Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beckett
“Hi, Beckett.” Georgia gives me a little wave and a Colgate smile as she struts across the terrace in her sky-high heels and a form-fitted dress that shows just the right amount of cleavage to pass as tasteful. She looks like an aging beauty pageant contestant.
My father was so predictable. The only outlier was my mother.
“I heard you want to throw a party.” She sits on the edge of a cushioned chair opposite me and crosses her legs, tablet in hand. “I’ll need a bit more information than what Dahlia gave me.”
“Daisy. Her name is Daisy.”
“Oh, right. Daisy. Gosh. I’m so bad with names. So the party…” She takes my silence as a cue to continue talking. Her lips are moving, and words are coming out, but she’s saying nothing of substance.
It’s funny. I expected Daisy to be a younger version of Georgia but they’re nothing alike. Georgia is the bargain basement version of Astrid, and Daisy is in a league of her own. I’m not entirely sure who Daisy is yet but at least she keeps things interesting.
“… so I thought we could do a theme. Since it’s the Fourth of July, we can do red, white and blue decorations and we can ask the caterers to serve American food, but they could use wagyu beef for the burgers and make them bite-sized…”
She’s still talking but I’ve tuned her out. Her ideas are about as original as pairing peanut butter with jelly so I cut her off before she wastes any more of my time droning on about apple pie “but the fancy kind.”
“I’ve decided not to throw a party, after all.”
“Oh.” Her brow furrows, or it would if it were capable of furrowing. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don't, so I'm going to enlighten you. My father had security cameras installed throughout the house, and I had a little extra time on my hands and some questions about some missing items. When I went over the footage, I found something very interesting.” Her face pales and she licks her lips nervously. Bingo.
“So, listen carefully. I want you to return everything you stole from him. I want every single item, including what you pawned, and I want you to personally deliver it to my front door this evening.”
“I…I’m sure there must be some mistake,” she says with a nervous laugh.
“The only mistake is that my father never learned from any of his. You have until six p.m., Georgia.” She opens her mouth to protest. “Yes, I’ll accept your resignation effective immediately.”
Her eyes narrow on me. “That’s not what I was going to say. You can’t do this. Your father promised me?—”
“I’m not my father. Next time someone makes you ‘a promise’, get it in writing. Now unless you want a police escort, you’d better be on your way.” I wave her away with my hand. “You have some packing to do.”
She stands from her chair and smooths her hand down her dress, lifting her chin in defiance like she’s in charge and not me. “I’m going to need more than two hours.”
I tap my watch with my index finger. “Tick tock, Georgia. I wouldn’t push my luck if I were you. An orange jumpsuit would clash with your spray tan. And don’t even think about skipping town. I’ve put a tracking device on your car and hired private security to watch your house.”
She opens her mouth to speak then clamps it shut and glares at Daisy, who has stepped out of her hiding place behind an Italian cypress.
“You little thief.” She stabs a finger at Daisy who just looks bored. “I don’t know what you did to change his mind, but all of this should have been mine.”
Daisy yawns, a wide open-mouthed audible yawn that causes Georgia’s hands to ball into fists. She stomps her foot, stabs her finger at Daisy, and shrieks, “You’re going to pay for this!”
I’m laughing. This shit is hilarious.
Daisy’s hand goes to her heart, and she pretends to cower. “Oh gosh, is that a threat? I’m shaking in my shoes, Georgina .”
With a growl, Georgia turns on her heel and stomps away and I’m still laughing at this whole soap opera, bad dialogue included.
If nothing else, this was entertainment gold.
My father wasn’t that stupid though. He loved this vineyard. It was just about the only thing he ever truly valued, and if I really stopped to think about it, he might have had a good reason for making Daisy a beneficiary.
The reason hasn’t been made clear yet, but not even Astrid was able to get her hands on this vineyard, and that’s saying something.
He was putty in Astrid’s duplicitous hands, and he was too stupid to see the warning signs until it was too late.
My father was so blinded by his love for Astrid that she dictated the terms. She told him what had to be done to keep her and he complied. He forced my mother out of the house and gave up his only son.
She returned the favor by wiping out his savings account and helping herself to every valuable item in the house when she left.
But he never gave Astrid a single acre of this land.
And yet, he chose to leave half to Daisy, his step daughter who was allowed to live in this house after I’d been relegated to a life of hell.
She flops into the chair Georgia just vacated and looks over her shoulder before her eyes come to rest on me.
Tendrils of blonde hair escape her messy bun. She has dirt under her nails, and she isn’t wearing a speck of makeup but she’s still a thousand times more beautiful than the woman who just stormed off could ever be.
Daisy doesn’t even have to try. She would easily be the most beautiful girl in any room. And that’s one of the many things that makes her so dangerous.
“You really have a way with the ladies, don’t you?”
“Must have inherited that from my old man,” I comment dryly.
She laughs, props her muddy boots on the coffee table and slinks down in her seat like I’ve invited her to stay for a while. “You were bluffing, weren’t you?”
I should probably lie, but I know she heard the whole thing, or at least most of it and for some reason, I feel compelled to tell her the truth. “Yep.”
She laughs again, but I hope she takes it as a warning. Nobody steals from me and gets away with it.
“You really are such a bastard. But why do all the bastards have to get me involved in their dastardly deeds? Why didn’t you just go to her directly instead of coming up with this whole party plot?”
“That was an added bonus.” I wasn’t going to do it that way but when I saw her this morning, I just couldn’t resist, and she did exactly what I thought she would—she brought Georgia to me. “But just so you know, I did have security cameras installed.”
“I hope you didn’t put any in my bedroom or the bathrooms, you perv.”
“Nah. I have Pornhub for that.”
“Oh. You’re one of those guys.” She nods a few times, like she really believes I’d ever need to resort to watching porn. Doesn’t interest me. Never has.
She stretches her arms over her head, letting out a sigh of contentment. “We should still throw a party for the employees though.”
“There is no we in this equation.”
“Fine. You should throw a party. It would be a nice thing to do.”
“Sounds good.” Might as well blow more money. Every cent I spend will be deducted from her share of the profits. That’s if I can’t find a way to completely cut her out. “I’ll leave the planning up to you.”
She stands and heads into the house. “I hope you have deep pockets, matey, because I’m going all out.”
“Will you be serving tankards of ale, wench?”
“Aye. And bottles of the finest rum for me men,” she yells over her shoulder in what has to be the worst impression of a pirate in the history of sea lore.