[Christmas Key 01.0] There's Always a Catch

by Stephanie Taylor

  He watches as she brings the cup to her lips with a shaky hand. Her phone buzzes in her pocket; she ignores it.

  “I can’t hear this, Buckhunter. Please,” she begs, her eyes watery.

  “Jesus, woman. What in the hell are you getting at?”

  “I don’t judge you, I swear. I just thought…I guess I thought you’d have darker hair.” She points at her own head. “I thought she liked South American boys.”

  “Wait—are you trying to say that you think I’m your father?” His eyes are narrow, forehead creased. “Because I hate to disappoint you, darlin’, but I am definitely not the kind of guy who would have knocked Coco up, even as a dumb teenager.”

  Buckhunter is not her father? Buckhunter is not her father! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Relief brings her senses back and restores the circulation to her extremities while she gives a silent prayer of gratitude.

  “Then what are you talking about? What’s so top-secret that you’ve been given instructions not to tell me about it?” Her breathing is returning to normal, her heart rate slowing.

  “I mean how much do you want to know about your whole family? There’s a lot that I’m guessing no one ever bothered to tell you, island princess, and if you don’t even know who your daddy is, then I’d imagine you’re living in the dark about a lot of things.”

  Holly lifts her chin just slightly, miffed at being called ‘island princess.’ She snorts. “Okay, I’m game. What exactly do you know about my family that I don’t, Buckhunter?” Her confidence—badly shaken for a minute when she thought she might actually be living next door to her father—is back. “You come here and rent this house from my grandparents, set yourself up as our neighbor, and we barely know you! I mean, I like you fine. You’re an amazing bartender and a pretty damn good guy to have around the island, but it’s always stuck in my craw that we live within shouting distance of one another on my property and we’re not even family.”

  He nods, giving her a look that says, fair enough. “I see your point. I do. But that’s not entirely true.”

  “Which part?”

  “I’m not a stranger, Holly.”

  She braces herself for the impact of whatever comes next.

  “I’ve known your family for years—Frank, Jeanie, even your mother.”

  “How?” she croaks, still expecting him to reveal a torrid romantic tale of lust and heartbreak that somehow involves Coco even if it didn’t result in, well, her.

  “Okay,” he starts, looking out into the mangrove trees again as he rocks in his chair. “It’s a long story.”

  “So start telling it,” she demands.

  Buckhunter laughs at her tone. “Slow down there, missy. You aren’t really steering this ship right now, are you?” He lifts his coffee cup and takes another sip, swallowing and smacking his lips in what feels like slow motion. “Anyhow, as I was saying, I’ve known your family for years. And now with your mother making the choices she’s making about the island, I think it’s time for you to hear this, because it actually does involve you.”

  Holly makes an okay, lay it on me gesture with her hands.

  “There are secrets in every family, Holly. And sometimes the people you love surprise and disappoint you.” Buckhunter rolls an unlit cigar between two fingers while he talks. “I know your grandparents because they sent me money every month for as long as I can remember. Your granddad would pick me up for spring break every year and take me fishing, and they never forgot my birthday.”

  Holly waits for understanding to wash over her. Without more information, she can’t imagine why her grandparents would give him money or take him on vacations. Was Buckhunter some sort of charity case? It’s just not making sense.

  “My mother and I lived in a tiny house outside Savannah, and she worked nights. She was a nurse.” His eyes glaze and he looks faraway. “My whole life, it was just the two of us. And every month, she waited for that check to come so she could buy me an extra gallon of milk, or a new pair of shoes, or send me to football camp. We had a good life, but she never let me forget that we’d been blessed by her decision to bring your grandfather into our lives.”

  “Buckhunter…” Holly leans forward, elbows on her knees. She is thoroughly vexed. “What in the hell are you trying to tell me here?”

