“You assumed that she was my Pam?”
Artie cleared his throat. “I don’t know, Drunk. She’s a tiny blonde lady. With big, you know, umm… assets.” He cupped his hands out in front of himself.
“And an ass grown men would kill for?” I asked, bobbing my head up and down knowingly. Yes, I could recall those assets well.
Artie’s mouth gaped, and he shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Well, Drunk. I mean, I wasn’t exactly looking at her—”
I waved a hand in the air. “It’s okay, Artie. Most men never get past her tits. I get it.”
He nodded. “So I have to assume it’s her.”
Fuck.
It was Pam alright. What in the hell was she doing all the way out here? It wasn’t like she could be all, Oh, I was just in the neighborhood and I saw your car so I thought I’d stop in and say hi. Hell, I was damned near to the equator—not exactly across the street from her hairstylist. In addition to that, I didn’t even own a car out here.
I let my head drop in front of me. “Fuck. This is not what I need right now, Artie.” My head hadn’t stopped pounding, and the gurgling in my stomach made me feel both nauseous and like I could destroy the nearest bathroom at any minute.
“You’re telling me,” sighed Artie. “She’s been screaming at the girls ever since she got here because they wouldn’t tell her where you’re staying.”
I made a mental note to bring the front desk girls an extra box of chocolate.
I rubbed the pads of my fingers against my temples. “She’ll go away eventually. She can’t stay in the lobby forever.”
“She said she’s not leaving until you show up.”
I threw a hand up in the air. “Fucking call security on her ass, then.”
“You’re security, Drunk.”
My head bobbed as I slammed a palm against my knee. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t call the island cops?”
“She’s staying here, Drunk. She rented a room. She’s a guest. I can’t have the cops here making an even bigger scene than she is. It’ll be all over social media, and that’s not the kind of reputation I want for the resort.” He sighed and lifted his barely-there brows. “As much as you don’t want to, you’re just going to have to go talk to her, I’m afraid.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head like a petulant five-year-old. “Hell no. Ain’t happening. Uh-uh. You can’t make me, Artie.”
3
With my arms crossed over my chest, I stood in the chilly epicenter of the navy-and-white nautical-themed resort lobby. By my definition, the lobby was posh. Perhaps some hoity-toity city gal might disagree, but it was enough to impress this Missouri transplant. A wide, curving staircase led to two stories of balconied hotel rooms, which opened to a vaulted ceiling. There were nicely cushioned rattan chairs set atop fancy rugs, and hand-painted vases sat on the tables. Aside from the check-in area and guest suites, the main resort building housed a gift shop, a high-end boutique clothing store, the vacation excursion office, a Japanese restaurant, a gym, a bar, two conference rooms, and of course, the main dining room where the big buffet style dinners were held.
It was check-in time, and new guests were being hauled in from the airport by the dozen, so the space around me buzzed like flies on a cow pie. I felt only slightly self-conscious about my business being put on display, but I wasn’t about to take it somewhere less public, as Artie had suggested. Nah, that was tempting fate, and I wasn’t about to be lured into perpetrating a murder.
My six-foot-four-inch frame stood tall as I stared down at the petite blonde in front of me. She smelled like coconut oil and mango and wore a pale pink strapless mini romper that stretched tautly across her fake boobs and exposed the underside of her perfectly rounded bottom.
My bloodshot eyes narrowed to pinpricks. “What the hell are you doing here, Pam?”
“Hi, Danny. I came to see you,” she said, a cautious smile playing around her mouth.
My head tipped sideways as I pursed my lips. “No. Fucking. Way.” I could feel my insides heating up. “Next you’re gonna tell me that sharks shit in the ocean.”
She ignored my sarcasm. “Be serious, Danny. Isn’t there somewhere private we could go to, you know… talk?” She held up her room key. The expensive piece of hardware I’d given her when proposing marriage sparkled on her finger beneath the lobby’s chandelier lighting. “I got a room. We could go there. Or if you’ve got a—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Pam.”
