The House on Mermaid Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

Nigel urged. “If you can just get her to turn around for . . .”
    Avery grabbed Kyra’s free hand and pulled her the rest of the way into the foyer. Maddie tumbled in after her. Avery shoved the door closed behind them.
    “I’m so sorry,” Kyra said. “I don’t even know where they came from. I didn’t see anybody tailing us down from Atlanta. Although there was this really homely woman wearing what looked like size-thirteen shoes in the stall next to me at the rest stop.” Kyra sighed. “That’s how bad it’s gotten. I’ve been reduced to checking out feet in stalls! But I thought we were safe. I didn’t even think about wearing a disguise. Plus there was no way I was making an eight-hour drive in a burqa.”
    Dustin rubbed his eye sleepily. One side of his face showed signs of contact with what must have been a corduroy car seat. His dark curls looked smashed from sleep.
    Chase and Deirdre came into the foyer. Maddie set down their overnight bags. “I need to get Dustin’s booster seat and Pack ’n Play out of the car.” She squared her shoulders and turned back to the door with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner about to face the firing squad.
    “I’ll get them.” Chase took the minivan keys and offered a mock salute. “Cover me! If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, send reinforcements.”
    “If I had a gun I’d gladly cover you,” Kyra said. “I don’t know how to get rid of them. I just keep praying that a real celebrity will show up to distract them.” She propped Dustin up in the crook of her arm. “I mean, where are Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan when you really need them?”

Chapter Two

    In the kitchen Kyra set Dustin in Jeff’s lap, and the little boy stared gravely up at him. Dustin had his father’s Armenian coloring and movie star looks but a solemnity that was all his own. Chase made it back intact, set up the Pack ’n Play in the guest room, and joined them at the kitchen table, where wine had already been poured and plates were being dished up.
    Deirdre stood next to her chair eating up the praise for her pompano, which had emerged from its paper bag moist and delicious. Avery nibbled at hers tentatively, reluctant to admit just how good it was. It was impossible to sit at a dinner table with Deirdre and not think about all the meals she and her father had soldiered through after Deirdre had left. She could still remember how careful they’d been not to look at Deirdre’s empty seat at the table; the echoing silence without Deirdre’s tales of the days spent on the interiors of the spec homes her father and Jeff Hardin were building at the time; how much she’d missed the tidbits from the Hollywood gossip magazines that Deirdre practically inhaled—a form of forewarning neither Avery nor her father had recognized until after Deirdre had emptied her closet and drawers, stuffed it all into her car, and left without a backward glance.
    “Do you have any idea who the Florida Keys house belongs to?” Chase asked.
    “No. And I still can’t believe they won’t even give us an address until we get down there,” Avery said.
    “Believe it,” Kyra said. “Lisa Hogan and her crew are all about injecting as much angst as possible into the proceedings.”
    “We’re lucky they even told us we were going to be in the Keys,” Maddie said. “We’re supposed to rendezvous at Mile Marker 82 tomorrow at four P.M. to get the rest of the instructions.”
    They ate for a while in silence. Even Dustin seemed to love the fish, which he ate both scooped on his plastic spoon and with his fingers.
    “Have you been back to Bella Flora?” Maddie asked Avery.
    Avery set down her fork as all eyes turned to her.
    They’d arrived for a final Christmas together at Bella Flora knowing only that the house had sold. On Christmas Day they’d discovered that their mystery buyer was Dustin’s movie star father and his equally famous—and very pissed-off—movie star wife, Tonja