2. Fair Play
2
FAIR PLAY
Ruby
A school of fish shimmered like bright blue jewels as they swam past me, making dainty ripples in the crystal-clear water. One darted close enough to brush my leg, making me laugh—silently, since I had the regulator in my mouth.
I waved at my brother and pointed to the underwater camera he held, motioning for him to capture all this. Cole gave a thumbs-up. The Miami sun filtered through the water like a faint spotlight on the sunset-pink reef. I swam alongside glittering blue tang fish and plants that danced in the current, tranquil and silent. As I skimmed the sandy bottom of the shallow ledge, a dazzling pair of purple parrotfish shot past, racing into an underground cavern too narrow for humans. I signaled Cole, moving my hand in a circle. It’s a wrap. The parrotfish would be hard to top.
We kicked toward the surface, reemerging into a world of air and sun and sound after the dark, silent serenity of thirty minutes underwater. Cole tugged off his mask. “Great footage, Ruby,” he said. “The parrotfish rocked it.”
“Thanks. I rehearsed with them earlier.”
He laughed. “Always said you were a fish-whisperer, Ariel.”
I grinned at the childhood nickname, and we swam for the dive boat where my friend Lance waited. “You’ll be swamped with bookings after we upload this promo,” Cole said over the lapping of the waves.
“I hope so!”
I needed them.
Lance reached over the side and I grabbed his hand to hoist myself up. He was a longtime friend who ran day fishing tours, and he’d been doing us a favor, manning the boat while we filmed underwater videos to advertise Ariel’s Island Eco-Adventure Tours. Cole was a professional photographer, and I was grateful to have their help.
“Get what you wanted?” Lance asked while we removed our dive gear and stowed it away. “Wait. That was a silly question.” He held up a hand and flashed his catnip-to-women grin. “You always get what you want.”
“Not always.” I’d worked my butt off most of my life, but that wasn’t the same thing. “But from now on, yes. New Ruby”—I tapped my chest and adopted a tough glower—“takes no prisoners. The new me is merciless.”
Lance chuckled as he started the engine. We sped toward the skyline of South Beach, my wet hair whipping behind me. After I’d almost lost my business a year ago, I didn’t take the bliss of working outdoors for granted. Thanks to my mother’s help, and favors from people like Cole and Lance, I’d started anew.
We reached the marina, and Lance slowed the motor, navigating around other vessels returning to the beach.
Cole ran a hand through his hair, golden from years in the sun, like mine. “When do you leave for your next adventure tour?”
I rubbed my hands together. “About a week and a half. I’m so excited for this one. I’m running a rock climbing and diving gig in Flamingo Key.”
“Nice. First job there in a while, right?”
Crossing my fingers, I nodded. “Took me months to get this one.” Business in Flamingo Key had been hit hardest by my ex-boyfriend Duke’s slash-and-burn departure from my life. But I’d been steadily rebuilding my tour company’s presence.
I turned to include both guys when I said, “I can’t thank either of you enough for your help. Not just today, but over the last year.”
Cole raised a closed fist and knocked it against mine. “Here’s to success and saying fuck you to the asshole who tried to tank you.”
“I second that,” Lance said as he steered Sally into her slip.
I jumped to the dock as soon as it was close enough and helped tie the boat to the cleat.
“See you in a few hours, Captain,” I told Lance with a salute before I headed for my car. I had a sunset snorkel tour off Key Biscayne and had hired Lance’s boat for the trip. More work tonight meant no cocktails now, but no complaints.
“Roger that,” he said.
“Say hi to Mom for me!” Cole called, and I waved him off with a smile before I took off for South Beach and parked in a nearby lot, then found our mother at her favorite fish taco joint on the main drag.
“You’re too tan, sweetheart,” Mom said when I reached her. “You need to wear sunscreen. Or a hat.” Her own wide-brimmed headgear was large enough to provide a landing pad for creatures from outer space.
“The tan is kind of an occupational hazard.” I sat in the empty stool next to her, then gestured to my getup—a green bikini covered by blue swim shorts and a loose tank. “I can slather myself with the stuff, but even then, the sun leaves its mark.”
“Slather yourself more,” she instructed, as if telling me to do my chores. But I was thirty-two, not twelve, and didn’t have to be told to clean my room. I kept it, and my condo, quite neat, thank you very much—even before I’d kicked out my ex.
“The mojito and virgin pina colada?” a waiter asked, two tempting drinks on his tray.
