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“Did you two get in trouble?”
They exchanged worried glances and shrugged in tandem. “We didn’t do anything,” Sally said, rubbing the toe of one patent leather dress shoe across the path. “Which is why it is so unfair that you have to go in and have a conference about us.”
“Well, something must have happened to prompt this,” Kristy said, frowning and glancing back at the letter. Otherwise the school counselor wouldn’t have requested that Kristy make arrangements to meet with her privately as soon as possible.
The girls shrugged again, looking as mystified and out of sorts as Kristy felt.
“This looks like a bad time,” Connor said.
Kristy glanced up at him. She had been so wrapped up in what was going on with the girls she had almost forgotten he was there. “Actually, yes, it is,” she said, deciding she had enough on her hands trying to deal with her twins’ current calamity without wrestling with her feelings about him, too. Glad that Connor seemed to understand and be okay with that, she rushed back inside, where she spotted Harry Bowles in the lobby. “I’m ready to get to work,” he announced.
Kristy wasn’t surprised to see the British butler looking as handsome and tidy as ever. What did shock her was that he was dressed in a formal-looking suit and tie. Which was not what she needed from him this morning.
Belatedly, Kristy realized she should have gone over that with Harry when she hired him. But it, too, would have to wait until later. “Harry, do you have some old clothes?” she asked.
Harry peered at her peculiarly. “Old clothes?”
“Like what I’m wearing,” Kristy said, pointing to her clean but paint-stained blue chambray work shirt and loose-fitting shorts.
“Uh, no, actually, I don’t have anything like that,” Harry said. And he didn’t look particularly eager to get some, either.
“Well, can you find something to wear that won’t be a great loss if it gets ruined?” Kristy asked. Able to see the myriad questions in Harry’s keen eyes, she promised, “I’ll explain later. I’ve got to run the girls to school. They’ve missed their bus.”
“Very well, madam. I’ll do my best,” Harry agreed cooperatively.
He strode cheerfully out to his luxury sports car parked in the employee lot at the end of the driveway. Connor was still standing there, talking to the twins about flying kites on the beach. “Okay, girls, let’s go!” Kristy said, opening up her minivan. She slung her purse into the front seat and opened the back for the twins.
The girls climbed in, Sally being careful not to muss up her pretty dress and matching crinoline, while Susie hopped in like the complete tomboy she had gradually morphed into since her father’s death.
Harry turned to Connor. “Do you know where I might find some ‘old clothes’ similar to what Ms. Neumeyer is wearing?” she heard him ask.
Connor directed him down the beach to a discount store, and Harry got in his sport coupe and drove away as Kristy put on her sunglasses and seat belt. “We’re going to be late,” Susie said.
“No, we’re not,” Kristy stated. Confident she had plenty of time to get the girls to school before the bell, she slid her key into the ignition, turned it and got…absolutely nothing. Kristy stared at the steering column and the driver panel, and tried again.
Nothing. No groan from the motor, no spark as the ignition tried to catch. Just silence.
“Oh, no!” Susie moaned from the back seat.
“The van won’t start!” Sally sounded panicked, too.
“Problem?” Connor appeared at Kristy’s window.
Kristy scowled, already calculating how long it would take to get a cab out here. The answer: way too long. “My van won’t start.”
“Want me to have a look under the hood?” Connor asked.
The girls grew even more agitated.
“There’s no time for that,” Kristy said, getting out. She had so much to do today. She really didn’t need this. “I’ve got to get the girls to school.” And she had very few options, unless she wanted them to miss half an hour or more of their school day. She looked at him, hating the position she was in, but—for her kids’ sake—not too proud to ask. “Can you take us?”
“Sure. You’ll have to direct me.”
“No problem.”
They piled into Connor’s Mercedes, and Kristy directed Connor to the elementary school. Unfortunately, there was a traffic snarl at two of the intersections, and by the time they reached the school, the bell had already rung and the grounds were deserted.
“Now I don’t want to go at all,” Sally grumbled from the back seat.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll go in with you and explain what happened at the office,” Kristy said.
“Do you want me to go inside with you or wait in the car?” Connor asked, willing to do whatever was best.
