Taking Over the Tycoon

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  They all waited, barely breathing, for some reply, but there was nothing. No sign that anyone in the spirit world had heard. No sign they hadn’t. Kristy’s hand trembled slightly, as across from her, Harry Bowles cleared his throat. “I have something I want to say, too, to Winnifred’s late husband, Lieutenant Smith,” Harry stated seriously. “And it’s simply that I love Winnifred. And I promise I will always take care of her whether she ever decides to marry me or not.”

  A hushed gasp swept around the table. No one was surprised by the feelings, just the bold declaration of them.

  Winnifred opened her eyes, looked at Harry and smiled. Then she closed her eyes again, and the mood grew solemn as she, too, spoke to her deceased husband. “I would marry Harry. But I’m bound by the promises I made. I can’t unless you give me a sign.”

  Without warning, the lights in the adjacent lobby flickered off and then on again.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you but that felt like a sign to me,” Tom Deveraux said, nonplussed.

  It felt eerie as all heck to Kristy. And judging by the way Connor was suddenly gripping her hand, he felt the same. A candle in the center of the table went out, then another—for no reason that anyone could see. Another eerie chill swept across the back of Kristy’s neck.

  “Mommy?” Susie and Sally were suddenly standing in the entrance of the dining room.

  Without warning, Kristy was suddenly shivering. Her skin was ice cold and her teeth were chattering.

  “We saw Daddy,” Sally declared.

  Looking stunned and disbelieving, but more comforted than frightened, Susie added, “And a lady with hair like that—” she pointed to Great-aunt Eleanor “—in a long white dress.”

  The storm howled outside as the girls walked across the wide-planked floor in their cartoon-decorated nightgowns and bare feet. “Yeah, they waked us,” Susie confided as she slid onto one side of Kristy’s lap, Sally the other. Kristy held them close, grateful for their warmth. Beside her, Connor moved in protectively, too.

  “Daddy wanted us to come down here,” Sally declared.

  Kristy buried her face in the fragrant softness of her daughter’s just-shampooed hair. “You were dreaming, honey.”

  “No,” Susie insisted stubbornly, as she pressed her head against Kristy’s shoulder and wrapped her arm around her waist. “He and the lady led us all the way down here before they disappeared.”

  Kristy swallowed, aware that the room had grown utterly silent even as Tom Deveraux got up and calmly went over and hit the lights, bathing the dining hall in a warm glow. “What do you mean, disappeared?” Kristy asked, her adrenaline only increasing. How much of what they had just been saying and doing had the girls witnessed?

  “Like magic,” Sally explained.

  Only there was no magic.

  Just as there were no ghosts. Or any way to really communicate with those in heaven. Not here on earth, anyway. Kristy held her daughters tighter. She was about to tell them it was just the storm when there was another burst of wind, a loud, slow, crackling noise and a huge, horrible crash.

  CONNOR AND THE REST of the men there spent the next few hours dealing with the huge palmetto tree that had smashed through the windows of the bedroom where the twins had been sleeping, just minutes before they had awakened and vacated their beds.

  The only casualty, it seemed, was the Carolina Storm cap he had put on before going out into the rain to the storage shed, in search of plywood panels to board up the broken windows, and a chainsaw. The cap Kristy had given him was torn off his head and whipped away before he could attempt to catch it.

  Connor lamented that for a number of reasons. It was the first gift Kristy had ever given him. It bore the paint stains of all the hard work he had personally put in on the lodge. And it was a symbol of the different kind of life he would have if he and Kristy made their relationship permanent. The kind of life where everything was possible and nothing, from the most mundane to the most magnificent, was off-limits to him.

  Hoping the hat would turn up somewhere on the beach the following day, Connor went back to work, and the rest of their mission went fine.

