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  Virgin Gorda’s shape reminded me of a Halloween witch riding her broom. Most of her twenty-five-hundred inhabitants live in the brush end of her broom. There is another pocket of civilization in the curve of her broom handle. As we got closer to the sea I could see a secondary population of sailboats moored in her many bays.

  After banking around a tall forested peak I saw the itty-bitty runway and realized that I’d run out of time. I still hadn’t thought of a plausible excuse for my visit.

  I let Mr. Grumpy (whom I’d affectionately named Gus) go ahead of me. His long skinny (pasty) legs strode quickly toward the lone little airport building. I walked more slowly, thoroughly enjoying being in a non-air conditioned environment, letting my skin soak up the humidity and inhaling the salt-scented air. It looked like Gus and I were the only passengers who hadn’t brought checked baggage, because the people who’d filled the other four passenger seats were standing around waiting for their bags to be handed to them from the open cargo door of the plane. Gus, clutching his beige leather overnight bag, had gone through a doorway at the far end of the building. I followed him.

  A uniformed BVI customs official was seated at a folding table just inside the room. “Welcome back, Mr. Black.” He stamped Gus’s passport, which I noticed was Canadian. (At least Gus’ last name had some colour in it.)

  Gus went outside through the open door on the other side of the small room. Then the customs officer looked at me and held his hand out. “Reason for your visit?” he asked as I handed him my passport.

  “Why are you here?”

  Same question, but with different words and coming from a different mouth.

  James stood in the doorway that Gus had just used as an exit. He looked so much like our grandfather — short, stocky, with receding thick dark hair, and Grandpa’s screwed up toes on display in his sandals — but he wasn’t smiling Grandpa’s smile. He was scowling James’ scowl.

  “Surprise!” I forced my lips to spread into a smile.

  Holding the ink stamp in mid-air, the customs officer looked from me to James. “Is she with your production, Mr. Butler?”

  “No! She’s my sister and I have no idea why she’s here. Go on, Ria, explain it to both of us.”

  “Vacation.” The stupid smile was still plastered on my face.

  “Right.” James’ lie meter, his left eyebrow, shot up.

  “And where will you be staying?” the customs officer just had to ask.

  “Um, I was going to, I mean, I thought I’d …”

  “My guess? She’ll be staying with me. You came for some family bonding time, right?”

  Oh boy. “Yup, that’s why I’m here.”

  Bang went the customs stamp onto my passport. “Enjoy your stay, Miss Butler.”

  “Where are your bags?” James asked.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Let’s go.” James turned around and walked out into the sunshine.

  I ran after him. “James, wait up!”

  My brain was running as fast as my feet and I quickly threw together enough words to form a weak (very weak) excuse for my surprise arrival. But I didn’t get a chance to use any of those words. I became speechless when I saw who was sitting in the Jeep that James was standing beside.

  My old pal, Grumpy Gus.

  “That’s Albert. He’s part of the production team.” James heaved himself into the driver’s seat. “I just have to drop him off at the marina and then we’ll go to the villa.”

  “Nice to meet you, Albert.” I gave him the sweetest smile I could muster as I contorted to get into the back seat.

  His response was a nod and a tightened pucker.

  A grand total of three turns and no words later, James had driven through the majority of downtown, low-rise Spanish Town. He turned into the parking lot of the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour and parked in one of the forty spots. Through a line of short palm trees I could see the marina itself. There were more parking spots for boats than there were for cars. Three long docks ran straight out from the shore. Sticking out from those docks like the tines on a comb were multiple smaller docks. In almost every slip there was a boat — some with masts, some with multiple engines, each of them worth more than any of the cars in the parking lot.

  Albert got out of the car and, without wishing me a fond farewell, walked between the palm trees and down onto the docks.

  “I just want to wait to make sure the boat’s here for him,” James said, his attention focused on Albert.

  Under normal travel circumstances I would have wanted to take my time, look around, make note of my original impressions of the island, but these weren’t normal circumstances. James, however, decided to play the part of a tour guide as I moved up to the front seat.

  He pointed to single-storey building on our left. “That’s the closest thing they’ve got to a mall,” he said in a monotone. “There’s a bank, a dive shop, a liquor store, and a pub called The Bath and Turtle. They make pretty good cheeseburgers.” He looked to our right. “Over there’s the grocery store and some showers and stuff for people on the boats.”

  I turned my head to look at what he was describing and pretended to be interested.

  “There he goes.” James nodded and started to back out of the parking spot.

  Through the palm trees I saw the tallest structure I’d yet seen on the island, slowly making its way out of the marina and beyond the breakwater. Albert was apparently yachting in style — the boat he was on was three-stories high.

  We turned onto the road we’d come in on, only this time we headed in the other direction and drove through the residential section of Spanish Town. After we passed the last house the Jeep strained as we headed up a steep hill. I kept having to remind myself that James was driving on the right side of the road, the left side. From my side of the car it felt like, and looked like, he was driving so close to the edge of a sharp drop down to the Caribbean that our inclusion in the fish food chain was imminent. When we crested the hill I forced myself to look up, away from the pencil-thin line of gravel that pretended to be the road’s shoulder. What I saw was a postcard-perfect view of the small bay below us. Waves broke over a coral reef and then gently lapped the completely empty crescent beach.

