It wasn’t a heart attack; he had suffered a series of minor strokes, no doubt exacerbated by watching his empire being picked apart and dismantled brick by brick, crumb by crumb. As empathetic people, Trys and I did not have Magnus Mercer in our prayers. If that was a character flaw, then it was one we both wore unapologetically. The suffering both fathers had presided over was abhorrent, not to mention illegal. Trystan accessed his trust using a Manhattan lawyer who Frazer Klein’s family had worked with when Kenya was abducted.
“What do you want to do first? Bags to the hotel, or drive along the beach?” He slings my bags into the back of the Jeep with ease. I’ve never packed heavily and now don’t even travel with my sketch materials. I prefer to take a series of photographs and work from that back in my living room, curled up on cushions or with a glass of three-dollar wine. One million dollars earns insane interest in my bank account, and I drink three-dollar wine that smacks of vinegar and poor decisions.
“All of it, Trystan. I want to do it all. I want to hear about everything you’ve been doing since I’ve seen you last. I want to hear about everyone you’ve been doing, and if any of them are on this island, I’d love to meet him. And most of all, I’m just content to spend time with my favorite guy and scoop sand.”
The rear door shuts with a thunk, and he’s at the passenger door in an instant. “My lady,” he jests, and I just know he’s rolling those eyes behind the glasses he put back on because holy shit it’s bright out here. “Sure thing, lovely, we can do it all.”
I reach for the seatbelt as he plants a kiss on the hairlineabove my temple. I pray it doesn’t smell like avgas and airplane food. “Christ, I’ve missed you.”
Trystan spendsthe next four days showing me around the island paradise. He slips away for an hour some days when I’m lounging by the water or enjoying a massage. From the quaint hotels back deck, we can access the white sand beach directly through a maze of coconut palms and tropical plants I can look at and not think about Malice. Because she will not leap out from behind the foliage and snip off any lesser leaves with her secateurs and overpriced gloves. Because she’s in a treatment facility for addiction, or was the only time I inquired about her whereabouts. I see Nic every other week for lunch or coffee dates. She is only in contact with Marin and Mason, who she let slip had quit the corporate world not long after he’d quit the toxic branches of the family. He had also quit New York, but she left it at that when my lips pursed and I could feel the prickle of tears threaten. She knows I left her brother’s employ, but not why. By her panicked reaction and hasty apology, I realized I was making her uncomfortable. His name is now off-limits, banished from our conversation as easily as I walked out on him, or the way he left New York.
We discuss any upcoming children’s books I’m illustrating, her gorgeous family, and Ava’s ballet lessons now that she can get all that wispy hair up into a classic bun. I live for the photos of a smiling little girl in a leotard and tights, teeth missing and hopeful eyes staring back through the lens. We discuss first positions and first curse words from a son who likes to send his father prematurely gray and his mother into fits of giggles behind her hand.
My phone buzzes with a text message, and Trystan frowns,grabbing for it when I extract it from my jean shorts. “Vacation, Bubble! No phones, no stress. Give me one reason I don’t drop it in the pool right now?”
“Because I’d drop you in after it.”
Trystan knows most of my small circle. He knew Pen through Covet bookings and met Eden one night when we ran into him, literally dashing into his lawyer’s office. His heartwarming smile with eye creases and enlarged pupils made Ed a little weak at the knees. That, or the three tequilas she’d had at the bar we’d just left. Introductions were swift and messy on a street blooming with the after-work drinks crowd and commuters desperate to be anywhere other than trapped on the sidewalk.
“It’s Ed, Pen, or is that Nic? Maybe it’s Liam. Has Geoffrey proposed yet?”
“If you move your damn paw, I can tell you who it is.” There is no name, only a cat emoji and a butterfly. “It’s Caity!” She had a follow-up visit with her retinal specialist, and while the inflammation and leaky vessels are still present, it’s graded low level, meaning she can avoid Prednisolone for the time being. That’s the best news we can hope for. “Give her my love,” he says, his enormous arms interlinked over my shoulders as I type.