  “When my mom was younger and still in nursing school, she was a real beauty—an absolute doll. She had this wavy light brown hair, and sparkly, clear blue eyes. She could have been a movie star—no problem.” Buckhunter had obviously inherited his own icy blue gaze from his mother. “She and some girlfriends took a trip one summer from Savannah down to Miami Beach. They were looking for some nightlife and sun, but what she found instead was a charming older man at a card table. And what he found was a naïve girl who just wanted to be loved.”

  “Wait—are you talking about—”

  “Frank. Yeah. I’m talking about your grandfather.”

  “But…”

  “But what about your grandmother? Yes, your grandparents were married at the time. Your mom was born about six months after I was.”

  Holly’s first instinct is to slap him in the face—to make him take those words back—but she can’t bring herself to move. This whole thing has to be a bad joke. Her grandparents’ love had never wavered—not even for a moment, and definitely not for a weekend on Miami Beach with a nursing student who looked like a movie star.

  Holly’s mind races wildly. Buckhunter waits, letting her process everything.

  “So—my mom…”

  “Is my sister.”

  “Jesus.” Holly stands up, setting the mug of coffee on the wooden planks of the deck. “I don’t know how to deal with this.” She feels unsteady on her feet. How is it possible that her beloved grandfather cheated on her grandmother with some nursing student? And how is she supposed to believe that Coco has a brother, and that it’s Buckhunter? Holly holds her arms across her stomach protectively.

  “Why don’t you go take a breather. We can talk later,” he suggests, standing up from his own chair. They face each other on the porch. Buckhunter is still holding his coffee cup.

  She nods mutely.

  With no recollection of running across the grass to her golf cart, no memory of the bumpy drive back down Cinnamon Lane, and no idea how she got there, Holly ends up in the chair at her desk, facing a chipper Bonnie. Her baseball cap is still in her shaky hands, her muscles quivering from the shock.

  “Hey, sugar,” Bonnie says, smiling at her from over her open laptop. “Busy around here, huh? Feels like you and I haven’t spent even a hot minute here together all day.”

  Holly nods dumbly, her eyes glazed and unfocused.

  “While we were at lunch we got an email from a bride who’d like more information about how we can help her throw her dream wedding on Christmas Key. Says she saw an ad in the Miami Herald and she followed us on Instabook.”

  “It’s Instagram, Bon,” Holly says in a raspy voice. Her head feels loose on her neck and she’s struggling to hold it up.

  “Honey? What’s eatin’ you?” Bonnie is watching her with the kind of concern you see on someone’s face when they realize that all is not well and that they might need to call for back-up.

  Holly takes a deep, ragged breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth. She runs her hands over the smooth aluminum cover of her closed laptop. “I just found out that Buckhunter is my uncle.”

  Chapter 30

  “No,” Bonnie says, shaking her head like that will make her words true. “That’s impossible. Leo Buckhunter is not your uncle.”

  “Apparently it’s not impossible, Bon. Buckhunter’s mom was a cute, young nurse vacationing on Miami Beach when she met my very married grandfather. I’m sure you can imagine the rest.” Holly feels like her head weighs forty pounds; the desire to rest it on her desk is overpowering.

  “So wait just a second here.” Bonnie taps a manicured finger against her half of the desk. “Are you telling me that Frank B
axter had an illegitimate baby with some floozy, and that that baby is Buckhunter?” Her face is incredulous.

  “That’s what he says. He and Coco are,” she pauses, swallowing hard, “brother and sister, and he knows all the details about her wanting to sell the island.”

  “Okay. Then this is—and I’m still trying to fit the pieces together in my pretty little head, mind you—but this is actually good news, sugar.”

  “I seriously have no clue how you see this as good news,” she says, forehead still planted firmly on her desk.

  “It’s good news because it means he probably has some stake in this island. Do you think your grandparents put him in their will?”

  Holly lifts her head slowly, her hair falling into her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.” She blows the hair out of her face and searches for her phone blindly on the desk. “I always figured it was just fifty-fifty with me and Coco. No one ever told me that for sure, but she never completely makes decisions without my input.”

