Medium in Paradise: A Humorous Paradise Romance (11 page)

The detective’s house was at the end of the street, the backyard obscured from view by a high wooden fence. A neatly appointed ranch with pale gray aluminum siding, vinyl replacement windows and a small serviceable porch, sat on a short expanse of freshly cut grass. Two hanging planters filled with lush ferns and two glazed ceramic planters stuffed to the brim with an array of blooming flowers, completed the quaint picture. Though cute, it was a far cry from the turn of the century beauty he’d so lovingly restored. She wondered if he had any regrets.

He beckoned her toward the open door with a wave of his hand and she walked inside. A living room with hardwood floors covered in southwestern-style throw rugs and a scattering of masculine leather furniture was offset by high ceilings crisscrossed with varnished open beams. The kitchen had stained cement countertops and stainless steel appliances.

The two cats Sam had told her about, came running down a hall Dina assumed led to the bedrooms. They gave her a long, cool stare from the safety of an armchair, negligently licking their paws, all the while keeping an eye on her movements. Deciding they liked what they saw, one by one, they came down to sniff at her legs before lazily winding their way around her ankles with arched backs, their sleek black and white coat leaving a trail of fur in their wake.

“Buzz and Saw,” she said, reaching down to scratch them behind the ears. “They’re pretty cute.”

“Yeah,” he said, a furrow between his eyes. “How do you know their names?”

“I—I’m a Medium remember? We know things.” She cursed her stupidity.

“But knowing their names is pretty specific, isn’t it?” He was looking at her strangely, suspicion sharpening his voice.

“I don’t question the spirits, detective. I merely accept what they choose to share with me. I’m sorry if that bothers you,” she said, coolly.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a brief pause. “I was just startled, that’s all. You can’t read my mind, can you?”

“Of course not. I pick up on certain information and can make pretty good guesses based on energy,” she lied, nimbly. Seeing the look of confusion on his face made Dina feel a tinge of guilt about misleading him.

“Good, because I’d hate for you to know what I was thinking about your legs right now.” His smile was mischievous.

“Uh-huh.” She walked over to French doors that opened to the backyard. “You are quite a surprise.”

The cats followed her, one of them pawing at her ankle then looking up at her expectantly. She picked it up, absently stroking its soft fur. Just past the deck and its neat arrangement of furniture, a large swath of grass ended at a pier where a shiny boat was docked. It floated serenely atop a glistening expanse of water, marsh grasses swaying along the shore.

“Why?” He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms.

“Because of all this,” she said, waving an arm to encompass her surroundings. She placed the cat back on the floor and it walked back to the living room, leaping on the armchair. “You have great taste. Surprisingly great taste.”

“Because I’m a cop that surprises you?”

“Of course.”

“Cops can have good taste, too.”

“Yes, but they usually don’t.”

“And you know this how?”

“I’ve seen the cop shows,” she said, grinning. “All that cheap looking furniture and even cheaper suits. I’m assuming at least some of its true.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that,” he said with a little laugh. “But I have a father who’s a furniture maker and carpenter. He’s the one I inherited my great taste from.”

“So that’s how you learned to restore old houses?”

“Yes, he taught me everything I know. Before my Mom and dad bought a house, we lived in crappy rentals. My father would spend time renovating them with second hand supplies until they looked brand new on the inside. The landlords were always happy to raise the rent them out afterwards,” he said with a chuckle. “One of our landlords started hiring him to spruce up his rentals and from there, my father’s reputation spread until he had his own thriving renovation business.”

“And where’s your family from?”

“Reservation in North Carolina.”

“Are you guys the ones that opened a casino in the mountains?”

“The Cherokee? The one and only. That’s how I was able to afford this. I saved up all the tribal checks I got from the casino profits and was able to buy something a cop’s salary wouldn’t normally allow.”

“That’s quite a story.”

“I tell all the girls that to impress them,” he said, a playful gleam in his eyes.

“And does that normally work?”

“Always. Poor little Indian boy that made good with his life. Works like a charm.” The look he threw her was filled with roguish charm and she looked away, rolling her eyes.

“You want something to drink?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a beer.”

“Another empty calorie filled beverage? I’ll bet that’s a record for you,” he teased, opening the fridge and taking out two Modelo Especial’s. He cut a lime, popping the top on each beer and placing a slice in each bottle.

“I like to waste my calories on alcohol and chocolate, thank you very much.” She took a sip from the bottle he handed her, enjoying its crisp taste on her tongue.