“You can just wait here if you don’t mind. It should take me only a minute to sign them in,” Kristy promised.
“EVERYTHING OKAY?” Connor asked Kristy when she finally emerged from the school some twenty minutes later and climbed into the car beside him. It didn’t look as if things were okay, he thought. In fact, she looked pretty upset.
“No.” Kristy lowered her glance and pressed her fingertips to her forehead.
Connor turned to her, no longer sure if this was merely a business encounter or a love affair about to happen. He only knew for certain that kissing her last night had stirred something deep inside him that he thought had been exhausted long ago. And though he wasn’t sure if passion like that was good for anything except messing up the best laid plans, he still wanted to experience it again.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked, as he started his car and guided it back onto the road. Right now she seemed to need a friend, and even if it interfered with what he was trying to accomplish workwise, he wanted to be there for her.
Kristy sighed and, with the flat of one hand, pushed her silky, dark brown hair away from her face. “I ran into the school counselor as I was checking the girls in at the office.”
“And…?” Connor asked as he turned onto Folly Beach Road.
“She asked me to step into her office, since I was there.” Kristy drew a deep breath and turned to face him. “She told me the girls have been talking about their dad a lot to their classmates and teachers. Susie acts as if Lance is there with her every day after school and commented to that end to her music, art and physical ed teachers. And Sally’s been telling the other kids that her dad is away, but he’ll be coming back real soon.”
Not good, given the fact that—according to the information Skip and Connor had gleaned, anyway—Kristy’s husband had died nearly two years before. “Do the other kids know Lance died?”
“Well, the twins’ teachers hadn’t mentioned it. But that all happened long before the twins moved here or started in this school six weeks ago. Now the third grade teaching team is wondering what to do, which is why they turned it over to the guidance counselor.”
That seemed like a good move, Connor thought. “What did the twins have to say?”
Kristy lowered her window and let the warm ocean breeze blow across her face. “I haven’t talked to them yet. They weren’t there when I spoke to the counselor.”
Connor switched off the air-conditioning and opened his window, too. “What is the counselor recommending?”
“Ms. Meyes is going to meet with them frequently at school to talk about things. Both together and separately. She’s a clinical psychologist and has experience handling stuff like this. She said it could just be a coping mechanism they’re employing due to the move here over the summer. That they feel they need their dad to help them through the transition or something, and it’s just a temporary thing.”
“Do you think that’s it?”
“I don’t know, Connor.” Kristy sighed. Her teeth worried her lower lip as she shot him a troubled glance, confiding, “The thing is, they’ve never talked too much about their dad’s passing. Young kids can’t really comprehend the concept of death, the finality of it. So that was no surprise. I mean, they know he is in heaven, and that he hasn’t come back and isn’t going to. And they seemed to be soldiering on.”
“But…?” Connor prodded, his heart going out to her and her girls, and all they had obviously been through. It couldn’t have been easy, losing a husband when you still had two children who were depending on you to take care of them, he thought. It was hard enough to get over losing a spouse, period.
“But there’s no doubt they’ve changed since Lance died,” Kristy continued in a low, troubled voice. “Susie used to be a princess, and now she’s a tomboy. And Sally is so particular about things. Susie carries around a Frisbee, and Sally carries around that old beach towel that was Lance’s. You probably saw them with those things yesterday.”
“Yeah, I did,” Connor said compassionately. He hadn’t known what the significance of the items were at the time. He had just noticed that the girls had brought them in to dinner and then carefully recouped them as soon as dinner was over.
“But Susie won’t play Frisbee anymore, and neither will Sally, because that’s something they used to do with their dad.”
“They’re still grieving the loss of their daddy.”
Kristy nodded, a look of unbearable sadness coming over her face.
“What about you?” Connor asked, not sure why this should be so important to him, just knowing it was. “Are you?”
GOOD QUESTION, Kristy thought as they arrived back at Paradise. Noting Harry Bowles’s car was not in the drive, she released the catch on her safety belt and got out of Connor’s Mercedes. “I think I’ve moved on.”
