Ocean Beach (33 page)

She’d lost weight since she’d last worn it, and as she assessed herself in the bathroom’s least wavy mirror, she saw that she was not just thinner but tauter and more subtly muscled from the year of hands-on renovation than she’d ever gotten as a result of expensive personal training. Perhaps if things didn’t work out with
Do Over
or a return to matchmaking, she’d write an exercise book using renovation as its base. Surely Home Depot or Lowe’s or even one of the do-it-yourself networks could get behind that.

Nicole added an Art Nouveau lavaliere necklace, a silver cuff bracelet, and a favorite pair of Maud Frizon high-heel sandals then practiced her sincerest smile in the mirror, pitifully glad that the mirror was too cloudy to reveal the deepening lines around her eyes and across her forehead.

Tonight was do-or-die night for Parker Amherst. She’d do all that she could to convince him to sign the contract she’d tucked into her bag, but if she left empty-handed, her pursuit of him would be over. She might be desperate, but she knew from experience that anyone this difficult to sign would be impossible to please.

The gate at Star Island proved little more than a formality. After a quick look at her and the Jag, and without even asking whom she was visiting, the guard waved her through. The palm-tree-covered island was an interesting combination of old, original, and funky pressed up against spanking new and expensive. The streets were old and narrow and the lots far deeper than they were wide. Just like the houses, whose thick walls, high gates, and tropical foliage blocked all but the smallest slivers of water from view.

Parker Amherst’s home ate up every inch of its lot, and from the look of it had tried to gobble up portions of those on either side. The walled gate was so high that only the angles of the barrel-tile roof and some toothpick round palms showed above it.

She parked on the brick driveway, rang the bell on the gate, and when the gate clicked open she walked into a bricked courtyard, dominated by a gurgling fountain and a lush tropical garden from which the plentiful plant life had gone forth and attempted to conquer.

The house was an impressive Mediterranean Revival that resembled a wedding cake and had all of the style’s bells
and whistles, including a columned loggia, wrought-iron balconies, and an impressive run of floor-to-ceiling windows. Two bell towers and a chimney poked up above the multigabled roof. The home’s fortress-thick walls were an ocher-stained stucco outlined in white icing trim. In square footage it appeared considerably larger than Bella Flora but not so large as Bitsy Baynard’s estate in Palm Beach.

Nicole pressed the doorbell beside the massive wooden door and heard it peal melodically inside. Several minutes passed before she heard the echo of footsteps. When the door swung open, Parker Amherst stood framed in the doorway. A marbled foyer stretched out behind him.

“Hello.” He studied her for a moment then stepped back and motioned her inside. “Thank you for coming.” His manner was stiff and he did not extend his hand; Nicole responded in kind. Parker Amherst was not an air-kiss kind of guy.

The entry was beautifully decorated, with highly polished surfaces that glinted in the stray rays of sunlight that filtered through high clerestory windows. But each sound echoed loudly, all the more noticeable for the vacuum of silence it pierced.

“Come in,” Amherst said. “I thought we’d have drinks in the study.” He led her down a central hallway past darkened rooms on either side and into a heavily paneled room with a long row of arched windows that overlooked Biscayne Bay. Miami Beach lay in the distance; she could make out several of the high-rises that lined South Beach’s western edge.

“Can I fix you something?” Amherst asked, motioning her to a seat as he moved to a drinks cart. “I’m afraid the staff is off tonight, but I make a passable martini.”

“Thank you.” Nicole took in her surroundings as her would-be client began to assemble the drinks. She was surprised and not at all happy to learn that they were alone. “Your home is beautiful. How long have you lived here?”

“My grandfather built it in the twenties. I was born here.” His answers were straightforward, but there was something in his tone that was not.

“It’s quite large,” she said, striving to stay conversational. “How many people does it take to run it?”

He smiled, his lips turning in a wry twist of amusement. “We used to have a staff of ten. But now that it’s just me, I’m down to a skeleton crew. Our housekeeper retired when my father died last year. She wasn’t the only one; several of the others were quite old. They’d been with the family since before I was born.”

It was an answer, but it wasn’t. Nicole felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck as she contemplated the silence and recalled that no one but the disinterested guard at the front gate even knew she’d come anywhere near this house tonight. If in fact he’d paid attention to anything but the Jag.

“Here you are.” Amherst handed her a glass and raised his to it in toast.
“Salud,”
he said, taking a chair across from her. “To happier times.”

Nicole took a sip. It was too heavy on the vermouth and far stronger than she liked. She looked up to find him watching her. “It’s very good,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He took a sip of his own then looked at her appraisingly. “I’m sure things were ‘happier’ for you before your brother’s theft was discovered.”

Nicole stopped drinking, but took her time swallowing. It was the first time he’d mentioned Malcolm, though after
the premiere party pilot she could no longer fool herself that he didn’t know all the gory details. “Yes, of course,” she said. “What he did was unconscionable.”

“At the least,” Amherst said, taking a taste of his drink, but continuing to stare at her as if he might glean some bit of information just by looking. “It’s always so hard to believe that family members really didn’t know in these kinds of situations.”

She remained silent under his regard as long as she could. “So why did you ask me here?” Nicole finally asked. “And why did you contact me in the first place? You certainly don’t seem in any hurry to find a wife.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out whether you really were duped,” he said. “It occurred to me that you might have been in on the whole thing.” He paused as if waiting for her protest. “And that you might know where the rest of the money your brother stole is. I mean it’s not like the FBI got all of it back.”

