Page 54 of Troubles in Paradise
“Let’s go,” Maia says. “She wasn’t the FBI.”
The boys and Joanie shoot out the door and Maia does a check—lights out, stove off, everything put away. She locks the sliding glass door and turns off the water on the slide.
Goodbye, villa,she thinks.Site of my first kiss.
Together, they run down Lovers Lane shrieking with heady joy. Maia can’t believe they got away with it.
Baker
He feels like he’s starring in a sitcom about a single dad who moves from the big city to a tropical island to woo the girl he fell in love with on vacation. In episode 2, he finds out this girl is pregnant. Twist: It’s his child. Twist: She is just out of a long-term relationship and needs time alone. Twist: He moves in across the street.
In episode 3, his mother moves in. There’s no room for her but she’s adamant and says she has nowhere else to go.
“What about Huck’s?” Baker said when Irene showed up on his doorstep with her suitcase. “That was working out. You had your own bedroom. You drove to work together.”
“I quit the boat,” Irene said. “I need to be with family. Huck isn’t family.”
“You quit theboat?” Baker said. “You like the boat.”
Irene stared at him. She was impossible to read but he couldn’t just let her stand outside so he held the door open. She set her suitcase behind one of the sofas in the living room.
“So you’re here for a while?” Baker said. “Why don’t you take the second bedroom. Floyd can sleep with me.”
“I’ll be fine on the sofa,” Irene said. “I’ll use Floyd’s bathroom. I hope he won’t mind.”
“Mom,” Baker said. “I insist. Floyd will sleep with me. Are you kidding? He’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m not putting either one of you out,” Irene said. “I feel horrible about this as it is. The sofa is fine.”
He decided that after she spent a few nights on the sofa, he would offer again. “What are you going to do for work now? Do you have a plan?”
“I’m going to get my captain’s license,” Irene said. “I have that money coming from your grandmother. I’m going to buy my own boat and start my own charter.”
“Your own charter?” Baker said. “Here?”
Irene nodded. Wow, she did not look happy.
“You’re going into direct competition with Huck?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Something had happened, but what? She would tell him when she was ready. Or she wouldn’t. It would be nice to have his mother around, but he needed to catch her up. “That house across the street is where Ayers lives,” he said. He considered asking Irene to sit down—but if anyone could handle the news standing up, it was his mother. “She’s pregnant.”
“You’re kidding.”
“With my baby.”
“Yourbaby?”
“Yes.” Baker paused. “We aren’t together. I mean, weweretogether, I suppose that’s obvious, but then she got engaged to Mick, then she broke the engagement with Mick because he was unfaithful, then she found out she was pregnant.”
“But the baby’s not Mick’s?” Irene looked dubious. Baker’s private fears were written all over his mother’s face. “You’re sure? She might just be telling you that because…well, because you’re you, by which I mean a wonderful father.”
“She insists the baby is mine,” Baker said. “Don’t women have a sixth sense about things like that?”
Irene frowned. “I’m not sure. I never had any doubts about the paternity of my children.”
The last thing Baker wanted was for Irene to take issue with Ayers. “Here’s the thing. I want to be with Ayers eventually. The cart came a little before the horse—”
