Valentine's Day in Venice Read online

  VALENTINE’S DAY IN VENICE

  THE HOLIDAY ADVENTURE CLUB BOOK ONE

  STEPHANIE TAYLOR

  CONTENTS

  The Holiday Adventure Club Series

  1. August 23

  2. December 6

  3. February 6

  4. February 7

  5. February 11

  6. February 12

  7. February 12

  8. February 12

  9. February 12

  10. February 13

  11. February 13

  12. February 14

  13. February 14

  14. February 14

  15. February 14

  16. February 15

  17. February 15

  18. February 21

  19. February 22

  20. March 3

  Ready for the next book in the Holiday Adventure Club series?

  Also by Stephanie Taylor

  About the Author

  THE HOLIDAY ADVENTURE CLUB SERIES

  BOOK ONE

  Valentine’s Day in Venice

  1

  AUGUST 23

  AMELIA ISLAND, FL

  “Holiday Adventure Club, this is Lucy, how can I help you?” Lucy Landish held the phone to her ear, wedged between cheek and shoulder as she continued tapping away on her computer keys.

  She didn’t like customers to know that she was still operating a one-woman show at the Holiday Adventure Club office, so she always tried to juggle her various duties and to answer the phone when it rang, even if it meant interrupting her train of thought as she fired off an email.

  “Sorry…I think I have the wrong number. I was looking for the Amelia Island Holiday Club?” the man on the other end of the line said, sounding confused.

  Lucy let out a quiet sigh. Amelia Island—a small, quaint strip of land loosely connected to the east coast of Florida by a single bridge that crossed the Amelia River—did a brisk tourist trade, but people inadvertently mixed up her business with the sprawling, similarly named hotel on the beach, and most days she ended up just giving them the correct phone number rather than making them hang up and find it themselves. And, after all, even someone who called her by accident could be a potential customer—whether they knew it or not—so Lucy was always helpful because she couldn’t afford not to be.

  “Thank you so much,” the man said after Lucy had given him the hotel’s phone number.

  Lucy set the phone receiver back in its cradle. Starting her own business on a tropical island had been a strategic move, and she still reminded herself daily that this was the direction she’d chosen to go—and for very good reason.

  The ringing phone had derailed her train of thought as she’d typed, so Lucy stood up from her desk and stretched her arms toward the low ceiling of the tiny office that was nestled between a coffee shop and a postal store in the strip mall near A1A. She’d been lucky to find a spot so close to the beach, and on nice days when the humidity didn’t feel like a pile of bricks on her chest, she loved to prop open the glass front door and breathe in the salty ocean air that blew in off the Atlantic. For most of her life, upstate New York had been home, and with each change of season (though visitors might argue that Florida’s only seasons are hot, hotter, and hottest), Lucy appreciated the beach, the humidity, and the fluctuation in the number of tourists. She also appreciated the lack of snow, the way she’d been able to reinvent herself with each mile south that she’d driven from Buffalo, and the fact that her new job didn’t have a damn thing to do with death certificates or formaldehyde.

  It might seem strange: a thirty-eight-year-old woman leaving a job where her main objective was to identify the cause and manner of death under a variety of mundane and horrifying situations, only to start over as a small business owner whose only job was to be cheerful and to plan people’s travel adventures, but it had been the change that Lucy needed in her life in order to keep getting up in the morning. If she’d seen one more mangled body, heard one more tale of unnecessary destruction of a life from a jaded detective, or held one more drug-addled brain, heart, or liver in her gloved hands, she was going to climb into her bed and never crawl out.

  Today, however, as Lucy contemplated the pile of work that needed to be done, the late August heat was more than oppressive: it was downright threatening. Her air-conditioning unit rattled a warning that reminded her how much she relied on it, and the sky beyond her wall of windows hung heavy with a line of gray clouds that looked as if they could fall and crush mountains. Within the hour, a heavy rain would pound the roof of her building and the streets outside, and with it would come a quick, ferocious thunderstorm that might knock out the power anywhere on the island without warning.

