Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(40)

“Word on the street?” Mick says.

“Excuse me?” Baker says.

“Word on the street is that Ayers is pregnant,” Mick says.

Baker flags down the bartender for another beer, then puts his eyes on Floyd. Floyd has stopped to let Gordon sniff. Ayers is pregnant.

“Really,” Baker says. He thinks of the text she sent him. I’ve come down with something. It’s bad and I wouldn’t want you or Floyd to catch it. I’ll call you when I’m better. She’s pregnant?

“That’s what I heard,” Mick says. He raises his Corona to Baker. “So I guess congratulations are in order.”

Baker feels like he’s suffered a grave injury—lost a limb, maybe—but has yet to feel the pain. “Yeah, man, congratulations.” He would like the congratulations to be accompanied by giving Mick a sock in the mouth or pouring Mick’s drinks over his head. Mick doesn’t deserve Ayers. He sure as hell doesn’t deserve to have a baby with Ayers. But that’s the way the world always works, isn’t it? The jerks win.

“Congratulations to you,” Mick says. “The baby’s not mine.”

“What?” Baker says.

“It’s not mine,” Mick says. He drains his rum punch in one long swallow and bangs the empty glass on the bar. “It’s yours.”





Huck


He sees the Jeep with the tinted windows idling at the base of Jacob’s Ladder in the morning when he and Irene take Maia to school, then he sees it again in the National Park Service lot when he and Irene are letting off their charter clients. The clients were a couple, the husband reeking of weed and high as a kite and the wife spending the entire six-hour offshore trip glowering at him from under her wide-brimmed sun hat. Irene had tried to draw the woman out, tried to put her on a mahi, but the wife was having none of it. That was fine; Irene cut bait and left her alone. It wasn’t her job to make friends or play marriage counselor.

“Some people like being miserable,” Irene murmurs to Huck as the couple head off the dock like two of the Seven Dwarves—Dopey and Grumpy. “It’s what brings them joy.”

I love you, Huck thinks, and that’s when he notices the Jeep again. Black Jeep, tinted windows. He checks the license plate and repeats it in his head—TP 6756—but two seconds after the Jeep drives away, he’s forgotten it.

Could be just a coincidence, a tourist driving around. Tinted windows are legal, though you don’t find them on rental vehicles.

He shakes his head. He’s thinking of Oscar Cobb, Rosie’s old boyfriend, the one with the Ducati motorcycle who, after he was released from prison, drove a Jeep with tinted windows. Oscar’s Jeep called attention to itself; it was jacked up, sitting on top of thirty-five-inch BFG mudders.

Huck is thinking of Oscar Cobb again because even though he promised himself he wouldn’t, he has been reading steadily through Rosie’s journals. It was as simple and irrevocable as Eve taking the first bite of the apple; one taste and Huck was damned.

The journals were a trip back in time. Rosie was single, working at Caneel Bay, living with Huck and LeeAnn. Oscar Cobb came sniffing around, and Rosie resisted. (LeeAnn, Huck thought, would have been so proud of how Rosie resisted!) Russell Steele had stepped between Rosie and Oscar one night. He put Oscar into some kind of death grip, and despite himself, Huck cheered for the guy. That was the beginning of the relationship; it was damn near accidental. Russ hadn’t been on the prowl looking to hook up with anyone. He’d seen a person in trouble and he’d helped out. The affair lasted the weekend, and that, Huck supposed, would have been that—were it not for Maia.

There are two places in the journals where Huck choked up. The first was the description of the morning Rosie announced she was pregnant. If Huck had had to remember this on his own, he would have come up blank. But reading the scene in Rosie’s handwriting carried him back to the exact moment—his own kitchen, a typical morning. LeeAnn was wearing her raspberry scrubs, her nails painted to match. She was drinking the cup of coffee that Huck always made for her, awaiting her egg and toast. Huck had been dressed for a charter. He wonders now who he’d taken out on the boat that day and what they’d caught and if he’d seemed distracted because of the news his stepdaughter had dropped at breakfast. What Huck does remember is his fear about LeeAnn’s reaction. LeeAnn’s number-one priority since the day Huck met her had been keeping Rosie from messing up her life in exactly this way. She had gotten Rosie through high school and through college without her becoming pregnant with Oscar’s baby.

That day, Rosie swore the baby wasn’t Oscar’s. She said it was a white fella’s, a businessman who’d stayed at the hotel. A pirate. Huck was skeptical. LeeAnn was more than skeptical.

“We’ll know the truth when this baby is born,” she said.



The second place Huck tears up is at Rosie’s description of Maia losing her first tooth. Again, the breakfast table, again toast, because at some point, Huck began making an egg and toast for Maia as well as for LeeAnn. The tooth popped out and skittered across the kitchen floor. Huck found it after a few minutes of hunting—Maia had been worried, the Tooth Fairy and all that—and when he held it up, she’d wrapped her arms around his legs. That was right before LeeAnn got sick and died. The end of the golden days, though of course, none of them had any idea it was the end. And that, Huck supposes, is why it makes him emotional. His life was blessed and he hadn’t appreciated it like he should have.