The House on Mermaid Point

by Wendy Wax

  His mouth was still open in shock when she slammed the car door shut and walked away.

  Chapter Forty-two

  When Maddie arrived at the Mermaid Point dock, the boathouse and the upstairs suites were already a bright tropical green with white trim. She’d seen Will’s skiff in the boathouse cradle and immediately braced for the moment she might run into him. She dropped her suitcase off on the houseboat, passed the newly refinished pool and palm-tree-edged deck, amazed at how much had been accomplished on the island in her absence.

  Avery walked her through the main house like a proud mother showing off an especially talented child, stopping every minute or two to share a story or give an explanation. In the kitchen Roberto hung the upper cabinets while Fred Strahlendorf, back with a shiny new pencil protector, connected the new appliances. With the new glass composite countertops completed, a plumbing crew set toilets, hooked up faucets, and put in showerheads in the four guest suites. “They’ll finish all the bathrooms today then come back to hook up the dishwasher and kitchen sink once the zinc countertops go in. The refrigerator and icemaker under the stairs are operational as of about ten minutes ago,” Avery explained.

  Nicole and Deirdre stood on tall ladders in front of the fireplace pressing shells, rocks, and chunks of barnacles and coral into the still-soft concrete that ran up the wall to the ceiling.

  “Wow, that looks great!” Maddie moved closer to get a better look.

  “Thanks.” Deirdre smiled. “Fortunately our technique seems to be improving. We did a smaller version in the garage guesthouse and found out the hard way that it works a lot better if you work your way up in sections.”

  Maddie turned slowly, trying to take in the whole space. The plank floors shone under a light gloss of polyurethane. The acid-washed pecky cypress lightened the entire space, and the glass accordion doors that now stretched across the ocean side of the house maximized the view and allowed the sunshine to stream through unchecked.

  “You just fold them open and push them to the wall when the weather’s good, and voila—it’s all outdoor space,” Avery enthused. “Just wait ’til you see how they open up the master suite.”

  Maddie smiled gamely, still braced for the first encounter with Will. Though surely whatever William’s reaction might be to her, it was hard to imagine anyone could have a complaint with the renovation. The kitchen cabinetry was clean lined and the new commercial appliances fit perfectly with the Wolf range’s huge stainless steel hood. A railing had been run down the new stair and a collection of wooden boat paddles of various shapes, sizes, and colors stood nearby. Avery held one up to demonstrate how they’d be screwed in to serve as spindles.

  “Those are going to look fabulous,” Maddie said. “Although I was kind of hoping never to see one again after we had to paddle back that morning.”

  “Well, you don’t want to be up a creek without one,” Nicole joined in from the other side of the room.

  “Or on a flat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at low tide,” Avery added.

  “Everything looks so great. I’m sorry to have left you shorthanded.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Avery rearranged the paddles against the wall. “It’s okay. I told Lisa Hogan that we were down a worker and she could either provide extra money for additional crew, push back our deadline until after Labor Day, or let me know which buildings she wanted to leave unfinished. We got an extra painter.” She laughed. “But you’re back just in time to help us finish the interior cut-in work tomorrow and the next day. We’ll move outside to do the same after that.”

  “Avery was just waiting for it to get as hot as possible before we moved outside.” Nicole pressed a large rock into the concrete and held it there.

  “Hey, there’s no getting around the heat,” Avery replied. “We’re lucky there’s still no rain on the horizon—we just have to finish the exterior painting, get the furnishings and accessories barged in and set up, and help get the landscaping finished. Then it can rain all it wants as far as I’m concerned.”

  Maddie fell asleep early that night. It might have had something to do with being back on the gently rocking houseboat, or the sunset toasts with the people who seemed to best understand her and who gleefully trashed Steve and his cruel barbs as soon as Kyra went below to put Dustin to bed. Or it could have been all that bracing and unbracing each time she thought she was about to run into William Hightower. She fell asleep trying to convince herself that she wasn’t disappointed that she hadn’t even laid eyes on him.

