Sunshine Beach (3 page)

She looked up into Joe's intelligent brown eyes and read the sincerity in them. She'd hit the relationship jackpot and could not in all conscience cash in her chips.

She set her fork down. “I've been married twice. And I sucked at it.”

“It's not a skill you develop,” he said. “I'm pretty sure it's a matter of choosing the right person.”

“Said the man who's never been married,” she said wryly.

“True. But I know what marriage can be.” Joe said this with the quiet assurance of someone whose parents and grandparents had been together for over half a century each. “I know who and what I want.”

Somehow he'd decided she was that person. A fact that both amazed and frightened her. FBI agents were trained not to take no for an answer.

“Ready for the main course?” he asked.

“Yes, but I can . . .”

“No, I've got it.”

She took another long sip of Chianti as he disappeared into the house. This was their last night together for a while. This was not the time to hash out their differences or debate their feelings. This was a night to be enjoyed.

When he returned she ate every bite of the meal he'd prepared, and turned the conversation with a deft and intentionally lighter hand. When they'd finished and he drew her up from the table and pulled her into his arms, she gave herself to him without reservation. Deirdre Morgan had been full of life one minute and dead the next. Nicole was determined to make the most of this moment. To create new memories that would never be forgotten when their relationship came to its inevitable end.

She only hoped she'd have the strength to let him go when the time came.

“Listen, Nigel, if you take the day off, I promise that the next time Daniel comes to see Dustin we'll give you an exclusive.” Kyra Singer offered the lie with a straight face and crossed fingers as she wheeled the jogging stroller down Bella Flora's bricked drive.

“Nice try, luv,” the lanky paparazzo replied from his position in the middle of Beach Road, exactly three feet from Bella Flora's property line. “But I didn't just fall off that turnip truck now, did I?” The Brit wore board shorts, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian-print shirt. Multiple cameras hung around his scrawny neck. The rest of his pack was missing, presumably off hunting more impressive celebrity game. Nigel Bracken was nothing if not single-minded, that single thought being to capture shots of Dustin with his movie star father, Daniel Deranian.

Since Dustin's birth two and a half years ago, Kyra had dressed the two of them in an array of disguises to avoid detection. Daniel, who had access to professional hair and makeup people, had passed himself off as an old man, a convincingly attractive woman, and a UPS deliveryman in order to visit his son.

Nigel lifted a camera and aimed it at them, and she knew he was framing them against Bella Flora's wedding cake façade; making the most of the pale pink walls, banks of windows framed in white icing trim, and the bell towers that topped a multi-angled barrel-tile roof and jutted up into the powder blue sky.

She nodded and prepared to go, but the photographer turned his lens and aimed it directly at Dustin. When he began to zoom in for a close-up Kyra bent over, intentionally blocking Nigel's shot, then took her time slathering sunscreen on Dustin's sturdy arms and legs even though he'd inherited his famous father's golden skin, which never burned, along with his brown heavily lashed eyes and silky dark curls.

Nigel continued shooting. Which meant the photographer was now taking pictures of her ass.

“Okay, little man.” She handed Dustin his favorite ball and whispered, “Hold on.”

Jaw tight, Kyra pushed the jogging stroller down the driveway. As they left the drive, Nigel backed toward the beach, blocking the road so that she'd have to get close enough to give him his money shot of Dustin.

Not today
, she thought, her hands tightening on the stroller. At the last moment, she broke right and headed toward the bay.

“Dustin go to beach!”

“We will, sweetie.,” she promised, leaning over as she pushed the stroller onto the sidewalk that ran along Boca Ciega Bay.
Just as soon as I lose the photographer.

Ignoring Nigel's yelp of surprise, she began a slow jog, which took them past First and Second avenues. Careful to appear unhurried, she subtly increased her pace with each block. She had no doubt she could outrun him; the man was wearing flip-flops after all, while she had on her running shoes and was pushing what was for all intents and purposes an all-terrain vehicle. Plus she'd seen him with a cigarette
dangling from his lips plenty of times. Nothing about the man's physique led her to believe he'd ever set foot in a gym. But she didn't want to simply outrun him; she wanted to lose him altogether.

