Chapter 1
Greyson Cartwright, aka a guy who should’ve picked a different bar…
It would’ve been nice if today could’ve told me it didn’t intend to go as planned.
Rude, today. Very rude.
But not as rude as the woman currently sitting next to me.
Correction.
Pretending to sit next to me while actually attempting to crawl into my lap and take my kombucha.
“Ooh, is that the lime mojito flavor?” she asks, poking at a glass in my sample flight. The outdoor beach bar is lit mostly with tiki torches and the music is drowning out the sound of the ocean waves. But it’s not drowning out the woman. “They ran out before I got any. Is it good?”
Should’ve picked a different seat.
In a different bar.
Considering how much of a failure every bit of today has been, I didn’t even need to come to this state.
My phone buzzes on the bar. I lift it, see that both my sister and my former business partner are sending me walls of texts, grimace, and flip the device back over without reading it.
Much.
The main points are hard to miss.
Selfish asshole.
You agreed to this.
If you were really over it, you’d send her a birthday gift.
Quit being a dick and get the lights turned back on .
Both of them mad at me for vastly different things.
Both of them telling stories vastly different from the truth in order to—oddly enough— try to get back on my good side.
I should change my number. Maybe my name too. And if I don’t quit gripping this glass so hard, I’ll have to change my shirt as well.
I make myself put it down as I realize how badly my hand is shaking.
“Can you think of anything sadder than leaving Hawaii without trying lime mojito kombucha?” The woman leans even closer, her hair brushing my arm.
I landed in Hawaii four hours late because of a maintenance issue with the plane.
Then I was assigned a rental car with a flat tire and waited an extra hour before the company could find another car.
And once I arrived at the resort where I was supposed to attend—okay, wreck —a wedding, everything was crickets.
The whole reason I flew across the Pacific was canceled.
No destination wedding. No reception. No chance to watch Chandler Sullivan’s face when I announced to his family, friends, and new bride that he was a failure who had to sell his family’s Colorado mountain café to me because of online gambling problems.
A jilting, apparently. At a resort with so few staff, I gave up on finding someone to check me in and found a different hotel a few miles up the road.
And while Chandler Sullivan deserves every shit thing that’s ever happened to him, I’m irritated that I didn’t get to play a part.
Not that I’m normally a dick. Current circumstances happen to be extenuating.
I enjoy the hell out of justice being served, and the opportunity presented itself at the exact moment when I needed something to land on the right side of karma but couldn’t get justice anywhere else.
And now I’m debating if I want to finish my flight with this woman next to me, or if I want to give up on trying to figure out the mystery flavor in this lemon ginger kombucha and find a better place to attempt to enjoy my limited time in Hawaii.
Plenty of places to choose from.
Can’t beat paradise, even if I didn’t get to enjoy my long-coming revenge.
Yet.
I still own Chandler Sullivan’s café. Signed the papers this morning before boarding the flight that was supposed to get me here just in time to destroy his life the same way he once destroyed mine.
Not the exact same.
But close enough.
And I still get to watch everyone in his hometown realize what he’s done and what will ultimately happen to his family’s business.
Just not at his wedding.
“Not that I’m asking you to share.” The woman giggles a high-pitched giggle that threatens to split my eardrums while she tries to lean even closer. “That would be too much, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Wow. Your hands are really big. Look at your thumb. That’s…a really big thumb.”
I suck in a breath through my nose, twist on my stool to block her with my body, and pretend I can hear the ocean surf over the sound of this woman’s chatter and the ’80s music playing on the bar’s speaker system.
“ Really big thumb,” the woman repeats.
I take another swig of my lemon ginger kombucha and close my eyes while I swirl it around my mouth.
What is that aftertaste?
It’s different. Reminds me of the holidays, but fir tree isn’t right, and also doesn’t make any sense.
I love a good puzzle, especially after a long day of not much going right.
“Are your…feet…as big?” the woman next to me asks.
And this kombucha is a mystery I won’t be solving.
Today’s a wash.
I start to move, leaving most of my flight still intact in front of me, when a whirlwind arrives on my other side. “Hi, honey,” a short redhead says. To me. “Sorry I’m late. Parking the car took forever . Did you order dinner yet?”
Is she—is she talking to me?
She subtly moves her green eyes to the woman on the other side of me, then adds an equally subtle eye roll.