  • • •

  Romeo crowed just after dawn the next morning. Maddie pulled on clothes then made a pot of coffee. She was taking her first sips when Avery appeared, sniffing her way toward the coffee like a hound on the scent. Together they carried their mugs up on deck to watch the sunrise.

  Maddie could hear the sounds of swimming from the pool. Part of her ambivalent self wanted to run inside so as not to risk seeing Will; the other wanted to head right over there so she could watch him emerge from the pool in all his bronzed, bare-chested glory. She did neither.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on with Romeo.” Avery nodded to the clearing where the rooster and his harem pecked at the ground. “Every day you were gone he got closer and closer to crowing at dawn. By the time we’re ready to leave he’ll probably be right on the money.” She smiled fondly at the fowl. “I’m going to kind of miss him and the girls.”

  Maddie kept an eye on the sun and the strutting rooster and his adoring entourage, but she was picturing the flash of William Hightower’s arms cutting through the water, the wake produced by his strong flutter kick. A fish jumped nearby and she looked up to see Troy filming them from the deck of the other houseboat. There was no sign yet that Roberto was stirring.

  Maddie closed her eyes and raised her face up to the still-gentle morning sun, but her ears pricked at each new sound from the pool.

  “He was kind of moping around while you were gone,” Avery said. “I think he might have missed you.”

  “Romeo?” Maddie asked.

  “No, Will.”

  “I doubt it.” Maddie sighed, took a sip of her coffee. “It was just sort of something that happened. I . . . can’t say I had any expectations. But I wasn’t really prepared to be blown off so quickly or completely. And it did get kind of ugly when he found me cleaning up the studio.”

  Avery drew her knees up to her chest and sipped her coffee as the sun inched up the sky. “I’m sure you can sleep with him again anytime you want to, Maddie. But I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Then you might want to listen to him.”

  “Probably. But I can’t help noticing that listening isn’t exactly a two-way street for him.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice; yearning for William Hightower’s attention was kind of like wishing that the sun would shine only on her.

  “He may be famous but he’s still a guy.” Avery’s arms were wrapped around her legs. “Listening to the woman you dragged back to your cave in order to propagate the human race apparently didn’t rank all that high on the evolutionary scale.” She held the cup with both hands. “I haven’t been all that successful with men. Sometimes I think Chase is only still around because he’s too stubborn to give up. But I’d rather have someone be honest with me even if it hurt than tell me things that aren’t true just because it’s what I want to hear.”

  The sun was appreciably higher in the sky by the time Maddie and Kyra headed over to the main house with Dustin in tow. Avery and Deirdre were in the midst of screwing the paddles into place and Kyra unstrapped her video camera to shoot them at it, mirror images with their blond heads bent toward each other, their capable hands holding and affixing the unique spindles. “Where did you find those?”

  “Oh, here and there.” Deirdre rubbed her ey
es and then the back of her neck. “I love being able to reclaim and repurpose things. It’s kind of my way of being eco-friendly.” She reached for an open bottle of aspirin and downed several with a long sip from a bottle of water.

  Dustin pulled a toy screwdriver from his tool belt and went over to “help.” All of them pulled out their camera phones to snap pictures.

  “Ready to head upstairs and get started on the painting?” Maddie asked.

  “I’m going to grab a few more shots down here. Do you mind taking him up with you, Mom? I’ll be right there.”

  “Up-tairs, Geema!” Dustin grabbed Maddie’s hand and climbed the new stairs beside her with his screwdriver at the ready.

  They were on the upper landing about to make the turn to the new front suites when Dustin dropped her hand. The master bedroom door was only open a crack but Dustin pushed it open with a gleeful “Billyum!” and raced inside.