“But, Danny! We need to talk!” she begged. The soft sweetness of her voice had turned into a whine. “You never answer my calls, you don’t respond to my messages. Your folks say you’re suddenly moving to the island? What’s that about?”
I grimaced. I’d specifically asked my mother to stop talking to my ex. I palmed my forehead. “Stop calling my mother, Pam. That’s not normal.”
“I didn’t call her, Danny. I bumped into her at the supermarket. What am I supposed to do? Just ignore her? Pretend that I wasn’t almost her daughter-in-law? I love your mom.”
“Yeah, well, she gave birth to me. So I get to keep her in the breakup.”
“I’m not trying to steal your mom. I just wanted to be in the loop since you won’t call or text me back.”
“You don’t get to be in the loop anymore. And I don’t respond to your calls and texts because I blocked your number.”
She grimaced and looked down at her long aqua-colored fingernails. “Yeah, I figured.”
Of course Pam had actually managed to get around the block by using other people’s phones to call me or by using star sixty-seven to block her number. It had only worked a few times, until I’d finally caught onto her tricks and stopped answering calls from restricted numbers and numbers I didn’t recognize.
“You couldn’t take the hint that I didn’t want to talk to you? Instead you had to fly thousands of miles for me to tell you to your face? Fine. Then I’ll tell you.” I leaned over to sneer in her face. “I don’t want to talk to you, Pam!”
“But, Danny, all I want is a chance to explain what happened.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, I know what happened alright. You fucked Steve fucking Shitwell in my bed. My new fucking bed, Pam! On the night before our wedding!”
People were staring at us now. Perhaps it was the profanity. I saw Mariposa, the head of the front office and maid staff, raise one bushy black eyebrow at me disapprovingly.
“Sittell, Danny. His name was Steve Sittell, and I’m sorry! I was having cold feet.”
“Then you should’ve put on a goddamned pair of socks, Pam! What you shouldn’t have done is screwed around behind my back!”
Pam’s face was red as she pouted. “I admit it! Alright? I made a mistake! Haven’t you ever made a mistake that you regretted?”
Fury that I’d stuffed down for the past month and a half bubbled up from the pit of my stomach. The venom burned as it crawled up my esophagus and spewed out my mouth. “Yes! Pamela! I have made a mistake that I regretted! You’re the mistake! Don’t you get it? You are the biggest fucking mistake that I’ve ever made in my entire life. I regret meeting you. I regret wasting a year and a half of my life with you.” I grabbed hold of her left hand and shoved the ring I’d given her in her face. “I regret giving you this ring and asking you to marry me. And most of all, I regret that you’re standing in front of me right now!” I let her hand go, and her arms dropped to her sides.
Pam’s mouth gaped slightly. She looked stunned. Like I’d hurt her. She had to be fucking kidding me.
We stared at each other while I panted, slightly out of breath from the adrenaline rush and the exertion of yelling at her.
Finally, she took a step backwards. “You regret meeting me?”
I wagged a finger in her face. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try and get me to feel sorry for you. That’s what you do. You play the victi
m. You’re not the victim. I’m the victim, okay? Got it? You made me the victim, so you don’t get to make that sad face and look all shocked and offended.”
“I—” Her mouth snapped shut, like she didn’t know what else to say. “Danny, I still love you. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I swallowed back the rock that was in my throat. “But you did, Pam. And we will never get back together. So get it through your thick skull. We’re over. So why don’t you just pack up your bags and go home.”
“But I got a room for the night.”
“Just for one night,” I repeated. I hardly believed her. There was no way that Pam had flown all the way to Paradise Isle to stay for only one night. Back home, they were still dealing with the last remnants of an April snowstorm. The consistent eighty-two-degree temperature in Paradise was too perfect to leave after only one day. No, I didn’t believe that for a second.
