Page 57 of In Spades

“You should go on a date.”

I rubbed my tired eyes and looked up from the stack of bills. “What?”

“That’s who called you, right? A guy that likes you?”

“Will is just a friend,” I said, letting a smile slip. “But I guess he likes me.”

“Do you have a picture?” she asked hesitantly.

“I don’t,” I said, standing to my feet and motioned for her to follow me to the couch. The bills would still be there to tackle in the morning. We plopped down and I crossed my legs. “He’s just a guest at the inn that I hit it off with.”

“But he called you.” Kylie looked down at her hands. “Is he nice?”

I sighed. “Yeah, he’s nice. But I’m not dating, Ky. I’ve never even gone out with him.”

Well, that was kind of a lie. He bought me lunch from Revanche. It had been the best date I’d ever been on. Then again, the bar for good dates was on the floor.

“You could, though. Go out with him, I mean.”

My brow furrowed. “Why do you want me to go on a date so badly?”

“I just figured it’d make you happy,” Kylie said with a shrug. “You sounded happy when you were on the phone. And I don’t know—maybe you’d meet someone nice. Someone who would help, so you don’t have to take care of everything and everyone all by yourself. I know we’re a burden.”

“Ky—” I reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’re not a burden. Not in the past, not now, not ever. Do you understand me?”

“I don’t want you to resent us,” she whispered, her eyes glassy with tears.

“I will never resent you, Kylie,” I said, wrapping her in the tightest hug I could muster. “If it makes you feel better, I really like Will. Talking to him does make me happy. But I worry about y’all, and your safety. I’m not taking any chances with that.”

13

WILLIAM

Iloitered outside the door of my room at the Taylor Creek Inn. My bags were packed and loaded into my truck. I checked out hours earlier, but stuck around, waiting for Kristin to make her way through the floor to turn over my room.

The second week of my stay was great, mostly because I got to see Kristin almost every day. She was a firecracker. The more she relaxed around me, the more her personality came out.

And damn if I didn’t love it.

Sarcasm came naturally to me. It was an aspect of my personality that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I tamped it down for the most part.

Kristin didn’t turn her nose up at my dry sense of humor, though. She threw it right back at me.

My reason for staying at the inn had been to sniff out any red flags that might not have been obvious on paper. A few things needed to be streamlined, and I wanted to do some digging on a couple of red-flag employees. Aside from that, the place was in tip-top shape.

The missing money still ate at me, though. My time at the inn revealed little more than I already knew. So, I installed spyware on the inn’s server and hoped to get to the bottom of the mess.

I had to admit, writing code on the fly and secretly planting software on a server took me back to the good old days. Technically, I already owned the place. I could do what I wanted. But that didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had more fun being sneaky.

Besides, protecting the inn was important to me. It wasn’t just another investment property to me.

The Taylor Creek Inn was the spot I looked at as having made it. When I would go to the beach as a kid, my foster family would drive a route that took us past the inn. The regal white pillars lining the waterfront wrap-around porch always caught my eye, marking wealth and opulence.

We never went in, but I watched the tourists mill about the property. Men in business casual socializing with ladies in sundresses and big floppy hats. It was a different world for a kid like me.

Having the kind of money it took to stay at the inn was more than my little ten-year-old mind could comprehend.

I told myself that I’d work hard and save up so that someday I could stay there for two whole weeks. The day I filed my first patent, I thought about the little boy who dreamed of staying at the Taylor Creek Inn. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I kept working.

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