Taking Over The Tycoon

Kristy blinked. Obviously, Connor thought, this was not in Kristy’s game plan.

“Here?” she said.

“Well, yes. It’s not as if you don’t have plenty of room.” Maude gestured expansively at the lodge and the dozen or so cottages fronting the beach. “There are…how many cottages here?”

“A dozen,” Kristy admitted reluctantly.

“And how many rooms in the lodge itself?” Doug inquired.

“One hundred. But only one of the four wings is open, and those rooms are still undergoing renovation,” Kristy warned. “None of those rooms are ready for guests.”

“So, we don’t mind roughing it as long as we get a chance to see you and the twins and have dinner together this evening. Do we, Doug?”

“Not in the slightest, Mother.”

Kristy looked at Connor as if somehow expecting him to bail her out. No way was he going to do that. If there was a family problem—and it looked like there was—then it wouldn’t help any of them to sweep it under the rug. As his family had for so many years. No, they needed to deal with it, like it or not, and if the rest of Kristy’s family was ready to do so… “I think it’s great your mother and brother are here,” he said kindly.

“Would you like to join us for dinner then?” Kristy replied, just as sweetly. “Good!” she exclaimed before Connor had a chance to reply. “We’ll eat at seven, in the dining hall. And in the meantime…” she gestured for everyone to follow her around to the lobby entrance “…I’m going to have to send you and Mother to the market, Doug, because I wasn’t planning on feeding quite so many people this evening.”

CONNOR WATCHED as Kristy quickly wrote out a grocery list, produced some cash—which was summarily rejected by both her mother and brother—and then waved them off, with directions to the closest food store.

“A little rude, weren’t you?” Connor said dryly, as the station wagon moved through the palmetto trees and disappeared down Folly Beach Road.

Kristy scowled and sat down in one of the green wooden rocking chairs on the piazza. She leaned forward, her paint-stained hands clasped between her knees. “You don’t know them.”

True, Connor thought, as he sat down in the chair beside her. He turned it so they were sitting knee to knee, then he leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “It sounds as if I’m going to get to know them, though.”

“I’m sorry about that. I…” Kristy floundered, for the first time that afternoon looking regretful. “I was desperate.”

Connor had seen that, and for that reason, his heart went out to her. He knew what it was like to want to connect closely with family, and be unable to do so. For years he had not been as close as he wanted to be to anyone in his family. Since his parents’ acknowledgment of their problems, that had changed. But he still regretted all the years when he and his mother and father and two sisters hadn’t been able to talk. Or even spend any meaningful time together.

He took one of Kristy’s hands in his. “Why are they here?” he asked.

A demoralized expression on her face, she pulled away. “The same reason you are. To talk me into giving up the ghost, so to speak, and sell the place to a high roller like you.”

Connor sat back in his chair, began to rock. “But you’re not about to take the money and run, are you?”

“Nope.” Kristy pushed against the floor with the toe of her shoe. “I love this place. I know it’s still a work in progress,” she confessed as she rocked gently back and forth, “but I am determined to return it to its former glory and then some.”

Connor was beginning to see that. Which, of course, made his own mission all the harder. “You have a history here?” he asked.

She nodded. “My siblings and I visited here every summer when we were kids,” she told him, oblivious to the way she was sitting, giving him an unobstructed view of her fabulous body.

She turned to look at him, a mix of subdued temper and sentimentality glowing in her dark eyes. “When we got older, I worked here in the summers while my brother and sister were off at science camp, or volunteering at the hospitals in Raleigh, in hopes of getting into medical school.”

“Which they did,” Connor guessed.

“Oh, yes.” Kristy squared her shoulders, took a deep, regretful breath. “Both my brother and sister followed in our parents’ footsteps.”

Connor took a moment to consider what that must be like. “Everyone in your family is a doctor?”

Kristy nodded. “Except me. My father is a lung transplant surgeon and my sister is a pediatric oncologist. My late husband was a pediatric heart surgeon. I’m the only one who didn’t choose medicine as a career.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Kristy said dryly, rolling her eyes at his reaction. “Wow.”

