Strike

by Cora Brent

  An alarm on my phone beeped, reminding me that I had a meeting with Griffin in fifteen minutes.

  “Shit,” I said and started to head for the freeway. It was only our weekly status meeting but I hated being late for anything.

  Griffin was waiting inside the club with his feet up on a table when I arrived. He glanced at his flashy Movado watch and meaningfully raised an eyebrow to get his point across that I was four minutes late.

  “I know,” I said. “I apologize for my unforgiveable tardiness.”

  He grinned. “Never mind. I’m kind of enjoying the way the tables are turned. Usually you’re the one moodily glaring at me for failing to be on time.”

  “You’re the boss. You’re allowed,” I said, pulling up a chair.

  “Yeah, I’m the boss,” Griffin said and I caught a flash of something in his face. Irritation? Worry? In any case I doubted it had anything to do with me. He was under his father’s thumb and endured relentless pressure to expand the family fortune. One might think that getting handed a multi million dollar resort was a dream come true but I’d caught glimpses of Griffin’s life and I wouldn’t be willing to trade places with him. I’d never tell him this, but sometimes the square-jawed Sullivans and their naked ambitions reminded me of the mafia.

  Griffin was amused by the fact that I had all the revenue and attendance numbers memorized. He was pleased by the continuing success of the club and said there’d been talk of raising the VIP membership fees next year. I wasn’t sure I agreed with that plan because even rich people must have a price ceiling.

  He brushed my concerns aside. “Trust me, they’ll pay it.”

  We’d moved outside and were discussing a giant fountain feature that was going to be added to the front of the building soon. I thought the idea was ridiculous and unnecessary but someone on the Sullivan’s marketing team decided it would be classy.

  Lately I’d been wondering if Griffin had an inkling that I didn’t intend to stick around at Aqua Room for much longer. I’d had several promising phone conferences with Harold Fulton recently and he was committed to the training center.

  There was no time to tackle that subject though because Cami pulled up in a golf cart. The smile on my face was instantaneous. She was just wearing her usual polo shirt and khaki pants work uniform with her hair pulled back in a low ponytail but she was stunning.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” she said with some formality as she emerged, glancing at Griffin.

  He laughed. “Go ahead and suck face, kids. I don’t care.”

  Cami threw him a look and then squealed when I grabbed her and bent her back for an old-fashioned big screen type of kiss.

  “What brings you this way?” I asked when I set her upright.

  “We have a very wealthy guest with very particular tastes spending the day at the spa. She finished off the kitchen’s last bottle of Ridge Monte Bello but she’s still thirsty so Eleanor sent me down here in the hopes that you keep some in the wine cellar.”

  I nodded. “Pretty sure we do.”

  She beamed. “Good. That’ll save me a trip to the grocery store.”

  Griffin chuckled. “I wasn’t aware the grocery store stocked three hundred dollar bottles of wine.”

  Cami’s eyes widened. “That much, huh?”

  “Maybe more.” Griffin glanced at me and then back at Cami. “How’s your sister doing?”

  Cami’s eyebrows rose. “Cassie’s just fine. Why?”

  “I still feel bad about the trouble she ran into at the club,” Griffin explained. “I would have liked to make it up to her but from what I hear she’s very happy with her boyfriend.”

  Cami didn’t flinch. “Yes, she is. They are very much in love. But it was kind of you to think of her.”

  Griffin probably knew she was full of shit but he seemed amused. He announced he had to get going to a very important meeting, which might have been true. Or he might have just been heading home to take a nap. With a wave he told me he’d be back before the club opened tonight and then he took off in his Jag.

  “Cassie will be so pleased to discover that she’s in an exciting new relationship,” Cami said as we watched Griffin drive away.

  I slipped an arm around her waist. “Yeah, well. Griffin was interested and even though he’s my buddy I wouldn’t want him dating my sister.”

  She smiled up at me. “I love how you’re all protective.”

  And I love you.