At Fifth Avenue she doubled her speed, though she was careful not to hunch forward or look too intent. Kyra kept her eyes straight ahead as the concrete balustrade whipped by, and ignored Nigel Bracken's shout when he apparently noticed the gap between them growing. The sound of his flip-flops flapping against the sidewalk brought a smile to her lips.

“Hey!” Nigel's shout carried on the breeze, but she pretended not to hear him, accelerating once again as she widened the gap between them.

She continued north past the small park that sat between Ninth and Tenth. At Eleventh she snuck a peek over her shoulder and saw Nigel bent over with hands braced on his thighs, wearing only one flip-flop and breathing heavily. His cameras dangled down around his ankles.

Gotcha!
She smiled with pleasure as she cut across the street and out of sight. At the end of the short block, she crossed Gulf Way, jogged north a few blocks, then took a crossover onto the beach.

“Ha!” Feeling ridiculously victorious—were there medals for eluding paparazzi?—she pushed the stroller down to the hard-packed sand at the water's edge.

“Beetch!” Dustin yelled jubilantly as she turned the stroller north and headed toward the castle-like Don CeSar Hotel.

“Beach!” she shouted back as she settled into a comfortable walk that would allow them both to enjoy the sights and sounds.

Brightly colored kites swooped and fluttered in the sky. A parasailer hung suspended high above the water, towed by the speedboat to which it was tethered. Jetskiers and
windsurfers skimmed across the slightly choppy surface while landlubbers set their own pace, some running or walking with intent while others meandered from shell to shell. Small children ran in and out of the shallow water with shrieks of delight.

With each step the huge pink hotel grew larger. When they reached it with no sign of Nigel, she stopped and extracted Dustin from the stroller. They settled happily at the water's edge where they built their own version of the Don with thick hard-packed walls decorated with coquina shells, mud-dribbled turrets, and a moat that filled with water with each new wave that came ashore.

A text dinged in and she lifted her phone, hunching over it so that she could read the screen.
lifdink let. Ticks lightner.
Kyra snorted at her mother's attempted communication, which as always left a lot to be desired. Madeline Singer's thumbs and her iPhone were not exactly simpatico. She debated whether to call or to query the message, but decided if there was anything urgent her mother would have called.

“Catch ball!” Finished with the castle, Dustin retrieved his beach ball and hurled it without aiming. It landed in the surf and he was after it before Kyra could stop him.

“Hold on, you!” She sprinted after him hooking an arm around his waist and lifting him onto her hip before wading in after the ball. “If we're going to play catch we have to get farther from the water. How about up there?” She pointed toward a stand of dunes near which a catamaran nestled on its pontoons, its lines clanging slightly against its mast.

“Boag!”

“Yes.” Together they pushed the stroller back the way they'd come, then maneuvered it up into the softer sand.

Positioning herself in front of the sea-oat-topped dunes not far from the catamaran, she tossed the ball carefully to Dustin. “Good catch!” she said as he caught and clasped it to his chest. Before she could prepare herself, he threw it
back. It whizzed past her knees, rolled between the dunes, and disappeared.

“Ball!” Dustin ran past her in pursuit of his ball.

Kyra went after him. She found him crouching near what appeared to be a low wall of sand against which the ball had come to rest. A wall that ran the width of a property she'd never even known was there.

She scooped up Dustin and his ball taking in the No Trespassing!!! sign that rose out of a patch of grass and sandspurs. But it was what lay beyond the low wall that had her frozen in her spot trying to understand what she was seeing.

She'd walked and run this stretch of beach hundreds of times, had noted the homes both new and huge and old and funky as well as the condos that perched above it. But she'd always assumed this stretch of sand and scrub was somehow attached to one of the buildings on either side of it.