“Are you ready for an adventure?” he asked.

“As ready as I’m gonna be.”

**

After packing up a bag of tortillas and some beef jerky; he tossed beers, bottled waters, raw chicken legs and grapes in a large cooler filled with ice.

“What’re the chicken legs for?” she asked, peering into the cooler.

“You’ll see.” He gave her an alluring little smile that made her heart jump.

They walked down to the boat, each holding one side of the cooler. Hopping aboard, he quickly unmoored the boat, then pulled away from the dock, the low rumble of its twin engines following them. A trench of surf opened up behind them, the blue gray waters of the channel churned up by the boats movement. He chatted about the rest of his family as they slowly moved out of the channel leading to the open ocean. He had three brothers and four sisters, the youngest in his early twenties and the oldest turning forty that year.

“So they all went into the family business and you decided to become a cop? Why?”

“Small town. Everybody knows you and everything gets reported back to your family in one way or another. I got tired of it. Went to the military as soon as I turned eighteen, did my basic training in South Carolina, loved it here and when my four years were up, came back, went to police academy and the rest is history.”

“So you escaped?”

“I guess you could say that.” His laugh echoed across the water, the eyes he cut in her direction glittering with mirth.

“Are you good at what you do?”

That roguish smile again and a showing of pearly whites, “Very good.”

He slowed the engine then cut them altogether. Sea gulls screamed, wheeling overhead, their beady eyes searching for a meal on the water’s surface. The boat came to a drifting stop just short of leaving the channel. Dropping anchor, he opened a storage area near the hull, removing a crab pot.

“It’s a little late in the day for crabs, but we might still catch a few.” Attaching a long, plastic line to the railing, he secured the other end to the crab pot. Opening the trap, he dropped the raw chicken legs inside, reclosed it and released it in the water. It landed with a loud splash, quickly sinking until it was lost from view. “You fish?”

“Of course. I am a southern girl, detective.”

“Call me Arnie,” he said as he moved below deck. He returned with two long, sturdy looking fishing rods, their width and length suitable to ocean fishing. After making sure they were properly strung and baited, he handed one to her and they walked over to the boats railing, casting their lines, then placing them in the rod holders attached to the railing. They situated themselves on the comfortable seating built into the boats deck and continued talking about their families, the conversation easy and relaxed. Over the course of the next couple of hours, as the sun began melting slowly into the horizon, they caught a couple of mackerel, three seabass and over a dozen crabs before heading back.

As soon as they returned, Dina got to work scaling and gutting a couple of the fish over a pile of newspapers while Arnie fired up a charcoal grill. Pretty soon, they had a veritable feast of grilled fish and steamed crabs. A few brown-n-serve rolls and a crisp salad were their only accompaniments to the meal. They ate outdoors, Arnie carefully setting the grilled fish and crabs on serving platters alongside slices of lime and bowls of melted butter.

“I’m stuffed to the gills,” Dina said, plopping with a contented sigh on one of the lounge chairs. Arnie had lit a few citronella torches, their bright flames licking at the darkness and throwing flickering fingers of light across their faces.

“Then that means I did my job.” He eased back on the lounge chair next to her, folding his hands behind his head. Stars twinkled overhead, the moon a half-full crescent partially hidden behind a fast moving bank of clouds. Water gently lapped at the dock, the sound carrying in the still night air and mingling with the loud mating call of crickets and amorous frogs. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I did, but we just broke up,” she said, stiffly, the question pulling her right out of her food lethargy.

“What happened?”

“We just wanted different things and I felt it was time to move on.”

“How long were you all together?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” she mumbled, testily.

“I’m curious about you.” He looked over at her, his eyes probing her face in the darkness. “You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said with a shake of her head and a noisy exhalation of air. “I wanted to be married and have children and he didn’t. The oldest reason in the book to break up, huh?”

“One of the oldest,” he said with a shrug. “Most women wouldn’t want to have children, if like you, they owned their own business and had just released a new exercise video. All the marketing that probably needs to go along with your work must keep you pretty busy.”

“You sound just like him,” she remarked, tersely. “But like I told him, you make time for things that are important and family is important to me.”

“Now I’m the one that’s surprised.” She could tell from the way his voice sounded that he was smiling.

“What? You’ve never met a career girl that made room for family?”

