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“I take it he’s not here,” Lindy said, cocking her head to the side, openly assessing the kid. “Otherwise you’d be watching your mouth a little more closely. I get your act, kid. You play the sweet innocent girl for your dad but when his back is turned you show your true colors. You’re spoiled, mean, selfish and cruel,” Lindy said, taking pleasure in the way the girl’s face had begun to redden. “Oh, and chances are no one really likes you, which is something you probably know but pretend not to care about because, let’s face it, being a jerk is a lonely life. But let me fill you in on a secret, short stuff, this lonely childhood of yours is only going to get worse because unless you change your attitude, no one is ever going to want to be around you...not even your dad.”
“Shut up,” Carys said.
“Hey, kudos, kid, for the lip tremble,” Lindy said, being quite brutal, probably more than what was required but Lindy was still pissed about the toilet. “Pretty convincing. If I wasn’t already wise to your act, I might’ve bought it.”
At that Carys’s eyes actually welled and Lindy felt a pang of remorse for taking it to that level but the kid had it coming, for sure. Today Lindy was Karma’s handmaiden.
“I’m telling my dad,” she whispered, her voice cracking a bit. For a split second Lindy actually saw something in the girl’s raw expression that smacked of genuine emotion. A moment of doubt crossed her mind as she thought to soften the harsh words but the moment passed as quickly as a tropical storm and suddenly Carys screamed before slamming the door in Lindy’s face, “My daddy is going to sue you for every penny you own for being so mean to me!”
“Yeah, well good luck with that!” Lindy shouted back, forgetting her earlier doubt. Then she added, “Brat!” for good measure.
Well, that hadn’t gone well. But surely Lora had to have known it wouldn’t. Maybe her sister had set her up. Customer service wasn’t her specialty or niche. And curse her own stubbornness. Maybe she ought to have let Lilah handle the situation with Bungalow 2, after all, because clearly Lindy simply wasn’t cut out for this touchy-feely stuff. Damn, damn, damn, Lindy thought grumpily. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for anyone. At this rate, she might’ve single-handedly ruined Larimar’s chances of pulling through this disaster in one day. Good job, Lindy!
* * *
“AND THEN...AND then...” Carys’s voice hitched on a hysterical hiccup as Gabe cradled his daughter as she sobbed in his arms. “And then, she called me...she called me...a bad...n-name, Daddy!”
“What sort of bad name, sweetheart?” he asked, barely holding his temper in check. “Go ahead, you can tell me. I’ll take care of this once and for all if you just tell me what happened.”
Carys ground the tears from her eyes and then wailed, “She called me a...b-word!”
The b-word. Hmm...well, the range could land between a whole lot of different insults from mild to harsh. He’d only been gone for an hour and a half, just long enough for Carys to calm down so they could discuss her behavior, but in the space of that time, that woman had apparently returned to the bungalow to call his daughter names. A small niggling doubt worried at his thoughts even as his temper reached a dangerous place. Carys was only eleven; the woman had no right to call his daughter names no matter what she’d allegedly done to the damn toilet. Still, that one percent of doubt countered with grim logic. Carys was...a handful. The b-word was the least of the insults recently hurled at his daughter. In fact, her last nanny...well, he was pretty sure the woman had called her something quite unpleasant in Swedish.
“Honey, why would she just show up and start calling you names?” he asked, unable to bury that small doubt under his instinct to defend his daughter. “Maybe it was a misunderstanding....”
“Daddy, you don’t believe me?” Carys’s head popped from his shoulder, her eyes hard and mean.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, sweetheart,” he said evenly. “But sometimes there are misunderstandings.”
“I’m not stupid or deaf. She called me a b-word. How am I supposed to misunderstand that?”
Ah hell, he’d walked into that one. Carys was much too smart to pull off that kind of deflection. He sighed and shook his head. “Carys...be honest with me.... Why do you think a relative stranger would just start calling you names? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Did you, possibly, say something that might’ve been offensive?”
“Why are you taking her side?” Carys said, openly wounded and rapidly growing angry. “You’re supposed to be on my side! Not hers. She’s a nobody. I’m your daughter! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does,” he said sharply, not liking what was happening between them but it seemed to happen more often these days. “I’m just saying—”
“Don’t you love me, Daddy?” she cut in impatiently, wiping her nose with a quick swipe of the back of her hand.
