Winter in Paradise (Paradise #1)(59)

“I’m really not sure, Irene,” Huck says. “What I know about their relationship I could write on my thumbnail and still have room for the U.S. Constitution. Rosie told me next to nothing. And like I said, I never had the pleasure of meeting…”

“My husband.”

“Mr. Steele.” Huck clears his throat. “Your husband.”

Irene steps back to the table, fills her glass with more wine, and regards Huck over the rim, as if trying to gauge whether or not he’s telling the truth.

He is. He knows it sounds unusual. It was unusual. And part of what’s at work in Huck is guilt. He should have nipped the relationship—or at least the secrecy about it—in the bud. But like he said, Rosie met the guy right after LeeAnn died, when Huck was in bad shape. LeeAnn had been sick, sure—her death hadn’t come as a total shock. And yet Huck had been left feeling like his entire right side had been amputated.

He’d been glad that Rosie had found someone to distract her from her grief. By the time he realized how pathological the relationship was, it was too late. Rosie was in love. All the way.

“I should have done more,” he says. “I should have tried to stop it. I should have hired a private investigator.”

Irene sets her wineglass gently down and lets her hands drop to her sides. “You showed up here,” she says. “That’s more than a lot of men would do.”

True, he thinks. But he says nothing.

Irene reaches out… and takes his hand. “Will you come upstairs with me?”

He’s speechless.

“There’s something I need your help with,” she says.



Huck follows Irene up the stairs, his mind racing. Is she making advances? Is the “something” that she wants help with getting out of that black dress? This is all moving a little fast for Huck. But he won’t say no. She’s a grieving widow and he has lost his daughter. Now that he has allowed himself to travel back in time, he realizes that Rosie became his daughter the second he yanked her out of the regatta. Or maybe it was when he paid twenty bucks for a regatta t-shirt to put on over the hankie she was wearing. Or maybe it was when she told him she hated him.

Irene needs physical contact and Huck needs it too, doesn’t he? And she’s a good-looking woman.

They walk down a long white hallway with a vaulted ceiling ribbed with exposed beams. There are rooms off to both sides, bedrooms. Huck peers into each one. They’re similar; it feels like a fancy hotel. At the very end of the hall is a closed door. Irene turns the knob. Locked.

“When we got here on Thursday, the house had been cleaned out,” Irene says. “Every personal item removed. Russ’s clothes, gone. All the papers from his office, gone. Someone came and took it all away, probably his business partner, Todd Croft. Ever heard that name?”

Huck shakes his head. “No.”

“This door is locked. And I was hoping you could force it open for me.”

“Okay.” Huck says. The door is solid wood, the handle is heavy. Nothing about this house is cheap. “Have you asked your sons?”

“I didn’t ask them,” Irene says. “And they obviously haven’t been blessed with any natural curiosity, because neither of them has noticed. I’m afraid of what we’re going to find inside.”

Huck presses against the door. He’s a big guy, but breaking down this door is beyond him; he’ll have to pick the lock. The nice thing about owning a boat for forty years is that he can tinker with the best of ’em. He is a world champion tinkerer.

“Do you have a hairpin?” he asks. “Or bobby pin?”

“I do,” Irene says. “Hold on.”

She’s back in a few seconds with an ancient, sturdy steel bobby pin that looks like it came straight from the head of Eleanor Roosevelt. It takes Huck a few moments of poking and twisting—he doesn’t have his reading glasses, and the wine has gone to his head somewhat—but then, click, he gets it. Lock popped. He hesitates before turning the knob, because he’s also afraid of what they’re going to find inside. More dead bodies? Assault rifles and refrigerators full of money? Who was this guy Russell Steele, and what was he into? Irene clearly doesn’t have the first idea.



Huck opens the door and the first words that come to him are those from “Sugar Magnolia,” Sunshine, daydream. It’s a bedroom with a huge white canopy bed decorated with turquoise and purple pillows. The wallpaper is a swirl of purple, green, and turquoise tie-dye. There’s a white powderpuff beanbag chair, a desk, and a dressing table. Maia would love this room, Huck thinks. Then he sees the letters painted on the length of one wall. M-A-I-A.

“Oh,” he says. “This is Maia’s room.”

Irene slips past Huck into the room and starts poking around. Hairbrush and pick on the dressing table, a bottle of shea butter lotion. A book on the nightstands entitled The Hate U Give. Huck thinks to speak up on behalf of Maia’s privacy; she’s only twelve, but she still deserves respect. Huck understands why the door was locked—it would have been impossible to “undo” this room on short notice.

How must Irene feel, knowing her husband decorated a room like this for his lover’s daughter? Is it salt on the wound? Huck supposes so, although he, for one, is happy to see that Maia had a safe space of her own in this house. He will be Maia’s champion to the end.