  Maddie hesitated only briefly. Fear that the accordion glass might be open forced her through the door, prepared to look away if William was . . . indecent . . . or . . . whatever. The bedroom was empty and the accordion glass was, fortunately, closed but the changes that had taken place while she was gone were impressive. The new glass wall made the already large space feel even more a part of the natural setting. The walls were now a toasty beige; the wood trim had been stained a warm coffee color. The bed hadn’t been made yet but a two-cup coffeemaker was in the midst of a brew cycle on the counter of the new kitchenette. Maddie’s idea for a personal haven for Will had come to fruition.

  She heard a muffled squeal and glanced into the closet. Dustin had recently discovered hide-and-seek and she hoped to hell he wasn’t hiding behind Will’s clothes, which had been rehung in the newly painted closet. That was the last place she wanted to run into him—with or without his underwear in her hands. “Dustin! Come here right now!”

  She pulled aside shirts and jeans—whoever had rehung his things hadn’t cared about grouping color or type. Stepping out of the closet she contemplated the closed bathroom door: the only place left to look. Damn it. She’d lifted her hand to knock when the door flew open. William Hightower stood there bare-chested, clad only in blue jeans, his dark hair wet. Her grandson was wrapped around one leg. “I think you lost someone.”

  He didn’t sound angry, but he didn’t sound particularly glad to see her, either.

  “Sorry.” She reached down to retrieve Dustin and practically shoved her face in William’s abdomen in the process. She straightened quickly and may have inhaled a little more sharply than was required; it was a heady scent of sunshine and soap and . . . well, the sex part was most likely in her mind. “We were just headed over to the upstairs suites to, um, finish painting.” She propped Dustin on her hip while jerking her head toward the front of the house in a move that undoubtedly made her resemble one of Romeo’s female companions.

  “That’s good.”

  She blinked and waited for more but that was it. No question about how her trip had gone, no comment on it being nice to see her back. Not even a snide remark about having caught her molesting his studio the day she’d left.

  “Maddie?”

  She realized her eyes had gotten kind of tangled up in his chest hair and she yanked them up to his face, where she noticed an odd glint in his eyes. She was too nervous to determine if it was irritation or amusement. She suspected it might be both. “You all right?” His tone was the polite one anyone would use with someone they’d run into unexpectedly when they were on their way to something more important. If the man had in fact come anywhere close to “moping” as Avery had indicated, he was clearly over it now.

  “Mom?” Kyra’s voice sounded behind her. “Are you in there?”

  “Coming!” She started to turn but Kyra had already come up behind her. Between them they’d pretty much blocked off any means of escape.

  “Hi, Will.” Kyra reached to take Dustin from Maddie. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” He nodded and they stood and stared at one another for a long, uncomfortable moment.

  “Right.” Maddie swallowed. “So. I guess we’d better get to work.” She managed to turn and kind of push Kyra along in front of her. She could feel William behind her bringing up the rear. And so although she did her best not to look at the bed or anything else that might feel remotely personal, she heard herself saying, “The view is unbelievable through the accordion glass. I bet you can lie in bed and . . .” Heat rushed up her cheeks and she was ridiculously grateful that he couldn’t see her face. “Well, anyway, everything looks great. You must be happy with how things have turned out!”

  They were in the doorway and almost into the hall when he grunted what she guessed was his agreement. She turned and saw his eyebrow go up. “Did you say something?”

  “Um . . . no.”

  “So the grunt and the eyebrow. That wasn’t actually an attempt to pass judgment or communicate?”

  “Not intentionally, no.” His expression had turned . . . well, she couldn’t actually read that expression any more than she seemed able to understand the thoughts and emotions currently zinging through her.

  She reached in, grasped the doorknob, and began to pull his door closed. “I just wanted to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood anything.”

  She drew a deep, embarrassed breath as soon as the door clicked shut. She dug the heel of her hand into her forehead as she followed Kyra into the first guest suite.

  “That was weird.” Kyra sat Dustin in the center of the room with a book and his favorite toy car.

