Better Homes and Hauntings

3 World Finance and the Fine Art of Cookie Bribery

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief—meaning Cindy’s belief—Jake wasn’t a womanizer. If anything, he was a serial monogamist. He had a long string of girlfriends whose inability to get him to settle down stretched back to his dorm days. Over the years since what Deacon’s cousin, Dotty, called his “free-for-all” dating period in college, he’d definitely developed a type. It wasn’t so much about build or hair color as a mind-set. He leaned toward driven women, women who liked to spend as much time at the office as he did. Because in general, those women were going to time their “long-term commitment goals” carefully after they built up their careers, and he didn’t feel pressured about proposing after three months.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to settle down; he just wasn’t ready yet. He liked his life. He liked trying new restaurants every night. He liked being able to drop everything and go skiing or diving for the weekend with Deacon. Or forcing Deacon to leave his office at water-gunpoint and making him go skiing or diving. Committed girlfriends, the women who were in it for the long haul, had objections to that sort of thing.

But Cindy. The minute he saw her, he felt as if he’d run out of oxygen. It wasn’t just the fact that she was outrageously, undeniably beautiful. He’d been around a lot of beautiful women, and they’d never affected him like this.

Cindy was unspoiled, unpretentious. He loved the way she didn’t try to cover up her feelings, even when it meant turning that acid tongue on him. He loved that she actually ate in front of him during the group’s shared meals. She drank beer. She cursed. She walked around in dusty shirts with smudges on her face. She wasn’t trying to impress him. She wasn’t trying to cover up any flaws. She just was. And he knew he could trust her. If she was this rude to his face, she couldn’t possibly do or say anything worse behind his back. The same couldn’t be said about some of his ex-girlfriends, who were so accomplished at masking their emotions (through finishing school or Botox) that he couldn’t guess what was going on in their heads. There was Sophie, whom he’d caught going through his banking statements when she’d asked to use his bathroom. Or Caroline, whom he’d overheard telling her mother that Jake was “boring as hell but a suitable escort for parties.” And then Elizabeth, who had done a full financial and background check on him before orchestrating a meeting at her friend’s Labor Day party—and then didn’t understand why Jake found that unsettling.

But Cindy kept rejecting him. He didn’t understand it. He’d asked her to join him for a beer and watch the sun set over the bay. She’d said no. He’d asked if he could take her off-island for dinner at his favorite Italian place. She’d said no. He’d snagged a few blooms from the plants Nina was having brought over for her garden plans—prompting sweet, quiet little Nina to threaten him with one of those mini-rake things—and left a pretty bouquet on Cindy’s nightstand. He’d found it later in the trash can in the communal kitchen.

He knew she wasn’t playing coy when she rejected him. She truly, honestly had no interest in him. It was baffling. Most women liked him. Most people liked him. He was a likable guy. But Cindy seemed to have had some sort of grudge from the moment they met. Maybe it was a money issue? Could it be that she had a natural aversion to wealthy people after years of cleaning up their messes? That seemed as unfair as people in his circles discriminating against people without money. It wasn’t his fault that his family had been well-off from the time they strolled off the Mayflower. He knew it had kept him from some of the fundamental experiences growing up, such as mowing his parents’ lawn, having an embarrassing summer job, or driving a secondhand beater truck. But while it took care of most basic problems—food, shelter, education—it created others. Social competition, discontent, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses. His parents had provided for his basic needs but had never figured out how to connect with the son whose parenting they’d primarily left to nannies and various coaches. Then again, he knew how lack of money had affected Deacon and Dotty, and he was thankful that he’d never had to worry about that. He was even more thankful that the distinction had never caused problems between him and the people he considered family.

But none of this was helpful at the moment, because Cindy was standing in front of him in the second-best guest room, furiously tapping the toe of her sneaker against the floor. “Just what do you think you’re doing, telling my crew that they’re not allowed to work in the guest rooms? I have a schedule to keep, Mr. Rumson. And that schedule includes clearing out those rooms before that wall gets knocked out.”

Jake scowled at Cindy, despite the fact that she looked downright delightful in her royal-blue “Cinderella Cleaning Service” T-shirt with a matching slipper-printed bandanna wrapped around her head. “What are you talking about? We’re not knocking any walls down in the guest rooms.”

