Island Affair (Keys to Love #1)(26)
“I don’t know, Mother; this place makes even the non-loafer feel like loafing around!” Sara’s sister, Robin, called out.
Tall and slender like Sara, Robin wore her blond hair cut short in a wash-and-wear style. She and her husband, Edward, sat at the shallow end of the pool nearby. Robin’s tan sandals and Edward’s boat shoes had been shucked and neatly set aside. Now their bare feet rested on the wide first step leading into the water.
Luis ran through the facts he knew about them one more time. Not that there were many. Sara hadn’t provided much during their cram session. Robin was a cardiothoracic surgeon like their father. Edward punched his time clock as an orthodontist. No kids. Both career driven. Robin’s decisive personality balanced by her husband’s somewhat nerdy, yet equally intelligent, one.
During their conversation, Luis had already discovered a new piece of information for his and Sara’s sibling fact-finding mission. Apparently the couple enjoyed hiking in the mountains around Arizona. According to them, it allowed for requisite mind and body rejuvenation.
While he might prefer the open ocean to the mountains, Luis had to admit Robin was right about this backyard.
The rental homeowners had spared little expense in designing and landscaping the courtyard. Although Key West had much to offer in the way of history, nature, arts, and entertainment, the soft splash of the rock waterfall cascading into the deep end of the rectangular saltwater pool, along with the thick palm trees, potted ferns, and splashes of vivid color in the birds-of-paradise, yellow and red hibiscus, and fuchsia geiger tree blossoms, created the perfect ambiance for relaxation.
It definitely gave visitors a luxurious welcome to Key West.
Barring an emergency call, Luis rarely visited a place this upscale. His crowd hung in the older homes located in Midtown and up the Keys. Enrique had moved into an apartment off Duval after fire college in Ocala, but Luis could count on one hand the number of times he’d been there.
Sitting back against the sunset red cushion plumping his deck chair, he propped his work boots on the matching footstool and admired the view from the raised porch.
Along the main house and master bedroom wing, the shady porch with wide plank wood flooring made an expansive L shape, its white support beams and eaves tangled with flowering vines. Several dark gray rattan loungers and the chair set he and Sara occupied were situated down the length of the master bedroom side. A distressed-wood table allowed for casual dining in the area that opened off the living-dining room and kitchen.
A few stairs led down to the redbrick pool deck where two more loungers called to sunbathers. Near the pool’s far end, by the waterfall, Sara’s brother, Jonathan, an ER doc, and his wife, Carolyn, a stay-at-home mom, sat together on some kind of newfangled ottoman with a collapsible shelter cover. The design of the opaque, sun-reflecting material reminded Luis of a convertible car’s top providing shade from the intense mid-May rays. Still pretty strong as the sun made its late afternoon descent.
Jonathan and Carolyn huddled, heads close together, on a video call with their two young children named . . . co?o, Luis mentally fumbled through the info on his cheat sheet, trying to recall Sara’s notes.
“William and Susan have specifically requested videos and pictures while we’re on the Conch Tour Train,” Jonathan alerted everyone, inadvertently answering Luis’s question. “Susan’s hoping for a picture of Grandmother holding a starfish at the aquarium.”
“I can probably arrange that,” Ruth answered from where she lay in one of the rattan loungers by the master bedroom.
“And William wants it to be known that he is bummed, his word,” Carolyn added, hunkering closer to the cell screen to make a silly face for her kids, “that he’s missing a day out on Luis’s motorboat.”
“We’ll take him next time.” The offer slipped out before Luis could stop it.
Sara choked on her water. Leaning forward in her deck chair, she covered her hacking cough with a fist.
“But I’m sure you’ll get away to another beach location as a family sometime, and he’ll have a chance at a boat ride then,” Luis amended. He rubbed a hand on Sara’s spasming back until her coughing quieted.
Chin to her chest, she tilted her head his way. Eyes wide, she sent him a clear are-you-kidding-me glower. Luis hitched a shoulder in a tiny shrug. The offer was a natural reaction for him. Obviously, he’d have to be more careful. There wasn’t going to be a next time visit to Key West for the Vance family that involved him.
Thankfully, Jonathan and his wife didn’t catch anything amiss and they went back to their video call, promising to bring home a surprise for each kid before hanging up.
Over on her lounger, several feet down from Luis and Sara, Ruth took another sip of the pukey purple protein and vitamin smoothie Charles had whipped up for her.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she told everyone, tapping the side of her glass. “Best eight ounces of energy-packing punch.”
Luis had passed up her invitation to join her for a glass earlier, saying yes instead to the bottle of Stella Sara’s brother-in-law had held out to him.
“And we’re saving it all for you, dear.” Charles, who sat on the end of Ruth’s chaise with her feet in his lap, stretched his arm to clink his beer bottle with her glass.
“I smelled that concoction, Mom, no thanks!” Jonathan called out. “If I drank that, Carolyn might not want to kiss me. And, at the risk of over-sharing with you people, let me say, we are kid-free this week, so I’m hoping to get lucky.”