“You’re joking.” Will kept his voice even. He wasn’t even home yet. He was not going to get worked up. Hadn’t he just spent a month trying to learn how to stay calm and in control? “And it’s not like you’d ever get approval for a bed-and-breakfast. There’s an ordinance against them. And a moratorium on building.”

Tommy shook his head dismissively. “That’s just semantics and small-town politics. And I never joke about money.” Of course he didn’t. The kid was a damned investment banker with a calculator for a brain. If he didn’t look so much like a Hightower Will might have doubted the paternity test. “Unless you want to end up on the sleeper sofa in my living room? Or an old-age home for former rock stars?”

Will crossed his arms over his chest and turned an eye on Tommy. He’d used this look to good effect with record people who’d wanted to turn him into some fancy-boy crooner when he was a rocker through and through. And with fans who didn’t understand boundaries or personal space. “That won’t be happening.” If he’d earned anything in all the decades played out onstage, it was privacy. “There’s no way in hell I’m sharing my island or my home with strangers.” He shuddered when he thought of wide-eyed honeymoon couples or, worse, sad-eyed retirees in the bedroom down the hall.

You didn’t own a slab of coral rock barely tied to land if you wanted strangers anywhere near you.

His son turned and looked at him. “Well, I’m afraid you don’t really have a choice. You don’t have enough money to live on without using your sole remaining asset one way or another. You can sell Mermaid Point and the structures on it and live frugally for the rest of your life”—his tone indicated he didn’t believe William had the ability to do any such thing, as if he’d been born to wealth and hadn’t earned his fortune one damned song at a time—“or you can renovate, play the host to anyone willing to spend the money, and at least keep a roof over your head.”

William’s throat was so parched he could barely swallow. He didn’t know how he’d made such an obscene amount of money and ended up with so little. Or how the son who despised him had come up with such a horrifying plan.

A drink would have smoothed things out. Would at least allow him to pretend he wasn’t a broke, recovering alcoholic. Slowly, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a Tootsie Pop. He unwrapped it carefully and placed it in his mouth as they passed Whale Harbor Marina.

The Lorelei whizzed by on his right. Pretty soon they’d see Bud N’ Mary’s Marina, which would make him as good as home. He sucked on the thing in silence, refusing—in a ridiculous test of will—to give in and bite into its chewy center like he wanted to.

Danielle, his favorite group leader at the facility, had given him a large bag of the pops as a going-away present. Idly, he wondered why no one had ever invented a whiskey-flavored version with a shot of Jack Daniel’s in the center. Maybe that was what he should do to get back on his feet. Invent an alcoholic version of the Tootsie Pop.

He turned his head to hide his smile, concentrating on the hard, sweet candy in his mouth. Maybe an alcoholic but sugar-free version so all the poor alcoholics wouldn’t become diabetic on top of everything else. He crossed his arms on his chest and let his eyes skim over the familiar surroundings as he sucked on that candy shell.

He could tell by the position of the sun that sunset was only a few hours away. From Mermaid Point he could watch the sun rise over the Atlantic in the morning and see it set over the Gulf every night; both were sights he hadn’t gotten tired of seeing yet.

Back in the day he could have scribbled down a hit song on a napkin between sets in a bar. But that was then. Before he’d turned as old as the fucking hills and lost most everyone he’d ever cared about. This was now. And he was pretty certain that he didn’t have so much as half a melody hidden anywhere inside him.

Chapter One

Although she hadn’t exactly planned it, Madeline Singer had recently achieved two things that surprised her: a senior citizen discount; and the legal right to date.

Over the course of her twenty-seven-year marriage, Madeline had fulfilled many roles and been described in a variety of ways. She’d begun as a young bride, morphed quite happily into a suburban housewife, and genuinely enjoyed the years spent taking care of her husband and two children who followed. Two years ago, for a time so brief she wasn’t sure it should count, she’d become an “empty nester,” eagerly anticipating what she was sure would be a new and exciting phase of her life. That anticipation had been blotted out by the discovery that she was, in fact, a Ponzi victim; a dark thundercloud of reality that had forever changed her, her family, and her life but that had been rimmed with a silver lining of unsuspected inner strength and sense of purpose. She could now be described by two words that she’d never imagined joined together. Those words were “fifty-one” and “single.”

