Hurricanes in Paradise (28 page)

“Get up!” Tamyra yelled, yanking Laine from her chair.

Laine’s knife and fork, which had just cut into a perfect piece of medium-rare filet mignon, were still sticking in the meat when she flew out of her chair. “My dinner!” she said as she reached for her purse before Tamyra caused her to lose that too.

“You eat enough! We’ve got to get Winnie.”

Laine was almost out the door in less than four strides. How women like Tamyra ran in stilettos was still beyond her. Poor Albert followed right behind, and by the time they all made it to the hallway, Winnie was nowhere in sight.

Tamyra stopped by the door for a brief second. “Let’s head to her room.” Before Laine could speak, Tamyra was a blur.

Laine turned to Albert. “Don’t worry about Winnie. We’ll take it from here. She’s an ornery old cuss. Sorry if it messed up your dinner. Better go. Those long legs are no match for mine.”

“I’m sorry. I tried to be so careful.”

The worry in his eyes touched Laine. She patted his arm. “It’s okay. She’s just having trouble letting go. It’s not you.”

He patted her hand. “Go. Go. I’m fine.”

She let his approval release her to hightail it down the hall. Fortunately she was wearing wedges, so she made up a little ground. Her wide-leg black pants kept whipping each other at the hem as she ran. When she came to the foyer of The Cove suites, Gerard was standing there as if he had been waiting on her. He simply pointed to the elevator.

She raised her hand. “Thanks.”

He called out as she rounded the corner to the elevators. “Should I be expecting Miss Riley, too?”

“No, she’s got a hot date!” She knew Riley would kill her for that. “I’m the last of the posse.” The door opened and Laine pushed the number for Winnie’s floor. When she exited the elevator, she could hear Tamyra banging and screaming from down the hall. She ran to her and grabbed Tamyra’s hands away from the door.

“Leave me alone!” she heard Winnie yell.

“We’re going to, Winnie,” Laine said.

Tamyra slapped at her. “No, we’re not, Winnie! We’re coming in there just like we did earlier.”

“You are not! I’ll block the door with the sofa!”

Laine wrapped her arms around Tamyra’s waist and pulled. “My word, woman, you’re big,” she said as she dropped her in the hall away from the door. She stared up at Tamyra and pointed her finger. “You’re going to listen to me even if you have to look down at me. We’re leaving her alone.”

“But we can’t—”

“I said, we’re leaving her alone. She has to come to terms with this herself. This is a place she has to deal with. You can’t do it for her. Just like she couldn’t do it for you. You had to break down and get honest with her over the fact that you’re dying.”

She saw Tamyra’s eyes bug out. “She told . . .”

“She didn’t tell me a thing. Your actions told me everything I needed to know. I study people for a living, Tamyra. You were an easy one. Now, we are leaving her alone.” Laine leaned against the door and spoke to the woman behind it. “We’re leaving, Winnie. You just take your time. We won’t bother you anymore. Just know if you need us, we’re here.”

There was no sound from the other side.

Laine grabbed ahold of Tamyra’s arms and pulled her down the hall. “Come on. Let’s go.” She pulled her across the carpet and down to the elevators.

“It’s all my fault.”

“Yes, it is all your fault. You set the woman up. On a date she didn’t want to go on in the first place.”

Tamyra removed her wrist from Laine’s grasp. “Don’t hold back, Laine. Tell me what you really think.”

“I will. But you know what? It was good for her. Maybe this is what she needed to finally let Sam go.”

“So you don’t think I’ve destroyed her?”

Laine pushed the Down button for the elevator and laughed. “No, Winnie’s a big girl. No pun intended. She will be fine. But Albert, on the other hand . . .”

Tamyra walked into the elevator and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my word. What I did to him was horrible.”

“Yes, now that was horrible.”

Tamyra rolled her eyes at her.

“You need to go apologize to him.”

The elevator doors opened and they walked back out into the foyer. Gerard was still standing there. “All is well, Gerard. All is well,” Laine informed him.

“So Miss Riley really had a date, huh?” Gerard asked, following her to the doorway.

Laine turned and gave him a big smile. “Yes, with that Christian Manos guy.”

His black eyes widened and his white teeth overtook most of his face. She was shameless.

* * *

Riley licked barbecue sauce from her fingers.

“Southern girls like ribs, huh?” Christian laughed.

She could feel her face flush. Bertha’s Go-Go Ribs was a local hangout on the island. And had the best ribs in town. “I’m sorry; I hope I’m not embarrassing you.” She picked up her napkin and wiped her hands.

“You’re not embarrassing me. I did a little research and found out what Southern girls like. Guess I got it right.”

Charm seeped from him. Right along with sincerity. An odd pairing. “Fry it or barbecue it and we eat it.”

“Tell me about growing up in the South, Riley.”

He picked up another rib and took a bite. But his eyes came straight back to her. They had been on her all night. And she had determined about thirty minutes ago that if there were going to be eyes on her, she’d couldn’t think of any she would rather have than these. She shook her head. “It is a world all its own. In the South all girls ‘come out.’” They both laughed at that. “That’s too long a story for this pile of ribs. Fathers are icons. Mothers are . . . How shall we say it?
Involved.
”

He laughed. “Involved? That is new to me. Do you go home often?”

“Haven’t been back since I left. But that’s because I needed to settle in here. I think my parents are coming to visit soon, and I’ve got some old demons back there I’m not ready to confront.” She gave a cautious laugh.

“Old demons?”

“Another long story.”

He raised his napkin and wiped his mouth. “One I hope you’ll tell me someday.”

Riley leaned back in the booth. Music from the jukebox played hits of the eighties. “Why have you been so persistent?”

