There's Always a Catch: Christmas Key Book One

by Stephanie Taylor

  “Come on, Hol,” Jake pleads, pulling her closer. His lips are just inches away from hers. “Let me take you home,” he whispers. “Let me remind you how good things can be.”

  “Maybe,” she says into his shoulder, pressing her lips against the cotton of his shirt. She can feel his warm skin under the fabric; she can smell that familiar Jake smell—part soap, part musk, part beer. The two shots of rum are scrambling her best intentions, and Holly feels the world spin around them. It’s just her and Jake in a puddle of moonlight—just the two of them standing on their own private island in the middle of a bigger island—and she wants to believe his words. It’s been more than a month since their night together, and she does a quick mental bargain with herself, weighing the cost of one more night with Jake against the confusion it might create between them.

  Jake’s hand cups her cheek; her face and ear fit in his large palm, his fingers between her gold hoop earrings and her jawline. Fifty feet away, all of their neighbors and friends are dancing and drinking in the bar as Joe starts a slowed down, meandering version of “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys.

  “What do you say? Can I take you back to your place?” Jake asks, bringing his lips to meet hers. She tastes beer. “I know what you want, and I know how you like it.” He probes her mouth with his warm, familiar tongue.

  In under ten seconds, Holly runs through the whole scenario in her mind: the sheet-scorching night they’ll spend in her bed; the sultry feel of waking up in the darkness under the ceiling fan with Jake breathing softly next to her; the inevitability that she’ll realize tomorrow what a huge mistake she’s just made.

  “Jake,” she whispers hoarsely, separating her lips from his. “Wait.”

  He pulls back sharply, the softness draining from his eyes. It’s obvious that he’s already moved further into the evening in his mind, and he’s assuming that she has too. Her hesitation is a bucket of cold water to the face.

  “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t,” she says.

  “Who makes the rules here, Holly? Isn’t there some loophole that says you can have a drunken night with your ex occasionally, and it doesn’t really mean anything in the light of day?” His voice is raspy with desire.

  “I don’t know, Jake…”

  “Or maybe it does mean something. Maybe we can just skip over that whole part where I asked you to marry me. I mean, things between us weren’t bad, were they?” He’s looking down into her eyes.

  “Jake, things were never bad—never. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s honest to God not you. This is all me; these are my issues.”

  “That’s what you say, but I feel like part of this must be my fault. Things were great between us and then suddenly…I don’t know. It’s like when I asked you to marry me, it totally pushed you away.”

  Even though they’ve completely stopped dancing, Holly keeps her hands on Jake’s waist, her gaze focused on his shoulder. “I’ve gone over this in my mind a million times. Believe me,” she says in a near-whisper. “We had almost everything going for us—”

  “Except what, Holly? What did we not have going for us?” he interrupts.

  Joe’s song ends and everyone in the bar breaks into applause as he launches into the next one. Holly tucks her hair behind her ears and pulls away.

  “Almost isn’t enough for me, Jake. I’m sorry, but it’s just not.” She folds her arms across her chest. “I need to know that I’m not just marrying someone because…”

  “Because what? Say it,” Jake says, his voice hard and demanding. “Just say it.”

  “Because I don’t have any other options.”

  Jake steps back, starts to say something, then stops. He puts his hands on his hips. His face is hurt, though he’s obviously trying to mask it with nonchalance. “Okay.” He nods. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Jake,” she says, her body language as defensive as her tone. “I have so much work to do on the island. I made a promise to my grandpa that I’d pour my heart and soul into this place, and that’s what I have to do. I need to stay focused.”

  Jake backs away, both palms facing her as he shakes his head. “I give up, Holly. I’m finally ready to accept it.”

  “Accept what?”

  “You. Your stuff. This place. ” He gestures wildly at the darkened beach and the palm trees. “It feels kind of crazy to even say this, but has it ever occurred to you that maybe you don’t actually own this island?”

  Holly stands, arms dangling at her sides, fingertips brushing against the skin of her thighs below the hem of her jean skirt. “How do you mean?” She frowns at him.

