Winter in Paradise (Paradise #1)(27)

How should he answer this? “Not a vacation, exactly,” he says. “I’m here with my mom and my brother.”

“Family reunion?” Ayers asks.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Are you married?” Ayers asks. She blows out a stream of smoke and looks at him frankly. Something inside of him stirs. Someday, he thinks, he will be married to this girl right here, Ayers Wilson. And they will remember this, their very first conversation, sitting on a low tree branch outside Chester’s Getaway during the funeral reception for her best friend, who also happened to be Baker’s father’s mistress.

“I was,” he says. “I mean, technically I still am. But my wife found a girlfriend. She announced two days ago that she was leaving me for her colleague, Louisa.”

“Ouch,” Ayers says.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Baker says. “It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.”

“That’s right,” Ayers says. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“I heard your friend was in an accident,” Baker says. He wants to tell her who he is, but he’s afraid she’ll run off and he’ll never see her again. “What was she like?”

“Rosie? She was… she was… she just was,” Ayers says. “You know how sometimes people just click? And there’s no reason for it? Rosie and I were like that. I met her working at La Tapa.”

“La Tapa,” Baker says.

“It’s the best restaurant on the island. When I first got to St. John, it was the only place I wanted to work, but places like that can be hard to break into. I was very lucky to get hired and even luckier that Rosie took me under her wing. Rosie was a local, she’s born and raised here, her parents were born and raised here, and her grandparents. There was no reason for her to befriend me, some white chick who shows up for the season to get in on the good tips, then leaves. But Rosie was nice to me from the very beginning. She was protective. She showed me where the quiet beaches were, she introduced me to a guy who sold me a pickup truck for cheap, she took me to Pine Peace market and introduced me to her mother and her stepfather and just generally treated me like a long-lost sister.”

“Wow,” Baker says. He’s moved by this and he wants to ask some strategic follow-up questions. Was she seeing anyone? Had Ayers known Russ? But at that moment, Baker looks up and sees Cash headed toward them, holding two beers in each hand.

Baker shakes his head at Cash in an attempt to convey the very important message: She doesn’t know who we are! But Cash looks too hot and pissed-off to care about secret codes.

“Why the hell did you vanish like that?” Cash asks. “You expected me to find you all the way over here?”

“That’s my fault,” Ayers says, dropping the butt of her cigarette into her now empty beer. “I led your brother astray. Sorry about that.”

Cash hands Baker two of the four beers and takes a long swallow of one of the beers he’s holding. He seems like he’s making an effort to regroup. “It’s fine,” he says.

“Cash, this is Ayers Wilson,” Baker says. “Ayers is a friend of the deceased…”

“Best friend,” Ayers interrupts. “Your brother admitted that you two are crashing.”

“Um… yeah,” Cash says.

“It seems like there would be better ways to spend your precious vacation days than attending a local funeral lunch,” Ayers says. “Though Chester’s barbecue is pretty good.”

“Vacation days?” Cash says, and he gives Baker a quizzical look.

Ayers takes the awkward moment of silence that follows—during which Baker is silently imploring Cash to just go with it—as an opportunity to stand up. “I should get back to my post,” she says. “And back to my grief, although God knows that’s not going anywhere.” She offers Baker her hand. “Thank you for allowing me to escape for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll see you again before you leave.”

“I hope so,” Baker says. “What’s the name of the restaurant where you work?”

“La Tapa,” she says. “Right downtown, near Woody’s.”

“Woody’s of the infamous happy hour,” Baker says.

Ayers touches a finger to her nose. “You got it. And hey, go get yourself some barbecue. Anyone gives you trouble, tell them you’re with me.” She vanishes back into the crowd.

“What was that?” Cash asks, once she’s gone. “You told her we were on vacation?”

But Baker is too lovestruck to answer.





IRENE


She’s relieved when the boys leave the villa because she needs time and space to think, really think, and she needs room to process. There are two weighty issues Irene has to deal with. One is Russ’s death, and the other is his deception.

Because this house, this island, is a very large, very real deception. Russell Steele, Irene’s husband of thirty-five years, is a liar, a schemer, and most likely a cheat. Irene doesn’t know what to say—words fail her, thoughts fail her, and the boys seem to expect both thoughts and words, some expression of pain, some expression of anger. But Irene is so befuddled she can’t yet identify pain or anger. Her interior life is a barren wasteland.