Playing the Part

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?”