Can't Fight This Feeling (Indigo Royal Resort Book 1)

by Claire Hastings

  Her warm, wet skin felt good against his, and he could feel her nipples reacting to the chill from no longer being under the warm water, sending all the blood rushing to his groin. He could feel himself getting harder by the second, and he was sure she could too. By the looks of her wide eyes growing dark and the mischievous grin on her face, she could more than feel it.

  “Well, hello there,” she said, reaching down in between them, grasping onto his shaft.

  “Good morning, sweetness,” he responded, leaning down, capturing her lips in his for a kiss. “Need help soaping up?”

  Spinning back around, facing into the water, she wiggled her hips toward him. “My back could use some attention.”

  The shower gel she had in there smelled of citrus, matching her shampoo, as he squeezed some out onto his hands, lathering up. He massaged some into her back briefly, before bringing his hands around to her front, finding her breasts, and pinching her nipples. She let out a moan as he continued. Reaching behind her, she found his cock again, stroking it long and slow.

  “Like what you found?” he asked, low and husky.

  “Very, very much.”

  They spent the rest of their morning shower stroking and caressing, until they both were in a state that required them to shower for real. Each taking a turn under the hot water and trying to not freeze while it was the other’s turn, they laughed and joked about all the things that happened at the bonfire. When they finally got out of the shower, one look at the clock told them they needed to speed up their routine if they were going to make breakfast on time.

  Rushing through the lobby, Kyle held on to Drea’s hand tightly, leading the way around guests and staff members. A couple of dirty looks from wait staff in the dining room later, they made their way into the kitchen, both laughing from the wild ride of a morning.

  Everyone but Grayson was in the kitchen, sitting down at the table. Vaughn and Simone were both focused on their phones, while Miller sat hiding behind the morning paper. Kyle knew it was him simply by the weird way he folded it. They grabbed the two seats in between Miller and Simone, grabbing cups for coffee as Grayson slid in the back door from the alley.

  “Gray, you’ll be happy to hear that some light bulbs seem to have been replaced in the kitchen last night. So, you appear to be saved from the shirt,” Miller said, putting the paper down and passing a coffee mug to his brother.

  “Am I the only one who was in the dark about that reference?” Kyle asked Drea. “Pun not intended.”

  “I think so,” she answered.

  “Kyle, congrats, my man, you nailed the skinny-dipping divorcées,” Grayson said, holding out a fist to Kyle. Kyle reached out and bumped, feeling pretty proud of himself.

  “Excuse you, I called the puker!” Drea exhaled.

  “Yes, you did, baby girl,” Miller said. “And she puked during her dad’s attempt at a speech if I’m correct.”

  “She sure did,” Grayson muttered, shivering from the thought of the amount of vomit the moment resulted in. “Speaking of, whoever had the distinct pleasure of cleaning that up deserves a bonus this month.”

  “So, it comes down to knitting needles and the creeper in 531,” Miller said.

  “I saw Mr. 531 making his rounds, and I did not see a single knitting needle,” Vaughn interjected.

  “But you said he’d hit on everyone under thirty, and he did not make it to every last person under the age of thirty. Drea, did you encounter 531?” Simone asked.

  “Nope, he didn’t say a single word to me all night.”

  “Me either,” Kyle interjected. This was met with another fist bump from Grayson.

  “But there were no knitting needles either, so some encounters overrules no needles,” Vaughn argued.

  “Does not!” Simone argued back.

  “Well, Simone, consider it an early wedding gift,” Grayson said, digging into his pocket for a moment before pulling out his cell phone. “But I texted Dalton and asked if he happened to see grandma last night, and sure enough.” He held out his phone to show her and Vaughn.

  Grayson: Hey, did you happen to see that older lady with the knitting needles at the bonfire last night?

  Dalton: Sure did man! As I was making my exit from that redhead who was puking her guts up, she stabbed me with one of those things! Fucking thing hurt like a bitch…

  Dalton: Why, was there an issue?

  Grayson: Nope, just wondering. Thanks man.

  “YES!” Simone shouted. She did a little dance in her chair, only annoying her fiancé further.

  “You paid him to say that, didn’t you?” Vaughn asked.

  “How would I have done that? You can see the trail of texts!”

  “You sure?”

  “You want to text him to ask?”

  “Damn it!” Vaughn smacked the table.

  “Don’t worry, bro, I washed it for you,” Grayson said, rubbing it in.

  “Sorry, Uncle Vaughn,” Drea commented.

  Vaughn continued to grumble about having to wear the shirt as they all dug into breakfast. This was the most food Kyle had ever seen at breakfast. Maybe it was because of the extra body, or maybe Kyle had just never attended a full Wednesday breakfast to know how much food they started out with. The only thing that seemed to be missing was Miller’s infamous magic muffins, and Kyle would bet that if he asked, some could make an appearance.

  Other than Vaughn’s protestations that the text shouldn’t count as proof, the conversation flowed easily, the uncles treating Kyle as if he’d always participated in this ritual, and no one seemed to be any the wiser to what he and Drea were hiding. It was a relief to not feel on edge about their secret, and he wondered if Drea was feeling the same way. She was much more relaxed than she had been the last time they were at this table for a family meal, which was a huge relief.

