Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) Read Free Page A

had happened to him—Logan and Jeff had turned disgustingly mature. The men of the family. Mom’s perfect helpers.
    I hated it.
    I really hated it.
    So did Dad. He shut himself up with his computer and mostly didn’t even come out to eat. Mom served his meals on a tray and at least once a week engaged in tense, low-pitched battles with him about eating with the family. That, however, was before he got a look at my first-term report card. I heard him bellow, “Laine!” all the way in my bedroom at the far end of the house. With MTV going full blast.
    As the youngest, and the longed-for girl for Mom, I’d escaped most of the lectures that pinned my brothers to the wall. But not now. I was screwed big time. And, yeah, wise ass fourteen-year-old that I was, I understood the expression in all its ramifications. The upshot of it was, five days a week after school, I reported to the once great Jordan Halliday, who’d had one of those If-I-tell-you, I’ll- have-to-kill-you jobs. And we didn’t just crack the books. Dad took me to fitness training, martial arts lessons, and rolled right along with me to the public firing range. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had private tutors in French and Spanish. Believe me, it’s tough to practice sullen teenage rebellion when you don’t have a minute to feel sorry for yourself.
    And, besides, worry about me was getting Dad out of the house. He even condescended to try a couple of the specially designed machines at the fitness center. And we soon learned his disability didn’t extend to his eyes. He could shoot pretty good for an old guy in a wheelchair.
    With fierce teenage insensitivity, I promised myself I’d practice until I could beat him. Turned out it was a good thing we lived so far out in the woods, because I practiced so hard we didn’t see a heron, egret, slow-circling buzzard, or even a feral pig for weeks. (Closer to town, I’d have been arrested after the first shot. Heaven forbid anybody should scare the tourists.)
    On the day I put five of nine shots into the heart of my paper target and four more to the head, Dad slowly nodded. He reached down, folded up his metal foot rests. Then he levered himself to his feet. “HK,” he said, holding out his hand. I grabbed the MP-5 submachine gun and handed it to him. Watched him check the magazine, set it to manual. And then he put the HK to his shoulder and calmly shot perfect concentric rings around my two sets of shots.
    There were so many grins, so much shouting, handshaking, and back-slapping at the firing range that day that, thank God, nobody seemed to notice my tears. I was growing up. They were tears of joy. Jordan Halliday lived again.
    I mean, it’s no wonder I never seem to find the right man. With a gold standard like Dad, what’s a girl to do?
    Dad never said, but I think that’s the day he decided to expand the family business, creating Holidays by Halliday, a sort of special events bonanza where people’s wildest dreams could come true. (The legal ones, that is.)
    It took me a while to catch on, but that was also the day Mom started smiling at someone besides our clients. It took even longer for the bigger revelation to hit me. Dad had discovered he could do more than stand on his own two feet. After my stomach stopped clenching and I got through going, “Euw!” I thought it was pretty cool.
    I went away to college, but only as far as Orlando, never getting too far away from the endless beaches, the seabreezes, swamps and alligators, or my new home town of Golden Beach as it attempted to cope with an overwhelming influx of people looking for a spot in the sun. By the time I graduated, Logan had also been swallowed up by the some secretive government acronym, so my return freed Jeff to do what he’d always wanted, a job as a Calusa County Deputy Sheriff. And, believe me, I had no regrets about returning to the family businesses. Troubleshooting for Fantascapes beats nine to five all to hell.
    “ Hey,