She shrugged lightly as her cheeks flushed. “Well, I mean, I’d hoped that we’d…”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “You can’t possibly mean that you thought that…” I drew a line with my finger between the two of us. “That we… that you…”
Her face crumpled into a pout. “I mean… I hoped. There wouldn’t have been any sense in getting a hotel room for more than one night if we were going to get back together. Then I could just stay here. With you.” She stepped forward then and threw her skinny little arms around my waist. The top of her head went as high as my collarbone. She tucked her chin into the hollow, cavernous region just below my rib cage and stared up at me, her big blue eyes shining angelically. “We can still stay together. No strings attached, Danny. I mean, at the very least, I owe you that.”
I swallowed hard. As crazy and outlandish as it sounds, in the year and a half that we were together, Pam and I had never consummated our relationship. When we’d met, I was going through a phase. I’d had the distinct feeling that something was missing in my life. I’d spent my late teens, my twenties, and my early thirties having only shallow physical relationships with women. And after all of my buddies had married off, started families, and focused on their careers, I was still partying hard and bringing home randoms.
But when I’d hit thirty-two, I’d come up with the idea of re-virginizing myself in an attempt at finding the one. I’d quit drinking, I’d joined the police academy, and I’d made the decision to save myself for marriage.
And a little over a year into the new and improved me, I’d met Pam.
She’d been a setup. A friend of a friend of my mother’s. Crazily enough, we’d been introduced at church, and we’d gone to coffee. Which is partially why it had come as such a shock to find my good Catholic woman screwing her ex-boyfriend on my bed, in my apartment, the night before our wedding.
Completely broken, I’d dropped everything and gone on the honeymoon she’d planned for us. Which, in a nutshell, was what had brought me to Paradise Isle and the Seacoast Majestic.
I stared down at her. She was a beautiful woman. There was no denying it. Any red-blooded man on the planet would tell you that. But now, the sight of her repulsed me. And to have her hands wrapped around my waist? It made me even more nauseous than I already was.
She grinned up at me as I contemplated the exact thing I wanted to say to make her leave. It was a sexy little smile. One that had been so damned hard to resist during our courtship. One of her arms unwrapped itself from my back and she slid her hand down, against the front of my athletic shorts. “It’ll be my way of apologizing to you, Danny,” she whispered seductively.
I quirked a brow and glanced up at the front desk. Despite the steady line of new arrivals, all the uniformed girls kept one eye trained on me. I was sure they all saw Pam’s hand now cupping my junk right there in the lobby. One girl in particular didn’t seem to appreciate the scene we were making.
Miss Maclynn Rush, aka, Mack.
She shot me the stink eye. Now not only was Pam pissing me off, she was cramping my style.
Furious, I swatted Pam’s hand away, then reached down and grabbed her by both arms. I hunched over slightly, so I could look her directly in the eyes. With her nose less than an inch from my nose, I think she expected me to plant a kiss on her. But in a calm, rational, even voice, I said, “Not if you were the last woman on earth, Pam.” I let go of her and took a step back.
Her mouth hung open, her eyes pinched together and her brow creased. It was as if she couldn’t believe her sexual advance had been thwarted.
“Call the airline, get your ticket changed to tomorrow’s nine o’clock flight. First thing in the morning, I’ll send the hotel shuttle to your room to drive you to the airport.”
With that, I strode away. The adrenaline, mixed with the hangover, mixed with the physical reaction of hating Pamela to my core, gave me the sudden, immediate urge to vomit. I headed for the men’s room and promptly purged the contents of my stomach.
4
The lobby’s glass doors slid open, and a blast of humid island air reached out and embraced me in a warm, much-needed bear hug. I moved my knock-off Ray-Bans from the brim of my fedora to my eyes and stood in the doorway for a split second, drawing in a deep breath and trying to squash down the emotions that had me so on edge.
