Go Away, Darling - Alexis Anne Page 0,71

turned me into a sad, sappy sucker, wishing for a life he willfully left behind.

My feet sank a little deeper and a part of my soul came back to life. The beach always fixed me. I thought for a while it would magically fix my marriage.

No such luck there.

“Jack! You dipshit! When did you get in?” The deep baritone of my ex-brother-in-law, Harrison, hit me just at the break between waves. Otherwise I might not have heard him. With the tide on the way out I’d wandered almost a quarter mile across the mudflats.

I turned and braced my hand over my brow to cut out the glare of the sun. Harrison stood on a crumbling shell midden, barefoot—because no one ever wore shoes—and clutching a bucket. Probably had a couple fish in there.

My stomach growled. I apparently missed the fresh seafood as much as I missed everything else.

I carefully unsealed my feet from the mud crypt, shaking the sludge free before beginning the walk back to shore. Harrison waited patiently, setting the bucket aside for a big hug when I finally made it to him.

“Long time. Long, long time.” He cracked my back with his big paw.

“Yeah. Not long enough.”

“Christmas with your mom?”

I nodded. When I’d married Berlin it meant spending part of my life on Mistletoe Key. Her’s was an old Florida family, having settled several different areas around the peninsula including this island. They’d owned this house forever, her aunt being the most recent resident before Berlin inherited the house.

She loved it here. I fell for it hard, too, and with my job coaching the Miami Pythons hockey team, it wasn’t too painful of a commute. My mom came to visit, fell in love with a bungalow on the town’s main square, and it was all over. The Cassidys officially became Mistletoe Key transplants, given extra rank because of my marriage to a legacy family.

Then Berlin and I divorced, and everyone got the island except me.

“I’m just here for three days. We’ve got a home game on Thursday.”

Harrison grunted, grabbing the bucket and turning toward the house. “She know you’re out here?”

I nodded again. “I texted her this morning asking permission. She said it was fine.”

Our house—her house—stood a good ten feet higher than we were now, built on top of a shell midden before the religious group that settled the island in the late nineteenth century realized that what they were essentially destroying was a mound built by the real first settlers of Mistletoe Key centuries earlier. The sun setting behind it made the old house little more than a shadow.

Probably better that way.

“I miss you, brother,” Harrison said, a bit more wistfully than I expected. “Her new man, Ryker—who the fuck has a name like Ryker? Anyway, he’s a total bro. No fun at all.”

Harrison was reserved on the outside, but he loved to get into trouble on the sly. He was a sneaky bastard and really great friend. I could only imagine how big he rolled his eyes when this Ryker asshole wasn’t looking.

“Let me guess, he wears shoes?”

“And polo shirts. Not even pink ones.” He made his eyes extra wide. “It’s like he doesn’t even know where he is.”

The official dress code of the Keys was shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops. For dressy occasions women wore sundresses and men wore Hawaiian shirts. With flip-flops. If they wore shoes at all. Which was honestly a thing. You know how restaurants usually have signs that said “no shirt, no shoes, no service”? Not here. No one gave a flying flip about any of it.

As long as you were happy.

Happiness was the requirement around here. Which was why I was convinced the pina colada was invented. It made sad people less sad. What was it Jimmy—patron saint of the Keys—sang? Where we go I hope there’s rum!

It was definitely one of the happiness ingredients here on Mistletoe Key.

“So what are you doing down here, Harry?” The main Anderson clan called Calusa Key their home base. The island on the gulf coast was where Berlin grew up, but when she inherited her aunt’s house on Mistletoe Key she jumped at the chance to live on her favorite island—away from the constant attention of her sisters.

“Berlin needed some help with a few repairs. We figured it would be fun to spend Christmas here for a change.”

“London still won’t come home?”

“Nope.”

“The girls here?” Harry and Paris had two daughters.

“Of course. I’ll bring them by your mom’s later when we get