Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Rose

It’s like watching him stepping in and out of the shade. The sunny side of Brandon Weiss, the side that emerges when Damon’s presence is fading, almost reminds me of a baby creature hatching from an egg and seeing the world for the first time. But Brandon in the shade is a lonely creature that’s been shut away inside a damp, miserable cave for far too long and has forgotten that anyone else exists.

Of course, the reality of his life couldn’t be any different. Instead of a damp, miserable cave, he no doubt lives in a penthouse apartment that’s even swankier than his office. Baby Grand? Are you kidding? Brandon Weiss probably has a Steinway in his living room at home, one that he bashes a drunken tune out on when he gets home after a bad day at the office.

We’re quiet on the way to Sombrero Beach.

I’d almost believed that he’d dropped the businessman fa?ade when he saw the zoetrope, but one brief conversation with his brother later, and we’re back to the man who can’t abide a sticky finger near his pants.

Why am I even bothered?

I know exactly why. For some reason, Brandon Weiss’s moods affect those of everyone around him. He’s an energy vampire, sucking the life out of people when he’s down, and boosting them to stellar levels when he’s high.

I peer down at Georgie lulled asleep by the boat’s engine with her head resting in my lap. She’s indifferent to Uncle Brandon’s moods. Is that because she doesn’t spend enough time in his company to pick up on the energy levels, or is it just me?

I think back to the flight from New York to Ruby Island. Jennifer was comfortable in his company. So was Damon for that matter behind his cushion of sibling rivalry.

Just me then. Maybe everyone else is desensitized to it.

Unsure how to process that right now, I sit back and enjoy the warm breeze on my face. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life, it’s that you can’t guarantee you’ll get another chance, and I’m not wasting today, even if it is all about the competition for Brandon.

Sombrero Beach isn’t as busy as I expected it to be.

We walk along the sandy path to the beach with the ocean swallowing the horizon, and I slide off my sandals to feel the sand between my toes.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

Brandon doesn’t speak. He’s quiet, but his mood isn’t quite as heavy and black as it was on the boat after bumping into Damon a second time.

“Can we build a sandcastle?” Georgie asks.

“Maybe we should ask Uncle Brandon.” I glance at his profile, his eyes fixed straight head.

“You do understand the rules of the game?” he asks. “You wrote them.”

I ignore the low jibe, telling myself that it isn’t worth it. He wants me to swallow the bait, and I won’t give him the satisfaction.

“It’s too lovely to take a selfie and leave again,” I say. “And besides, she’s hungry and thirsty. Can’t we get a drink and some snacks while we’re here?”

I get a wall of silence, and Brandon keeps walking.

“We haven’t seen anyone else apart from Damon,” I continue. “Maybe the others are playing by the rules and taking the long route.”

“That’s it? That’s your game plan?”

I snap. “You’re forgetting I didn’t need a game plan. It isn’t my fault that your partner got drunk on gin and tonic and couldn’t get out of bed this morning.”

When he looks at me, his eyes are cold. “So, that’s my fault, is it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying, Rose?” He stops on the edge of the beach and turns his back to the beautiful foamy ocean and golden sand. “Come on, I’d love to hear it.”

Tears well in my eyes and I look away. I should’ve jumped ship back in Key Largo. I should never have allowed myself to get swept up in his competitiveness after the first challenge, but I was riding high on the glory of playing the conch, and allowed myself to believe that it would be okay.

More than that, I convinced myself that spending the day together might actually spark a common ground so that we could at least pretend to get along for the rest of the week.

Wrong, Rose!

The man has no interest in getting along with anyone, not on a personal level anyway. He thinks he’s an island. Well, good luck with that. The lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song pop into my head.

And a rock feels no pain.

And an island never cries.

“Come on, Georgie.” I offer the child my hand and run with her across the beach to paddle in the water.

It’s warm in the shallows. I peer across the ocean until my eyes water from the diamonds playing across the surface. Part of me hopes that he’ll leave us here. He’ll have to go home and tell Kelly where we are, and why he finished the treasure hunt without us, and perhaps the other guests will see him for the obnoxious, self-absorbed asshole that he is.

