Off Plan Read online

  But I didn’t say those things to Beale. Instead, I said, “Maybe he tries, but your dad is three sandwiches shy of a picnic. He’s been muttering and smiling to himself for weeks, and whenever anyone asks, he says it’s ‘secret mayor business.’” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever the fuck that means, right?”

  “Wow.” Beale coughed. “Yeah, that’s… yeah. Who’s to say, really?”

  I narrowed my eyes and silently watched Beale focus his attention first on the tree overhanging the driveway, and then on the toes of his boots. He darted a glance up at me, and his whole face flushed when he saw that I was looking at him.

  Aha. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “You tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell! I know nothing,” he insisted. “Why would anyone tell me anything? Young Rafe’s the oldest and most responsible. Gage is the… the smartest. You’re the best at fixing things. I’m just… me.”

  I made a noncommittal noise. Beale was brilliant at a lot of things, whether he saw it or not. Plus, he was the nicest Goodman. Rafe and Gage were so pissed off, they likely weren’t talking to their dad, and every evil mastermind needed a sidekick, right?

  I tilted my head and said nothing.

  Beale shot a glance in my direction and kept running his mouth to fill the silence. “I mean, I definitely would keep a secret. I’m capable of keeping secrets. I don’t blab.”

  I frowned and tilted my head in the other direction.

  Beale swallowed convulsively. “I don’t, Fenn! Especially when it’s important! Especially when lives are at stake.”

  I blinked. Lives were at stake?

  “Especially when the whole fate of the island rests in the hands of the Goodman family,” Beale whispered. He pressed his lips together in a bid to stop the flow of information.

  I nodded slowly. “Of course. You’d be a silent fortress, wouldn’t you? Especially if your dad had found a totally legal means of obtaining money…?”

  “Yes!” Beale agreed, relieved. “Yes! Like a grant! Or an investor! Or both!” His face crumpled. “Shit.” He glanced guiltily at the house.

  But I didn’t care about Big Rafe’s possible reaction to Beale spilling the beans. I was too stunned by Beale’s words. “A grant? A grant for what, Beale? And an investor? For the motel? Who invests in rubble?”

  Beale’s eyes widened and mine narrowed further.

  “Wait, not an investor for the motel? What, then? The business? The island?”

  Beale shrugged helplessly.

  “Christ on a cracker, how do you invest in an island?” I ran a hand through my damp hair, not caring about the engine grease. “What are the terms of the investment? What happens when Big Rafe defaults, or whatever the fuck you call it? Do they take our homes? Do they take over the island? Can Rafe even legally take investments like that on behalf of the town without—”

  “Can and have!” a voice from behind me boomed. Then in a wryer tone, added, “I can see we’ve reached the expiration date on your secret keeping, Beale. It was a fun ten minutes while it lasted.”

  Beale ran a hand over his face and muttered, “Damn.”

  I closed my eyes and forced myself to turn around to meet my uncle’s gaze. He was a big guy despite his age—six feet tall and as barrel-chested as Beale, with his bulk all stuffed into a navy blue T-shirt emblazoned with the word MAYOR across the front in white letters. But where Beale and Rafe Junior were all muscle, Big Rafe had run to fat long before I’d met him. Unlike Beale, Big Rafe had black hair almost untouched by gray and dark eyes that hinted at the Cuban part of his heritage. Also unlike Beale, Rafe’s eyes glowed with acquisitive passion. There was always more out there, better out there, and Rafe Goodman, Senior, was gonna fucking find it.

  I heaved a heavy sigh. “What are you doing this time, Rafe? And more to the point, what’s gonna happen to the rest of us when it backfires? Nice T-shirt, by the way.”

  He ran a fond, protective hand over his shirt. “Disrespectful as ever, Fenn Reardon. And it’s none of your concern. It’s my job to take care of my family. Young Rafe’s car fixed yet? He had to take my truck to do errands.”

  I shook my head and told myself I wasn’t upset by his dismissal. It really wasn’t my business. I didn’t want it to be my business.