  “The villa’s over there. You can have the bedroom on the top floor of the left wing for your vacation.” James pointed at one of the two multi-level and terraced houses on the opposite hill. “I’m in the room below the main house.”

  I changed the topic as quickly as I could — to James’ favourite topic, himself. “Why aren’t you staying at the hotel?”

  “I’d go insane over there, staying with the crew and everything. I can spend the day with them, but I need a separate place to find my sanity at the end of the day.”

  “You found your sanity? Sure took you long enough.” His facial muscles didn’t budge; he wouldn’t be smiling or even smirking at my attempt at humour. “What are you shooting down here?”

  “Check-Out Time.” He changed gears and let the engine take us down the other side of the slope. “This one’s big. We’ve been picked up by one of the U.S. networks for a prime-time run.” The topic change had improved his mood a bit.

  “Should I say congratulations?” I already thought James was successful. He’d produced television shows and movies that had sold all over the world. Apparently prime-time U.S. network exposure was the Holy Grail of his profession.

  “You should say ‘Holy shit, that’s great!’”

  “Okay. Holy shit, that’s great.” I said it with as much conviction as my exhaustion would allow. Fifty-five hours of travelling had wiped me out. “What’s the show about?”

  “It’s a reality show. We started off with thirteen contestants, but we’re down to the last two now. The prize is a one-year contract to manage the hotel. The cross promotion is a dream come true! Aunt Patti and Uncle Richard bought the island after the hotel on it was wiped out by some hurricane; they got it at a steal. They fixed it all up and o
ur entire cast and crew have been staying there for free, which has saved me a fortune in below-the-line costs. They’ll open to the public again in a couple of months, just in time for the high tourist season — and that’s when the series will go to air, which’ll give the hotel lots of free publicity. And, get this, I got my old boss, Dan Shykoff — you probably heard me talking about him when I started out — anyway, he’s got a production company in LA now, and he signed on as co-executive producer and brought in the network boys. And he’s exec producing a theatrical release that he’s going to shoot on the island once we’ve finished shooting the series. His production’s going to spend a fortune there, which’ll make Aunt Patti and Uncle Richard happy. The cast and crew on the feature will be staying there for almost two months, at full price. The series is going to give his release some advance publicity,” he took a deep breath, “and, if the numbers are as good as we hope they’re going to be, he’s going to bring me in as co-executive producer on his next feature.” We went halfway up another hill, turned left on a painfully bumpy dirt road, and then swung into a short driveway and parked. “I’m getting a shot at breaking into theatrical! Isn’t that great?” He turned the car off and hopped out, bursting with happy energy.

  “I guess so.” It all sounded kind of convoluted to me, but James sure seemed happy about it. I got out of the car and walked around to join him on the driver’s side.

  He was bent over, getting something out from under the seat I’d been sitting in.

  “It’s a dream come true! All the pieces fit into place perfectly. Well, except one — you.”

  His comment made me wonder where the body piece that Rob had mentioned fit in. Once I saw what James was holding when he stood up I started to wonder about something else. “Isn’t that Albert’s?” James was carrying the beige overnight bag.

  He looked down at the bag in his hands and acted as if he’d just noticed that he was carrying it. “What, this?”

  Rob was right — James was guilty of something. I instantly recognized the look that washed over his face. I’d practically raised him after our mother was killed, and could spot his guilty look a mile away. Right then that look was less than a foot in front of me. Despite the fact that he was in his forties, James looked exactly like he had when he was fifteen years old, standing in front of me with blood on the knuckles of his right hand, denying that he was the cause of the blood running out of the freshly broken nose of our younger brother, Evan.

  “He must have forgotten it. I’ll take it to him when we go over to the island for dinner. Come on. Let me show you the place.” He stopped in front of a high wooden gate, unlocked it, and pointed at a sign on the rock wall beside it. “See? What did I tell you? It’s a dream come true.”

  The oval sign had two artistically drawn palm trees in the middle of it. Circling around the palm trees, in red block letters, was the name of the villa — A Dream Come True.

  James had always been the dreamer in our family. I’d learned, from too much life experience, that not all dreams had a happy ending. Mine usually ended when reality slapped me in the face.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The stones in the stairway down to the villa had been laid more recently than the ones on the side of Huayna Picchu, and my nowhere-near-thirty-year-old knees were truly thankful for the smoother surface as I walked under an archway of palm fronds. Hot pink hibiscus flowers trumpeted our arrival when we stepped down onto the main patio. The villa was made up of two two-storey buildings, one on either side of the large patio we were standing on. Through its many windows I could see that the building on my left housed a great room on its ground floor. There weren’t as many windows on the ground floor of the building on my right, so I couldn’t see what was housed in it. Even if I could have, my eyes were drawn to a different view. Beyond the patio, between the two buildings, over the edge of a large horizon pool, was a priceless unobstructed view of the Caribbean that made whatever James had paid to rent the place a bargain. I instantly felt the urge to grab my camera — that was the money shot. Framed by purple-grey volcanic island shapes in the distance and brilliant red bougainvillea flowers on either side of the pool, I’d never seen the Caribbean look so spectacularly blue. The only things that ruined the view were the sparkling silver mounds that rose above the chest of the woman who was lying on a floating mattress in the pool. Her microscopic bikini top barely covered her tanned boobs. (They were too big and artificially round to be realistically called breasts.) Her blonde hair was just as bleached as the pale yellow crescent beach that curved around the bay below the villa.

