“If we keep our heads down for the next two weeks, take off the Fourth to recharge, and then settle in to finish, I feel pretty sure we can be up and running by Labor Day.”

“That’s good. Because Labor Day is a biggie here. That’s when the 1935 hurricane hit and more than four hundred people died.” Maddie swallowed. “I’m not sure I could face the memorial service they do every year. I can still remember Hurricane Charlene and cowering in that motel bathroom when she was barreling past Pass-a-Grille.”

“Hey, from what I hear it’s been an abnormally dry, calm summer. But I’m all for being done ahead of schedule,” Avery said. “And if we’re going to make it we’re going to need a designated ‘Hightower Handler.’”

“I hope you weren’t looking at me when you said that.” Maddie folded her arms across her chest.

“Of course I was looking at you. We need someone to keep him . . . well, maybe not happy but at least cooperative.”

“That’s not as easy as you seem to think,” Maddie said. “The last time you gave me ‘Hightower detail’ he caught me with his underwear in my hands.”

“I’m sorry I missed that.” Nicole’s voice rang with suppressed laughter.

“We’re all sorry we missed that,” Deirdre added.

“I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d missed that,” Maddie said drily.

“But you got him to agree to donate some things,” Avery pointed out.

“Hell, it sounds like we could have auctioned off some of his underwear, too.” Nicole looked wide awake now. Even in the fading light Avery could see her eyes glinting with humor.

“Oh, no.” Maddie’s voice took on a teasing tone. “He specifically exempted them.”

Nicole snorted and then there was no holding back the laughter.

“You should have seen his face when the underwear went flying in the air and landed all around us.” Maddie joined in the laughter.

Soon all of them were howling, clutching their sides. Deirdre didn’t seem to care if she got her head wet anymore. Roberto and Fred had stopped looking at the sky and were watching them in surprise. Avery wiped tears of laughter from her face. Nicole was still laughing so hard she looked at risk of going under.

“Fine. It was completely ridiculous.” Maddie wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “But the man was royally pissed off.”

“But he does listen to you.” Deirdre was the first to get herself under control. “Whether you want the title or not I think you’re the perfect pick for William the Wild Whisperer.”

This had them cracking up all over again. The sky grew dark and the stars began to come out. It was Deirdre who finally cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Where do we stand with the zoning issues?”

“I really can’t think about it,” Avery replied honestly. “I’m thrilled with the subs we have lined up. We now have a first-rate carpenter and electrician in residence. I saw online that there’s talk about lifting the ban on B and Bs.” She shrugged. “I’ve got too many other things that I can control to worry about the ones I can’t. We’re not tied to land, we’re not changing the footprint of any of the structures, and so far no one has tried to prevent us from pulling permits. As far as I’m concerned this is the network’s legal department’s problem.”

“Except that Lisa Hogan is already trying to make it ours,” Nicole said quietly.

Avery shrugged again. “She just said we had to be done by Labor Day, and we’re going to do everything humanly possible to meet that deadline. But I can’t force William Hightower to be standing at the front door greeting guests with a smile on his face. And I can’t be expected to go out and book those guests, either. As my father used to say, all we can do is the best we can do.”

They left the hot tub extremely shriveled but oddly hopeful. Avery said her good nights to everyone and watched them head back to the houseboat. Alone, she stepped out onto the moonlit sliver of beach and pulled out her cell phone, eager to call Chase and fill him in.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Over the last weeks of June one day bled into the next. Maddie felt the sun beat down harder, gaining strength each day. Even when the clouds scuttled in, the breeze remained heavy with humidity; a warm wet towel that wrapped itself around you and refused to be shrugged off.

Despite the heat the once-sleepy island appeared wide awake and pulsing with life. The subs arrived early each morning and stayed late each afternoon. Boats and barges came and went bearing workmen, supplies, and materials; an invasion so complete that even William Hightower seemed at a loss as to which incursions loomed largest.

Mermaid Point thrummed with the sounds of power tools and reverberated with shouts. Wherever Roberto worked, rock and roll and especially classic southern rock blared from portable speakers; something that William had at first blanched at and then pretended not to notice but that made Maddie’s blood quicken each time the strains of remembered favorites reached her. She lingered outside the garage late one afternoon where Roberto was framing in a new upstairs bath and stair just so that she could listen to a younger, edgier William Hightower’s pain-roughened vocals that lamented the mermaid who’d left him to return to the sea.

