Larissa Learns to Breathe

  LARISSA LEARNS TO BREATHE

  RUBY LASKA

  Copyright © 2015 by Ruby Laska.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Larissa Learns to Breathe / Ruby Laska. – 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-940501-04-8

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Other books by Ruby Laska

  Excerpt of Black Gold

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  She should have brought the singing turkey.

  Larissa Lawson stood at the edge of a crumbling asphalt parking lot, next to a fairly intimidating woman who didn’t seem to like her very much, at least not today, and considered the fact that there had never been a more un-thanksgiving-like Thanksgiving week than this one. Sure, it was only Tuesday. Sure, there were still two more days in which the tides of holiday cheer might turn. But right now, she could really use something—anything—to remind her that it was the season to give thanks.

  The singing turkey had been a gift from a client—a guilt gift, for firing Larissa. Sarah had actually been one of Larissa’s best clients, one of the last ones she’d thought would abandon her. To be fair, Sarah had been the second-to-last to fire her, but then again, it was Amelia who had been the very last and that was only because her dog had died, so she didn’t really count.

  Sarah was a lovely person, a pediatric dentist famous on the Upper East Side for her patience with children, and she’d hugged Larissa after firing her and then given her the singing turkey, which was made out of soft fake fur with a tiny speaker sewn into its middle.

  “When your dog chews on it, it goes like this,” Sarah had explained, giving the thing a squeeze, which caused it to gobble a tune. Then she’d promised to write a glowing recommendation and said she hoped they could remain friends and asked for Larissa’s address so she could send a Christmas card. Anything, it seemed, but allowing Larissa continue to walk her corgi, Ginger, who had begun to cringe and pee a little every time Larissa came to the apartment to get her.

  Larissa didn’t mean to scare the dogs she was hired to walk. It was just that she was a little…uncomfortable around them. She’d never had a dog of her own—or a pet of any kind, really—not even a turtle. She grew up in a third floor walkup on the upper West Side, where her philosophy-professor parents kept house indifferently, lavishing all of their attention on their books and papers and only child. Larissa was well loved, but sometimes her parents forgot to eat and they often forgot to clean, and a pet would have languished from a lack of attention. The only creatures that Larissa had for company were the mice who burrowed behind the walls.

  Still, there had been dogs in her building. All through her childhood, Larissa had watched them come and go with fascination and more than a little longing. Then came college and business school and six exhausting years at Torrence Capital, when she barely had time to shower, much less forge a relationship, even with a pet.

  But it didn’t escape her notice that lots and lots of people loved dogs, even city dwellers, and when Larissa lost her job with Torrence Capital during the recession, her “transition counselor” had advised her to seek a need, and fill it. That very day, she’d seen a “Wanted: Dog Walker” sign in the Laundromat, and her new business had been born.

  Within a week she’d signed up six clients. Another thirteen by the end of the month, all delighted to pay for her services. Naturally, all of her clients assumed that she had a dog of her own. Who would hire a dog walker who didn’t love dogs, after all? But the sad truth was that when Larissa came home to her peaceful apartment—tiny, barely furnished, but peaceful—at the end of the day, she was so grateful for the silence that she could cry. Actually, a lot of the time she did cry, though that may have something to do with the bills piling up and the phone that hadn’t rung much since she was laid off.

  She blinked hard, willing the memories of all that failure to recede into the depths of her heart, where they belonged, and turned to her traveling companion. “Please tell me that’s not the boat, Amelia.”

  “It’s been a strange day,” Amelia murmured, not taking her eye off the rickety skiff making its unhurried way toward them, its driver—if that’s what one called the person rowing—seemingly indifferent to the fact that he was half an hour late.

  “It’s been a strange week.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Finally, the skiff approached the dock, an assemblage of loose boards that was at least as decrepit as the boat, which was why neither woman had dared walk out on it. But the figure in the boat—too far away to make out his facial features, but Larissa had to admit that he did look remarkably, er, fit with that muscular bare chest and biceps that rippled when he waved—hollered out “Are you the Cupid girls? Can you come out to the end of the dock so I don’t have to beach this thing?”

  “I’m hardly a girl,” Amelia huffed. At twenty-nine, Larissa was more than twenty years younger than her companion, but she too bristled at the word. She hadn’t muscled her way up the corporate ladder at Torrence by being a “girl.”

  They picked up their suitcases and made their way carefully along the dock. Amelia was fairly steady in her Italian loafers, but Larissa had worn her best I-mean-business heels from back when she used height to try to intimidate her colleagues, and it was hard to keep her footing on the rough-hewn wood. After nearly falling twice, she took off the heels and went the rest of the way barefoot, reaching the end of the dock with at least two splinters embedded in her skin.

  “Please don’t tell me the rest of Palmetto Island is as poorly maintained as this…watercraft,” Amelia huffed.