  “Afraid not. She’s gonna need a new ignition coil as far as I can tell. Best confirm that with a real mechanic.”

  Rafe’s jaw tightened. “You are a real mechanic. Didn’t you just yesterday change the oil in Ms. Beecham’s Datsun? And figure out why Orry’s car was making that chirpy noise?”

  Yeah, and it had taken me a week, working on it every evening and a whole Saturday, when it would have taken a real mechanic a fraction of that time.

  “Please.” I snorted. “I’m an unemployed geologist playing at being a tour boat captain. I enjoy working on my own car, but a wrench and my dad’s old car repair manuals do not a mechanic make.”

  “Sure they do” was Big Rafe’s compelling comeback. “Anyway, you’re the closest thing we’ve got.”

  I snorted. Just like the Concha was the closest Whispering Key had to fine dining, and this three-ring circus was the closest thing I had to family.

  I tossed my rag down onto the engine, wiped the side of my face against my shoulder, and swiped my greasy wrench on the side of my shirt.

  “Anyway. Always enlightening talking to you, Uncle Rafe, but I’ve got a party going out on the boat later this afternoon, and I promised Jim I’d take him to get some paint before I left. I’m gonna go and get cleaned up.” I hooked a thumb toward the motel. “Bachelorette party coming up from Coral Gables, so the tips should be great.” Even though I’d have to throw a whole bunch of phone numbers away afterward.

  “The tips are gonna be Beale’s today,” Rafe said, folding his arms. “Need you to do a favor for me this morning.”

  Beale and I exchanged a look. Beale looked a little sick and a little guilty.

  So he hadn’t spilled all his secrets yet.

  Damn it.

  “What favor?” I demanded.

  “Need you to get changed and drive to Sarasota. Immediately.”

  “Sarasota? This morning? No can do. I just told you, I’m already doing a favor. I promised Jim Pickles I’d bring him to the hardware store, and it’s over an hour each way in traffic, even assuming the bridges are all down. Besides, what the hell’s so important in Sarasota?”

  Once upon a time, eight or ten hurricane seasons ago, Whispering Key had been connected via a bridge directly to the mainland. That bridge had sustained damage that made it structurally unsound, and all these years later, the funding to repair it kept getting delayed due to environmental studies and labor disputes. Nowadays, the only land route from Whispering Key to the mainland involved driving over a drawbridge to the slightly larger island north of us, and then heading east over one of its two bridges. In early summer, with so many pleasure craft out on the water, it sometimes felt like the drawbridge was up as much as it was down, and Whispering Key was cut off from the rest of the world unless you had a boat. Or gills.

  Rafe rocked on his heels, way too fucking delighted with himself. “New guest arriving this morning. You need to pick him up from the airport, since Young Rafe’s already gone to help Jim pick out his paint colors, and you’re the only one with a functioning car until you can get the parts you need for this piece of shit.” He kicked the Jeep’s front tire fondly.

  “Wait. New guest?” I glanced over at the motel like it had somehow become habitable since I walked over here an hour ago. “What kind of idiot is coming here voluntarily?”

  Rafe pretended not to hear me. “Gonna put him in the west wing, second floor I think,” he mused. “Sunset view over the water.”

  “The… the west wing?” I sounded bewildered because I was. “Rafe, there’s only one wing, and it’s all shitty. Remember? We talked about how the plumbing is—”

  Rafe waved a hand. “
Mason knows he’s going to be staying in the employee quarters. It’ll be fine.”

  “There are no employee quarters!”

  “You’re an employee,” he returned mildly. “You’re quartered there—”

  “Because my alternative was sleeping in Beale’s bunk bed listening to him snore!”

  “Hey!” Beale said, wounded.

  “—ergo it’s the employee quarters.” Rafe nodded, like this settled things.