  The words just popped into my head. I didn’t say them. They hadn’t even consciously occurred to me before now. Was it possible to fall in love in one month?

  “Let’s go inside,” I said. “I’ll hunt down that bottle of wine for you.”

  Cami was squinting at something. “Who’s that? Looks like he’s heading over here.”

  Artie, one of the head landscapers, pulled up in a golf cart. His face was red and he looked flustered.

  “Is Mr. Sullivan around?” he asked breathlessly. “Anne Carter told me he had a meeting here.”

  “He was here,” I said. “He just left.”

  Artie sighed and stared down at something in his lap. Whatever it was had been placed in a plastic shopping bag and it was dripping.

  “I need to give this to him,” Artie said.

  “What is it?”

  “A lady’s purse. Wallet inside and everything. One of my guys fished it out of the lake.”

  “Did you look at the ID?”

  “I didn’t. No.”

  “Why would you give it to Mr. Sullivan instead of turning it in to the lobby? They’re the keepers of all things lost and found.”

  He seemed uncertain. “I don’t know. Anne looked inside the wallet but she didn’t say nothing. She just shoved it back into the purse, wrapped everything up in this bag and told me to bring it straight over here to Mr. Sullivan.”

  That was weird. But then again Anne Carter could be a little scatterbrained. I held my hand out. “You can give it to me. I’ll make sure Mr. Sullivan sees it.”

  He hesitated. “I was told to hand it over directly to him.”

  “Artie, I will take full responsibility. Mr. Sullivan will be back here at the club tonight and I’ll keep it locked up in my office until then.”

  The man frowned down at the dripping bag. Then he shrugged and handed it over. “All right, if you don’t mind. Thanks, Dalton.”

  “No big deal.”

  Artie promptly rode away on his golf cart while Cami commented, “That seems a little odd.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “But Artie’s a jumpy guy.” I looked down at the sodden bag in my hand. Apparently there was ID inside so I didn’t understand why in the hell Anne Carter didn’t try to find contact info instead of pushing the problem up the ladder to Griffin. Chances were the handbag had been lost by a recent guest. But it wasn’t really my problem. I’d just hold onto it until tonight when I saw Griffin.

  Cami needed to return to her demanding socialite at the spa so I set about finding her that bottle of wine. I left the dripping bag in the bar sink and told her I’d just need a minute to find the bottle. It actually took closer to ten minutes because someone had reorganized the narrow, crowded wine cellar. When I returned Cami was backing away from the bar and she had a funny look on her face.

  “Found it,” I said, holding out the bottle, wondering if she was worried about getting into trouble with Eleanor by being gone so long even though Eleanor was probably the most easygoing human being in the zip code.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her hands on her pants for some reason and then reached for the bottle. “I should get back. The woman doesn’t seem like the patient type.”

  I leaned on the wall and stared down at her. I pushed a loose strand of silky brown hair behind her ears. She was biting her lower lip and hugging the wine bottle.

  “Dinner later?” I asked.

  She shook her head immediately. “I can’t. I mean, I’d like to, but I have a few things to take care of.”

  “Camille,” I sa
id when she began to head for the door.

  When she turned to look at me I saw she was pale. Maybe she felt sick.

  “No kiss goodbye?” I asked.

  Her smile was weak. Her kiss was distracted. “Bye, Dalton.” She scurried away before I could answer.

  Cami was always eager to be touched, to be kissed. She melted right into me at every opportunity, pressing her cheek against my chest, sighing happily at the feel of my hands on her body. It wasn’t like her to shrink away, to be evasive over why she couldn’t have dinner. The fact bothered me all afternoon as I tended to administrative tasks in my office at the back of the club.

  It was hours before I remembered the lost handbag sitting in the bar sink.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Camille

  The day started out strange. I fell out of bed and landed with such a loud thud the dog started barking on the other side of the house.

  “What happened?” Cassie yawned, sitting up.

  “The airplane dream,” I grumbled, untangling myself from sheets on the floor. My left knee felt bruised.

