Chapter 5 #2
“My grandfather’s island has been a second home to me my whole life.
It is where I married my sweet Tiff, and it is where I spread her ashes.
As much as Lydell, she was also my safe place.
” Dyer’s eyes went glassy, and Fletcher didn’t dare fidget in her seat to glance at Waylon, afraid of what she’d find.
Tiffany Cartwright had died long before Fletcher ever met the Cartwrights.
“Tiff always said work brought out the best and the worst in me, and that who I become in my darkest moments defines how I will be remembered.”
A kind of wet, heartbroken laugh filtered through his lips. Jackie reached over and squeezed the hand by Dyer’s side. He glanced down at her, a gentleness in his gaze Fletcher recognized as grief.
“Wives really are right about everything, aren’t they?
” he said, raising a good-natured laugh.
“We always loved coming here. On Lydell, we didn’t have to worry about decorum.
Here, we were free from expectations, as wild as the animals roaming the island’s grasslands and jungles. Lydell Island is a world of its own.”
Dyer looked straight toward Fletcher, and her smile moved into place on its own accord.
For years, every time she’d seen Dyer, she’d pasted on this expression of cartoon excitement.
Like there was nowhere else on earth she’d rather be than where he needed her.
She wondered, vaguely, if she was as much of an anchor for him as he was for her.
“There is one more thing I forgot to mention,” Dyer said. He let the silence linger for dramatic effect. Ever the showman. “This will be my last company trip to Lydell. It’s time I announce my retirement.”
The entire table gasped. Fletcher included.
No, no, no.
Her insides curdled like a glass of milk that had sat in the sun for too long.
Wouldn’t you mention to your executive assistant there would no longer be an executive for her to assist?
Sure, they’d find a new CEO eventually, but Dyer was Cartwright Media.
They were synonymous, no one without the other.
Sheila glanced at Fletcher over her shoulder, the question obvious in the intern’s narrowed eyes. Did you know?
Heat flared up Fletcher’s neck because no, no she had not. And she should have. It was her job to know. Had there been signs she’d missed?
“Who’s taking over the company?” Deepti asked with a panicked edge.
Was this why Waylon had been invited? The heir, come to claim his father’s throne? And, what? Fletcher was just expected to become his lapdog? To sit when he said sit, to stay when he said stay?
Shock gave way to something a little bit lighter. Maybe Dyer retiring could be exactly what she needed to leverage her move to Jet-Setter. Waylon would be happy to get rid of her.
“I’ve got all the details worked out.” Dyer’s glass lifted higher. “Tonight, we celebrate the legacies we inherit and what we choose to do with them. May you all choose wisely.”
Melv stood next to him, clapping a compassionate hand on Dyer’s shoulder. “This calls for a toast. To everything Dyer Cartwright’s legacy has brought us, and everything yet to come.”
And the table called out, “To Dyer!”
As the party lights extinguished and everyone wandered back inside, darkness clawed over Lydell.
Fletcher leaned against her window and let herself feel small beneath the atlas of stars.
The breeze stilled, and the grasses stopped rustling, and the night birds’ evening songs quieted, as if the entire island knew change was coming, and there was nothing it could do but brace for impact.
Fletcher’s face was wet when she woke up. Not from crying, though she considered it. Something stiff and dripping glided over the plane of her cheek, and her eyes snapped open as a giant purple tongue retreated. A slick of slime coated her cheek.
A giraffe grinned down at her like it enjoyed Frenching her and would happily do it again.
“Oh my god. Disgusting.” She wiped the slobber off her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “At least ask for consent.”
The giraffe culprit blinked down at her, its long neck craned inside her open window. Enviously long lashes, big black eyes—beautiful and mesmerizing, but not exactly good-morning-kiss material.
Wait.
A giraffe?
Fletcher untangled herself from her bedsheets and shooed the massive creature back outside with a hand pressed against its muzzle. As it retreated, she leaned out the window and pointed toward the drooping boughs of a nearby apricot tree, bloated with fruit.
“Look! Right there!” she called. As if the giraffe spoke English. “Plenty of food, just for you.”
She could’ve sworn the animal winked at her before lolling its giant neck toward the fruit tree behind the outdoor sauna. It must have gone to the Asshole Rick School of Flirting. Yuck.
The savanna seemed to have crept closer overnight, like the tectonic plates themselves shifted with Dyer’s retirement announcement.