  She titled her mirrored sunglasses up and squealed, “Oh, hi!” when she saw me. Carefully clasping her silicone implants, she wiggled off the floating mattress and jiggled through the water to steps at the end of the pool nearest us. “I’m Mandy, Jamie’s personal assistant.”

  I didn’t know anyone named Jamie. I knew a James; he was my brother — my married brother. “I’m Ria, Victoria’s sister-in-law.”

  “Huh?” Mandy looked confused. Her collagen inflated lower lip didn’t meet up with its overly plump upper mate.

  “Ria, don’t,” James’ guilty look had been replaced by anger.

  “I won’t if you don’t,” I shot back. All he had to do was honour his wedding vows and I’d start acting like the nicest sister in the whole world.

  “This tension is my cue to go get a drink,” Mandy walked to the side door of the great room. “Do either of you two want anything?”

  “No.” We both said as we stood facing each other like two fighters waiting for the round to start.

  James dropped Albert’s bag on the patio and kicked it under one of the lounge chairs by the pool. “Your room’s up here.” He spun around and headed for the exterior stone stairway that led to the second floor of the other building.

  Apparently, we were going to have our argument in private. That was fine with me. I matched the force of his stomps as I followed him up the stairs.

  I’d barely closed to door behind me when James started. “What the fuck was that?”

  “That was me reminding you that you’re married.” I tilted to the side and let my heavy bag slide off my shoulder and onto the massive four-poster king-sized bed.

  “That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it. Dad sent you to check up on me. Vic probably put him up to it. Or maybe Glenn told you to come?”

  “Neither Dad nor Glenn knows I’m here. Neither does Victoria,” I said with force backed by honesty. “And, for the record, Glenn doesn’t control me — nobody tells me what to do!” It was the one and only time I’d ever said something about my relationship (or lack thereof) with Glenn to James. “I’m here on vacation. I needed a break and knew I’d find a free place to stay.”

  “Yeah, right! You needed a break from travelling, so you decided to do a hell of a lot of extra travelling. That makes sense. I guess it was that direct flight from Machu Picchu to Virgin Gorda that made this the most logical place for you to go?” He glared at me and then stormed across the room and flung open the doors to the room’s private balcony. “Give me a break, Ria. You’re full of shit and we both know it. You came here to check up on me.”

  “I’m not here to check up on you!” I hoped that James wasn’t as good at recognizing my guilty look as I was at spotting his.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Your bimbo isn’t big news to me! It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve had one, is it? What’s really bugging you? Is there something else that you’re worried I’ll check up on?”

  “Fuck off!”

  I opened my mouth to respond but my brain kicked in and stopped me from firing off an angry reply. If we kept fighting, something we’d always done only too well, I’d never find out what was going on. “Look, I haven’t slept in two days, I’m tired, and maybe my crack to Mandy was a little bitchy, I’ll admit that, but …”

  “A little bitchy?”

  “Oh, I am so sorry if I wasn’t all l
ovey-dovey with your slutty mistress, James. Or should I start calling you Jamie now?” So much for trying to calm things down — my mouth had over-ruled my head.

  “She’s my personal assistant!”

  “And Victoria’s your wife!” We’d completed the verbal circle and locked glares, neither one of us knowing how to break out of it.

  James closed his eyes, sighed, and sat down on the edge of the cushion on the wicker settee. “Vic threw me out.”

  “Oh, shit.” I would have sat on the edge of the bed but it was too high up. Instead, I sidestepped onto the wooden footstool beside the bed, pushed my bag over a bit and sat down.

  “Glenn didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh.” Glenn knew? Why hadn’t he told me? “Did Victoria find out about Mandy?”

  “No. Mandy came in to audition for a new role on our soap the day after the blowout with Vic.”

  “She’s an actress?”

  His smirk told me that we were slowly working our way back to being brother and sister. “She wants to be, but there’s one small problem with that — she can’t act. Our director said hers was one of the worst auditions he’d ever seen.” He leaned back and stretched his arms across the back of the settee. “So I hired her for the position of personal assistant.”

  I didn’t want to think about the positions Mandy would get into to keep her job. “Do you care about her?”

  He slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “Grow up, Ria. This isn’t about emotion. She’s getting what she wants — a paycheque and production contacts — and I’m getting what I want.” Thankfully, he didn’t go into detail on his list of wants.