Cindy pulled a sheaf of papers from her blue, color-coordinated clipboard and showed it to him. She pointed to the big red “APPROVED” stamp at the top of a diagram showing several different shelf units. “I sent Mr. Whitney a proposal for some extra storage rooms to maximize the displays for his collections. He approved of the plans last week.”

“Well, I appreciate Whit’s input. But considering that I’m the architect, how about I decide which walls we knock down?”

Cindy’s blue eyes narrowed. “Or you could listen to what the client wants instead of insisting that you’re right just because you have a certain job title.”

“I’m not insisting I’m right because of a job title, I’m insisting I’m right because I’m actually right!” he exclaimed.

Cindy growled. “I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this!”

“Like what?”

“All arrogant and jackassy.”

“ ‘Jackassy’ isn’t even a word,” he retorted.

Cindy snagged a container of grout cleaner and turned on him with murder in her eyes. Now that Jake thought about it, his correcting the way she insulted him might be the reason Cindy didn’t want to go out with him.

THE SUN BEAT down on Nina’s shoulders, a pleasant burn that soaked into her skin and chased away the pervasive chill that had plagued her since she’d stepped onto Whitney Island. Perched on her knees, clearing gnarled weeds from the base of the water fountain, with the sound of the waves in the distance and the sun on her back, Nina felt she could breathe deeply for the first time in months.

As intimidating as it was to be so isolated, it also gave Nina a measure of freedom. She was too far from the mainland for her creditors to reach her. Rick and his cronies couldn’t influence what happened to her here. She could finally relax and enjoy getting her hands dirty again.

The six-man day crew she’d hired had arrived at first light to start clearing away the overgrowth. They’d ferried over that morning with the construction crew, who were swarming the interior of the main house like little worker bees. The construction team was headed by Anthony LaRossa, a sweet old bear of a man who smelled like peppermint candies and Old Spice and had big, fluffy gray eyebrows that came down over his eyes when he spoke.

Anthony had barely recovered from triple-bypass surgery the year before and was therefore the only key member of the staff who was allowed to stay off-island, so he could be near his cardiologist. With his loud, booming laugh and heartfelt promises to direct his crew’s footsteps away from her flower beds, Nina was sure Anthony was going to be her favorite coworker. Or, at minimum, he would be the least crazy.

To be fair, she’d seen more of Anthony than she had of the other island residents all day. Although he’d promised a meeting with “Team Crane” over breakfast, Mr. Whitney had received some sort of important business call around seven that morning and hadn’t been seen since. Jake was holed up in the main house’s library, reviewing blueprints. Cindy had been called away by her crew with questions about furniture for the guest rooms.

Nina’s first night as a resident of Whitney Island had not been a momentous one. Dinner had been a stilted, uncomfortable affair, with the team seated around the long dining table in the men’s dorm, scarfing down takeout Japanese food that Jake had ferried across from the mainland in a cooler. Jake had tried valiantly to get a conversation going, bringing up Deacon’s love for a particular sashimi bar in Boston near EyeDee’s corporate headquarters and funny stories from Jake’s family’s travels to Kyoto when he was a teenager. But Cindy had glumly picked at her food—when she wasn’t narrowing her eyes at Jake in suspicion.

And Nina had studiously kept her head bent over her plate, unable to make eye contact with Deacon, who was staring at her as if she was some sort of puzzle he was trying to unlock. Maybe he didn’t like people who threw up on his fancy boat? But considering that the ink on their contract was of the nonerasable variety, he could just deal with it until she made an actual termination-worthy error. At which point, Nina would be screwed and possibly homeless.

Right, moving on to a plan that involved making nice with her new boss and not ending up fired and homeless. She would be as personable and professional as possible, and Deacon would have no choice but to love her work. She would stop seeing imaginary shadow people. And she would stop reacting to the island and the people on it like one big exposed nerve.

“It would be a cliché for me to complain that this is what I use as bait to catch real food, right?” Cindy had whispered to Nina. “I mean, I like fish, but I’m more a beer-batter sort of gal.”

“Yes, yes, it would,” she’d whispered back. “But I brought the makings for blueberry waffles and my own waffle iron. And yes, I do consider waffle ingredients to be basic survival gear. So if you can hold out until the morning, I can arrange carb compensation.”

