Will Work For Love Read Free Page B

coffee.
    The sun coming in the front window caught the blond
curls brushing the top of his ears and almost reaching the collar
of his T-shirt. Yesterday, she’d thought he was a guardian angel
when he rescued her from the door. Today, he did look a bit like an
angel, but with a devilish grin. A nice contrast. She should say
something.
    “Working on a Sunday?” she asked. “I thought
tropical islands had a relaxed pace.”
    He smiled. “Maybe I’ll work…slowly.”
    And then he was gone. She watched him walk up the
street, imagining he had a car parked somewhere beyond her view.
The girl who worked behind the counter came over and watched him
walk up the street, too. She sighed.
    “He would make a fantastic Christmas present,” she
said.
    Whitney nodded in agreement as he disappeared from
view.
    ****
    It would have been nice to avoid her problems and
hang out with a coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other as she
watched the sunshine downtown glance off the bronzed skin of hot
island men. That would, in fact, have been very nice. But Whitney
didn’t have a whole lot of choices. Driving back to East Pointe to
face the unmitigated hurricane damage was what she had to do. Her
loyalty to Taylor and high hopes for the wedding came before
tropical hotties and Virgin Island daydreams.
    But first, there was something downtown she needed
to see. With an address and cell phone GPS, she only turned down
two streets before she found it. Tropical Property Managers. The
company trusted by people who needed someone to oversee their
gorgeous estates while they were away. The storefront in the
commercial district had a large colorful sign over dusty windows
advertising a business that was closed. Locked up for good. Out of
business. Out of luck.
    No phone number, no forwarding address. Nothing she
could do but drive back to East Pointe and start picking up the
pieces. She drove to her temporary home, numbing shock settling
over her as she tried to imagine what to tell Taylor’s parents.
They were busy with their new grandchild, but if they had any idea
what awaited them here, she thought, they would have come
immediately themselves. When Whitney had called them earlier to
tell them nothing was repaired, their first reaction was shock.
Followed closely by pissed off. Their lawyer was already
investigating the seemingly absent property management company—even
on a Sunday. Now that Whitney had another piece of the puzzle, it
wouldn’t be long before answers were on the table, but the wedding
couldn’t wait.
    And Taylor had thought she was maneuvering Whitney
into a nice two weeks in the sun under the guise of double-checking
the wedding plans.
    “Ha,” Whitney muttered to herself as she looked at
the wreckage that was once an immaculate lawn. “So much for that
idea.”
    Any ideas about a sunny, relaxing vacation had just
been flushed down a tropical toilet. She would be all over those
contractors as soon as they showed up tomorrow morning. And they
better show up after the message she left them after talking to
Taylor’s parents. Martin and Kitty East had asked her to do
whatever it took to make things right for Taylor’s wedding. They’d
try working with their lawyer, but Whitney was their person on the
front lines and they were counting on her. She had called Blue
Isle—trying to sound like Kitty East—threatening to bring the whole
FBI, CIA, Good Housekeeping or whoever she could find down on their
heads. After a team of lawyers removed those heads and bowled with
them.
    After that message, somebody from Blue Isle would
show up tomorrow morning. Until then, her wheels would be spinning
as she made a detailed list of exactly what she wanted repaired and
in what order.
    Whitney flopped down on a lounge chair on the small
private beach and propped herself up on her elbows. She looked out
at the clear blue water and envisioned sparkling blue eyes. Chris.
She wished she knew more than just his first name.
    She thought of