She was blinking away tears, wondering how someone who could evoke such strong emotion with his voice could stop using it, when she looked up and saw Troy and Anthony recording her reaction. The crew somehow seemed to be everywhere capturing everything. Kyra blocked whatever shots of Dustin she could and occasionally she shot back, though what she intended to do with the video of the video and audio men seemed unclear.

The days passed in constant motion and forced interaction so that by the time the subs left for the day even Maddie, who had always been keenly aware of the importance of communication, had little to say and virtually no energy with which to say it. She’d become far less stringent about maintaining their “one good thing” tradition, but because sunsets were off-limits to the network camera, they took to the upper deck almost nightly, carrying their snacks and cans of soft drinks, which they’d begun to spike with rum from a liter bottle that Nicole had brought back from Miami. Sometimes they toasted and reflected on the day; sometimes they sat silently, their eyes on the sun and the sky.

Avery’s fingers were Cheez Doodle orange and the rum she’d poured into her Diet Coke can was starting to kick in when a boatload of paparazzi slowed out in the channel, one of two daily “drive-by shootings” that had grown as regular and inevitable as the tides. So far Nigel and his friends had kept their distance, sticking to the deep water and relying on telephoto lenses so long they could magnify a blemish that hadn’t fully formed yet from two miles away.

From the deck of his sunset boat, Roberto waved a tie-dyed bandana at the photographers while Fred Strahlendorf aimed the tip of a screwdriver at them before holstering it in his tool belt. Avery gave the paparazzi an orange-coated finger, but with Dustin already tucked into his berth and their energy level at such a low ebb, there wasn’t a lot of heat in the exchange.

“Permission to come aboard?” Hudson Power stood on the retaining wall, his head tilted back to address them. In the swimming pool William Hightower swam lap after lap, something he now did at sunrise before the workmen arrived and near sunset after they left.

Waved aboard, Hudson slid onto a vacant seat cushion. Deirdre slid a plate of crackers slathered in pâté onto a wooden crab trap that Maddie had requisitioned for their cocktail table. Nicole handed him a can of Coke from the cooler, though Maddie noticed that no one mentioned or offered a pour of rum to go in it.

“I feel like we should lure them closer. You know, maybe put Will and Dustin out in a boat just on the edge of the shallow water and wait for them to bite.” Kyra’s eyes were on Nigel. “Then we could snap pictures of them stuck on a flat.”

“It’s tempting.” Nicole took a long sip of her drink.

“Aren’t the fines for running aground really steep?” Maddie asked. “I remember one of my guidebooks talking about the damage propellers can do to the sea grass and coral rock.”

“That’s right, fines can run in the thousands,” Hudson said, his eyes on the paparazzi. “So far these guys have been smart enough to keep a local at the helm.” Hudson gave a friendly wave to the driver of the paparazzi’s boat. “That’s Captain Eli Fine out there.”

Eli waved back, gave an amiable toot of his boat horn.

“It happens all the time, though,” Hudson said. “Even native Conchs run aground on occasion.” He took a sip of his Coke. “The saying is there are only three kinds of skippers: those who have run aground, those who will run aground, and those who have but won’t admit it.”

“You haven’t run aground, have you?” Maddie asked, surprised. Hudson’s lessons on running the Jon Boat had been clear and concise. She knew he’d been guiding for decades and operating boats since he was a child.

“Of course.” Hudson popped a pâté-covered cracker in his mouth and chewed companionably. His green eyes crinkled at the corners. “And so has Will. In fact, I heard that one of the reasons he was so upset when he got back and found someone in his, um, closet was because he almost got stuck on a flat he knows like the back of his hand that day. All it takes is a moment of inattention.”

Maddie wasn’t sure which was worse: getting stranded on a flat with no way off or going through what she’d come to think of as the “underwear fiasco.” “But if you stay in the marked channel, then you’re safe, right?” She wished briefly that there were obvious channel markers in real life, too.