Fortunate Harbor (8 page)

“I’m starving.” He put his arm around her waist and hauled her toward the door, his fingertips searching for and finding bare skin. Over the unmistakable twang of Willie Nelson, she could
hear raucous laughter through the open windows. Half a dozen couples lounged against the porch railing, waiting for tables, but she wasn’t sorry to be among them. She was enjoying the feel of his fingers slipping under the waistband of her capris.

“Looks like it’s going to take some time to get seated, even at this hour,” she said, snuggling closer.

“Sorry about the timing. Sylvia had a bunch of things to take care of, so I was minus a babysitter earlier.”

“You could have brought Bay. He loves Skeeter’s.”

“Bay doesn’t want to miss a chance to be with his mom. It was better not to fight him on that.”

Tracy told herself not to feel hurt. So, okay, Bay had grown on her. For a kid with a bunch of problems, he could be fun to have around. And he liked her; she knew he did. In fact, she’d kind of thought she was special. But Sylvia was his mother, the mother whose attention he’d worked so hard to gain, probably since birth. His preference tonight was perfectly normal.

“You would know best about Bay,” she said, after Marsh reluctantly stepped away and asked the gum-cracking hostess to put their names on the wait list. “And I’m assuming Sylvia’s going to be on her way home before long?”

Marsh steered them to a corner on the far end of the porch where the noise wasn’t as bad. She perched on the railing and rested against a post. He stayed on his feet and leaned against it, his chest snug against her hip, one hand resting on her knee.

“I don’t know what her plans are,” he said. “I thought she’d be gone by now, but Bay’s so thrilled to have her, I’m afraid to rock the boat and ask.”

“Marsh, does Bay think she might stay? Does he know this is just temporary?”

“Kids know things on a variety of levels.”

“Meaning he’s holding out hope.”

“I’ve talked to him. I’ve explained that relationships change, and one day some people realize that they just can’t live together. I told him that’s what happened with his mom and me.”

Tracy knew what was coming. “And so then Bay said, if relationships change, maybe yours will change back, and you’ll want to be a family again.”

“How did you know that?”

She shrugged. “Maybe because I was a kid so long myself, I just know the way they think. I grew up kind of late. Like maybe last year.”

She realized she had said just the right thing to break the ice. He grinned, and she felt the warmth of it moving across her body.

“Bay’s crazy about you.”

“And I guess I’m—”

Marsh’s pocket began to play “Wild Thing.”

“I’d better get that.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear, stepping away from her as he did. She didn’t pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Uh-huh.” He listened a few moments. “Right. So far so good.” Listened some more. “The chocolate sauce is in the door of the refrigerator, and the strawberries are in the freezer. Yes, he can eat strawberries. He’s not two anymore.” And listened some more. “I don’t know when I’ll get home, Sylvia. We’re waiting for a table.”

He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket, but he didn’t resume the position he’d abandoned.

“Ice-cream sundaes?” Tracy asked, as pleasantly as she could.

“She’s out-of-date on what he can do.”

Tracy struggled to be charitable. Some struggles were hopeless. “Bay is her son, and that’s pretty basic stuff.”

“Tell me about it. At least she’s making a stab at being his mother. Maybe she’s even serious. It remains to be seen.”

She was encouraged that Marsh hadn’t fallen for Sylvia’s story hook, line and sinker. “I kind of get the impression she’s interested in being a wife again, too.”

“Nah, you’re way off base.”

“She seemed pretty territorial when I was there.”

“She’s territorial by nature. She’s used to going after anything that moves. That’s who she is and why she’s so good at her job.”

“Her job…” Tracy smiled tightly. “I always thought attorneys had trouble taking time off. And she’s been here, what, almost two weeks?”

“She brought work. Bay’s still coming to my office after school when he’s not at the rec center, so she can make phone calls.”

Tracy tried to imagine that. Sylvia was in Palmetto Grove to see her son, but she didn’t want to see him in the afternoons when he was actually free? She saved work to do then? Why? So she could be finished in the evenings when Marsh came home?

“Enough about my ex,” he said, as if he was reading her mind. “How about yours? Any more mysterious CJ visitations?”

She was still thinking about Sylvia and growing more annoyed that the woman was still in Marsh’s house. “Just a couple.” Then she realized what she’d said. “Umm…not really.”

He was not smiling now, and he didn’t look as if he intended to in the near future. “Which is it? Not really? Or my personal favorite, just a couple?”

