Page 55 of What Happens in Paradise
“The pool is for Granger, my dad,” Tilda says. “He’s very intense about his swimming. About everything, actually.” Tilda sighs. “The only person who makes him seem relaxed is my mom. Now, she’s a maniac.”
Cash wants to hear more but Max is getting heavy. “Which way?”
They head out a side door and down one of the covered walkways into the guest wing. It’s two stories, complete with its own garden and plunge pool. They are so high up that Cash can see all of Jost Van Dyke and Tortola.
The bedroom is on the first floor. Tilda throws Max’s bag down and hurries to sweep back the white sheers from the side of the mahogany four-poster bed so Cash can set Max on it. It’s like they’re in some kind of weird fairy tale.
Max rolls onto her side and continues to snore.
“She needs to sleep it off,” Tilda says. “Wanna go get a drink?”
“Yes,” Cash says. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
They go back to town and Tilda picks a place called the Lime Inn, where they sit at the open-air horseshoe-shaped bar. Tilda orders them each a cocktail called the Danger, which is probably the exact opposite of what Cash needs right now, but he rolls with it.
“So your parents…”
“Run an international headhunting firm,” Tilda says. “Specializing in IT. My mother is the owner and CEO and my father is the CFO. I’m proud of them. When I was young, my mother worked in HR at a software company in Peoria and my father was a financial adviser for a lot of the top execs at Caterpillar. Then, when I was eight, my mother had an idea for this business. We moved to Chicago right before I started high school and by the time I was a freshman at Lake Forest, their company was everywhere—India, Australia, Eastern Europe, South Africa.”
It’s not so different from Cash’s own story. Russ took the job with Ascension when Cash was sixteen and life changed—for the better, he’d thought at the time.
“My parents want to invest in a business for me,” Tilda says. “But I’m not sure what I want to do yet. So I’m living down here, waiting tables at La Tapa, and I volunteer at the animal shelter.”
“You do?” Cash says.
“I love dogs,” Tilda says. “But I can’t have one because…a white house.”
“I have a golden retriever named Winnie,” Cash says. “She’s my world.”
“I’d love to meet your world sometime,” Tilda says. “Should we have one more Danger or do you have to go?”
Cash thinks about it for a second. “Let’s have one more,” he says.
Tilda is cool. And she’s really smart. She has a degree in economics from Lake Forest. She gave business school some thought, but she’s grown attached to St. John.
“I’m thinking about starting an eco-tour company here,” she says. “Hiking, kayaking, snorkeling. But I’d want to provide lodging too, I think, so I’ve been checking out real estate. I’m not going to jump into anything.”
“I wish I’d been as savvy as you,” Cash says. He taps his fingers alongside his glass, wondering how in depth he wants to get with Tilda. “You know that my father was killed in the helicopter crash with Rosie?”
“You told me,” Tilda says. “A few weeks ago, when you were hitchhiking and I picked you up. You remember that night, right?”
“Kind of,” he says. He remembers Tilda picking him up; he hadn’t recognized her as working at La Tapa until she reminded him. That was the night he’d gotten drunk at High Tide after his fight with Baker. He can’t recall a thing that he and Tilda talked about. At that point, Tilda had been a minor character, someone in the background. But now that Cash is getting to know her, he’s intrigued. It’s enough of a plot twist that she’s a child of enormous wealth, but it’s an even greater twist that, despite this, she works her ass off and volunteers and is researching business ventures. “So what did I tell you about my dad?”
“That he had been killed in the copter crash, that he was Rosie’s lover, and that he’d bought you two outdoor-supply stores in Denver that went under.”
“I told you that? Ouch. I can’t believe you’re still sitting here with me.”
“You invited me to Breckenridge to ski!” Tilda says. “You made me promise I would come.”
Cash laughs. “Did I?”
“And…” Tilda fiddles with the straw in her drink. “You told me that both you and your brother were in love with Ayers.”
Cash drops his head into his hands. “Idiot,” he says. “I’m an idiot.”
They decide to stay at the Lime Inn for dinner. Tilda gets the grilled lobster, which she says is the best on the island, and Cash gets the guava pork ribs, and when their food comes, they push their plates together and share.
“Eco-tourism, huh?” Cash says. “Do you like to hike?”
