by J. L. Berg
He might have also dropped a note with his phone number too, but party-pooper Piper had snatched that out of my hands before I could get any ideas.
Something about making enough bad decisions for one night.
Whatever.
The night was just getting started, and the bar was filled with tons of people just waiting to make poor choices. To our right was a rambunctious bachelor party, and to our left was some sort of girls’ night out. Their shrill laughs made my eardrums hurt, but I kind of dug eavesdropping on their conversations.
“Why would you even ask that question?” I gave her a wide-eyed look that caused her to roll her own set of peepers.
“Why? Because this isn’t you, Lani! Flirting with the bartender, drinking shots… You’re acting out, and you know it.”
I gave her a look that said she was seriously destroying my buzz.
“Fine,” she relented. “But don’t call me in the morning, complaining about your massive headache.”
I made a sound from my lips that reminded me a lot of the noise Piper’s little niece made when she was spitting out baby food.
“Please. Like I’d ever do that.”
We both knew I would. It was how this whole friendship thing worked. She took care of me, and I took care of her. It was symbiotic…well, mostly. I thought Piper gave more than her fair share of motivational speeches.
Especially when it came to my dad.
That was exactly why we were in a bar and why I was currently ordering shots like I was a college freshman on spring break in Cozumel.
Or at least, I thought I was.
I really had no idea the frequency of shots ordered on a spring break in college. Piper and I’d spent our spring breaks ordering room service in my high-rise penthouse while binge-watching all the TV shows we’d missed during the year.
“Why didn’t we ever do anything fun for spring break?” I blurted out, deciding to sip my latest round of shots. My lips were starting to feel sort of tingly, and I had a nice buzz going. No use in ruining it.
“Because you were always hopeful that your father would show,” she said. “Every year, you’d send him the dates of every break we had, from fall break to Christmas and right through to spring. And every year, he’d miss every last one of them.”
Grabbing my shot, I downed it.
So much for sipping, I thought.
The bachelor party nearby cheered me on, causing me to blush as I held up my empty shot glass in their direction. The girls next to us laughed. I couldn’t help but overhear one of them talking about a recent vacation. I was in the hotel business; it was kind of my whole life. And wasn’t that just a little sad?
“The hotel was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I don’t know what my husband was thinking when he booked it. Thank God it’s for sale. Maybe someone decent will buy it or, better yet, bulldoze the thing!”
Everyone laughed.
“But the town was as cute as a button. Like small-town Americana meets island life.”
“Why do you do this to yourself?” Piper asked, pulling me back, front and center.
“Do what?”
“Torture yourself over your father,” she said.
“I don’t know, honestly. I mean, I can’t even remember the last time I saw him.”
“We saw him at the Christmas party,” she said with an ounce of hope.
“That was a company party, and he said a few awkward words to me, just like he did to everyone else.”
“He hasn’t been the same since—”
“My mom died. Well, you know what? That was thirteen years ago. The rest of us learned how to move on. Why can’t he?”
Silence fell between us, and it was times like this when I knew Piper really deserved something close to sainthood. In seconds I’d gone from a playful drunk, flirting with the bartender, to a woeful heiress, complaining about her daddy issues, and my best friend had barely batted an eyelash.
“You deserve better,” she said, taking my hand in her own. “And one day, your father’s going to wake up from that coma he’s put himself in and see the amazing woman you’ve become while he’s been too busy to notice.”
“And then will he give me a job?”
“Is that all you’re after? A job?”
I shrugged.
“You have a job, remember?” she reminded me. “And your dad will promote you. Eventually. We might just need to get a little creative on how we get his attention next time.”
For some reason, her words settled at just the right moment.
Maybe it was the alcohol.
Maybe it was the girls laughing in the booth next to me or the fact that, in a couple of weeks, another year would pass without my mother around.
“Creative you say?”
“Oh no.” Piper’s eyes went wide with the look of panic she got whenever she knew I was getting a wild but genius idea.
It was the same look she’d had on her face the night I talked her into matching lightning bolt tattoos on our ankles. She’d been scared out of her mind when we walked into that tattoo parlor, but she’d walked out, grinning like a damn fool after that burly biker dude tatted up her ankle.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice already rising an octave.
“Shut up. I’m thinking,” I said before turning my chair toward the cackling girls next to us.
“Oh God, what are you doing?” she said as I waved my hand behind me in an attempt to get her to shut up.
“Hey,” I said in my most uppity, girlie-girl voice possible. “I’m sorry to butt in, but I heard you speaking about a hotel—”
“Oh my God, yes!” one of the women answered. She didn’t seem fazed at all that I’d been eavesdropping or the fact that I was a total stranger.
The group of women was probably our age, maybe a bit older. Young mothers out for a night on the town. Most of them had rocks the size of my fist on their left ring fingers and were dressed head to toe in designer clothing.