“You’re a good woman, and one day, people will write songs about you,” Cindy had said, poking halfheartedly at her green dragon roll.

Nina had made an airy gesture with her hands. “Yes, the Ballad of the Waffle-teer.”

Cindy giggled, making Nina snicker. And when she’d looked up, Deacon was staring at her again. Gah!

Deacon had seemed to thaw a bit when the group started making checklists and plans—cooking rotations, the shower schedule, a “first-day to-do list” to determine exactly how over their heads they were with this project. So they’d finished dinner and settled down to brass tacks, each presenting his or her immediate plans for the house—stabilizing or rehabbing the interior structures, salvaging what few furnishings and antiques were left—and how they would work around one another to prevent delays and hissy fits involving power tools and garden implements.

Curled in her solitary iron bed that night, Nina had dreamed she was pulling the sheets tight over her mattress. The feather-tick mattress was hers. The sheets were hers. But the arms stretching out in front of her belonged to someone else. A large diamond flanked by sapphires winked on her ring finger. The sleeves of her dress were a beautifully embroidered blue muslin, with silver stitching at the cuffs. The soft white hands smoothed the counterpane. She was pleased that she was able to provide clean, comfortable rooms for her staff. She knew how hard the servants worked to keep a home running. And while she certainly didn’t need to make up the beds, she found a certain satisfaction in seeing to them herself. She could walk down the rows of rooms, seeing a freshly made bed in each, and know that she’d done something productive with her day. Besides, the servants wouldn’t arrive for a few days anyway. And it seemed inhospitable to welcome them to their new home with bare beds.

She bent over the far corner of the mattress, tucking the sheet tightly. And when she rose, she felt a large hand slide down the small of her back and give her backside a pinch. She squealed, and another hand clapped around her mouth, pressing her back against a broad male chest.

“Well, look at what I found here,” a seductive voice whispered against her ear. “A pretty piece of skirt already bent over the bed.”

A thrill of fear rippled up her spine as those hands slipped around her hips and pressed her bum against his solid frame. Teeth closed gently over her earlobe, tugging insistently. She relaxed into the masculine embrace, sighing as the mouth moved from her ear to her neck. The hand cupped her chin, tilting her head back toward him. The scene changed, and instead of a bright, sunlit room, she was outside in the dark, with the wind whipping at her skirts. The grip around her throat tightened, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She scratched and coughed and fought, but he was just too strong.

Suddenly, the pressure at her throat disappeared. She was falling, tumbling through space until she was underwater, watching waves roll over her head. She tried to swim to the surface, but she was held in place by growing pressure around her legs, tugging her down like an anchor, crawling up her body like greedy, grasping hands until it settled around her throat. She reached upward, trying to claw her way toward air, toward light, but was unable to make any progress. Now she saw herself, her arm extended over her head in a mockery of a ballerina’s pose. Her delicate blue muslin sleeve fluttered against the water, and she stared at its motion as it slowly turned brown and disintegrated with age. The sleeve rotted away, leaving a grotesque, decaying limb behind, sloughing and dissolving until all that was left were bleached ivory bones reaching up toward the light.

In her head, she could hear screaming.

Nina had bolted upright, clawing at her throat and gasping for breath. She’d fought against the urge to turn on the little bedside lamp. The light would disturb Cindy, an admittedly light sleeper, slumbering just across the hallway, door wide open. Nina didn’t want to explain why, at thirty-one, she needed a night-light. It was just anxiety, she’d assured herself. Just a new job and frayed nerves. She had nightmares all the time, and they had nothing to do with her surroundings. She’d sworn off the Xanax before arriving on Whitney Island, but sitting in the dark room with tension gnawing at her chest, she had wondered whether she should restart the pills.

HOURS LATER, IN the light of day, surrounded by freshly turned earth and mulch, it felt silly to have been so frightened by a bad dream. Nina pushed up from her knees, pressed her hands to the small of her back, and stretched, ignoring the house that loomed behind her. It was easy enough to do, since she didn’t actually have to work inside the house—for which she was eternally grateful. She kept her eyes trained on the fountain, which, as it turned out, featured a beautifully rendered stone water sprite underneath a cocoon of brambles. She refused to look anywhere near the roof. She would not have a repeat of her shadow-person sighting. She would get through this first day, and then the next, for the rest of the summer, without having a ghost-based nervous breakdown in front of the rest of the staff, ruining what little reputation she had left.