  By midnight, he and Harry and the Deveraux men had managed to saw off the part of the thirty-foot tree sticking through the window, clean up most of the broken glass and board up the opening, to protect the interior from further damage. But the floor of the girls’ bedroom was drenched with rainwater blown in by the wind, and everything in the room was a soggy mess. Connor knew there would be damage to the ceiling of the guest rooms situated directly below them, as well.

  The twins had been kept downstairs, where there was no shortage of adults to comfort them and assure them everything was going to be all right, and put them to bed—this time on mattresses that had been pulled to the protected sitting area in the lobby.

  Susie and Sally were delighted—it was like a giant slumber party with adults—and no one else seemed to mind.

  But Kristy was shaken to her core, and the first moment he got her alone, Connor took her into his arms to reassure her, too.

  “I don’t understand why that tree fell over like that,” she said.

  But Connor knew, and the next morning, when dawn broke and Imogene had moved up the coast, and they surveyed the half dozen other trees that had also been toppled during the storm, he made a surreptitious phone call to Harlan Decker and asked the private investigator to meet him as soon as possible.

  “I want to talk to you, too,” Harlan said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “Proof?”

  “And it’s all on videotape. Where and when do you want to meet?”

  Connor knew something had to be done before the insurance investigators came out to look at the situation. Kristy had already put in a call to them. “How about half an hour? Can you make it out to Folly Beach?”

  “Yeah. I’m just a few miles away from Paradise Resort now. Do you want me to come there?” Harlan Decker asked.

  “No.” Connor wanted to know what they were dealing with before he presented Kristy with the facts. “There’s a coffee shop half a mile up the road. I don’t know if it’s open or not, but we could meet there in the parking lot.”

  Meanwhile, as the rainwater receded, the guests all began heading off to their respective homes, and Tom and Grace Deveraux took the eighty-six-year-old Eleanor home with them.

  The resort and many of the other homes along Folly Beach had lost power during the night, but Kristy had backup generators that powered the lodge refrigerators and freezers, so she turned those on. Charleston was fine, so Harry and Winnifred offered to take the girls to Winnifred’s historic-district home, to stay until services at Paradise Resort were restored and they again had electricity to power their lights and hot water heaters.

  Kristy agreed with the plan. First, though, she wanted to survey the fallen trees, and she had promised the twins they could take a walk along the beach before they left. They knew, as did Kristy, that after a storm of that magnitude, there would be lots of interesting things deposited onto the sand. That was okay with Harry and Winnifred. They had some things to talk about, and wanted to take a private walk along the beach, too.

  Connor wasn’t surprised. In fact, he was betting, from the way the two were looking at each other, that they’d be either dating or married soon.

  “You want to come with us, Connor?” the twins asked him eagerly as they prepared to set off with their mom. Kristy looked as if she wanted him to join them, too.

  Reluctantly, Connor had to decline. “Actually, I’ve got an errand to run—some pending business with a property I’m involved with that I need to check on,” he said, promising himself he would tell her the whole story as soon as he could.

  He saw a brief flash of hurt in Kristy’s eyes. The girls looked surprised and disappointed, too, that he would be running off to do something work-related instead of spending time with the three of them. But it couldn’t be helped. And soon Kristy would understand
why, Connor vowed silently. “It should only take an hour,” he continued easily. “Then I promise I’ll be back to help you get squared away here.”

  Kristy pulled herself together even as she stepped away from him. “Take your time,” she said in the polite tone she usually reserved for potential customers. “I realize you have responsibilities, too.”

  None, Connor thought fiercely, more important than the three of you.

  HARLAN DECKER WAS WAITING when Connor pulled into the parking lot. The coffee shop was still closed, due to lack of power, so Harlan left his car and got into Connor’s. He had a compact video camera in his hand and several videotapes. “I want you to take a look at this,” he said, turning on the camera and handing it over.

  Connor viewed the picture on the playback screen—and saw Bruce Fitts carrying jugs of weed killer from tree to tree, dousing the roots liberally with the poison.

