Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
Tom checked his watch as he hurried off the small jetway of his private plane and into the black car that was waiting for him on the tarmac, its air conditioner already blasting.
“You’re late,” Nick said, not looking up from his phone as Tom slid into the back seat next to him.
“My pilot said there was a storm or something, so we had to reroute.”
Nick huffed. “I thought the point of owning your own private jet was you were never stuck dealing with delays.”
Tom shrugged. “Can’t control the weather, I guess.”
Nick finally looked up, giving Tom a grin. “Not yet. Someone sent me a proposal for a new development where you can use these giant fans and some kind of chemical droplets in the air to create a ‘microclimate’ that’s perfect year-round.” He held out his phone, showing Tom some bizarre-looking patent application full of inscrutable diagrams. “It’s a bit too early stage for this Florida development, but might be cool for Palmco in the future.”
Tom nodded and Nick tucked the phone away. It seemed like every day Nick was coming to him with some far-fetched scheme to make even more money with even more cutting-edge technology. The thing was, most of the time, it worked.
“So, welcome to Florida.” Nick gave Tom a friendly swat on the shoulder. “Remember the last time we were here? You spent the whole time chasing some redhead, and Kevin got so drunk he puked on a dead octopus. And I got the worst sunburn of my life!”
Tom remembered. His last real vacation, spring break of his sophomore year in business school. He remembered Louisa, the nest of turtle eggs he had found, the beach cleanup, the fish and chips, and their sweet night spent together.
“That was a good time,” he agreed, giving Nick a smile. Nick had remained his best friend through school, and after graduation, he had joined Palmco as the Chief Operating Officer to Tom’s CEO. Together, they ran the company toward success, ensuring that Palmco Development saw major profits every year.
Now, Tom was here to oversee a new real estate development in La Vega, one that would make unprecedented use of new and innovative chemical engineering to allow them to build directly on the shoreline. It would allow them to take advantage of the hip, rapidly growing market in the area without encroaching on existing development or changing the nostalgic, beach town atmosphere of the older areas of La Vega.
Tom didn’t always fly out in person to visit each new project, but there were some rumblings about permitting issues with La Vega. Apparently there were a bunch of environmental activists trying to stop the development.
Plus, Tom would be lying if he said that his decision to spend some time in La Vega didn’t have anything to do with his pleasant memories from ten years earlier.
He doubted that Louisa would still be in town—when he met her, she’d had big dreams of becoming a marine biologist and was studying all the way out in California. She might not even remember him, or she might be married to someone else. But part of him still hoped that he might catch a glimpse of her fiery red hair while he was here.
“So tomorrow we’re meeting with some of the county board members—it was like pulling teeth to get them to agree to a date—and then in the evening we’ll tour the building site around sundown.” Nick was flipping through something on his phone, reading off the schedule. “The next day, there’s a black-tie dinner with some local investors, but if you have time before that, I’d like to review some of the budgeting with you. I’m not sure we’ve taken the costs of local labor into consideration when it comes to actual construction.”
“Uh-huh.” Tom was only half listening, watching out the window as the impossibly blue skies and towering palm trees of La Vega passed by. He wished the driver wouldn’t blast the air-conditioning so high so that he could try and get a whiff of the salty ocean air, but he told himself there would be plenty of time for that.
Nick continued talking, telling him about interstate orders for the chemical compound they were using, and giving him some background on the various investors they’d be meeting with the next day. Tom nodded along, but coming back to La Vega had him lost in his thoughts.
Even as he left the car, heading to his own penthouse suite in one of the tallest hotels in La Vega, he couldn’t get Louisa out of his memory. He wondered if she still wore that squid necklace, and whether that sea turtle—what had his name been?—was still alive.
Curious, Tom flopped down on his fluffy hotel bed and pulled out his phone, looking up how long sea turtles live. He found a website that told him sea turtles could live up to fifty years or more, and he smiled. Outside, past the floor-to-ceiling windows of his hotel room, he could see the sapphire blue sea rippling with white-capped waves. Although he knew that nothing was ever guaranteed, and that nature could be quite cruel, he had to believe that at least some of the baby turtles from the nest he and Louisa had protected ten years ago were out there somewhere, swimming around.
This made Tom’s heart swell as he set down his phone and wandered out onto his balcony, smiling. He didn’t have many things that felt, to him, like a legacy. Sure, he kept the profit margins for Palmco Development high, but in the end, it was just a business, one his father had started. Each individual development project was like a blip on his radar—it started, it finished, and he moved on. He didn’t have time for personal endeavors, let alone a partner or family. There was very little he felt personally proud of.
But thinking about those turtles, and the small part he may have played in helping them survive and grow and make it into the ocean, gave Tom a pleasant sense of pride.