “Anita.”

  “Anita isn’t feeling the flame anymore when she has to step over her middle-aged husband—no offense.” Holly shoots Brian an apologetic look.

  “No worries,” Brian says.

  “Anyway, she has to vacuum around a guy who comes home from the insurance agency, changes into sweats, and then sits around eating fast food and playing video games from the 80s.”

  “Space Invaders came out in 1978,” Brian corrects her. “And I always play in my boxers and a t-shirt.”

  “My bad. Okay, so Anita isn’t feeling the passion, Bri,” Holly says. She stops walking and turns to him. “She married a handsome, swashbuckling stud of a man, and after a couple of kids—”

  “Four,” he adds.

  “—after four kids, this hunky dude turns into Brian from State Farm.”

  “Well, I have to pay the bills,” he says sadly. “And I like my job.”

  “That’s awesome; you should like your job. And you should be proud of what you do. But you need to think about Anita. Does she read romance novels?” Holly is just guessing here, but she’s feeling lucky.

  “Yep. In bed at night. Always the ones with the man tearing off the lady’s dress on the cover,” he says, making a face that says he can’t imagine why anyone would touch something so crass.

  “Brian,” she says, “it’s simple: ladies love romance. They want to be swept off their feet. And understood. And desired. And made to feel beautiful. You can do all that without being a pirate.”

  “But she always jumps on me after a pirate weekend. As soon as we get the kids to bed, she makes me put on my boots again and—”

  “Got it.” Holly holds up a hand to stop him before he gets to the part where he pulls out his sword. “So then what’s the big deal? You get to spend a weekend away with the guys every so often, drinking rum and smoking cigars on a freaking pirate ship, and then you go home to find Anita feeling frisky. It all sounds like a win-win to me,” Holly says.

  “I guess…when you put it that way.” Brian gives a weak, hungover smile. “I just wish these other guys would let me stop someplace for a burger every so often,” he says, patting his slightly rounded belly.

  “You know what? I can set you up with a burger fit for a rockstar today, how does that sound?”

  Brian’s eyes light up like a little boy who’s just been offered a cookie.

  “Great. Let’s get you back to the B&B so you can shower and meet up with the other guys. Hey,” Holly stops walking. “How did you get all the way over here? We had dinner on the other side of the island last night, and when I left, you all were still sitting around the bonfire.”

  A grin spreads across Brian’s unshaven face, and the combination of his impish look and the gold stubble on his cheeks gives him the look of a frat boy who’s partied a little too long and hard. “I was looking for a cheeseburger.”

  Chapter 5

  “Holly, you have got to make this stop,” Carrie-Anne Martinez demands. She steps out from behind the counter at Mistletoe Morning Brew and walks across the coffee shop to meet Holly at the door.

  �
�Make what stop?”

  “The damn holes—they’re everywhere!” Heads turn all around the shop, and the chatter dies down.

  “More holes?” Holly closes the door gently with her right hand, trying to keep the bells on the handle from banging loudly against the wooden door frame. “Where?”

  “This morning Ellen and I got up at four like we always do, and we went out to feed Madonkey and the turkeys before coming here to open the shop.” Carrie-Anne is nearing breathlessness as she starts her play-by-play of a morning spent feeding the menagerie that she and her wife, Ellen, have adopted.

  “Uh huh,” Holly prompts, furtively scanning the coffee shop crowd. The Bradfords are present, as are Heddie Lang-Mueller, Cap Duncan, two of the triplets and their respective husbands, a smattering of other islanders, and Mrs. Agnelli. Holly is about to say more when she hears a light rap on the glass of the door behind her; she turns to see Jake and Bridget waiting patiently for her to move out of the way so they don’t hit her with the door.

  “Sorry,” Bridget whispers, tiptoeing in theatrically after Holly steps aside. “We just need coffee.”

  “Come in, come in,” Holly says. Her patience is wearing thin. “We almost have enough people for a mini village council meeting,” she says, counting heads. “Bonnie isn’t here, and we’re missing—” She points at the triplets. “Which one of you are we missing?”

  “Gwen,” Gen says.

  “Okay, we’ve got a good crowd here and no visitors amongst us.” Holly slides onto a tall chair at the bistro table where Heddie is sitting. “So let’s talk about these holes.”

  Loud discussion erupts all around the coffee shop. Holly lets it go on for a minute or so before she speaks. “Let’s figure out what’s going on and what we need to do.”

  The sea of gray and white heads turn to face her. Eyebrows raise and arms are folded as the islanders wait for Holly to go on.

  “Who can tell the rest of us where the new holes are?” Holly asks.