Despite the sign and its exclamation points, she settled Dustin on her hip and moved closer, drawn by something she didn't really understand. A low-slung building with glimmers of grime and salt-caked plate glass overlooked an equally bereft concrete pool filled with trash. Drifts of sand clumped with debris covered everything, reminding her oddly of pictures she'd seen of Pompeii. She stepped through the low-walled opening, her sneakers crunching on sand and gravel and broken glass, half expecting to see plaster casts of bodies overcome by the Florida equivalent of molten lava. This place felt that way—abandoned unexpectedly and in a hurry. A jungle of palms and sea grape trees had sprung up around the edges of the property, wrapping around each other, squeezing out air and sun. Roots and tropical vegetation poked up through the concrete deck, climbed the building's concrete walls, and hung from its tarp-covered roof.

Not sure why, she walked to the building and pressed her face against the murky glass. The long side of the building was an open space that contained tattered groupings of
furniture. An ancient Ping-Pong table sat in front of one glassed area. Card tables lined another. The back wall was punctuated by doors labeled with signs she couldn't make out. The L at the eastern end of the building appeared to be a dining room, its tables and chairs still in place. Faded art-work hung crooked on the walls. Shredded ceiling-to-floor curtains hung in corners.

Dustin wrapped his arms tighter around her neck, unusually silent. He did not ask to be put down, but he didn't ask to leave, either.

“I'm just going to take a peek at what's down this sidewalk,” she said to both of them as she followed a narrow concrete walkway that curved and branched to an assortment of square, concrete buildings, all roughly the same size. Tarps had been stretched over the flat roofs. Signs affixed to each door carried names, all of them beach related: Starfish Suite, Coquina Cove, Horseshoe Haven, the Happy Crab.

A hotel, then. Small and intimate and definitely of another time. She'd never noticed it from the road, either, hidden as it was by the overgrowth that surrounded it, but given its proximity to the Don CeSar she'd know where to look for it.

Slowly she retraced her steps to the beach pausing near the No Trespassing!!! sign for a last look.

The property was in horrible shape, but it hadn't been condemned or torn down. This was prime beachfront. Perfect for a lavish new home. Or even a small condo building. This property was worth millions of dollars and yet it sat like the land time had forgotten. The question of course was whom did it belong to and why had they left it here to rot?

The day had already begun to fade but the sun had not yet set when Maddie pulled her trusty minivan into Bella Flora's driveway behind Avery's bright blue Mini Cooper and Nikki's green Jag.

Bella Flora's plaster walls glowed a dusky pink. Her white trim had begun to shadow. Her barrel roof looked burnt red against the lightening sky. She was elegant and beautiful, yet warmly comforting. The sight of her sent Maddie flashing back to the day she'd arrived and met Nicole and Avery for the first time, all three of them aghast at the sorry state of their shared remaining asset. Out of desperation they'd brought her back to life not once but twice. Bella Flora had done the same for them, sending them all down a path that none of them had envisioned. That she belonged to Kyra and Dustin now and had turned into “home” was beyond amazing.

“Geema!”

Maddie had barely extracted herself from the driver's seat when Dustin launched himself out of Bella Flora's large wooden front door, down the steps of the windowed arcade, and through the front garden toward Maddie.

He hurled himself into her arms and began to cover her face and neck with noisy kisses. She kissed him back just as noisily, both of them laughing as Kyra came to join them.

“Mommy tolded me I could stay up 'til you gots here,” he said happily.

“I see that,” Maddie said, cuddling his sturdy warm body close as she leaned over to kiss Kyra on the cheek. “Have you had your bedtime story yet?”

“He's got it all picked out.” Kyra pulled Maddie's suitcase and hanging bag out of the backseat. “Nikki just got here a few minutes ago. I thought we'd have munchies and drinks over sunset once Dustin's tucked in.”

Maddie carried her grandson into the high-ceilinged entry and felt Bella Flora enfold her. The first time she'd stepped into this foyer it had looked and smelled more locker room than grande dame. A trapped bird had winged by them in a mad escape. If there'd been the slightest alternative, she, Avery, and Nikki would have turned and fled, too.