Meanwhile, Georgie and I will build the biggest sandcastle we can manage, complete with turrets and a moat, and shells for windows. We’ll even use seaweed to make a flag on top and give it a name. And when Kelly comes to get her daughter, I’ll ask her to take me straight to the nearest airport.

But forgetting Brandon and the treasure hunt isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Maybe I shouldn’t have put the sombrero back. If I’d let him buy it, he wouldn’t have been in such a foul mood; he’d have taken his selfie when we got here, and we’d be on our way to the next challenge.

But could I have listened to him gloating and remained silent about his cheating? I don’t even have to ponder the answer to that question.

Laughter penetrates my thoughts and my eyes drift to a large family higher up on the beach. They’ve come prepared. Sunshades have been set up to shelter the youngest kids from the afternoon sun, folding chairs have been arranged in a circle, and a couple of cool boxes are filled with food and drink.

Two dads are playing frisbee with their kids—the ones I heard laughing. But my gaze is instinctively drawn to the sombrero one of the women is wearing.

A sombrero!

I scan the beach for Brandon and realize that he has spotted it at the same time. He’s striding towards the family, a dark scowl on his face, and even though I’ve seen the Weiss charm at work, I’m not sure Brandon fully understands how to employ it outside of the boardroom.

I grab Georgie’s hand, and we run, barefoot, towards the family to intercept him.

The woman wearing the sombrero holds on to her hat as she tilts her face upwards when she sees us approaching.

“Hi!” I yell from a distance, getting in first. “My name is Rose. Where did you get your sombrero?”

“Oh, honey,” the woman drawls with a Southern accent. “I brought it on vacation with me. Sombrero Beach. It had to be done.” She and her friend both laugh, and I spot the empty beer bottles on the sand between their seats.

Brandon joins us and stands next to me, keeping a small distance between us. First mistake, I think. These people would be a lot easier to convince if they believed we were a family.

“We’re taking part in a family treasure hunt.” I say, omitting the fact that we’re staying on a private island. I shuffle closer to Brandon, so close, our shoulders are touching and try to ignore the warmth of his skin on mine. He doesn’t flinch. “One of the challenges is to take a selfie on Sombrero Beach wearing a sombrero. Would you mind if we borrowed your hat, please? All we need to do is take a picture.”

“A family treasure hunt.” The woman turns her attention briefly to Brandon and back again. “What a brilliant idea. We should steal that for our next vacation, Pam,” she says to her friend.

“Love it,” Pam says. “So, what, you’re visiting the Keys collecting selfies?”

I notice the tic on Brandon’s jawline. He’s still clock-watching, and the last thing he wants to do is stand around on a beach with the sun beating down on the top of his head, and swap game strategies with a couple of strangers.

“Yes,” I say, intervening before he snatches the hat from the woman’s head. “We’ve already taken a selfie with Betsy the lobster, haven’t we, Georgie?” I inch Georgie around in front of me to diffuse Brandon’s abrasiveness.

It works every time. Especially when Georgie says, “Betsy the crabby, Rose.”

“Aw, isn’t she adorable?” The woman wearing the hat Brandon is so desperate to get his hands on, hauls herself out of her seat and grabs a popsicle from a cool box which she offers to Georgie. “There you go, honey.”

“Thank you,” Georgie says politely, sealing the deal for their affections.

The woman pulls the hat from her head and gives it to me. “Put it on, honey, and your fella can get a selfie of the two of you with the ocean in the background.” She smiles widely and gestures for Brandon to move closer.

He does.

I lean back against him, resting my head on his shoulder. Snap . I smile at the camera. Snap . I peer up at Brandon and instinctively run my fingertip across his jawline. Snap . I swallow as Brandon turns his face to peer back at me and my pulse races. Snap . Several selfies with forced smiles later, I have what we need.

“Whoa.” The woman fans her face with the sombrero when I hand it back to her, thanking her for her kindness. “For a moment there, I thought I was gonna have to close my eyes.”

“Has anyone else asked to borrow the hat?” Brandon asks, ignoring the comment. The charm is there—I only hope the woman doesn’t notice how it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

She shakes her head. “You’re the first.”

