Best Beach Ever

by Wendy Wax

  “I wouldn’t think there are a lot of places that could offer what Disney could.”

  “You would be right about that.”

  “We’re not shooting at Legoland are we?” Kyra asked. It was the only theme park she’d seen signs for in the area.

  “No. Even if it could be made to work for the script, they apparently have a brand to protect from us, too.” Anger and puzzlement flickered across his too-handsome face, battling for dominance.

  For a brief shining moment Kyra thought they were about to be set free. That her worry and trepidation had been for nothing. That she and Dustin could simply turn around and go home. Or at least go to the Sunshine. It would be tough living in the cottage while Troy made himself at home in Bella Flora, but even that would be preferable to what lay ahead here. “So, you’re . . . rethinking the film? And you don’t need us here?” she asked hopefully.

  His brown eyes lost their warmth, turning decidedly un-bedroom-like. “I knew you didn’t want Dustin to do this film. And you’ve made it clear you don’t want to be here with him. But I didn’t realize how happy you’d be to see us smacked around this way.” His features hardened. “If I’d given up every time someone said no to me, I’d still be working in my family’s rug business.” Which was, incredibly, where he’d first been discovered.

  Kyra seriously doubted that he or Tonja had heard the word “no” even a handful of times in recent memory, but she refrained from saying so. “We’re shooting here in Winter Haven then?”

  “Yes. It turns out that when Legoland took over what used to be Cypress Gardens, they only used a portion of the old attraction’s acreage. They’ve leased us everything that’s left including the old rides and props and signage. The construction crew has been working twenty-four-seven to turn it into the theme park the screenplay calls for. And we’re repurposing an old fruit processing plant into a soundstage for the interiors.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “It is, but we’ll have enough done to start shooting by the end of the week. And there’s a lot we can do in the meantime. Including getting Dustin acclimated and comfortable with everyone.”

  She did not ask who “everyone” was, but the knot in her stomach tightened.

  “The crew is all set and ready to go. We’re just waiting on a few more cast members to arrive this afternoon.”

  She watched his face as he spoke, noting the signs of stress and the barely leashed tension that emanated from him. It was a far cry from his usual easygoing personality, but then he’d always had others pampering him and the most he’d been responsible for was his own performance.

  “You’ll have the rest of the day to get settled in.” Daniel lifted the back of the Jeep and pulled out their suitcases. Kyra retrieved her video gear and called Dustin over to carry the bag of toys he’d packed. Daniel led them up the front steps and inside. When he delivered her bag to the master bedroom and Dustin’s to the smaller bedroom beside it, he pointed out each feature and amenity.

  “This is lovely,” she conceded, taking in the main living area with its cozy chenille sectional, the club chairs with ottomans that faced the fieldstone fireplace. Near the open kitchen, which was beautifully appointed and stuffed with high-end appliances her mother would have recognized and appreciated, a maple dining table sat beneath the bank of windows that overlooked the lake.

  “The refrigerator is fully stocked and there’s a concierge on call twenty-four-seven in case you’d like anything delivered. The guard gate is also manned around the clock and the guards are highly trained. No one who isn’t authorized will be setting foot inside this compound while we’re here.”

  Her smile was unintentional.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing. The grounds are beautiful, and if the whole cast is staying here, security will be important.” Dustin went back into his new bedroom to play with toys. Her lips tipped up again.

  “And?”

  “And . . . I’m just picturing the tiny, white-haired woman who let us in holding off a determined group of paparazzi or a stalker of some kind, though those are sort of the same thing,” Kyra said. “I mean, she couldn’t have been lovelier or more efficient, but she wasn’t particularly intimidating.”

  Daniel tsk-tsked. Which wasn’t something you heard every day. “First of all, there’s a panic button and other technical devices in the guard gate that automatically summon backup in an emergency situation. In fact, there are several in each cottage that I’ll show you. So size and youth aren’t really necessary attributes.”

  “Right. Of course. I know that. It’s just . . .”

  “And although your feminism is now in question, you should know that that guard’s name is Joan McCreary and she is one of the most revered stuntwomen of all time. She did more than thirty films, stunt doubled for virtually every female megastar for decades, and performed stunts well into her seventies. Hell, she was the first woman inducted into the Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.” He wagged a finger at Kyra as he continued. “She’s also an expert marksman and has a third-degree black belt in karate. Frankly, I’m a little afraid of her.” He flashed a smile and suddenly there was the Daniel Deranian she’d first fallen for, gorgeous yet human with a wicked and often self-deprecating sense of humor. “She doesn’t take an ounce of shit from anyone.”

  “Good to hear,” Kyra replied. “I’ll definitely rest easier knowing that Nigel and his cohorts won’t be talking their way past her. Although I’d like to be somewhere nearby with my video camera if they try.”

  His smile dimmed. “The only time you’ll encounter a paparazzo or a stranger of any kind is if we decide you’re going to. You realize that is going to happen.”

  She nodded, no longer remotely tempted to smile.

  “Also, this will be a closed set so there will be no unauthorized video shot.”