“Carys,” he warned, disappointed by her obvious attempt at manipulating him. “Stop it.”
Her lower lip trembled and she pushed away from him, the action actually skewering him in the heart. “I hate you,” she said quietly. “Mom would’ve believed me. She was the only one who truly loved me.”
“Damn it, Carys,” he said, growing angry himself, but mostly doubling over inside from the pain of what was happening between them. It was as if Charlotte’s death had taken the light and laughter from his daughter and he’d been left with the dark and dour shell that could neither laugh nor smile and he was at a loss of what to do. “This has to stop. Just stop it already, all right?” His voice almost sounded desperate and if he could hear it, so could she. He moved to the window, a mass of equal parts frustration and despair, as he felt the need to escape. No, he told himself firmly. Fix this. Somehow. “Listen...” He turned to try again, to apologize for being short with her but before the words could leave his mouth, she was running out the door.
“Carys!”
* * *
CARYS RAN AS fast as her legs could take her, as fast as she’d ever run before. Her bare feet slapped on the dark asphalt road as she burst from the private grounds of the resort where her father had imprisoned her; running almost blindly as tears sprang from that empty, yet strangely painful place she held deep inside. She hated it here. She hated her father. She hated everything and everyone. No one understood what she was going through, how every day felt worse than the last.
Her father didn’t care. All he cared about was his business and making money. She hated money. Hated that her father took business calls at all hours of the night, during dinner, when he’d promised to read to her, when he’d canceled their snorkel tour. Everything came before she did—everything!
He probably wouldn’t even care if she dropped into the ocean and sank to the bottom and got eaten by a...a...stingray! A sob broke from her chest and she heaved as her side screamed in pain from the all-out sprint. She held her side as she limped, realizing with a cry her big toe was bleeding. Somehow she hadn’t noticed that her big toenail had been partially ripped off. She sank to the side of the road and held her foot, crying. Nobody cared. Nobody!
“Momma...” she whispered. Just saying the word made her heart spasm with raw grief. Everyone had told her time would heal the hurt, but they’d lied! Every day was more painful than the one before and she didn’t care anymore what anyone thought or said about her. She just wanted her mom again. And if that meant...well, then that’s what she meant.
She wished she were dead, too.
CHAPTER THREE
LINDY STORMED PAST the reception desk where Celly, the local Crucian woman Pops had hired, arched her thin brow and clucked at Lindy’s angry pace. “You got a bee in yah bonnet, supahstar?” Celly asked, using the nickname she’d given Lindy once she learned she was an aspiring actress. Funny thing was, Lindy wasn’t quite sure if she was being facetious or complimentary.
“You could say that,” Lindy muttered. “Where’s Lora?”
Celly shrugged. “Not that woman’s keepah, you know dat,” she said, adding with a sniff, “she likely eatin’ young children’s souls for breakfast somewhere.”
Lindy would’ve laughed because that was damn funny, but she was too keyed up to appreciate Celly’s wry island humor. She had to talk with Lora before the she-devil in Bungalow 2 had her daddy bellowing to bring the resort down. Maybe if she gave her side of things... Oh hell, why even bother. She’d been harsh, but the kid had needed to hear a few harsh truths. She probably deserved to have her mouth washed out with soap, too. Luckily for Carys, Lindy hadn’t had any on hand.
“Yah got murder in yah eyes, girl,” Celly warned with a chuckle. “Must be good, whatcha got?”
“The spoiled monster in Bungalow 2... Lora told me to apologize for having the audacity to call the kid out for flushing two tons of sand down the toilet but I didn’t quite manage the apology part.”
“No?”
“Not quite. I probably made it worse,” Lindy admitted with a private grimace. “But in my defense, I told Lora I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with that little brat and so it’s really sort of Lora’s fault for making me do something I knew wasn’t going to go well. She never listens.”
“None of yah do,” Celly said, chuckling. “Yah all de same. Stubborn, de lot of yah.”
“Oh, really? And suddenly you’re an expert on the Bells?” Lindy quipped wryly. “You’ve worked here for all of a year or so?”
“Dat mouth de same as de rest.” Celly tapped her dark head. “Hard as sea coral and just as rigid.”
Yeah, well, maybe. But she didn’t have time to argue the finer points with Celly so she let it go. “If you see my sister can you please tell her I need to talk to her?”