“I took the liberty of ordering in advance.” Mom touched my arm, then waved her hand in the air. “And the mojito’s for me, please.”
Once our drinks were placed on the table, Mom leaned closer then paused. “Hello,” she said, lowering her sunglasses and peering from under her floppy hat. “Incoming hotness at two o’clock,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth as a muscular man in board shorts and flip-flops strolled by.
“Mom,” I admonished.
“Not for me. For you. You deserve a little fun,” she urged. “Go say hello.”
Thanks but no thanks. “I don’t have time for romance. It’s distracting.”
She dropped a hand to my arm, squeezing gently. “But it can also be wonderful,” she said, ever the romantic, in spite of the screwing she got in her recent divorce and her ex’s cheating during their marriage. “Romance can be worth the trouble. And it’s been a year for you.”
One year, three months, and nine days.
“And it’s taken that long to rebuild my business and my life.” I was finally close to where I was before Duke slammed my professional reputation online after the breakup with negative review after negative review. My voice softened. “Which I couldn’t have done without your support, Mom.”
Mom waved away my gratitude. “I’d do anything for you, Ruby.”
My heart squeezed. She would. I knew that about her in a soul-deep way. Even though we saw each other a few days ago, we easily chatted about her chakras, and cute guys at her yoga class, and who was dating who until we were near the end of our drinks, but it seemed Mom wasn’t out of gossip.
“So, I heard from Andrew.” She stirred the mint at the bottom of her mojito glass. “One of Eli’s former business partners.”
The name was familiar. “Wasn’t he your old college friend? I did a dive tour for him some time back.”
Mom fiddled with the silvery necklace she’d made and looked away, embarrassed. “Right. I’d worried he’d hold it against me, that I’d introduced him to Eli. At the time, I knew Eli was looking for someone with Andrew’s skills and…”
And the rest was painful history, as it often goes with exes. And Eli was the worst of them. Shame that he’d been such a good stepdad for nearly two decades. He’d helped raise Cole and me after our father died when we were young, and had been like a father to us until he’d screwed Mom over in their divorce, after screwing someone else while they were married.
“Anyway,” Mom continued as if shaking off thoughts of her second husband, “Andrew has been trying to reach him, but apparently , he’s too busy to answer the phone, living it up in Flamingo Key with his new fiancée and his new club, Sapphire .” She breathed the name like it cost her something.
“Flamingo Key?” I asked because life was funny sometimes. “Where I’m headed for the tour?”
She nodded. “Yes. Where we used to go on vacation when you were little. And when you were a teenager too,” she said with a laugh. We’d spent a lot of time there, and I knew a lot of people there, still counted many friends on the island. She paused, perhaps for dramatic impact. “And there’s more. Andrew thinks Eli might have started the club with money he stole from the business. He’s hired a PI to look into it.”
I stared at her, hoping this was a bad joke. Because that was next level. “Are you kidding me? He stole from the company?”
“That’s what he said.” She stabbed the straw into the soggy mint at the bottom of her glass. “Something about shares in a mysterious cocoa bean farm. Did the investment tank or did the money go elsewhere?” she mused.
“Like into his nightclub?” I asked.
Mom lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and beckoned me closer. “You should drop in on the club and then steal his Rolex while you’re there.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. “He does love that stupid Rolex.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “On second thought, concentrate on your tour, sweetie. You can’t take people rock climbing from jail. And talking too much about my ex is bad for my chakra.”
* * *
The conversation nagged at me until my sunset snorkel when I put it aside. After I said goodbye to Lance and my satisfied clients, my mind turned to Eli once more as I drove through the familiar Miami streets toward my condo.
My mom had given everything for love—her heart, her time, and her money. She’d given Eli the start-up funds for his investment firm many years ago. It hadn’t been a loan, but a gift. She’d wanted to help make his dreams come true.
For him to turn around and battle so coldly to keep everything when they split had left me empty inside.
And pissed off too. I wanted what was right. That was how Mom had raised me. Hell, that was how Eli had raised me.
To play fair.
When I reached my home, I headed straight for my laptop and impulsively—or maybe it wasn’t so impulsive since it felt goddamn necessary—changed my flight. I needed some extra days on the front end, and I’d use that time to do some digging.
To find out what Eli was up to because he was obviously up to something.
Then I’d make him do right by Mom.
Play fair. Just like he’d taught me when I was a kid.