Passion Key (A Romance & Suspense Series) (3 page)

7.

Justine parked the Porsche in her one-car garage, just off the back of the resort, and went to her room.  She felt a little sick to her stomach and knew that it had everything to do with her ex-husband escaping from prison.  The sad fact was that when he had his freedom, she lost hers.

All because of one stupid night.

It had been a typical vicious Chicago winter night, and in their big house north of the city along the Gold Coast, Justine had been awakened by a noise.  Ordinarily, she would have just gone back to sleep, but it was so cold that she always worried about pipes freezing and bursting because their mansion had been built in the 1920s and parts of the house had very little insulation.

Because of that, she swung her feet out of bed, slipped into her fleece robe and fur-lined slippers, and went down the stairs into the great room and listened.

There was another banging sound and she knew it was coming from the garage.  They had a bedroom suite over the garage that had originally been the maid’s quarters and it was one of the areas that had little insulation. There was a bathroom above the garage and she worried that one of those pipes had frozen.

Justine walked through the kitchen, then through the mud room and opened the door to the garage.

Her husband Daniel was standing at the back of his car with the trunk open.  He and another man were shoving a third man into the trunk. Justine saw the man’s face and the blood that had poured from a small hole near his temple.

He was clearly dead.

A look of fury crossed Daniel’s face and he turned to her.

“Go back inside.”

The ice in his voice was several degrees colder than the sub-zero temperatures outside.

Justine did as she was told.  For weeks after, she and her husband never talked about the incident. In fact, they never really talked at all.

Privately, using public computers where she could clear the machine’s history, she began to piece together who her husband really was.

So not long after when the FBI approached her, she was all too ready to talk.

Now, in her new condo with the memories rushing back at her, Justine wanted to cry, but was determined not to.  Daniel had made her cry far too many times to remember and she’d be damned if she’d let him do it to her again.  Let the jackass come down and try to find her, she thought, trying to muster up some bravado but the words sounded hollow to her.

The heck with it
, she thought.

She wasn’t going to sit around and worry.  That was the old Justine.  This was the new Justine.

The O’Connells, her first guests, were having a cocktail by the pool.

“How are we doing, folks?” she asked, forcing her voice to be calm, steady and cheery.  It was the complete opposite of the fear and unsteadiness she felt inside.

“We got a lot of sun today,” the man said.  His face was already pink from exposure to the sun.

“People always underestimate the power of the sun down here,” Justine said.

The woman looked carefully at Justine.  “How did you come to own this place? Are you married?”

“Louise, don’t pry!” her husband chided her.

The woman rolled her eyes.

“It’s hardly prying, Jesse.”

Justine laughed.

“No, it’s fine.  I ran a small business back in Chicago,” Justine began, using the story she’d carefully rehearsed many times with her FBI handlers.  “The good news was it became very successful.  The bad news was I could no longer keep running it.  So I sold it.  And since I’d been a Midwestern girl my whole life and didn’t care to see one single more winter I sold the business to a giant holding company, took the money and bought this place.”

“And you live here alone?” the woman asked.

The man shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. 

“Honey, you are relentless,” he said to his wife.

Justine figured it was a gesture, and a phrase, he used often.

“No, not all,” Justine said.  “Every week I stay with someone new, like you two.” She smiled and her guests laughed.

“Now,” Justine said. “What are you two planning on doing while you’re down here?”

“Exactly what you see us doing. We are going to sit by the pool all day and jump in the water when we get too hot,” Jesse O’Connell said. “And then in the evening we’re going to go into town and find a good restaurant.”

“But we’re not going to eat at the same place every day,” Louise said.  She pointed at Jesse with her thumb. “This bozo finds a place he likes and then wants to go there all the time. Not me, I like to explore.”

“Well, you have plenty to choose from around here,” Justine said. “Now, is there anything I can do for you two?”

The woman looked at her husband.

“Well,” Jesse began, seeming almost sheepish.  “There’s quite a loud banging once in awhile.  We think it’s a door or a window slamming somewhere.”

Justine frowned.

“I know what you mean, I had a contractor here to look at it, he’ll fix it tomorrow,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t cause a problem this evening.”

She said her goodbyes to the couple and walked down to the beach.

The tide was going out and she walked along the smooth part of the sand, her toes squishing into the wetness.  Justine loved the feeling.  Walking barefoot always made her feel like she was on vacation.

The wind had started to pick up and she saw whitecaps not too far from shore. It was a warm breeze and the sea grass was rustling at the top of the dunes.  The sound of the waves hitting the shore eased her mind for a moment and she felt the tension relax just slightly from her neck and shoulders.

A soft sigh escaped her lips.

This place would be perfect, she thought.

If my husband were still in prison.

8.

The resort Justine had been awarded by the FBI had been in the hands of the government for reasons that hadn’t been exactly shared with her.  From hints supplied by Agent Runyan, it sounded like the property had been owned by a financier in New York who had swindled investors with an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Passion Key Resort had just been one of his hundreds of properties that were mostly run only for the sake of appearance, hence the obvious signs of disrepair that needed attention.

By and large, though, she thought the property had a lot of potential, and it was now in her name.  Beachfront real estate in the Keys was expensive, and Justine knew she could make the place a success.

The question was, did she want to?

