Sunshine Beach Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF WENDY WAX

  “[A] sparkling, deeply satisfying tale.”

  —Karen White, New York Times bestselling author

  “Wax offers her trademark form of fiction, the beach read with substance.”

  —Booklist

  “Wax really knows how to make a cast of characters come alive . . . [She] infuses each chapter with enough drama, laughter, family angst, and friendship to keep readers greedily turning pages until the end.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “This season’s perfect beach read!”

  —Single Titles

  “A tribute to the transformative power of female friendship, and reading Wendy Wax is like discovering a witty, wise, and wonderful new friend.”

  —Claire Cook, New York Times bestselling author of Must Love Dogs

  “Quite a clever, fun little novel . . . If you’re a sucker for plucky women who rise to the occasion, this is for you.”

  —USA Today

  “Just the right amount of suspense and drama for a beach read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Beautifully written and constructed by an author who evidently knows what she is doing . . . One fantastic read.”

  —Book Binge

  “A lovely story that recognizes the power of the female spirit, while being fun, emotional, and a little romantic.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Funny, heartbreaking, romantic, and so much more . . . just delightful!”

  —The Best Reviews

  Books by Wendy Wax

  A WEEK AT THE LAKE

  WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY

  MAGNOLIA WEDNESDAYS

  THE ACCIDENTAL BESTSELLER

  SINGLE IN SUBURBIA

  HOSTILE MAKEOVER

  LEAVE IT TO CLEAVAGE

  7 DAYS AND 7 NIGHTS

  Ten Beach Road Titles by Wendy Wax

  TEN BEACH ROAD

  OCEAN BEACH

  CHRISTMAS AT THE BEACH (NOVELLA)

  THE HOUSE ON MERMAID POINT

  SUNSHINE BEACH

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2016 by Wendy Wax.

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2016 by Penguin Random House LLC.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 9780698157194

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wax, Wendy, author.

  Title: Sunshine Beach / Wendy Wax.

  Description: Berkley trade paperback edition. | New York : Berkley Books, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015043729 | ISBN 9780425274484

  Classification: LCC PS3623.A893 S86 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043729

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / June 2016

  Cover art: Seaside patio © Imagin.gr Photography / Shutterstock; Mediterranean style terrace © Andrei Nekrassov / Shutterstock; Outdoor lamp © La Forza Deztino / Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Danielle Mazella di Bosco.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  For my parents, Elaine and Ken Wax, who gave me a beach for my birthday and a childhood spent cartwheeling across sugar-white sand and floating in the warm salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. I miss you both.

  And for “Aunt” Sonya and “Uncle” Irwin, longtime family friends who owned and ran the Rellim (Miller spelled backward!) where I spent so many magical summer days. The hotel of my youth has been gone for many years, but my memories of it remain.

  Although my Sunshine Hotel, and the characters who own, run, and visit it are fictional, I hope they’ll give you at least an idea of how lovingly I remember the real hotel that inspired it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, thanks go to my longtime critique partners, Karen White and Susan Crandall, talented authors and BFFs with whom I’m grateful to be sharing this crazy journey.

  Thanks, too, to my agent, Stephanie Rostan, who is also very talented at what she does and can always be counted on to tell it like it is.

  In every book there are an amazing number of small details that can have great impact. Rebecca Ritchie has once again helped me envision what a space can be and answered countless questions. Tito Vargas shared information on construction and its cost. Thomas Lange, Chief of Police (Ret.), St. Pete Beach, Florida, offered insights into policing a small beach community and how a case might be dealt with “then” and now.

  I’ve taken liberties and exaggerated where necessary. This is, after all, a work of fiction and “making things up” is a critical part of every novelist’s job description.

  CONTENTS

  Praise for the Novels of Wendy Wax

  Books by Wendy Wax

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven


  Readers Guide

  Prologue

  JULY 1952

  Sunshine Hotel and Beach Club

  Pass-a-Grille, Florida

  She climbed onto the diving board and waited until she had an audience. Waited for the fathers to look up from their newspapers. The mothers to stop fingering the smooth ivory mah-jongg tiles.