  After tying the boat up, the man jumped up onto the dock with the grace of a cat. He pushed back his longish brown hair and gave them a dazzling grin. The truth was that he looked as untended as his boat—hair that was about two months overdue for a cut, ancient board shorts that were fraying at the hems, flip-flops worn almost through their rubber soles—but in all other respects he could serve as a very compelling advertisement for the resort that was their destination.

  “I’m Tommy,” he said amiably, holding out a hand. “Tommy Reid. And it’s called Cupid Key, actually.”

  “Amelia Drake.”

  Larissa winced; Amelia could be terrifying when she was in the mood. You’d never know that her privileged childhood, Ivy League education, and society wedding were all ancient history, and that since her husband’s death two years ago, she had sunk nearly as low as Larissa herself. “And the name of the resort is the first thing I intend to change. The manor is already called Palmetto Manor, which is a perfectly dignified name. No need to make it sound like we’re running some squalid little swingers’ club.”

  If Tommy minded
that Amelia ignored his outstretched hand, he didn’t let on. “Well, I guess you can take that up with Rafe,” he said. “I don’t much care what they call it, as long as they keep paying me.”

  He moved past Amelia and shook Larissa’s hand. “And you are?”

  “Larissa Lawson.” She cleared her throat, aware that she sounded only slightly less uptight than Amelia. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are the, um, ferry captain?”

  Tommy threw back his head and laughed, then picked up the women’s suitcases as though they weighed mere ounces and threw them into the back of the boat. “Among other things. Right now I’m helping out with construction. Come opening day I think my title’s something like Director of Beachside Recreation. Basically I’m your glorified and overpaid bungalow boy.”

  He had the temerity to wink at her, but before Larissa could glare at him he was back in the boat, standing gracefully on the seat in front. “Careful when you get in, ladies, and keep your weight to the center.”

  “Are we meant to sit on…that bare wood?” Amelia asked, pointing at the boards serving as bench seats, which were liberally doused in gull droppings. A Dorito bag was anchored to one of the seats with a beer bottle.

  “Unless you want to stand,” Tommy said. “There’s a towel back there you can sit on if you want.”

  Amelia sighed and accepted his hand. She stepped over the first couple of seats and settled herself on the back one after draping the towel over it. Tommy offered Larissa his hand next. His grip was warm and comforting and as she stepped gingerly into the boat, she was aware of the heat he generated, of the salty, earthy, suntan-lotiony smell of him. And those faded-denim blue eyes. And that smile, with those incredibly white, bright teeth—

  “Hey,” Tommy said in alarm, “stay to the—”

  But it was too late. Larissa—who did not care for water and had been in exactly one boat in her life, a gondola on the lake in Central Park—planted her foot near the edge of the boat, felt it sink alarmingly into the water, teetered for a second—

  And fell.

  Tommy held onto her hand as long as he could, but when her bare feet struck cool water, she shrieked so loudly that he let go.

  This can’t be happening, she thought as the water closed over her and she opened her eyes to see what her watery grave would look like, wishing she had swallowed her pride and admitted that she couldn’t swim. Not that it would have made any difference, of course, because there hadn’t been a single life preserver on the boat, which proved what Larissa had suspected all along, which was that the entire thing—the mysterious invitation to the island, the job offer, the airline tickets, the cash—were part of some elaborate scam that would leave her either divested of what was left of her savings, or dead, or both.

  Larissa was underwater long enough to observe that it was surprisingly green down there, and that the fish swimming by weren’t nearly as cute as the ones in Finding Nemo, when her feet touched bottom. Sputtering and splashing, she managed to stand up on the slimy ocean floor, most of her shoulders above water. “I can’t swim,” she sputtered, blinking away the stinging, salty water. “I’ve never been in a boat.”

  Tommy was crouched in the boat, reaching out his hand to her and trying not to laugh. “You might have thought to tell me that before you went in,” he said. “Well, I guess this’ll save you doing laundry, anyway.”

  She stared at him in dismay, water dripping into her eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. They don’t have the laundry facilities finished yet, and it’s a pain to get to the Laundromat on Key Grande, so some of us have been doing our wash in the cove. Leaves your drawers a little stiff, but—”

  “This,” Larissa said, plucking her blouse away from the skin to which it had plastered itself, blushing when she saw that her bra was as visible as if she was wearing plastic wrap, “is silk. My skirt is tropical wool. They are dry clean only.”

  She enunciated carefully as if speaking to a toddler—a toddler who has toppled the cookie jar and broken it into a thousand pieces. Tommy’s smile faltered, and then morphed into a chagrined expression. “Uh…I don’t think there’s a dry cleaner on Cupid Island. Or on Key Grande either, now that I think about it.”