  “And your grandparents never told you how they were splitting things up?” Bonnie probes gently.

  “I guess…maybe. But not in so many words. It was just understood that I’d run things, and that Coco and I would come to an agreement on anything major. Bonnie, I need to call someone. Who do I call?” She flicks through the contacts in her phone, trying to decide who to get on the line. “Accountant? Attorney?”

  “Uhhh, probably attorney, sweetheart.”

  Holly chooses a name in her contact list and waits for the line to ring. Her attorney’s secretary picks up after three rings and redirects her call to the lawyer that her grandparents retained when they first bought Christmas Key. Bonnie gets up discreetly with her iced coffee in hand, pulls her pink t-shirt down over her round bottom, and leaves the office so that Holly can speak privately with the lawyer.

  It’s a quick conversation: the attorney knows about Mr. Buckhunter and was given explicit instructions not to discuss it with Holly until she called to ask. The will is iron-clad. A copy of the document will be scanned and emailed to her within the hour.

  Bonnie comes back with a computer printout in hand from the front desk, sipping her iced latte through a neon yellow straw. “Got a rundown of our bookings for September so that we can look at dates with that bride who wants to start talking details,” she says, sitting down across from Holly. She peers over the frames of her reading glasses, waiting patiently to hear what the lawyer had to say.

  Holly taps the back of her cell phone against her bare thigh as she turns the information over in her head. “Okay. Interesting turn of events.”

  Bonnie pulls off her glasses and sits down in her chair.

  “After my grandma died, Frank took a trip to see his attorney and to change the will. He was very firm about not sharing the information with anyone until there was a good reason for us to know.”

  “You mean like Coco wanting to sell the island?”

  “Right. So the lawyer drew up an amended version of the will during that visit, and my grandpa signed it on the spot.”

  “And?”

  “Three ways—but not an even split.” Holly sets her phone down on the desk and folds her arms across her chest. “Do you think Buckhunter’s opened the bar for happy hour yet? Because this feels like the longest day ever and I could really use a drink.”

  “He might be there,” Bonnie says. “But let’s back up to the uneven split—how did Frank divvy things up? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “33% each to Buckhunter and Coco, and 34 for me.” A chill runs up her spine. Her grandfather had selected her to officially be in charge of Christmas Key.

  “That’s gonna go over like a ton of bricks, sugar,” Bonnie says, dropping her glasses on the desk with a clatter. “Coco is going to lose it when she hears that.”

  “I know. I need to talk to Buckhunter more when my brain and my mouth decide to work together again. But assuming that we’re on the same page, we can easily out-vote Coco on this.”

  “And on pretty much anything else that comes up,” Bonnie points out.

  “True.”

  “But you might have to be a smidge less contrary with the old goat now to make sure he stays on your side.” Bonnie winks at her and slides her reading glasses back on.

  “I’m not contrary with him,” Holly says, “I just like to give him grief.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  “You know what? I think I’m going to run a couple of errands.” Holly pulls her hair into a loose ponytail and grabs her purse and sunglasses. “Can you get back to our bride and work out some dates with her?”

  “Sure thing, boss. I’m on it.” Bonnie plucks a sharpened pencil from the cup on her desk. “Go get some fresh air, you hear?”

  Holly sets her Yankees cap on her head and smiles. “Be back in a jiffy.”

  Chapter 31

  It’s real and it’s in writing: Coco can’t simply show up and snatch the island away from her, even if she wants to. Holly feels like skipping down Main Street, her purse swinging from one shoulder as she grabs lampposts and spins around them, stepping jauntily over storm drains and singing to her own reflection in shop windows. Everything that had gone gray in her life with Buckhunter’s revelation has turned Technicolor again, and she feels like kissing the front of the buildings along Main Street and jumping onto the back of a moving golf cart like it’s a streetcar in a musical. In her mind, she’s an extra in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers flick, stopping in the middle of the road to sing to the heavens with every ounce of her being, arms thrown to the sky.