  “Oh, before I forget,” Vaughn said. “The lawyer will be here Friday morning to add Simone’s name to all the Indigo Royal paperwork. Don’t worry, it’s only my portion she’ll have access to, we’re not dividing it into fifths all of a sudden. Drea, I assume you won’t have any tours Friday? So you can be here to meet with the lawyer at ten?”

  “Why do I have to be there?” Drea asked, confused.

  The conversation came to a halt and silence filled the table. The only noise that seemed to penetrate the silence was Grayson slowly putting his coffee mug back down on the table. The kitchen staff buzzed around them, yet nobody at the table moved. Kyle slid his gaze between each one of the men sitting at the table. All three had unreadable expressions on their faces, yet seemed to know exactly what the others were thinking.

  “Miller, did you not tell her?” Vaughn asked sternly.

  “May have slipped my mind.”

  “How have you not told her?” Grayson asked.

  “We agreed you’d tell her when she turned twenty-one,” Vaughn added.

  “And I guess I forgot,” Miller responded.

  “Tell me what?” Drea asked, confused, looking between each uncle for some kind of answer.

  “So all this time she’s been working for me on the boats, she’s had no idea?” Grayson clarified.

  “Forgot? That’s not something you just forget,” Vaughn ground out. “Five years, man. It’s been five years. You mean to tell me it hasn’t come up once?”

  “Miller, you promised!” Simone interjected. “Right after we fixed up the cottage for her. That was part of the point of giving her the cottage!”

  “Tell me what?!” Drea asked again.

  Her question was met with more silence and uncomfortable glances between her uncles.

  “Tell her,” Simone said through gritted teeth. “Or I will. And it needs to come from you three.”

  “We’re all equal partners in this resort,” Vaughn said.

  “Right, the three of you,” Drea said.

  “No, kiddo, the ownership of the Indigo Royal Resort is in four parts,” Grayson added. There was silence for a moment, all of them letting
the weight of those words sink in.

  Miller finally broke the silence. “You’re the fourth owner, baby girl.”

  Drea’s head was spinning. No, maybe that was the room. Either way, she suddenly felt dizzy and like everything around her was chaos. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. The Indigo Royal was divided into fourths? She was the fourth partner? The only way that could have been was if she’d inherited it when her parents passed, but they didn’t have a financial interest in the resort. She knew the story of the resort; her uncles bought it from a friend of their grandfather after their father passed away from cancer, using the money they had inherited from his estate. Her dad was just along for the ride as Miller’s best friend, helping them with the restoration.

  “What? I’m what?” she sputtered out.

  “You’re the fourth partner in the Indigo Royal Resort,” Vaughn said calmly.

  “How? I don’t understand. It’s a Quinlan Family Resort. I’m not a Quinlan, I’m a Miller.”

  “You’ll actually find that all the legal paperwork says Quinlan-Miller Investments, LLC, dba Quinlan-Miller Family Properties. But we left that off the marketing material since you were underage and we were trying to protect your interests.”

  “What? How?” she sputtered again. She felt like a broken record, just repeating the same words over and over, but every one of their answers only confused her more. She reached under the table and grabbed Kyle’s hand. “You three bought the resort with your inheritance, didn’t you?”

  “But how do you think we could afford to renovate it?” Grayson asked.

  Drea just looked back and forth between them all. She still didn’t understand, but didn’t want to ask the same two one-word questions again. Nothing was making sense.

  “Drea, look at me, baby girl,” Miller said, his voice cracking a bit. “I should have done this a long, long time ago. But I guess that I had a hard time accepting you were all grown up, and this was my way of keeping you little. Because if you didn’t know the full story, you weren’t fully grown.”

  He took a long, deep breath and sighed before taking a big gulp from his coffee mug. She could tell whatever he was about to say was hard for him, but she was dying to know the truth. She squeezed Kyle’s hand underneath the table. Her heart was racing, but the little squeeze he gave her in return was a big comfort.

  “Yes, the story we’ve told you since you were little is true. We used to vacation here, or well, the former version of here, when we were kids. The property had belonged to a friend of our grandfather’s. It’d been in his family for years, originally starting as a family retreat and then someone decided to turn it into a hotel-type thing. It wasn’t really successful for them as a hotel, so they shut it down and were looking to off-load it. When we were kids, we’d loved it down here and often tossed around the idea of someday running our own hotel.” He paused to take another drink of his coffee.

  “So, when our dad passed, we approached Mr. Redford and he sold it to us. However, our inheritance really only covered the cost of purchasing the property. In comes your dad, who had his own family money from the life insurance payouts from his parents’ deaths, and he offered to invest in the renovations if we split the ownership four ways and went into business together. We all agreed, and the Indigo Royal was born.”

  “Wow,” Drea muttered. It was all she could manage to get out. Blinking rapidly, she tried to clear her head and wrap her mind around all he was telling her. It was just so much to take in at once. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “After the accident, we decided that it was best if publicly it just seemed that we own the resort,” Miller stated.

  “The lawyers all told us that it was the best way to protect you and your interests if no one knew that you had inherited so much at six months old,” Vaughn added.

