Taking Over the Tycoon

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Susie nodded. “We don’t have a kitchen, ’cause we have the big one downstairs and we can use that one whenever we want.”

  “Speaking of which,” Connor said, abruptly remembering why he had come up in the first place. “I think we better head on down, if we don’t want breakfast to get cold.”

  “I’D LIKE TO SPEND this evening and all day tomorrow baking all the sweet breads, cookies and cakes we’re going to need for the conference next week, and then freeze them,” Winnifred told Kristy over breakfast. “That will make things a little less hectic when the guests arrive. And Harry has agreed to help me.”

  Harry didn’t look unhappy about that, Kristy noted. Which probably meant that he and Winnifred were making up. She smiled in approval of the plan. “Sounds good.”

  “Unfortunately, this poses a problem for me, since Harry and I were both supposed to be working at a fund-raiser this evening for the new teen shelter. So I was wondering, Kristy and Connor, if you two dears wouldn’t do us a favor and take our places this evening. All you have to do—besides enjoy yourselves and participate in a very worthy cause—is get there an hour early, sit at the sign-in table outside the hotel ballroom and make sure everyone gets their name tags as they check in for the gala.”

  Kristy wasn’t sure what to say to that. She didn’t mind working for a worthy cause, but she was leery of being paired with Connor. She was having a hard enough time reminding herself they were on opposite sides of the fence, and keeping him at arm’s length, without putting the two of them in a situation that would look very much like a date.

  He, however, did not seem to mind being paired with her. “No problem—for me, anyway,” Connor said, obviously delighted by the request. He looked at Winnifred. “What’s the dress?”

  “Black tie. Kristy will need a formal gown.” Winnifred paused and turned to her. “Will that pose a problem, dear?”

  Kristy shook her head. She already had a dress that was perfect for such an occasion. “Not at all. But it may not be easy for me to get a sitter for the twins on such short notice,” she warned. And she couldn’t expect Harry and Winnifred to supervise two eight-year-olds when they were working—and hopefully making up.

  Winnifred waved off Kristy’s concern. “I can ask my great-aunt Eleanor Deveraux to come out. She’s lovely and she adores children. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind watching over the twins if you don’t mind putting her up in a cottage for the night, in return.”

  “It’d be my pleasure,” Kristy said. It had been months since she had been blessed with a night out. It would be good to feel like a woman again, instead of just a mom.

  Connor and Kristy spent the day cleaning all the windows in the north wing of the lodge, while Harry continued washing the bedspreads and draperies, and Winnifred worked in the kitchen, putting together casseroles that would be frozen, and then baked and added to the luncheon buffets. The twins had social studies projects due the following week, and they camped out in the dining hall, working on their reports and posters most of the day.

  By dinnertime, Eleanor Deveraux had arrived. Kristy was pleased to discover the eighty-something woman was the epitome of Southern gentility and an era gone by. She was wearing a lace-trimmed, pastel-green dress, and her long white hair was caught in an elegant bun at the back of her neck. She had a delicate, aristocratic bone structure, a petite, slender frame. As Eleanor met Kristy, she clasped both of her work-worn hands in her exquisitely manicured fingers, and lifted her faded, sea-blue eyes. “Thank you kindly for inviting me out here this evening,” she said.

  “Thank you for coming,” Kristy replied, knowing instinctively that her girls were going to get along famously with this lovely woman with the kind eyes and gentle air. “And offering to spend the evening with my girls.”

  “That will be my pleasure.” Eleanor Deveraux smiled.

  Winnifred swept out of the kitchen to give her aunt a hug, before she looked at Kristy. “Shouldn’t you be going up to get ready, dear?” she said.

  Kristy looked down at her dirt-stained work shirt and jeans. If that wasn’t an understatement, she didn’t know what was.

  AN HOUR LATER, Kristy came down the stairs and into the dining hall, where everyone else was gathered, eating a casual Saturday evening supper of pizza and salad. “Oh, Mommy,” Sally gasped.

