“Wait here,” she said, pushing away from the table and scurrying down the hallway. When she came back, she slid a small blue box toward him on the table. It looked like it had once been covered in velvet, but it was well-worn and showing its age.
“I’m not saying to give this to her now—that’s a cop-out move. You need to figure out your own thing. I highly suggest lots of groveling,” she said, looking down her nose at him. “But, this is my engagement ring. If she’s really your lobster, she should have it.” She flipped the little box open and Kyle saw the ring that he’d seen his mother wear until he was in high school.
“Mom, I can’t take this,” Kyle said, pushing the box back toward her.
“Kyle, you seem to have a very bad habit of telling us girls what we can and can’t do. I know you mean well, but stop. I am giving this to you. Take it. Hold on to it for when you win back your girl and finally decide on forever.”
“She likes that word, forever,” he said, recalling the words she said to him in his room. His heart had skipped a beat as she told him that, and it hurt now thinking about how he shoved it back in her face.
“Most girls do, baby,” she replied, looking at him lovingly.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His mom was right, as always. He needed to go win her back. He needed to grovel and beg and prove that he loved her, no matter what. He just wasn’t one hundred percent sure where to start.
“I think I have a few phone calls to make,” he said, sitting back up and looking his mom in the eye.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I think I know exactly what to do.”
“That’s my boy.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Time seemed to drag the next couple of days, no matter what Drea did. One would have thought that since they were shorthanded that the opposite would be true, that the days would fly by from being so busy. The problem was that it seemed like at every turn there was a reminder of Kyle’s absence. He was the reason they were shorthanded, after all.
Grayson had filled in as captain for the first couple of days, and she enjoyed running the tours with him like they’d done when she was in high school. It’d been a long time since they’d worked together, but thankfully they slipped back into their old routines. Of course, having Dalton there to provide entertainment for the guests certainly helped.
Today, however, Dalton was playing captain as Grayson had some “administrative matters” to handle. Part of her wanted to know what exactly that meant, but another part of her knew it was that he was searching for Kyle’s replacement and that made her heart ache all over again. She knew that eventually it wouldn’t hurt as much to think about him, but for now, she was learning to live with the pain. Maybe once things got underway with the spa, she really would be too distracted to notice the hole he left in her life.
The spa was going to be stunning. She and Vaughn had sat down the day before to go over Drea’s ideas and all the numbers she had figured out regarding build-out, construction time, equipment, staff, etcetera. The look in her uncle’s eyes when she pulled out her folders of research and inspiration photos told her just how impressed he was with everything she put together, and she had to admit she was incredibly proud of it all. The idea had been festering inside her for so long that it took almost no time to pull all the papers together with her ideas. Vaughn had run the idea by Grayson and Miller at dinner that night and they were both in agreement that a spa would do great things for the Indigo Royal as a whole. The only thing left to do was meet with the accountant to figure out just what the budget would be, and she’d be on her way to breaking ground.
Drea was relieved when she saw the resort’s docks come into view. They had run a tour to Turtle Cove today and it was the first time she’d been back since the whole mess with Kyle. It took all her resolve not to burst into tears as they pulled into the cove to anchor. Lucky for her, none of the guests seemed too put out that she wasn’t joining them in the water today, leaving her to have a brief pity party behind the bar with the bottle of rum.
Now that they were back at the resort, she figured once she got everything cleaned up and prepped for tomorrow, she would just find Leona and the two could sit on Big House Beach and complain about how much men suck. Cullen Cruz had pushed out the date of his visit by about a month, but in doing so, he also sent a list of additional requests since the resort would have time to accommodate them. Drea thought Leona might explode on the spot when Randy, the night manager, handed her the document. Nothing got under her skin quite like the superstar athlete, although Drea was pretty sure it was for reasons other than the ones that Leona insisted on. Nonetheless, Drea was more than happy to let Leona have a night of word vomiting on the subject. It’ll be nice to hear about someone else’s man problems and not think about my own, she thought.
Dalton helped Drea off the boat, watching as she made a face as she heard her phone chime with a text. Looking down, she found a text from Grayson.
Grayson: Found a new marina manager, just need your approval, others already on board. Meet me at your place?
He found a new marina manager already? That was fast, she thought. She typed back to him that she needed to change, so to let himself in whenever he got there. She hadn’t realized that he’d even put the word out yet that there was an opening, but it seemed that news traveled fast around the island. Not that she would be working the sailing tours much longer once everything with the spa got moving, but she hoped for Dalton’s sake that it wasn’t some douche who thought he could just come in and change the whole feel of the tours.
Making quick work of changing out of her swimsuit and shorts and into one of her sundresses, Drea made her way into her living room, wondering where her uncle was. It shouldn’t have taken him this long to get over here from the main building—part of her had even been expecting him to beat her here. When she felt the breeze hit her, she looked over to find her patio door open and what looked to be tea lights lit and placed along the railing. The setting sun made it hard to tell they were lit, but the breeze caused the little flames to flicker just enough that Drea could see them.
What the hell? she thought as she walked closer to the door. It wouldn’t have been strange to find Grayson on the porch, but the candles made no sense. As she drew closer, she heard the sounds of a guitar playing softly, although she didn’t recognize the tune. She paused right before walking out the door, a little freaked out about what was going on. Could Dalton have done something trying to cheer her up? He’d been full of all sorts of bad jokes and such ever since the wedding, trying to keep her spirits up. But she couldn’t imagine him lighting candles on her porch, not to mention he’d just been on the boat with her.
Turning the corner slowly and apprehensively, she was met with the last person she expected to be sitting on her porch, playing an acoustic guitar.
Kyle.
He must have heard her step outside, because he looked up at her, registering the shock on her face just as she came to a halt. Taking this as his sign, he started to play in earnest now. She was frozen in place, unable to move or think. After a moment she realized he wasn’t just playing, he was singing too.