Chapter Twenty
When they sat at the patio table, Nell looked around one more time.
“I’d want to live out here. Do you drink your coffee-flavored milk and sugar out here every morning?”
“Usually.”
“Miles has a Zen place like this, and actually makes time to work in the garden every week unless he’s really slammed. I guess you know.”
“Yes, it’s beautiful.”
“Okay, well.” Nell tucked her hair, loose today, behind her ear. “I don’t want this to be awkward.”
“Too late.”
Nell made a small sound of agreement. “I guess there’s no avoiding the awkward. I wanted to talk to you here, your turf, your home, and not my office, so you’d be as comfortable as possible.”
“I appreciate that. I do. Can I cut to my personal end of the line and ask if you’re firing me?”
“What? Jesus, no! No. Toss that out right now.” As she spoke, Nell shot a hand in the air as if winging something away.
“Okay then.” Morgan breathed out. “I’ll throw out the worry and we can just stick with the awkward.”
“I wish it wasn’t awkward, because this is about your comfort, Morgan. I know Miles, obviously. I love Miles, but I stand—or sit right now—as your direct supervisor, and your support. I understand you and Miles now have a personal relationship, and I want you to tell me, to feel absolutely secure and safe in telling me, if you felt in any way pressured to enter that relationship. Even if Miles didn’t—”
“You can stop there because that’s a big, solid no. He didn’t pressure me, I didn’t feel pressured. He didn’t make any moves. I did, and I thought that’s why you might fire me.”
“Oh. A minute?” She lifted her coffee, drank. “He didn’t share that part, and of course he wouldn’t. He’s Miles. It would’ve been helpful. We’d still have had this conversation, but it would’ve been helpful.”
“I can be helpful. He was more than kind to me after I had the incident Friday night—a week ago on Friday night. You’d know about that.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry it happened.”
“So am I. I also felt, even prior to that, he might be interested in me. He never said or did anything, but— Oh hell, Nell, you know, right? When a man’s interested. You might misinterpret, but you get a sense.”
“All right, yes.”
“I wasn’t going to act on the fact I was interested back because I love my job, and I need it, but I baked him cookies.”
“Seriously?”
“My mother’s idea.”
“Oh, I get that, too.” Now she laughed, shook her head, drank more coffee. “So you baked him cookies.”
“With a lot of help, but yeah, then I was going to drop them off at his house, but I saw the turrets.”
“It’s a great house.”
“It really is, and then Howl came running out, and I was so charmed, and Miles looked so baffled. I asked to see inside the turret. I still wasn’t going to act on the attraction, I just really wanted to see. Then I was leaving, and…”
“Oh, don’t stop now.”
“And I just felt what I felt was mutual, so I asked if he was attracted or interested, and he was so careful I figured I’d misinterpreted. But then he said I hadn’t, and we sort of talked through the situation and how to put that whole thing aside—mutually. Then I made my move, and one thing led to another.”
Morgan shrugged. “Is that helpful enough?”
“He’d never have told me all that. I’m glad you did.”
“If this is going to cause any problems … I don’t know what to do. The job, living here with my ladies, now Miles? It all makes me feel more myself than I have in so long. I don’t want to give any of it up.”
“Why would you? You’re an excellent manager, this is a lovely home that feels happy with it. And though as my brother, Miles can irritate the crap out of me, he’s an interesting man, with a strong moral code. I needed to know where you stood and how you felt, and why. Now I do, and can say this now sits as your personal business.”
“Good. Thanks. And whew. I know I’m probably not his usual type.”
“I don’t think he has one.”
“Well, I mean like that woman he was seeing not that long ago.”
“Carlie Wineman? Please.” Nell rolled her eyes. “I know a ladder-climber when I see one, and okay, I didn’t see it for a while. And I shouldn’t say any of this, but the hell with it. I’m now Miles’s sister, not head of Hospitality, and I’m going to say this. She’s gorgeous and knows how to show off her looks. She knows art and wine, skis like a champ, speaks French like a native.”
“None of this inspires self-confidence.”
“I’m not done. After a while—it took awhile, because she could be very charming—I realized Miles was a step up for her. Socially, financially. And more, she just liked the way they looked as a couple. Everything about her is about as deep as a rain puddle, except her vanity.”
“All right, maybe a dribble of self-confidence coming back.”
“I like you. I like you for Miles. I don’t know if this is just a sex thing, but—”
“I don’t know either.”
“Understandable. Once I got to know Carlie, I didn’t like her. And I really didn’t like her for Miles, and was thrilled when he broke things off. I do love my brother even when he pisses me off, which is with some regularity. I also piss him off with some regularity.”