  “You look so beautiful!” Susie said.

  “I clean up okay,” Kristy murmured with a self-conscious wink as she turned, saw Connor walking across the lodge lobby toward her. He was dressed in a black tuxedo and snowy white shirt. He looked handsome and debonair, and he smelled wonderful, too—a wintry mix of musk, forest and man. She felt a thrill of excitement coupled with a tinge of alarm as he stopped in front of her, his eyes roving her upturned face, and gallantly offered her his arm. “Ready to go?” he asked softly.

  Kristy nodded, her pulse kicking up another notch.

  “Have fun, dears!” Winnifred said gaily.

  Kristy said her goodbyes, then the two of them headed off across the lobby and out the door. As they circled around the building toward the parking lot, Connor leaned close to her ear and remarked, “The twins weren’t kidding.” His gaze roved the floor-length, champagne-colored, silk-chiffon sheath, taking in the glamorous swaths of beaded lace that started at one shoulder, swept across her breasts and continued in gorgeous serpentine patterns to the hem. “You look spectacular in that dress.”

  It was the most elegant dress Kristy had ever owned. She’d spent a great deal of time picking it out. Pleased to find someone else liked it as much as she did, she touched a hand to her upswept hair self-consciously. “Thanks.”

  Connor opened the door of his Mercedes and helped her into the passenger side. He bent to make sure the delicate fabric was safely tucked in, then closed the door and circled around to slip behind the wheel. “Is it new?”

  “I’ve had it a couple of years.” She had just never worn it.

  Aware how much this felt like a date even though it was definitely not a date, per se, Kristy slid the end of her safety belt into the catch.

  Looking as if his thoughts were drifting along the same lines as hers, Connor fit his key into the ignition. He shot her a curious glance. “Bought it for something special?”

  Kristy nodded, replying, “A medical society dinner-dance.”

  Bittersweet light came into Connor’s eyes. “Your husband must have loved the way you looked in it,” he said.

  The corners of Kristy’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. Clasping the evening bag in her lap, she admitted sadly, “He never saw me wear it. He got called to do an emergency surgery.”

  Connor’s brows knit together. “You didn’t go?”

  Kristy shrugged, remembering how hard it had been that night to hide her feelings. “I didn’t want to attend alone.”

  Connor paused before turning his sedan onto Folly Beach Road. “How often did that happen?”

  Kristy took a deep breath. Turning her eyes away, she admitted softly, “A lot.”

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged and forced herself to forget about all the lonely nights and constant disappointments she’d endured during her marriage to Lance. “It was the way our life was.” She’d known that, going in. And, had the two of them connected the way they should have as man and wife, Kristy knew she could easily have handled his frequent absences and enormous responsibilities. It was the feeling that she and Lance weren’t really suited for each other, that he didn’t really love her, not the way a husband should, that had made the disappointments so unbearable.

  Oblivious to the reason for the brooding nature of her thoughts, Connor reached over and patted her knee companionably, through the silky fabric of her dress. “Well, you’ll be glad to know I don’t often get called out on emergency business meetings,” he teased.

  Warming to his efforts to inject a lighter mood into the conversation, Kristy turned toward him as far as her safety belt would allow. “You say that as if we’re about to be
come a couple,” she observed.

  Connor met her eyes. “Aren’t we?”

  Kristy didn’t know, wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Fortunately, she didn’t have to think about it, once they arrived at the downtown Charleston hotel where the event was being held. She and Connor were shown to the sign-in table, and were soon busy greeting guests and handing out name tags for them to wear. By the time they had finished taking “Winnifred and Harry’s” shift, dinner was being served. And they found themselves going down the buffet line with Connor’s recently divorced mother, Charlotte Templeton, and her escort for the evening, shipping executive Payton Heyward. Both were charming members of the old guard Charleston elite, and received Kristy with lovely gentility.