“And yet,” he pointed out quietly, as he circled around the end of the car and fell into step beside her, “you’re still wearing your wedding and engagement rings on your left hand.”
Kristy looked self-consciously down at her hand, embarrassed that Connor had noticed that about her. She knew she should have taken her rings off when Lance died, and put them away. But she hadn’t been able to. Feeling herself growing defensive, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts and turned to face him. “What’s your point?”
Not about to pull any punches with her, he said quietly, “If you want your girls to be able to accept the finality of their father’s passing, maybe you have to start accepting it, too.”
Kristy glared at him. “I don’t believe I asked for any armchair psychology, Mr. Templeton!”
He shrugged his broad shoulders indolently. “Just making an observation.”
“Well, don’t!” Kristy advised with every ounce of dignity she possessed. Not sure when she had been so furious with anyone in her life, she stalked away without a backward glance.
CONNOR STARTED TO GO after Kristy, to find some way to make amends, then changed his mind. Whether she wanted to or not, she had to think about what he had just said. And in the meantime, there was still the matter of her nonfunctioning minivan….
In the distance, the lodge door slammed behind Kristy.
Connor sighed and started toward his car.
Without the keys to Kristy’s minivan or her permission to take a look under the hood, there wasn’t a lot he could do except call his favorite mechanic and ask him to make a house call. Connor reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He had just started to dial when a maliciously grinning Bruce Fitts rounded the corner.
“What are you doing here?” Connor demanded, irked to have to deal with Kristy’s obnoxious neighbor to the south.
“Helping ‘our cause,’ of course.”
Connor didn’t want to be lumped in with the likes of someone like the lawsuit-loving Bruce Fitts. “By…?” Connor prodded.
“Loosening the distributor cap and a few wires on her minivan, of course. Fool woman, she didn’t even think to check.”
“You deliberately sabotaged her car?” Connor asked in amazement.
“The lady needs to realize she is not welcome here.”
“Listen…” Connor took a threatening step toward Bruce. Then, reminding himself it wouldn’t do any good to make enemies here, he reined in his temper. “Antics like this could sour the deal,” he pointed out coolly.
That stopped Fitts, but only for a second. “Has she agreed to sell yet?” he asked.
“No, but—”
“Then I plan to continue my campaign to help her toward that decision,” he announced with a sneer.
Connor’s temper inched higher. Much more of this and he would lose it.
“What are you still doing here?” Kristy’s voice rang out behind Connor. “And what are you—” she pointed at Bruce “—doing on my property?”
“I was saying hello to my friend Connor,” Bruce said.
Kristy’s eyebrows climbed higher. “Well, I’d like you both to leave,” she said firmly.
Connor wanted to tell her this jerk was not his friend. Not anywhere near it. But knowing that wouldn’t help Kristy, he merely clapped a hand on Bruce Fitts’s shoulder and propelled him toward his beach house. He would deal with Kristy. Make her see he hadn’t meant to offend her with his observation about her wedding and engagement rings. But it would be later, after they had both had the time and opportunity to cool off.
“SO HOW IS IT GOING with the widow woman?” Skip asked Connor over a late breakfast at a local café.
“We’ve got a problem with her neighbor.” Connor explained the harassment Kristy was receiving from Bruce Fitts.
“Well, I hate to say it, but as loathsome as I find Fitts and his actions, what he’s doing only seems to help our cause,” Skip said practically.
Exactly the words Fitts had used, Connor thought uncomfortably. “Bruce Fitts is a jackass and a half,” he said.
“I know,” Skip answered bluntly. “But look at it this way. He doesn’t want Kristy Neumeyer resurrecting Paradise Resort. He does want something built in its place.”
“At this moment he does,” Connor corrected. “But that could change. And Fitts could be just as much a pain in the butt to the new condominium owners as he is to Kristy Neumeyer right now.”
“Then that will be their problem, not ours,” Skip replied unsympathetically. “Besides, the consortium we put together can always buy him out, and they can turn his luxurious beach house into a restaurant or something.”
Connor had already had thoughts along the same lines himself. Not that Fitts’s property would come cheap. Or even reasonably priced.