  Lucy abandoned her computer altogether for the moment to stand at the windows, arms folded as she looked out at the impending storm. The parking lot that fronted the row of shops was only half-full, and right outside her office was a vintage Volkswagen Bug painted a cheerful, optimistic shade of yellow with only a few patches of rust. Lucy had been driving it since she’d arrived on Amelia Island a year and a half earlier and sold her VW Passat, bought a tiny bungalow that needed a ton of elbow grease, and signed a lease on the office in the strip mall. None of these acquisitions were really representative of the successful businesswoman she aspired to be, but they were definitely representative of the free-spirited, hopeful, fun-loving girl she’d been once and hoped to eventually be again.

  She was working on it. As with all good things, it would simply take some time.

  Without locking her office—after all, how hard-up would a burglar have to be to run through the kind of rainstorm that was about to make landfall in order to snatch a PC or a desk phone from a tiny travel agency office?—Lucy stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk and ducked into The Carrier Pigeon, the P.O. box shop next door.

  “So, Hurricane Lucy is already making landfall, huh?” Nick Epperson watched her enter as he leaned on the counter of his shop with both elbows. His thin cotton shirtsleeves were rolled and pushed up to reveal tanned, smooth forearms. Nick let the paperback he’d been reading fall shut and he tossed it aside as his gaze focused on Lucy in her above-the-knee floral summer dress. Her auburn hair was wavy and loose around her flushed cheeks, sticking to the back of her neck where the sweat had immediately sprung from her pores in the humidity. As they looked at one another, the first fat drops of rain began to pelt the pavement outside. “You gonna ride out today’s festivities with me?”

  Lucy glanced around: Nick’s shop was as empty as her office. “No customers?”

  Nick turned both palms to the ceiling. “I’m becoming obsolete,” he said with a charming half-smile. Nick’s brown hair was short and mussed, his goatee neatly trimmed. He looked not so much like the proprietor of a business as a grad student who might suddenly pull a dog-eared paperback copy of The Great Gatsby from the back pocket of his 501s and start pontificating about how optimism is a noble, if futile, trait.

  In truth, he was a mystery writer who lived with a black lab named Hemingway, but his youthful good looks continued to fool bartenders and confound the young women who glanced his way without realizing that he easily had twenty years on them.

  “You’ll never be obsolete, Epperson,” Lucy said, walking over and hopping up on the counter in one easy, fluid movement. She sat with her back to the wall of padded envelopes and shipping boxes as she and Nick faced the rain, watching it hit the windshields of the cars outside with force.

  “That’s sweet of you to say, but you, my dear, run a travel agency. Now that people can do everything online, neither one of us is really considered ‘essential.’”

  “Fair enough,” Lucy conceded, kicking her legs so that the heels of
her sandals banged against Nick’s front counter as she sat on it. “But if the fax machine ever makes a comeback, I predict good things for you.”

  Nick gave an amused chuckle. “And if any generation after the Boomers suddenly gets confused about how to use Travelocity, then I predict great things for you. By the way, how is your big project coming along?”

  Lucy shrugged her bare shoulders. “I’m wondering if I might be crazy. Or if this is too adventurous for the Holiday Adventure Club.”

  “Going around the world in a year? Seems doable.” Nick reached for the paperback he’d cast aside and slid it closer, spinning it on the counter in lazy circles as he talked.

  “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” Lucy watched as a woman holding an umbrella that would be rendered totally useless within seconds exited the nail shop at the end of the strip mall with a fresh manicure. Within seconds, the onslaught of rain drenched the woman and nearly crushed the metal spokes of the umbrella as it began to fold on top of her head. “Yikes,” Lucy said as an aside, nodding at the woman. “She better get into her car ASAP and quit running around in a lightning storm holding that thing in the air.”