Behind her, a smooth voice sounded. “That looks really nice.”

Nina yelped, whirling around, clippers in hand. Deacon’s eyes showed alarm, and he stepped out of range. “Sorry, sorry!” he exclaimed, holding up his hands in a defensive, please don’t clip me gesture. “I thought you heard me.”

Awesome. She had threatened her boss with sharp implements.

Despite the implement swinging, Nina was starting to like Deacon. He was kind and careful with the people around him. She’d read that when EyeDee first monetized and the worth of the company skyrocketed, Deacon gave out stock options to every employee, from the cleaning lady up. Increased shares were given to employees who had been with him since the company had started in Deacon’s dorm room. Jake was given stock just for being the one who made sure Deacon occasionally ate and showered when he was doing the initial programming. And despite his financial difficulties early on, Deacon had never opened up the Crane’s Nest to tours. He never let in one of those “paranormal hunters” reality shows, even though it would have been pretty lucrative for him to do so. That showed a certain amount of character.

“No, I’m sorry. I was in the thinking zone.” Nina sighed, dropping the clippers into her tool basket and wiping her hands on her faded jeans.

“I get that way at work,” he said, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck. “Back when I first started out, I’d stay up for three days straight, hopped up on Mountain Dew and espresso jelly beans, writing code. Jake said he could have thrown a brick at my head and I wouldn’t have noticed. I guess I’m lucky he never tried.” When she didn’t respond, he cleared his throat a little and added, “Because, you know, damaged gray matter doesn’t produce good HTML. It produces . . . something else . . .”

Nina’s brow furrowed. Awkward small talk seemed to be something of an issue for Deacon. “Was there something you needed, Mr. Whitney?”

“Oh, I was just finished with my conference call and wanted some fresh air. The work you’re doing, it looks nice,” he told her.

“I’m just clearing away the weeds,” Nina told him.

“Still, you’re making a lot of progress for the first day,” he said, nodding to the water sprite. “I remember her from the few times my parents forced me out to the house when I was a kid. She’s Metis, one of the primordial figures in Greek mythology—”

“The first wife of Zeus,” Nina said, yanking loose brambles away from the fountain and tossing them into a pile. “After he had his wicked godly way with her, Zeus feared a prophecy that Metis would give birth to children powerful enough to overthrow him. Of course, it didn’t occur to him to worry about that before he had his wicked godly way with her, but that’s beside the point. To work his way around the prophecy, he drank Metis in as water. A little while later, he had a splitting headache, literally, and Metis’s daughter, Athena, sprang out of his skull and took her place as the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy.”

Stop talking! Stop talking! Stop talking! Her brain screamed at her. He’s a product of several very fancy private schools, and he probably doesn’t appreciate a lecture on stuff he learned in kindergarten!

But there she was, giving him a speculative look, practically daring him to scoff at her retelling of one of the less offensive birth stories in the Greek canon.

Looking mildly impressed, Deacon pursed his lips. “I suppose with a company name like Demeter Designs, I should have known you would be familiar with Greek mythology.”

“Ever since I was a kid,” she said with a nod.

“That’s sort of a weird subject for a kid to be interested in.”

She gave a shrug that personified the word noncommittal. “Not really.”

Deacon waited for a long moment, staring at her expectantly. “This would be the part where you tell me how you became interested in mythology.”

Nina’s full lips quirked, but she resisted the urge to smile. “It would be.”

“Pardon me for saying so, Ms. Linden, but you seem a little . . . ‘Twitchy’ would be an offensive term to use, wouldn’t it?”

Nina’s first instinct was to snort-giggle, but she tamped it down. “Yes.”

“OK, you seem edgy, then, and not just in the ‘spending extended amounts of time with one of the Forbes top ten entrepreneurs’ way. Like in an honest, ‘I am so uncomfortable right now, I wish your face would melt like something out of Flash Gordon’ sort of way.”

She sighed. “I never pictured your face melting like General Kala’s.”

An impish grin brightened his whole face, and she felt the tension in her shoulders relax by degrees. “You know Flash Gordon?”