  “I mean,” Jake says, running both hands through his short hair, “maybe you don’t own this island—maybe it owns you. It’s food for thought, Holly. Seriously.”

  Before she can say anything, he turns and walks back to the bar, taking the wooden steps two at a time. She stares at his back as he moves through the crowd on the well-lit dance floor and disappears from view.

  It feels like a million years since she arrived at the B&B that morning, and Holly is more than ready to go home—alone. She wrestles with the idea of jumping into her golf cart and driving away from the bar without going back in, but it would only be polite to track Bonnie down and let her know that she’s leaving. She walks back towards the bar, stopping to pick up her flip-flops and purse where she left them in the sand.

  “It’s not fair,” a female voice says from the shadows.

  Holly stops in her tracks. “Who is it?” she asks, moving closer.

  Emily Cafferkey stands up from the spot where she’s been sitting Indian-style on the sand, her back to the bar in the shadows.

  “Em—you scared me! Do your parents know you’re out here?”

  Emily ignores her question, instead lightly crushing the half-full can of Coke she holds in her hands. “It’s not fair, Holly. You don’t even want him, so why can’t I have him?”

  “Oh. Em.” Holly’s heart clenches; she knows how much Emily loves Jake.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Emily says, a touch of anger in her voice. “I know why I can’t have him. I’m not stupid. I’m different, and I’m not pretty.” She turns her back on Holly, letting her chin drop to her chest.

  “Emily, no.” Holly reaches for her friend. There are people you can lie to out of kindness, and there are people who know you too well for that. Sometimes you cushion your words to spare feelings, and other times you know a person well enough to know that any lie you tell would ring hollow. Instead of grasping for words, Holly wraps her arms around Emily from behind, pressing her cheek against her friend’s silky blonde hair. “I’m so sorry, Em.” And she is sorry—sorry that she doesn’t have the right words, sorry that life is unfair, sorry for the pain of unrequited love. She’s been in Emily’s position before and it hurts like hell—maybe more than anything else on earth besides losing the people you love.

  Emily straightens up, sniffling. She raises her head proudly, patting the arm that Holly’s wrapped around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Holly. It’s okay. I love you.”

  Holly loosens her grip and lets Emily go, watching her old friend as she walks to the steps of the building, her short body swaying slightly as she takes each wooden step one at a time.

  The strains of Joe’s guitar wail into the night as he jams, letting the chords take him on an uncharted journey; the music floats all around her. But Holly isn’t going back in there. Bonnie is a sharp enough lady to deduce for herself at the end of the night that she’s taken off, and it won’t be a big deal.

  Under the watchful eyes of the night animals and the diamond-sharp stars, Holly drives back to her house, shoes and purse on the seat next to her. Buckhunter’s kitchen light is on next door as she pulls into her driveway. For just a minute she’s tempted to knock on his door and see if he wants to have a nightcap with her. Holly sits on the bench of her golf cart, looking at his porch. Would that be weird? To pass a few minutes in the company of a neighbor? Something about
going home alone after the way she and Jake just left things feels off. Sort of lonely.

  She makes up her mind to be spontaneous and neighborly. She parks her cart and walks up to his porch. Standing there, poised to tap on his door, Holly spies two beach towels slung over the back of his rocking chair. And sitting right by the front door are two pairs of shoes: a man-sized pair of flip-flops, and a pair of sandals with rhinestones that Holly immediately recognizes as Fiona’s.

  She smiles, looking down at the shoes, hand still closed in the fist that was about to knock on the door. In a weird way it pleases her to think that Fiona faked a cold to steal an evening with Buckhunter, because why not? It wouldn’t hurt Fiona to be less of a planner and more of a doer, and if what she wants to do is Buckhunter, well, then more power to her. Holly backs away from the door, tiptoeing across the grass to her own darkened house.