  “She does appear to be asking for trouble,” Nick agreed, only half watching the woman. “But listen,” Nick said, not letting go of his train of thought. “You can definitely hit a city for every major holiday for a year—you’re smart and capable and I have the utmost faith in your abilities—but do you need to do this?”

  Lucy squinted at the rain outside as she thought about it. “I’m sometimes smart and occasionally capable,” she finally said. “And I do need to do this. It’s sort of like an internal re-set, you know? It’s all part of the process.”

  Nick, still leaning on the counter next to her, turned his head and looked at her profile for a moment. “He really hurt you, didn’t he?” he asked quietly.

  In an instant, Lucy’s eyes glassed over with unshed tears and her jaw set firmly. She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “He might have left a few contusions. Broken a bone or two. Calcified my heart,” she said with a sad smirk. “But I’ll survive.”

  Nick reached over with one lightly clenched fist and gave Lucy a faux punch on the arm. “Look at you. Using your forensic talk to make light of things.”

  In truth, the man in question had done more than leave a few scrapes; her seven-year marriage had ended—badly—and left her to question everything about her life.

  A small, wicked smile tugged at Lucy’s lips as a thought formulated. “Hey, since I’ve got you here, oozing sympathy in my direction, do you think maybe—“

  “Nope,” Nick interrupted her, pushing away from the counter and holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m not taking care of your evil cat again while you go on vacation. Uh uh. No way.”

  “Nick,” Lucy giggled, watching his face as he backed away, shaking his head. “Joji is the sweetest cat that ever lived! He probably wouldn’t even kill a mouse if it was eating my last piece of cheese.”

  “No, no, and no. I hate cats. They’re creepy. And unpredictable. Remember how you told me about that case you had where the woman died and her own cat ate her eyeballs and her lips before the neighbors found her body?” He shuddered. “I will not go near that furry little agent of Satan, no matter how sorry I feel for you. And Hemingway hates cats too.”

  Lucy slid off the counter as she laughed out loud. “You’re too much,” she said. “You write books about murder and mayhem, but a ten-pound tabby unravels you.” She walked over to the door and rested her fingers on the handle as she looked back at him across the shop. He’d re-settled onto the counter with both elbows and was looking at her with that same easy half-smile he’d had when she walked into the shop. It had been no big secret between them in the year and a half that they’d been friends and neighbors that they found one another attractive, but because of Lucy’s relatively recent heartbreak, things had never moved past friendship and mild flirtation.

  “Hey, I’m a complicated man,” Nick said, lifting his eyebrows and his shoulders slightly. “Are you really going out in that rain?”

  Lucy looked back at the downpour. “I’ll stay undercover. I just want to run over and get an afternoon coffee.”

  Nick dropped his eyes to the counter and reached for his book again. “Gotcha,” he said flatly. “Stay dry, Lucy.”

  Lucy pushed open the door and let in the loud rush of pelting rain. The sound of water hitting the roof, the pavement, and the cars in the lot drowned out the last of Nick’s words.

  Santo & Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” was playing from an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of the coffee shop when Lucy walked in thirty seconds after leaving Nick’s store.

  “Afternoon, Miss Adventure,” Dev said, wiping his counter with a wet rag as he glanced up at her. His hazel, almond-shaped eyes were framed by dark lashes that nearly stopped Lucy in her tracks.

  Instead, she paused for just a moment as she always did when she first walked into Beans & Sand, caught off-guard once again by Dev’s exotic good looks. Dev Lopez was the product of a mother from Jamaica and a father from Mexico, and the combination of the two had yielded light eyes that mesmerized like a kaleidoscope; deeply bronzed skin; soft, curly hair; and broad shoulders. Dev was equally as handsome as Nick, but where Nick was funny and nimble with his words, Dev was serious and pointed. His only concession to joking sarcasm that Lucy had picked up on so far was his penchant for calling her “Miss Adventure,” a play on the word “misadventure” and on the name of her business next door. And she loved it, naturally, because in Lucy’s experience a good nickname meant you mattered to someone—at least a little.