She peered into the formal living room and study to the left and right of the foyer. A formal guest bath lay across from the elegant staircase that led to the second story. The central hall led past the formal dining room and Casbah Lounge with its Moroccan-tiled décor and on to the eat-in kitchen and salon. Nikki and Avery stood in front of the salon's floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the loggia, the pool, and the pass, where the Gulf and bay came together.

“The pool house is clean and available if anybody's interested,” Kyra said after hugs and greetings had been exchanged. “Or we can double up upstairs.”

Avery hesitated and Maddie knew that although she'd spent time at Bella Flora since they'd lost Deirdre, had even helped Kyra move into the master bedroom suite, which Deirdre had claimed upon her then-unwelcome arrival, it was hard to be in the house without thinking of the woman whose interior design had so transformed her.

“Why don't you bunk with me?” Maddie said. “I have the extra bed and bathroom. It'll be like a slumber party.”

“Thanks.” Avery's smile was a bit wobbly. “That would be great.”

“I'm not going to complain about having a bedroom and bath to myself,” Nikki said. “We've been forced to share a single bathroom far more times than is healthy for any friendship.”

They shuddered in unison at the memory of five women and Dustin sharing the tiny prefabbed houseboat bathroom on Mermaid Point. They'd shared at Bella Flora out of personal necessity, but the grim accommodations on the last two renovations had been only one of the network's attempts to “keep things interesting.”

“Amen to that,” Avery agreed.

“As soon as I put my things upstairs, I'll get the drinks organized,” Nikki said.

“I'll get the snacks.” Kyra dropped a kiss on Dustin's head, which was already burrowed into Maddie's shoulder. “Happy dreams, little man.”

By the time they'd gathered out on the pool deck Maddie wasn't the only one yawning. They sat in the cushioned wrought-iron chairs Deirdre had selected, a far cry from the Goodwill castoffs they'd begun with, and watched the sun slip toward the horizon. A few people fished on the jetty, and a lone windsurfer cut across the water beyond it. It was quiet with only the rustle of the palms and the thrum of insects.

A bottle of red wine and an assortment of their favorite appetizers sat on the wrought-iron dining table. “I bought the caviar in Deirdre's honor,” Kyra said watching Nicole load up a cracker.

“The woman did know her gourmet foods,” Nikki said.

It had taken time to warm to Deirdre Morgan, who had deserted her husband and their then-thirteen-year-olddaughter, Avery, to become a Hollywood designer to the stars, and who had reappeared after Avery's father's death. She'd
proven that people and their actions weren't always as they seemed, and Maddie had done what she could to help Deirdre reconnect with her daughter. Deirdre's sudden death had left an unexpectedly large hole.

Avery eyed the bowl of Cheez Doodles before plucking one out and holding it between two fingers. “These don't taste quite as perfect now that I can't taunt Deirdre with them,” she said quietly.

“Oh, I'm sure she's up there tutting over your food and clothing choices,” Nicole said reaching for her wineglass. “But it does feel strange to be here without her.”

“The first night I slept in the master bedroom, I put on my fanciest pajamas,” Kyra admitted as she snagged a Bagel Bite.

“What, the ones with the T-shirt that has only one hole?” Nikki asked.

Avery popped the Cheez Doodle into her mouth as they laughed. But Maddie saw her eyes glisten.

“To Deirdre.” Maddie raised her wineglass to Avery.

“To Deirdre,” they echoed, raising their glasses in return.

For a time they drank and ate and watched the sun continue its descent toward the Gulf. Bella Flora's thick walls hunched protectively around them.

“I'm pretty sure I'm too tired to come up with a good thing tonight,” Avery said. Coming up with one good thing to toast at sunset was a ritual Maddie had instituted during that first desperate renovation of Bella Flora when coming up with even one semi-positive thing had been a challenge.

“Me, neither.” Maddie yawned again. She was glad to be back, yet already missed Mermaid Point. She was someone there with Will that she wasn't anywhere else, even here with Kyra and Dustin and the women who'd unexpectedly become her closest friends.

“Seriously, Maddie? You're sleeping with a man formerly known as William the Wild and you have nothing to offer?” Avery teased.