  “Your dad was nothing if not overprepared, so he had a will created right after you were born, leaving everything to you and leaving you to either me or your grandparents. They were too devastated by the loss of both of their daughters to take you in, so I convinced these two, and your life as you know it was formed.”

  “It didn’t take a whole lot of convincing, mind you,” Grayson added with a smile.

  “Technically, you’ve had an equal vote in everything since you were eighteen. But we opted to wait until you were twenty-one, in case you had wanted to go to college. I should have told you years ago, baby girl, but I’ve been selfish in wanting to keep you here. Can you forgive me?”

  “Keep me here? Where would I go?”

  “Per the lawyers, we are supposed to offer you a buy-out option. In case what you want is the money, rather than an equal interest in the resort. Grayson and I have been under the impression you knew about this and opted to stay, rather than the three of us buy you out,” Vaughn stated.

  “Buy me out? No, this resort is my life. I’m the family part of Quinlan Family Resorts!” she said, raising her voice on the last part.

  “I like hearing that. Although technically you’re the Miller in Quinlan-Miller,” Grayson laughed.

  She stood up from the table and started to pace slightly behind her chair. This was massive news. Suddenly, things started to make more sense. Why Grayson took her on the trip to Florida to look at the boat and why he asked for her opinion on hiring Kyle. Why Vaughn had included her on the discussion before bringing on Dalton and promoting Leona. Why Miller insisted she sit in on his choosing of the new silverware and linens, even though the idea of looking at another colored napkin made her want to cry. These weren’t them just asking their niece, they were asking their business partner.

  “So I have an equal say in things?” she asked, stopping her pacing. “So if there is something I want to do with the resort, I can do it?”

  “Well, we have to discuss and vote,” Vaughn said, pointing out proper business etiquette. “But yes, if there are changes you’d like to make or something you want to improve, you get as much of a say as any of us.”

  “Do you know what this means?” she excitedly asked Kyle, who had been sitting quietly at the table the whole time.

  “You get your spa?” he answered, standing up from the table, holding his arms out.

  “Yes!” she said, leaping into his open arms. He caught her almost instinctively, picking her up and twirling her around. When he put her feet back on the ground, she immediately popped up to her tiptoes and kissed him.

  She was so excited about what her uncles just told her that she didn’t stop to think that they were all watching her now as she wrapped her arms around Kyle and continued to kiss him. He didn’t seem to be thinking much about that either, returning her kiss full force, sweeping his tongue lightly across hers. She pulled away from his lips, giggling, and looked into his eyes. She could see the same happiness she was feeling reflected back and it made her heart skip a beat. That was, until she heard her uncle’s voice.

  “What the fuck is going on?!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kyle’s heart leapt into his throat and his stomach dropped as he heard Vaughn’s booming voice from next to them. He’d gotten so lost in the excitement radiating off Drea that he’d totally spaced that they were at breakfast with her family. Her family that didn’t know they were together. Not to mention that they’d just dropped a major bomb about the resort.

  “Get your hands off of her,” Vaughn growled.

  “Vaughn!” Simone chastised. He glared at her before standing up.

  “I’m going to ask again, what the fuck?”

  “Uncle Vaughn, I can explain,” Drea started, pulling away from Kyle.

  “You don’t owe anyone an explanation, baby girl,” Miller said.

  “Is this why you took her away for the weekend? To seduce her? You used our property to try and take advantage of our innocent niece?”

  “No, sir,” Kyle started. “Please sit and let Drea and I tell you our story. I promise it’s not what you think.”

  Shit, Kyle thought. He
knew this moment wouldn’t go well. He’d imagined it in his mind hundreds of times and every time it ended with a different one of her uncles, if not all three, being very, very upset. He drew in a deep breath as he sat back down, hoping to convince Vaughn to do the same.

  “No, I will not sit down. And I’m sure it’s exactly what I think. You don’t get to decide you love her now that you know she has money. If you didn’t love her before, you don’t now.”

  “But I did,” Kyle shouted, standing back up. “I do. I do love her.”

  He heard Drea’s sharp intake of breath as he said the words. He hadn’t meant for them to come out like this, but here they were. But just as he was turning to address Drea, Vaughn cut in.

  “I’m sure you do. Because you just heard all about how she owns a quarter of the Indigo Royal.”

  “Give it a rest, Vaughn, and stop accusing our employee of being a gold digger!” Grayson said.

  “Prove to me that he’s not and I’ll consider rescinding my accusation.”

  “Consider?” Drea chirped.

  “Vaughn, have you watched these two, like, ever? They’ve been circling each other like animals in heat for years. It was about time something happened,” Miller claimed.

  “I’m just glad he decided to shit rather than get off the pot,” Grayson added, looking over at Miller.

  “Me too,” Simone stage whispered.

  “So you all have known about this? And you’re okay with her being with…him?” Vaughn said, gesturing toward Kyle.

  The statement was a punch to the gut, and Kyle couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Is this really what they thought of him? Some money-hungry lowlife who would prey on Drea to get what he wants? He’d worked here for five years, poured his heart into this place, and this was the reaction he got.