Stranger on the Shore (Mirabelle Harbor, Book 4) Read online

  “I will,” I promised her, glancing behind us, surprised to see how far I’d already ambled down the coast.

  The older woman caught my gaze and stabbed her bony index finger at the hotels in the opposite direction. “Walk that other way another mile or so and you’ll find yourself at some pretty ritzy hotels and bungalows and such. But you don’t need to be rich to enjoy the beach.” She flung her arms out on both sides, as if to capture the air. “The beach is free for everybody.”

  “I’m not rich,” I murmured, pondering for a split second what it must be like to feel comfortable like that. Never having to wonder where the next rent payment or doctor’s fee would come from. Never having to make a choice between buying a much-needed coat for yourself or new school clothes for your child. Never having to worry about selling your house because you can’t swing the mortgage or the insurance or the utilities...

  “Me neither, girlie.” She tapped her chest with the flat of her palm. “I’m Vivian, by the way.”

  “Marianna,” I told her, as the woman stuck out her hand to formally shake mine. Vivian’s grip was strong and sure, grounding me to the present.

  “I walk all the way down Siesta Key beach and back, twice a day. Two and a half miles each way,” Vivian informed me proudly. “So, I’m sure I’ll see you again. And you just ask me if you have any questions ‘bout anything, you hear?” She patted her chest again and grinned. “Fourth generation Floridian. Not one of them newcomers.”

  I grinned back. “Thank you,” I whispered, a lump rising in the back of my throat for a reason I couldn’t begin to justify. When had the simple act of a stranger being kind to me reduced me to tears?

  Vivian waved and was on her way, and I was left swallowing back an emotion I was too anxious to let myself fully feel. But I did eye the people on the shore a little more closely now.

  There were lots of women in bikinis with perfectly even tans and trim bodies—showing off their butterfly tattoos on their shoulders, their silver or coral anklets, their diamond-studded belly piercings—and hard-muscled men jogging along the shore with shades and waterproof watches. The youngsters frolicked like water nymphs, and even the older people had a lean, outdoorsy look about them.

  I felt frumpy in my t-shirt and shorts. A pale-faced tourist in paradise, carting only my bungalow key, a pair of flip-flops, and a shell. A simple existence, really.

  I spied a family with three or four...no, five kids under the age of eleven or so. The youngest ones were a set of twin boys—a handful from the looks of them—about four years old. Probably similar to what Chance and Chandler Michaelsen had been like at that age. These young boys were racing each other to the water as fast as their brown little legs could carry them, giggling, with maniacal expressions on their faces like Thing One and Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat. Their beleaguered mother was calling after them, but she had the three older kids hanging off of her. Literally. One of them was pulling at the straps of her swim top.

  I heard her shout, “Steve! Get them!” in an exasperated tone, motioning toward the adult male nearby, ostensibly the twins’ father, who was occupied blowing up a beach ball for the siblings. He dropped it and began to chase the little terrors into the Gulf.

  I found myself mildly amused by this scene—half relieved, half wistful at having those parenting days long behind me—and I couldn’t help but reflect on what it might have been like for me, Donny, and Kathryn if there had been other children in our little family. Kathryn had always been such a quiet little girl, only starting to emerge from her room and explore the world more once she got into high school. The blow of her father leaving when she was just sixteen stunted that growth for a time, but she soon found more consolation from her friends than from me. Maybe all teens did. Certainly, Kathryn now preferred her new college pals, her boyfriend, and her exciting university life to another dull summer with her mother.

  Again, I felt the lump of emotion rising in the back of my throat and forced it down once more. There was no use crying. I just needed to regroup. To take a few deep breaths. Get back into the swing of things. And slog away even harder this time. That strategy had worked in the past and, by God, I’d make it work again.

  I felt a splash on my legs and the sudden hot breath of Thing One as he raced past me, deeper into the water. Quite a few yards away, the father had nabbed Thing Two and was holding him firm with one arm and waving wildly at me with the other. “Please stop him!” he shouted.

