Her bottom lip trembled. She had heard him loud and clear, but where had this venom come from? Her stomach turned. She had fallen for this man not once, but twice. How had she been so terribly wrong about him?
“Did you hear me?”
Meg stared into the cab’s grimy ceiling and harnessed her colliding thoughts. “You don’t need to say another thing about this, Jackson. Now or ever again.” Meg puffed out a harsh breath. “I will go back to California and I will work hard to honor your father until I can find another suitable position somewhere. But unless it’s work related, I don’t ever want to hear from you again either.”
* * *
When she was little, Meg often sat on top of her quilted bedspread and stared out the window, book in lap. This moment felt a little like that, although as a child her heartbreak came from the sudden loss of her father and the lack of explanation of where he had gone. Though this heartbreak came about in a far different way, it did not hurt any less.
After Jackson threatened to fire her, she’d tried to book a flight out of Tampa, but nothing was available. She couldn’t go to Sea Castle Inn, so she came here, to this resort nearby. Rooms were at a premium this time of year, but the front desk clerk had taken pity on her tear-streaked face and upgraded her to a room with a peek-a-boo of the gulf.
Her phone rang. Liddy. She barely had time to answer it when Liddy said, “Where are you? I thought you were coming home to watch chick flicks with me and eat ice cream.”
She pictured her friend prone on her couch, bored, maybe even fearful. Guilt washed over her. “I’m sorry, Lid. Still traveling.” How often had she said that to her best friend?
“I’m only teasing! Baby and I are fine and we do NOT expect you to leave Italy for us.”
“If only I were still there.”
“Wait … where are you?”
Her resolve to keep it together dissolved into a shake in her voice. “Oh Liddy. I’m in Florida. There’s so much to tell you. I-I just can’t believe all that has happened since I left California.”
“Honey, what is going on?”
Meg sniffled, suddenly hyper-aware of her friend’s recent trip to the hospital. The last thing she wanted to do was cause her any stress. “Actually, I’m fine. I came here to look into some things at Sea Castle, but they, uh, have everything under control. I’m going to leave in the morning.”
“Hold it. You can’t brush me off that fast—it’s me. Remember?”
Meg’s attempt at a stiff upper lip crashed like a rogue tide. Tears so hot and fast she could barely eke out a word of explanation. “Jackson came to Italy to see me … but it’s over now.” She gave her friend the highlights from their time in Italy ending with, “He doesn’t want me, Lid. He never did.”
“I will kill him.”
Meg pictured her much-pregnant friend chasing down Jackson and smacking him over the head with her giant reservation book. She sniffled. “There’s more.”
“Great. I can’t wait.”
“It’s Pepper. She’s not—at least I think she’s not—Jackson’s sister.”
“Come again?”
“I saw a photo in Domenic’s office of the real Pepper. Her name is Sophia—Pepper’s just a nickname—and nobody seems to know where she is. We believe that, somehow, this Pepper that we’ve all come to know and love is an imposter.”
“I can’t … no way. Is there any chance that the real Sophia just doesn’t want to be found? That she sent this … this crazy woman in her place?”
“Hadn’t thought of that angle.” She sighed, her breath ripply from tears. “I’ll mention that to Domenic since I’m, well, I almost quit my job today.”
“What?!”
“Shush. Oh no, don’t get stressed, Lid. Please. You need to keep calm for the baby’s sake.” She paused. “Jackson threatened to fire me. You know how hard I’ve tried to honor my promise to William to stay on, but I can’t do it ....” She couldn’t finish, her words garbled by a fresh onslaught of tears.
“It’s okay, Meggy. You tried your hardest, but there’s been so much drama there over the past year. Plus, your rocky relationship with Jackson—and now the shocking news about Pepper…still can’t believe that! Oh I love you so much, girl. Give yourself a break for once.”
Her voice turned raw, raspy. “Thank you. I’m tired now. Going to grab a nap. I’ll see you tomorrow, ‘kay?”
“I’ll have all my wallowing supplies at the ready. Godspeed, my friend.”
After they’d hung up, Meg closed her eyes, but sleep would not come. She had not told anyone but Liddy, and Jackson, of course, that she would not be working for Riley Holdings much longer. Tears sprang again to her eyes, surprising her with their relentlessness. She had believed that she would always be a part of the company. In a deeply painful way, she realized that saying goodbye to the inns would be like saying goodbye to William all over again.
Her phone rang and she dropped a gaze to the screen. Janet from the Sea Castle. She inhaled sharply and answered on the third ring. “Hey, Janet. What’s up?”
“Hello, Meg. Lucky mentioned that you would be coming in soon. We have a suite set up for you—do you still need it?”
Jackson had not informed them of her departure, apparently. And she had not had the heart to say goodbye to the staff.
Her spirit wavered. She wanted to duck out and pretend that her fight with Jackson had not happened, that he hadn’t treated her so poorly. She certainly did not want to tell anyone at the little inn on the gulf about her predicament. “Change of plans. I made it to Tampa but got called back to California.” It wasn’t that much of a lie—she did live there, right? “I won’t be making it to the inn, so you can go ahead and release the room.”
