Taking Over The Tycoon

Skip tilted his head. “You’re not getting sweet on her, are you?”

Guilt swept through Connor, even as he denied the possibility. “Why would you think that?” he demanded. He had never been one to mix business and pleasure. Not since Lorelai, anyway.

“I don’t know.” Skip studied Connor. “Maybe because I haven’t seen you look that starry-eyed when talking about a woman since junior high.”

Connor grinned. “Are you sure those aren’t dollar signs you’re seeing in my eyes?”

Skip clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “I wish your main desire was to make money because if it were, our partnership would be a lot more profitable. Instead, you want everyone to like you.” He said that as if it were the worst quality on earth.

Connor knew differently. “It helps if people don’t hate your guts when you’re trying to broker a deal between two warring parties.”

His partner’s eyes gleamed with a cynical light. “It’s more than that, and you know it,” he scoffed. “You just can’t stand making an enemy of anyone.”

It was true, Connor admitted to himself. Probably because he had spent so much time as a kid feeling caught up in the animosity simmering between members of his family. For years he had suspected that his parents and his older sister had secretly resented the heck out of each other, but he hadn’t understood why. Not that his younger sister, Daisy, who had been adopted as an infant, had escaped the family penchant for stifled emotions and supersecret angst. No, she had been as unhappy as all the rest, albeit more openly so. To the point that everything had finally exploded during the course of the previous summer. The truth had come out. And his parents had reluctantly ended the deception as well as their forty-eight-year marriage. Now, everyone seemed content to go on with their lives. Only Connor, it seemed, was still reeling, still trying to take it all in. Still wondering where the hell it left him.

Aware that Skip was waiting for a response, Connor stood and moved lazily about the office. “So I don’t like fighting.”

“I know, you just want everyone, and I do mean everyone, to get along,” Skip intoned dryly, shaking his head. “Speaking of which, that neighbor, Bruce Fitts, called here, said you weren’t doing a good job with Kristy, not at all. He suggested I go back out there myself.”

Connor objected fiercely to that. “It was you talking to Kristy in the first place that really set her off.”

His partner spread his hands wide. “All I did was offer her a cool five million dollars for her land and buildings.”

“Which wouldn’t have been a problem had she been at all interested in selling.” She wasn’t.

Skip flashed him a sly smile. “She’ll come around—if I know you. And I think I do.”

“I hope so, too,” Connor allowed. “But in the meantime, Skip, where Kristy’s concerned, let me do the talking.”

His partner agreed without argument. “When are you going to see her again?”

“Tonight.”

Skip blinked. “You got her to agree to go to dinner?”

“Actually, she invited me to have dinner there.” Then she had dis-invited him, but Connor figured that was beside the point.

“Way to go, buddy!” Skip came out of his chair to high-five Connor. Grinning, he predicted, “You’ll have her seeing things our way in no time.”

Connor hoped that was the case.

Chapter Two

“Kristy, dear, please come and look at this.” Maude Griffin said, pointing to the television screen mounted near the ceiling of the hotel kitchen. “This is exactly what I was talking about.”

Kristy left the crab cakes frying in the skillet and walked over to stand beside her mother. The TV was set to the Weather Channel. “…tropical storm Imogene, with winds of sixty-five miles an hour, is gathering strength five hundred miles southeast of Bermuda….”

“Mom,” Kristy explained patiently, “it’s October. It’s hurricane season. And thus far a very mild one. So of course there are going to be tropical storms and, yes, even hurricanes headed our way till the end of hurricane season.” Which Kristy knew was usually around November 1. “It’s a fact of life on the Atlantic Coast.”

Maude lifted a pot from the stove, carried it to the stainless steel sink and emptied its contents into a mesh strainer. Steam rose from the cooked redskin potatoes as the boiling water ran down the drain. “Suppose Imogene hits Paradise Resort?”

Trying not to let her mother’s worry transfer to her, Kristy handed her milk and butter. “Suppose Imogene does?”

Maude put the potatoes in a bowl and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, before switching on the mixer. “Kristy, you are sinking so much money and effort into this place without any reassurance at all that you are going to make it back.”