“My mom had an abiding, irrational love of Queen’s music,” she told him, narrowing her eyes. “Did you really just drop that Forbes reference on me?”

“I think in some cases, I should be allowed to use that Forbes reference,” he said, shrugging. “It makes some people nervous.”

“So why would you bring it up?” she said.

“A little conversational quirk of mine,” he muttered. “No matter what I’m talking about, if I start thinking about the things I don’t want to say, that’s what I blurt out. I think, ‘Don’t try to impress her with lame media references,’ and that’s the first thing that pops out of my mouth. It’s made meetings with investors a living hell.”

She laughed.

“So, I’ve shared one of my psychologically formative secrets with you, not to mention made myself sound like a bit of a tool with the Forbes thing. The least you can do is tell me how young Nina Linden became so interested in Greek mythology that she named her business after the goddess of the harvest.”

She offered him a shy smile. “When I was seven, I got the chicken pox. It was just awful, one of the worst cases my pediatrician had ever seen. I had them in my ears, on the soles of my feet, just everywhere. I was miserable and itchy, and I was making my parents equally miserable. And one day, my dad brought home a big stack of videos from the Rental Hut. Annie, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, anything to keep me quiet and still for a few minutes at a time. But the one I watched over and over, to the point where my mom was afraid that I was going to wear the tape out, was this weird animated collection of Greek myths. Hercules and the twelve labors. Icarus and his melting wax wings. King Midas and the golden touch. And my personal favorite, Hades tricking Persephone into staying in the depths of the Underworld three months a year, making her mother, Demeter, so miserable that she kills off all the plants and creates winter.”

“Sort of dark for a seven-year-old.”

“It was,” Nina agreed. “But I was hooked, couldn’t stop watching it, which was probably not healthy for me. Dad ended up having to buy the video from the store or pay more in late fees than the tape was worth. I started reading everything I could find in the library on Greek myths. I learned all about the gods and goddesses and their symbols and alliances and powers. And I loved the idea that Demeter had a fairly wimpy power—plants not being as lethal as lightning or the sun or the ocean—but she managed to bring the whole world to a stop because she was ticked off about her daughter being taken away. I started growing beans and avocados in cups on my windowsill, which led to my next crazy phase, gardening.”

“And you turned out to be a nice, normal girl, so clearly the overindulgence in animated mythology didn’t warp you too much,” he said, grinning at her, making her insides turn all warm and fluttery. That wasn’t good.

“What makes you think I’m nice and normal?” she asked, her tone far more challenging than what was advisable.

“Extensive background checks.” Deacon’s cheeks flushed, although Nina couldn’t tell whether it was embarrassment or sunburn. “You know, I tried to send you an EyeContact request to help us keep in touch during the project, but I couldn’t find you. Even with my supersecret admin privileges.”

Nina was willing to let the background-check comment slide for now. She had expected as much, dealing with someone as rich and security-conscious as Deacon. What surprised her was that she’d passed the check. She pasted on a cheeky smile, even if she wasn’t feeling quite sassy yet. “Well, this is probably going to hurt my chances of continued employment, but I don’t have a profile on EyeDee.”

Deacon’s jaw dropped, and it was his turn to laugh.

He had a very nice laugh, Nina noted. It made his whole face relax into something just a little younger, a little less burdened. And she resolved that she would try to make that happen at least once a day, if for no other reason than that it might keep her in a job that much longer. Gardener-slash-court-jester was a perfectly respectable position, right?

“I don’t know whether to feel insulted on a professional level or worried about hiring a hermit.”

Nina scoffed. “I’m not a hermit! I just don’t have that many people I want to keep up with from high school. I have friends, and when I want to talk to them, I have this new invention, it’s called a phone. It’s like magic. I hit these little buttons, and suddenly, my friend’s voice comes out.” She pulled her thick, early-model cell phone from her pocket.

Deacon’s mouth remained open as he marveled at the relic in her hand. “Is that a Zack Morris phone? Seriously, Ms. Linden? Are you going to call for a carryout order from the Maxx?”

“It’s just a phone.” She sighed. “It works. That’s all I ask of it.”

He shook it like a faulty flashlight. “Can you even get text messages on this thing?”

