“Atta girl. You know, Dar, you set such a good example for everyone else.” Alastair leaned back and regarded her. “What a poster child you are—
beautiful, healthy, crunching on your granola there.”
Dar glanced up at the blue cereal box, with the lurid tiger waving a spoon at her, and smiled. “Oh yeah.”
“You have to come out to Houston one of these days and teach my wife some of your tricks.”
“I hate Houston, Alastair,” Dar commented, finishing up her bowl and 4 Melissa Good setting it into the stainless steel sink, then turning and grabbing a cup for her coffee.
The CEO grinned. “I’ll forgive you for saying that, just for that nice view, Dar,” he teased, “One of the perks of my job, I tell ya.”
Dar lifted her cup and gave him a wry look. “Nice seeing you too, Alastair.”
“Fifty percent, Dar,” the older man stated with a wave. “See ya.” The screen went dark.
“End meeting.” She sighed and watched the computer close the session down. “Happy Monday,” she muttered, as she took her cup and opened the sliding glass door that led out to her second-story balcony. The wind was coming in from the east, blowing back her hair and pressing her T-shirt against her body. She set her cup down on the small stone table and went to the railing, leaning on it and looking out over the rock-filled jetty to the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The air was full of salt and thick with moisture, and she breathed it in, letting the familiarity soothe her as she listened to the rhythmic sound of the surf against the coral rocks that made up the base of the island on which she lived. In the east, the horizon displayed a gray, cloud-studded line over the still darkened sea, and it was so quiet she could hear the soft clanging of boat tie downs from the nearby marina. A gull swooped overhead, its feathers whipping the thick air as it soared along the coral, searching for food.
Dar reached behind her and picked up her mug, curling her hands around the ceramic surface and taking a sip of the flavored, pungent beverage.
She enjoyed the peace of early morning, and if she didn’t turn her head to see the long Miami Beach skyline rising to her left, she could imagine she was out in the Caribbean somewhere, viewing the sunrise.
Her condominium was a split-level townhouse, sharing a cluster with four other residents here on the outer eastern shore of the small island. The outer walls were reinforced steel and concrete, neatly designed and landscaped to simulate quaint adobe, but meeting current hurricane codes as was mandatory in Dade County.
That meant low, sloping roofs and all-concrete block construction, and a challenge for high-class architects to make buildings look less like bunkers, but Dar had spent one Category Five hurricane in the place, and she was glad to skip on the glamour in trade for having the walls stay put around her.
Fisher Island was an exclusive community, offering large oceanfront residences for those who could afford to pay unbelievable prices for them. Dar was thankful that she had inherited hers. She had seen the price tags for them, and found it hard to believe someone would spend five million dollars for what amounted to an apartment. Even a really, really nice apartment, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms, and a gorgeous kitchen, which she seldom used.
She could afford it. Being the VP Ops of the largest computer services company in the world garnered her a very healthy paycheck, but it was the principle of the thing.
“Thanks, Aunt May.” She toasted her departed, much-beloved aunt with her coffee. May Roberts had been something of a sensation in the family, Tropical Storm 5
marrying four men and burying them all, all the while adding to her considerable bank balance. She’d bought the condo as an investment and occasionally rented it out, but had willed it to her niece on her death, correctly figuring it was better for Dar to live here than in “that horrible Grove.”
The little place among the jasmine and ficus was far more Dar’s style: a studio, with a hot plate and huge bay windows, and worn real wood floors that had fifty years of dogs’ nail marks in them. She’d been able to walk to the waterside and wander through the area’s sometimes oddball residents and not feel out of place in her hiking sandals and cutoffs.
No one had to know she was a corporate big shot. She liked it that way.
Dar studied the horizon. She could have rented this place out when May died, and kept living where she was, but it had occurred vaguely to her that she might want to have a party someday and the condo had a lot more space for that.Plus the view from the porch of the Atlantic to the horizon was priceless.
After several years of residing in the middle of the eclectic artists’
community to the south, the change had taken some getting used to, but Dar had finally decided she liked the island. It was accessible only by car ferry.
She could get away from the city there and spend some time in quiet solitude without fights, and crime, or even noisy neighbors. Five million dollar apartments had thick walls.
The maintenance fees were outrageous, and accounted for all the island’s amenities, but they were less than the rent she’d been paying in the Grove, so it had worked out for her in the end. She found herself enjoying a lifestyle she’d never considered attempting, and even had fun watching the upper crust socialites who populated the island at their strange social rituals.
The sun turned the horizon coral pink, and before her eyes, the sea slowly moved from inky black, to fluttered dark gray, to a deep, rich green. The offshore current was lightly choppy, breaking the surface up into ripples, and she took a breath of the sea air with a sense of pleasure.
Its ever-changing, elemental nature had always appealed to her, and she often spent her early mornings in the peace of its uneven rhythm before she went on with her problem-filled, hectic days.
“Well, time to get moving.” She finished her coffee, then slipped inside the glass doors, moving from the warm humidity to chill air conditioning with a tiny shiver. The tile floor was cool against her bare feet, and she went quickly to the walk-in closet, shedding her T-shirt and exchanging it for her workout gear, which consisted of a pair of running shorts and a snug sports top.
She pulled her hair back and put a band around it, then sat down to put on her shoes, tugging the laces and tying them with efficient fingers. “I don’t think your wife would like my fitness secrets, Alastair,” she remarked to herself wryly. “They involve sweat, and lots of it.”
With a sigh, she stood and walked over to the small closet just inside the alcove where the stairs came up. She ducked inside to pull out a set of wrist and ankle weights, which she fastened into place carefully. Then she slipped down the stairs and unlocked the front door, locking it behind her as she emerged onto the small porch outside the condo. A dozen stairs led down to 6 Melissa Good the underground parking. She dodged underneath, ending up on the path that meandered down towards the water.
The island was about a mile across and roughly round in shape. She made it her habit to circle it four times, rain or shine, even in the wicked downpours subtropical Miami sometimes provided. With a sigh, she began to jog and headed off around the path.
It paralleled the Atlantic, at first, going on in front of clusters of condos much like the one her own was in. The architecture was mellow Mediterranean, with barrel tile roofs and adobe-style walls, and the buildings seemed to blend in to the surroundings. The landscaping, rich with salt-tolerant bushes, was neatly kept and perfectly trimmed, and she could see where beds of winter flowers were being planted to give a bit of variety to the scene.
Artificial variety. Winter had little meaning here, the one or two months of relief from the tropical heat and constant thunderstorms rarely providing more than a day or two of mild sweater weather. Seasons didn’t truly exist.