He took a drink and leaned back. “Persistent? What do you mean?”

“About having dinner with me.”

She caught his coy grin. “I see something in you, Riley. Something I don’t see in many women.”

“What? I don’t swoon over you?” His expression registered his uneasiness. Her words had been careless. She leaned forward quickly. “Sorry, Christian. I didn’t mean to insinuate that you are a womanizer. It’s just evident by the way women look at you that most find you extremely attractive.”

“Attraction is easy to come by, Riley. Depth, not so much.”

She laughed. “Okay, so now
really
why me?”

“I’ve watched you. Even when you didn’t know I was watching. The way you care for your guests. The way you care for Gabby. You have a way about you. A sensitivity that only comes from knowing pain. At least that’s what I’ve discovered. Most people are so self-absorbed because they’ve never really known what hurting was like. But once you know what it’s like to hurt, you’re different. Your compassion is richer. Your eyes are more aware. I see that in you. And one day I hope you’ll share some of that with me.”

She shook her head. “I doubt you could handle my story.”

He leaned in. “One day I hope you’ll trust me enough to try me.”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. The leaping in her heart had her too concerned that if she said anything in that moment, she would officially spill her entire life and not come up for air until every last detail had been unearthed from even the deepest graves.

He pulled twenty-five dollars from his wallet and set it on the table, then grabbed her hand, rescuing her from herself. “Come on. I want to take you somewhere else.”

She slipped out of her side of the booth. “Where?”

“It’s a surprise. Your first step in learning to trust me.”

Little did he know that his last statement had already cracked open that door. This would be her second step.

* * *

The room was closing in around Winnie. She jerked open the sliding-glass door to the patio and stepped into a rush of warm, salty air. Her fingers fumbled frantically with the scarf around her neck as if it were a noose only moments from ridding her of all known life. When she was finally free, she flung it to her feet, where the wind whipped it and flew it like a kite over the manicured lawns of the resort. “I don’t care!” Winnie wailed. “The saleslady talked me into you anyway!” But her heart knew she wasn’t talking to the scarf.

She dropped her head down on the railing. Her bangle bracelets clanged against the railing as her arms dropped too. There was nothing rhythmic about her tears or her rage. They were fierce, violent, surging.

“I don’t want to move on, Sam! I don’t! I don’t! I’m fine with the way it is. I have you all to myself every night.” Her tears dropped in scattered puddles on the concrete beneath her feet. “We talk. You listen to my day.” She snorted hard, trying to stop the faucet of her nose. She had kept this pain at bay for three years, knowing that if she ever allowed it to break free, it would consume her. It had. It was. And she had nothing in her to stop it this time.

“I don’t want to move on!” Her voice was desperate, pleading.

And then words were whispered to the very center of her soul.
It’s time.

She jerked her head up. “Who’s there?” Her head darted from side to side as she looked at both sides of her balcony to see if someone else was out. There was no one. At least no one she could see in the darkness. She shot her gaze downward. But no one was below her. She turned her head upward in the most contorted way, but there was no one there, either.

“Don’t toy with me! I’m not in the mood!” Her blue eyes blazed out at the darkness. She was sure that a passing ship would mistake them for the lighthouse that stood at the end of the harbor.

It’s time, Winnie. It’s time.

“No! No! You can’t! You can’t leave me!” She felt a tearing in her heart. A knife went in and sliced her in two, and she crumpled. Her jacket caught the side of a chair as she fell and pulled it up around the back of her neck. She fought with her right sleeve until she finally set herself free, and there she hung, one arm stuffed inside the sleeve of her bedazzled denim jacket and the other sleeve wrapped in a knotted mess around the chair. Pretty much the way her insides felt. “You already left me once! I won’t make it if you leave me again!” Her body heaved as the pain of her grief coursed through her.

It’s the only way you will make it.

Her hands tried to grip the concrete beneath her. Gravel slid underneath her fingernails. “But I need you! I need you so bad!”

You need to start living. And you can’t live holding on to Sam.

The word
Sam
startled her. “Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?” she sputtered through her tears.

A flutter went through her heart. And in that moment she knew it wasn’t Sam talking to her.

Sam’s voice had always been in her head. There was only one voice that swept through her heart.

The wailing ceased, but the tears were relentless. She looked up into the moonlit sky as if she were going to peer into heaven itself. But she didn’t have to. Heaven was whispering in her heart. Tugging her. Wooing her. She had found Jesus on a wooden bench at vacation Bible school when she was six years old. Anytime He talked to her, it was always in her heart. But she had stopped listening after Sam’s death. Now she knew why. She was mad at Him.

“It’s not fair, you know.”

Yes, I do know.

“I miss him.”

And I miss you.

She shifted on the concrete, the solidness of it doing nothing for her old bones. “He’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

The whisper in her heart came again.
For a long time.

She sniffled again and wiped her runny nose with her sleeve. No one ever had to know. “You’ve missed me?”

Like crazy.

“I haven’t known what to do without him. I’ve been so mad at You.”

I know. And I’ve tried to get your attention. I’ve wanted to hold you, comfort you, show you some new things.

She blinked hard; tears gathered on her eyelids in bulging droplets. The moon swelled in her sight, its beauty almost new. As if she hadn’t seen it in a while, either.

“But I’ve been too angry, huh? Caught up in all these old things, the past.”

Buried.

“A part of me died with Sam.”

I know it did. That is what happens when you’ve become one. Your pain shows the depth at which you’ve loved. But you didn’t die, Winnie. You’re here. And I want you to live.

The ache started again in her chest. “I’ve lived with the kids at school.”