Элин Хильдебранд - What Happens in Paradise

“Half brother.”

“Whatever. He and Baker are Maia’s only blood relatives, aside from whoever is left on Rosie’s father’s side.”

“I don’t want you hiking with him.”

“You don’t have any say.”

“But we’re in a relationship,” Mick says.

“We’re dating. You don’t own me. I’m sorry that you don’t like it. I don’t like it that Brigid still works for you. I didn’t like driving down to the Beach Bar at three o’clock in the morning and seeing you—”

“Stop,” Mick says.

“I’m going hiking with Cash and Maia,” Ayers says. “And Winnie!”

“Great,” Mick says. “You’re cheating on Gordon as well.”

“Just drive,” Ayers says. She leans back in the seat, marveling at the unexpected turn the night has taken and how buoyant she now feels. Mick is jealous, but Ayers doesn’t care. Cash is here—and tomorrow, Ayers will ask him about Baker.

Cash

His mother called to tell him about her visit from the FBI, so Cash isn’t surprised when the taxi turns onto his father’s road and he sees a dark SUV parked in one of the dummy driveways.

They’re watching the house. Well, he can’t blame them.

It’s been nearly three weeks since he left. The villa seems basically the same, although Cash can tell things have been gone through. The bed in the guest room he used last time has been hastily made and all of the drawers in the adjacent bath are ajar. Cash does a quick check of the house and this seems to be the case throughout. Irene said they found nothing at the house in Iowa City and Cash imagines the same is true here. There was very little of a personal nature in this house to begin with. When they arrived the first time, reeling from the news of Russ’s death, it seemed more like a hotel than someone’s house.

It feels good, though, to have the place to himself. It feels better than good; it feels luxurious. Cash stands out on the deck bare-chested while Winnie goes nuts sniffing everything and chasing after geckos. Cash gazes down the lush, leafy hill over the moon-spangled water. He’s king of the castle! He wants to howl, he wants to sing. The villa is his!

His exultation is tied to seeing Ayers. He wondered if he’d built her up in his mind—but when he saw her from behind, her curly blond hair hanging loose and crazy down her back and the silhouette of her body in that halter top and white jeans, he felt like he was being swallowed up. She had been so happy to see him, happier than he would have predicted, and she had seemed nearly jealous when Tilda came over to give Cash a hug. The interaction had been great, great, great, everything Cash could have dreamed of.

Today was the first day of the rest of his life, Cash thinks. It’s a tired phrase—and yet so true, so true! He has never been more certain of anything: his life began today. He swung down here on a slender filament of hope that a potential job on Treasure Island offered and now it looks like it will all work out.

He wants to beat his chest! He has escaped the doom of a lonely winter in Iowa City, shoveling snow and bumping into ex-girlfriends at the grocery store. Tomorrow he has plans with Ayers and Maia, and Monday he starts his lifesaving course, which Irene has given him more than enough money to pay for.

“I’m so happy!” Cash cries out. He wonders if the FBI has bugged the house. Well, if they have, they are going to hear the twenty-nine-year-old son of Russell Steele talking to himself. And maybe it will seem strange or even cruel that Cash is so jubilant only a few short weeks after his father died. Cash misses his father; he’s mourning his father, and he’s angry and resentful and disappointed in his father. But all of that feels like a pot Cash can pull off the stove for now. His excitement about this island and this girl and this sense of freedom and opportunity win out.

“It’s going to be epic!” Cash says. Winnie barks and comes trotting over; she noses around Cash’s legs and he bends to rub her soft butterscotch head. “Right, Winnie? Right?”

The next morning Cash winds his way down the hill in one of his father’s gray Jeeps, stops at the black SUV, and rolls down his window. “I’m Cash Steele,” he says. “Russell Steele’s son.”

The man sitting in the front seat—shaved head, blond Hulk Hogan mustache—flexes one of his enormous biceps as he brings a cup of coffee to his lips. “I know,” he says.

Cash waits a second, thinking maybe there will be more, but the guy looks down into his lap; he’s reading the paper. Cash is the one with questions—who is this guy? Why is he watching the house?—but Cash is certain he’ll be stonewalled and he doesn’t want to be late, so he carries on.

He meets Ayers and Maia in the parking area on Leicester Bay Road. In Cash’s backpack are three towels, nine bottles of water, and three sandwiches from the North Shore Deli. He’s wearing trunks under his cargo shorts, his Social Distortion T-shirt, and his lightweight hiking boots. Both girls are standing next to Ayers’s green truck, tying bandannas around their foreheads.

“Hey,” Cash says as he climbs out of the Jeep. Winnie heads straight for Maia, who crouches down to pet her. Winnie is an excellent ambassador; as always, she smooths over a potentially awkward situation. Cash follows, tentatively offering Maia a fist bump. Ayers said that Maia would be cool with Cash joining them, but will she? Cash knows nothing about the psyches of twelve-year-old girls.

“Hey, bro,” Maia says. She bumps knuckles with him, then grins. “You came back! And Ayers tells me you’re going to work on Treasure Island .”

“That’s the plan,” he says. He glances quickly at Ayers in her white tank and light blue Lululemon running shorts; he can see the outline of a bikini underneath.

“Ayers’s boyfriend, Mick, is really jealous,” Maia says.

“Maia!” Ayers says. “Hush!”

“What?” Maia says. “He is. He’s even jealous we’re taking this hike.”

“Well, he doesn’t need to be jealous,” Cash says. “Ayers and I are just friends.”

“That’s what I told him,” Ayers says. She drops her blue aviators down over her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t mind carrying the pack? It’s got to be heavy.”

“Please,” Cash says. “I hike at eight, nine thousand feet with a pack that’s three times this weight.”

“Ayers doesn’t like hiking,” Maia says. “But she’s my parent now, so she has to do enriching things with me.”

“Mangrove snorkeling is enriching,” Ayers says. She looks up at the brilliant blue sky. “And a far more appropriate activity than hiking on an eighty-degree day.”

“Next week,” Maia says. She strides toward the trailhead. “Come on, Winnie, let’s go.”

The Johnny Horn Trail has five spurs, Maia explains. The first spur, a flat, sandy walking path, leads to a narrow beach hugging a bay that has a rugged island a hundred yards offshore.

“Waterlemon Cay,” Ayers says. “Best snorkeling on St. John. How about I stay here and you guys keep going?”

“We’ve only been hiking thirty seconds,” Maia says. She turns to Cash. “See what I have to deal with?”

The second spur takes them up a steep, rocky incline that requires a fair amount of scrambling and careful foot placement before it levels out, when they reach stone ruins. This is the guardhouse, Maia tells them, built in the 1840s, back when slavery had been abolished in the British Virgin Islands across the Sir Francis Drake Channel but was still legal on St. John.

“There were sixteen soldiers stationed here,” Maia says. “And their job was to keep watch for runaway slaves.”

Cash is impressed. “You have quite the body of knowledge,” he says. “How did you learn all this?”