Honestly, I was surprised I didn’t know any of them.
High society in Honolulu was a tight-knit community, full of backstabbing, gossip, and climbing your way to the top. I’d done a good job of keeping out of the way, but I would always be the daughter of Stephen Hart, hotel tycoon. It was a hard title to run away from.
“My bestie and I are planning a little vacay for spring break next year, and I overheard you talking about that cute little town…” I literally hated myself right now. I sounded like a sorority girl from the movie Legally Blonde, but I had a feeling this was what these particular women identified with, and I was right.
Their fake blonde heads bobbed up and down as they gave me the lowdown.
“And you said it’s where?”
“Ocracoke. North Carolina. It’s just darling. But don’t stay at the hotel there,” she warned. “It’s awful.”
“Oh, I don’t plan on staying there,” I said with a mischievous grin as I turned back to a worried-looking Piper. “I’m going to buy it.”
As it turned out, my dear old daddy was one step ahead of me and had actually bought the property in question only days earlier.
Seemed my father and I had similar taste.
That, or fate just had a wicked sense of humor.
Either way, it made this quest-for-independence thing a whole lot easier in a way. I’d planned on just buying the property myself with the trust fund he’d set up for me years ago—the one I hadn’t touched once in my entire adult life in a desperate attempt to prove to him just how responsible I was.
In my drunken haze, this plan had all seemed pretty cut-and-dried. Buy hotel, make it amazing, and finally prove to my father just how worthy I was of his adoration.
The fact that he’d bought it first?
Well, it definitely made things a bit more interesting.
And by interesting, I meant terrifying. Because, now, if I failed, it wouldn’t be just my money I was wasting.
It would be my father’s.
>
Of course, I had to get to it first.
All that required was a couple of white lies.
Okay, a few giant lies.
But the building did have my name on the side of it, and damn it, I deserved this chance. And I was going to take it. No more waiting around in empty conference rooms while my father slipped out the back to avoid seeing me.
There was no way he’d be able to ignore this.
Piper, being the strict rule-follower that she was, wanted nothing to do with my evil scheme, and I didn’t blame her. If and when I got caught by my father, I had a number of things to fall back on—my stellar personality, guilt over the fact that he’d basically checked out after my mom died, followed by tears, and then finally, the fact that I was an only child and if he sacked me, who else would he pass this company on to?
Piper, on the other hand, basically had her good work ethic and talent, which would continue to be wasted if I didn’t get us out of this office and knee deep into a project of our own.
So, for now, I was solo.
No one deserved to be on the brunt end of my father’s wrath for pulling a stunt like this, except for me.
So, after a bit of hacking, thanks to a few tricks I’d learned from a brief interlude with a certain IT guy, I was on a company jet, headed for North Carolina, ready to check out my first solo project.
It didn’t take long for Piper to track me down. A mere fifteen minutes in the air, and my cell phone started blowing up, her distinctive ringtone filling the small space with a smooth R&B jam that reminded me of her quirky sense of humor.
“Where the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Well, hello to you, too!”
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”
I looked out the window of the jet. There was nothing but water for hundreds of miles, the Pacific Ocean sparkling below like a blue sequined blanket.
“It depends,” I said. “What do you think I did?”
I heard a heavy sigh on the other end. Well, not quite a sigh. It was more of an exaggerated huff. “What I think you did is hacked into the company’s database—although I have no idea how—and put your name down as the lead designer for that tiny hotel in North Carolina.”
My lips pressed together as I tried not to smile. Even though we weren’t physically together, she’d be able to sense it.
And she wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Okay, so, yeah…that I did.”
“What the hell, Lani?” Her voice was low, her words hushed, but they carried an intensity that spoke volumes. “You could be fired for this. Worse, you could be arrested. That’s a crime!”
I made that noise again, the one that reminded me of Piper’s niece. “Arrested? Please. Do you really think my father is going to arrest me?”
Silence followed my question until she finally groaned. “No, but seriously, what were you thinking? This isn’t you! The Leilani I know doesn’t do this.”
She’d said something similar last night while I was knocking back those shots from the bartender. It hadn’t bothered me so much then, but it did now.
“Exactly!” I said. “The Leilani you know just sits idly by while her father promotes everyone but her. The Leilani you know continually gets hurt time and time again when that same father constantly bails on her. I’m sick of being that Leilani. I want to be better than that Leilani.” With every word, I’d let my emotions build until tears welled beneath my eyelids, and my chest grew heavy.
“Okay,” she said. “I get it.”
My lips quivered. “I can’t wait any longer. I have to show him what I can be, if he just lets me.”
“Then go show him.”
I could hear the smile in her voice.
Like I’d said, even miles away, I could sense it.
“I will.”
“And, Lani?”
“Yeah?” I smiled back.
“Make sure you show him good. For the both of us.”
It had been three days.
Three days since the announcement of the sale that had rocked the small community of Ocracoke.