  “Gorgeous afternoon, isn’t it?” Lucy shook her left arm, which had been subjected to the sideways-pouring deluge of rain as she’d scurried along the walkway outside, huddling as close to the building as possible. Droplets of water flew all over the floor.

  “Get you a coffee to go?” Dev tossed the rag he’d been holding into the stainless steel sink behind the counter and turned to his wide array of coffee supplies and machines. “An afternoon latte? An Americano with coconut milk?”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, pulling her hair from the back of her sweat-dampened neck as the song on the jukebox ended and another began. “Actually, I’ll have a vanilla latte, please.”

  Rather than sit, she stood there in the middle of the coffee shop, which had the distinct vibe of a 50s diner with its vinyl covered barstools at the counter, and booths that ran the length of the window. But instead of anything retro and 50s related, Dev had covered the walls with framed posters of his favorite musicians of all eras, including David Bowie, Nirvana, The Smiths, The Beatles, and The Beach Boys. The music ephemera and the colorful jukebox in the corner made it feel like some sort of Hard Rock Cafe outpost.

  “Doing good business this week?” Dev asked amiably with his back to Lucy as he made her coffee. Instead of Nick’s affable college guy plaid shirt, Dev wore a beat-up black Lenny Kravitz concert t-shirt tucked into well-cut black jeans. He also wore a brown leather belt and brown boots, and on his fingers he wore no fewer than two rings per hand. One wrist was covered in a tangle of leather and string bracelets. Lucy watched as he moved around, admiring his smooth skin. When Dev turned to her with her paper cup of coffee in hand, his serious eyes burned into hers.

  She blinked a few times and accepted the coffee with a gracious nod. “I mean…the phone has rung. Does that count?” She smiled at him as she put the cup to her lips for a first sip.

  “Careful—that’s hot.” Dev leaned back against his sink, crossing his boots at the ankles and folding his arms across his strong chest as he watched her intently. “And the phone ringing is a start. Unless it’s a wrong number.”

  “Oof. I feel so exposed,” Lucy joked, hoping it would bring a smile to Dev’s face. It didn’t. Instead his brow furrowed.

  “Maybe you should think about your advertising game,” he said, looking out the window and staring into the gray sky. “Like, if you’ve
identified who your target travelers are, then you’ve gotta go to where they are.”

  “Sage advice,” Lucy said wryly, holding the coffee cup with both hands. “I’ve tried that. Facebook ads, Twitter, retirement community newsletters, college campuses—“

  “So basically your audience is everyone?” Dev asked, still watching her closely.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Anyone who wants to travel, can travel, and who can afford it.”

  If possible, Dev’s brow knitted together even more. “But you’re starting with Valentine’s Day, right? In Venice, wasn’t it?”

  Lucy chewed on her bottom lip. “Yeah, and I thought having six months to plan it was a decent head start.”

  “So, okay. How about gearing this first trip towards romance? Valentine’s Day is kind of the ultimate fake romantic holiday, right? And although I’ve never been there myself, I’ve heard that Venice is pretty dazzling.”

  Lucy nodded and picked a spot on the wall on which to focus her gaze. How humiliating to realize that she was already knee-deep into planning this big, groundbreaking business venture, only to have someone point out that she was casting her net too widely. Or at least to remind her that maybe she wasn’t cut out to be handling the entire shebang, from soup to nuts. Would it kill her to bring in someone else’s ideas or to at least use a friend as a sounding board? Maybe talk to someone who’d spent the last decade working amongst the living and not the dead? Probably not. But in her previous career—and while a forensic pathologist certainly cooperated and worked in conjunction with police, doctors, hospitals, families, witnesses, and sometimes even the FBI—much of her work had been solitary. She’d focused on the task at hand and put all of her mental energy to unlocking the mysteries presented to her by a human who could no longer speak for himself or herself.