“You’re saying we should live in this penthouse, and Miami should move to, hell, Miami?”
“I know it’s going to be more confusing for him than it should be, but yes. And I’m not just saying you should do it, I’m demanding it. It’s imperative you do it.”
Penny gulped down her bubbles and handed me the empty glass. Then, she pulled out a swipe card and a key from her bag and handed them to Danielle.
“I can do no more here,” Penny said. “There’s no food, but there’s a bed in one of the bedrooms. The other bed is only a frame, there just for show, so choose wisely. There’s a restaurant in the club at the north end. Stay the night, test it out. If you like, I’ll have the stagers come tomorrow and move the staging furniture out and you can get your stuff in. The rental contract is on the kitchen counter. Read it, sign it, get it back to me.”
Penny looked at each of us. “Okay?”
She kissed Danielle on the cheek and then did the same to me. Then, without a further word from any of us, she walked out.
It took a long time for either of us to speak. For a while, we just stood there looking at each other, as if we had been hit by some kind of real-estate tsunami. Then I stepped over to the edge, and together we looked out at the lights of Coral Gables twinkling in the twilight.
Eventually, Danielle held up her empty glass, and I went inside to the ice bucket for refills, and then returned to the view. We could practically see all the way across the Everglades. We sipped our drinks in silence, but I was fairly certain that Danielle’s mind was spinning as much as mine.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“Lots of white noise.”
“Do you think this could work?”
I shrugged. For a moment I thought about all the reasons it couldn’t: I lived on Singer Island; I worked in West Palm Beach; I had staff to worry about and clients to keep. Longboard’s felt a million miles away from Miami. And then I thought about what Penny had said at The Breakers, and what I had repeated to Keisha, and how rare it was that I ever followed my own brilliant advice, even if it was secondhand. But what I had told Keisha stuck in me like a burr. She was looking for reasons why she couldn’t, not ways that she could. And if it was worth doing, it was worth finding every possible way how.
And it was worth doing. I’d never been surer of anything.
I handed Danielle my glass and went inside, and I dragged two lounge chairs out onto the balcony. It wasn’t a wide balcony and it was a tight squeeze, but I made it work. We both sat down as the sun sank into the horizon, sending sharp bursts of orange across the city. Looking through the balusters made me feel a bit like an Alcatraz inmate staring through the bars at the lights of San Francisco, but the company was vastly superior.
Danielle passed me my bubbles and then put her hand on the arm of her chair. I put my hand on top of hers.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah, what?”
“I think we can make it work.”
She glanced at me and gave me that half smile. I tipped my glass in her direction.
“Are you ready for Act II?”
If You Enjoyed This Book
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Constance Renfrow as ever, for polishing my words into coherent sentences.
Thanks to Nancy, Julie, Wayne, Char, Bob, Michael and Colin for their input and advice.
All errors are mine, even that night in 1995 in London when I declined to do karaoke. It’s the ones we don’t sing that stick with us.
Also by AJ Stewart
Miami Jones series
Stiff Arm Steal
Offside Trap
High Lie
Dead Fast
Crash Tack
Deep Rough
King Tide
No Right Turn
Cruise Control
Red Shirt
Three Strikes *
John Flynn series
The Compound *
The Final Tour
Burned Bridges
One for One
Lenny & Lucas series
Temple of Gold
* The Compound and Three Strikes are only available to members of AJ Stewart’s readers’ crew. Visit ajstewartbooks.com/reader to join.
About the Author
A.J. Stewart is the USA Today bestselling author of the Miami Jones series, the John Flynn thriller series, and the Lenny & Lucas Adventure series.
He has lived and worked in Australia, Japan, UK, Norway, and South Africa, as well as San Francisco, Connecticut and of course Florida. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his two favorite people, his wife and son.
AJ is working on a screenplay that he never plans to produce, but it gives him something to talk about at parties in LA.
You can find AJ online at
www.ajstewartbooks.com
Jacaranda Drive Publishing
Los Angeles, California
www.jacarandadrive.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover artwork by Streetlight Graphics
ISBN-10: 1-945741-19-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-945741-19-7
Copyright © 2019 by Jacaranda Drive
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
If You Enjoyed This Book
Acknowledgments
Also by AJ Stewart
About the Author
Half Court Press Page 27
