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Bo didn’t live directly on the premises, but he lived on the property tucked behind, which was also owned by Mort and Annabelle Windsor. They provided him with a small caretaker’s cabin, a Ford F-250 truck, and a modest salary in exchange for looking after the property—keeping teenagers and would-be vandals away when it wasn’t in use, maintaining the grounds, and performing minor repairs here and there. His cabin wasn’t only smaller, it was located farther from the ocean, and it was mostly hidden by trees. But he preferred it that way. Everyone else wanted to be right on the beach; he just wanted to maintain his privacy.
Glancing down at his phone again, he sighed. He had to go out in the weather. Annabelle had just texted him to say the cottage had lost power—which didn’t come as any surprise since he’d lost power, too—and Remy’s fiancée was sitting over there in the dark, alone and frightened.
Although he had to make do with a lantern and other emergency supplies, like most regular people in such a situation, the big house had a generator that was supposed to come on. Why hadn’t that happened? He’d tested it when he installed it, and it’d worked perfectly.
But it was the first generator he’d ever dealt with. He should’ve gotten a professional to handle the installation. He would have if it wasn’t so damn hard to hire a contractor on the island. The few electricians, plumbers, and other tradesmen they had were booked weeks or months—sometimes years—in advance. Not only had he installed the generator, he’d helped with other aspects of the renovation. Cub Holiday, the most successful contractor on Mariners, was diagnosed with cancer before he could finish the project. Though Cub was in much better health these days, Bo had done the rest of the work for the Windsors—or as much of it as he could, given his lack of experience. Construction was almost second nature to him, but there were still plenty of things he had yet to learn.
On my way, he texted back and yanked on a coat and boots before grabbing his toolbox, a lantern for the stranded woman, and a waterproof flashlight for himself.
“It’s all about giving the rich people what they want,” he muttered as he stepped outside. But he wasn’t bitter. He’d gotten lucky landing his job with the Windsors, and he knew it. When he came to the island looking for a summer gig in the tourist industry, he’d had no idea he’d still be here. But he’d adopted a fake surname and created a bogus work history and, so far, the Windsors hadn’t bothered to follow up.
He didn’t plan to give them any reason to do so in the future.
It was mid-April, but the weather made it feel like January. Leaning into the wind, he squinted against the rain stinging his face as he stepped over a huge branch that’d been torn from an oak tree and taken part of the fence surrounding the garden down with it. There’d be significant cleanup to do later. But at least that branch hadn’t hit the house. It easily could have.
The cottage sat dark and brooding—a hulking giant perched on the last outcropping of land, seemingly staring with resolute determination at the angry sea.
Bo turned a wary eye on the fifteen-foot waves as he made his way to the front walk. The tide seemed dangerously high. But he’d only lived on Mariners for two years. He couldn’t imagine this storm was anything notable to those who’d been here a while.
Or...was he assuming too much? There was a first for everything. Who would’ve expected the strange series of events that’d derailed his life when he was only eighteen...
The wind blew down his hood, but his hands were full, so he couldn’t pull it back up. He trudged on doggedly, ignoring the elements raging around him and finally achieving a small reprieve when he climbed up the stairs to the porch, where the deep overhang provided a modicum of protection.
Anxious to start the damn generator so he could return to his own place and get warm again, he pressed the doorbell, then knocked immediately after. “Ms. Chalmers? It’s Bo Broussard, the caretaker,” he called above the wind. “Annabelle Windsor sent me over. I’ve got a lantern here you can use until I get the generator going.”
He waited what felt like several minutes, but there was no response. Figuring he’d just get the lights on, so she wouldn’t need a lantern, he started back down the stairs as the door cracked open.
“Mr. Broussard?”
Ducking back under the overhang, he angled his flashlight below the woman’s chin so he could see her without blinding her. From what he could tell, she had flawless dewy-looking skin, the roundest eyes he’d ever seen—though he couldn’t make out the color—and curly blond hair that was currently pulled back in a ponytail. She was surprisingly tall, too. He was six-five, so she had to be...five-eleven? Six feet?
Was she some kind of model?
Leave it to Remy to find such a stunning woman to become his wife. That dude had the best of everything. Although Bo had only met Remy three times since he’d started working for the Windsors—the summer he was first hired, Thanksgiving the same year, and the Fourth of July last summer right before they started the renovations—he didn’t care for either of Annabelle’s boys. They both seemed unashamedly arrogant and spoiled. They couldn’t even get along with each other. Weren’t identical twins supposed to be close? Almost inseparable?
At least Remy was doing something with his life. He would soon be a medical doctor. Bastian, on the other hand, was supposed to be working in the diamond industry with his father, but Bo got the impression he did more traveling and partying than anything else. Bo had heard Annabelle complain about Bastian’s behavior on many occasions. “Money ruins people, Bo,” she’d say when she came out to help him in the large garden she left in his care when she wasn’t around. “Wealth is a blessing, but it’s also a curse.”
He wishedhe’dbeen cursed the way the Windsors had. They’d never been without food on the table, a roof over their heads, that sort of thing. He’d grown up poor, first in Florida and then, when he was orphaned at ten, in a small parish in Louisiana, where he was raised by a great-uncle who lived on Grand Isle with almost nothing—off the grid as Uncle Chester liked to say, which meant he had no government help, taxes, or other normal connections to the rest of society. The bullying Bo had received at school for wearing pants that were too small, or shoes with holes so big the soles flapped as he walked, had been almost unbearable—until he’d learned how to fight. Then the other kids had become too frightened to taunt him. But he’d always known he didn’t fit in.
Unfortunately, so had they.
He tried not to remember the years immediately following the incident that’d taken his mother’s life. Prison, almost nine years later, after a lengthy trial, had been less traumatic. At least while he was behind bars he’d had three square meals a day, clean clothes, well-established rules, and there’d been a clearly understood pecking order.
And since he’d already learned to fight, he hadn’t been scared. That he wouldn’t take any shit fromanyonewas something he’d established the day they’d first locked him up. He’d spent the next month in “the hole” as a result, where he’d thought he’d go insane, but he survived, and it was drawing that line that’d made the rest of his time behind bars tolerable. Because of that, and his size, he hadn’t had to “click up” with a gang, hadn’t gotten involved with anyone he didn’t want to. The other inmates quickly learned if they left him alone, he’d mind his own business, too.
Still, the memories he most wanted to avoid—right after his mother had been killed—popped up every now and then. Kids found the damnedest reasons to torment other kids. It was probably thanks to those experiences that he preferred his own company to anyone else’s, and that was why this job suited him so well. If he had to get a generator going in the middle of the worst storm he’d seen on Mariners, no big deal. It was a minor inconvenience, all things considered.
He handed the lantern he’d brought to the willowy, slender woman fighting to hang onto the door so it wouldn’t blow against the inside wall. “I brought this for you to use while I start the generator.”
She used her knee to keep the door in place and switched her cell phone to her other hand so she could accept the lantern. “Thegenerator?” she echoed above the storm.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to come on automatically once the power goes out. But it’s new, since the renovation, and—I’ll get it going,” he finished, cutting himself off. She needed power, not a fifteen-minute explanation as to why she didn’t have any.
“Thank you.” She seemed polite and genuinely relieved.
“No problem.” He pulled up his hood and started to turn away for the second time, but she stopped him.
“Fixing the generator is something you have to do outside? In this weather? Will you...will you be okay?”
