Winter in Paradise (Paradise #1)(57)

“Nothing wrong with teaching people to ski,” Huck says. “Honest living.”

If Irene notices the archness in his voice, she doesn’t let on. “So those are the boys. They’re good kids. They don’t know what to make of all this. They know about Rosie, although we haven’t discussed it. I should tell them I know—it would probably be a weight off their minds. They want to protect me from it, I’m sure. I suppose I’ll tell them in the morning.”

“Always best to be open,” Huck says.

“Is it?” Irene asks. “I made them leave the house tonight because you were coming. They don’t know I’ve made contact with you. They don’t know about the fishing.” Irene throws back what’s left of her wine. “It’s like Russ had this giant secret, which, in turn, is causing the three of us to keep our own smaller secrets.” She looks Huck in the eye for the first time, or the first time without her guard way up. Her eyes are steel-blue, the color of a stormy sea. “I can’t believe this happened to me. And I can’t believe I tracked you down, forced you to take me fishing, and then invited you to dinner.”

“If it makes any difference,” Huck says, “I’m glad you did.”

“Are you?” she says.

He wants to kiss her. But he is too old and out of practice to know if she would welcome this or slap him.

Slap him, he thinks. She’s been a widow for less than a week.

“Yes,” he says. “I am.” He rips his eyes away from her and focuses on Jost Van Dyke, twinkling in the distance. The view is quite something from up here.

“Tell me what you know,” Irene says. “Tell me about Rosie.”

“All right,” Huck says.



Should he go all the way back to the beginning?

Huck is new to the island, but not brand-new. He has his boat and he has his best friend, Rupert, out in Coral Bay. Coral Bay is different from town: folks out there keep to themselves, West Indians and whites alike. Honestly, as soon as you came down the other side of Bordeaux Mountain, it was as though you were on a different island. When Huck wanted to see Rupert, he had to drive to Coral Bay; Rupert simply refused to come west. They would drink at Skinny Legs or Shipwreck Landing and then, half in the bag, Huck would drive home.

Stay left, Rupert used to say. And look out for the donkeys.

It was at a full-moon BBQ at a place called Miss Lucy’s that Rupert introduced Huck to LeeAnn. There was a three-piece steel band and she was right in front, dancing in the grass. Love at first sight? Sure, why not.

LeeAnn had a daughter, fifteen years old and beautiful, which meant trouble. Rosie’s father was long gone, but his people were still around, and while LeeAnn was working her long hours as a nurse practitioner, Rosie sometimes visited her Small aunties and cousins out in Coral Bay—or at least that’s what she said she was doing. Part or most of that time, she was, instead, falling in love with a fella named Oscar from St. Thomas who was twenty-four years old and bad news. Oscar worked “security” for Princess cruises—Huck suspected he also supplied the staff and passengers with drugs—and as such, he was flush with cash that he liked to show off. He drove a Ducati motorcycle and came over to St. John every chance he got to take Rosie for a ride.



Rosie sneaked over to St. Thomas to attend the Rolex Regatta. She had begged LeeAnn to be allowed to go and LeeAnn had said no, she was too young, period. But Rosie had gone anyway. When LeeAnn found out, she dispatched Huck to find her and bring her home. Huck and LeeAnn had been together only a few months at that point, and Huck was still completely infatuated. He would do whatever LeeAnn asked without question, even though he knew he held no sway over Rosie.

He had loaded his truck on the car barge and driven to the St. Thomas Yacht Club, where he paid twenty-five dollars to park and another five for a couple of beers to walk around with while he hunted for LeeAnn’s child. Because Huck had been born and raised in the Florida Keys, he was no stranger to regattas. They were only nominally about sailing; really, they were about drinking. Huck took in the well-heeled crowd holding their cocktails aloft as they danced to the band playing vintage Rolling Stones, and the pervasive sense of joy and revelry—because what better way to spend an afternoon than drinking rum and dancing under the Caribbean sun while a bunch of white guys in five-million-dollar boats negotiated wind and water in the name of an overpriced watch?

He was cynical because he was jealous. It looked fun, and he had come to be a buzzkill.

Huck found Rosie sitting on Oscar’s lap at a picnic table crowded with other West Indians, all of them nattily dressed, all of them wearing Rolexes themselves. They were eating chicken roti and conch stew, drinking Caribes. Huck was bigger than Oscar, just barely, but there were some other gentlemen at the table who were bigger than Huck and Oscar combined, with Rosie thrown in.

Huck saw no way to tackle his assignment other than head-on. He approached the table—the men and Rosie were all speaking patois, Huck could barely decipher a word—and said, “Rosie, I’ve come to bring you home.”

Rosie, he remembered, had blinked lazily, unfazed, and had burrowed like a sand crab into Oscar’s arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here.”

“No,” Huck said. “You’re not.”

“Hey, man,” Oscar said. “You heard the lady.”