Free Fortunate Harbor by Emilie Richards Page A

a few minutes. She would stop by to explain and ask his forgiveness. She would tell him that any time he could get away again, he had a standing invitation to come to her place. She gave herself an extra half hour to get to work and took off.
    Marsh lived on the other end of Palmetto Grove Key, near the bridge to the mainland, in a house his family had owned for four generations. She passed both the island’s Indian mound and an abandoned fish camp; then she wound her way through forest scrub that reminded her of her unfortunate search and destroy mission yesterday.
    Someday soon she would have to find her way back to that spot and look for her golf umbrella, which she had abandoned after nearly clubbing earth-tone man over the head.
    Marsh called his rambling home a Cracker house. It sat on brick pilings, high enough that when storms blew through and flooding ensued, the house usually withstood both. The tin roof jutted over screened porches for shade, and windows had been placed for maximum ventilation. Once in the fall, she, Marshand Bay had camped out in mosquito-net-draped hammocks on one of the porches, listening to insects and the remnants of a faraway thunderstorm. She had fallen asleep, drugged by the fragrance of citrus blossoms and the faint sulfur of distant mangroves. The unlikely combination had been intoxicating.
    Gratified when she saw that Marsh had not yet left, she pulled her vintage BMW convertible to a halt beside his pickup. A Chevrolet sedan with Florida plates sat on the other side. She remembered that Marsh’s cleaning lady came on Mondays.
    She climbed the steps and opened the screen door to the porch where they had camped that night. She crossed and rapped on the front door. About to pound a little harder and call through the open windows, she was surprised when the door opened.
    Tracy took a step back. The woman in the doorway was about her own age. She had pale blond hair and a porcelain complexion that proclaimed the hair color—or at least some version of it—was natural. Her features were narrow and perfectly aligned, and her eyes were almost violet. Tracy examined her quickly, hoping for something that wasn’t perfect, to pump up her diminishing confidence, and decided the lovely eyes were spaced too close together.
    That did not, of course, offset the fact that she was dressed in a bathrobe the same shade of violet.
    “May I help you?” she asked sleepily, tying the belt of her robe around a Scarlett O’Hara waist.
    Tracy was at a complete loss for words. Obviously this woman, whoever she was, had spent the night here.
    In whose bed?
    She was expected to say something. She settled for the perfunctory. “I was looking for Marsh.”
    “Well, he’s a popular guy. I’m sure you aren’t the first woman who’s come looking for him.”
    The woman did not have a voice that went with her general appearance. Tracy had expected a Southern drawl, something soft and purring, like melting butter on moist corn bread. Instead she clipped her speech, as if each word knew it was allowed only so much time to hang in the air. Tracy pictured a spreadsheet. She pictured graphs.
    “Is he home?” Tracy asked at last, although she wasn’t sure why. Confronting Marsh here and now was one of the worst ideas she’d had in a few days filled with them.
    “I’m sorry, but Marsh is getting our son ready for school. I would call him, but I know he doesn’t want to be interrupted. We both take Bay’s education very seriously.”
    Sylvia Egan. Now Tracy had a name to put with the face. Marsh had told her all about his ex-wife, Sylvia, or at least she’d thought so. He had just neglected to mention that Sylvia could have been Miss America.
    Or maybe she had been. Maybe Sylvia had put herself through law school on all those scholarships. Because Tracy knew that when she wasn’t standing around in a bathrobe, Sylvia was a hotshot criminal attorney in Manhattan. Marsh had told her that Sylvia was a