Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (2 page)

“
Is all right. I go now.” Viktor Kirichenko stood, enveloped my hand in his great paw, and gave me a carefully gentle shake. Bless him. I suspected that for all my time in martial arts classes, he could crush me like a bug. I assured him we would get back to him as soon as we’d done our research. Even with an international call waiting, I couldn’t help taking the time to watch him lumber out of my office. The supersize personification of a classic Russian enigma.

For a moment I frowned at my white desk phone—so ordinary, so innocent—yet it was undoubtedly about to bring me grief. Paolo Jimenez, our rep in Lima, usually communicated by e-mail. A telephone call meant trouble.

I picked up the phone, making a real effort to sound cheerful. I had a hot date with a new guy this weekend. A fast trip to Peru was not on my schedule. “
¿Cómo le va, amigo?
”

I listened, shook my head. Foolishness, sheer foolishness. “Max Arendsen is absolutely right, Paolo. At Nazca the plane’s wings have to be
above
the windows. Otherwise the pilot has to stand the plane on one wing before Max and Hildy can see the lines. Then for the next set of lines, the pilot has to do a roll and stand on his other wing. Trust me, we guaranteed the Arendsens a good look at the Nazca lines, not the roller coaster ride from hell.” Been there, done that. I knew the hollow feeling of viewing the famous Nazca figures while lying on my side. And my fellow passengers turn green.

“
Look, Paolo, if the regular plane’s down for maintenance, hire one in Lima and send it to Nazca. Ask for some kind of Cessna Skyhawk. Turbo, if you can get it. An extra day in Nazca means the Arendsens will have only two days to acclimate in Cuzco before they hit the Inca Trail, but that’s then and this is now. Single engine Cessna. Do it.”

Paolo gulped, sputtered, uttered a feeble protest. “Lima’s a big city, Paolo. There has to be a plane with wings above the windows. Just do it.”
Please, please do it. Don’t make me fly down there. Please, double please
. I’d met Flint Ramsay, helicopter pilot and SWAT team sergeant, at one of the consults for Marybeth’s wedding. Canceling our date tomorrow night was out of the question.

I held my breath. After a few more mumbles, Paolo agreed to give it a try.
Thank you, Lord
. Fortunately, Mom came back before I had to leave for the wedding. Less fortunately, she was steamed. Helen Lomelo suffered from acrophobia, a fear of heights. Weddings Extraordinaire was going to have to find someone else to officiate at a ceremony in a hot air balloon high above central Florida.

The helicopter swooped down toward the sixty-foot SWAT training tower, its rotors scattering dirt, leaves, and twigs like a whirlwind left over from our last hurricane, the thundering roar of its engine doing its best to intimidate the wedding guests. I grabbed my poofy driving cap, clamped my other hand against my flaring layers of chiffon, and planted the sturdy heels of my half boots hard into the sandy Florida soil. Sixty feet above us, the bride—her white silk gown billowing in the storm-like wind—hung out the window of a wooden shack at the top of the tower. Clutching a bouquet of blood red roses in one hand, she waved madly with the other.

For the sake of Fantascapes, I could only hope she maintained the illusion of a maiden in distress, but Marybeth looked like she was going to forget her role and break into a broad grin at any moment.

And who could blame her? For the groom, in spite of his stiff powder blue tux, was looking suitably heroic as he dangled on the end of the chopper’s rescue cable, swinging ever closer to the front of the open tower window. Noise and wind forgotten, we all gaped as Jake swiveled his hips, did something tricky with his feet and broad shoulders, and plucked his bride straight off the ledge, the only casualty one white satin slipper that landed with a soft thud in the dirt six stories below. A collective sigh of relief swept the wedding guests as the chopper swung away.
Thank you, Lord
. My ideas usually worked, but . . . let’s face it, losing clients isn’t good for business.