An airport shuttle full of new guests pulled up beneath the porte cochere. The sight of the guests inside the makeshift shuttle bus made me crack a smile for the first time since laying eyes on Pam. The vehicle was less shuttle bus and more flatbed truck with bench seats welded onto the back and a makeshift aluminum frame holding up a corrugated roof panel to block the sun. I’d been surprised when that had been the ride that picked me up at the airport on my arrival. But after having been on Paradise Isle for several weeks, I now viewed the shuttle as a quaint introduction to a simplistic island, and I realized that I wouldn’t have wanted to be greeted any other way.
All around me, palm trees swayed against the tropical breeze, airport shuttles, cabs, and resort cars zipped around the circle driveway, and guests in bathing suits and flip-flops strolled the property. Several of the resort valets nodded and smiled at me as I walked around the shuttle bus.
“Good morning, Mr. Drunk,” said a tall gap-toothed man with short dreads and broad shoulders. He wore a concierge’s uniform and waved as I passed his assigned outdoor station.
“Hey, Desi. Beautiful day.”
“It is always a beautiful day in Paradise, Mr. Drunk,” he said in a clipped accent, following up his words with a hearty laugh.
I stopped next to him and pulled a fifty out of my wallet. I slapped it into his hand. “Hey, Des, I need a personal favor.”
“Anything for you, Mr. Drunk.”
“There’s a woman staying here. I’m not sure what her room number is, but I’m sure Mari can hook you up. She needs a ride to the airport first thing in the morning. Can you handle that for me?”
Desi’s eyes widened as a slow, knowing smile crept across his face. “Ahh, the woman that was looking for you earlier?”
I sighed. “Yes. Her.”
“She said she was your fiancée,” he added. “I did not know you were going to be married, Mr. Drunk.”
“I’m not going to be married, Desi. We broke up. So, listen, can you please just make sure to get her room number from Mari and then send someone to pick her up in time for the nine a.m. flight, and have them make sure she gets on a plane?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Ask Mari to leave a message for her so she knows what time the car is coming. Her name is Pam Calcara.”
Through his perpetual smile, Desi gave me a stiff little bow. “Yes, Mr. Drunk. No worries. I shall handle it.”
I clapped him on the back. Desi was a good man. I knew if I asked him to handle something, he’d make sure it got done. “Thanks, Des. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, Mr. Drunk. Enjoy your day.”
“You too.”
On the other side of the driveway, I noticed
Al Becker at the wheel of a sleek black golf cart. Al was a youthful eighty-seven-year-old retired Case IH implement dealer from Nebraska who, along with his wife, Evelyn, had recently moved to Paradise Isle to live full-time. I’d met Al on my first day on the island. Not only had we become friends, but we’d become known as a bit of an odd couple around the resort.
Al was a small man that had gotten smaller over the years and now he barely measured in at five feet tall. Over a white tank top, he wore a blue short-sleeved button-down shirt patterned with pink and green hula girls. His thin bird-like legs poked out of a pair of khaki shorts, his white socks pulled clear up to his knobby knees, and he wore white New Balance sneakers at all times, even on the beach. For the most part, Al was bald, but he kept tufts of white hair behind his ears, just to prove he could still grow hair, I guessed. One might think he sounded ridiculous, but he tended to blend into the rest of the geriatrics that lived full-time at the Caribbean resort.
Looking at him now, hunched over the steering wheel of the oversized six-seater Black Panther golf cart, he looked especially tiny. The golf cart was a recent purchase, and he’d already told me twice that he’d sprung for the six-seater because he was going to have to haul my ass around now that I was officially living on the island too. I knew that in Al speak, that meant that I was now part of the family. I didn’t feel too guilty. The guy was loaded and lived full-time on a Caribbean resort—what else did he have to spend his money on?
Approaching the cart, I gave Al a sideways glance. He was quiet, but the sun reflected off his glasses, so I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or deep in thought. Considering that he tended to nod off without much effort on his part, I had to assume that it was the former. I put a hand on the side rail and gave the cart a shake. The jiggling roused him.
Drunk on a Boat Page 2