“Yah,” Celly said, though Lindy wasn’t quite sure if Celly was just saying what Lindy wanted to hear or if she’d truly give Lora the message. Lora and Celly didn’t get along. Under normal circumstances, anyone who bumped heads with Lora was an automatic friend to Lindy but Celly was different. She wasn’t all that friendly and she rarely did what anyone told her to do unless it aligned with what Celly had already planned for herself. Lora had tried to talk Pops into letting Celly go but the man had stubbornly refused. Plain and simple, he liked the ornery woman. So she remained. The only one who didn’t seem to rub her wrong was Lilah, but honestly, her twin had the disposition of a wet sea sponge—as in she gave absolutely no resistance to pressure; she simply caved. So of course Celly would have no problem with Lilah.
It was one of Lilah’s most aggravating qualities to be honest but Lindy would never say that to Lilah because, well, everyone protected Lilah. It was their thing.
Lindy exited the lobby and ran smack into the very person she didn’t want to face just yet—Gabe Weston.
She opened her mouth to defend herself but he blew past her, wearing an anxious expression. A feeling of dread settled in her stomach and she hurried after him against her better judgment. “What’s wrong?” Lindy asked.
He barely acknowledged her, but answered tersely. “Carys is missing. She wasn’t in her room and she wasn’t down at the beach.”
“I’m sure she’s just hiding out,” Lindy said, swallowing a really big lump of something that tasted like apprehension. Had she caused this kid to do something stupid like run away? The island was a safe place, mostly, but it certainly wasn’t smart for a kid to go wandering around by herself. “I’ll help you look.”
“That’s not necessary,” he said, cutting her a short look.
“I know the island and two sets of eyes are better than one, right?” she said, trying to appeal to his logic, but she saw an arctic storm blowing behind his eyes. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. “How long has she been gone?”
He made an agitated gesture that spoke of private guilt as he admitted, “I don’t know, exactly. We were having a discussion and then she got really upset and ran out the door.”
“Did she say what had upset her?” Lindy asked, though she could guess.
“Actually—” he stopped to pin Lindy with a sharp stare “—she said you called her the b-word.”
Lindy gaped. “The what?”
“The b-word, which I can only assume is bitch. Is that true?”
“No,” Lindy answered truthfully. “I hate to break it to you but your little angel lied to you. I called her a brat but I’d never call a little kid that other word, no matter how much they deserved it.”
Gabe processed her answer and slowly came to his own conclusion. “I was afraid of that.” He sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. “I’ve been having some...issues with Carys.”
“I can only imagine,” Lindy said wryly. “But we’ll find her, don’t worry. There are only so many places she can hide on this island.”
“I thought she probably needed a little cooldown and went to the beach but after about thirty minutes I went to find her. She wasn’t anywhere.”
She could hear the guilt in his voice and felt bad for him. She wasn’t a mom and didn’t know what it entailed but she knew for certain, she wasn’t interested in the job description from what she knew so far. “Okay, so she’s either gone to Hawksnest Beach or she went to town. My vote is for town. I’m guessing she has cash or a credit card?”
He looked discomfited, as if Lindy’s assumption only solidified her opinion that Carys was a spoiled rich kid, but he nodded nonetheless. “For emergencies,” he clarified, as if that made a difference. In Los Angeles, a rich kid’s emergency could mean there was a new pair of Jimmy Choo ballet slippers at Nordstrom. Lindy supposed rich kids were the same no matter the zip code.
“Well, that’s good. If she has cash, she’s probably blowing off some steam in the shops. I mean, isn’t shopping its own brand of therapy?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t particularly like to shop. That was my wife’s department,” he answered grimly.
Wife...likely a divorcé and he ended up picking the short straw with the kid this vacation. “So where’s the missus right now?”
“She passed away a year ago.”
Ouch. She bit her lip and the pink of shame heated her cheeks. “Oh. I’m sorry,” she said and actually meant it. She knew how it felt to lose a mother. With a pinch of conscience she grudgingly saw Carys in a different light. Maybe the kid was hurting and lashing out because she missed her mom and buttoned-up dad wasn’t cutting it in the emotional healing department. She skewed her gaze at Gabe and another apology hovered on her tongue. He started to veer toward the parking lot where his rented luxury car waited and she tugged at his magnolia-
covered shirt, gesturing for him to follow. “C’mon, I’ll drive. I know my way around and some of these roadways are tricky.”