  “I didn’t know you still had that.”

  “I don’t. Haven’t had it in years.”

  When I was a kid, maybe five our six, my parents took us to an airshow with vintage World War 2 era planes. One of the stunts involved a girl dangling from one of the planes and then dropping into a huge pile of hay. Everyone gasped and then clapped when she emerged from the hay a little shaky but otherwise fine. She even waved at the crowd. My mother assured me on the way home that they hadn’t really dropped a girl from the plane. It had been only been a mannequin. The girl was simply waiting below in the hay the entire time. I could remember being unsure whether I believed this. It seemed too real and I could remember holding my breath for fear of her fate. That night I had a dream that I was the girl dangling from plane high above but I always woke up the second my fingers released. I always thought the dream must mean something, my subconscious trying to warn of danger that my alert mind couldn’t piece together.

  But there was no reason to have that dream now, no danger on the horizon. I was having the perfect summer. Sure, I was falling but there nothing perilous about it. I was only falling in love.

  My parents were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She was reading a book. He was sketching with a pencil, probably working on some artistic tattoo concept for work. I paused at the threshold for a second to admire them.

  “Did you drop something this morning?” my mother asked, offering me a piece of buttered toast from her own plate.

  I took the toast. “I fell out of bed. I’m fine.”

  My dad’s cheerful blue eyes peered at me from over the rim of his coffee cup and then he returned to his sketch. Nothing had been said about the fact that Dalton had been in my bedroom the other day and my plan was to never mention it.

  There wasn’t much time to enjoy a quiet breakfast because everyone needed to get ready and go their separate ways. When I drove through the entrance to Wild Spring Resort my heart sped up a little bit because Dalton was on my mind. I wished I’d been able to haul my ass out of bed a little early so I might have had the opportunity to stop by his suite before work. He was having lunch with his dad later and our paths didn’t regularly cross during the workday so it was unlikely I’d see him before this evening. A glance at the dashboard clock made me curse because I was running a few minutes late and so there was no chance I’d be able to see him. My fingers touched my lips and the visceral memory of his touch came to me unbidden. I’d never craved anything in all my life the way I craved him.

  The first thing I saw when I reached my desk was that it wasn’t empty. A cup of coffee and an apple muffin from the café were waiting. There was no note but I knew who had left them.

  “That man,” Holly said enviously when she emerged from the employee locker room to find me smiling over my early morning gifts. “He was here not ten minutes ago but had to run to a meeting, obviously disappointed that you weren’t in yet. God, you’re lucky.”

  Holly didn’t need to tell me I was lucky. I already knew.

  I was so high on thoughts of Dalton that there was nothing fake about my smile as I went through the morning, greeting spa guests and showing them to their rooms. An entire bridal party arrived for a day of pampering. The big event was taking place in the ballroom this weekend. I picked out the bride immediately, a curvy blonde who wore her radiant happiness in her smile. She hugged me on the way out.

  Lunch at the cafe was lonely since I’d grown used to eating with Dalton, often in his suite, usually followed by some kind of sexual encounter that would leave me blushing for the rest of the afternoon. As I nibbled my ham sandwich I realized I was sitting at the table where I’d interrupted Debra’s lunch weeks ago. After that day she became slightly friendlier, at least deigning to greet me by name when she showed up at the spa, although our conversations were usually less than ten syllables. I’d been so wrapped up in Dalton I hadn’t really noticed that Debra hadn’t been around as often lately.

  Congressman Anders, meanwhile, had been all over the place. Holding press conferences, charity golf events, posing for well choreographed photo ops. Yesterday I saw a commercial advertising his run for governor. Maybe Debra had been staying in the shadows on purpose now that her lover was in the public eye more than ever.

  It wasn’t any of my business but something bugged me about the whole thing. Not just because Anders projected this bullshit image as a morally superior pillar of the community. I felt sorry for Debra. I suspected that if you scraped away all that haughty attitude there was an unhappy girl who’d made some poor choices.