Her giraffe suitor must have stepped clean over the fence separating the patio from the wild, but that wasn’t all.
Vultures circled overhead, and just beyond the grounds, a pack of lions gnawed on a puddle of mangled red. Far too close for comfort.
An engine revved in the distance, more staff members heading up from their lodging at the jungle’s heart, most likely. Fletcher’s mouth started to water at the thought of a five-star breakfast as elaborate as last night’s supper. Belgian waffles, eggs Benedict, bottomless mimosas.
For the first time in years she’d fallen asleep with her falsies still glued on. Not to mention the giraffe saliva caking into a hard crust. Hell would freeze over before she let her colleagues witness her in such a state of disarray.
Gripping the marble ledge of the bathroom countertop, Fletcher faced herself in the mirror.
She was made of soft lines. Full cheeks, round lips, and carefully drawn eyebrows.
All curves and no corners. Freckles, fading as NYC descended into overcast autumn, spread across her nose, pinpricks on a map.
Already the Lydell sun had sketched redness onto the fair skin of her forehead and the peaks of her cheekbones.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of complimentary skincare products had been arranged on the bathroom counter.
It put Fletcher’s Neutrogena selection to shame.
With a fistful of cleanser, she scrubbed her face until her skin pinked.
She splashed her cheeks one last time, only to end up with very expensive suds in her eyes.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Fletcher reached blindly for a towel.
Oh, god. A towel.
She’d forgotten to grab one. New zits sprouted at the sheer thought of using the hand towel with all of its hand towel germs.
With her eyes pinched closed, Fletcher waddled toward the linen closet. Twisting the knob with skincare-slick hands proved harder than she’d expected, but when she finally pried the door open, her hand planted firmly against something warm and solid.
“Good morning to you, too.”
A scream tore out of Fletcher’s throat. Her eyes peeled open in terror—and then clamped shut in pain. The soapsuds burned so sharply it curled her spine.
She spun too quickly, slipped on a bath mat, and skidded back into the sink. Fletcher fumbled for something, anything, and her hands snagged on a bottle from her toiletries bag and brandished it like a sword.
“Are you trying to defend yourself with a bottle of hairspray?”
That voice. She recognized that voice.
Fletcher pried one eyelid up, a fraction of an inch, and winced against the sting. Waylon stood, shirtless, hands planted against his hips, and watched her half-feral survival instincts with a smirk.
She glanced at her weapon of choice. “Dry shampoo. Doesn’t matter. Why are you standing in my closet?”
“I heard the water turn off. Thought I might hop in the shower.”
“In my bathroom?” Fletcher shrilled.
“Don’t you mean our bathroom?”
For the first time, Fletcher peered over his shoulder. Beyond him wasn’t a set of shelves, stacked with rolled terry cloth. There was a bed, a dresser, nightstands. Bedroom things just like her bedroom things.
And between them, a jack-and-jill bathroom.
“Did you want to join me?” Waylon’s photo belonged in the dictionary next to the definition for smug son of a bitch.
Fletcher would have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t accidentally chemical peeled them. “I’d rather throw myself into an active volcano.”
A hum vibrated in his chest. A hum that sounded a lot like he didn’t believe her.
She opened her mouth, hoping something snarky manifested, but it simply hung there useless. Her thoughts tangled, a fly caught in a spider’s web. Whenever he was near, she reverted to a twenty-three-year-old version of herself.
She stripped the towel from his arms and used it to wipe at her eyes as she stomped away, slamming the door behind her.
“You’re welcome for the towel,” he called.
His laugh, bright and clear, haunted her all the way downstairs.
The rest of the house was still, quiet save for the sound of an iPhone game chiming six inches from Sheila’s face. The intern slumped on one of the microsuede sofas, body contorted into a horrible C shape that would give chiropractors nightmares.
“Morning,” Fletcher offered half-heartedly as she smoothed her hand over the sofa’s plush fabric. “Did I miss breakfast?”
“I don’t think so,” Sheila said. “No one’s come out of the kitchen yet. Do you think I should sell my golden chicken to get a super-mega-blaster?”
“What? No. I don’t care.”
In the silence between sound effects, Fletcher listened for signs of life. The estate was missing the low-volume chatter it had yesterday before dinner when staff members fluttered between rooms. There was no popped champagne or crudités. No sweet smell of syrup or freshly brewed espresso.