“Because you’re so much alike.”
Over the rim of her cup, Nell shot a long, cool look. “Now you’ll piss me off.”
“You have to know that. You’re very self-aware. You came here because you wanted me to be comfortable and feel more in control. That’s kind and respectful. Miles is kind and respectful, he’s just more brusque about it. Liam’s more freewheeling, but you all get the job done, and well. Part of that’s work ethic, and part of it is a deep love for the family and the business it created.”
“Maybe you should’ve gone into psychology.”
“A good bartender is a psychologist who mixes drinks. Did you like that part of your training? Liam said you all trained in every area of the business.”
“Did he? Well, he’s right about that. I can’t say I liked the work, but I found the training valuable. It made me understand it’s a lot more than mixing those drinks.
“Now, though I’d like to just sit here for another hour in this spot—it reminds me what it is to relax—it’s not my day off. I have to go buy a wind chime, then get to work and let you get back to your day off.”
“I’m glad you came by.”
“So am I.” Nell rose. “I don’t make real friends easily, but tend to keep the ones I make. And damn it, that’s exactly like Miles. Anyway, we should have lunch sometime.”
“Lunch?”
“Or drinks. And now it sounds like I’m asking you out. Maybe I am, in a way. A ‘let’s see if there’s a possible friendship in here’ sort of way.”
“I don’t make friends easily either. I’d like to try that kind of lunch or drinks.”
“Great. I’ll text you possible openings in my schedule, which is exactly why I don’t make friends easily.”
“I’m a big admirer of the schedule.”
“That’s a good launching point for possible friendship.”
They parted on those amiable terms, then Morgan sat and let the relief wash over her. She wasn’t going to be fired, she wouldn’t have to choose between the man and the job when she wanted both.
And, over and above it all, Miles had told his family.
“Turning around,” she said quietly. “It really feels like things are turning around.”
Gavin Rozwell enjoyed the balmy ocean breezes and the golden sands of the South Carolina beach. The local seafood suited his palate. While the view from his front deck afforded views of sea and sand and sunrise, he had to admit he missed the terrace of his hotel.
But when a man booked a hotel for a couple of months, he earned notice and talk. A man who rented a beach house didn’t. He’d have to make certain the reward was worth the sacrifice.
Here, he was Trevor Caine, a successful ghostwriter working on a project, and carving out time to—hopefully—finish his own too-long-neglected novel.
He’d gone for the casual scruffy look, as it seemed to reflect the beach setting and his current persona. He’d darkened his hair to a chestnut brown, added some sun-kissed highlights and a goatee. A spray tan completed the beachy look, along with a collection of shorts, T-shirts, distressed jeans.
He topped it off with a Mets fielder’s cap he’d battered a bit so it looked well-worn, and a pair of Ray-Bans.
He decided he not only looked the part but looked damn good.
While he did, occasionally, stroll on the beach, he spent most of his time at his laptop. Instead of writing, he continued his research, refined the outline of his plan.
His target, Quinn Loper, had her own beach house—with some very nice equity therein—owned and operated a cleaning company that serviced the rentals, contracted through the booking agency.
She no longer did any of the dirty work, and for a sliding scale of fees, offered wipe downs, deep cleanings, window washing, and so on to other locals.
Quinn had an MBA and a solid business. She also had well-off paternal grandparents who’d relocated from New York to Myrtle Beach when they’d retired, for the weather and the golf.
Her mother had died in an accident when Quinn was six—so sad! Boo-hoo!—and her widowed father moved her and her eight-year-old sister to South Carolina to be close to family.
Her father remarried seven years later and now lived in Atlanta. Her sister recently married another woman—he didn’t get that, but live and let. They bought an old plantation-style house in Charleston, rehabbed it—and ran a B and B.
An enterprising family!
He considered Quinn a prime choice. She’d been on his list for a couple of years, and since Fat Ass in New Orleans—big disappointment!—he’d gone deeper into his research.
Single—and not gay like big sister—twenty-eight and athletic enough to run on the beach most mornings. She also had a membership to a local gym. She worked out of her home, saving the cost of office space, and ran a crew of sixteen, full- or part-time.
She supplied the equipment and supplies under the company name of Beachy Clean.
Too cutesy for his taste, but it worked. She had just over seventy-five thousand in equity built into her four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, two-level home—with front and back decks and a hot tub. She drove a Mercedes convertible and owned a Dodge pickup truck.
Her business account remained healthy, and her personal accounts—well, that MBA and those rich grandparents paid off handsomely.