  “Just because you say ergo doesn’t mean you’re right, FYI.” I seriously hated when people thought using Latin words made their arguments stronger. “It’s a dilapidated old motel. Did someone book it by accident? Beale, come on. You can’t go along with this. We could be sued, or—”

  Beale shrugged nervously and didn’t meet my gaze. “If the guest’s okay with it, Fenn…”

  But another thought had occurred to me, and my eyes widened with dawning horror. “If he’s a guest, why’re you putting him in our nonexistent employee quarters? Please tell me you didn’t hire someone to work for Goodmen Outfitters when we can barely afford—”

  “Fenn, Fenn. Jesus. You need to stop doubting so much. I think you must get this from your mother, since Lord knows your father never worried about a thing besides his car and his whiskey in all the years I knew him.” He rolled his eyes, and I gritted my teeth. “No, Goodmen Outfitters doesn’t need another employee. We need guests, though. Tourists. Families. Day visitors. We need to get this island back to where it was in its glory days.”

  “Which days were those?” I folded my arms over my chest. “Was Kennedy president? Or are we talking pre-Spanish colonial period?”

  “For your information, there was a time in my memory when Whispering Key was the vacation destination. Families came and stayed for weeks.” He stared at something above the tree line, some time that existed only in his memory. “They had bonfires on the beach. Folks got together every night—tourists and locals alike!—to watch the sunset down at Powder Point. They’d stroll down Godfrey Pass eating ice cream from Luisa Oliveira’s shop and ride the carousel, or watch movies at Godfrey Park. There was music and laughter nearly every damn day.”

  I looked at Beale. He looked at me. We both shrugged.

  Whispering Key had been a forgotten island for the five years I’d lived here—and way longer, based on the look of the place. Godfrey Pass was six miles of road that ran the length of the island and through a town center comprised mostly of empty storefronts and a boarded-up, graffiti-covered carousel. I’d never heard of Luisa Oliveira, and the only places to get ice cream without heading to Publix off island were Omar’s Sundries, and Pickles’, the world’s tiniest grocery store.

  I opened my mouth to say something—something cutting about how a lot of things had changed since those good old days, and the past was the past—but I wasn’t a total heartless bastard. The happy, dreamy look in Big Rafe’s eyes wasn’t one I was used to seeing unless he was talking about some treasure his ancestors had dropped off the coast a couple hundred years before, or how he was gonna buy a stake in some almost-guaranteed mind-blowing get-rich-quick scheme for a low, low price.

  So instead of arguing, I nodded once. “All right. So what’s your plan here? You’re trying to get folks to visit the motel? Do some advertising?” I tried not to sound as deeply skeptical as I felt. “Gonna be hard. The beaches are gorgeous, but you know that’s not enough. Tourists need more.” Like running water and furniture that wouldn’t disintegrate under their hands, for a start.

  “I’m aware, Fenn,” he sighed. “Leave it all to me.”

  Words to strike fear in a man’s heart, right there.

  “They’re gonna want those shops you talked about, and entertainment, and restaurants, and cafes,” I persisted. “The Concha isn’t gonna cut it no matter how good Lety’s cooking is, you realize. Tourists don’t love to buy their lunch at the same place they buy live bait, as a general rule.”

  “Precisely.” Rafe nodded approvingly, like I’d displayed more intelligence than he’d thought me capable of. “We need small businesses to relocate to Whispering Key. Chefs and bakers, bartenders, artisans. All the kinds of folks who were here before.”

  I frowned. I was possibly mildly impressed by his foresight. Against my will, you understand. “So…”

  “So, in order to get those people to move here, we have to have services for them. Like schools—”

  “And decent housing. And medical care,” I interjected. “Yeah, okay. I follow you. That’s a fuck of an undertaking, though. Shit, Rafe. And you can’t possibly have people start coming here before—”

  “Sure I can. One bite at a time.” He headed back up the steps to the house. “Name’s Mason Bloom. JetSet flight 1443. Arrives at 11:29,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t be late. Be nice. And for God’s sake, change that shirt. You look like a criminal.”