Maybe now, while the guests are slogging across the uneven grass toward the wedding tent—a few teetering wildly on high heels—is a good time to explain how Fantascapes got started. You see, there’s a reason
Weddings
comes before
Holidays
on that sign at the office. It all began nearly twenty years ago back in Connecticut. My Aunt Candy, Mom’s sister—in spite of emerging from three failed marriages with nothing to show for it but a toddler— loved weddings, if not the reality that followed. That, plus the shadow of poverty—Aunt Candy’s third ex was as likely to send alimony as he was to win a jackpot in Vegas—made a strong incentive. In the blink of an eye Candy Spangler moved from giving friends advice, gratis, to being a startlingly successful wedding consultant. And after Dad came home from his last so-called business trip in a wheelchair and we had to give up our sprawling white 1830 Federal on the Connecticut shoreline for the great unknown of Florida’s Gulf Coast, Aunt Candy declared, “People get married in Florida, right?” and moved right along with us, sweeping my mother into the business before she knew what hit her.

I’d been a freshman in high school at the time, still feeling my way through the cultural shock of falling into Bubbaland, not to mention our brand new handicap-accessible pink stucco fortress out back of beyond. I mean everybody else in Florida lives as close to water as they can—beach, bay, Intracoastal Waterway, or lake. All we had was a jungle river right out of
Apocalypse Now
, a sluggish tea-colored ribbon of water, chock-full of alligators and water moccasins. And even that was a far hike from the house. The Calusa River doesn’t just flood in tropical storms. By the end of every rainy season, homeowners along the river have to park a mile away and row home. Not a great place for a guy in a wheelchair, but I guess Dad still liked to live dangerously.

Not too surprisingly, those first months in Florida Dad and I grumped around, feeling sorry for ourselves, empathizing without words about all we’d left behind, both of us utterly useless. My half-brother Doug—the son of Dad’s first wife who died when Doug was four—had finished college and disappeared into the same anonymous government alphabet soup that had disgorged my father in a wheelchair. Logan was a junior in college, and Jeff a senior in the local high school.

That’s right, you got it. My mother must have wanted a girl real bad. Aunt Candy says that when I was born, there was a great sigh of relief. I was destined to be the little living doll the Blaine sisters and my grandmother had always wanted.

Surprise! Or maybe not. With three older brothers my tea set never made it past my sixth birthday, and my Barby wore permanent camo—jungle and desert. I was mad for toy trains and Tonka trucks. I built forts, tanks, and helicopters with my Lego set. By the time I was twelve, Mom and Aunt Candy had pretty much given up, not-so-secretly hoping that an interest in boys as something more than sparring partners would one day miraculously transform me into the girl child of their dreams.

Meanwhile, I was miserable. Since Dad’s accident—or whatever had happened to him—Logan and Jeff had turned disgustingly mature. The men of the family. Mom’s perfect helpers.

I hated it.

I really hated it.

So did Dad. He shut himself up with his computer and mostly didn’t even come out to eat. Mom served his meals on a tray and at least once a week engaged in tense, low-pitched battles with him about eating with the family. That, however, was before he got a look at my first-term report card. I heard him bellow, “Laine!” all the way in my bedroom at the far end of the house. With MTV going full blast.

As the youngest, and the longed-for girl for Mom, I’d escaped most of the lectures that pinned my brothers to the wall. But not now. I was screwed big time. And, yeah, wise ass fourteen-year-old that I was, I understood the expression in all its ramifications. The upshot of it was, five days a week after school, I reported to the once great Jordan Halliday, who’d had one of those If-I-tell-you, I’ll- have-to-kill-you jobs. And we didn’t just crack the books. Dad took me to fitness training, martial arts lessons, and rolled right along with me to the public firing range. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had private tutors in French and Spanish. Believe me, it’s tough to practice sullen teenage rebellion when you don’t have a minute to feel sorry for yourself.

And, besides, worry about me was getting Dad out of the house. He even condescended to try a couple of the specially designed machines at the fitness center. And we soon learned his disability didn’t extend to his eyes. He could shoot pretty good for an old guy in a wheelchair.

With fierce teenage insensitivity, I promised myself I’d practice until I could beat him. Turned out it was a good thing we lived so far out in the woods, because I practiced so hard we didn’t see a heron, egret, slow-circling buzzard, or even a feral pig for weeks. (Closer to town, I’d have been arrested after the first shot. Heaven forbid anybody should scare the tourists.)