“Could I persuade you to make sure that I’m the last?” Brandon’s casual stance belies his determination to win, and the women snap it up.

Pam laughs out loud again. “Cheeky. What’s it worth?”

“Dinner on me,” Brandon says, glancing along the beach to the straw umbrellas set up outside the bar.

“Oh, I was only joking,” Pam says. “Although if you’re offering.”

Brandon, confused, slides his wallet from his pocket.

But the other woman interjects. “Take no notice of her. We’ll hide the hat if it will help you win.”

“Thank you,” I say again, glaring at Brandon.

Oblivious, he heads back up the beach without waiting for us.

I run after him, my feet sinking into the sand, Georgie struggling to keep up with me while she licks her popsicle. “Brandon, wait!” I call out.

He stops and waits for me to catch up with him, far enough away from the family that they can’t hear our conversation.

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

“What? Improve our chances of winning?”

“Ask her not to share the hat with anyone else.”

He wrinkles his nose and stares at the ocean as if he has only just realized it’s there. “It’s called a tactic, Rose. I’m increasing our chances of winning.”

“ Our chances?”

A flicker of emotion passes behind his eyes. When he speaks again, his tone is cold, his voice clipped. “Unless you don’t want to finish this with me.”

I always thought that I was good at reading people, but Brandon Weiss is a closed book. “What have I done?” I ask. “Why do you dislike me so much?”

His jaw works and his eyes dart around the beach, skimming the women who are still laughing, still having fun. Finally, he looks at me and says with no emotion in his voice, “I don’t dislike you.”

I nod. It’s my turn to look away. I have the overwhelming urge to detach myself from this man, this situation, and this job that I should never have accepted when Ruby Weiss offered it to me in the penthouse office suite of Weiss Tower.

“I never thought you were a coward.” I clench my fists, and swallow hard to prevent the tears from spilling. I have no idea how they still keep coming after all these years. “But I guess I was wrong.”

I pick Georgie up and walk down the beach towards the shore, and I don’t look back.

“Wait, Rose,” he calls out. “Where are you going?”

“To build a sandcastle.” I allow the breeze to carry my words to him.

Building a sandcastle when the sand is so soft and dry is harder than it looks, especially without a bucket and spade. We’ve been trying—and failing—to build a mound of sand that doesn’t even remotely resemble a castle when one of the kids playing frisbee with his dad comes running over with a red bucket and spade.

“Mom said you could use this,” he says before running back to his family.

I wave my thanks to the woman in the sombrero and watch Georgie shoveling sand into the bucket. It has images of Woody and Buzz Lightyear on the side, and I wish that I could find a way to repay these people who have been nothing but generous to us.

Brandon Weiss could’ve learned a thing or two from them if only he’d stuck around. What is he afraid of? Getting knocked off that golden pedestal his parents have stuck him on top of or realizing that there’s a whole wide world out there that he’s missing out on while he’s reading emails and earning his next billion.

“Where’s Uncle Bran?” Georgie asks.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” I say. “I think he left something on the boat.”

“Is he coming back?”

I smile at her. “Of course he is, Georgie. Just as soon as he finds what he’s looking for.”

She fills the bucket to the brim with sand that’s darker and damper the deeper we dig. She smooths the top with the spade and waits for me to turn it over into the middle of the circle we’ve declared as our castle’s moat. Then she taps the bottom of the bucket three times with the spade.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Ready.”

“Okay, here goes.”

I slide the bucket upwards, careful not to dislodge the sand inside, and we both squeal when we have a shape that looks like a castle.

Simple pleasures. I’d bet that Brandon never made a sandcastle when he was a kid, or if he did, he has erased the memory and replaced it with dollar signs.

The sun is hot on the back of my neck as we fill the bucket time and again, creating our castle masterpiece that dries up and crumbles as quickly as we can build it. I wish I’d brought some money with me to buy us both a cold drink. Or at least fetched a couple of bottles of water from the cooler on the boat.

“Here,” a voice says from somewhere behind me. “I thought you could use a cold drink.”

Brandon?

I turn around and there he is, a bottle of ice-cold water in his hand.

“You came back,” I say.