Emily Marshall was in the bathroom. No, not the bathroom, the head. On a boat the tiny bathroom was called the head.
And as long as you're correcting yourself, Emily thought as she leaned closer to the mirror to reapply her lipstick, this floating castle with sails can't really be called a boat.
Boats were unassuming, functional little things you sat in and used oars to row. Or they were things with sails attached that gave you calluses on your hands, sunburn on your face and a healthy lungful of fresh ocean air. Sometimes they took you from point A to point B, but mostly from point A to nowhere, and back again.
Despite the fact that there was, indeed, no destination for this evening's sail, there was nothing unassuming about the sailing vessel Emily was standing on. True, the Home Free wasn't large enough to be called a ship, but somehow the word boat didn't fit, either.
Yacht, thought Emily as she adjusted the straps of her new black party dress. Alexander Delmore's boat really had to be called a yacht.
She looked at herself critically in the mirror. She'd picked up this dress in a fancy department store's bargain basement. Even marked down the way it had been, it had put her out nearly half of one of her weekly paychecks.
Spending that much money was a big deal to her. It meant she'd have to watch her grocery money for the next few weeks, and really try to keep her expenses down. But to real estate tycoon Alexander Delmore, the amount she'd spent on the dress would have been laughably small. When Alex took her out to dinner, he spent that much on one bottle of wine.
Of course, he made significantly more money wheeling and dealing in real estate than she made as a high school English teacher. That was just one of the simple facts of life. And it was typical of Emily to have fallen in love with a job in a city school system that couldn't afford to pay a decent salary. Sure, she could have applied for a job in a more affluent district. Or she could have stuck to her original college major and gone into business or gotten a job working with computers. It was her own fault that she never seemed to have enough money.
Emily made a face at herself in the mirror. But even with her tongue sticking out, she still looked sophisticated, thanks to the elegant lines of the dress.
Earlier this evening, Alex had asked her out again, for next Tuesday night. He wanted to take her to a party at a local country club. If she spent the other half of her paycheck on yet another expensive dress, she'd be eating pasta or tomato soup until the end of the month.
Emily didn't like eating pasta day in and day out. She liked lobster. And veal. And expensive cuts of filet mignon. She liked asparagus, regardless of the season. She liked watermelon in the winter, and imported chocolate.
She liked houses like Alex's, houses that overlooked the clear blue water of the Gulf of Mexico. She liked houses like Alex's, with six bedrooms and four and a half baths. She liked fluffy new towels that weren't fraying around the edges. She liked cleaning ladies and dinners out. She liked big floating weekend parties on Alex's yacht—parties like this one that started early in the afternoon on Saturday and didn't end until late Sunday night. She liked big-screen stereo TVs and state-of-the-art compact disc players.
She liked the thought of having enough money that she'd never have to worry about the phone bill or the electric payment. She liked the idea of vacations and cruises and trips to Europe.
She also liked Alexander Delmore.
But she didn't love him.
It was clear that he was interested in her. He had as much as told her that he was looking to settle down, to start a family. He was one of Florida's most eligible bachelors, and Emily was flattered that he found her attractive.
But… she didn't love him.
Her neighbor, Carly Wilson, said so what if you don't love him? Love was overrated. A good strong case of like could outlast the most passionate love affair, particularly if it was combined with an enormous bank account. How often does real love come along, anyway? Carly had asked. According to Emily's neighbor, the answer was usually never.
Emily stared at herself in the mirror, searching the familiar blue of her own eyes. She was amazed that she could be wearing this gorgeous, expensive dress that made her look like a million dollars, and be standing here, in the bathroom—head—of millionaire Alexander Delmore's luxurious yacht, thinking about… James Keegan.
After seven years, you'd think she'd be over the man. And she was over him, Emily told herself firmly. Her affair with black-hearted Jim Keegan was dead and buried, deep in the past. Jeez, it had been over almost before it even began.
So what the heck was she doing thinking about him?
