PAR FOR CINDERELLA

by MCCARTY, PETIE

  The kid had the grace to look chagrined. “I was working on my parents’ books, and I lost track of time.”

  Aidan exhaled hard. “I said don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not!”

  Either the kid was a great actor, or he truly was indignant.

  “What’s really going on?” Aidan asked. “You’ve used that same excuse all three times this week.”

  Rory threw up his hands in the air. “That’s because it’s the truth!”

  Aidan held up a hand. “I believe you.”

  “You do? Why’d you change your mind?”

  “A good liar will keep changing his story.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I know, kid. Now what’s the big deal with your parents’ books. Why are you doing them and not your dad?”

  “I told you before, I’m good with math and accounting.” He stared at Aidan for a long moment, looking like he was making an important decision. On a big sigh, he said, “They’re not my dad’s books. They’re mine.”

  Aidan frowned. Did Frank’s quiet waiting trick.

  The silent treatment only took seconds. “I started keeping a second set of books, and I can only work on them when my dad’s not around. He’d ground me forever if he caught me.”

  Aidan sat down in the closest golf cart and patted the seat next to him. “Better have a seat and start at the beginning if you want me to help you.”

  Rory’s jaw sagged. “You will? Help me, I mean?”

  “It’s why you told me, right?”

  “Well, I heard how you helped Neal, so I kind of hoped.”

  Aidan closed his eyes. No one in this town can keep a secret.

  “I will if I can, kid, so tell me.”

  “I think Archer Bartow is screwing my dad.”

  “Really? Go on.”

  “You’re not shocked?”

  “Not one bit. Now tell me. What happened?”

  “A few months back, all my dad’s vendors and distributors bailed on him. At the same time. Dad totally panicked and had to scramble every day to get the foodstuffs he needed to keep the restaurant running.”

  Rory made a disgusted face. “Then less than a week later, Mr. Bartow knocks on our door with a promise of new vendors and distributors if Dad will let him buy in as a partner. His paltry ten grand wasn’t worth the fifteen percent take of the profits he asked for, but he had Dad over a barrel. I smelled a rat.”

  “Smart kid. What then?”

  “Part of Dad’s new partnership agreement was that Mr. Bartow’s accountant—” Rory made quote marks with his fingers when he said accountant. “—would manage our books.”

  “Convenient.”

  “You said it. Mr. Bartow came and collected my dad’s books and told him to put the nightly proceeds in a deposit bag, and Bartow would pick the bag up when the restaurant closed.”

  “He comes to the restaurant every night?” Aidan asked in surprise.

  “Him or his wife, Evelyn.”

  “Sheesh.”

  “Yeah. Well, I didn’t like it, so I started keeping my own set of books. Dad doesn’t even know about them.”

  “Hold on. You’re keeping track of expenses and income for your dad’s restaurant?”

  Rory nodded.

  “And you think your dad’s getting screwed.”

  “I know the password for the restaurant’s bank account. Found it in my dad’s wallet.”

  Aidan frowned. “I see.”

  Rory looked penitent. “I had to check on the bank statements too.”

  “Go on.”

  “Mr. Bartow is making bigger deposits than what Dad puts in the bag at night, and then Mr. Bartow withdraws the difference plus his fifteen percent, but Dad doesn’t get any more than he would normally minus the partnership percent.”

  “Did you go to your dad?”

  Rory hung his head. “I did, and he blew a gasket when he found out I snagged the password from his wallet, but he still went to Mr. Bartow since he had noticed the discrepancies too. The mayor told him not to worry. Said it was because his vendors have to pay him referral fees.” The kid glanced up with a panicked look in his eyes. “Thank God Dad didn’t tell Mr. Bartow I knew the password, and he can’t change the password or Dad won’t have access to his own bank account.”

  “Maybe that’s true about the vendors.” Though Aidan didn’t believe that for a minute.

  “I don’t think so, and I don’t trust Mr. Bartow. So I checked on the vendors myself. There’s next to nothing about them online, and they are all based out of Ybor City in Tampa. My dad is getting less profit than before, and I think Mr. Bartow is collecting more than his take. He’s paying his vendor bills in cash and doesn’t provide all the receipts. Mr. Bartow told Dad if he kept complaining, the mayor would take his business and his vendors elsewhere.”

  Aidan’s hand balled into a fist. He intended to get a leash on Bartow before Aidan brought his golf resort to town.

  “Dad doesn’t want to lose the restaurant,” the kid continued, “so he told me to butt out. But I think he’s scared something illegal is going on.”

  “Money laundering,” Aidan muttered.

  “But banks are the first to notice laundering,” Rory argued.

  “Not when Bartow has Seashore Bank & Trust in his pocket.”

  “Is that what you suspect? Money laundering?” The kid’s eyes went wide.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Rory agreed glumly.

  “And I think you’re a very smart young man.”

  “You do?”

  Aidan nodded.

  “What do we do?”

  Aidan raised a brow. “We?”

  Rory flushed. “Well, you’re gonna help me, aren’t you? Like you did Neal? We should go to the town council.”