She almost laughed at the absurdity of the notion, though the way he was studying her—and the fact that they were completely alone—robbed the situation of humor. “More experienced people than you have tried to figure that out.” She thought of Giraldi and wished he were here.

Amherst continued to study her and she wished she’d let Giraldi do a background check on him. She let several long moments go by and still Amherst didn’t speak. Which made her wish she’d given up trying to get him to sign a contract as soon as he’d started jerking her around.

The silence became louder and more ominous. Her heart skittered in her chest. The guy and his Roman numeral were really starting to creep her out.

“I did my best to get him to turn himself in,” she finally said, fighting the urge to stand and turn and make a break for the front door.

“But he didn’t, did he?” Amherst said quietly. Not that he had to speak up to be heard over the mushroom cloud of silence. “And he hasn’t admitted where big pockets of money went.”

She didn’t know what he wanted from her. For the briefest of moments she wondered if maybe this was a bid to get her to find him a wife for free, but when she looked into his eyes, which were definitely not fully focused, she knew this was one more case of wishful thinking.

Leave.
The word reverberated in her brain and caused her gut to clench with urgency.

Nicole set the martini aside and stood. “I’m afraid I really have to get going. But I promise you I did not collude with my brother. In fact, he stole everything I had.”

“So you say.”

“Believe me, if I didn’t need the money I wouldn’t be sweating on national television over a house that’s not my own. And I certainly wouldn’t have come here hoping to sign a client who’s been so reluctant to pay even a nominal retainer.”

She shrugged as if these things happened and stepped out from behind the cocktail table, half anticipating a sudden lunge or move on his part. But although his eyes dilated slightly, he didn’t get up or move toward her. His expression remained veiled.

“So I’m going to go ahead and leave,” she continued even as she felt around inside her purse for her car keys. When she finally found them, she positioned them in her fist with
the sharp ends poking out between her fingers like she’d been taught in self-defense class. “Thank you very much for the drink.”

Very careful not to cut and run, though everything inside her was screaming for her to do so, Nicole edged toward the hallway under cover of looking in her purse for the keys that she’d already turned into a potential weapon as she waited for him to speak.

When he didn’t, she forced herself to look him in the eye and to keep her shoulders squared and her chin up. She smiled with lips that were practically quivering. “No need to get up. I’ll just see myself out.”

And then despite the knees that threatened to buckle and the trip-hammer of her heart in her chest, she walked as firmly and as slowly as she could bear back down the central hallway to the front door, listening intently for any hint of him behind her.

At the door, her fingers wrapped around the dead bolt and she uttered one last prayer as she finally managed to unlock it. She didn’t breathe again until she’d made it out through the courtyard and into her car, where she hit the autolock, fumbled the key into the ignition, and drove down the street, out past the gate, and off Star Island as fast as the Jag would take her.

The sky was dark. Rain pounded on The Millicent’s roof, which had—thankfully—already been repaired, and seeped through the crumbling caulk that surrounded the ancient windows, which—unfortunately—had not.

Avery could barely see the pool house through the curtain of rain, and none of them wanted to slosh across the backyard to “command central” more often than absolutely necessary.

Avery held the phone tight to her ear, trying to maximize the reassuring sound of Chase’s voice without letting anyone, including him, know that that was what she was doing. He hadn’t been able to make it back in the month since the premiere party and he had spent much of this conversation and the ones before it apologizing for not knowing how long it might still be until he returned.

The more time Chase spent apologizing, the less time he had for directives, advice, and suggestions. Who said she couldn’t see the silver lining?

“I’m really sorry, Van,” he said again. “I’m overwhelmed
at the moment. Dad can’t do anywhere near what he used to, although we keep pretending that he can. And the boys are at an age where I don’t want to leave them too much to their own devices.” He sighed and she could picture him running a hand through his dark hair, distracted. She did not want to be an additional pull on his time or another obligation he needed to find a way to fit in.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said. “The rain’s causing a few delays.” She pushed ahead before he could ask her for an e-mail or fax of her revised schedule. “But it’s no big deal. I just hate being cooped up.” She didn’t like how many early tropical storms had begun to form, either. She’d sworn that she’d never again pour her heart and soul into a house that sat on the tip of a barrier island—not after Mother Nature’s assault on Bella Flora last summer. Yet here they were again. Only this time they weren’t eyeball to eyeball with the relatively benign Gulf of Mexico, but with the far more aggressive Atlantic Ocean.

“The chances of dealing with another hurricane again so soon are statistically infinitesimal,” Chase said. The man might be overwhelmed up in Tampa, but on occasion he seemed alarmingly able to read her mind.

“Can you put that in writing and send a copy to the National Hurricane Center?”

“Gladly,” he said, a smile in his voice.

A silence fell between them and she felt what she thought might be an actual ache of longing.

“Why don’t you come up to Tampa for a few days?” Chase asked, as if he were once again reading her mind. “From what little I hear”—he paused to let the jab sink in—“you all are making good progress. And we could sit
down with John Franklin. He left a message that he’d had another showing of Bella Flora.”

If only it were that simple. There was nothing she’d like more than to just pick up and go.

“I can’t,” she said. “The new windows are ready to go in as soon as the weather breaks. And if I take time off, everyone else will want to, too.” Now it was her turn to run a hand through her hair.

Another silence fell. There was really nothing else to be said, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say good-bye. She heard another phone ring in the background. After the second ring, Chase said, “I’m sorry, Avery. I have to take this call.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Take care.”