  “You’re telling me I can’t shoot video of my own child?” Kyra asked.

  “Yep.”

  She wasn’t sure which hat he was wearing when he said this, but she had a very strong urge to try to knock it off.

  “Right. So . . . ,” he continued. “There’s a rehearsal and shooting schedule in that envelope on the counter. A revised script will be delivered to you shortly.”

  She nodded, unwilling to tell him just how much Dustin had been looking forward to being in the film. “He really wants to please you, you know.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful with him, Kyra. I hope you believe that.” For the first time since they’d arrived he looked at her as he so often had, with a mixture of sincerity and appreciation that had always cut through her defenses. No longer the producer/director under duress who was juggling too many hats and had too much riding on the film they were about to shoot. A flicker of what she recognized as sexual interest lit his eyes, and she felt an automatic and unwelcome tingle of awareness. An awareness she thought she’d finally managed to stamp out.

  “Tonight at six thirty the whole cast is invited to a cookout at our place. It’s the one on the other side of the lake.”

  Kyra was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. She’d expected to at least have the rest of the day before she had to confront Tonja Kay and the rest of their family. “I thought we’d just take it easy and have an early night. I think it would be best for Dustin to get a good night’s sleep before his first call tomorrow.”

  “The cookout isn’t optional,” Daniel said. “It’s important for everyone to get acquainted and begin to get comfortable with one another before we start shooting. It won’t be a late night.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’ll be okay, Kyra. I promise.” He was standing too close and his tone felt far too intimate. “Everyone’s going to be on their best behavior. And if anyone’s not, I’ll take care of them.”

  Dustin raced back into the living room already looking completely
at ease. “I have a big boy bed all myself. And there’s a bed for Max right next to it! And a cage! What goes in that?”

  “I wasn’t sure if you were crate training Max or not,” Daniel said. “There’s a dog walker available and other services, too.”

  “You really thought of everything didn’t you?” she said, taking a step back.

  “Our goal is to make everyone comfortable,” he replied, lifting Dustin and hugging him good-bye.

  His easy use of “our” and “we” conjured unwelcome images of Daniel and Tonja sitting around discussing which cottage to give them and even what amenities it should include, right down to the crate for Max. A reminder not to be a fool.

  “Just try to relax,” he said as he prepared to leave. “Everything will be fine.” As he let himself out the front door, she couldn’t help wondering whether he was trying to reassure her or himself.

  Nine

  As she drove across the state, Maddie bellowed out the lyrics to Will’s songs as if she were in the shower. Her heart sped up when she hit Florida City. On the two-lane eighteen-mile ribbon of asphalt that locals called the stretch, the mountains of debris Hurricane Irma had left in her wake were gone. Fences and billboards were back up. Here, the real world began to dissolve. Residents claimed that heart rates slowed and stress levels dropped during this drive, but the closer she got to Mermaid Point, the faster her heart beat and the more heightened her senses became.

  At the top of the Jewfish Creek Bridge, sun glinted off the impossibly turquoise water that flanked her on both sides, the Atlantic Ocean on her left, Florida Bay on her right. A cool salt breeze rifled Maddie’s hair, and her pulse kicked up another notch as she wound south toward Upper Matecumbe, the third of Islamorada’s four keys. She thought of all the family car trips she and Steve had taken with the kids over the years and their eagerness to get where they were going, and felt that same sweet, impatient anticipation. Are we there yet?

  There were homes and businesses and even landmarks that hadn’t survived Irma, but the residents of the Keys were a hearty bunch. Those with the resources to had hung on. Many were still rebuilding. She whizzed by Whale Harbor Marina and the Lorelei, and the landmarks became personal, forever tied to William. At mile marker 79 she slowed to turn into the parking lot of Bud n’ Mary’s Marina, remembering the trepidation of their arrival two years ago when they’d had no idea which “high-profile individual’s” home they’d been sent to renovate or how much that individual wouldn’t want them there. And even less an idea of just how much that individual would affect her personally.

  She spotted Will at the same moment he looked up, and her heart lifted. She waved as he detached himself from the group of anglers and guides he’d been talking with. Moments later she was out of the van and in Will’s arms.

  “I’ve missed you, Maddie-fan,” he murmured after the first bone-melting kiss. “Nothing’s quite the same without you.”

  “I know the feeling.” She breathed in his heady scent of sun and salt water and looked up into the chiseled face that attested to the hard living he’d done and the excesses he’d known. “But I was just thinking how much nicer this arrival feels than the first one did.”

  He chuckled. “I might have been a little pissed off that Thomas had brought in the cast and crew of a reality TV show to turn the island I was planning to hide out on into a B and B.”

  “A little pissed off?” She stepped back. He’d been fresh out of rehab the day they’d arrived, his once meteoric career in shambles, emotionally unable to make music, his island recording studio padlocked. “You were an ogre!”

  “I notice you’re not stammering this time,” he teased, retrieving her suitcase and backpack and slinging the soft-sided cooler over one shoulder.