  Connor scowled. “That son of a…”

  “My feelings exactly,” Harlan said.

  Connor handed the tape back to the detective. “Did you see what happened last night at the resort?”

  Harlan nodded. “Looked like half a dozen palmetto trees toppled over.”

  “One of them crashed through a window in the twins’ bedroom. They could have been seriously hurt.”

  “What do you want to do?” Harlan asked, sharing Connor’s concern.

  What he had been wanting to do, Connor thought. “Talk to Bruce Fitts.” He paused, aware that the ex-cop was in a position to be very helpful. “You want to come with me?”

  Harlan nodded. “It’d be my pleasure.”

  Connor drove to Fitts’s place. As he turned his Mercedes into the driveway, he saw the man standing in the garage. Bruce was wearing a bathing suit, gold chains and flip-flops. He had a cloth in his hand and was polishing his car. Fitts smirked as he watched Connor get out, then turned curious eyes toward Harlan. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the turncoat,” he said nastily. “Sleeping with Beauty yet? Or still just making out with her every chance you get?”

  Wondering if Fitts had been spying on him and Kristy on Tuesday evening, as they’d kissed good-night, Connor held on to his temper with effort. It was all he could do not to punch the smarmy neighbor in the face. “The palmetto trees at Paradise Resort have been poisoned. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Do I look like a tree specialist?” Fitts asked sarcastically.

  Harlan pointed at the jugs of weed killer lined up in the garage. “You don’t have to be a genius to know that large doses of weed killer can kill a tree. And that dead trees topple a lot faster than healthy ones.”

  Fitts shrugged uncomfortably. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “The surveillance videos at the resort say differently,” Harlan stated impassively, looking at that moment every bit the ex–law enforcement official he was.

  “So here’s the deal,” Connor said, picking up where Harlan left off. “You’ve got twenty-four hours to figure out what kind of reparation you’re going to make to Kristy for the property damage you’ve done. You’re going to apologize to her, and then you’re going to leave her and her property alone.”

  “And if I don’t?” Fitts countered with an ugly smile.

  “Then,” Harlan explained, just as smoothly, “I telephone my friend the district attorney. We show him what we’ve got, and encourage him to prosecute to the full extent of the law. For property damage, as well as the potential health threat posed.”

  Bruce Fitts glared at them silently. For once he had no smart-alecky comeback.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Connor warned silkily. “And Bruce?” he added, narrowing his eyes. “Be generous.”

  KRISTY TOLD HERSELF the fact that Connor had been behaving oddly since the previous evening had more to do with the storm and the tree crashing through the window than anything she had said or done.

  As for him going off alone, to make secret phone calls on his cell phone that morning…well, they probably had to do with the pending business he said he had elsewhere. He dealt with commercial properties. He probably had something on the market that might also have been damaged in the storm.

  It was perfectly logical that he would want to go take a look. She just wished he had been more up front with her about what he had been going off to do. She didn’t like being left out of the loop that way. It reminded her too much of the way Lance had always patted her on the head and told her not to worry about family finances, or the problems and challenges he encountered in his medical practice. It had seemed as if Lance didn’t really think she could handle things, so felt he’d had to protect her.

  Kristy didn’t want to be protected. She wanted to be respected.

  Until now, she felt she’d been getting that from Connor.

  Now…now she had the oddest feeling he was shutting her out, the way her late husband had.

  Kristy sighed wearily and swept her hand through her hair as the girls raced ahead of her up the beach, shouting out happily as they discovered curiosities here and there. Maybe she was just tired. Imagining things. Lord knew it had been a very long and emotional night, what with everything that had happened. And she still had so much ahead of her to do. Trying to deal with the insurance people, and getting the fallen palmetto trees cut up and carted away. The landscaping around the lodge restored…

  “Mommy, you are not paying attention!” Sally scolded, as she doubled back to take Kristy’s hand.

  Susie raced back and took her other one. “You have to enjoy yourself, Mommy!”