She braced herself for a barrage of questions.
“Uh, okay. Lovely.”
Apparently, she’d sounded believable. But something about Janet’s response bothered her. She sensed timidity. Janet did not intimidate easily, one reason she was the best desk manager on the planet. Kind, but firm. “I understand that Pepper is at the property now.”
“She is.”
“Is she … is everything okay?”
“Funny you should ask.” She lowered her voice. “I’m actually in the back office right now. There are two gentlemen out front who have been quite forceful about their request for a suite with a view. Even Pepper seemed openly unnerved by them—she is the one who told me I had to give him the suite.”
“And the only one with a view left was mine.”
“Yes, we are booked solid.”
She found her reason for Janet’s tone. Pepper was in-house—enough to scare even those with a strong backbone. “Well,” Meg said, “I’m glad I could help, then.”
“Mm-hm. Yes. I have to go now. Thank you, Meg.”
She clicked off the line, her eyelids heavy, her body pressed into the bed. Sleep had come.
Chapter 20
Jackson’s jaw clenched as he stared out the window into the abyss of clouds, rehashing the words he had spoken to Meg, and the tone in which he had delivered them. He had done what he had to do. No second guessing. No regrets.
Alex, it turned out, had been an even better resource than Jackson had expected. With his help, he had begun piecing together a picture based on a number of questionable transactions. When added together, the answers to those questions raised one massive red flag over the company. When this was all over, he would have to find a way to give their IT man a raise.
Once he was in Pepper’s email account, Alex helped him log in to her credit card accounts. Jackson winced at the recollection of finding four credit cards in the company’s name that he knew nothing about. “They’re all from the same bank,” Alex told him. “Since that’s the company bank, those cards didn’t stand out to you on the reports. My guess, anyway.”
Even digging into the accounts did not immediately raise concerns. Many of the charges were inn related, such as payments to their laundry service and gif
t shop suppliers. But as he dug deeper, Jackson noticed the cash advances: some in the hundreds, but most in the thousands of dollars. What would Pepper need cash for in relation to the inns?
Jackson fidgeted in his seat. More aware of the company’s dire financial situation than ever, he had opted for a window seat in coach. The seats, he’d decided, had been created with children in mind, not adults. He shifted, trying to get comfortable, his mind cramped with myriad dark thoughts.
The first came late last night, when he printed out Pepper’s plane tickets. If he were going to build a case of fraud, he would need evidence, so he scanned the documents for clues and stuck them in a file. He pulled one of the tickets back out and scrutinized it. Miami. For a cruise? He suspected that, now that she had charged up all the accounts associated with Sea Glass Inn, Pepper had plans to similarly drain Sea Castle Inn’s resources.
He stuck the document back in the file, mulling his options. There were few.
With two thick files of evidence in his briefcase, Jackson stalked across the inn’s parking lot and headed home. He had almost arrived when his phone rang. The number on his screen, though not Domenic’s, indicated a caller from Italy. “Yes?” he answered.
“Jackson.”
The woman said his name with a familiarity that tugged at his insides, but caution dictated.
“This is Jackson.”
“It is Sophia. Your sister.”
Pepper would not announce herself this way. This woman did not screech. She did not attempt to dominate the conversation. Her voice was soft, almost timid. “Sophia?”
“Yes, it is I. Domenic found me.”
“Wait … You say that you are my sister?”
“I am.”
“I hardly know where to begin.” The inky black night surrounded him. “How much has Domenic told you?”
“Ah, I believe he has told me all that he knows. I am so sorry, Jackson. I had no information about any of this.” Her voice tremored. “I learned about William. My heart is broken. This explains why my last letter was returned.”
He willed himself not to fall prey to another scheme. He would not cut her off, however. Instead, Jackson would listen to her story, gather information that might help him figure out this chaos, and stay emotionally detached. It was the only way he could function after nights of no sleep and sudden, unwelcome information.
“Sophia, where have you been?” A simple, open-ended question—simple if she had an answer to it.
“I am in Italy. Domenic said you had come to visit him and I am grieved not to have met you while you were here.”
“I was not aware that you lived abroad.”
“Neither was Domenic. When my mother died, I did not see any reason to stay in New York. She taught me to sew and I have been able to find work near Milan, not too far from where we lived for a little while when I was young.”
Her story yanked on him. She was beginning to sound authentic. “If you are who you say you are, who is Gia?”
“Oh Jackson—she is my half-sister. Always in trouble, from the day she was born. My mother married her father when I was a baby. When Gia was born they gave us both the same last name.” She paused. “All my life I did not know I had another father.”
“Sophia, you must know the trouble Gia has caused.”
“You need to be careful, Jackson. That is why I called you right away after Domenic reached me. My sister … my sister is too smart for her own good. I don’t trust her.”
“We believe she intercepted the letter I sent to you regarding our father’s death.”
“She will do more than steal mail, I am afraid.”
“Like money?”
