The banner hanging over the lobby touted the conference, and the people standing in small groups wore lanyards with their names emblazoned across them. That would make identifying who we were talking to much easier, although I had no idea what I should expect when dealing with authors. I assumed they were like actors, full of themselves and oblivious to real-world issues like Megalodons and Chupacabras, but I had nothing to base that on other than movies and television.
“Do you like pimento cheese?”
The question seemed so out of the blue I could do nothing but stare at the woman who claimed the stool to my left as she fixed a friendly smile on her pretty face. She wore a lanyard. The name read “Sarah Hilton,” and she wore the most ridiculous cat T-shirt I’d ever seen. The feline in question had a horn (like a unicorn) and there were sparkles flying out of its butt.
“Um ... what was the question?”
“Pimento cheese,” she repeated. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever tried it,” I said after a beat. “Should I like it?”
“Absolutely. I have some up in my room if you’re interested. Two-twenty-seven.”
“Okay.” The word “odd” didn’t begin to describe her. She seemed nice enough, don’t get me wrong, but inviting me to her room seemed weird. “I’ll see if I can free up some time.”
“Great.” She took the drink she was waiting for from the barista and happily shuffled away from the counter, heading toward a small group of women who looked to be cackling and having a good time.
“Who was that?” Jack asked as he appeared at my other side, hoisting himself onto a stool and signaling the barista for a tea to match mine.
“Sarah Hilton,” I replied. “I think she’s an author. I’ll have to look her up.”
“What were you talking about?”
“She asked me if I wanted pimento cheese and then invited me to her room.”
“Hmm.” Jack’s gaze was thoughtful as he watched the woman cavort with her friends. “Maybe she was hitting on you.”
That hadn’t even occurred to me. “Why? Is pimento cheese code for something I don’t know about? I said I would think about it. What if she thinks I mean it and waits for me to join her in her room?”
Instead of being upset, as I expected, Jack merely chuckled. “Something tells me you’ll be okay. As for the room situation, we’re not going to be in regular rooms this time. Apparently the resort is sold out.”
“What does that mean? We’re not sleeping on the beach, are we? I’ve heard horrible things about crabs crawling into certain cracks and crevices if you sleep on the beach.”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “Ah, you must be talking about the notorious ass crab infestation of 2015. I think we’re past that.”
His sense of humor reared itself at the oddest of times. “I didn’t say ass crabs.”
“Yes, well, that’s what I heard.”
“Whatever.” I sipped my tea. “What are we going to do about the rooms?”
“They have timeshare condos. We’re getting two of those.”
“Two?” I did the math. “How many rooms?”
“Four.”
That sounded a little too cozy for my taste. “So ... how is that going to work?”
Jack shrugged. “Chris and Hannah will take one room. We’ll put Laura in the condo with them to punish her. Then you and Millie can share a room in the other. Bernard will take the second room and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Why do I have to share with Millie?”
“Because it’s either her or Laura.”
He had a point and still ... . “Why can’t you share with Bernard and I’ll take the couch?”
“Because I’m not sharing with anyone. Bernard is a great guy but we’re not sharing a bed.”
I loved Millie dearly, but I didn’t want to share a bed either. “I’ll sleep on the floor ... or I guess I could sleep on the couch in the other condo.”
Jack blew out a sigh. “Do you really want to share a roof with Chris and Hannah the way they’re ... all over each other?”
I understood what he wasn’t saying and shrugged. “I think it’s kind of cute.”
“It won’t be cute when they lose control in the middle of the night.”
“How do you even know they’re sharing a room?”
“Because Chris flat out told me. He seemed to think I would frown on it, but it’s not my business. That doesn’t mean I want to share a roof with them. That’s why Laura is being punished. No one likes her. And at least she won’t be under our roof fouling things up.”
He had a point. “I guess it doesn’t matter who is sleeping where. What are we going to do once we drop our stuff off in the condos?”
“We’re heading out to the pier to look at the scene.”
That sounded exciting. “It’s nice out. I love the beach. I haven’t been in a long time ... but I love the ocean ... and the waves.”
“And the Megalodons,” Jack added.
“Don’t get snide,” I chided, wagging a finger. “I don’t like your attitude. It could be a Megalodon.”
“Megalodons are extinct.”
“There was a fish that was thought to be extinct but discovered alive,” I argued. “I can’t remember its name but I know it exists.”
“I know what fish you’re talking about, and that’s a completely different situation. That fish grows to be, like, six feet long, not sixty.”
“Still, we haven’t seen everything in the ocean. It’s too vast. Maybe the Megalodon was living in a deep trench and lost its food source and had to come to warmer waters or something.”
“You saw that in that Jason Statham shark movie. I saw it, too.”
A smile flew to my lips, unbidden. “I think it’s kind of funny that we both like bad shark movies.”
“We’ll have to have a movie night when we get back.”
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one from our group was eavesdropping and lowered my voice. “We’re doing okay, right? Although ... maybe you shouldn’t be sitting with me if we’re trying to fly under the radar.”
