Chapter 3
A week later she was lying on a recliner around an aquamarine, kidney-shaped pool, with sun-loungers and cocoon pods dotted around. It was surrounded by tropical gardens, and a small walkway led to sun-kissed white sandy beaches. Tobias and Savannah were in separate hammocks under the palm trees and Jacob was further away, near the sand.
“Izzy, come and see this!” he yelled.
She got up from her recliner and held her flat hand against her forehead, like a shade from the sweltering sun. Staring at him, she couldn’t help but admire the scenery. It was like a snapshot from a luxury holiday brochure.
“Izzy! Look!” Jacob held up something she couldn’t make out.
“I’m coming!”
She got up and sauntered over, barefoot.
“He’s not letting you have a moment’s peace, is he?” Savannah, in her two-piece brilliant blue bikini, looked up from her book.
“He’s excited. I’m excited!” Izzy waved at him. Kawaya was a picture perfect paradise straight out of a movie. It was a world away from her lectures and the bustle and chaos that was New York.
Even stepping foot into Tobias’s private plane had her spell-bound, and no matter how much she tried not to be dazzled by such wealth, she couldn’t hold back her amazement. The interior of the plane was fancier than anything she had ever seen in real life. It was luxurious, and stylish, with large cream leather seats, huge, shiny, TV screens, sleek wooden tables and vases of flowers.
Vases full of flowers on a plane?
They had arrived yesterday, and gone straight to bed, exhausted after the long flight, but this morning had been her chance to see exactly what Kawaya was like.
“Look,” said Jacob, and gave her a map of the island. It was huge, with a sprawling huge main house where the immediate family stayed. Savannah had insisted that Izzy also have a room there, next to Jacob. For the rest of the guests, there were lots of small cabins dotted around, further along the beach.
The island had a waterfall and in the main, it was unspoiled, still in a state of natural beauty.
The bodyguards were discreet. Every now and then she caught sight of them in their black t-shirts and black trousers, and felt sorry for them, wondering how they kept so cool in the heat. Though a gentle wind kept the edge off.
“What have you got there, Jacob?” He was squatting, in his Iron Man swim trunks, which he had put on soon after he’d woken up.
“Seashells. Look.” He fished one out with his tiny hands and put a shell to his ear. “I can’t hear anything.” He made a disappointed face. “Lenny says you can hear the sea but I can’t hear nothing.”
“Anything,” she said. “You can’t hear anything.”
“I can’t,” he agreed. “You try.”
She did, and couldn’t hear anything either. “I think we need to find a shell that has more curvature.” She looked around, until she found one. “See,” she said, “This one has more of a curve.” She put it to her ear and smiled. “I can hear something now.”
“You try.” She knelt on the soft powdery sand, like sugar, but golden, and held the shell close to Jacob’s ear. “Listen,” she whispered. “It’s very, very, very quiet. Like a ‘sssssshhhhhhhhh’. Hear it?”
He frowned, then his eyes opened wider. “Yeah … yeah, I do! I hear it!”
She let him enjoy the moment. After a while, he put it into his plastic basket. “I’m collecting them,” he explained.
“Shall we walk around the beach seeing how many we can find?”
He shook his head.
“Then what do you want to do? We could go for a swim or—”
“Let’s go swim in the sea! Race you!” And he rushed off, into the water, before she could reply. She followed, and noticed that one of the bodyguards stepped forward. There were two of them—discreet, yet visible, and always around. Being here had given her a taste of what it was like, being part of Tobias Stone’s world, being constantly shadowed by men who never spoke. Men who were there to guard your life.
The Shoemoneys were relatively normal compared to this.
~ ~ ~
The next day, Tobias and Savannah were still lying in their hammocks and relaxing.
With three days to go until the wedding, Izzy made sure to keep Jacob occupied. He was a bundle of energy, and while she didn’t have a hard time keeping an eye on him, she could see why Savannah had asked her to come along.
They spent the rest of the morning building sandcastles and playing in the sea. After lunch, Tobias suggested they could explore the island.
“Alone?” asked Savannah, looking horrified.
“It’s safe enough, Savannah,” said Tobias, reassuring her.
“But it’s so big. What if he gets lost?”
“It’s an island. He’s not going to go far, and it’s only us here.”
Izzy listened, keenly aware of Savannah’s fear. She had forgotten that time, when she had found a scared looking Jacob in the shopping mall, but she realized that the fear was never going to leave Savannah.
“Can we go there?” Jacob, pointed behind in the distance.
Savannah gasped. “To the waterfall? No. No way. Unless we all go, and I’m not feeling up to it right now. Do you mind waiting, honey? We could go tomorrow?”
“I can take him,” said Izzy, stepping forward. Jacob wasn’t the type of child to jump up and down and throw a tantrum. He listened to his mother and went along with anything she or Tobias said. His downcast face, and his silence, had been enough to move her. “I’d like to explore the island, and the waterfall doesn’t look so far away”
“They can take the jeep,” Tobias offered. “But it’s not far. I’ll go with them, if it puts your mind at ease.”
“We’ll be fine,” Izzy insisted, knowing that they needed time to unwind before their big day.