“Honey?” she repeats.
My brain kicks in, and so does my mouth right as my phone vibrates on the bar again. “No.”
“Silly. You’re so good at ordering for me. You didn’t have to wait. I know you were starving after…” She winks.
It’s a massive, exaggerated wink that’s so unexpected and legitimately goofy that it startles a small laugh out of me.
That hasn’t happened in weeks. Months?
Laughing at a stranger is uncomfortable enough that I almost reach for my phone to see what half-truth message my sister or my former business partner has sent now.
Instead, I make myself nod at the woman. “I was hungrier than a whale,” I agree.
“And so mellow you forgot to save me a seat.” She laughs and pats my hand like touching me is the most natural thing in the world, her fingertips soft and light as a butterfly’s wings, then pulls away before I can process that she invaded my personal space.
A wave of goosebumps spreads up my wrist and forearm.
Do I know her?
I don’t know her. I’m positive I don’t know her.
Not that it’s likely I’d run into someone I know at a random bar in Hawaii. To the best of my knowledge, Chandler was the only person I anticipated seeing here that I would’ve known before.
Any of his old friends from college would not have been friends of mine.
And this curvy redhead in a shimmery green halter top, flowery skirt, and high-heeled ankle boots wasn’t one of his friends in college. I’m positive I’ve never seen her before.
She has an air.
A sparkle that almost reminds me of my grandmother.
I’d recognize that sparkle if I’d seen this woman before.
“Excuse me,” she says to the kombucha flirt who’s been falling all over me. “Do you mind moving down a seat so I can sit with my husband?”
It should be the most ball-shriveling statement a woman could make.
Especially given the subject of one of the conversations still making my phone vibrate on the bar.
Instead, I realize I’m subconsciously leaning toward her the same way the kombucha flirt has been leaning into me .
The unwelcome space-invading, kombucha-thieving woman stutters out an awkward response while the redhead circles behind me, trailing those butterfly-wing fingers lightly up my arm, over my shoulders, and down my other arm, setting my skin on fire under my Hawaiian shirt. “Thank you so much! You’re the best.”
I barely register that the kombucha flirt is retreating far, far down the bar.
All of my attention is on the redhead.
It’s curly.
Her hair, I mean.
It’s a mass of curly copper frizzing all over her head.
She’s so short, even in the heeled boots, that she has to boost herself into the newly vacant bar stool.
And now that sparkle is fading as she gives me a pained smile.
“Apologies for invading your bubble. You looked like you needed a save, and I need to do about five thousand more good deeds today. I’ll pretend to talk to you for a few more minutes and then be on my way. You can ignore me.”
“Stay.” The word falls out of my mouth while my guard goes up.
If there’s one thing marital counseling taught me and that recent business developments reinforced, it’s that I’m historically terrible at recognizing when I’m being manipulated.
So I’m studying this woman closely while her smile goes from pained to I have sunk to the most miserable depths of hell and will never get out .
“Oh, honey ,” she says, rapidly shaking her head, “you do not want my stink on you.”
Yep.
I’m officially intrigued.
Still massively on guard—can’t help it—but intrigued. “You murder someone?”
She grimaces. “Only their reputation.”
“And how?—”
“Get you something?” the bartender interrupts.
The redhead flashes a smile at him. “Water, please. And his drinks are on me.”
Before I can utter a word, she passes a credit card across the bar.
I have umpteen messages from my sister making my phone vibrate endlessly because I failed to contribute to or RSVP for the massive birthday bash she’s throwing for my ex-wife in Antigua next month.
My parents regularly request that I lend—and I do mean lend without repayment —them money because you owe us after the top-notch education we gave you at boarding school all of those years. You know that’s why our part of the family trust fund ran dry .
My business partner just took five years’ worth of my research and sold it to his buddy’s start-up company because you don’t need the money, Grey . Do somebody a favor for once .
For once.
For once .
Fuck that.
So someone else picking up my tab purely for the purpose of doing a good deed for someone else?
This is refreshing.
And paranoia-making.
Is she playing me? Does she know who I am?
Seems unlikely.
None of my siblings or their children were quick or smart enough to become celebrities for being rich, and the trust fund from the old Cartwright apple farm empire dried up before any of them thought to try it. We’re obscure in the world of old rich families. Plus, we’re not actually rich anymore.