  Larissa looked back over her shoulder at the crumbling parking lot, beyond which was a shuttered bait shop and a dusty road leading into town…the town of Key Grande, named for the body of land on which it sat, two thirds of the way to Key West. “Big Key,” if her Spanish served, which had seemed like a laughable misnomer until she spotted Cupid Island in the distance, which—though she knew it was three miles long and a mile wide—looked about the size of a floating kiddie pool.

  Maybe there was still time to go back. The ferry back to Big Pine Key ran four times a day, and from there it was just a three hour bus ride on the Overseas Highway back to the Miami airport, where she could catch a flight back to New York. Except that her credit cards were maxed out, and…

  “I know what you’re thinking, sugar,” Amelia said quietly, suddenly sounding not nearly as irritated with her.

  Larissa looked at the woman who until two weeks ago had been merely a friendly acquaintance, someone she saw when she went grocery shopping. Then came the mysterious letters slipped under their apartment doors, inviting them to leave New York and come work on Cupid Island. Now, for better or worse, she and Amelia were partners in this crazy adventure. She blinked away salt water and tears, hoping that it wasn’t obvious that she was crying, and spoke briskly. “I’m thinking that this Raphael Westermere had better be planning to give me a clothing allowance.”

  Amelia’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, but she merely nodded.

  “You might want to ask him for shoes, too,” Tommy said, holding up one taupe leather pump. “Since the other one fell in the water when you did your little swan dive.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  If this was Rafe’s idea of overtime, then he was all in, Tommy thought as he rowed toward the island. He paddled slowly, dipping the oar into the clear blue water on one side and then the other, the boat moving smoothly through the gentle swells. The rhythm of the oar made a nice counterpoint to his thoughts, which drifted around the fantastic looking woman in the see-through shirt who was sitting with her knees almost touching his. She had closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sun as though she’d just emerged from years in solitary confinement.

  He didn’t think he’d ever met a woman who appeared more in need of a vacation than Larissa Lawson. Which was kind of funny because, if her job was anything like his, she wasn’t going to have a day off for a very long time. Cupid Island Resort was due to open in eight days, on December 4th, in plenty of time for the Christmas holiday crowd, and there was still so much to do.

  The island’s transformation had begun only last summer, when Rafe—whose grandfather had built the grand manor and several dozen bungalows as a getaway for the rich and famous in the 1920s—decided to restore the long-abandoned island. Since then, Rafe had managed the project from his home in New York City, hiring staff sight unseen, and checking in via daily conference calls. When Tommy attended the staff meetings, his impression of the man was that he was intelligent and cultured, quirky but fair…though how much could you really tell from a disembodied voice emanating from a speaker in the center of a conference table?

  Tommy wondered why Rafe had chosen Amelia and Larissa to be his general manager and director of housekeeping. From talking to the other staff, it seemed as though no one really knew why they’d been offered jobs. Some of them had been living in Key Grande or other nearby towns, but others were from far away—though none so far as New York City until now. Job offers were delivered on thick stationery, slid into letterboxes and under doors, and they always seemed to come at exactly the right time, when the recipients were out of work or down on their luck or desperately in need of change.

  Already, it was hard to believe that only a few months ago, they’d all been strangers. But even as they worked
side by side, getting to know each other at the end of long work days, the staff of Cupid Island agreed that there was still a lot of mystery surrounding their absent employer. Still, paychecks were delivered on time, the food was delicious and the accommodations were nothing short of splendid, and no one was complaining.

  Neither woman spoke much on the fifteen minute trip. Amelia took a tiny tube of sunscreen from her purse, applied the lotion to her face and neck, and then pulled on cotton gloves and seemed to go into a trance behind her enormous dark sunglasses. Larissa’s expression morphed between worry and despair—and, whenever Tommy caught her eye, what looked like deep irritation.

  Well, it wasn’t his fault that the Daisy Jean was in drydock with Zeke hard at work fixing her. The sleek Bayliner powerboat that was usually used to ferry staff back and forth had a run-in with a coral reef last week and was being repaired at a marina on Key Grande, so they were making do with the boats that had been moldering on the island for nearly a hundred years.

  As the manor came into view, he watched the women’s reactions. He wasn’t disappointed. “It’s gorgeous!” Larissa exclaimed, catching sight of the ornate towers above the palm trees.

  Tommy didn’t know much about architecture, though he’d been told that Palmetto Manor was one of the finest examples of the Flemish Renaissance Revival style still standing. He did know that it was impossible not to be impressed by the beautiful mansion with its red tile roof, its carved stone trim and arches and towers. The windows had been washed, the stone cleaned and tuckpointed, and a century’s worth of maintenance had been done in the space of several months. The old furnishings had been removed, and architects and interior designers had flown in from New York and Europe to direct the renovations. Now the finishing touches were being performed on the interior and grounds, all to have it ready for the first guests.

  Larissa turned back to him. “You say you’re helping with construction?” she asked.