He seemed poised to argue but thought better of it and followed her to the Jeep. They hopped in and after Lindy fished around under the seat for the spare key, they were rumbling out of the parking lot.
“Do you always keep the spare in the vehicle?” he asked, clearly a bit incredulous. “I mean, anyone could just take off with your vehicle.”
“They could but they don’t. It’s a private resort and everyone’s pretty honest.” She barked a laugh at a private memory. “We’ve only had one car thief in all the years we’ve owned Larimar,” she shared without shame. “And it was me. I took the Jeep and skipped off island to St. Thomas, where a few friends were having a party, and I didn’t come home until morning. In my defense, how was I supposed to know that the ferry didn’t run past 11:00 p.m.? I was grounded for a week after that escapade but it was worth it.”
He shook his head, not quite sure what to think of her. Lindy didn’t take it personally. She was a bit of an odd bird, so she’d been told. “Oh, come on, you mean to tell me you never did anything crazy when you were a kid?” she asked, trying to take his mind off his daughter and ease the frown on his face.
He exhaled a short breath as if he was wise to her attempt but he answered with a short shrug. “I guess. But it feels a whole lot different when it’s your kid doing the crazy stuff.”
She bit her lip, her smile fading. Yeah, she supposed that was true. Now she wished she hadn’t tried to make light of the situation. “We’ll find her. It’ll be okay,” she said. “I grew up here and it’s pretty safe. Almost boring. In fact, in St. Thomas they call St. John St. Yawn if that tells you anything.”
“She’s only eleven,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but something tells me she’s pretty damn resourceful, even for an eleven-year-old. Am I right?”
At that he nodded grudgingly, rubbing the skin above his brows. “Yeah. I guess you could say that. She can be a bit precocious.”
“Yeah,” Lindy agreed. “I recognize it. That’s how I was, too. My grandmother had her hands full with me, but I turned out pretty well, so likely she will, too.”
They drove into the plaza where the shops converged in a marketplace hub and Lindy grabbed the first parking space she could find, sliding into a tight spot that barely qualified as legal. Gabe looked uneasy at her parking job but she simply hopped out and waited for him to follow. She waved away his concern. “I know it looks illegal but it’ll be fine. Besides, we’ll be gone before anyone starts to raise a fuss. Trust me,” she said, scanning the plaza. Several tourists were snapping pictures of an iguana lazing on a tree branch at eye level until he tired of the attention and lumbered farther up the tree. Lindy turned to Gabe. “Let’s split up. We’ll cover more ground if we do. You take the upstairs shops and I’ll take the bottom level. We’ll come back to this spot in thirty minutes. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said and struck out, his pace brisk. She blew out a short breath and focused on where an eleven-year-old kid would likely want to hang out. The shops in this plaza were mostly geared toward tourists and she doubted the kid was looking to buy a coffee mug or T-shirt. Lindy closed her eyes and thought hard. If she were a kid with money at her disposal and she was so angry and hurt that she just ran away, where would she go?
Off island. The answer seemed simple enough. A rich kid with resources and enough savvy was going to try to find a way off the island, possibly to purchase a plane ticket in St. Thomas to fly back to wherever she came from. Knowing Carys, the kid probably knew her way around a terminal. The wealthy were usually well traveled; some kids in L.A. were bicoastal with divorced parents so a plane ride was as natural as hitching a cab in New York.
Lindy jogged to the marina and began scanning. She spied her old friend Billy Janks, unloading scuba gear from his charter. She waved and grinned when his dark brown face split into an easy smile.
“Yah a sight for sore eyes,” he exclaimed when she stepped aboard and gave him a fierce hug. “Heath told me yah were here but I couldn’t believe yah left all dat Hollywood glamour for little ol’ St. John.”
“I didn’t leave permanently,” Lindy said, smiling. “Just a little break until things get more settled with Larimar.” She admired his beautiful boat. “Man, you’ve come a long way. I remember when you were just a snot-nosed island kid like the rest of us. Now you own your own charter company? That’s damn sweet, Billy.”
He grinned and nodded. “Saving up for yah to make me an honest mon, sweet.”
Lindy laughed. “As if I’d keep you from all the ladies who want a piece of that dark island candy,” she teased. “I’d never be able to live with myself if I kept you all to myself.”
“True dat,” he said, laughter in his voice. “So what da real reason yah here? Come for a ride?”