  Maddie just stood there replaying her moronic behavior in her head as Kyra poured some of the toasty beige wall paint into a tray for Maddie and handed her a paintbrush. She imagined Will standing in front of his closed bedroom door wondering what the hell had just happened. “What did I just do? And why does he look so attractive even when he’s being a jerk?”

  “Now there’s a question I’d like to see answered.” Kyra began cutting in on the other end of Maddie’s wall. “It doesn’t help when they have an unfair supply of charisma and are used to getting any woman they want.”

  “That’s for sure.” Maddie tried to focus on applying paint to the wall.

  “It’s like me and he-who-shall-remain-nameless.” Kyra nodded toward Dustin, who was happily flipping through the pages of his fabric book. “I was so sure I could resist him. I even took a room next door just so I’d have somewhere to go in case I felt myself weakening. And then, I don’t know, all that charisma and testosterone focused on you, a few fireworks, and poof!” She sighed and shook her head.

  Maddie almost laughed. “Maybe the women in our family have a hereditary weakness for fireworks. Or maybe we’re just turned on by loud noises, bright colors, and . . . larger-than-life personalities.”

  “All I know is Daniel acted as if it was just this spontaneous thing that happened because of the magic of the night. It was only afterward when I was lying there next to him that I thought, ‘Who brings condoms for a weekend with his son?’ That’s when I realized he’d probably planned it all along.” She slapped the brush against the wall and then pulled the drop cloth over to try to catch the drips. “Or maybe he’s just always prepared. Kind of like a Boy Scout?” She looked over at Maddie. “Is there a badge for that? You know, condom preparedness? Or sexual safety?”

  Maddie felt her lips tip up in a smile. “Andrew was a Boy Scout and I’m pretty sure neither of those were in the handbook.”

  Kyra snorted. “Somebody needs to tell those Scouts to stick to pitching tents and lighting campfires and . . . walking old ladies across the street.”

  “And while they’re at it maybe someone could come up with a badge for teaching certain men how to keep their pants zipped.” It was Maddie’s turn to snort.

  Laughter didn’t contribute a whole lot to a paint job, but it did lighten the hurt and embarrassment just a l
ittle. As Maddie settled into her brushstrokes she reminded herself that sleeping with William Hightower was just a surprising blip on her radar screen. In a matter of weeks they’d be leaving Mermaid Point and moving on with their lives. In a couple of months William Hightower would be no more than a fond and miraculous memory. And he would have already forgotten her name.

  Chapter Forty-three

  As far as Nicole was concerned the only thing worse than painting the exterior of a building was painting it at the end of August. In the Keys. Only twenty-four degrees from the equator.

  She sat on a section of scaffolding on the southern wall of William Hightower’s master suite just beneath the roofline. A folded towel was beneath her to eliminate direct contact with the hot metal. A paint tray sat between her and Maddie. Avery was one section over. All of them wore paint-spattered hats and protective clothing. Each of them was caked with dirt and grime and sweating profusely. Nicole stopped cutting in around the window to swipe her eyes with the back of one sleeve. The only thing she didn’t hate at the moment was the view.

  It was a gorgeous summer day with a bright blue sky and pulled white clouds. Sunlight glittered on the turquoise water. Boats cut across it, leaving white-plumed wakes behind them. The tide was so low that she could see the one-time causeway that stretched out to U.S. 1. For the first time she noticed what looked like an old guard gate at the end of it.

  “When we leave here I’m going to do my best to erase these last five days from my mind.” Nicole continued to survey the island. Near the docks and retaining wall, barges of furniture, accessories, and everything else Deirdre had bought, begged, or possibly stolen had arrived and were being off-loaded. On the western edge of the island she spied the flash of machetes through overgrown bush, the hauling away of dead limbs as the Marathon Garden Club worked to tame but not quash Mermaid Point’s tropical splendor.