  So, I threw my flip-flops and new seashell on the sand and plunged deeper into the Gulf after the boy. But he was fast, and I...was not. He zigzagged in and out of the water, in between people, around clumps of seaweed, giggling demonically the whole way. I reached out to grab him on the shore but, just like some hapless adult in a kids’ sitcom, he slithered out of my grasp and I slipped in the wet sand, falling to my knees.

  “Ow!” I cried, not sure what jagged object I’d landed on this time, only that everything out here—be it on land or sea—seemed to be conspiring to cut or bruise me.

  I heard a deep, throaty laugh (not maniacal, not demonic) and a voice beside me that said, “This one yours?”

  I turned to face the sound and stood up, brushing the sand from my limbs and spotting a collection of cat’s paw shells in a heap where my knee had been. “No—” I began, but then I focused on the man and, for a moment, found myself actually tongue-tied. He was holding up the four-year-old as easily as I’d hold up a coconut...if it had legs and were kicking.

  This was not what was remarkable about him, though.

  The Sunshine Coast, while full of heavenly bodies in varying states of undress, had presented me with someone wholly unexpected. Although roughly my age, the man had jet black hair—slicked back—full lips, twinkling baby-blue eyes, and a tanned, toned frame, like he’d just stepped out of a late-1960s beach movie. There was just no other way to say it: He looked like Elvis Presley in some film like Clambake.

  I blinked at him. “Do you sing?”

  “What?” he asked above the noise of the still-squealing kid.

  “I, um—” I swiveled around in frantic search for Thing One’s father and, suddenly, he was there.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the dad said to the Elvis lookalike and to me. “Thank you for grabbing my boy.” He snatched the kid from Elvis’s capable hands and the giggling and squealing came to an immediate stop. As the father marched the child back to his family, Elvis chuckled and said, “I do not envy that man.”

  I laughed. “Or his wife.”

  “Agreed.”

  We shared a fleeting smile.

  “Thanks for catching him when I couldn’t. I slipped...”

  “I noticed.” He squinted at my feet. “If you’re going to run on the shore, you should get some Beachwalkers.”

  “I know, I know. You’re the second person to tell me that today.” I noticed he was wearing some very sporty-looking black water shoes with red stripes to match his long swim trunks. “Do you know a good place to buy some? I just got to Sarasota.”

  “Yeah, you looked like an out-of-towner.”

  My awe at his resemblance to The King began to wear off and a splinter of irritation took its place. “Do I have a sign on my back or something?”

  “Nah. It just takes one to know one. I’m not a native either, but I’ve lived in Florida for a long time.” He checked his watch (waterproof, I was sure) and added, “I’ve got to get to work, but the best beachwear outfitter around is just a few miles down the road in St. Armand’s Circle on Lido Key. Take Tamiami Trail to 789 North and follow the signs. The shop is called Castaways, and it’s on John Ringling Boulevard, just past the circle. They’ve got clothing, bathing suits, snorkel gear, footwear—everything you need for your visit. Lots of other great shops on the block, too. The Beaded Periwinkle and The Golden Gecko are a couple of my favorites and they’re right next door. You should check ‘em out.”

  “Hmm,” I said, noncommittally. “Thanks.”

  “You
’re welcome.” He paused, flashed me one of his twinkly grins and waved like he was The King himself. “See you around.”

  I waved back and watched him stride down the beach, finding it hard to believe our paths would really cross again. He had the gait of someone who didn’t spend a lot of time idling on sand drifts and talking to frumpy divorced women, despite how even his tan was or how effortless his manner.

  But, then, people always said insincere things like that to each other. Probably even more often in a beach-culture environment such as Florida, where the population fluctuated with the tide.

  I grabbed my pink flip-flops and new lightning whelk—both half buried in the sand—patted my pocket to make sure my key was still there and, finally, began my trek back to the Siesta Sunset bungalows. Where the rich people stayed. I knew I didn’t belong there, but I was getting attached anyway.