“Okay, there seem to be a lot of men in the world who resemble CJ, and now that he’s, you know, out of jail, I seem to see them everywhere. But it’s no big deal.”

“Maybe you’re conjuring him.”

“Like creating him, you mean? I don’t think so, thanks. If I
did, he’d be materializing on a mountaintop in Nepal. Or maybe an active volcano. Do they have volcanoes in Nepal?”

“Maybe it’s good we cooled things down.”

For a moment the words seemed to hang in the air between them; then she slid off the railing so they were face-to-face. “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“Wild Thing” began to play again.

“Maybe you ought to just keep the phone in your hand,” she said. “Saves you rooting around in your pants. Although if this conversation doesn’t change direction, you’re certainly the only one who’s going to be tonight.”

He held up the hand under discussion and spoke into the phone. “What, Sylvia?”

Tracy cocked her head and lifted an eyebrow.

“Of course he doesn’t want to go to bed,” Marsh said. “It just got dark a little while ago. Sure he can watch television. Tomorrow is Saturday. Just make sure it’s something appropriate.” He listened. “You have a law degree, Sylvia. You should be able to figure this out.” He closed the phone with a hard snap, then shoved it back into his pocket.

“What did you mean, ‘it’s good we cooled things down’?” she demanded.

Whatever he was feeling didn’t show in his face. He was looking at her the way he probably looked at developers under indictment, right before he pulled out a damning piece of evidence. “Issues. Lots and lots of them, apparently.”

“Whose? Mine or yours?”

He expelled a long breath. “We’re blowing this, Tracy. I don’t want to blow it tonight, okay? I want to eat a pound of boiled shrimp and drink just enough beer to keep my blood alcohol level under the limit. I want to look at you over the table and
think about how lucky I am that you and I somehow managed to overcome our differences and get this far together. Okay?”

“Marsh, I want our relationship to heat up, not cool down. I’ve told you I want it to go further. CJ doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“And Sylvia doesn’t—”

“Wild Thing” started all over again.

“I am beginning to hate that song,” she said too loudly. “Please, please! Change your freaking ringtone!”

He was rarely profane, but he made up for it while he dug the phone out again and snapped it open. “Listen, Sylvia, I am trying to—”

He fell silent. Even though the phone was pressed hard against his ear, Tracy could hear Sylvia’s voice, like a coloratura practicing scales before a concert. Up and down, up and down. Marsh didn’t say a word.

Tracy turned up her hands in question. “Bay?”

He shook his head, still listening.

“Okay, I’ll be there shortly,” he said at last. He put the phone back in his pocket.

Tracy waited. The silence—if you could call LeAnn Rimes wailing over the speakers silence—extended. Finally he sighed.

“Sylvia was fired. She’s a mess.”

“Now? She was fired
now?
” She looked at her watch. “At eight o’clock on a Friday night? Isn’t that a new low, even for a law firm?”

“I guess she’s known it might be coming, but she just got the word. Of course they’re saying it’s the economy, that they just can’t afford to keep her anymore, but it’s really that case she lost. You don’t lose a high-profile case and live to tell about it.”

Tracy really didn’t care. This was the woman who, from the
moment of Bay’s birth, had always put her job first and her baby son on hold. This was the same woman who had been mooching off Marsh for almost two weeks but still didn’t know whether Bay could have strawberries on his ice cream.

This was the woman who’d made it perfectly clear to Tracy that she would fight to the bitter end for her ex-husband, even if she didn’t really want him.

She struggled to sound logical and calm. “I’m sorry, Marsh, but what exactly does she expect you to do about this on an empty stomach?”

“I don’t think she expects me to do anything except listen. But I’m worried about Bay. She’s a mess. He shouldn’t have to deal with his mother when she’s like this.”

Bay. Not Sylvia’s beloved son, Bay. Sylvia’s secret weapon, Bay. Sylvia knew Marsh, and she knew that nothing would stop him from shielding their little boy from emotional distress.

“Do you think she really just found out?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe she’s known all along. Maybe she chose this moment to tell you because you’re out with me.”

“That’s paranoid and clueless.”

She bristled, and all caution fled. “And you’re clueless if you think she’s not capable of something like that. Look, she’s been here almost two weeks. How many phone calls has she gotten from her law firm while you’ve been there? How much work was she actually doing? I bet she was fired before she—”

“Look, leave my ex-wife to me, okay?” He was angry now. She could see it in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders. “You’ve got enough on your hands with your imagination and your fantasies.”