They had been over this dozens of times since Aunt Ida died and left Kristy Paradise Resort, and Kristy had announced her decision to sell her house in Chapel Hill, and move the girls south in time to start the new school year.

She stabbed the green beans with a fork and found them tender. “I need a life, Mom.”

Maude carefully added the milk and butter to the mashed potatoes. “You’re only thirty-three. You’re still young enough to go to medical school.”

Kristy took the remoulade sauce out of the fridge and garnished it with a few sprigs of parsley. “That was your dream for me, not mine.”

Maude scooped the mashed potatoes into the serving bowl, then paused to regard Kristy hopefully. “Only because you never gave it a chance.”

Kristy layered the cooked crab cakes onto a large white serving platter. Doing her best to contain her exasperation, she asked, “Don’t we have enough doctors in the family?”

Her mom ladled the steaming green beans into a dish. “We could always use one more. Think about it, honey,” Maude persisted as they carried the food out to the table set up in the hotel dining room. “Your house in Chapel Hill hasn’t sold yet, and University of North Carolina has a medical school. You could still move back there and get your medical education while the girls are in school. You had the grades and medical college admission test scores you needed to get in. And if not there, you could go to Duke or Wake Forest. Wherever you want.”

If Kristy thought it would bring her happiness, she would have headed for medical school right out of college. But it wouldn’t. Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to make her family understand that. Although Kristy supposed that, too, was her fault. She should never have let her parents pressure her into taking the premed courses and the medical school qualifying exam while simultaneously earning her college degree in hotel management. But she had….

Maude looked out the door toward where Doug was walking along the beach with his nieces. As usual, whenever they were home or just hanging out, Sally had Lance’s old beach towel slung around her neck, and Susie had his beat up Frisbee clutched in her hand. Maude rang the dinner bell Kristy had mounted next to the door, and signaled them all in. Kristy smiled as they waved and headed toward the lodge.

“The twins would enjoy going back to North Carolina, too.”

Kristy wasn’t so sure about that, either. “The only thing that will make the twins happy is if they could have their father back,” she answered soberly, as she brought out pitchers of sweet tea. “And that’s not going to happen.”

Maude paused. “You still miss Lance, too, don’t you?”

Kristy didn’t know how to answer that. She missed the man she thought Lance had been when she married him. She lamented all the dashed hopes and lost dreams, and she still felt tied to him in some way. Unable to go back, not quite willing to move on. At least in that sense. Her throat aching, she busied herself getting a plate for store-bought rolls and a bowl for coleslaw. “When do you and Doug have to leave for your medical conference?” she asked instead, as the twins and Doug walked in and went straight to the bathrooms off the lobby to wash up.

“Tomorrow. Early, about seven.” Maude started to close the doors behind them, then began to smile.

“What is it?” Kristy asked.

Her mother turned back to her, surprise in her eyes. “I thought you said your friend wasn’t coming.”

HE WASN’T SUPPOSED to be here, but you would never know that by looking at Connor Templeton’s face, Kristy thought, her heart racing as she went to the front door of the lodge to show him in.

Unlike the rest of the family, who were in shorts and T-shirts, Connor was still in the casual business clothes he’d had on earlier, including tie and sport coat. He had two bottles of wine—one white and one red—a bunch of flowers and a basket of gourmet cookies in his arms.

“My goodness!” Maude said cheerfully, rushing past Kristy to lend a hand. “You really went all out this evening!”

Connor looked past Kristy to the table in the middle of the hotel dining room, set with steaming food. “Looks like I’m just in time.” He smiled, stepping closer.

Kristy bit her lip in embarrassment, knowing she was serving dinner a full half hour before she had told him she would, prior to privately uninviting him. Inhaling a whiff of his brisk masculine cologne, she replied, “Supper got ready quickly.” Which was true.

Doug and the twins came out of the powder rooms in the lobby, smelling of hand soap and sea air. Susie and Sally looked at Connor curiously. Remembering she hadn’t made formal introductions earlier, Kristy said, “Girls, this is Mr. Templeton. Connor, my daughters, Susie and Sally. Connor is going to be eating dinner with us this evening.”