“Nope. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things Sam and I used to argue about. She wanted to wait for kids and I wanted them right away. And honestly, months before our wedding I wondered if we should even have been getting married, then the accident happened and took that choice right out of my hands.”

“You still sound like you’re mad at her.”

“No, I’m not mad at her. It took a while, but I moved on. If it were up to me she’d be up and out of that hospital bed and walking around right now.”

“Up and out of the hospital bed,” Dina said slowly. She sat up, looking over at him. “How is that possible when your fiancée is dead?”

“Dead? Sam’s not dead. She’s in a coma. Has been for the last two years.”

“Sam—get your ass out here right now!” Dina bellowed as soon as she walked through the door. After Arnie had told her Sam was in a coma, ignoring the questions in his eyes, she’d made a quick excuse and abruptly left. Tossing her purse on the counter, she steamed up and down the hallway until Sam showed up. The look on her face told Dina that Sam knew exactly what she was mad about.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, tentatively.

“Are you just a born liar or did you learn that after you started cheating on your fiancé with his partner?” she asked, her tone deliberately cruel.

“I’m guessing Arnie told you that.”

“You guessed right.” Dina was angrier than she’d ever been. “I see now that this whole dating scheme isn’t about Arnie and his loneliness at all. It’s about you. It always has been.”

“I—I didn’t mean--,” she began, miserably.

“I don’t even want to hear it,” Dina said, savagely cutting her off. “You led me to believe you were dead when the entire time you were lying in some hospital bed in a coma.”

“That’s practically the same thing,” she retorted, a spark of defiance igniting in her eyes.

“It’s completely different. You’re not a ghost, you’re a dream-walker. A person whose body is still alive but whose spirit is roaming around, either by choice, or because they’re locked out of their body. That explains why you can do some of the things you’re able to do. All that effort you put into making sure I had your little necklace was pointless. You could’ve just followed me around at will.”

“It’s easier to find you if you have something of mine.”

“Whatever,” Dina said, her tone biting. “What the hell, Sam? Why are you doing all of this? Why didn’t you just tell me the whole truth from the outset?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d help me and I wanted to make up for what I did to Arnie. He’s been so miserable after I got in the accident. I wanted him to have a little joy in his life. You were so beautiful and nice. I knew he’d like you. I caused him a lot of heartache, Dina.”

“That’s baloney. You’re too self-centered for that to be true. What’s any of that got to do with me anyway?”

“Despite everything, what I said to you when we first met was true. You were the only suitable woman that could see me, that could help me.”

“You used me. You used me to right a wrong you made while you were alive.” Dina felt drained and angry at the same time. “It’s not your place to make decisions for my life or his life. To manipulate us. Haven’t you done enough already?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Who knows, maybe, just maybe, the accident was the universes way of getting back at you for your screwed up decision making.” Dina regretted the words as soon as they’d come out of her mouth, but there was no taking them back.

Sam’s face crumpled as she dissolved into tears. “I’m—I’m sorry for everything. I’ll leave.”

“Sam, I--,” But she’d already disappeared, leaving Dina talking to thin air.

**

Early the next morning, after a night spent mostly tossing and turning, Dina woke up to the puppy whining in his kennel. She threw on a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt and walked into the kitchen. The puppy’s two front paws were poised on the door of the enclosure, tail wagging so hard his whole body was moving. Smiling, she unclasped the latch and the puppy shot out of the cage, dropped to his haunches and immediately peed the floor. Dina closed her eyes and groaned.

She mopped up the mess with a wad of paper towels while, bladder emptied, the puppy jumped and pranced enthusiastically around her ankles. Managing to get him under enough control to secure a harness around his body, she attached the leash, thinking it would be a simple matter of walking and he’d follow. Not so. Feeling the weight of something foreign around his body, he grew stubborn and refused to budge, his fat puppy bottom remaining on the floor despite her firm tugging. Exasperated, she finally picked him up and carried him out the front door.

She had plopped him on the walkway and was once again attempting to coax him into a walk, when a squeal emanated from the vicinity of the next door neighbor’s house.

“Mommy! Mommy, there’s the lady I told you about and she has a puppy!” Mia came barreling around the fence before Dina could make a timely escape. She got down on her haunches, smiling and talking to the puppy in a language only the two of them could understand.

“I’m sorry. Is it ok if she pets your dog?” A plump woman with Mia’s curls and pink cheeks walked over to Dina, a look of apology in her small brown eyes.

“No, it’s no trouble.”