He calculated he’d net between two hundred and two hundred fifty thousand before he killed her and drove off in the Mercedes.
The truck was loaded, newer, but the convertible was sweet.
With his research done and his cover firmly in place, he only had to engineer a meet-cute.
He headed to the beach just after sunrise. When she ran, that was her time. He ran two miles that day and the next without seeing her. He had to remind himself to be patient, remind himself he established a pattern for any other early risers who walked the beach or drank coffee on their oceanfront decks.
The guy in the Mets cap who jogs in the morning.
The third day she beat him there, so he fell into place behind her.
Long legs, tight body—the way he liked them. She had a long ponytail through the back opening of her ball cap. Other than the length of the hair, she reminded him of Morgan.
Maybe she had more curves—but they reminded him of his mother, so it all worked.
Prime catch.
After a solid mile, she turned. He’d paced himself so they’d run toward each other just long enough. He flashed a smile, tapped his cap, tapped a finger in the air at hers.
“Go team!”
“Having a good year,” she responded, only slightly breathless, and kept going.
“Hot bats.” He ran on, then turned, paced her again, keeping about six feet between them.
When she slowed to a walk, he gave her a half wave as he ran by. She’d walk another quarter mile or thereabouts. He’d watched her routine through binoculars. She’d cool down with the walk, stretch a little, then walk up the path between the oceanfronts and back to her own house.
He stopped at that point, bent over to brace his hands on his knees, panted some until she walked closer.
With a half smile, he straightened. “It’s a pretty run, but I’m not used to running on wet sand.”
“You did fine.”
“You did better. From New York?”
“Born there.” Keeping a careful distance, she balanced on one leg for a quick quad stretch. “But I’ve lived here most of my life.”
Which sounded clearly in her coastal Southern drawl.
“I inherited my love for the Mets from my grandfather. New York?” she asked in turn.
“I moved to Brooklyn right after college. Found my place and my ball team. Nice to meet a fellow Mets fan in South Carolina. They’re playing the Mariners tonight. Bassitt against Castillo.”
“I’m looking forward to it. So, you and your family on vacation?”
“No family, just me. Working vacation. Can’t beat the view.” He gestured back. “I’m two back from these big-ass oceanfronts. They call it Riding the Wave.”
She’d check on him with that info, he thought. Just as he wanted her to.
“Ah, Trevor Caine.” He offered a hand.
“Quinn Loper. Enjoy your stay.”
“Oh, I am. Maybe I’ll see you on the run tomorrow.”
She shot a smile over her shoulder as she walked away. “Maybe.”
He timed it well the next day, and she ran just behind him. He slowed just enough. “Hell of a game,” he called out.
He hadn’t watched it, but he’d gathered all the stats and highlights. “That double play in the bottom of the ninth? Sweet!”
They ran together for a stretch, tossing game tidbits back and forth. This time he slowed to a walk when she did.
“Taking a tip from you,” he told her. “Walking it down. Too much sitting, I guess, and not enough time in the gym.”
“Same for me if I fall off routine. What kind of work do you do?”
She already knew the basics of the identity he’d built, he could tell.
“I’m a writer, working on a novel. He’s said for three years and counting.” Sheepish smile for that one. “Ghostwriting pays the bills while I do.”
“Ghostwriting? Like, you write a book and somebody else puts their name on it?”
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s more somebody needs something they’ve written fixed up, or has an idea, but it needs fleshing out.”
“Books and baseball are my things.”
And he knew that, hence the cap and the cover.
“Who have you written for?”
He gave her a smile and lifted shoulders. “The thing about ghosts is we’re invisible. Can’t say. It’s a contractual deal. I decided to come down here, finish up a project for a client, and give my own some serious time.”
He looked out over the water. “It’s working. I think I can finish the contract book by the end of the week. Then, no excuses, it’s my time, my story.”
He looked back at her. Easy and casual, but let interest show through. “What do you like to read?”
“A good story. Thriller, mystery, romance, horror, fantasy. Just take me away for a while and we’re good.”
“That’s the goal. What do you do when you’re not reading or watching baseball?”
“I run a cleaning company. Beachy Clean takes care of your cottage.”
“Seriously?” He tipped his cap back. “You clean my rental?”
“Not me personally. I run the operation that does.”
Not own it, he noted. Being careful.
“I’m going to start picking up a lot more before the weekly cleaning so I don’t get reported back to you as a slob.”
Her smile came wide and bright.
“The crew’s like ghostwriters. Very discreet. And I’ve got to get to it. Good luck with the writing.”
“Thanks.”
