Page 12 of The Mistakes I've Made
“My bestie and I are planning a little vacay for spring break next year, and I overheard you talking about that cute little town…” I literally hated myself right now. I sounded like a sorority girl from the movieLegally Blonde, but I had a feeling this was what these particular women identified with, and I was right.
Their fake blonde heads bobbed up and down as they gave me the lowdown.
“And you said it’s where?”
“Ocracoke. North Carolina. It’s just darling. But don’t stay at the hotel there,” she warned. “It’s awful.”
“Oh, I don’t plan on staying there,” I said with a mischievous grin as I turned back to a worried-looking Piper. “I’m going to buy it.”
As it turned out, my dear old daddy was one step ahead of me and had actually bought the property in question only days earlier.
Seemed my father and I had similar taste.
That, or fate just had a wicked sense of humor.
Either way, it made this quest-for-independence thing a whole lot easier in a way. I’d planned on just buying the property myself with the trust fund he’d set up for me years ago—the one I hadn’t touched once in my entire adult life in a desperate attempt to prove to him just how responsible I was.
In my drunken haze, this plan had all seemed pretty cut-and-dried. Buy hotel, make it amazing, and finally prove to my father just how worthy I was of his adoration.
The fact that he’d bought it first?
Well, it definitely made things a bit more interesting.
And by interesting, I meant terrifying. Because, now, if I failed, it wouldn’t be just my money I was wasting.
It would be my father’s.
Of course, I had to get to it first.
All that required was a couple of white lies.
Okay, a few giant lies.
But the building did have my name on the side of it, and damn it, I deserved this chance. And I was going to take it. No more waiting around in empty conference rooms while my father slipped out the back to avoid seeing me.
There was no way he’d be able to ignore this.
Piper, being the strict rule-follower that she was, wanted nothing to do with my evil scheme, and I didn’t blame her. If and when I got caught by my father, I had a number of things to fall back on—my stellar personality, guilt over the fact that he’d basically checked out after my mom died, followed by tears, and then finally, the fact that I was an only child and if he sacked me, who else would he pass this company on to?
Piper, on the other hand, basically had her good work ethic and talent, which would continue to be wasted if I didn’t get us out of this office and knee deep into a project of our own.
So, for now, I was solo.
No one deserved to be on the brunt end of my father’s wrath for pulling a stunt like this, except for me.
So, after a bit of hacking, thanks to a few tricks I’d learned from a brief interlude with a certain IT guy, I was on a company jet, headed for North Carolina, ready to check out my first solo project.
It didn’t take long for Piper to track me down. A mere fifteen minutes in the air, and my cell phone started blowing up, her distinctive ringtone filling the small space with a smooth R&B jam that reminded me of her quirky sense of humor.
“Where the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Well, hello to you, too!”
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”
I looked out the window of the jet. There was nothing but water for hundreds of miles, the Pacific Ocean sparkling below like a blue sequined blanket.
“It depends,” I said. “What do you think I did?”
