The Prince Next Door. Sue Civil-Brown

      CHAPTER THREE

      MARCO, STILL CLAD in his obscene Speedo, was indeed in the parking area beneath the condos. On the coast like this, buildings were elevated on stilts to avoid flooding during severe storms, and the area beneath was quite handily used for parking.

      He was busy applying a thick coat of something milky to the lovingly preserved red paint of his Ferrari. He smiled when he saw Serena. “This is so important to preserve the finish in this climate,” he explained.

      Thinking of the condition of the paint on her four-year-old car, Serena was inclined to agree. Between salt and sun, a car didn’t stand a chance. “Have you met our new neighbor?” she asked Marco.

      He paused and straightened. “No, I don’t think so.”

      “He lives next door to me. He drives a Ferrari.”

      Ariel snickered quietly, and Serena shot her a warning glance.

      “He does?” Marco’s face, usually quite happy, brightened even more. “He appreciates fine workmanship and speed, no?”

      “Actually,” Serena said, “I don’t know what he appreciates. All I know is…Marco, I think he may be up to no good.”

      Marco’s expression sobered. “Why you say that?”

      Ariel beat Serena to the punch, in her usual, tactless and straightforward way. “Serena thinks he might be a drug dealer.”

      Marco’s face darkened. His chest swelled with ire and he spouted something in Italian that definitely sounded threatening.

      “Now wait,” Serena said hastily. “I don’t know anything for a fact.” Then she shot a glare at Ariel. “Don’t make mountains out of molehills.”

      “I thought that was your job,” Ariel agreed sweetly.

      Marco, meanwhile, had let his chest sag once more. “Why do you think this?”

      “Because…because he dresses oddly and claims to be an international art dealer. I mean…” She was starting to feel foolish, but Marco saved her.

      He nodded. “International art dealer? Here? Hah!” He made a gesture that Serena had never asked the meaning of and suspected she really didn’t want to know. “So what do we do?” he asked.

      “Well…” She didn’t feel quite so foolish anymore, now that Marco, a man familiar with a more cosmopolitan world than this part of Florida, found it absurd that an international art dealer would choose to live here of all places. Oh, there were some fine-art museums in the Tampa Bay area, and even the famed Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. But enough business to keep a major art dealer busy? Not likely.

      “Yes?” Marco prompted.

      “I thought…perhaps….well. Since you both have Ferraris, I thought you might be able to strike up a conversation and learn more about him.”

      “Sì.” Marco nodded once, then vanished into his own Italianate thought. After a few minutes, during which time Serena hardly breathed, he nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “I will be a spy. I have grandchildren visit here. No drug deals in my building!”

      For an awful instant Serena wondered if she was being too hasty. Then she remembered the weaselly visitor, and the threatening words he had spoken, “We have your mother.” Surely that was a sign of some illicit deal gone bad.

      “But,” she said, having a final twinge of conscience, “we don’t know for sure anything’s wrong with him. We just need to find out.”

      “I’ll find out.” Marco beamed. “No one can resist my personality.”

      “No?”

      “No.”

      Serena had her doubts, considering how she had been clock-watching—or rather timer watching—just a little while ago. “Just don’t go overboard, Marco.”

      He smiled. “Trust me. We will become bosom buddies.”

      ARIEL LICKED the last bit of stickiness from her fingers as she and Serena rode the elevator back up to the eleventh floor.

      “I wish,” Serena said, “that you wouldn’t be so…”

      “Brutally honest?” Ariel asked. “It’s just the way I am. Besides, you wanted Marco to help, didn’t you? So why beat around the bush and waste time?”

      Serena didn’t have an answer for that.

      “Anyway,” Ariel continued blithely, “I hope you realize you may just have totally slandered an innocent man.”

      Serena’s heart thumped. “I didn’t say he was a drug dealer. You did.”

      “But it was your idea.” Smiling, Ariel got off the elevator ahead of her. “I hope you have a good lawyer.” Then she skipped down the balcony toward her own unit like a gleeful child.

      Serena stared after her, thinking that while Ariel might be an adult by law, she was awfully immature in some ways. Sometimes it didn’t seem to Serena that the young woman ought to be living on her own.

      But then, she thought with painful honesty, she could probably say the same about herself.

      What had she just done?

      SERENA’S SINUSES HURT. Guaranteed there was a storm coming. Her sinuses were a better predictor than the weather service. Certainly better than that dweeb on TV, who one day had stood talking about clear skies while it was raining everywhere, including on his own building.

      Sighing, she pulled back the drapes, stretching out the morning stiffness and looked through her glass doors. Her sinuses were right. They were pounding like a tympani because the sky was leaden, the gulf was gray and white-capped, and the only thing missing was the rumble of thunder.

      No morning run. She’d lived her entire life in the lightning capital of the world, and she knew better than to get down there on the beach and trot along the water’s edge when there were clouds visible, even at a distance.

      As if in answer to her thoughts, a purple-blue-red bolt suddenly shot out of the heavens and appeared to hit the water near shore. It was followed by an eerie green halo that seemed to hang in the air like a huge ball of plasma…which it probably was.

      Curious, she stepped out on her balcony—not the wisest thing but she wasn’t always the wisest person, as everyone acquainted with her knew—and glanced down.

      “Oh my God!” The words escaped her as she saw what appeared to be two men dragging a third person out of the water. Idiot tourists. Someone else was running toward the beach bar at a mad dash. Probably to call 911.

      Serena was a dermatologist, but she was also a medical doctor. Grabbing a blanket and the CPR kit she was never without, she dashed out of her condo. The elevator would be too slow, so she ran down eleven flights of stairs, bursting out onto the beach and churning up gouts of sand behind her.

      People were crowded