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to meet the rock god whose poster used to hang on my bedroom wall. Or have a camera crew recording it,” she said as she locked the van. “Now I only stammer on the inside.” Which was where she entertained the doubts and fears that arose whenever she thought about just how many younger, firmer, more beautiful women Will could have, especially now that he was once again topping the charts.

  He nodded easily to the denizens of the docks as they passed, lowered her luggage into the open skiff, then handed her in. Across a slice of sparkling blue ocean, Mermaid Point beckoned.

  Within minutes they were rounding the northern mangrove-shrouded side of the island. A line of tall, skinny palms arrowed toward a half-moon of white sand beach bisected by a sphere-shaped tidal pool where seagulls and other small birds chased after food on matchstick legs. From here she could see bits and pieces of the main house’s pyramid-shaped roof, glints of glass decking that hung off the ocean side of the building. An open-air pavilion overlooked the beach and pool where Will swam the laps that were often a substitute for the alcohol and other substances to which he’d once been addicted.

  As they rounded the southeastern edge of the island, Will nodded to the empty hammock stretched between two palms, and his lips tipped up into a smile. “It’s about time we got to watch another sunset wrapped up together and swaying in the breeze.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, remembering the first weekend they’d found themselves alone on Mermaid Point and all the sunsets that had followed.

  A cock-a-doodle-do rent the air, and a rooster strutted out into the clearing. A gaggle of chickens clucked along behind him. “Oh, my gosh, there’s Romeo! He’s clearly still time challenged, but his harem’s gotten even bigger since the last time I was here.”

  “Yes, and it looks like he’s brought every one of them out to greet you.”

  Romeo and his throng of admirers had greeted them the day they arrived, descendants of early birds brought to the Keys for illegal cockfights and passed off as pets when the feds showed up to investigate.

  Will cut the engine so that the skiff glided up to the long dock that fronted the boathouse and its upstairs guest suites, all of them freshly painted a bright tropical green with white trim. Seconds later he was out of the boat and cleating it. She looked up and saw her wild-haired smiling self reflected in his mirrored sunglasses as he offered her a hand up. The warmth in his answering smile sent a tingle of awareness up her spine. When he leaned down to kiss her, she felt an internal tug that had her melting into him again.

  “Hey, get a room!” Hudson Power’s voice floated down from the balcony of the closest guest suite.

  “That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Will whispered against her ear before turning and looking up at his longtime friend and fishing guide. “Keep your shirt on!”

  “I will if you will!” Hud shouted back. “Welcome back, Maddie! I don’t know what you see in that guy, but it’s good to have you back.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Will retrieved her bags and pulled Maddie close. “It’s time to stop crushing on my girl, Hud, and find one of your own!” It was Hud who had retrieved them from Bud n’ Mary’s that first fateful day and Hud who’d taught her how to handle a boat.

  Maddie laughed and waved. “I’m making egg soufflés in the morning! One of them has your name on it!”

  Will led her onto a shaded path and toward the main house where they’d quit Do Over and where Will had managed to thwart the network’s plans to turn his newly renovated private refuge into a B and B, turning it instead into a sober living facility, one he’d named for the younger brother and bandmate who’d lost his life to the excesses that had almost claimed William.

  Near the house they passed a group of men sitting under the shade of a palm tree. Not far away a tai chi class was under way. “Looks like you’re full up,” she said to Will as they waved and called greetings.

  “Yeah. We were able to fit two more living spaces into the garage-turned-guest-house while it was being repaired after the hurricane and we added an open mic night. I kind of hate to be gone on tour for so long.”

 
She wrapped her arm around his waist and laid her head briefly on his broad shoulder. He had come so far and achieved so much. It was his records and sold-out tours that allowed him to keep the facility running and had enabled him to bring a construction crew and building materials from outside Florida post-Irma.

  After months of work, the house once again welcomed and soothed just as it had been designed to. Plank floors and acid-washed pecky cypress walls and ceilings lightened the space. The accordion glass doors that stretched across the ocean side of the great room with its communal kitchen and living and dining room had been folded open to let the sunlight and ocean breeze inside.

  That sense of peace evaporated when Will’s assistant Lori Blair raced out of the downstairs office like a very young and very blond animal shot out of its cage. “Hello, Maddie!” She offered a quick but sincere hug then turned to Will. “Thank goodness you’re here. Aaron called,” she said. Aaron Mann was Will’s producer at Aquarian Records. “There’s some problem with the last track on the album that he needs to talk to you about. He wants you to go into the studio and recut it. And the tour operator wants to add another concert in Houston, the first one sold out in like fifteen minutes, and . . .” She raised a phone to her ear. “I’ll get him on the line right now and . . .”

  Will reached for the phone. She tried to tuck it out of reach, but he took it gently like a parent taking a dangerous toy from a toddler, and turned it off. “No. We’re not going to talk to Aaron now.”

  “But . . . ,” Lori began.

  “No, no buts,” Will said quietly. “And no more work today.”

  “Oh, no!” She shook her head of short spiky hair, her wide, mobile mouth already forming another protest.

  Maddie winced at the panic that filled the girl’s huge hazel eyes.

  “I promised Aaron that as soon as you got back I’d . . .”