As oxymorons went, hers was nowhere near as clever as “jumbo shrimp,” “virtual reality,” or even “a little bit pregnant.” But it did qualify her to join AARP. And, apparently, to go out with new men.

Most of all it made Madeline more determined than ever to prove that being old enough to get a senior citizen discount didn’t mean you couldn’t start over.

It was May in the Atlanta suburbs. The azalea bushes bulged with white and fuchsia blooms as Madeline contemplated the For Sale sign now planted in the sprawling yard her children had once played in. A row of deep orange daylilies marched down a gentle slope to meet the mass of purple and red tulips that had shot up through the red clay. The deep green leaves of the magnolia trees she’d planted to celebrate Kyra’s and Andrew’s births cupped large, white, saucer-shaped blooms.

Madeline’s pollen-dappled minivan sat in the driveway, crammed to capacity for the drive down to Tampa, where she, Kyra, and her grandson, Dustin, would spend the night. The next morning they’d caravan with their partners, Avery Lawford and Deirdre Morgan, to meet Nicole Grant in the Florida Keys, where they’d spend yet another sweat-soaked summer transforming a mystery house for an unknown individual for their renovation-turned-reality-TV show, Do Over.

“Geema!” Her grandson emerged from the open garage, his mother behind him. The one-and-a-half-year-old ran to her, his chubby arms outstretched. Madeline lifted him into her arms and rubbed her nose against his. His golden skin was soft and warm. His dark lashes were long enough to brush against her cheek in a butterfly kiss.

“Dustin!” She planted a kiss on his forehead and hugged him to her chest. When her daughter had been fired from her first feature film for sleeping with its star, Malcolm Dyer and his Ponzi scheme had already plunged their family into dire financial straits. Kyra’s pregnancy had seemed just one more crisis to overcome. Until the first time she’d held Dustin in her arms.

“I can’t believe you’re selling the house,” Kyra said, looking at the sign. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her arms were filled with camera gear. A diaper backpack dangled from one slim shoulder.

Madeline braced herself for one of Kyra’s pointed observations about just how few women Madeline’s age would have had the guts to ask for a divorce. Or toss out some new and troubling statistic about the shocking percentage of divorced women and their children who ended up living below the poverty line. As if their entire family hadn’t already hovered uncomfortably above that line for the past two years. But to Madeline’s relief, Kyra kept her thoughts to herself.

The previous day, which would have been her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, had been spent packing and de-cluttering the house so that Kelly Wittes, her ex-husband’s girlfriend, could stage it and the Realtor could start showing it. Their history as a family in it had been either stuffed into boxes or discarded. “I know. It’s hard to imagine someone else living here,” Madeline agreed. And yet, if the real estate gods were bountiful, the next time she saw their house it could belong to someone else. “But maybe a new family with young children will move into it like we did.”

Like mourners not yet ready to lay a beloved family member to rest, they observed a moment of silence. “I don’t want to picture anyone else in our house. I’m having a hard enough time trying not to think about the people who’ll be living in Bella Flora.” Kyra’s hands tightened on the camera bags as she mentioned the neglected mansion on the tip of St. Petersburg, Florida, that Madeline, Nicole, and Avery had desperately nursed back to life not once but twice. “Are you ready?”

The answer was no, not really. Even though she knew in her gut that divorce had been the best, most positive option for both her and Steve, her excitement was tinged with regret. Madeline was looking forward to going to the Keys for the first time; she couldn’t quite believe she was going as a single woman.

She followed Kyra to the van.

“I wish they’d tell us a little more about the owner of the house we’re going to renovate. I mean, ‘high-profile individual’ covers a lot of ground,” Kyra said as she loaded the camera bags into the backseat. Their first full season of Do Over, which would begin airing in just a few weeks, had been shot in South Beach, where they’d renovated a home for a former vaudevillian they’d all fallen in love with.

“Well, from what I hear, Key West is party central. If we end up down there you can hit the bars, Mom. We could go drinking together, troll for dudes.” Kyra took Dustin and began to buckle him into his car seat. “The tabloids would eat it up. And I bet our ratings would go through the roof. I’m surprised Lisa Hogan hasn’t already set it up.” Neither of them were fans of the network production head, who cared only about ratings. “Who knows, you could get your own reality TV spin-off called Cougar Crawl or something.”