“Where’s the floating lady?” Mia asked, looking at her as she clumsily patted the dogs head.

“Now I told you people don’t float in the air,” her mother admonished, giving Dina a little smile as if to say,
‘Kids, you gotta love their imaginations’
.

“But this lady was floating in the air and she told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers just because they’re girls. Isn’t that what she said?” She gave Dina a questioning look to which she shrugged expansively.

“There is no such thing as magical floating ladies, Mia,” her mother said, her tone firm.

“But there is! There is! Tell her she’s your friend and that you saw her, too.” Mia demanded, insistently. The mother looked at Dina, shaking her head.

“Your mother’s right. There’s no such thing as magical floating ladies.” After all, it was partially true. She wasn’t magical.

“My Mommy told me it’s bad to lie and you just told a lie.” Mia had stood up, her arms crossed, her lips stuck in a mutinous pout.

“Mia! Apologize right now!” her mother said, embarrassed.

“But Mommy she’s
lying
!” she exclaimed, stamping one foot. “You told me every lie I tell gets me one step closer to hell. That means
she’s
going to hell.”

“I am so sorry about this,” the woman mumbled, her pink cheeks blooming to bright red. She began ushering her pouting daughter back over to her neighbor’s house. “Why don’t we let this lady get back to her morning walk. Have a nice day.”

She and the puppy continued on their way, or at least she attempted to as her mind considered and discarded appropriate dog names. After more than a half dozen starts and stops, the puppy finally decided the leash was more of a nuisance than a danger. Turning around, he grabbed it in his mouth, tugging and jerking at it while Dina battled him for its return.

“Need a little help? Looks like you have your hands full.”

Dina looked up into the eyes of a smiling Arnie. She smiled in return, feeling a sudden tingle happiness at seeing him unexpectedly. The feeling made her heart speed up, turning her fingers into ten clumsy appendages that couldn’t do anything but fall limply to her sides.

“What are you doing over here?” The dog tugged at the leash one good time, head whipping back and forth as he growled and the leash slipped out of her hands. He began trotting off, leash dangling from his mouth, and she had to run and grab him before he got too far.

“I was on my way to breakfast and wanted to see if you’d like to be my date.”

“A date?”

“Yeah, a date. I figure I owed you one since I turned you down the first time.”

“Didn’t we go out on a date yesterday?”

“Yeah, but that didn’t really count because I was escaping and dragged you along with me.”

“Hmm, let me see,” she said, placing a finger on her lips reflectively. “Should I go out on a date with a man who not only turned me down, but dragged me away from a plate of ribs I wasn’t even finished with?”

“Of course you should. Especially considering that he’s paying and bought you these.” He reached down in the seat, hand coming back up with a Tupperware container filled with ribs. His hand dipped back down and came up this time with a jug filled with a reddish-orange liquid.

“Rum punch?”

“Yup. Poached all of this from Nick while his back was turned.” He shook the container enticingly, wiggling his eyebrows

“I guess I can’t say no to that.”

“But, there are strings attached. You must share your bounty with the bearer of the gifts.”

“But I intend to eat some of those tonight.”

“Then I guess you won’t be getting rid of me,” he said, lightly.

**

Their day began at Barney’s, a restaurant well known for its excellent breakfast and brunch selections. She ordered an egg white omelet and turkey sausage and he defiantly ordered a Belgian waffle, two eggs over hard and bacon.

“What happened last night?” he asked when they’d finished with their breakfast and were chatting over strong cups of coffee.

“I just had a lot on my mind,” she replied, evasively.

“Just out of the blue?” he asked, frowning at her.

“What can I say? I’m a woman and a Medium to boot. Sometimes my moods change as quickly as the tide during hurricane season, detective.”

“Please, call me Arnie. Even though detective is fine depending on the occasion.” He gave her a wicked smile and she studied her coffee, pretending she didn’t get his double meaning.

After eating, they decided on a pleasant stroll in the park at the community center, Arnie feeling a guilty need to burn some calories after all that food. They eventually meandered back to his house, introducing the puppy to Buzz and Saw, an event they were less than happy to take part in. Using his gruff guard dog bark, he began yipping at the strange, hissing creatures as they sat stiffly on the backs of the couch, their body language indignant. Irritated with all the noise, the two cats finally gave up their seats and scattered to the bedrooms, the dog racing after them until Dina interrupted the chase.