“Yes, Gia stole from my mother and from me. She has the ability to work hard and earn her own living, but she still takes what is not hers. Worse, she dances with devils.”
“Meaning?”
“She associates with bad people. That is why I was hiding from her all this time. When I heard from Domenic what she had done now, I knew I had to come out of hiding.”
Jackson peered through the window next to his seat, his eyes unable to focus. She associates with bad people. Last night, the words Sophia had spoken to him played over in his mind until the floating slivers of information joined together to form a vivid, tortured picture. Before Sophia’s phone call, Jackson had come to realize that Pepper had been stealing from the inn. She had taken out cash advances then paid the credit cards with the inn’s funds. No wonder their expenditures had skyrocketed.
He booked his own flight to Florida last night, determined not only to confront Pepper with his findings—but to get her confession.
But as he had begun to deconstruct the web of deceit he had lived with for so long, a more sinister thought weighed on him: Pepper could be dangerous. He already suspected she was behind the drone that dive-bombed Meg and caused her broken foot. If it were true, she probably had help—from the “bad people” Sophia warned him about.
He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—let anything happen to Meg.
Fear ground through him like blades to the gut. Pepper complained about Meg nearly non-stop, blaming her for improprieties, for being too controlling, all of it fabricated, of course. Why? It struck him that Pepper was afraid—of Meg. If anyone could eventually have sniffed out a liar, it was the woman who had helped her father build Sea Glass Inn into a warm and welcome destination.
The woman he loved.
I’m on my way there now …
When Meg said those words to him, he knew. He had to stop her. Had to. If Pepper had taken things this far—far enough to potentially chase her down with a drone—who knew what she could accomplish? Meg could be in real danger. He could not allow her to show up—and he’d done what he had to do to make that clear.
The only thing worse than losing everything would be losing her.
* * *
Meg squinted at the watery image in her mind. His top half came into focus. A man, tall and wide, his face cloaked except for his eyes. He pointed at her, his gloved hand unyielding. “Can’t stop the money train,” he said. “Can’t stop the money train.” His eyes burned with evil. She gasped, waking herself up. For a few moments, she lay there listening to the scrape of her own breath as it accelerated through her chest. She could not recall the last time she’d had a nightmare, nor one so palpable.
She rose, slid the door open to her small balcony, and stepped out. The balmy weather of the Florida gulf had cooled some, enough for her to lean against the railing, though the sky continued to morph into layers of darkness. The image of a dangerous man had been too real for her to completely shake. Despite the weather, goosebumps alighted on her skin and she rubbed them away with her hands.
Two gentlemen … quite forceful … even Pepper seemed unnerved.
She had not been able to get the tone of Janet’s voice nor what she said about the strangers in search of a suite out of her mind. What had the image in her nightmare said? Something about a … money train. She sighed, the sound of waves crashing filling the night air. The inns were no longer her problem. She had to remind herself that she had left her job, though technically, Jackson had forced her out. The reminder brought a sharp blow to her windpipe.
Still, Pepper becoming unnerved in front of guests? Not typical. Angry and confrontational with staff, yes, but guests were her bread and butter, so to speak. She shook it off. Pepper likely learned that the only thing between collecting the nightly rate for that suite or not was Meg’s impending arrival. And her dislike for Meg ran deep.
She would never forget the memory of Pepper shouting at her, inches from her face, those black fingernails like claws. “Hang up, hang up!” Meg had only called Domenic to say hello, and when she figured this out, Pepper had not been happy. She almost laughed at the absurdity of the moment. A grown woman squawking like a lunatic.
Then again, she was not who she claimed to be. Meg was as sure of this as she was of her own breath. Why, if she were not who she claimed to
be, would Pepper have such a dislike for a lowly sales director? If she did not have a true stake in the company, why would she care about some supposed long-ago money to Meg’s mother?
Meg frowned. She stepped back inside her room, noting the need for more air conditioning. After adjusting the dial, she took a seat at the wicker desk and called her mother.
“Buona sera, Meghan.”
“Good evening to you, Mom.”
“You must be back home.”
“Not yet. I arrived in Florida this morning on business. I plan to fly out tomorrow, though.”
“Florida during hurricane season? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
So dramatic. “Actually, I am calling to talk to you about something serious.”
“What could be more serious than a heart attack?”
“It’s about William.”
“William … ?”
“You remember—my boss.” She paused. The idea that William, who had never met her mother, had been secretly sending her checks sounded so bizarre. Though she had asked her mother a form of this question before, the issue continued to fester and she had to put it to rest. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this question again, but I must: Did William ever send you money … for anything?”
“Wow. You travel to Italy and the only thing you have to say when you get home is that your boss gave me money?”
“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you, but this is what I’ve been told—more than once. Do you have any idea why someone would make this claim?”
“I do not.”
Meg waited for more, but her mother had clammed up. As usual. It occurred to her as well that though Meg did not put a lot of stock in the allegations, her mother had not yet answered her question.
She swallowed rising concern. “Mom, did you know William? I mean, had you ever spoken to him?”
Silence.
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