  “So you two are dating now?” Charlotte asked, as they sat down at a table decorated with linens embossed with blue and white stars. She wore a sequined, burgundy evening gown that went well with her slender figure and silver hair.

  “I wouldn’t call it that, exactly,” Kristy said, noting that Connor had his mother’s gray eyes.

  Connor put a possessive hand on the back of her chair. “I would,” he said. He leaned over to whisper in Kristy’s ear, “Or we will be once the week is up.”

  While she blushed self-consciously and tried not to feel too thrilled by his declaration, Charlotte looked from one to the other, as if trying to size up what was really going on with her only son.

  Before she could ask them anything else, Connor’s sister Daisy and her husband, Jack Granger, sat down with them.

  “I think I’d call it a date, too,” Daisy remarked, as she joined in on the tail end of the conversation. “After all, Kristy and Connor are dressed up. They came in together, they worked at the check-in table side by side, and now, as the festivities begin in earnest, they’re still together.”

  “Only as a favor to Winnifred Deveraux-Smith,” Kristy declared.

  Connor’s widowed older sister, Iris, who had been happily talking business with another antique dealer, also came to join them. She looked at Connor and Kristy thoughtfully.

  “Well, I think the two of you look as if you belong together,” Daisy teased. Since she had fallen in love with Jack and become a happily married woman, she wanted everyone else to enjoy the same connection with someone wonderful.

  “You really think we look like a couple?” Connor asked, pleased.

  Jack Granger nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “I’d have to say your body language, the way you keep leaning toward each other instead of away, says so,” he stated out loud.

  Kristy didn’t know about that, although Jack was right about one thing—she and Connor did keep gravitating toward each other, physically and emotionally.

  She did realize, however, that Connor looked every bit as at ease in this environment as he did strolling into Paradise Resort to see her. She couldn’t say the same about herself.

  While she didn’t exactly feel ill at ease in the elegant ballroom, she did find herself feeling wary of the number of people Connor knew, and the long, complicated history he seemed to have with absolutely everyone at the elegant affair.

  She felt out of the loop again, in the same way she always had with her family. It didn’t seem to matter whether it was because she was the only nonmedical person, or the only one without deep Charleston roots.

  At times like this she felt like an outcast, when what she secretly wanted was to belong at Connor’s side.

  Telling herself that she would eventually acclimate to her new town, Kristy forced herself to smile, then excused herself to go phone and check on things at home. To her relief, the girls were having a great time playing crazy eights with Eleanor. And she was going to have a great time here tonight, too, Kristy told herself firmly, as she started back toward the table where Connor and his family were sitting, laughing and talking.

  She was halfway there when Skip Wakefield cut in front of her.

  She had met him before several times, when he had come out to the resort to see about buying her property, and she’d always felt a little on edge whenever she was around him.

  Maybe because to Skip Wakefield, business was business. Whereas to Connor, business was something to be accomplished while at the same time making everyone better off.

  As Skip closed the distance between them smoothly, she found that nothing much had changed. She was still on edge around him, although for different reasons tonight. She knew he mattered to Connor, and if she and Connor were ever going to be close friends as he wanted, then she and Skip would have to find common ground. Which wasn’t going to be easy, given the way Kristy felt about what Skip was trying to do to Paradise Resort.

  “You’re looking lovely tonight,” Skip told her kindly.

  “Thank you,” Kristy answered politely, noting that he and the Southern belle he had come in with earlier looked pretty good, too. “If you’re hunting for Connor, he’s over there with his family. In fact, I was just headed that way myself—”

  “Actually, Kristy,” Skip said, just as nicely, “I wanted to talk to you.”

  He waited until she turned her full attention to him before he continued easily, “I heard Winnifred Deveraux-Smith just took a position at your place as head chef. And that her butler, Harry, is working there, too.”

  Kristy nodded. “That’s true.”

  Skip probed her face, as if trying to work out a particularly difficult puzzle. “I also heard that Connor had the interior of an entire wing of the lodge painted on very short notice.”