She shook her head. “No. Unfortunately not. But I’ll take a rain check on that, though. Actually, I was wondering if you saw a little imp of a girl come through looking to pay someone to ferry her to St. Thomas. She has serious cash but she’s only about eleven.”
Billy sobered and nodded. “She came tru here about fifteen minutes ago. I told her to go home. She plenty mad when I say dat. I tole her to cool off with a cold drink at the boathouse.”
“Thanks, Billy,” Lindy said, relieved. At least Carys hadn’t found a way off island yet. She waved at Billy and headed toward the boathouse. She stepped inside and spotted Carys immediately. She was trying to haggle with a captain Lindy didn’t know.
“I have cash,” she said, her small face gathering into a dark scowl. “What’s the problem? I’ll even pay you more than the trip is worth! I mean, you’d be stupid to pass up a deal like that!”
Lindy could tell the kid was about to get tossed into the water headfirst by the annoyed captain and for a split second, Lindy was tempted to let him. The kid deserved that and more, but in the end, not even Lindy could allow herself to let that happen.
“C’mon, kid, your dad is worried about you,” she said, startling Carys until she saw it was Lindy, then her face screwed into a fierce glower. “I know, I know, you’re mad. You can be mad in the car. Your dad is about to turn this whole island upside down to find you and you can’t even comprehend how that will make my life hell and I think you’ve done enough of that for one day.”
“My dad doesn’t care,” Carys shot back, but there was a slight tremble to her lip that gave her away. Beneath all that bravado and bad attitude, the kid was hurting. Lindy sighed and wondered why she had to be the one to see it first.
“You know he does so let’s stop with the games and the lies.” Lindy drew Carys away from the clump of island natives and took her to the bar.
“I’m not lying,” she shot back heatedly.
“You told your dad that I called you a b-word. You and I both know I didn’t do that.”
Carys slid her gaze away. “I didn’t say which b-word. It’s not my fault he jumped to the wrong conclusion,” she said with a shrug. “He didn’t believe me anyway.”
“That’s not the point. You can’t just make up stuff about people. Someone could get hurt.”
“If he loved me, he’d believe whatever I said.” Lindy’s surprised laughter caused Carys to scowl. “What’s so funny?”
“You, kid. Loving someone doesn’t give you an all-access pass to being a manipulative brat,” she said, pausing to order two Shirley Temples. “I don’t know your dad but he seems like a decent guy. You and I both know you were the little twerp who ruined our plumbing so let’s just get that out of the way right now. I see what’s going on, though. You’re trying to get your dad’s attention because you’re hurting but trust me, this way isn’t productive and it just hurts you in the end.”
“How do you know?” Carys said, her voice small but defiant. “You don’t know anything about me or my dad.”
“True. But I lost my mom when I was really young and I remember how it felt.”
The defiance in Carys’s body language lessened a bit as she asked, “Really? How’d your mom die?”
“Cancer,” Lindy answered candidly, surprised when the admission still had the power to sting. She straightened and focused on Carys. “How about your mom?”
“Same. Dad said she didn’t suffer too long, though. By the time the doctors found the cancer, it’d spread everywhere,” Carys said, her small voice getting even smaller.
Lindy blinked back an unexpected show of tears. It’d been a long time since she remembered everything her mom had gone through. It’d been tough, but fast, too. Lindy had always wondered if her mom had simply given up because of her divorce. Her mom had never quite recovered from the shock of her husband splitting without warning.
“Dad doesn’t like to talk about it, though,” Carys whispered. “He says it’s not going to bring her back so we shouldn’t dwell on it.”
“How do you feel about that?” Lindy asked.
“I hate it.”
“Yeah, I would, too. My mom was a special woman. I’m sure yours was, too.”
“She was.” Carys sniffed and swallowed. “She was the best mom in the world.”
“And I’m guessing she thought you were pretty awesome, too. I mean, something tells me you didn’t act like this when she was around.”
A hint of pink crept into Carys’s cheeks and Lindy smiled in understanding. “Listen, how about this... I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise to stop trying to kill our septic system with your antics—” Lindy took a deep breath, shocked about what she was going to offer to the kid “—I’ll make a promise to listen to you anytime you want to talk about your mom. We can share stories about our moms if you want. Moms are special ladies. They deserve to get a little shout-out, even if they’re not with us anymore. Is that a deal?”