“Meanwhile, how are you doing at convincing the delectable Ms. Neumeyer to change her mind and work with us on this?” Skip asked.
Connor frowned and took a sip of his coffee. “Don’t call her that.”
“Why?” Skip paused and narrowed his eyes. “She’s a beauty and you know it. Unless…” He studied Connor all the more. “You’re not really getting sweet on her, are you?”
Was he?
Connor knew better than to mix business and pleasure.
Knew better than to let anything cloud his judgment.
Yet there he had been last night, having dinner with her family and kissing her, and this morning, driving her and her children to school. Listening to her most intimate problems. Offering unsolicited advice!
“And what’s with the clothes, anyway?” Skip demanded as his glance swept Connor’s T-shirt and jeans. “You heading out on someone’s boat or something?”
He shrugged and said casually, “I was planning to see if I could help Kristy.” Which was another anomaly, as Connor knew nothing about the kinds of tasks she was doing. If he needed something fixed, he simply hired someone to do it for him. Kristy was a lot more hands-on.
“Good plan.” Skip nodded approvingly. He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Infiltrating the enemy camp.”
Connor and Skip had been friends for years, and business partners for the last fifteen. They’d enjoyed many a success together, Skip doing the business analysis and Connor working with all the parties to soothe the rough edges and get the deals implemented. Until now, Connor had appreciated Skip’s ability to keep his emotions out of any work situation. This time it was different. Maybe because for the first time someone stood to get hurt by what they were proposing. And Skip seemed either not to comprehend that or not to care. “She’s not our enemy,” Connor said flatly. He drained the last of his coffee and found it as cold and flat as his mood.
“She is if she won’t sell to the group we’ve put together,” Skip warned.
Connor was silent.
Beginning to look as upset with the situation as Connor was, Skip leaned forward and warned, “You’re not for one minute forgetting we’ve spent the past five months putting this project together or that we each stand to make a fortune from the deal, are you?”
No, Connor wasn’t forgetting that.
The problem was, he realized with a weary sigh, he couldn’t seem to forget Kristy Neumeyer, either. And that made it awfully darn hard to push on with a business proposition he knew she not only loathed, but was also resisting with every fiber of her being.
Chapter Four
When Harry Bowles returned from his shopping expedition, he was wearing a pair of loose-fitting trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and sneakers. He’d added a souvenir cap that said Folly Beach across the front, and he looked a lot more relaxed as he and Kristy sat down in her office to go over the work she had slated. Kristy took two bottles of water from her office fridge and handed him one. “I hate to tell you this, Harry,” she said as she sat down behind her desk, “but we’ve really got our work cut out for us if we want to be ready for that insurance agents convention next week.”
Harry smiled, unperturbed. “I’m used to hard work.”
Kristy was glad to hear it. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly did your duties as Winnifred Deveraux-Smith’s butler include?”
Harry unscrewed the lid to his water and drank sparingly. “A little bit of everything, as it happens,” he said rather formally. “I arranged parties, oversaw the household help that came in to cook and clean, dealt with the decorators and handymen that were hired for various tasks. I even managed Winnifred’s social calendar until her aunt Eleanor came in and took over those duties.”
It sounded as if he was a flexible guy, willing to take on whatever needed to be accomplished.
Kristy frowned. Here came the hard part. “Well, we don’t have maids yet and probably won’t for another week or two, so for the moment all those duties are going to fall to the two of us.” She paused, not sure how this was going to go, and regarded him seriously. “Are you up to that?” Because if not, he was not the man for the job, after all.
“Absolutely.” Looking ready for action, Harry put the cap back on his water bottle. “What do you need me to do today?”
Kristy rose and escorted him out, past the reservation desk to the center of the lodge. “Well, as you can see the lobby, club room, kitchen and dining room are in fine shape. So is the exterior of the hotel now, and all the cottages, and the apartment on the second floor of the south side of the building where my daughters and I reside. But all four wings of guest rooms are in need of a lot of TLC,” she warned, knowing he was in for a shock there. “We only need one wing for the conference next week, but all twenty-five rooms have got to be stripped and cleaned and put back together again, before next Wednesday. Actually, Tuesday, since the guests will be arriving Wednesday before noon, and we don’t want to still be doing any of that when they get here.”