They spent a lazy afternoon on the water, the puppy falling asleep with his head on his paws as they chugged their way down the coast. They fished some more, this time managing to add grouper and red snapper to their catch. Tossing the fish in a cooler filled with ice, they drifted over to a small waterfront development of restaurants and shops on Saint Simon Sound. They indulged in a late lunch, managing to snag a table overlooking the water where they sipped cold beers and cracked into steamed crabs and shrimp.

“I still haven’t named him yet.” Dina gestured toward the puppy, a half-peeled shrimp pinched between her fingers.

“I’ve got a good name for him,” Arnie said, cracking into a crab with a pair of nut crackers.

“I’m listening.”

“Shrimp.” He popped a chunk of crab meat in his mouth with a smug expression.

“Shrimp?” She frowned, turning it over in her head. “Let me take a wild guess at your inspiration.” She shook her shrimp at him and he laughed.

“They say the greatest artists are inspired by the simplest of things.”

“So now you’re an artist?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I don’t know. Seems a little simplistic.”

“Why’s it need to be complicated?”

She looked down at the puppy who was at the moment gazing raptly at a group of seagulls hovering near the end of the pier. Shrimp. It worked.

“From this day forward, he shall be named Shrimp.” She grinned, cementing his naming with a celebratory bumping of her shrimp against a crab leg he hastily pulled off and held up.

**

They glided to the pier behind the house just as the sun began to set, Arnie keeping his promise to spend the entire day with her. This time, he prepared the entire meal. Expertly scaling and filleting the fish, he sautéed it in a creamy lemon dill sauce, roasting potatoes and cooking sugar snap peas as sides.

“That was great,” she said, after they’d finished eating. She drowsily sipped from a glass of white wine he’d procured from a rack beneath the counter. “You’re ruining my strict diet though.”

“It’s good to live a little sometimes,” he said, his eyes mellow as he sipped the last of his beer.

“I’m living way too much though.” She reached a hand down to massage the sole of her foot. “Ahhh, my feet are so sore.”

“Is that your way of asking me to massage them?”

“If I wanted you to massage them, I’d say so.”

“Oh, you’re that kind of woman, huh?”

“I sure am.”

“Then I need to show you the type of man I am,” he said, huskily. Picking up her feet, he laid them gently in his lap. She thought about protesting. After all, massaging a woman’s feet is always the prelude to something, though what that something was should be the question she was asking herself. Filled with good food, wine and even better vibes, her defenses were down and she didn’t want to do something she’d regret in the morning.

“Maybe you shouldn’t--,” she finally opened her mouth and said.

“Relax, I’ll never do anything that you don’t want,” he soothed, reassuringly.

“My feet are very sensitive,” she said, weakly.

“You’re in good hands.”

He began rubbing her right foot with firm, sure strokes, nimble fingers paying special attention to her arch. He tenderly pressed his index finger into the tendon, touching her foot in such a way that pleasure shot up and down her spine in an undulating wave. She opened her mouth to tell him to stop, but when her eyes captured his, she found she couldn’t speak, trapped as she was by what she saw in their depths. She fell back against the pillows, wondering what she had gotten herself into. He moved on to the balls of her feet, the warm palms of his hands bearing down on her foot from either side. He pressed and pushed, moving the ache in her foot to the back of her mind as discomfort was replaced with a sensation far more erotic than her mind was prepared for. She closed her eyes, giving in to the delightful sensations lancing through her body. Her nipples hardened as he continued to gently manipulate her foot with the tips of his fingers, running them up and down and up and down the inside of her foot until her toes curled. An inadvertent sigh of pleasure escaped her lips and she shifted, arching her back the slightest bit. She couldn’t say when his touch turned from therapeutic to sensual, but as she grew damp between her thighs, she writhed a little, her inner thighs beginning to tremble as a thumb ran across the hollow on her ankle. He firmly pressed with one hand while the other was once again pushing into her arch and she gasped as his hands set her body afire. She knew she should stop him from where he was headed, but she didn’t want to. Continuing to assault her senses, his hands moved over her foot, stretching, pulling and tugging at each toe. She grew damper, a sweet sensual tension building up and making her throb between her legs. Squeezing her thighs together, she enhanced the sensation and gasped anew. Tendrils of feeling racked her lower body, building and growing, swirling as it grabbed her, dragging her under. Finally, as his hands moved on to the other foot, she moaned deep in her throat and with a final arch of her back, came in a dizzying wave of pleasure as he continued his seduction.