Because of love. She was thinking about Jim because she had honestly loved him. As rotten and cruel as he had been, as badly as he had hurt her, the fact remained that Emily had loved James Keegan with all of her heart and soul. And deep inside she knew that never, not in a billion years, would she ever love Alex Delmore even half that much.
Still— Carly's voice seemed to echo in her head, as if she were a little devil perched on Emily's shoulder —who says you have to love Alex to marry him?
"I do," Emily said out loud to her reflection, then winced at her poor choice of words.
She gave the short skirt of her new dress one more yank southward and quickly ran her fingers through the short, blunt-cut of her chestnut hair. She took a deep breath to further exorcise James Keegan's too-handsome ghost, then turned to open the door that led out into Alexander's tiny shipboard office.
She heard the angry voices as soon as her hand was on the doorknob, but it was too late to pull back. The door swung open, and the arguing men immediately fell silent. Alex and another man—Vincent something—looked up at her, and she could see surprise and annoyance in both pairs of eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to interrupt…."
Alexander Delmore shook his head. "No problem," he said, crossing the tiny cabin with a smile on his tanned, handsome face. "I didn't realize you were using the head." He glanced back at the other man as he took Emily's hand. "If I'd known, we would have gone somewhere else to have our… chat."
Emily couldn't remember the other man's last name. They had been introduced earlier that evening, when all the party guests first boarded Alex's yacht. Vincent what? she thought. Martino? Or was it Medino?
Whoever he was, he was a heavyset man. His dark complexion and body-builder's physique offset Alex's golden slenderness. And, unlike Alex, Vincent still looked annoyed at the interruption.
"If you don't mind…" Vincent said pointedly.
Emily slipped her hand free from Alex's. "I'll get out of your way," she said.
"It'll only be a second," Alex promised. "I'll meet you up on deck."
The office door closed tightly behind her.
Emily was halfway down the hall when she realized that she'd left her purse in the head. She turned back, but when she got to the door to the office she could hear that the two men were arguing again. They were keeping their voices low, but there was no mistaking the underlying current of tension.
She had just lifted her hand to knock when Vincent's voice rose slightly.
"If you don't like that deal," she heard him say quite clearly, "how about this one—I waste you and take all of your profits."
Waste? Had he said waste? As in… kill?
Alex's voice rose enough for Emily to hear him, too.
"I had a deal with your uncle that worked out fine for years," he said, his voice shaking with emotion.
"My uncle's dead," Vincent said. "And I'm in charge now. You want to deal, first you gotta deal with me."
"Fine," Emily heard Alex say. "In that case, you can deal me out."
Vincent laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You don't expect me to believe that you'll get out of the business just like that, do you?"
Emily could almost see Alex's shrug. "Believe what you want, Marino."
There was a loud thump from inside the office, as if someone's head had hit the bulkhead, hard. Emily's heart was pounding, but she couldn't move, couldn't run away.
"I believe," Vincent's voice growled, "that I just might break your face. I know that there was a snowstorm somewhere off the Gulf Coast last night, and I know that this pretty little boat of yours was there to intercept. You cut me my share, or you're dead. That's your deal. Take it or leave it."
A snowstorm? In July? In Florida?
With sudden clarity, Emily remembered waking up in the early hours of the morning to the sound of a small outboard motor. The yacht's motorized dinghy had quietly pulled up alongside the bigger boat, and even as she watched out her cabin's tiny porthole, the gentle throbbing of its engine had been cut.
Someone had been out on the deck. Emily hadn't been able to see who it was, but she had heard the sounds of movement. The little boat had been secured to the side of the yacht with a rope, and a ladder had been thrown down. The person in the boat had turned, and in the early dawn Emily had had a clear view of his face.
It had been Alex.
When she asked him about it at breakfast that morning, he'd apologized for disturbing her, and told her that he'd been out fishing.
Fishing? Fishing for what? Something Vincent Marino would threaten to kill Alex for?
Snowstorm. Snow. Snow was slang for cocaine, wasn't it?
God in heaven, was it possible that Alex was dealing cocaine?
Emily turned and ran.
Emily sat at the interrogation room table in the St. Simone police precinct, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
The police officer who had first taken her statement had called this the interview...
