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“So am I.” Nell rose. “I don’t make real friends easily, but tend to keep the ones I make. And damn it, that’s exactly like Miles. Anyway, we should have lunch sometime.”
“Lunch?”
“Or drinks. And now it sounds like I’m asking you out. Maybe I am, in a way. A ‘let’s see if there’s a possible friendship in here’ sort of way.”
“I don’t make friends easily either. I’d like to try that kind of lunch or drinks.”
“Great. I’ll text you possible openings in my schedule, which is exactly why I don’t make friends easily.”
“I’m a big admirer of the schedule.”
“That’s a good launching point for possible friendship.”
They parted on those amiable terms, then Morgan sat and let the relief wash over her. She wasn’t going to be fired, she wouldn’t have to choose between the man and the job when she wanted both.
And, over and above it all, Miles had told his family.
“Turning around,” she said quietly. “It really feels like things are turning around.”
Gavin Rozwell enjoyed the balmy ocean breezes and the golden sands of the South Carolina beach. The local seafood suited his palate. While the view from his front deck afforded views of sea and sand and sunrise, he had to admit he missed the terrace of his hotel.
But when a man booked a hotel for a couple of months, he earned notice and talk. A man who rented a beach house didn’t. He’d have to make certain the reward was worth the sacrifice.
Here, he was Trevor Caine, a successful ghostwriter working on a project, and carving out time to—hopefully—finish his own too-long-neglected novel.
He’d gone for the casual scruffy look, as it seemed to reflect the beach setting and his current persona. He’d darkened his hair to a chestnut brown, added some sun-kissed highlights and a goatee. A spray tan completed the beachy look, along with a collection of shorts, T-shirts, distressed jeans.
He topped it off with a Mets fielder’s cap he’d battered a bit so it looked well-worn, and a pair of Ray-Bans.
He decided he not only looked the part but looked damn good.
While he did, occasionally, stroll on the beach, he spent most of his time at his laptop. Instead of writing, he continued his research, refined the outline of his plan.
His target, Quinn Loper, had her own beach house—with some very nice equity therein—owned and operated a cleaning company that serviced the rentals, contracted through the booking agency.
She no longer did any of the dirty work, and for a sliding scale of fees, offered wipe downs, deep cleanings, window washing, and so on to other locals.
Quinn had an MBA and a solid business. She also had well-off paternal grandparents who’d relocated from New York to Myrtle Beach when they’d retired, for the weather and the golf.
Her mother had died in an accident when Quinn was six—so sad!Boo-hoo!—and her widowed father moved her and her eight-year-old sister to South Carolina to be close to family.
Her father remarried seven years later and now lived in Atlanta. Her sister recently married another woman—he didn’t get that, but live and let. They bought an old plantation-style house in Charleston, rehabbed it—and ran a B and B.
An enterprising family!
He considered Quinn a prime choice. She’d been on his list for a couple of years, and since Fat Ass in New Orleans—big disappointment!—he’d gone deeper into his research.
Single—and not gay like big sister—twenty-eight and athletic enough to run on the beach most mornings. She also had a membership to a local gym. She worked out of her home, saving the cost of office space, and ran a crew of sixteen, full- or part-time.
She supplied the equipment and supplies under the company name of Beachy Clean.
Too cutesy for his taste, but it worked. She had just over seventy-five thousand in equity built into her four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, two-level home—with front and back decks and a hot tub. She drove a Mercedes convertible and owned a Dodge pickup truck.
Her business account remained healthy, and her personal accounts—well, that MBA and those rich grandparents paid off handsomely.
He calculated he’d net between two hundred and two hundred fifty thousand before he killed her and drove off in the Mercedes.
The truck was loaded, newer, but the convertible wassweet.