By day four he planned to run together, but she didn’t show. He settled for day five. On day seven, she asked him out for a drink, beating his scheduled ask by two days.
He followed up with an invite to dinner—all casual, friendly, and a friendly good-night kiss before he deliberately missed a day.
“Pulled an all-nighter,” he told her, and put on shining excitement. “It just started to roll, and I couldn’t stop.”
“Your book, right?”
“Yeah, all mine.”
“What’s it about?”
“Can’t say—that’s straight superstition. It’s like if I talk about it, it’ll stop rolling.” He looked up as gulls winged and called overhead. “This was the right time, the right place. If I ever get it finished—and I will—and published—and I will—I’ll send you a copy. I honestly think these morning runs with you got the engine going.”
“That’s great, Trevor.”
“How about I take you to dinner—maybe tomorrow night—to celebrate?”
She smiled. “How about you do?”
It took nearly three weeks for the mating dance to end up at dinner at her place. It gave him an opportunity to study the layout and get a few minutes with the desktop in her office.
She wanted sex, and that was fine, not unexpected. He could handle it, could get hard imagining the kill.
Plus, she had a laptop in her bedroom, so he gained two points of access.
He met her grandparents, ate barbecued ribs on their deck. And since they just laid the opportunity out there, he took it, uploaded his program into the old man’s office computer.
No reason not to add to his take with a chunk of their investment account.
He’d just add a couple of days onto his schedule.
It only took a month, and he’d given himself two. After securing the loans as Quinn Loper, banking the take, he drained her accounts, sweetened it with a hundred K from her grandfather.
He thought about killing the grandparents, but he couldn’t find the thrill in it. Instead, he found the thrill imagining their shock, their tears after he’d killed their beloved granddaughter.
He slipped into their house while they slept—they left the windows open to hear the ocean.
Idiots.
He removed his program, slipped out again.
Quinn didn’t leave the windows open, but her front door lock was a joke.
He moved through the darkened house, into the bedroom where she slept. He was tempted to wake her up first so she’d have more time to know what was happening, more time to feel it, fear it.
But she worked out, and he knew she’d put up a fight.
So he eased onto the bed, pinned her arms under his knees. Her eyes popped open when he closed his hands over her throat.
She couldn’t make a sound, not more than a peep, but she bucked, tried to roll.
“You’re just another whore.” Tighter, tighter, cutting off the air, watching her eyes roll. “You think you’re special, but you’re not. I’m making you nothing.”
Her mouth gaped open as she fought for air, beneath his hold on her arms, her fingers clawed at the sheets. Her heels drummed.
“I took everything I wanted, do you understand? Your house, your business. It’s all mine now, and nothing you ever did will matter because now you’re nothing.”
She stopped struggling and convulsed. Even in the dim light, he saw the life drain out of her eyes.
And she was nothing; and he was a god.
Oh, the thrill. It coursed through him, hot, bright, strong.
But not, he realized, perfect.
She’d been good, much, much better than Fat Ass New Orleans, but not perfect.
Nothing would reach perfect again, until he finished Morgan.
Out of his pocket he took the bracelet he’d found in Morgan’s drawer, and he slipped it on Quinn’s wrist.
“Here, you can have this. I want to remind her I’m coming for her.”
He took the keys to the Mercedes, drove it the short distance to his rental to load up the luggage he’d already packed. Just as he’d already shaved, as he’d already dyed his hair black and generated a new identity.
By the time anyone found her, he’d have traded the convertible to a contact he had in North Carolina, and with a new ride, head west for a while.
As he drove off into the night, he smiled to himself.
“And that’s how it’s done.”
Morgan didn’t want the summer to end. Every day, rain or shine, offered her another building block in her new life. A life, she’d discovered, she genuinely loved.
Nothing could change the tragedy that had set her on this new path, but she could, and would, not only walk it but appreciate the scenery on the way.
She could and would be grateful.
On a sunny Sunday, she intended to show some gratitude with a surprise.
“I really appreciate you helping out.”
As they drove, Morgan reached up to stroke Howl, who pressed against her seat in Miles’s burly SUV.
“I know you have a weekend routine.”
“It’s a routine, not a commandment carved in stone.”
“Either way, I’ll never move that concrete base alone, which is why it’s been sitting in my grandfather’s workshop for a dozen years. But the three of us can move it.”
“Yeah, the dog’ll be a lot of help.”
“He’s here for moral support, aren’t you, Howl? And he gets an outing. It’s like a little vacation.”
“Every day’s a vacation when you’re a dog.” He pulled into the drive at the Tudor.
“My ladies won’t be back until after three, probably later. This is going to work.”