“Sounds doable,” Harry said. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“I’d like you to take down all the draperies in the rooms. They’re going to need to be laundered. And the same goes for all the bed linens, including blankets and bedspreads.” Still not entirely sure that Harry wasn’t going to change his mind and bolt when he grasped the gargantuan task ahead, Kristy led him down a short hall to the big laundry room, where a half-dozen large commercial washers and dryers lined the walls. Kristy made her way over to a canvas cart. “You can put the linens in this and then bring them back here, and begin washing them.”
“Which rooms will I be stripping?” Harry asked, as he pushed the cart out into the hall.
“One hundred to one twenty-five. I’ll be working in the same wing. I’m going to start on the bathrooms.” Kristy handed him the maid’s set of room keys.
“Right-o, madam.”
Kristy stopped in her tracks, figuring they might as well get this cleared up right now. “And, Harry?”
He paused. “Yes, madam?”
“You’ve got to start calling me by my first name,” she insisted.
“Oh. Right. Kristy.” He smiled at her. She smiled back. He began pushing the linen cart again as the front door of the lobby swung open and Connor Templeton walked in. He was dressed as he had been earlier that morning, in a T-shirt and jeans. Kristy’s shoulders tensed, even as her heart took a little leap. She should not be so glad to see him. Particularly after the way they had parted a few hours ago….
Harry looked at her, the polite, formal butler again. “Would you like me to see what the gentleman wants, mad—er, Kristy?”
She shook her head. “I’ll handle Mr. Templeton.” She pointed in the direction of the north wing. “You go ahead and get started.”
Kristy crossed the lobby. Unsure whether it was excitement or annoyance speeding up her pulse, she noted dryly, “Like a bad penny, you keep turning up.”
“Ha, ha.” Smoky-gray eyes twinkling, he strode over to her. Before she could do anything to stop him, he curved a possessive hand about her elbow and leaned over to kiss her cheek in that casual Southern style of greeting he favored. Kristy knew it didn’t mean anything—Connor probably kissed dozens of female cheeks in the course of a single day as he said hello to women he knew—but she couldn’t keep her face from tingling at the soft-as-a-butterfly touch of his lips. Or keep from thinking how those same lips had felt—so sure and so right—over hers the night before, as they had ended the evening in a way that had felt anything but casual.
“So? What’s going on around here today?” Connor asked, as he stepped back.
“We’re working.” Or about to start, Kristy amended silently. “What did you need?”
Connor looked deep into her eyes. “I thought maybe we could go for coffee,” he suggested softly.
And darned if she didn’t want to forget everything and just go. “I don’t have time for that.” She had a business to run, even if it was a fledgling operation at the moment.
Some emotion she couldn’t quite identify flickered in Connor’s face. Kristy didn’t know why, but suddenly she felt as if she were in the midst of some sort of test. A test she was destined to fail.
“Why not?” he asked, still holding her gaze.
“Because,” Kristy continued, attempting to insert some levity into the conversation, “I’m getting ready for a group of insurance agents and their spouses.”
Connor shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not until next week.” For him, that was light years away.
It didn’t matter, Kristy thought, beginning to feel completely overwhelmed again. She turned and headed for the reservations desk. To her chagrin, Connor was right behind her.
“I have a lot to do between now and then,” she told him bluntly.
“Such as…?”
His sympathetic attitude invited confession. And right now Kristy needed someone to unburden herself to. “Clean rooms, do something about the ratty-looking carpet in the one-hundred wing, see if I can’t get a crew in to paint the hallway. Polish everything until it gleams. Wash windows. Scrub down bathrooms that haven’t been touched in over six months. Need I go on?” Feeling as if she was wasting time standing there gabbing—or flirting—with him, she yanked open the drawer where all the room keys were kept. Grabbing the old-fashioned master key ring for the north wing, with all twenty-five keys on it, she brought it out and clipped it to the belt loop of her shorts.
As if he had all the time in the world, Connor lounged against the polished wooden counter. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”