She snatched the phone back and crossed her arms, peering up at him. She’d changed her mind. She wouldn’t make him smile anymore, particularly if she was to be the source of his amusement. Because right now, that smile was doing funny things to her belly and making her knees all jellied. And surely, throwing herself at her boss while shouting Flash Gordon quotes was not the mark of a composed professional.

She needed to think of something else to talk about, something business-related, something that would catch his somewhat scattered attention and redirect it from her cave-phone.

“Why did you hire me?” she blurted out. “There were much larger firms up for the job. Firms that have more of a track record with large estates. Why me?”

Really, brain? She huffed internally. That’s what you came up with? Making him question why he hired you in the first place?

And there was the boyish grin again. “Plant samples. You were the only landscaper I met who thought to bring plant samples, so I could grasp what the gardens would smell like. I liked that. It showed an attention to detail I thought was lacking in the other presentations.”

“Oh.” She chuckled, surprised and pleased that he’d noticed. He rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at his feet. “And is there a reason you haven’t hired a security staff? If nothing else, I’d assume that you’d be a prime kidnapping target. What with the Forbes top ten entrepreneurs list and everything. I mean, if I were a criminal, I would kidnap you.”

Oh, dear God, brain, we are not friends anymore. Clearly, my id is going to take the wheel from here.

She cleared her throat. “Anyway, you’ve isolated yourself out here in the middle of nowhere without protection. Why not keep the security team on site?”

“It seemed unfriendly,” he said. Nina snorted, which made him smile. “Not that many people know I’m out here. Besides, before we arrived, I had a security system installed. It’s armed every time the day crews leave the island. Any motion within twenty yards of the shoreline sets off the sensors, and I get an alert on my phone, which includes a live feed from a nearby video camera. There’s a panic room installed just behind my office. There are cameras focused on every square inch of the property. And this little button on my watch? There’s a private SWAT team standing by at an undisclosed location on the mainland who can make it here in six minutes by helicopter.”

“I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified.”

“Maybe a mix of both?” he suggested. “You could be imperrified.”

Nina laughed. “That’s awful. I hereby forbid you to create portmanteaus. It’s for the greater good.”

“Well, you know what the word ‘portmanteau’ means, which is one up on, oh, ninety percent of the population.”

“So if we have the SWAT team on the six-minute call window, why can’t Anthony stay on the island? Surely, scary military personnel could handle a medical evacuation.”

Deacon nodded. “They could. And I added a medical rescue service when I found out about Anthony’s heart condition. He’s the best, and he came highly recommended by Jake, so I wanted him. But his wife, Marie, would worry herself sick if she couldn’t see him every day, and that seemed cruel.”

“That was very kind of you.”

“Not really,” Deacon protested. “Marie brought three dozen of her indescribably awesome Italian lemon-drop cookies by my office and promised me another two dozen every week for the next year if I let her Tony stay at home while he worked on my ‘little house project.’ ”

“Really?” Nina cackled. “She bought you with cookies?”

“Every man has his weakness,” he said. “Mine happens to be delicious homemade baked goods.”

“Well, if I ever foul up the flower beds, I’ll just whip up a batch of snickerdoodles.”

An expression of pure want flashed across his eyes, and Nina felt vaguely insulted that said expression centered on cookies. He pressed his hand over his heart. “Don’t toy with me, Ms. Linden.”

“I never joke about my snickerdoodles,” she said, her voice dropping to a seductive, teasing octave that even she didn’t recognize.

Tugging at his collar, Deacon cleared his throat. “Jake said you’ve been uneasy about the house?”

Nina’s flirty tone disappeared. She cleared her throat. “I thought I saw something yesterday, but it was probably just a trick of light or a hallucination brought on by seasickness meds. Really.”

“I know the house has a reputation,” he said, carefully placing his hand on her shoulder. And then, remembering his own scrupulously written corporate policies on sexual harassment in the workplace—even if that workplace was his own backyard—he quickly pulled his hand away and held it behind his back. “And that can put people on edge, make them misinterpret things or see things that aren’t there. But really, it’s just an old, beat-up house on an old, beat-up island. There’s nothing supernatural going on here.”

There was a desperate tone in his assurance, Nina thought, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as her. She asked, “If it’s just an old, beat-up house on an old, beat-up island, why do you want to live here?”