“Imagination?”

“Right. All these CJ appearances. I know where I stand with Sylvia, and I know I wouldn’t take her back for anything, no matter what she says or does. But maybe the same’s not true for you. Maybe that’s why you keep seeing your ex everywhere. Maybe you’re hoping he really will come back and hand you that silver platter life you lost.”

She stared at him. For a moment she thought maybe she saw the beginning of remorse creeping across his features, but even if she was right, it was too late. She took a deep breath, but the voice that emerged did not sound like hers.

“Don’t forget to tell the hostess we won’t need that table. Or hey, maybe I ought to grab it anyway. Maybe the phantom CJ will sit across from me and keep me company. Of course, this kind of place isn’t really CJ’s thing. He’d probably like the yacht club a lot better.”

She gave one short nod in goodbye, then she wound her way through the porch crowd and the parking lot and unlocked her car door. Marsh didn’t follow, but she hadn’t expected him to. The last thing she heard from Skeeter’s was a woman she didn’t recognize singing the unfortunate choice, “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye?”

“I don’t need a bit of help, thanks,” she said, as she revved her engine and took off for home.

Tracy had calmed down just a fraction by the time she passed the sign that announced she was now in Happiness Key. Happiness Key was the last piece of private property on the north end of Palmetto Grove Key—a prime piece, however, that stretched from bay to gulf and nearly out to the point, which was protected public land. To this day Tracy wasn’t certain why CJ had put the land in her name without explanation, and how he had managed, somehow, to protect it sufficiently so that this shabby old collection of shabby old cottages had not been seized after his arrest, along with everything else that belonged to them.

Once upon a time the property had been called Happiness Haven, a quasi resort with ten cottages, a rental office, and plans for a modest-sized motel and miniature golf course. Even though development plans had stalled, and nobody had been as happy as they should have been, the complex had stayed in the same family until it became so run-down, there was no
hope of expansion. One by one, five cottages and the office had fallen to the wrecking ball.

When the last family member finally gave up and left Florida, CJ snapped up the property. He spent a small fortune securing permits, having plans drawn up, finding ways to circumvent myriad statutes so that the ecologically sensitive land could be developed. Then history and infamy collided. Florida real estate went from gold mine to black hole, and the Feds swooped in to part CJ and all his investments forever.

Or at least Tracy had thought it would be forever.

Now CJ was out of prison. If he stayed out, she wondered what he would do with the rest of his life. She was fairly sure whatever it was wouldn’t involve her. When she looked back on it, she realized her life with CJ Craimer had been built on lies. She had loved his power and status. At most he had loved her nubile young body and pliability. And could he be faulted? There’d been nothing much else worth loving. Tracy’s moral compass had pointed toward the Bel-Air Country Club and Rodeo Drive. Until CJ’s arrest, she had never questioned it.

Still contemplating her life, she parked in her driveway and stayed behind the wheel. She was furious at Marsh and his double standard. From negotiations over the Happiness Key conservation easement, she knew he could be intractable, even arrogant. But the man under the cocksure cynicism was a sensitive guy with a big heart, a man willing to give up a partnership in a top Manhattan firm to earn a fraction of that income managing a grassroots environmental organization. His consummate skill and bulldog tenacity had turned Wild Florida into a force to be reckoned with. And his devotion to his son told her everything else she needed to know about him.

So why was Marsh falling into Sylvia’s trap? No matter what he claimed, did he, like his son, harbor hope of reconciliation?

Darkness had fallen, and Tracy saw she’d forgotten to leave a light on inside. Not surprisingly, Happiness Key had no streetlamps. The bulb on her porch light needed to be replaced, and tonight even the stars were blanketed by clouds. She felt completely alone and insignificant in a way she had never experienced until she moved out to the key. Marsh had taught her to appreciate the wilderness beyond her house, but tonight she wasn’t that fond of it.

She opened her door to the cacophony of a Florida evening. In one direction she heard the squawk of seagulls, and from the other the whirring of insects and croaking of marsh dwellers. She contemplated the remainder of her night, and decided she would slide into bed and pull the covers over her head.

Halfway up the walkway to her house, she heard movement behind her. Not directly, but something that sounded like footsteps on the road. She debated between whirling to see what or who was there, and making a run for the door. With a lock between her and whatever was out there, she could peek through the window to her heart’s content.

