Taking Over the Tycoon

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  But, she thought, as the school bus rumbled toward them, she would deal with that bridge when she came to it. Right now, she had conference guests to prepare for.

  “Girls get off okay?” Connor asked when Kristy came back into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee.

  He and Harry were folding dozens of cloth napkins under Winnifred’s direction.

  Kristy nodded and looked at the television mounted near the ceiling of the lodge kitchen. “What’s the latest on Imogene?”

  “Not good,” Harry said with an unhappy frown. “It’s picking up speed again and heading for Jacksonville, Florida. They think, at the current rate, it will hit landfall early tomorrow morning.”

  Which was bad. The question was how bad. “Is it going to go north or west?” Kristy asked, as she went to sit next to Connor and lend a hand.

  “North.” Harry pushed a stack of cloth napkins in Kristy’s direction. “They’re expecting it to hit Charleston late Wednesday or early Thursday.”

  “But,” Connor added quickly and cheerfully, as he finished his stack and started helping with hers, “they also think that by the time it gets here it will be downgraded to just a tropical storm.”

  “So the conference should be able to go on, no problem, even if activities for a day or so are indoors,” Winnifred said.

  Kristy breathed a sigh of relief.

  “In the meantime, I still have a lot to do to get ready,” Winnifred said.

  “When are the food deliveries coming?” Kristy asked, forcing herself not to think about the possibility—or was it probability?—of Imogene changing speed, direction and intensity yet again as hurricanes were wont to do on an almost hourly basis.

  Harry looked at the schedule Winnifred had tacked up on the bulletin board. “Seafood at nine, meat at ten-thirty, dairy at three and produce at five.”

  Connor looked at Kristy. “What would you like me to do this morning, when we get done here?”

  Kristy made a face as she thought of the tedious but very necessary task ahead. “Help assemble welcome buckets.”

  A WELCOME BUCKET, Connor soon found out, was a big plastic sand pail filled with local maps, tourist information, flip-flops, candy, gum, tennis visors and T-shirts bearing the name of the resort.

  They all had to be marked with the names of the couples checking in, and it took the entire morning to do all twenty-five buckets, plus a couple extra just in case. By then Connor and Kristy were needed in the kitchen, and they spent the rest of the afternoon there, stopping long enough to walk out and make sure that Susie and Sally got safely off their school bus.

  The girls brought their books into the kitchen and did their homework on a corner of the table while work continued. Connor could only marvel at how quickly and efficiently Kristy and Harry were able to help assemble the many food dishes that Winnifred was preparing for guests who would be arriving at noon the next day. He was a little less skilled, although no less enthusiastic. And they had accomplished a lot by five that evening when they turned on the news and weather and learned that Imogene was now headed straight for Jacksonville. A powerful category-three hurricane, it had sustained winds of nearly a hundred twenty-five miles per hour. And looked to reach category-four status, with winds of up to a hundred and thirty, by the time it hit landfall at midnight.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What do you think? Should we board up the windows?” Connor asked late Tuesday afternoon as they slid the low-country chicken casseroles into one of the big commercial refrigerators, where they would stay until they were baked at noon the following day.

  Kristy shook her head as she carried several big plastic containers of cut-up vegetables over to the fridge and slid them in beside the prepared sour cream ranch and onion dips. “Not unless or until the state issues an evacuation order. Right now, there’s still a chance the storm will go east or west of us, or will have diminished considerably by the time it gets here.” There were at least a dozen hurricanes every year. Very few of them actually hit the Charleston area, and most of them had been downgraded to tropical storms when they did. Kristy was hoping for the same here. But she could see that Connor was less confident of her decision.

  “How long will it take if we do have to board up the windows?” he asked, as Harry ladled homemade shrimp bisque and vegetarian chili into plastic containers.

  “Five or six hours,” Kristy said. She carried some of the pots over to the big, stainless steel sink for washing. “We already have all the supplies—they’re in the storage shed with the mowers.”

  Susie and Sally continued on with their language arts homework, unconcerned. They, too, had weathered too many storm alerts to become upset.

  Sally looked up. “Our teachers said we might not have school tomorrow, if the weather is really bad.”

  “Yeah, but we have to do our homework anyway, just in case,” Susie said.

  Kristy smiled. “That sounds like good advice.”

  UNFORTUNATELY, THE PREDICTIONS were correct, and Imogene roared onto Jacksonville Beach at four-fifteen the following morning, a category-three hurricane. Winds of nearly a hundred twenty-four miles per hour knocked out power lines, toppled buildings and inflicted property damage in the millions for the state of Florida.

  Airports all along the east coast were closed as the storm turned and continued slowly but steadily northward, and hundreds of flights were cancelled.

  Kristy heard from the conference organizer at eight-thirty that morning. “I suppose you already know the Charleston airport has been closed, our flight from Chicago cancelled,” she said.

  Kristy and the others had been gathered in the kitchen watching the weather forecasts and morning news shows since dawn. All were focused solely on the hurricane. “By the time Imogene gets here later this evening, it’s going to be a tropical storm,” she soothed the anxious organizer. “That means a lot of rain and some high winds, but Imogene will be out of here by tomorrow morning. That still leaves the rest of the weekend.”

