Connor knew that, too. Jack and Daisy were not just married, they were crazy in love. The way he wanted to be someday. If he ever met the right woman, that was. One who wasn’t the least bit interested in his blue blood or his wealth. Thus far, he had yet to meet a woman who loved him more than his pedigree or bank account. Connor looped his jacket over the railing that edged the piazza and removed his tie. “I understand you’re a widow.” Losing a spouse was something they had in common…
Kristy turned to give him a frosty look.
So she didn’t want to talk about that, Connor noted.
Moving on. “You have twins.” Who would likely be needing college funds. And many other things that money from the sale of Paradise Resort would provide. If he could get her to sell it, that was.
Kristy regarded him with exasperation. “Did you ever hear the expression about wearing out one’s welcome? Well—” She broke off when she heard the sound of a car in the parking lot on the other side of the lodge.
“Expecting someone?” Connor said, aware that the place wasn’t slated to reopen for another week or so.
“No,” Kristy admitted as the car motor shut off. She set down her paintbrush and regarded Connor smugly. “But then I wasn’t expecting you, either.”
Touché.
Connor followed her around the building and down the walk that led to the parking lot. When she spotted the two people inside a late-model station wagon, she released her breath in a low hiss and muttered a most unladylike phrase.
“Problem?” Connor asked. He was surprised because up to now, Kristy had seemed so cool, calm and collected. Now she looked anything but.
“My mother and brother.” More color swept into her cheeks.
“You don’t look very happy to see them.”
Kristy released an unsteady breath. Dread filled her dark brown eyes. “That’s because I’m not.”
Connor knew all about unpleasant family situations. He had grown up with them. He started to put on his jacket.
Kristy wrapped her fingers around his forearm and gave it an imploring squeeze. “Please stay. They’ll be less likely to go on the attack if you’re here.”
Connor always had been a sucker for a damsel in distress. And to have Kristy Neumeyer looking at him so imploringly…
“Kristy! Hello, dear!” A woman emerged from the driver’s side of the car, just as a big guy got out of the passenger side. Both resembled Kristy in looks and were also dressed casually in jeans, sneakers and shirts.
Kristy’s smile looked frozen as she exchanged hugs with her mother and brother. “What brings you to this part of the world?” she asked cheerfully.
Her mother removed her sunglasses and placed them atop her soft gray curls. “A medical conference on the latest in ultrasound techniques at Hilton Head. We’re on our way down.” Unlike Kristy, though, her mother and brother looked genuinely happy to see her, Connor noted.
Her slender shoulders relaxing slightly, Kristy turned to Connor. Urging him forward, she made introductions. “Mom, Doug, this is Connor Templeton. Connor, this is my mother, Maude Griffin, and my brother, Doug. They’re both obstetricians. They practice in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
“Nice to meet you.” Connor shook hands with both. As the silence strung out awkwardly, he began to regret staying. Clearly, there was something that needed to be said here….
Kristy latched on to his arm in a way that seemed to indicate the two of them were very close. “I wish I’d known you were coming,” she said. “I would have cleared my schedule.”
“Or been out,” Doug said dryly.
Kristy gave him a tolerant smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “But the twins are still in school,” she continued, as if her older brother had not spoken.
Maude beamed. “Darling, we’re spending the night!”
Kristy blinked. Obviously, Connor thought, this was not in Kristy’s game plan.
“Here?” she said.
“Well, yes. It’s not as if you don’t have plenty of room.” Maude gestured expansively at the lodge and the dozen or so cottages fronting the beach. “There are…how many cottages here?”
“A dozen,” Kristy admitted reluctantly.
“And how many rooms in the lodge itself?” Doug inquired.
“One hundred. But only one of the four wings is open, and those rooms are still undergoing renovation,” Kristy warned. “None of those rooms are ready for guests.”
“So, we don’t mind roughing it as long as we get a chance to see you and the twins and have dinner together this evening. Do we, Doug?”
“Not in the slightest, Mother.”
Kristy looked at Connor as if somehow expecting him to bail her out. No way was he going to do that. If there was a family problem—and it looked like there was—then it wouldn’t help any of them to sweep it under the rug. As his family had for so many years. No, they needed to deal with it, like it or not, and if the rest of Kristy’s family was ready to do so… “I think it’s great your mother and brother are here,” he said kindly.
“Would you like to join us for dinner then?” Kristy replied, just as sweetly. “Good!” she exclaimed before Connor had a chance to reply. “We’ll eat at seven, in the dining hall. And in the meantime…” she gestured for everyone to follow her around to the lobby entrance “…I’m going to have to send you and Mother to the market, Doug, because I wasn’t planning on feeding quite so many people this evening.”
CONNOR WATCHED as Kristy quickly wrote out a grocery list, produced some cash—which was summarily rejected by both her mother and brother—and then waved them off, with directions to the closest food store.
“A little rude, weren’t you?” Connor said dryly, as the station wagon moved through the palmetto trees and disappeared down Folly Beach Road.
Kristy scowled and sat down in one of the green wooden rocking chairs on the piazza. She leaned forward, her paint-stained hands clasped between her knees. “You don’t know them.”
True, Connor thought, as he sat down in the chair beside her. He turned it so they were sitting knee to knee, then he leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “It sounds as if I’m going to get to know them, though.”
“I’m sorry about that. I…” Kristy floundered, for the first time that afternoon looking regretful. “I was desperate.”
Connor had seen that, and for that reason, his heart went out to her. He knew what it was like to want to connect closely with family, and be unable to do so. For years he had not been as close as he wanted to be to anyone in his family. Since his parents’ acknowledgment of their problems, that had changed. But he still regretted all the years when he and his mother and father and two sisters hadn’t been able to talk. Or even spend any meaningful time together.
He took one of Kristy’s hands in his. “Why are they here?” he asked.
A demoralized expression on her face, she pulled away. “The same reason you are. To talk me into giving up the ghost, so to speak, and sell the place to a high roller like you.”
Connor sat back in his chair, began to rock. “But you’re not about to take the money and run, are you?”
“Nope.” Kristy pushed against the floor with the toe of her shoe. “I love this place. I know it’s still a work in progress,” she confessed as she rocked gently back and forth, “but I am determined to return it to its former glory and then some.”
Connor