  Such simplicity. It struck me freshly again and again.

  What a contrast from the crazy complexity of my life with Donny, his kind parents (when they were still living), and Kathryn as a baby. What a contrast from the quieter life of just me and Kathryn alone, when my daughter was a teen. This summer life felt almost too easy.

  And, yet, as I approached #26, my pulse started racing again. Not like the rush of rejuvenation I’d felt at the exercise of walking along the stunning beach. No. More like a return to the combination of fear and indistinct emotion I’d felt after talking with Vivian. More like the misgivings I’d tried to express to Ellen at having come to Florida at all.

  With simplicity abounding—so much daily clutter cleared away—it was shockingly apparent when there was a big problem sitting in the middle of the room. Like, oh, my entire nebulous future.

  I sighed and pushed open the door to the bungalow. It was precisely how I’d left it and, for some reason, this brought with it a fresh wave of sadness. I swiped away any remnants of sand and sea from the shell and placed it in the middle of the glass coffee table. My first decoration.

  It wasn’t even three o’clock in the afternoon but, suddenly, the two days of driving, the tension of moving, the odd sense of displacement I’d felt since getting here, and the endless stretch of the unknown all mingled inside of me to create only the certainty of exhaustion.

  I curled up on Ellen’s cushiony floral sofa—a buttercup pillow under my head—and closed my eyes. I needed to call my sister back soon, but for the next hour, I could let myself drift into sleep and away from all anxiety-producing things.

  The day might not yet have ended but, tomorrow was still another day. I figured I had more than enough worry and angst to carry over into it. For the time being, though, I’d burrow deeper into my borrowed shell, pretend the ocean was a melody designed to lull me to sleep, and dream about my longest-held fantasy—the one I pointedly refused to name aloud.

  Chapter Three

  Connecticut Disconnect

  Ellen Slater had always prided herself on being a strong woman. A warrior, even. In the tax world. In her marriage. Everywhere. No one questioned her ability to do her job extremely well, reel in new clients, get thirteen things done at once—and all brilliantly. And they damn well shouldn’t doubt her. She was forty-four, clever, experienced, and at the absolute top of her game.

  Which in no way explained why, after doing nothing more challenging than having a ten-minute phone call with her longtime client, Gage Bartholomew, Ellen had sequestered herself in the far left stall of the women’s restroom—the one on the fifth and highest floor of the New Haven, Connecticut branch of Palmer, Jacoby and Slater—and was trying desperately to breathe deeply and keep her hands from visibly shaking in front of her.

  She stared with increasing horror at her fingers, her nails polished with a tasteful rose-red sheen, but each digit trembling as if she were afflicted by some sort of palsy. Her heart raced, she found herself wicked short of breath, and she was sweating straight through her cream-colored silk blouse. Disgusting. She figured she was either dying or—worse—going through early menopause.

  What the hell was happening to her?! She’d just had a comprehensive physical in May, and her doctor had pronounced her in good health.

  So much for what he knew. Stupid asshat.

  Ellen had every intention of telling off Dr. Joseph Cole when she spoke with him next...once she could stop quivering long enough to dial his number on her cell phone. It would, however, be a far less effective rant if she were, say, incapable of speaking above a whisper. Like she was at the moment.

  She leaned against the cool ceramic tiles on the wall, letting the chilled smoky-blue squares ice the back of her neck, and debated whether or not to call 9-1-1. The fact that she could still “debate” made her less inclined to initiate such a call. Besides, the symptoms of whatever she was experiencing seemed to be lessening—at least she wasn’t feeling quite as lightheaded or nauseated as she’d been back in her office fifteen minutes ago.

  Her office... Oh, Christ. She was supposed to have a conference call with her client Carole Grayson this afternoon. In twenty minutes. That just wasn’t going to happen. She’d have to ask her secretary to call Carole and reschedule. This illness—or whatever it was—was effing up her day, big time.