  “I’m sorry, but the airline has already told us there is no way they can get us all there tomorrow morning. They’re busy moving planes out of the area and away from any potential storm damage even as we speak, and we have to hold this sales meeting this weekend. So we’ve decided to stay here in the city. Truly am sorry.” She paused. “I understand we’re out our deposit, but owe nothing else, given the extreme circumstances.”

  “That’s right,” Kristy said, well aware of the terms of the reservations agreement that provided an out in case of hurricanes or other severe weather. She paused in turn, aware she hadn’t felt this deeply disappointed in a very along time. “You’re sure we can’t reschedule your visit here? We could apply the full deposit to another date.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Maybe next year. Thanks, anyway.”

  Kristy hung up to find all eyes turned to her. “The conference has been moved to another site,” she reported in the most even tone she could manage. She caught a glimpse of the compassion in Connor’s eyes as he searched her face, and then went on to sum up the conversation she’d had with the event organizer.

  “Oh, Kristy, I’m so sorry,” Winnifred said, splaying a hand across her chest.

  Harry nodded. “Dreadful turn of events,” he said in his clipped English accent.

  The twins, who were just happy that their school had been cancelled for the day, looked at Kristy. “Does this mean you don’t have to work today?” they asked eagerly.

  Doing her best to hide her quickly mounting worry about how she was going to make up for this financial loss, now that she had salaries to pay and Connor to reimburse, Kristy nodded.

  All this did was make Connor—and others—right about the unfeasibility of her staying here, trying to make a go of it.

  “I don’t get it. How come we don’t have school today if it’s not even raining?” Susie asked.

  “Because they think the storm will have reached us by around three o’clock today, and they want to make sure e
veryone is home from school when the rain starts,” Kristy said simply. “So it just makes sense for the district to use one of your bad-weather days today.”

  In the meantime, it was gray and gloomy outside, and the wind was picking up. But there was no reason to panic; they still had a while to get ready for Imogene. “The question is what are we going to do with all this food?” Kristy asked Winnifred. “Some of it can be frozen for later use, but the rest of it really should be eaten.” And they had enough to feed fifty and then some!

  Winnifred smiled thoughtfully. “We could always have a hurricane party,” she suggested, like the inveterate social hostess she was. “Invite family and friends to come and ride out the storm here.”

  Harry jumped on the bandwagon. “Who knows, maybe we could even talk them into renting a few rooms for the night.”

  “Now you’re thinking!” Connor nodded.

  “I don’t know about that.” Kristy frowned. “I don’t want to twist anyone’s arm or put them on the spot. If we invite them, I think they should just come as our guests, period.”

  Everyone looked at her. “You sure you have the toughness needed to be a business person?” Connor teased gently.

  “Connor’s right,” Harry warned soberly. “You’ll never turn a profit that way.”

  “I’ll worry about profit later,” Kristy said, waving off their concern. “I’d rather just have fun tonight and celebrate what we’ve done here thus far.”

  Connor regarded Kristy thoughtfully. “You could still turn this to your advantage.”

  No wonder he was a business tycoon, Kristy thought. He just wouldn’t let go of any opportunity to come out ahead. She folded her arms and lounged against the stainless steel kitchen counter. “How?”

  “By turning this into a publicity-generating event, and writing off the costs for entertaining everyone. That way you don’t have to charge anyone, and yet you can still make use of all the hard work, by having my sister Daisy document through pictures what it’s like to ride out a tropical storm at Paradise Resort. You can put that in your brochures, maybe get a mention and a photo op in a local paper, or travel agency newsletters.”

  Kristy had to admit it was a good idea. “Who could we get to come, do you think?”

  “The entire Deveraux family,” Winnifred said.

  Connor grinned. “The Templetons, too.”

  Winnifred simultaneously made phone calls, issuing invitations, and watched over the kids while Kristy and Connor and Harry went outside to gather up anything and everything that could get blown away in fierce winds.

  They carried it all to the storage shed. “Sure you don’t want to board up any windows?” Connor asked, with a worried glance at the lodge.

  Kristy shook her head, vetoing his suggestion “It’s not necessary for a tropical storm. Only hurricanes.” And with Imogene steadily losing strength as it moved across land, it would be nothing more than that when it finally passed over the Charleston area later that day.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It had just started to drizzle when the guests arrived at three o’clock that afternoon. By the time they sat down for dinner at six-thirty, rain was falling in sheets, while fierce gusts of wind blew it around. They were able to watch the storm surge out the dining room windows. The wind was blowing around forty miles per hour and the waves crashing onto shore were six to ten feet high. No longer a hurricane, Imogene had been downgraded to a diminishing tropical storm. Nevertheless, they knew the torrential rain and wind would continue through the night. And talk during dinner was of other storms they had all weathered, many of them much worse than the one currently pounding the entire eastern half of South Carolina.

  By eight-thirty that evening, the twins were all tuckered out from the excitement of the day. Kristy took them up to her suite on the second floor. While the palmetto trees bent in the wind, and rain pounded upon the roof and the eaves, she tucked them into bed.