  The winter residents were gone, the cottages closed up. But the beach club was open. Children spent entire days running from the pool, across the white sand beach, into the Gulf of Mexico and back again—stopping just long enough to build a sand castle or etch a hopscotch board—while their mothers sat at card tables arranged in the shade and gossiped. She had no idea what their fathers did during the sweltering weekdays, but on the weekends they came to lie on the chaises, or stand in the water talking business while they threw pennies into the pool for their children to dive after.

  She checked to make sure her audience did not include her grandparents or her parents, who would be somewhere on the property making sure everything ran “like clockwork.” Or her bossy big sister. Or the lifeguard who’d “closed” the pool so that he could spend his break k-i-s-s-i-n-g her sister behind a palm tree.

  When she had everyone’s attention she took three short running steps, bounced once on the end of the diving board, and dove headfirst into the deep end of the swimming pool just like her daddy had taught her. She did not come up. Nor did she emit so much as a single bubble.

  The scorching summer sun cast shimmery beams all around her as she hung motionless beneath the surface. It was perfectly quiet here; the rat-a-tat of the jackhammers digging up the cottage patios silenced. She was queen of the water kingdom and all the subjects that dwelt in its depths.

  Above her she could just make out figures standing near the edge of the pool, a group of dark shapes leaning over, peering down. She imagined them holding their breath as carefully as she was holding hers. Trying to decide whether someone should jump in after her.

  When no one did she began to swim toward the shallow end, slicing through the water with a long gliding breaststroke, her long blond mermaid hair streaming behind her. Silent and smooth, she used the same stroke with which she flew through the night sky in her dreams, soaring high above the ground free and unbound, pulling hard with her arms and legs to make sure she didn’t fall. Or get low enough for anyone—or anything—to touch her.

  It wasn’t a huge pool, not Olympic sized or anything, and she knew every inch of it. According to her Nana, she’d learned to swim in it before she could walk. Had been swimming its length underwater since she was three. She was five now and could do ten full underwater summersaults without coming up to breathe.

  Almost out of air, she reached for the wall, ready to surface to gasps of relief and admiration. But when she stood and wiped the water from her eyes there were no oohs or aahs. Just her know-it-all sister, who’d obviously told her audience that there was nothing to worry about and who was giving her the evil eye for being in the pool when she wasn’t supposed to be.

  Regally, she stepped out of the pool keeping her eyes straight ahead and her head up so that the diamonds in her tiara would sparkle in the sunlight. Without so much as a nod, she accepted the towel from her sister, then draped it across her shoulders like a cape. She did not deign to speak nor even stop to accept the ice cream sandwich her Pop Pop offered her as she swept down the path to the family cottage. Everyone knew that a queen should never be ignored. And the people the queen loved most should not be allowed to die or disappear.

  Chapter One

  Madeline Singer was fairly certain that the number of former suburban housewives who went on to have relationships with rock stars was too small to be statistically measurable. Which might be why she felt like Cinderella that May evening as William Hightower handed her out of his boat and onto the dock at the Lorelei Restaurant and Cabana Bar. If, that was, Cinderella had to color her hair, suck in her stomach, and wore a size too large to make America’s Next Top Model.

  Perched on the edge of U.S. 1, the multitiered Islamorada landmark served good, basic food, poured potent drinks, and drew a mostly laid-back crowd for its nightly sunset celebrations. Tables surrounded a thatched hut of a stage and spilled out onto a half-moon of beach where you could eat with your bare feet buried in the sand and your eyes pinned to a truly spectacular sunset that played out over the Florida Bay.

  Remnants of sunlight glinted off the black hair lightly threaded with gray that brushed William’s shoulders and cast his sharply angled face into shadow. “Should be interesting to see what kind of reaction we get to the new song,” he said as he retrieved his guitar case from the boat and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

  “Everybody on Mermaid Point loved it,” she reminded him. “You got a standing ovation.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s not forget Mermaid Point is surrounded by water. The residents are a captive audience.”

  Maddie laughed but did not concede the point. She may not be a musician, but she knew a great song when she heard one. Will had written “Free Fall” in September not long after she and the rest of the Do Over crew had finished turning William Hightower’s private island into what was supposed to have been a high-end bed-and-breakfast but which he’d turned into a sober living facility. It was the first song he’d written after more than a decade unable to make music at all. The first he’d ever written without the benefit of drugs or alcohol.

