Page 29 of Juicy Pickle

Concerned she’s uncovered a crab or some other unexpected creature in her sand sculpting, I whip around, ready to help.

But she’s standing, the breeze ruffling her distinctive brown hair with purple highlights. She holds her hat down, frantically trying to tuck her hair into it.

I’d know that dye job anywhere. Even with the big sunglasses, I recognize her chin, her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. Those small ears. Her shoulders.

I’ve never seen her with so little on, and I can barely catch my breath. She’s like a mirage in the desert, beautiful, perfect.

But this isn’t some vision.

It’s real.

It’s Bailey Johansson. My former assistant. The woman I fired.

The thorn in my side. The problem I have yet to solve.

And she is not supposed to be here.

She sucks in a breath. We’re only twenty feet apart.

I swear the ocean sizzles around my feet as my rage builds.

She isnotsupposed to be on this island.

I got rid of her.

Bailey holds out a hand as if to ward me off. “Rhett, don’t blow your stack.”

But that’s exactly what I do.

13

BAILEY

The roar of the ocean is a suitable backdrop as Rhett stalks toward me. It’s powerful and loud, and the waves race up the shore like they are staging an attack.

His voice cuts through the noise. “What the fuck are you doing here, Bailey Johansson? This is fraud. This is a fucking crime. I could have you arrested. Didn’t you cost this company enough money already?”

Oooh. Dang. Boss man can cuss. I’ve never heard him do it before.

I consider interrupting to call him out on his language around a lady, but then I decide A: I’m not one, and B: I don’t care. The way to rile him is to stay calm and do my thing. It’s how I managed working for him.

Still, the F-bombs. That’s new.

I tune him out and kneel before my sand sculpture. I kind of enjoy the spectacle. Rhett is in fine wet form, his neck bulging with the effort of being heard over the ocean. Water trickles down a seriously honed chest and muscular arms. If the rest of the employees, especially Viola, could see him, they’d be tattooing “Mr. Juicy” on their bodies.

His green-blue swim trunks cling to him. Dark hair swirls on his legs, wet and sticking to his skin. His dirty feet are covered in sand. They’re good-looking feet, not that I have a fetish. Okay, maybe a small one. I do judge a man by his toes.

These are good toes.

And wasted on him, since he’s otherwise completely intolerable. His face is beet-red, and the tirade continues. He hasn’t come any closer, so I don’t feel physically threatened. I smooth the side wall of my structure, still not sure where it’s going. I’ve only been forming a base shape.

His yelling melts into the roar of the waves as I consider the packed sand. There’s a moment in sculpting when your design becomes clear. You might start with a standard castle, squared off, towers higher than the wall. But then something happens. Maybe a portion collapses because you didn’t get the consistency quite right. Or sometimes the light simply hits it a certain way, and this ignites a new vision.

But this moment, with Rhett’s words spitting through the air like an angry cartoon, is when I see what my sculpture will become. It’s a sturdy fortress, stalwart against the storm. It reminds me of a mission I saw once on a road trip with my parents.

All the missions in Florida are long gone, but we took a three-day road trip to San Antonio, where tons of historical buildings are still standing. In fact, one was getting decked out to be the backdrop for a wedding while we were there.

A rounded dome of sand brings to mind the Mission San Jose, which had an intact church and a gorgeous line of arches where the light played with shadow. A photographer captured images of a teen girl in a wildly elaborate quinceañera gown while we were there, and I was completely enchanted by how magical it all looked.

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