“A convoluted idea of family loyalty?” he said, perching on the edge of the fountain and squinting up at her.

She fished around in her tool kit until she found a faded green baseball cap embroidered with the lotus-like Demeter Designs logo. She pressed it into his hands and sent a significant look at his high, surprisingly elegant forehead.

AFTER A MOMENT of debating whether Jake would make fun of him for wearing it, Deacon slapped the cap onto his head. There were a lot of reasons for wanting to reclaim Whitney Island, but he doubted that sweet-faced, skittish Nina had the patience to hear that particular dissertation.

He’d anticipated complications with this project. One didn’t simply walk into Mordor, and one didn’t restore a one-hundred-plus-year-old house without some problems. He knew it was optimistic to expect to carry a full workload while he was staying on the island, which was why he had promoted Vi from his assistant to vice president of “distance operations,” covering the holes in Deacon’s schedule and chain of command while he was off getting closure. Vi now had her own assistant and a corner office with a mini-fridge stocked with her favorite obscure Jones sodas. He shuddered. Gravy should not be a soda flavor.

Deacon had grown up with a name that had traditionally meant wealth and privilege to many in Newport. Unfortunately, tradition and present-day reality weren’t necessarily the same thing. The reality was like being the crown prince of a defunct country. Deacon was raised on tales of what could have been, what should have been. His dad had made a decent living practicing law, but his income wasn’t what his Main Line Philadelphia–born Mayflower mother was used to, and she couldn’t seem to adjust her spending habits. The fights about money were constant, loud, and sometimes public. His parents were more than well-educated. They could order dinner in several languages. They could traverse the social landscape of their moneyed neighbors, but they just couldn’t seem to get a grasp on ordinary adult obligations—such as the mortgage, car payments, or insurance. Somehow, his mother’s outstanding accounts at Saks and Elizabeth Arden took precedence. And his father couldn’t allow the family membership at the Newport Country Club to lapse. That would be shameful.

His father couldn’t let go of the “Whitney tradition,” even when it would have been more practical for the family to live in a smaller house or for Deacon to go to public school instead of the fancy private school the family’s “peers” attended. So Deacon was treated to condescending stares and outright hostility from his classmates, as if they thought “poor” was contagious.

When he earned a computer-science scholarship to Harvard, the only school his father would consider letting him attend, kids from the same old-money families looked down their noses at him, the kid whose parents’ car was repossessed from the school parking lot at parent-teacher night, the kid who bought school uniforms secondhand. Other scholarship kids resented him for stealing a spot from an underprivileged student. Mothers at the country club prayed he wouldn’t notice their daughters.

The only thing the family had to its name was this particular pile of rocks under his feet, which was held in a trust that wouldn’t let it be sold. So when they had money troubles that couldn’t be solved by opening a credit card in Deacon’s name, his parents honored the family tradition of rummaging through the house for any overlooked knickknacks that could be hocked or sold outright.

Nina’s background check had been an interesting, but troubling, read. He knew about the bankruptcy, the fraud charges, the trouble she’d had obtaining her own business loans and license. He felt a certain kinship with her. That combined with the fact that she was so lushly beautiful had made him fidgety and somewhat awkward during their initial interview at his office. He’d tried to converse with her professionally, as if she was any other contractor involved in the Crane’s Nest project, but he’d ended up dropping the cup of piping-hot espresso his assistant had just delivered directly onto his left hand. Nina had rounded the desk in no time, quietly and competently using her purse-sized first-aid kit to apply ointment and a bandage to his burned skin. The fact that she was so ill at ease but still managed to function and care for another person told him all he needed to know about Nina Linden.

But still, possible shared trauma and his family’s sordid financial history seemed like a lot of information to pile into a near-stranger’s lap. So instead, he finally answered, “For years, this house was a symbol of my family’s bad luck, of failure, shame, tragedy. I want to be able to show people that things have changed, to restore the family name to where it was, maybe even a little bit better.”

“I suppose adding ‘because now you have more money than they do’ is a vulgar way to put it?”

Deacon chuckled. “Probably, but no less vulgar than me wanting to prove that I’ve made something of myself. Genes, even if they link you to some of the unluckiest bastards on the planet, do not determine destiny. So we’re going to fix this place up and prove it to the world.”