  And it was going to take all of her strength just to keep news of her potentially imminent death from her husband Jared. The man might be smart, well-connected, over-educated, and affluent, but he couldn’t even make a grilled cheese sandwich by himself without detailed instructions and/or a step-by-step flowchart. What would he do without her?

  Hire a live-in cook, Ellen supposed. Or find himself a new wife.

  Crap.

  She swiped the beads of sweat off her forehead with a bit of tissue, her breathing starting to come a bit easier now.

  No, she definitely could not meet with Carole. And she would rather not tell anyone—not Jared and certainly not her whiny little sister—that she wasn’t in such great shape these days. They relied on her to be their rock. Jared was juggling a dozen projects at work, and Marianna had always been such a catastrophic thinker when it came to anything, especially other people’s health. The way she clucked like a little Mother Hen whenever Kathryn had the sniffles or her in-laws were sick...ugh. Always trying to make up for that bastard of a husband by being such a dutiful mom and daughter-in-law. The woman must have spent two decades in the Land of the Worrywarts after she married Donny the Freeloader. No way was Ellen going to give her sister something new to fuss over. Marianna had enough problems.

  Ellen forced out some air and inhaled long and slow.

  She slipped her hand beneath the neckline of her blouse and placed her palm on the bare skin above her heart. Still pumping furiously. Too furiously, considering she wasn’t running a 500-meter dash or sprinting up a flight of stairs.

  What did they always say to do if you thought you were having a heart attack? Chew on baby aspirin?

  Well, she didn’t have any baby aspirin. She didn’t even have any ibuprofen—at least not with her. Then again, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to check with her secretary to see if she had anything like that on hand. That, of course, would mean admitting she was sick, though. She cringed at the thought, but if she was going to leave early, she’d have to tell someone. Might as well be Selena, whom she at least liked a little and felt to be somewhat loyal.

  Ellen splashed a bit of water on her face, blotted with a paper towel, and tried to tidy up her appearance as best she could. But, really, there was no way around it. She no longer looked like a tax partner. She looked like one of those unfortunate women who’d had their brains half eaten by rabid zombies in the latest horror flick. No one would doubt she had some terrible bug. Maybe it was a kind of summer flu? People got weird things like that, with symptoms like hers, didn’t they?

  When she got back to her office, her secretary eyed her with concern. “Ms. Slater, are you all ri—” Selena began.

  “No,” Ellen said. “I’m coming down with something. Twenty-four-hour...hmm, ma
ybe forty-eight-hour flu, I think.” She watched as Selena nodded sympathetically and leaned a few inches back from her.

  “I’m sorry to hear—”

  “Please reschedule my call with Ms. Grayson for next week, and cancel all of my appointments for tomorrow,” Ellen interrupted. “I’ll call in if I think I’ll be gone longer than that.”

  “Of course, Ms. Slater,” the secretary said promptly. “I hope you’ll feel better.”

  “Thank you.” Ellen escaped into her office, gathered her laptop, her phone, a folder of paperwork to be signed and a handful of peanut M&Ms. No, they were not exactly baby aspirin, but she’d changed her mind about asking Selena if she had any of that. And, besides, Ellen could tell her heart rate really had returned to normal (almost), and it was foolish for a person to take medication they didn’t need. Especially if chocolate tasted so much better.

  When she was safely in her silver Lexus, though, she called her doctor’s office. “Yes, this is Ellen Slater. I need to speak with Dr. Cole at once.” She waited as the receptionist transferred her to Dr. Cole’s nurse, who then asked her to describe her symptoms.

  “Why can’t I speak with Dr. Cole directly?” she asked instead. “Where is he?”

  “He’s with another patient, Ms. Slater,” the nurse replied. “But if you’ll please tell me what you’ve been experiencing, I’ll be happy to—”

  Ellen clicked off her phone.

  She’d overreacted by calling in the first place. She was fine. Really.

  She’d go home, rest up, and be her normal self by tomorrow or the day after at the latest. And everything would return to the way it was.