“We spent time together before we started dating,” Jack reminded me. “If we completely stop hanging out they’ll be suspicious.”
“I think Millie is already suspicious. She said I was shiny this morning.”
Jack chuckled. “You did look a little shiny.”
“You look shiny, too.”
“Men don’t look shiny.”
“Oh, yeah? How do you look?”
“Studly and brave.” He puffed out his arms enough to make me laugh and then sobered. “We can’t stop interacting. We can’t interact too much. It’s a balancing act. We’ll feel things out until it slips into place.”
“Luckily Chris and Hannah are so caught up in each other they won’t notice. Laura will figure it out, though. Millie will, too.”
“They will. By then, hopefully we’ll have everything figured out ourselves.”
“That would be great.”
“So ... we’ll work toward that.”
THE CONDOS WERE BIGGER than we thought, which was a blessing. That didn’t change the fact that we were practically on top of one another.
“Why do I have to share with Chris and Hannah?” Laura complained as we walked toward the pier an hour after stowing our gear and getting the lay of the land. “Why was that decided without me?”
“We have limited options,” Jack replied, his gaze pointed ahead as Laura matched his pace. She was being rather obvious with her attempts to keep close to him. “Two women will have to share a room. That means it’s either you and Charlie, you and Millie or Millie and Charlie. I can’t see you coming out of the situation alive if you’re paired with either of them, so I figured this was the best option.”
Millie, who was walking beside me, laughed. “He’s got you there. If you want to share a room with me, that’s fine. Just be prepared for a gag ... and maybe a bullet.”
Jack sho
t Millie a warning look. “Don’t threaten her. If you’re not careful we’ll have to attend another one of those ‘don’t threaten your co-workers with death’ seminars. You know how annoying those things are.”
“Well, if she wouldn’t constantly make me want to threaten her we wouldn’t have been forced into the previous two. This is really on her.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jack waved off the comment. “What were we talking about again?”
“The fact that I don’t want to share a condo with Chris and Hannah,” Laura replied without missing a beat. “They’re going to be doing it all night. You know it and I know it. Why can’t Millie and Charlie sleep in the second room in that condo?”
“Because Millie is Chris’s aunt and doesn’t want to hear that.” Jack was prepared for Laura’s arguments and it was fairly impressive the way he laid things out. “She can’t hear that – it’s gross when you’re dealing with family members – and she has to room with Charlie.”
“Then what about Bernard?”
“I need Bernard in the other condo with me,” Jack replied. “We’re going to be dealing with a lot of equipment issues — boats, nets, tranquilizers and all that other stuff — and I prefer him close. Besides, I don’t want things to get uncomfortable with me being the only man in the condo. It makes sense for Bernard to share with Millie, Charlie and me.”
Laura was in no hurry to let things go. “Why can’t you and Bernard go into Chris and Hannah’s condo?”
“Because I need my rest as the head of security. It’s my job to keep everyone safe. I can’t do that if I don’t get a proper eight hours of sleep. I’ll never get eight hours in that condo.”
“In other words, you’re saying I’m the sacrificial lamb.”
“Pretty much,” Jack agreed. “I’ve already gone over room assignments with Chris. You can try to talk to him, but I made it clear how things would be going and he agreed to let me have the final decision. If you don’t like the sleeping arrangements, you can sleep on the beach.”
“With the ass crabs,” I offered, earning a snicker from Millie as Jack tried to hide his smile.
“I hate all of you,” Laura hissed, increasing her pace so she could reach the end of the pier before us.
“She’s a peach of a girl,” Millie said, making a tsking noise with her tongue as she shook her head. “I don’t know why some fine sociopath hasn’t snapped her up and taken her to his lair.”
“Don’t push her too much on this trip,” Jack warned. “She’s going to be absolutely psychotic after spending a night with the twitterpated duo.”
“A Bambi fan, too?” Now I was doubly impressed. “You’re full of surprises.”
“I’m a multifaceted guy.”
ONCE WE REACHED THE end of the pier — a longer than expected walk — Jack excused himself to talk with Chris and the police officers handling the scene. That left Millie and me to stare at the water, including the tattered remains of what looked to be a net as it was collected in small boats and replaced with a new panel.
“That must be the shark net,” Millie mused, narrowing her eyes. “It doesn’t look very strong, does it?”
I’d been thinking the same thing. “No, but I get it. If it’s too heavy, the sharks will have something to fight and it will be easier to break. By having it thinner, with more give, the sharks have less chance of getting trapped and dying. They also have less chance of breaking through.”
We watched as two men on a nearby boat held up a ripped piece of net, one man gesturing wildly as the other shrugged and held up his hands to signify he didn’t have the answers the other gentleman was looking for.
“You don’t think it was a Megalodon, do you?” I asked out of nowhere. It seemed a ridiculous question to lob in her direction, but I was genuinely curious.
“No.” Millie shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a Megalodon.”
“Chris does.”
“Chris has always had an imagination as big as his heart.” Millie’s smile was fond. “I spent a lot of time with him when he was a kid. It wasn’t that his parents were negligent, mind you, but they weren’t exactly hands-on.