  “Rafe? Get back here. Rafe, what have you done?” I demanded. I started for the stairs to follow him, but tripped on a crack in the concrete and landed flat on my back. My wrench went flying, too… and came to land directly on my face.

  “Jesus Christ! My eye!” I yelled, pressing my hands to my face.

  The only response was the completely unconcerned slamming of the screen door as Rafe went inside.

  “Portents in the air,” Beale whispered, wide-eyed. “I’m tellin’ ya.”

  And this time, I couldn’t even tell the idiot to shut up, because I felt them, too.

  Chapter Two

  Mason

  “What you need to do is get off your couch and stop overthinking,” my brother said in my ear.

  “Micah.” I pulled my third hard-sided black suitcase off the luggage carousel at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport with a little grunt and set it down beside two smaller pieces of the swanky, designer four-piece set I’d spent an arm and two legs on just the week before. “I didn’t call for a big-brother intervention, okay? Safe to say that’s never why I call you.”

  “No one thinks they need an intervention, Mason. That’s the first law of interventions! But we miss you, and it’s been four months since Victoria… you know.” He cleared his throat. “Did what she did. So—”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a gift for euphemisms?” I glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, then said quietly, “I think you mean four months since my fiancée left my ass for another guy?” And not just any guy but Gunner, our engagement photographer—honestly, with a name like Gunner, the writing had been on the wall there—who’d stolen Victoria off to cavort with him in the jungles of Central America. “Might as well call it what it is. First step to treating a disease is knowing what you’ve got.”

  Micah huffed out a breath. “It doesn’t need to be treated, Mason. This was never about you; it was about Victoria.”

  “Meh. It was kind of about both of us. Vic said she hadn’t been really happy in a while, and I guess I was sleepwalking through it, so that’s on me.” I still felt a dull, guilty sort of ache about not seeing the signs. I felt even guiltier about the fact that, while I missed having someone around, and I missed the future we’d planned… I hadn’t really missed Victoria as a person very much at all. In fact, I’d started thinking some of the accusations Vic had leveled at me before she left were kinda true.

  I didn’t really feel deep passions, and that probably was why she’d never felt deeply passionate about me.

  There might actually be something broken in me from growing up the way I had, that meant I could never love someone fully or be loved in return.

  She might even have been right about me being too obsessed with status… although that one I was pretty sure she’d enabled a whole lot. She was the one who’d taught me about wearing tasteful but expensive clothes, after all, and taking exotic-but-not-flamboyant vacations, and driving luxurious-but-not-ostentatious cars—all the stuff that got her likes on Instagram. She was the one who’d introduced me to her parents’ friends at their Water Mi
ll garden parties, and encouraged me to think big about my career and the future.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d gotten on board with that shit real fast, because to people who were important and wealthy, those fancy things were like a shorthand for “I’m important also. Take me seriously,” and for a guy who hadn’t known cashmere existed until he was past his second decade of life, that feeling had quickly become addictive. But you couldn’t teach a man a better way of living and then blame him because he’d listened.

  Not that blame really mattered now, anyway.

  “That’s not why I called either, though! I have some exciting news.”

  “Uh-oh.” Micah’s worry turned to suspicion. “You saying exciting when you’re in this mood is a little terrifying. Am I talking to the Mason who thinks reorganizing his polo collection is exciting? Or the old Mason, whose brand of excitement involved construction chutes and lube?”

  I sighed. The trouble with having a family who loved you was that they never forgot the shit you pulled, even half a lifetime and several big-deal degrees and certifications later… and they never let you forget it either.

  “First off, it was coconut oil, not lube. If you’re gonna tell the story, get it right. Second, this is not a mood. I’m starting a new chapter of my life.” A chapter I liked to call Dr. Mason Bloom Takes Charge of His One Goddamn Life and Lives Fearlessly.

  Catchy, right?

  Ironically enough, living fearlessly was scary as hell. My stomach had been flopping around like a fish on a line for the last two weeks. This either meant I was on the right track or coming down with some form of gastrointestinal illness. It was so often hard to tell.