“Every time you say that it comes out a little less confident.”
“I just need to get started. I’m nervous, but that’ll pass once I get started.”
She led the way around the house, with Howl looking everywhere, sniffing everything on his doggie vacation.
“I set the solar panel for the pump out yesterday so it would charge, but everything else is in the workshop. There’s a dolly, but I was afraid to try to move it by myself.”
She grinned at Miles. “You’re the muscle.”
“Looks good back here,” Miles observed.
“And when we finish this project, even better. It’s the one thing that’s missing. Or the one thing until I think of another thing.”
The workshop, a faded cedar square with a bright blue door, stood at the back of the property, tucked among the trees and backed by a narrow stream.
“Just like I remember it. The dog your grandfather had when I was a kid liked to stretch out in the stream. Our grandfathers sometimes sat on a couple of old folding chairs, had a beer, bullshitting. He always had a cold Coke for me when I tagged along.”
“He loved kids.” She opened the shop door. “They wanted a big family, but Gram had complications.”
“That’s a shame. Jesus, it looks just like I remember in here. ‘A place for everything, Miles,’ he’d say. ‘And everything in its place. Because when you need a tool, you don’t want to waste time hunting for it.’”
Running her hand over a worktable, she glanced around at the power tools, the pegboard holding hand tools, the big red tool chest, the labeled mason jars holding screws, nails, washers.
“It still, somehow, smells like him. I think that’s why Gram hasn’t given away any of his tools, or sold them. It’s been handy for me, with the little projects.”
Miles walked over to a concrete pedestal, easily three feet high with a wide top.
“This thing?”
“That thing. I don’t know why he had it—neither does Gram. I hope he approves of what I do with it. I’ve already drilled the holes in the frog.”
Now he walked to the concrete frog on another worktable.
It sat cross-legged on a perch inside a wide copper bowl. Its hands lay cupped, palms up on its knees. It wore a beatific smile.
The holes in the cupped palms offered a clue.
“You’re going to pump water out of his hands?”
“I knew what he should be as soon as I saw him. The submergible pump goes under his seat, and the wire for the panel goes down through the base—see the holes I put in? The sunshine runs it.”
“Did your grandfather teach you how to work a drill that way?”
“Not really. I didn’t spend that much time here—and that’s a regret. But some basics—hammer, nail, measure twice, cut once. Then there’s always a tutorial on YouTube. It’s going to work.”
While the dog explored the shop, Miles walked over to get the dolly. “Do you know where you want it?”
“The exact spot.”
“Said every woman ever.”
“That’s very sexist. Possibly true, but very sexist.”
He started to tip the base to slide the dolly under, stopped, and shot her a look. “Jesus, Morgan.”
“I know, it’s a ton, which may be why it’s still in here. We’ll get it.”
Together, they maneuvered it onto the dolly. While Miles rolled it, she balanced it.
“If it goes,” he warned her, “don’t try to catch it. It goes, it goes.”
“It’s not going to.”
It took some doing, a lot of muscle and sweat, but it turned out she did have an exact spot. In the full sun, beyond the shade of a weeping peach, and in front of a swath of thriving Nikko Blue hydrangeas.
“Okay, just hold it there!” She ran back for a slab of slate—hole drilled—then the pump and wire.
Once she had the pump set, they eased the base onto the slab of slate.
Miles gave it a push. “It’ll take a tornado to knock this thing over.”
“Exactly.”
She ran back, Howl running with her, to get the frog and bowl.
“See, the pump fits into the seat, the seat in the copper bowl—that came from the shop, a local craftsman—and the frog on the seat, with the pipe going up, and into his butt. Could you get the hose?” She gestured. “It’ll reach, I checked.”
“I’m sure you did.”
She didn’t miss a trick, he thought, when he hiked over to turn on the hose, walked back with it.
“It’s going to work,” she muttered.
“Fill it up?”
“Please. I love how the sun plays off the copper. I thought about getting a regular birdbath bowl, but the copper just pops out. The frog’s so cute. Totally Zen—which is what I call him. I think they’ll love it. Okay, moment of truth.”
She turned on the pump. Waited. Waited.
Water spurted out from the cupped hands in pretty fountains that spilled back into the copper bowl.
“It works!” She spun a circle, grabbed Miles, kissed him, spun another. “Oh, it’s adorable, right? Adorable and quirky and unique.”
“You’re handy. You built a damn fountain.”
“I learned to be handy, and it was more like putting pieces together. I love it. If they don’t, they’ll say they do, but I’ll know. Let’s sit on the patio, see how it looks from there. I’ll get us a drink.”