“They will be, Savannah.” Tobias held his fiancée’s hand. “One of my men will go with them.” And that seemed to satisfy Savannah. “You’ll need to wear sneakers, Jacob. It’s rocky around the waterfall. Be careful.”
They spent hours exploring the other end of the island, walking along the velvety, golden beaches fringed by palm trees and lush vegetation.
She couldn’t wait to tell Cara and wished she had her cell phone with her, but one of Tobias’s bodyguards had taken it from her as soon as they had arrived.
“Mommy wasn’t sure that you were going to come with us,” said Jacob as they walked along.
“She wasn’t?” Izzy slipped her hands into the back pockets of her denim shorts.
“Didn’t you want to look after me?”
“Huh? No. That’s not the reason I wasn’t sure about coming here, Jacob.” She stopped, and turned to him, then bent down to his level, glad that they had both changed into their sneakers.
“I have college, and I didn’t want to miss too many lessons, that’s all.”
The boy looked up at her, his expression more relaxed now, as if the news had cleared some notion he’d had. “So it wasn’t because of me?”
“No! Why would you think it’s because of you? You’re pretty cool, and I’m super excited to be here with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They walked along the beach, and could see, set much further inland, lush vegetation—giant ferns and huge towering trees swaying majestically in the soft breeze. Jacob announced that they were mango, coconut and breadfruit trees.
They talked about school, and his friends and his favorite Marvel movies and superheroes. Every so often, they would stop, while Jacob examined shells along the seashore, or chased after one of the tiny crabs which zig-zagged along the sand.
“It is a cool place, isn’t it?” she said, looking around. “We have to make the most of it, before everyone else gets here.” It was going to be painful having to share the island with everyone.
Savannah had told her that the wedding was small, around a hundred people.
Small?
Some guests would start arriving tomorrow, both of their families and a few close friends. It would mainly be the same people who had come to the engagement party. At least she knew what to expect.
“It’s Tobias’s birthday tomorrow.” Jacob told her.
“It’s his birthday?” Savannah hadn’t mentioned a word of it. “I didn’t know.”
“Mommy said Tobias doesn’t want to make a big deal of it. I don’t think old people like birthdays the way we do.”
She laughed. “Old people? I guess they don’t. Do you think I’m old?”
“Not as old as Tobias.”
“Do you think your Mom is old?”
“Mommies never get old.”
She smiled.
“So they’re having a celebration for Tobias’s birthday?” Probably a dinner, she assumed, and some cake, and drinks, under the stars. That was the thing that had amazed her. The stars were so clear, so sharp, so easy to see, and there were so many of them. It took her breath away looking at the sky. It was beautiful. Only last night, she and Jacob had gotten into the separate hammocks and tried to count stars.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who’s coming tomorrow?”
“Mommy said Grandma and Grandpa, and Tobias’s mom and dad and Xavier and Kay.” He counted off on his fingers.
“Kay and Xavier?” The way Jacob said it made her wonder if they were an item. Izzy had met Tobias’s brother at the party and had remembered him specifically because his girlfriend had bumped into her and spilled her drink all over Izzy’s jacket. And Savannah’s cousin Kay was hard to miss in that blood-red dress she had worn to the party in the summer.
Izzy had been wary of going but Tobias had told her that Savannah was desperate to meet her, and that they both wanted to personally thank her for stepping in and rescuing Jacob from the clutches of that woman who was trying to take him away.
“Are they together?” she asked, wondering if Jacob had intel that Cara and her magazines weren’t privy to.
He looked up at her with a puzzled frown. “You mean ‘is she his girlfriend?’” He screwed up his nose as if the idea of a girlfriend was disgusting.
Izzy glanced over her shoulder, wondering if the bodyguard could hear. For some reason, she felt as if she was being nosey, sticking her nose into other people’s business. She was curious. That’s all.
“Dunno.” Jacob shrugged. “Tobias says Xavier has a new girlfriend every week, and Millicent said it was about time he stopped making wild toast.”
“What did she say?” Izzy asked.
“I dunno. Toast, or oats, or something like that.”
She grinned. Sowing his wild oats, probably.
As they approached a clump of trees and shrubs, the bodyguard took charge and led the way. They followed him down a flight of rickety wooden steps, then through a clump of trees and shrubs. The flowers blossoming around them had a sweet smell, like honey.
She heard the loud gushing water as they edged out into a clearing.
And there it was.
A wall of blue silk threaded with crystal, surging and thundering down the mountain. Izzy put her hands on Jacob’s shoulders, not because he was in any danger of falling, but because she was cold, and thought he might be too. The temperature was cooler here.
“It’s beautiful isn’t it?” she said, raising her voice.
He nodded, and they watched the water swishing over the rocks and collecting into a bluish-green pool at the bottom. It was stunning. She inhaled deeply, admiring the view, feeling soothed by the sound of the water.
She wanted to be still, and to make the most of this moment. It was amazing how calm and free she felt after a few days without her cell phone. Kawaya was such a huge contrast to her daily, normal life. There were no horns blaring, no sirens screaming, or traffic growling.
The sound of nature was soothing in comparison.
She had done the right thing by coming here, and now she wished Tobias and Savannah had come a few days earlier. Tomorrow, with the guests arriving a day before the wedding, the peace and calm of paradise would be lost forever and they would not know this calm again.