  “What’s your point, Skip?” she asked, aware that people were beginning to notice the prolonged tête-à-tête.

  He leaned a little closer to her ear. Abruptly Skip looked as protective of Connor as Connor was about Kristy. “What do you have on these people?”

  Kristy blinked in surprise, sure she could not possibly have heard right. “Excuse me?”

  He released an exasperated breath and pushed on in a low, frustrated voice. “Winnifred, Harry and Connor were never known to act irrationally. Until, that is, they became acquainted with you. Now, well, let’s just say the actions of the three of them have tongues wagging all over the city.”

  Kristy’s cheeks warmed self-consciously as she struggled to hold on to her cool. “I wouldn’t term it that way,” she countered stiffly. In fact, despite the long hours of hard work, they were having fun, all three of them! Just as she was.

  “Well, I would,” Skip stated bluntly. “How is Winnifred going to resume her position as the supreme doyenne among the social set, after working as a common laborer at a failing, run-down resort?” He shook his head at her in exasperation. “Don’t you understand what you’re doing here?”

  Kristy folded her arms and studied the man. She wasn’t sure what he wanted from her, save the sale of her property. “So you’re saying what—that I should fire Winnifred?” she whispered right back.

  Skip shook his head and continued regarding her as if she were completely clueless. “I’m saying, Kristy, that you should never have hired Winnifred or Harry Bowles. Not to mention whatever it is you’ve done to bewitch and bedazzle my friend Connor. Who, by the way, used to be known as the most levelheaded, up-and-coming business tycoon around. Before you had him cleaning toilets, anyway.”

  Kristy drew in a quick, shocked breath. Skip was right about one thing—she hadn’t really given any thought at all to how any of this would look to others in elite Charleston society. “How do you know about that?” she demanded, aghast.

  Kristy felt movement behind her, and then Connor was beside her, both his hands clamped reassuringly on her shoulders. “I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” he said.

  CONNOR HAD KNOWN Skip for years. They’d gone to school together and started a business that had grown beyond their wildest dreams, making them both very wealthy men in their own right. They’d seen each other through the best and worst of times. Connor relied on their friendship. And that made Skip’s suspicious attitude toward Kristy all the harder to bear
.

  “Winnifred Deveraux-Smith said something about your crush on Kristy to my mother. Winnifred seemed to think your devotion to Kristy and her cause was adorable and that the two of you had some sort of bet going that might or might not culminate in some sort of date. My mother asked me for confirmation. I said I didn’t know but would find out.”

  At that, it was all Connor could do not to groan. He should’ve realized word about his blossoming romance with Kristy would get back to Skip.

  Skip’s mother and Winnifred had been friends for many years, and as dedicated philanthropists, worked together for all the local charities on steering committees that also included Connor’s mother.

  He would have to talk to Winnifred, make her understand that what was going on between him and Kristy was private.

  “Of course,” Skip continued in a much more affable tone, “I really didn’t think it could be true. If anything of that sort were going on, I would’ve figured it would be the reverse. Like tonight. With you taking Kristy out and showing her how elegantly she, too, could live if she’d only take us up on the very lucrative deal you and I have put together.”

  “If you two gentlemen will excuse me,” Kristy said coolly, sweeping by them both with her head high, “I’m going to be heading home.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kristy had just cleared the ballroom when Connor caught up with her. She had no idea what he had said to Skip after she left, and she assured herself she didn’t want to know.

  “Forgetting someone?” Connor quipped.

  Kristy looked down at herself and replied with the same droll humor, “I seem to be all here.”

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her temper, all the while holding her gaze. “I meant me.”

  Kristy lifted her chin. “I can find my own way back to Folly Beach, Connor.” She didn’t mind helping out the charity or substituting, along with Connor, for Winnifred and Harry. Her mistake had been to try and make more of the evening than it was. There was no guarantee when their bet ended, however it ended, that the two of them would even remain friends. Especially when she still refused to sell her resort to him and Skip.