Peek and never see a darned thing worth seeing.

She whirled, ready to cut loose with a scream if she needed to. She thrust her keys in front of her, ready to strike out with them.

“I wouldn’t want to face
you
in a dark alley,” said a familiar voice.

Tracy was more surprised that the man had already gotten so close than she was at the man himself. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Her heart seemed to be rooted in her larynx.

Finally she gathered herself enough to answer. “Seems like
you would have picked up some pretty good self-defense skills where you’ve been, CJ.”

He smiled ruefully but looked perfectly relaxed. “If you’re not careful, that’s not the only thing you can pick up in a place like Victorville.”

Tracy studied her ex-husband until the pounding in her throat had dropped back to her chest. Then she regained control with a shrug. “Would you like a glass of wine? That is, if you’d like a break from skulking around in the dark. I hate to get in the way of a steady job.”

“Florida’s been good for your sense of humor.”

“I had to develop one or curl up and die.”

“It sits well on you.”

She turned around and started toward her door. “I have to make a phone call. But come in and make yourself at home. Just don’t plan to make it a habit.”

“Just to let you know, Marsh,” she said into the kitchen telephone a few minutes later. “CJ is sitting in my living room right now. I haven’t been imagining him. Maybe I’ll follow your example and invite him to live with me. It seems to be working so well for you.”

Then she slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

“If I’d thought I might be invited back into your bed, I wouldn’t have moved into Edward Statler’s guest house,” CJ said, from behind her.

Tracy took her time turning around.

“A sense of humor isn’t the only thing I’ve developed,” she said. “My bullshit meter is so finely tuned I can’t even watch the news, in case they interview a politician.”

“That’s a good thing to have. It can save your life.”

“For starters, it would have saved me from marrying you.”

He held up his hands. “I didn’t come all this way to dig up the past.”

Tracy examined the man she’d been married to. A little more than a year in prison hadn’t exactly agreed with CJ, but the lines imprisonment had engraved on his face sat well enough there.

CJ was a man women always looked twice at, then tried for a third if he happened to notice them. With a head of thick, curly silvering hair, expressive dark eyes and an assertive nose, along with olive skin that tanned at the slightest provocation, CJ looked more Italian than German or Dutch, as the Craimer name suggested. But while sorting family papers after his arrest, Tracy had learned that until age twenty-two and a brief court appearance, CJ’s surname had been the Lebanese “Karam,” a name that ironically meant “kind and generous.”

Of course he
had
been generous enough with her. For no apparent reason, he had deeded her Happiness Key.

“So why have you been skittering around the edges of my life instead of just coming right to my front door?” she asked.

“Didn’t you mention wine?”

“It’s not a vintage you’d appreciate, but considering where you’ve been, I guess you won’t spit it out.” She opened a cupboard and considered the bottle of wine Marsh had brought the night of her first CJ sighting, then nixed it. This occasion was nothing to celebrate.

Instead she found the corkscrew and opened a bottle of grocery store red, a sale wine she’d actually developed a fondness for, and set it on the counter to let it breathe.

CJ lounged, looking for all the world like somebody posing for a GQ photo shoot. Her ex-husband wore clothes as if he
never gave a thought to what he put on his body, looking relaxed and elegant simultaneously. For all she knew, he’d rooted through a Dumpster to clothe himself in these twill pants and subtly printed shirt, but he looked as if he’d just walked out of Neiman Marcus or Saks.

“I held off approaching you because I didn’t know how I would be received,” he said.

“Apparently you finally decided to find out. After making me think I was losing my mind every time I caught sight of you.”

“The male ego’s funny. It was one thing when you divorced me the moment the Feds closed in, but the possibility you might slam the door in my face now that I’m out was too much.”

“I could jump up and down on your ego in my spikiest Manolo Blahnik heels and never do the slightest damage.” Tracy reached for two wineglasses, then opened the refrigerator and rummaged for food. Right this minute she was sorrier that she and Marsh had never shelled a single shrimp at Skeeter’s than she was about the fight. CJ on an empty stomach was twice as upsetting.

He changed the subject. “I can’t believe you moved into this place.”

“Where else was I going to go?” She spotted a wedge of low-fat cheddar, and emerged a moment later with the cheese, a carton of fresh strawberries and four oatmeal cookies Olivia had baked last weekend. Olivia had given her a dozen. She was afraid to think where the other eight had gone.