Before Connor could comment further, they heard a large vehicle lumbering slowly up Folly Beach Road. Kristy glanced at her watch. “That’s the school bus!” She jumped out of her chair and headed around the lodge again, just as a big yellow bus pulled up Folly Beach Road and stopped at the entrance of the resort. Two little girls got off the bus and began walking up the palmetto-lined driveway. One had shoulder-length corkscrew curls, the same rich hue as Kristy’s, and was dressed in a pretty pink cotton smock and lacy white apron. The other’s hair was caught in two messy braids. She was wearing shorts and a striped T-shirt and sneakers. Only as they neared could Connor see, by the sameness of their charming features, that they were indeed identical twins.

They were halfway to Kristy and Connor when the one in the smock said something to the one in shorts. The second little girl took offense, dropped her book bag onto the grass and shoved the one in the dress. She shoved back, even harder, and the next thing Connor knew, the two were down on the ground tussling and rolling.

Kristy gaped at them as if unable to believe what she was seeing, then rushed toward them. She separated the twins, who came up kicking and screeching. “Stop it!” Kristy demanded as Connor caught up with her. “Both of you! Stop it right now!”

The cute little girls glared at each other and Kristy tearfully. “What in the world has gotten into you?” Kristy demanded as the twins wiped the tears from their long lashes with the backs of their hands. “I’ve never seen you fight like this before!”

“It’s all her fault!” the one in the dress yelled abruptly, her frustration with her sister apparent. “She is just so dumb sometimes!”

“No, it’s not! It’s your fault, you big scaredy-cat!” the one in shorts shouted back.

“All right, you two, that’s enough,” Kristy said firmly. The girls faced each other, sniffling. “Go on inside. I’ll be in directly to talk to you.”

As the twins meandered off, still glaring at each other intermittently, Kristy turned back to Connor. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what’s going on.” She paused, her expression conflicted. “About dinner… Forget the invitation, okay?”

“You’re sure?” For some reason Connor didn’t mind being used by her like that, although in any other situation, with any other person, he would have.

“Positive,” Kristy said, smiling apologetically, as if trying to make it up to him.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Now he was the one feeling bereft. “What about your mother and brother?”

Kristy shrugged as if it were no big deal. With barely a backward glance in his direction, she strode resolutely after her girls. “I’ll tell them you couldn’t make it, after all,” she said.

“SO SHE’S NOT GOING to sell,” Skip Wakefield said, when Connor got back to the downtown Charleston office of Wakefield-Templeton Properties.

Connor draped his sport coat over the back of a stylish chrome-and-leather chair and dropped into the one next to it. He faced his old friend. “Not yet.”

“Meaning what?” Skip asked, his probing green eyes alight with curiosity as he ran a hand through his close-cropped, reddish-brown hair. A risk taker with a practical streak, he was always focused on the bottom line. “You think you can change her mind?”

Connor reached for the necktie in his coat pocket and began to put it back on. “I think it’s possible, given enough time.”

His expression thoughtful, Skip watched as Connor buttoned the top button on his shirt and pushed the knot into place. “We don’t have a lot of time,” Skip warned as he tapped the end of a pen against his desk. “The investors we’ve rounded up to underwrite the costs of building the condo project aren’t going to wait around indefinitely. Even though suitable beachfront property is so darn hard to come by these days, and this place is ideal. If this project doesn’t come together soon, they may find another place to put their money.”

Connor had to agree with his partner on that. It seemed everyone wanted to live at the beach, and no one wanted to sell what they had. Not a twenty-five acre parcel, the amount Skip and Connor needed, anyway.

“Kristy Neumeyer’s property is worth waiting for.”

“Only if she’ll sell. If she won’t—” Skip shrugged, looking unhappy again “—then she and her resort are of no use to us.”

Speak for yourself, Connor thought. He had spent only thirty minutes or so with her, but she had definitely made an impression on him.