Three days of endless chatter revolving around a single word—Hart.
It was all anyone could talk about.
“How will this affect my restaurant business?”
“What about the view from my house?”
“Do you think they’ll tear the whole building down?”
Every single conversation circled around that damn hotel, and in those three days, I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep.
With everyone in an uproar over this hotel tycoon coming to town, my brother had taken it upon himself to try to calm their fears, once again leaving me to man the family business.
Ever since Cora had shown up and my brother had finally started to give a damn about the world around him, pulling himself out of the rut he’d found himself in after his accident, the town had begun to see him as a sort of leader.
He headed several committees and led town meetings.
I guessed it was a good thing we didn’t have a mayor; otherwise, I’d probably be sitting in this office by myself—permanently.
Feeling my foul mood growing by the second, I decided it was time for a break. Pulling out my cell, I called the only person I knew who could pull me out of this horrible funk I was in.
“You know, you could just walk across the street,” Millie greeted me, not even bothering to say hello.
I smiled, thankful for her friendship. We’d been buddies in high school, but we had grown apart after she went on to college, and I stayed here. It had been a mutual distancing, but honestly, I had been grateful for it at the time. I had been bitter back then. Bitter and angry over the life I’d given up, and hearing about hers just starting out? Well, it hadn’t helped.
“Yeah, but what would be the fun in that?” I goaded.
“I could try to sell you one of these fancy soaps I just got in. I’ve got one that smells like lavender and another that smells exactly like vanilla ice cream. It’s divine.”
“Why in the world would I ever want to smell like ice cream?” I asked, leaning back in the old leather chair. I propped my feet up on the desk and allowed myself a moment to relax. It’d already been a long day, having been out on the sound twice with tourists already and it was barely noon. And my day wasn’t close to being over yet.
“Well, I’m sure Sierra wouldn’t mind.”
My feet dropped to the floor with a thud. “Who told you?”
She laughed, a lyrical laugh that sent my nerves into panic mode, my eyes darting around for any sign of Sierra’s crazy grandfather.
“Seriously, Millie, who?”
“Relax,” she said. “Dean told me about it, and I said I’d rile you up a little just to make sure you were done and past it. Because, really, Taylor? She’s, like, twenty-two. Tops.”
“So?”
“She’s in college. Do you even remember college?” Her voice held a certain amount of judgment mixed with a healthy dose of amusement.
“Hey! We’re not that old. You talk like we’re a candle or two away from retirement. And, to answer your question, no, I don’t remember college. Remember, not all of us got to go.”
I heard her suck in a breath.
“Sorry. I forget how much I missed while I was—”
“Gone? Well, at least you came to your senses and came home.”
“I did,” she confirmed. “It only took ten years and one hell of a sexy Brit to get me back here. Now, how about I make up for some of that lost time by taking you out for lunch? I’ll swing by and pick you up in a few minutes.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling my stomach grumble in agreement.
We hung up, and I used what little time I had to look at my schedule for the afternoon and pick up around the office. While there wasn’t much in here for the customers, we did have a small rack by the door of products and a mini fridge of drinks and snacks, all of which got thoroughly ransacked with each tour
.
Just as I was rearranging the small box of Airheads, I heard the door chime, signaling the arrival of my lunch date.
“You’d better be taking me to Billy’s because I have a hankering for shrimp, and you know no one on this godforsaken island does shrimp better than that man.”
“I don’t believe I’m familiar with the word hankering or a man named Billy.” The voice that replied was smooth as silk and immediately made my boy down under come to attention.
Definitely not Millie. I’d trained myself to ignore the fact that she was a smokin’-hot female a long time ago. She’d always been the kind of friend I wanted to keep, which meant I’d basically been treating her like a dude since puberty.
My head popped up, and I nearly slammed into the female with the sexy voice.
“Sorry,” I said, holding my hands out to steady us both. “I, uh, thought you were someone else.”
“Clearly,” she replied, a sort of smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
And what a beautiful mouth it was. Pretty and pink with just the right amount of pout. A man could kiss those lips for days and never get bored.
But the gorgeous view didn’t stop there.
No, it spread from head to toe.
With dark skin and long, wavy brown hair, she looked like a damn Polynesian princess. And I would be more than glad to be her prince.
For an evening or two.
“I’m Taylor Sutherland, and you are?”
“Curious,” she simply said.
I watched as she strolled around, looking at the product rack at the front with an appraising eye. Her fingers grazed the assortment of candy as I took another moment to check out her long, flowing dress and all the ways it hugged her luscious curves.
And then I thought about all the ways I’d like to tear it off of her.
“Are you the owner of this establishment?” she asked.
“I am,” I boasted, giving her a wicked grin that was sure to earn me a dinner date. It had a smashing success rate with tourists.
And I doubted she’d be an exception.
“And you’re the only company like this on the island?”