  At least someone’s going to have a good night, and with no strings or dangerous emotions attached. Holly’s happy for them. She changes into a stained t-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts, pulling her sweaty hair into a pile on the crown of her head. She mixes up a small batch of thinset mortar in her kitchen and grabs her bucket of shells. With Pearl Jam on the stereo, and the ceiling fan spinning overhead on her lanai, Holly spends the next two hours fixing conch and lucine shells onto her outside wall, her mind drifting as she fits them together carefully before she sets them.

  It might have been nice to talk to Buckhunter about the stuff with Jake. Maybe. She glances at his house, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Her hands are covered in dried thinset, the white moons of her nails darkened with mortar. It’s probably just that he’s a bartender and used to listening to people’s problems, but Holly wouldn’t have minded downing a whisky with him and unloading a little.

  Across the way, a figure walks through Buckhunter’s kitchen, pausing in front of the window. From a distance, Holly can’t tell if it’s Buckhunter or Fiona, but she’s suddenly glad that he has company. It’s better to leave things the way they are, and to keep her business to herself. She doesn’t need Jake, she doesn’t need her mother, and she’s managing just fine without her grandparents, so why on earth should she need Buckhunter?

  The sound of the cicadas hiding in the darkness beyond the screened-in lanai nearly drowns out the crashing waves in the distance, and she has to go into the house to turn up her music.

  When she comes back, humming along to the song on her stereo, she holds another shell up to the wall with her grimy hands, fitting it in between two others. It’s a perfect match.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After two weeks of prepping menus, planning activities, and organizing rooms, the fishermen finally arrive on the last day of July. Holly and Bonnie watch as nineteen rugged men of all ages spill from the ferry, looking overheated and jet-lagged. They’re a motley crew of males: some potbellied and balding, others grizzled and covered with hair. Most are wearing wedding bands. Holly greets them all with a smile, shaking hands and welcoming each guest.

  She’s stopped just short of arranging a ticker-tape parade for the island’s first large group of visitors, but Bonnie would be more than happy to bounce up and down, cheering and tossing confetti at all nineteen of them, giggling as colored bits of paper get caught in their beards. She even offered to hand out business cards with her home phone number to each of them—just in case of emergency, of course. Holly nixed this idea immediately.

  “Welcome to Christmas Key,” Holly says, shielding her eyes with one hand as she watches the boat swaying in the sparkling water next to the dock. “Looks like you all got here in one piece.”

  “That depends on what you consider one piece,” says a man whose face she can’t see, even with the brim of her baseball hat casting a shadow over her eyes in the bright light. He steps off the trawler, the last of the men to climb from boat to dock. With his back to the sun, he’s nothing but a tall, lean, muscular silhouette to Holly, his voice somehow both rocky and smooth, as if his vocal chords are paved with gravel and melted caramel. He moves to the other side of her, lifting his bags in both hands easily. “I think Dave left a good chunk of his stomach back there somewhere around Key West,” he jokes, nodding at a middle-aged man who is wiping his forehead with a red bandanna.

  As Holly’s eyes adjust to the light, she sees that the last man off the boat is rather handsome. And young—at least in comparison to the rest of the group. “Well, I’m glad you’re all here,” she says to the good-looking stranger.

  “So are we. River O'Leary.” He puts his hand out to shake hers.

  “Holly Baxter,” she says, shaking firmly.

  “Nice place you have here.” He casts a glance around the dock, admiring the tall, weather-worn wooden navigational post that greets visitors. It’s peppered with handmade plaques from top to bottom, each plaque held in place with two fat, rusty nails.

  The villagers started the post the year that Frank paved Main Street. Everyone picked a location that meant something to them, then calculated its distance from Christmas Key. They each decorated a small piece of painted wood with that information and an arrow that pointed in the direction of the destination. At the bottom of the post is a sign that reads, “Portland, Maine—1,478 miles,” and at the top is one that simply says “Heaven,” and has an arrow pointing to the sky. The signs in between say things like “Santa Barbara, CA—2,352 miles” and “Chicago—1,240 miles.”

  “You don’t have one for Oregon.” River nods at the signs.