  But in reality, she’s taking Main Street in giant strides, the happiest smile she’s worn in ages plastered across her face, thrilled that she’s just—in an instant—gained the upper hand with her mother in the battle for the island.

  She looks up from the sidewalk and slams straight into Jake.

  “Holly, watch out!” He frowns, holding out his coffee cup from Mistletoe Morning Brew so that the hot drink won’t slosh through the opening and land all over them.

  “Sorry.” She steps back to avoid the coffee as it slops onto the pavement. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “I can see that.” He wipes his coffee-splattered arm on the side of his black shorts. “Where’s the fire?”

  “No fire. Everything is fine. Everything’s good. We’ve got a bridal party looking to throw a wedding here next month, and I’ve got some other things in the works,” she says, unable to stop her nervous chattering.

  “Your first wedding. Nice job. And how are things with you? Now that, you know, all of our visitors have gone, and your mom is off the island…”

  She smiles, refusing to take the bait. There’s no way she’s going to talk about either River or her mother and ruin her good mood. “Like I said, things are fine.”

  Jake sips his coffee, eyebrows raised. “I’ve been meaning to stop by and say hi.”

  They’re right in front of Tinsel & Tidings Gifts, and the triplets are visible through the front window as they bustle around, stocking shelves and laughing together. Holly watches them for a minute before looking back at Jake. “Listen, I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now, Jake. Maybe we can talk later?”

  He shifts his weight, one hand resting on his hip just above his holster. His mirrored aviators are folded and tucked into the collar of his shirt. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

  “Anyway, see you at the next village council meeting?” Holly is ready to keep moving.

  “I’ll be there,” he says quietly.

  Holly gives a tight-lipped smile and steps around him on the sidewalk.

  “Holly Baxter! You aren’t leaving much to the imagination with that short skirt!” Maria Agnelli shouts at her from across the street. “I can see all the way to next Tuesday, missy!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Agnelli,” she yells back. “You’re looking chipper today. And it’s a skort, so it has shorts sewn into it!”

  “It’s short on someth
ing: fabric!” Maria hollers back. She holds the door of Poinsettia Plaza open with one arthritic hand, ready to head into Fiona’s office for another round of questions and answers to determine the source of her aches and pains. Holly jokingly told her one afternoon that the source of her pain was old age; Maria had huffed at her in disbelief.

  “Have a nice day, Mrs. Agnelli!” Holly glances over her shoulder. Sure enough, Jake is standing next to his police golf cart, chuckling at the exchange between her and Mrs. Agnelli.

  “I’ve seen handkerchiefs that would cover more than that skirt,” Mrs. Agnelli says in a voice that’s still louder than it needs to be.

  Holly rolls her eyes and forges ahead, determined to stay focused on the discussion she’s about to have with Buckhunter. As luck would have it, he’s on the sidewalk opening the bar right then.

  “Just the man I’m looking for,” Holly says, jogging lightly to catch up with him. She grips the strap of her raffia purse, the other hand holding down the back of her pleated skort.

  “Two visits in one day?” Buckhunter’s mouth turns up at one corner. “Aren’t I a lucky guy.”

  “It took me a while, but I finally found my tongue. I want to talk. Are you busy?”

  “Just opening up. Want me to grill you up a burger or pour you a drink?” He bends down and unlocks the corrugated metal rolling door with a big key, releasing it and letting it slide back on its rails overhead. He does it again with the next door, which completely opens the restaurant to Main Street. It’s muggy inside, and Buckhunter walks around, flipping switches to turn on the overhead fans.

  She thinks about the drink she’d like to have, but decides that keeping her head straight is a better choice for this conversation. “An Arnold Palmer would be awesome.” She follows him inside the bar. “Oh, and thank you for the coffee earlier. Sorry I bolted on you.”

  He nods, shooting her a sideways glance. “Just shock, I’m guessing.”