  “Yeah,” Sally chimed in, “we want you to have fun with us this morning!”

  “’Cause there’s no school!” Susie said.

  Tugged out of her troubled reverie by her daughters, Kristy grinned. They were right. The sun was shining. They had dodged a bullet with Imogene; the damage had been minimal, compared to what people in north Florida were dealing with, where the storm had first come ashore. It was a beautiful day. And her daughters, after grieving for so long, were finally looking happy and excited, and yes, almost carefree again.

  “All right. I’m concentrating now,” Kristy said. “So let’s see what we can find.”

  As it turned out, they found quite a lot. There were oars, part of what looked like a trashed sea kayak, lots of colorful seashells and chunks of driftwood, a plastic soda bottle and a cooler. And near their favorite place in the dunes, the spot where they used to sit with their daddy and study the ocean, they all saw a sliver of something bright orange sticking out of the sand. As they got closer, Kristy realized what it was. “Look, it’s Daddy’s Frisbee!” Susie said, tugging it free. She inspected it curiously. “How did it get here?”

  “It must’ve been picked up by the wind and blown out of the window when the tree came crashing in,” Kristy murmured. Strange, though, that it would have ended up here, of all places.

  “And here’s his old beach towel!” Susie pulled and tugged until it came up out of the sand, where it, too, had been buried.

  And beside that was something else they had been on the lookout for all morning—Connor’s missing hat.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Connor had just gotten out of his car and was walking across the hotel lawn when the twins came racing across the dunes to his side. Kristy was right behind them. “Look, Connor! We found your hat and Daddy’s Frisbee and his beach towel!”

  “And they were all together.”

  “Yeah! Half-buried in the sand.”

  Connor looked at Kristy, wondering if this was some sort of hoax. “It’s true,” she said quietly. He could tell by the cautious way she was looking at him that she wanted to know if he’d had anything to do with it.

  He let her know with a return look that he hadn’t.

  “Do you want to play Frisbee with us on the beach, Connor?” Sally asked happily, as she handed over his sand-encrusted Carolina Storm hat.

  Connor knew how they’d felt about that before. They’d wanted to receive some sort
of permission from their father first. “You’re sure it’s okay?” he asked, looking at the two little girls, then their beautiful mother. Kristy seemed just as stunned by the request as he was.

  Sally nodded and continued enthusiastically, “We think it would be okay, now that we’ve seen Daddy again.”

  “Yeah, we’re pretty sure this is what he wants us to do. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left his stuff out there for us to find,” Susie said.

  “You two go ahead and I’ll catch up with you. I want to talk to your mommy a minute,” Connor said. He and Kristy watched as Susie and Sally raced off, both of them looking equally messy and exuberant.

  “They really think they saw Lance last night,” Kristy murmured, stepping close to his side.

  Connor wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Maybe they did,” he said softly, glad they finally had time and opportunity to have a heart-to-heart talk about this. “Something—or someone—got them out of that bedroom in the nick of time last night. If they think that angel of mercy was their father, then maybe it was.”

  “And he wants us all to move on,” Kristy murmured back.

  “I have to admit,” Connor said as his arms tightened around her, “I want that for you, too.” He wanted it for all of them.

  CONNOR, KRISTY AND the girls spent the next half hour playing Frisbee on the beach. They were still enjoying themselves immensely, romping around in the sand, when Harry and Winnifred walked up hand in hand.

  “I’ve got to go to Charleston and check on my home there,” Winnifred told them with a contented smile. “Harry is going to go with me. We thought the girls might like to spend the rest of the day with us, and you could pick them up later—say this evening after supper?”

  “That sounds wonderful, if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Kristy replied. That was a long time. Longer than she had planned on.

  “Not at all,” Winnifred said sincerely. “We really enjoy their company.” She cast a look over her shoulder at the lodge. “And I know you still have a lot to do here.”