Nina’s expression slid from concerned to slightly disappointed. His answer made sense. It was a crappy, shallow answer, but it made sense.

Deacon noticed Nina’s frown. “Hoping for something a little more altruistic?”

Before she could respond to his oh-so-cheerful observations, Nina turned toward the sound of loud arguing as Cindy and Jake, yelling at the top of their lungs, were practically jogging across the lawn toward the fountain, arms waving. Anthony followed at a leisurely pace, as if his colleagues weren’t going insane before his very eyes. Deacon sighed and walked toward them.

“What now?” he huffed.

Anthony continued past them, taking a seat next to Nina on the fountain. “Did Jake go too far with his version of quote-unquote flirting?” she asked quietly.

Anthony shook his balding gray head, folding his hands over his beer belly. “I’m not sure. I was in the grand ballroom with my crew and ran to do damage control when I heard the yelling. Blood is hell to get out of parquet flooring.”

“Surely it won’t go that far,” Nina murmured.

“You missed the part where she threatened him with grout cleaner.”

“Well, there’s a complex history there,” she started, but Anthony cut her off.

“They’ll either stab each other or sleep together before the first month is out. Given the grout cleaner, I’d be willing to put a twenty on stabbing.”

“That would be completely wrong and unethical and . . .” Nina said just as Cindy called Jake an “overgelled, classless troll” in a tone so sweet it sounded like a compliment. Nina lowered her voice to say, “I’ll put thirty on sleeping together.”

Anthony gave an exaggerated mock gasp. “And you seem like such a nice girl!”

“Whit, would you tell this woman that she has no right to move entire rooms around on my blueprints?” Jake demanded.

Cindy was all acidic smiles and saccharine sweetness. “Mr. Whitney, would you please explain to your architect that these storage areas are part of an organization plan that you approved?” she practically cooed. “You asked Anthony to knock out one of the walls between guest rooms to create storage and display space for your collectibles.”

“Collectibles?” Nina whispered.

“I’ve seen the sketches,” Anthony whispered back. “The guy’s a big fan of those weird sci-fi/fantasy movies. Flash Gordon. Krull. Tron. Ladyhawke. Did you know they made Krull action figures? Because I sure didn’t. I’ve never even heard of that movie.”

Nina shook her head. “I did not know that. But now that I know that there’s a tiny posable Liam Neeson out there, I sort of want one.” The look Anthony gave her was equal parts confusion and speculation. She just shrugged. “Don’t judge me.”

Deacon asked. “Jake, didn’t we have this conversation about the storage rooms last week?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were serious!” Jake exclaimed.

“Why not?” Deacon asked.

“Because when you told me about those plans, I said, ‘That’s fine, as long as you’re OK with two of the guest rooms collapsing on themselves, because you’re removing a load-bearing wall.’ Remember?”

Deacon frowned. “No, I’m pretty sure I tuned you out after you said, ‘That’s fine.’ ”

“Gah!” Jake threw his arms skyward. At Nina’s snicker, he turned on her. “Quiet, you.”

Nina mimed zipping her lips and tossing the key to Anthony, who “caught” it.

“I was up to my ears in code!” Deacon exclaimed. “You know we have that new EyeChat feature launching—”

“I knew you weren’t listening!” Jake cried, scraping his fingers through his thick sandy hair, making it stand up.

“Can’t you make up some sort of hand signal or something so I know when a conversation is important and I need to pay attention?”

“Most people don’t need hand signals to listen when their best friend is speaking, they just pay attention, whether it’s critical or not,” Jake grumped.

Deacon sighed and turned. “Cindy, I’m sorry. It seems that our plans for expanding the guest room into a collectibles room are not possible due to a structural issue. Would you mind looking into an alternative space in the family wing? Maybe the bedroom on the southwest corner of the third floor?”

Cindy nodded and gave Deacon a sunny smile. “Absolutely. That’s no problem.”

Jake sputtered indignantly, “Wha—Why does he get ‘That’s no problem’ and a smile? I asked you to do the same thing, and you threated to grout my face.”

“Because he explained it to me in a rational, polite fashion,” she said. “And he signs my checks. Also, I like him better than you.”