“Of course.”
“Where is the restaurant again?”
My neck cranes from the gentle rhythmic waves rolling into the forested area on the other side of the single-lane road. Save for a marina ahead of us, there is not much around. The road has hugged the shoreline for the better part of ten minutes, so a hamlet of twinkling lights and alfresco revelry would await usaround the next bend. Nope. This side of the island holds the airport where I flew in days ago, and a smaller helipad closer to the marina.
“It’s not a restaurant. It’s a sunset cruise.” Trystan pushes his sunglasses further up the bridge of his crooked nose and grins. “How romantic, right?”
“You are such a dick sometimes.”
“Only because you love it. We both love dick, right?”
I swear he’s my fifth brother, the one no one told me about, who was raised rich in some swapped at birth scandal. Too soon? Given the way Mason was conceived and raised without an ounce of love, I feel terrible for even thinking it. He pulls the Jeep into an empty bay of the sand-strewn parking lot. Unlatching his seatbelt, he’s around to the other side to open my door, an unnecessary move that he continues to ignore. As I climb down from the passenger seat, he keeps his arm on the roof of the Jeep and his gaze across the water, almost reverently. The last time I was at a marina, well, the last time I was on a yacht, I fell more in love with a man I could never have.
“I think the office is over there near the slipways,” he says, casually turning to look around the almost vacant area. I can’t see a sign for a company advertising any dinner or sunset sails, but then again, the rich like to hide something as essential as a pool drain, so perhaps this cruise is some contact of his from New York. Or some connection to Mason? The hairs at the back of my neck bristle to attention before a whole-body shudder consumes the rest of my nerves.
“Are you cold, Bri?” His honey voice has a hint of uncertainty.
“No, I’m perfect.”
“Yes. For what I have in mind, yes, you are.”
We make our way toward the jetty, passing older bobbing boats with faded paint and splintering timber. “Slipwayseventeen,” he announces, gesturing further along the pier to where some impressive-looking boats are moored. Trystan glances at his watch and stills. “Shoot, I have to go grab something from the car. You go on ahead. Here, take this,” he says, thrusting an envelope into my hand that he dragged from the back pocket of his cargo pants. “Slip seventeen, get on board and make yourself comfortable. If the charter or captain asks questions, give them the envelope. Deal?”
The whir of rotating helicopter blades increases just beyond the tree line; thethwuk thwuk thwukis both rhythmic, soothing, and loud.
“Deal,” I call to his retreating back, passing eight, nine, ten and continuing my pace until a sleek, silvery blue and white yacht comes into view. She’s tied to the jetty so I can’t see any name, but the number 17 is branded into the timber bollard she’s moored to, as well as the gate that allows access to the vessel. I push it open and, steadying the envelope in one hand, plant a foot on the bow and haul myself on board by the railing. I hope the food is served soon; I’m starving, I’m tired, and the prickle of unease from the parking lot won’t leave me.
It’s silent on board, only the squawking gulls overhead and the occasional clink of a cleat against the mast breaking through the silence. And thethwuk thwukthat has changed in pitch from before. The sun sinks lower to the horizon line, ready to dip below the curtain of pink, vermillion, and gold. I sink down the stairs into the main cabin, hoping for confirmation of the booking and about to tear into the envelope when I hear footfalls along the duckboards, increasing in volume as the sprinter gets closer.
“What did you forget?” I tease at the same time a pair of brown leather boat shoes land on the cabin steps.
“Fucking helicopters!” The tone is low, sexy, and achingly familiar.
It’s not Trystan. As I blink to take him in, a helicopter rises from the helipad, turning a lazy circle as it increases in height. From my periphery, I see it rise and rise until it banks and soars over the marina and off toward the orange curtain before it’s a mere black blip. My pulse gallops out of control at the captain standing in the cabin doorway, an almost identical envelope in his sun-warmed hands. Hands that used to hold my hair or lift my skirt and wash me in a penthouse shower with way too many jets.