“We would take adventures,” she continued. “I made him watch The Goonies and we looked for pirate ships. We sat on the lawn at the big house and talked about adventures in outer space. He always wanted to believe no matter what, even when his parents told him he was being ridiculous.”
“I always wanted to believe, too,” I admitted. “I always thought ghosts were hiding in my closet ... and monsters were under my bed ... and evil was around every corner. I don’t know why I thought that. My parents tried to break me of it. They were always calm, always rational. They explained things in ways I could understand. I still believed despite their best efforts.”
“That must make what’s going on with you and Jack difficult.”
I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. It was windy on the pier. My ears could be playing tricks on me. “W-what?”
“Oh, don’t do that.” Millie’s smile was sly. “Honey, I know what’s going on with you two.”
“How?”
“For one, you just told me.”
“But ... .”
“Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell anyone. It’s nobody’s business.”
I sucked in a breath to calm myself, hoping the panic fluttering through my heart didn’t show on my face. “If you didn’t know, how did you guess?”
“Little things. I first noticed in Michigan, when Jack took off after you the night you disappeared. He was convinced you were in danger.”
“He’s head of security. It’s his job to keep me from danger.”
“There was more than duty going on that night. He was afraid in his heart.”
I swallowed hard. “He got hurt that night. It wasn’t life-threatening, but he got hurt going after me. I feel bad about that.”
“Don’t. He wanted to go after you. He never would’ve forgiven himself if he didn’t make it to you in time. I’m curious about what happened after he got hit on the head — I think it was probably magical — but I know better than to pressure you. You won’t share someone else’s secrets.”
“No,” I agreed, thinking back to the things I had seen, the things Zoe Lake-Winters told me. “It was an informative trip.”
Millie laughed, genuinely amused. “I bet.” She patted my arm. “I also happen to know you and Jack went on a date last night.”
I was floored. “He told you?”
“No, and lower your voice,” she ordered. “If he thinks we’re talking about him, he’ll get edgy. He’s absolutely no fun when he’s edgy. The Megalodon talk makes him antsy enough as it is. You don’t want him to go off the rails, do you?”
Definitely not. “If he didn’t tell you, how do you know?”
“I saw him on his computer earlier in the week,” Millie replied, matter-of-fact. “He was looking at expensive restaurants outside of town. I was intrigued. I figured he had a date. I didn’t know it was with you. I thought maybe he might fight his attraction a bit longer. I give him credit for not being a typical man. He stepped up to the plate right away.”
“Just because he was looking at restaurants doesn’t mean they were for me.”
“Yeah, but I heard him make a reservation, and you came in looking shiny this morning. I’m not an idiot. In fact, I’m a fairly good investigator. I know exactly what’s going on with the two of you.”
I didn’t like her smugness. Not one bit. “For your information ... .”
“Don’t bother thinking up a lie.” Millie waved a dismissive hand. “You’re bad at it and it doesn’t matter. I won’t tell anyone. I think you guys are cute together.”
“He doesn’t want anyone to know,” I stressed. “We both want to be professionals. We’re keeping our personal relationship away from the job.”
“That’ll never work, but I think the attempt will be funny, so I’m willing to sit back and watch.”
I balked. “W
hy won’t it work?”
“Because matters of the heart are never that easy,” Millie replied simply. “You’ll figure that out going forward. For now, it’s your life. You guys are allowed to move at your own pace. I’m guessing this trip will be funny, though.”
“It will be professional,” I stressed. “We have everything under control. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“If you say so.”
Four
Jack and Chris got into an argument not long after the guys on the boats hauled up the shark net.
They didn’t call it an argument, of course. Jack said it was a debate and then pointed for me to walk toward the beach when I said it sounded like an argument. With nothing better to do, I acquiesced.
Millie went with me, mostly because Laura would not stop whining and refused to let go of the idea that someone should trade bedrooms with her. I was entertaining the idea of sleeping on one of the loungers on the back patio, so I understood her pain. That didn’t mean I was interested in relieving it.
“This is cute.” Millie’s eyes lit with excitement as we walked over a small hill and discovered what looked to be the world’s cutest tiki bar. “This is ... magical!”
I slid her a sidelong look. “Magical?”
“It is.” Millie bobbed her head, refusing to back down. “It’s rum runners at your fingertips. It’s ... sandy beaches, cute bonfires, hot bartenders. This is like heaven at the end of a licorice whip.”
I had no idea what that meant. “It’s a bar on the beach.”
“It’s better than a bar.” Millie gave my shoulder a little shove. “This is the grand momma of all bars.”
“Uh-huh.” Millie was a big fan of bars. She didn’t care if they were inside, outside, dive or high class. She simply liked all of them and I could tell this tiki bar, which was a three-minute walk from our condominiums, was going to be a regular haunt. “Just don’t swim in the ocean if you get drunk. There’s a Megalodon out there.”
Millie tilted her head as she regarded me. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
The Megalodon Mix-Up Page 3