  “Depends on how many of the town council either owe Bartow or signed partnerships with him like your dad did. We need proof before we go getting Frank and the council heated up over this. I’ve got a friend who can get us the proof we need.”

  “You mean the friend who lent Neal Riley money?”

  “Ah . . . a different friend.”

  Rory frowned. “How many helpful friends do you got?”

  “A few.” Aidan grinned. “Do you trust me?”

  “I guess. I mean, you did help Neal and all. And we are friends.”

  “Just give me a few days before you tell anyone else your suspicions. Got it?”

  “Yeah sure.”

  “Now that you’re here, I’ll go see if Frank needs help with that mower.” He took out his phone to call Shaun and headed for the door.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Aidan reached the ninth green, there was nothing left to do. The fat lady had already sung her aria, because Neal closed the hood on the big mower.

  “Well?” he asked Frank.

  “I don’t know. Ask him,” Frank said and nodded at the compact repairman who exhaled a regretful sigh.

  “Not good.” Neal turned to Frank with a grimace. “I’ve seen this once before. You’ve got sugar in your gas tank. The motor’s shot.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t take long to ruin an engine with sugar in the gas. That’s why you only got a little more than half the green mowed before she quit.”

  “How did this happen? I locked the maintenance shed myself last night,” Frank yelled.

  “Well, someone got to your equipment,” Neal stated the obvious. “I’ll go drain the tank on the older mower and the ball collector tractor to be sure this is the only engine that got screwed with.”

  Frank was shaking his head. “How much?”

  Neal reseated his stained ball cap on his head.
“To put it back to rights and make it like new or just get it barely running?”

  “Both,” Frank growled.

  Neal heaved a regretful sigh. “To get it running like new, I’ll have to rebuild the engine, and that will cost five grand.”

  “Five thousand!” Frank exclaimed.

  “You haven’t bought one in a while,” Aidan said. “A new one will run you twenty.”

  Both Frank and Neal gave him a curious stare. “How do you know?” they asked in unison.

  Crap! How did he know?

  Think fast, Aidan.

  “When I’m not crewing on the yacht or taking fishing charters, I’m usually playing golf.”

  “Lots of people play golf and don’t know the price of a new mower,” Frank said skeptically.

  Aidan gave a non-committal shrug. “I’ve worked at a few golf courses in the past.”

  “And when were you going to tell me that?” Frank grumbled.

  “I just did.”

  Frank narrowed his gaze on him as though waiting for more. Aidan clamped his mouth shut. If he kept talking, he’d give away everything.

  Frank gave up and turned back to Neal. “How much to just get it running?”

  The repairman scratched the side of his neck. “The sugar did some damage to the guts, so without rebuilding, the engine may run but it won’t run real good.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen hundred, but hell, Frank, you know I’ll give you a discount no matter what you decide to do.”

  Aidan thought Neal was a lousy businessman, but one hell of a friend.

  “No discounts,” Frank barked. “Dang it, Neal, you gotta stop giving everyone in Cypress Key a discount! No wonder you needed a loan.”

  “Not everyone,” Neal murmured.

  “Hell, I’m going to have to take a loan from Bartow just to get the dang mower running again. I don’t have fifteen hundred dollars lying around.”

  “No!” Aidan barked back. “No Bartow loans. The guy’s dirty. I can feel it.”

  “He’s right,” Neal pressed. “Don’t do it. Archer will want a piece of the course.”

  “You go on and check my other equipment to see if their engines got hit, too, so I know the full amount I need,” Frank ordered.

  Shaking his head, Neal collected his tool box and ambled toward the maintenance shed.

  “Bartow’s dirty,” Aidan reiterated. “He’s probably behind this. It makes sense. You refused his loan the other day, so this way he forces you into it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, if we can’t prove it,” Frank complained. “All the extra money I set aside was going toward getting our second tour boat out of hock from Neal’s shop.”

  “That can wait. You don’t have enough tourists right now anyway.”

  “We make more on tours during the Seafood Festival next weekend than we do all fall.”

  That surprised Aidan. “So this Seafood Festival is really that big a deal?”

  “Sure is. Folks come from all over that week just to try our seafood and my tour boat. But it’s not your worry. I’ll figure something out.”

  “There isn’t a something in this town that doesn’t include Bartow,” Aidan argued. “My friend could help you.”

  Frank gave him a distrustful look. “How many loans is that friend of yours going to make? Everyone in town?”

  “No!” Aidan said indignantly. “Like I told Neal, he owes me a few favors, and I don’t need the loan he offered.”

  Frank narrowed his eyes. “Sure you do. You could post your bail, get an attorney, and get the hell out of here instead of working for me.”

  Think fast, Aidan.

  “Then I’d just have to go work off my loan for him. I happen to like it right here.”

  Frank stared into his eyes for several interminable moments like he had the night before—searching for answers—and Aidan feared his jig was up.

  “I don’t want to be in debt up to my eyeballs,” he said softly, never breaking the stare with Aidan.