By now CJ was rummaging through her utensil drawer. “I thought you’d sell this quick, move to some resort area and find yourself a brand-new husband.”

“Somebody I could live off after I went through all the millions I was supposed to get for Happiness Key?” Tracy
didn’t even pretend to be angry. She was too hungry, and too off-kilter. “Didn’t sound good to me. I went the rich husband route once, without great results. I’ve sworn off rich men and sociopaths.”

“I hope that last doesn’t refer to me.”

“Not while you’re holding that knife, it doesn’t.” Tracy took the cheese knife away from him, then got a plate for the food and held it out to him. “Let’s eat at the table. I’ll pour the wine.”

They were seated, and she was opening crackers she’d found in the cabinet, before it occurred to her how charmingly domestic this looked. CJ home from the wars, fed and pampered by the little wifey. She almost snorted.

“I don’t remember the house being this nice,” he said.

“You mean you actually came inside? Why? You were planning to bulldoze everything in sight.”

“We were renting the cottages, remember? Until we could start? I was just making sure they were habitable until we were ready to demolish them.”

“Apparently you didn’t look very hard. I’ve spent a small fortune making repairs. I did the ones in here myself. I even put down the floor.”

He smiled, disbelieving. The man had a fabulous smile, made more fabulous against his olive skin. Tracy had always thought that without it, he would have been so ordinary, nobody would have taken his get-rich schemes seriously. With an overbite CJ would have been an accountant or a mortgage broker, cheating high school English teachers and veterinarians. Instead, his grin had catapulted him to a position where he’d been able to cheat supermodels, discount store tycoons and trust-fund babies.

“I did almost everything,” she said. “You’d be amazed at what
I can do. I found a job running the recreation program in town. I’m everybody’s favorite landlady. Even little kids adore me. The brand-new Tracy Deloche.”

“I thought you were pretty good the way you were.”

Okay. So she was feeling low as a lizard. Marsh was shacked up with his ex-wife and refused to see Sylvia for the schemer she was. His son was so thrilled to have Mommy in the house that he had probably forgotten Tracy’s name. She knew she was ripe for flattery. So why did she let his words make her feel just a tiny bit better?

She didn’t let on, of course. That would be like feeding the local alligators and not expecting them to grab an arm or a leg for dessert. Instead she asked the obvious question.

“What are you doing in Florida? More accurately, what are you doing in my house?”

“Where else was I going to go?”

He had purposely echoed her words, but she wondered if they were true. “What made you think you were wanted
here?
”

“If by
here
you mean
your life,
I didn’t. But as soon as the news broke that I was out, Edward Statler got in touch and suggested I stay with him as long as I wanted to. Since I’m only big news on the West Coast, I figured this would be a good place to hang for now.”

She pondered that. CJ had never lacked for friends. He gave gifts lavishly, bailed out the down-and-outers when he could, befriended other people’s castoffs. Of course, through the years, she’d noted he frequently called in favors, too. How could anybody say no to the man who had stood up for him in a pinch? A man who had generously held out a hand when it was most needed? She wondered if this Edward Statler had owed CJ something, and if he’d been forced to offer help. She
was certain there were other places her ex could have gone, other friends who couldn’t avoid paying him back.

“You have friends all over the world.” Tracy picked up a strawberry by the stem and bit into it to give herself time to think. “You want me to believe that this Statler, whoever he is, was the only one who offered you refuge?”

“How many people extended their hands to
you?
”

She nearly winced. CJ’s aim was excellent. “But I was just the eye candy, CJ.
You
were the one they owed.”

“You forget, I was the one who took their money and never gave it back.”

“Good point. It’s hard to love somebody who steals everything you have.”

“Something I never did.”

“So you said.”

“So I
say
. I trusted the wrong people, but I could have cleaned up that mess. Only then I was targeted by a prosecutor trying to make a name for himself. They tied things up so tight I couldn’t get back in to fix the problems. I’m fairly confident that’s what a better investigation will show, and I’ll be completely vindicated, even get back some of my assets or at least some portion of their value. Edward believes it, too. He stood by me then, and he’s opened his home now to prove he still believes. He’s even trying to find something I can do here to put my talents to good use.”

CJ’s situation was so complicated that Tracy had never understood every nuance. But she did know there had been more to the charges than what he was claiming now, real evidence that things had been amiss in her husband’s multitude of businesses. She found it hard to believe all that evidence had been concocted.