On the day I put five of nine shots into the heart of my paper target and four more to the head, Dad slowly nodded. He reached down, folded up his metal foot rests. Then he levered himself to his feet. “HK,” he said, holding out his hand. I grabbed the MP-5 submachine gun and handed it to him. Watched him check the magazine, set it to manual. And then he put the HK to his shoulder and calmly shot perfect concentric rings around my two sets of shots.

There were so many grins, so much shouting, handshaking, and back-slapping at the firing range that day that, thank God, nobody seemed to notice my tears. I was growing up. They were tears of joy. Jordan Halliday lived again.

I mean, it’s no wonder I never seem to find the right man. With a gold standard like Dad, what’s a girl to do?

Dad never said, but I think that’s the day he decided to expand the family business, creating Holidays by Halliday, a sort of special events bonanza where people’s wildest dreams could come true. (The legal ones, that is.)

It took me a while to catch on, but that was also the day Mom started smiling at someone besides our clients. It took even longer for the bigger revelation to hit me. Dad had discovered he could do more than stand on his own two feet. After my stomach stopped clenching and I got through going, “Euw!” I thought it was pretty cool.

I went away to college, but only as far as Orlando, never getting too far away from the endless beaches, the seabreezes, swamps and alligators, or my new home town of Golden Beach as it attempted to cope with an overwhelming influx of people looking for a spot in the sun. By the time I graduated, Logan had also been swallowed up by the some secretive government acronym, so my return freed Jeff to do what he’d always wanted, a job as a Calusa County Deputy Sheriff. And, believe me, I had no regrets about returning to the family businesses. Troubleshooting for Fantascapes beats nine to five all to hell.

“
Hey, kid.” Jeff strolled by with one of the stiletto-heeled bridesmaids tucked up in his arms. Best man for the wedding, he’d been one of the two SWAT team members up in the tower, making certain Marybeth was on the window ledge at the critical moment. I knew the details, of course, because of what I’d had to go through to convince Sheriff Purvis that Jeff wouldn’t let go until Jake took over.

If people had any idea what we had to do to make things look easy . . .

I picked up Marybeth’s satin slipper, whacked it gently against my palm to shake off the dust. I bit my lip. The white satin blurred as I shoved aside what had brought me here and, just for a moment, I tried to peer into the future. I’d had my share of opportunities to fulfill my own wedding fantasies, yet here I was. Once again the fairy godmother, never the bride. Truth was, if a guy showed signs of thinking
cook, housekeeper, baby machine
, I was off and running. That was for
some
day, but not today.

I fished a genuine lace-edged linen handkerchief out of my shiny blue alligator handbag and rubbed a stain near the slipper’s satin toe. I held it up to the strong Florida sun. Unless somebody got down and eyeballed it at ground level, it would do. I loped off after the guests who were making their way across the grass. Off to my right, I saw Flint Ramsay jogging toward the tent from the helo pad. I started to wave, my arm freezing in place—sort of like the Statue of Liberty holding up a shoe instead of a torch—as he drew to a halt, grinning down at a ditzy blonde in more skin than dress. Flashing her a broad grin, he clasped her firmly around the waist and whisked her toward the tent with her silly red heels skimming the ground, her mini skirt riding up to where the sun don’t shine.
Well, hell!

If I’d been stupid enough to wear high heels to a wedding at the SWAT team training grounds, it could have been me.

I glared at the white satin slipper, reminded myself my presence here was partly business. Fantascapes’ honor was at stake. We could not allow a bride to proceed lop-sided down the aisle. Even if it meant ignoring Sergeant Flint Ramsay and his clinging vine wedding guest.

Maybe I should go to Peru, after all.

Chapter Two

“
Morning,” I mumbled to my cousin Grady—Aunt Candy’s contribution to the male population—as I wandered into the Fantascapes offices the next day and headed straight for the coffee pot. Jessie has Saturdays off, holding down the fort on Mondays while Candy, Mom, and I are recovering from whatever weddings occupied our weekend. So my cousin was behind the reception desk, peering at Jess’s computer screen with what appeared to be considerable animosity.