“I have a child present,” Maddie said with a nod toward Kyra even as her cheeks heated.

“Yes, the child doesn't want to hear about her mother having carnal knowledge of a former rock icon,” Kyra said.

There was laughter, but a picture of Will onstage bathed in the warm glow of a spotlight formed in Maddie's mind. He looked so natural there, more comfortable in his skin than she'd seen him anywhere except out on the water poling his skiff over some backcountry flat. “I'm not planning to kiss and tell,” Maddie assured her daughter. “Speaking of that, I didn't see any sign of pests.”

Kyra shrugged. “Nigel and a few of his colleagues show up now and again. I managed to lose him this afternoon, and there was no sign of him when Dustin and I got back from the beach.”

“Good. Maybe there are some real celebrities in town,” Avery said. “It would be nice to have some privacy while we figure out our next move.”

Nikki groaned. “I'm going to need more wine if we're going to talk about that now.”

“We can save it for tomorrow, but I don't think it's going to be a long conversation,” Avery said. “I'm grateful we were able to take time to regroup. But our options haven't changed too much since last fall.”

“Definitely drinking now.” Nikki topped off her glass and did the same for the others.

“I've left several messages for Lisa Hogan's replacement,” Kyra said alluding to their former nemesis at Lifetime. “To see if they'd be willing to change the focus of the series. And, um, overlook the fact that it wasn't just Lisa we told where to, um, shove their pitiful and spiteful budget.”

Maddie winced. “We may have burned a few more bridges than we meant to.” It had been a wild night. A brief moment of heady freedom followed by cataclysmic disaster.

“We should be able to pitch other networks now that we have a track record of sorts. HGTV would probably be the best fit,” Nikki said.

This time it was Avery who groaned. She'd been pushed out of her original HGTV series
Hammer & Nail
after the network turned her into the Vanna White of the DIY set and her ex-husband, Trent, into the star of the show. Then Lifetime had taken the renovation show they'd envisioned and made it over into a mean-spirited reality TV show. “No, thanks,” Avery said. “I'd love to find a way to produce something of our own. Even if we started with a pilot that would demonstrate our vision for the show to potential backers.”

“Me, too,” said Kyra, who'd also been pushed out and devalued over the last two renovations while forced to watch as Dustin was used to draw viewers and unwanted media attention.

“If we did something of our own it would have to be local since we can't afford to travel,” Avery said. “And we'd need an interesting property owned by someone with an actual renovation budget.”

“If we go it on our own, we'd have to fund production, too,” Kyra said. “I mean, I can shoot and edit pretty economically, but we'd need at least another production person and we'd need more in the way of editing than I can do with my own equipment.”

They'd all gotten a lump sum when Bella Flora had sold. But given their debts and their lack of real income, that money was dwindling, not growing.

“And we wouldn't even have the insulting pittance the network gave us,” Nikki added. There was another silence.

“We can all live here,” Kyra said. “We wouldn't have a mortgage or rent payment or anything, but we still need to pay for utilities and food and, I don't know, I love Bella Flora and I still can't believe Daniel bought her for Dustin and me, but she's not exactly cheap to run or maintain.”

“Elegant grande dames never are,” Maddie said looking around her. “We owe it to her and ourselves to figure this out.”

“I thought we weren't going to actually talk about this until tomorrow,” Nikki said over the top of her now-empty wineglass. “Do I need to grab another bottle?”

“No,” Avery said. “We're done. But I'm glad we've laid out the basic options so that our subconsciouses can mull them overnight.”

“I don't think my subconscious is in mulling mode,” Nikki said. “I think it's ready to start shrieking. All of these options have a certain nightmare quality to them.”

“I still think we have a great opportunity ahead,” Maddie said. “We just need to choose a path. I'm sure we can figure it out together.” She said this with all the certainty she could muster. But there was far more wishful thinking wrapped up in her pronouncement than she wanted to examine. The last time they'd had this conversation she'd insisted that the future looked so bright it would require sunglasses. But at the moment she'd settle for a flashlight and a really good road map.