  “Not yet, but the island is still growing. Who knows, maybe someone with ties to Oregon will wash up on our shores someday.” Holly smiles up at him. He’s tall, and she has to tip her head back to really look at him. “Hey, how about we get you boys to the B&B so you can unpack and start this vacation?”

  Several of the men second that idea, but their faces are tired, and the guy who reportedly left part of his small intestine in the Gulf of Mexico still looks pretty green.

  “Sounds good.” River shifts his bags in his hands.

  Holly and as many villagers as she could round up are parked in the sandy lot right by the dock. They’re using their golf carts to haul luggage and fishermen up Main Street. Holly watches everyone load up, clipboard in her hands, Yankees cap on her head. She directs traffic and answers questions as everyone finds a cart, islanders shaking hands with fishermen as they quickly get acquainted. As the group works to sort the fishermen and their luggage out, there’s a moment where Holly pauses and realizes that this is what her island could look like. If twenty more people move to Christmas Key, the talking, the bodies, the activity—everything jumps up. Twenty more people would be that many more bodies in the mix. It would change the feel of everything.

  “Hey, honey!” Bonnie calls out, pulling up next to Holly in her golf cart. Riding shotgun is a white-haired man with a round belly and a white mustache. His eyes are merry, his cheeks pink. “This is Bill Hammond from Oregon. Don’t you worry about a thing; I’ve got this one covered!” Bonnie makes an OK sign with her fingers, laughing to herself as she steps on the gas and tears up Main Street.

  In less than ten minutes the rest of the luggage is loaded up and carted off, tires crunching across sandy gravel as the last cart rolls onto the paved road of Main Street.

  That leaves River standing, thumbs hooked in the back pockets of his khaki cargo shorts, his bags at his feet. A smile plays at his lips as he watches Holly sitting in the driver’s seat of her golf cart, efficiently checking items off of her list on the clipboard.

  “Need to call and check on this,” she mumbles to herself, holding the lid to the pen between her teeth as she scribbles a reminder for later.

  “Got room for one more?” River walks up to the passenger side and nods at the empty seat.

  The pen lid falls from Holly’s lips. It clatters onto the clipboard and rolls to the floor. “Of course! I’m sorry, you were so quiet there that I thought I had everyone shipped off already.” She looks
over her shoulder to double-check that everyone else is gone. “Hop on.”

  River tosses his bags onto the backseat and slides in next to Holly, the clipboard on the bench seat between them. She releases the parking break with a click and pulls out of the lot.

  “Sweet ride. What kind of horsepower are we looking at here?” He braces himself against the dash with one flip-flop clad foot. “About 300 or 310? You got a V8 under the hood?”

  “Sure. Totally. She’s road ready.”

  “Did you just say ‘She’s road ready’?” His mouth turns up on one side in an amused grin.

  “Why, did that sound like I knew what I was talking about?”

  “Kind of,” River laughs.

  “Yeah, I actually don’t. I grew up on this island, and we don’t have any cars here.”

  “You grew up here?” He looks around, taking in the quaint storefronts and the ruggedly-paved road. What feels to Holly like a massive amount of progress and construction must look to an outsider like a barely-populated campsite.

  “I did. My grandparents owned this island, and they raised me here.” She realizes that her life story is falling from her lips in front of a total stranger, but for some reason she’s at a loss to stop it from happening. “I did go to college in Miami, so it’s not like I’ve never left the island. I even learned to drive a car there. It was terrifying.”

  “What was terrifying—Miami, or driving a car?”

  Holly laughs. “Both, to be perfectly honest.” She straightens the bill of her hat. “People drive like maniacs on the freeway, and I’m not used to doing more than about twelve miles an hour.”

  River’s right arm is extended overhead; he grips the edge of the cart’s roof casually. “So you grew up on a gorgeous island, and big city life freaked you out and sent you running back home? I like it. It sounds like a movie or something.”

  Holly smiles. “It’d be a pretty boring movie: girl grows up on an island filled with old people and wildlife. The tides come in and go out. The end.”