  “And not that I don’t appreciate it,” he added. “But I don’t think you’re completely objective.”

  “True,” she said. “But I was a William Hightower fan way before I ever met you.” That had been back when he was building a name as a southern rocker, and Wasted Indian had been climbing to the top of the charts. “So let’s not go questioning my musical taste.”

  His dark eyes creased with amusement. The spider’s web of lines at their corners attested to all he’d been through. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, then headed for the stage.

  Maddie leaned against a vacant post not far from the bar that afforded an unobstructed view over the already packed tables that fanned out from the stage. A waitress handed her a glass of Pinot Noir, which she accepted gladly. She sipped it as Will and the musicians he’d cobbled together set up. Her eyes scanned the stage, the crowd, and the sun that hung in midair poised for its swan dive into the bay. She had only one more day with Will before she’d drive up to Bella Flora, the house that she, Nicole Grant, and Avery Lawford had nursed back to life and which had now become home. There they’d have to figure out what, if anything, they could do about the show they’d created, lost control of, and then quit so publicly.

  Conversation ceased as William stepped up to the microphone. All eyes, including hers, fastened on the man who had once hung in poster form on her bedroom wall. William Hightower might be sixty-two, but he’d come out of rehab a little over a year ago for what he’d vowed would be the last time, looking hot as hell.

  With a salt breeze and a pinkening sky for background, Will laid out his losses with a pain-roughened voice. He’d lost his younger brother and the woman who’d borne his son to drugs and excess. The pain had only mounted as he disappeared into every vial and bottle he could find in an attempt to hide from the hurt. Tonight he hid nothing, singing with his eyes closed, his fingers lithe on his guitar strings, his body taut with emotion. The crowd’s response was equally visceral. When he finished, Maddie’s were not the only cheeks wet with tears. She’d expected that. What she hadn’t anticipated was the naked hunger that shone in the eyes of his female fans.

  He sent her a smile over the heads of the women who mobbed him after the set, and she managed to smile back even as she struggled to tamp down her jealousy and uncertainty.

  She’d learned over the last months to stop apologizing for her body or even trying to hide it from him, though the stomach sucking was a reflex with a mind of its own. He
insisted he wasn’t comparing her to anyone; that she, a fifty-one-year-old mother of two and grandmother of one, turned him on just the way she was.

  But if Will’s mind didn’t stray to all the women who’d come before her or to the tsunami of female adoration that was currently washing over him, Maddie’s did. A lifetime spent as a suburban housewife prepared a woman for a lot of things. A relationship with a man like William Hightower wasn’t one of them.

  “You were fabulous,” she said on the boat ride back to Mermaid Point. “Could you feel how the audience reacted to ‘Free Fall’? God, they loved it. They were hanging on every word.”

  “Yeah.” Steering with his right hand, he pulled her onto his lap with his left. “I didn’t expect to get the same high, you know, performing straight. But it’s a definite rush. Kind of like a shot of adrenaline to the heart.”

  His body was hard and warm against hers. She could practically feel that adrenaline coursing through him. When they reached the house, Will emptied his pockets onto the bedroom dresser and began to shuck his clothes.

  “I’m way too wired to go to bed,” he said pulling on swim trunks. “Want to come for a swim?”

  She’d become used to taking off her clothes in front of him, had been unable to argue his unfailingly positive physical reaction to her, but his reception tonight had proved that while she might have tamped down her insecurities, she hadn’t shed them completely.

  “I think I’ll stay here and start getting my things together.” Unable to meet his eyes, she glanced at the items he’d pulled from his pockets. There were two cocktail napkins with names and phone numbers, one of them written in bright red lipstick. A crumbled photo of . . . “Is that a naked woman?” She moved toward the dresser for a closer look. “I didn’t know anyone owned a Polaroid camera anymore.”

  “Hmmm?” Will asked as he reached for a towel.

  “This.” She held the photo up by one corner. “This naked photo.”

  He turned to look at the photo Maddie held between her fingertips. He snorted. “Given who I think shoved that in my pocket, I doubt it’s remotely recent.”