Playing the Part - Kimberly Meter Van

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girl who bore half his DNA and was bound and determined to turn every single strand of his hair gray.

      “Carys Deanne, I’m not playing around. We need to talk about this latest stunt,” he said, feeling more than a bit foolish for speaking to a door but unwilling to invade his daughter’s privacy. “This is very serious business, which will likely be very expensive to fix. You’re lucky we have two bathrooms in the bungalow or else we’d be in a jam when either one of us needed to use the restroom.”

      “I said she’s lying! I hope she drowns in the ocean for what she’s saying about me,” shrieked his daughter in a shrill voice, eliciting a frown from Gabe. “Why do you believe her—a stranger—over your own daughter?” There was a short pause, then a barely audible, “Mom would’ve believed me.”

      He winced even as he recognized the ploy to manipulate him. “Carys, leave your mother out of this,” he said sternly. “The issue is about the property damage. You’re going to apologize.”

      “Will not.”

      “You will.”

      “You can’t make me. I’ll spit in her face. Try me.”

      “That’s not very nice, sweetheart,” he chided her gently. “I know you don’t mean what you’re saying.”

      “I do mean it. And if you try to make me, I’ll stay in my room until I die,” Carys said with the theatrical flair that had always made him and his wife laugh when she was smaller. But since Charlotte’s death a year ago, Gabe had found little to smile about when it came to his daughter’s antics.

      He’d brought them to Cruz Bay, St. John, with the hope that a change of scenery would help his daughter’s increasingly bad attitude. But she’d just managed to terrorize and scare away the second nanny in as many weeks and he wasn’t sure what to do any longer. He’d hoped to find a way to channel her destructive behavior into something productive but she’d sabotaged the art classes, sulked through the native dancing classes, and flat-out ditched the music lessons he’d managed to find on the small island.

      He was plain out of ideas and patience. “Carys, you will apologize even if I have to drag you from that room and plop you in front of the woman you’re so adamant is the one lying. Your behavior is out of control. Time to get a grip, kiddo.”

      “You can’t make me!”

      “Yes, I can,” he said, tight-lipped. He sent a quick look toward the heavens where he liked to think his wife was watching and chuckling over his bumbling attempts at being mom and dad and muttered, “I need a little help here.... At this rate, she’s not going to live to see twelve!”

      He stalked away from the door before his temper got the best of him and went to the kitchen to find a bottle of water. What was he going to do with her? His daughter’s behavior was nearly beyond his ability to handle.

      He knew she was grieving—losing Charlotte had been a blow to them both—but it didn’t seem as if Carys was even close to healing. His daughter was mired in anger and plenty comfortable in her own little mud pit of sorrow. He cracked the top of the plastic bottle and swigged the water. The humidity was brutal that day. It was hurricane season in St. John, which meant temperamental weather. One minute it was sunny and hot, the next it was time to batten down the hatches and tie down the patio furniture.

      His smartphone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out. A work call. He paused a moment, torn between taking the call and having another conversation with Carys, but the decision became easier when he heard something hard and heavy thump against Carys’s closed door. His little darling had just thrown something. He closed his eyes for a brief second and then walked away. “Hey, Gary,” he answered, switching gears almost gratefully. “How’s the Mercer and Jones acquisition coming?”

      Standing at the helm of a multimillion-dollar company was easier by far than handling the fickle emotions of one eleven-year-old girl.

      Heaven help him.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “SERIOUSLY?” LINDY gaped at her older sister, Lora, both incredulous and irritated all over again. “Did you not hear what I said about the toilet? The same toilet that the plumber fished five ties from?”

      “Yeah, I heard you. She’s a terror, I get it,” Lora said, pinching the bridge of her nose and pulling her long, thick black hair into a quick ponytail to escape the smothering humidity of St. John. “But we can’t afford to be scaring off patrons, especially during the off-season. If you’d take a minute to sit down with me and look at the numbers you’d see we need every penny. Larimar is in serious trouble, Lindy. It’s time you set aside your natural inclination to say and do whatever you like and go apologize to Mr. Weston for calling his kid a brat.”

      “She is a brat,” Lindy countered mulishly. “And I’m not apologizing.”

      “Lindy,” Lora warned, looking as exasperated with Lindy as Lindy was with the whole damn situation. A few weeks ago she’d been cruising Mulholland Drive with freshly colored hair to lighten her natural mousy brown, living the Hollywood dream—or nightmare, depending on the day—and now she was back home in St. John, working with her sisters to save the family resort because she didn’t have it in her to say sayonara to the whole situation. To make matters worse, after a few weeks in the Caribbean sun and salty water, her very expensive dye job was going to turn into an ugly mess. So much for making an investment into her future.

      Okay, so she wasn’t as cavalier about some things as she’d like to let on, she grumbled to herself. But Lora was on her last nerve and making it increasingly difficult to keep from boarding a plane back to California, right now. “C’mon, is it really so hard to just say the damn words?” Lora asked.

      Lindy shot her sister a cool look. “I don’t know. How hard is it for you to apologize?”

      Lora had the grace to flush, effectively ceding the point but she didn’t give up. “Yes, the kid is a monster, but do you realize Weston is paid up for the entire month? That’s serious cash and we need serious cash. The next IRS payment is due around the corner and I can’t liquefy any more assets without steep penalties. So, in order to keep the peace and keep Weston from taking his money and going elsewhere, I suggest you march your ass to his room and put those acting skills to work and pretend that you’re contrite.”

      Lindy clenched her fists, fighting the urge to stomp her feet like the kid in Bungalow 2. “This is bullshit,” she spit out just as her twin sister, Lilah, drifted into the room humming. She stopped short when she saw the standoff.

      “What’s going on?” Lilah asked, her sudden frown marring the clear, dewy skin of her twin’s face as she played nervously with the long strands of her blond hair. Although many thought Lindy and Lilah were identical, in truth they were not. While Lindy’s hair color came from a bottle, Lilah’s was simply sunkissed naturally. Lindy had often wondered how Lora had been graced with such dark hair while Lindy and Lilah had landed on the lighter side. In their most heated spats, Lindy had often tried to convince Lora she’d been adopted. It might’ve worked if their faces weren’t so similar. “Anything wrong?”

      By the anxious tone to her voice, Lindy knew Lilah was fearful of the answer. Lilah hated confrontation and generally avoided it, but as of late she’d gotten a bit tougher it seemed, if only marginally so. “The little demon spawn in Bungalow 2 has been up to her usual antics.”

      “What’d she flush down the toilet this time?” Lilah asked.

      “Sand. Lots and lots of sand,” Lindy answered.

      Lilah made a face. “What are we going to do? Should I have Celly call the plumber again?”

      “Yes, please. And while you’re doing that, our sister dear is going to apologize to the demon spawn’s father for being so rude,” Lora said.

      Lindy narrowed her stare at Lora. “If you want an apology, why don’t you go give one and say it’s from me and call it a day?

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