It had troubled her slightly when she agreed to testify against her husband and enter the witness protection program.  She had still been in shock, frankly, and in some ways felt incapable of making decisions.

But she’d made them anyway.

From somewhere deep within her a pocket of strength had begun to blossom and for the first time she felt steadier on her feet.

That was, until yesterday.

Come on, girl.

Justine shook off the negativity. The FBI would handle her ex-husband, she had her own life now.

Just as she arrived at that conclusion, Justine heard a car pull up outside the front door, and a door slammed.

She got up, and saw a couple emerging from a red Toyota that had to be a rental.

“Good morning,” Justine said. “Welcome to Passion Key!”

Over the next two hours the rest of her guests arrived and now all four suites were occupied.

The couple with the red car was from Minnesota and the other two parties had arrived from New Jersey and Windsor, Ontario.

Justine went back to the office and fired up her computer. She spent the next hour organizing the resort’s paperwork and bank records. Everything had been set up for her, but she needed to familiarize herself with the financial workings. 

She had learned her lesson.

While she’d been married to Daniel, she had allowed herself to be blissfully unaware of his business dealings.  She had enjoyed the expensive house, the travel, and the gifts.  But they had been small compensation for the feeling that her husband had married her for appearances and promptly dove into his business dealings and kept her alone, only taking her out to public functions when absolutely necessary.

When the Feds had finally approached her about her husband’s real business, she knew the artifice that her life had become was now over.

No, she would never let that happen again.

Justine made a short to-do list and was putting on her running shoes to get a workout in when she heard someone call out from the lobby.

“Hello!”

She finished lacing up her sneakers and went to the lobby where she found Archer Thorpe standing with a toolbox in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

Oh my, he is easy on the eye
, she thought.

“Good afternoon,” she said, and found it odd that she had chosen to sound so formal.

She felt his eyes on her and realized how she looked. She had put on tight micro shorts for her run, and a dri-fit tank. The ensemble left little to the imagination and she nearly blushed at how openly he was looking at her body.

“I’m here to loosen you up,” he said.  “I mean, your windows,” he added with a small smile.

“Okay,” she said. “How long do you think it will take?” Justine realized that it wasn’t the perfect response to his comment and its double meaning.

“Probably a few hours,” he said.  “I’ll let you know if I find any surprises.”

“I’ll be around,” she answered, and stepped aside as he walked past her.  She watched him walked by, saw the muscles in his arms and he smelled of soap and after shave.

She checked out his body as he walked past.

Nice
, she thought. 

Justine slipped her key inside the hidden pocket in her running shorts, and took off for the beach.

She would run along the water and try not to think about Archer Thorpe and his muscular body, handsome face, gorgeous eyes and perfect smile.

Enough!

Justine turned south, and picked up her pace. She was absolutely NOT going to get involved with a man.

The only exercise she would be getting would be out here, running.

Not between the silk sheets of her bed and the arms of Archer Thorpe.

Stop!

She leaned in and ran picked up the pace again so she was almost sprinting.

While at the same time she understood there were some things you just couldn’t run away from.

9.

Loosen her up.

Nice going, Archer
, he thought to himself.

He was here to do a job, nothing more, nothing less.  He needed to focus, but there was just something about this Justine woman that made him want to engage her, and get beneath that defensive shell she was so clearly holding up.

But why was she getting to him?

It was pretty clear.

Archer shook his head.
Who was he kidding?
The woman was smoking hot, that’s why.  Those tight little shorts and top had left nothing to the imagination. She had great legs and a gorgeous body. And she was stunningly beautiful.

He dropped the tube of caulk he was trying to insert into the caulk gun and laughed at himself.

That seemed to be the signal to his brain to set aside his lust and get busy with the task at hand. Which is what he did. The windows were structurally fine, but the framing needed to be replaced.  Since the resort was somewhat modern, and it being Florida, the job didn’t take him very long.  People in Florida had learned that it was a better idea to make things easily replaceable than to constantly battle erosion by making things ultra permanent.  Once he had pried the old, warped sections away, he replaced them with prefinished pieces that matched and then installed new hardware.

Archer also went up to the second floor, and checked where he figured a window had leaked, causing the slight stain on the first floor ceiling.  It was just as he expected, the caulking around the windows was in tatters.  He went outside, got his ladder, stripped the old caulk and sealed the windows with fresh silicone.

This was a nice place, he thought to himself as he cleaned up his work area and gathered his equipment.  He’d been here before of course, just once, when the place was pretty much abandoned. A friend had looked into staying there and asked Archer to check it out before he made a reservation.  Archer had taken a quick look and advised his friend to stay elsewhere.

He wondered how Justine had wound up owning the place. There had always been rumors that the previous owner was some kind of shyster from the east coast, and that he’d been busted.  Archer wondered if there was an interesting story behind how she’d come into possession of the place.

All of the other business owners on Passion Key were happy that the resort was in new hands. The goal was always to get people to stop and stay on Passion Key, as opposed to simply driving through.  The longer people stayed, the more money they spent.  Business 101.

Archer hoped Justine would make a go of the place.  She seemed like a nice woman and if she could make the resort successful, it would be a good thing.

It would definitely be good for Passion Key.

And he wouldn’t mind seeing her running around in those shorts.