  “I had fun today, Mommy,” Sally said.

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Susie confessed around a yawn.

  ‘I’m glad.” Kristy kissed and hugged each of her girls.

  “Think we’ll have school tomorrow?” Sally asked.

  “They’ll let us know at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow, but I’m guessing not,” Kristy said. With a good six inches of rain predicted, a lot of streets would be flooded, and school would not be held unless the buses could get out to collect students county-wide.

  Kristy turned out the lights in their room and went back down to her guests, who were gathered in the comfortable chairs around the big stone fireplace. “How are the twins adjusting to your move here?” Grace Deveraux asked.

  “Better now that they’ve finally started dealing with the enormity of their loss.” Kristy began telling the popular television show host and matriarch of the Deveraux clan about the girls’ struggle to understand the finality of their father’s death, the letters they had written to their dad and the balloons they had sent up to heaven earlier in the week. By the time she finished, everyone was listening and nodding compassionately. “Unfortunately,” Kristy concluded, “I know they’re still waiting for an answer from Lance, some sort of permission to go on with their lives.”

  Winnifred smiled wanly. “I know how that feels. Sometimes I think if I could only have talked to my husband before he died, or found a way to be released from the promises we made to each other at the time we married, I might have been able to move on years ago. And start over again, instead of deciding then and there never to remarry.”

  “So do it now,” Great-aunt Eleanor suggested, her thin voice sounding stronger, more determined than it had all evening.

  “How?” Winnifred asked, her elegantly shaped brows knitting together.

  Eleanor shrugged. “We could have a séance.”

  At that, every man in the room groaned loudly.

  Gabe Deveraux, a critical care physician, rolled his eyes. “Tell me we’re not going to spend the evening trying to communicate with ghosts!” he insisted with a humorous look.

  “I think it would be fun,” Amy Deveraux declared, as she fit her hand into her husband’s. “I’ve never been at a séance before.”

  “Neither have I,” said Daisy, looking as if she, too, was amenable.

  Mitch Deveraux’s wife, Lauren, a Realtor who specialized in historic properties, said, “Charleston is supposed to be haunted by all sorts of ghosts.”

  “Only for the sake of tourism,” Mitch pointed out, ever the practical shipping executive.

  “That’s the way Bridgett and I felt,” Chase said, looking like the sexy magazine publisher he was. “Until we saw the apparition of a woman in white on our wedding night.”

  Tom Deveraux turned and looked at his eldest son, blinking. “You really think you saw a ghost that night?”

  Chase shrugged. “We were standing on the deck of the yacht, and we both saw what looked like a woman from another era hovering above the water for a couple of minutes, before she disappeared into the mists. And in fact, Aunt Eleanor, she looked a lot like you. Only younger.”

  “That might have been my grandmother,” Eleanor said. She turned to the group. “I told you-all I’ve seen her off and on through the years.”

  Connor’s mother clapped her hands together. “So let’s see if we can conjure up one!” she said. She turned to her escort, Payton Heyward. “Are you game?”

  Payton nodded. “I’ve never been to a séance, either.”

  As they all headed into the dining room to light candles and pull some tables together, Kristy insisted, “You all have to promise me that not one single word of this will be breathed to the twins.”

  Everyone concurred as they settled into their chairs.

  Kristy dimmed the lights in the dining hall. As she took a seat beside Connor, a chill swept through her, and she reached over and took his hand, and on her other side, the hand of the grande dame of them all, Eleanor.

  The elderly woman turned to Kristy. “When I was very young, I
fell in love with a sea captain named Douglas Nyquist. He had been promised to Dolly Lancaster by his family, but the two of them weren’t in love, and he did not want to marry her. When he tried to break it off, she grew very angry and had someone familiar with witchcraft put a curse on him and the entire Deveraux family. She swore he would never have a chance to love me or make me his wife—and sure enough, his ship went down in a storm off the coast of Charleston shortly thereafter, killing him and everyone on it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Kristy said, able to see how much that had hurt the elegant Southern lady.

  “She also promised that the entire Deveraux family would suffer for my actions, and that no love would ever last. But I’m happy to say that curse has at last been broken, and now everyone in the Deveraux family has found the love they’ve been wanting.”

  Even Winnifred, Kristy thought, realizing—as did everyone else in the room—that she and Harry Bowles were meant to be together.

  “Amen to that,” Chase exclaimed.

  Enthusiastic cheers were heard around the table.

  “Anyway, I’d like to be the first to talk to the spirits, if I may,” Eleanor continued as they all linked hands and closed their eyes. A murmur of assent rippled around the table, and then, as they all focused on their surroundings, an eerie stillness swept through the room.

  Kristy kept telling herself this wouldn’t, couldn’t work, that there were no such things as ghosts, but she found herself mesmerized by the darkness and the flickering candlelight, and the relentless sounds of the storm outside.

  In a low, tranquil voice, Eleanor summoned the heavens and the attention of her beloved, Douglas. “I want to tell you I’m back with my family, after so many years away. And I’m happy now. I still want to be with you, Douglas, and I will be, one day, I promise. But not until it is my time, too.”