  I sighed and tossed the rest of my lunch in the trash. Debra Martinez wasn’t likely to go asking me for help so I was wasting my time worrying about her.

  Eleanor was in a state back at Blue Rain because the wife of a bank CEO had a long list of demands, including constant refills of her favorite wine. A minor panic broke out when the kitchen called to say they had no more remaining bottles and I volunteered to ride a golf cart over to Aqua Room and ask Dalton to raid the club’s supply. Of course it would have simpler to just call him but Eleanor was so distracted she didn’t think of it and I was happy to seize any opportunity to see him.

  He was standing outside Aqua Room with Griffin Sullivan. He saw me coming and the sight of his smile nearly caused me to crash the golf cart in my eagerness to reach him.

  Griffin had already professed he wasn’t a strict enforcer of workplace romance rules so I shouldn’t have been shy about leaping into Dalton’s arms but I felt a little wary about being romantic right under the boss’s nose. I knew he was Dalton’s friend but I didn’t completely trust him. I remembered all too well how eager he was to bury the whole Ivan situation. It didn’t surprise me to hear that he’d been asking after Cassie and I was grateful that Dalton had the sense to invent a fictional relationship for her in order to deflect his interest. I was glad when Griffin took off.

  My hopes of having some alone time with Dalton before getting back to the spa were interrupted when one of the landscapers arrived. He blurted out an odd story about a lost handbag being found in the resort’s artificial lake. The weirdest part of the tale was when he said the Human Resources Director had insisted that the object should be handed over to Griffin only. In spite of his orders, the man was willing to relinquish custody of the thing to Dalton, who promised to keep it safe until he saw Griffin again.

  While Dalton searched for the elusive wine bottle somewhere in the bowels of Aqua Room, I wandered around, thinking how different the place seemed in the daylight without the beautiful people and the energy and the music. If I closed my eyes I could almost hear the buzz of seductive conversations echoing from the art deco walls.

  I was idling near the bar when I spotted the bag Dalton had dropped in the sink. It was understandable he’d left it there since it was still dripping.

  Yet as I stood there over the sink the peculiarity o
f the situation struck me anew.

  Why would this be brought directly to the resort owner?

  Presumably Griffin Sullivan has more important things to deal with than tracking down some woman who’d dropped her purse in the lake.

  And by the way, who does that?

  If it was an accident, then why not seek the assistance of the resort staff when it happened?

  As I stood there regarding the object in the bar sink my interest was sparked. The landscaper had mentioned that the purse contained identification. He also mentioned that Anne Carter had seen the contents and then made the decision to deliver it into the hands of Griffin Sullivan.

  Why???

  There might be a good reason. There might be no reason. My father often teased that I’d been born with a ‘voracious curiosity’ that demanded answers to all the questions. Every single one. Because I’d long since figured out that it was impossible to sort out what was important and what wasn’t until you had all the answers.

  “Why aren’t there any more dinosaurs, Daddy?”

  Because millions of years ago an asteroid crashed into earth, devastating the planet, and the dinosaurs didn’t survive.

  “Why don’t you ever visit the town where you grew up, Daddy?”

  Because there were too many memories there that he was trying to forget.

  Why would a woman’s abandoned handbag be of interest to a rich, powerful resort owner?

  Because according to the driver’s license in my hand, the purse belongs (or belonged) to Carmen Carerra, the reporter who was supposedly snooping around Wild Spring Resort while posing as an employee.

  Without even thinking about things like evidence and proper procedure I slipped the driver’s license into my back pocket and quickly shoved the sodden wallet back into the purse before setting it inside the shopping bag exactly where I’d found it in the bar sink. Aside from the wallet there had been a tube of red lipstick and a piece of paper that was mostly ruined with water and lake slime yet still possessed the Wild Spring logo in the top right hand corner. The layout was familiar. If I squinted I thought I could see numbers. Just like the paycheck stub I received every week.