  “Have Neal fix your mower,” he told Frank. “We’ll find the money.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. You, me, and my friend. If you won’t take his loan, I will. For the mower, not my bail.”

  Aidan realized in that moment, he had committed to the Stuarts and to Cypress Key. He was in this for the long haul. He wanted to belong here. He risked blowing his cover by offering another loan, but there was no way in hell he would leave the Stuarts hung out to dry waiting for the Bartow the vulture to pick them clean.

  Frank was giving him that distrustful look again when a stroke of genius hit Aidan. “Look, the guy owes me. I’ve crewed for his yacht too. Several times, for last-minute runs, when he was in the lurch.”

  That seemed to calm Frank a bit.

  “Besides, it’s not like it’s costing the guy anything. You’ll still pay some interest, just nowhere near as much as a Bartow loan. My friend told me if I ever needed a loan—no matter how much—he would cover me. Yours and Neal’s loans are chump change to him.”

  “Who is this rich friend?” Frank asked suddenly.

  Now you did it. You just had to keep talking, didn’t you?

  Aidan tried to remember whether Rhett’s website—where Frank would no doubt immediately go to check—would make any mention of Aidan. A risk he had to take. Even so, any mention made would be Cross Enterprises, not Aidan Crosse. Didn’t matter. He would force his help on Frank if he had to, until he could get Bartow trapped or better yet, incarcerated where the crook belonged.

  “Rhett Buchanan. BDC is his company—Buchanan Development Corporation. Check him out if you want.”

  “I will. But if he offers me a loan, you don’t tell Casey. You hear me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell Casey what?” came a voice from behind them.

  Chapter 15

  Casey spent the morning alternating between missing Aidan and wanting to choke him. She had spotted Deedee Bartow driving into the marina parking lot as Casey was about to pull out that morning. The hour was too early for spoiled Deedee to even be out of bed. Since she was up, Deedee must have had an appointment, and since there was no one moving in the marina besides Aidan readying the tour boat, the two of them must have made plans for an assignation when they had canoodled at the Sand Dollar tavern last night. That’s when her betrayed heart had ached so bad she hated Aidan Crosse and wished he’d go back where he came from.

  Eventually, the less-jealous-and-more-sane part of her brain kicked in with a little common sense that proclaimed neither of them—Aidan or Deedee—could have known Aidan would be taking the tour since her uncle hadn’t decided until that very morning. Some semblance of calm would briefly take over, and common sense would persuade Casey that Deedee probably never saw Aidan in the marina and was just turning her car around.

  With no cloak of betrayal to weight her down, Casey could freely remember her and Aidan’s own canoodling the previous night, and her heart would race like Mamie’s milkshake blender in the snack bar. She could still feel his hands on her—those oh-so-masterful hands—and then she missed him being at the golf course where she could go find him and maybe steal another kiss and convince him of her decision during the night to give him that chance he had asked for. To prove he was trustworthy.

  He had howled last night when she accused him of being with with Deedee Bartow, so why didn’t she believe him now?

  She would.

  She did.

  Until her dear stepmother showed up at the golf course to clear away any of her misconceptions.

  Running late, Casey should have already left to pick up Aidan at the marina. She strode down the cart path toward the driving range carrying two buckets of range ball
s for the two tourists who had just paid for a round of golf.

  “What’s your hurry this morning, Casey Jo?” Evelyn’s grating, smarmy voice sounded behind her, followed by the clackety-clack of the woman’s high-heeled sandals as she hustled down the cart path to catch up to Casey.

  She refused to turn around and kept moving. “I’m delivering range balls, and I’m in a hurry. You’re not welcome here, Evelyn.”

  Her stepmother gasped in affront, and Casey almost smiled.

  “How dare you!”

  A hand snatched her arm to stop her, and the manicured nails pressured a hold tight enough to keep Casey from jerking free.

  “PJ is banned from this course, not me. I have every right to be here and so should PJ. You banning him is a disgrace, you little brat!”

  Casey didn’t mind Aidan calling her a brat. She minded a whole lot when Evelyn called her that. She glared down at the manicured nails digging into her arm. “Let go of me.”

  Surprisingly, Evelyn did as she asked, and Casey kept moving.

  Evelyn followed, the clackety-clack now muffled against the turf in front of the driving range.

  “What do you want?” Casey asked, when she realized her stepmother was keeping pace with her. The sooner she found out, the sooner Casey could get the woman to leave.

  “You’re awfully smug for a girl who just lost another boyfriend,” Evelyn sneered.

  Casey missed a step but kept her balance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her racing heart disagreed.

  “Oh, maybe you don’t,” Evelyn said gleefully. “Deedee tells me she cozied up to your houseguest last night at the Sand Dollar.”

  “So?” Casey lamely tried for nonchalance, but Evelyn wasn’t buying it.

  “Don’t act like you don’t care. The guy’s living under your own roof, and he has his eye on Deedee.” Evelyn let out a grating cackle. “She’s going to steal him from you—as if you really had him—and I’m going to help her, just like I helped you lose PJ all those years ago. Deedee called me this morning from your cheap little boat tour. She was on board. With Aidan.”