Devon’s mouth formed an O and he nodded like a wise man. “I get it. You want to know how Sapphire is doing.”
She mimed whacking a hammer. “As always, you hit the nail on the head.”
“That place is red-hot. All the young people are partying hard there. They talk it up when they come in the next day. It’s a huge hit. Crowds every night. Packed to the gills. It’s like a goddamn mint.”
Mint.
She gritted her teeth, biting back the comments that threatened to fall from her lips. Is Eli making a mint with someone else’s money? Did his company unknowingly fund that damn club? She sucked down those words, because this was what she needed to know. Eli Thompson still had the Midas touch. Nothing changed.
She leaned across the counter and planted a soft kiss on Devon’s leathery cheek. He pretended to catch the kiss in his hand. “Now I’ve got my next seven years.”
“If only a kiss from me had such powers.”
“Oh, I suspect it has great powers.”
She returned to a kiss from a few hours ago and sent a silent wish to the universe that Jake had come back for her note, that he’d decipher it, and that she’d see him again. So bizarre to want to see a stranger so badly. But perhaps kisses did have great powers. His had the power to make her long for him. The man whose last name she didn’t even know.
Devon parked his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, I know your parents split up, and it wasn’t so pretty the way it all went down. I get that you’re not on the greatest terms with your stepdad, and that’s a damn shame,” he said, and though Devon wasn’t privy to every sordid detail, he knew enough about how hard the divorce had been from her conversations with him during her visits. “But I’m all for family getting along and putting the past behind them, and I hope you’re able to do that. Even though he’s not your flesh and blood, he’s the man I saw taking care of you when you were a kid,” he said, and she pursed her lips, wishing what he’d said wasn’t true. Because it would be so much easier to write Eli off as an asshole if it were.
“Just remember—he’s done some real good here,” Devon added. “He hired a bunch of local companies when he built out his club. He did his part to invest in the Cayman economy, and a lot of folks here have been damn grateful for the business he’s brought to them. He did right by a lot of people when he remodeled the club. Penny even did some work for him before she started working at a flower shop. Assistant type stuff when he was setting it up last year. He was real good to her, I hear.”
“Penny?” Steph asked, as if the name of the woman she knew was suddenly foreign. She couldn’t picture pink-haired, tattooed Penny working for her stepdad, but this little nugget was all the more reason to track down her friend. Penny was a free spirit, a true island girl who flitted from random job to random job, sometimes as a nanny, sometimes as a Girl Friday, sometimes as a dog walker.
Penny had just moved near the top of the list of people to see. Someone else was on that list, too.
Later that night in her small and exceedingly cheap hotel room, she called the man of the hour, bracing herself to hear that voice she’d so adored as a kid. The happy, carefree sound of the man who had helped raise her.
“Sweetheart!”
His voice boomed loudly above the sound of music. The music faded, and the background noise died. He must have moved someplace quieter.
“Hey there, Eli,” she said. “I’m in town. Want to have brunch tomorrow?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Drum-heavy techno music pulsed loudly.
Actually, vibrated was a more accurate way to describe the volume. The electronic beat of the music reverberated in his bones as Jake weaved through the sardine-packed crowds thronging the dance floor.
The nightclub lived up to its name.
The sleek, silvery Sapphire shimmered. Mirrored walls behind the bar were edged with neon blue. Jewel-toned lights flashed from the ceiling, moving and swaying in colored spotlights. Women in barely there black dresses that skimmed the top of their thighs on one end and plumped up their chests on the other sidled up beside girlfriends or next to men. The crowd was mostly young, but sprinkled with the evidence of tourists of many ages—the mom and dad on a getaway from the kids, groups of fortysomething friends reliving their younger days with a hot night on the town, and lots of single men, from frat boys up to sugar-daddy age.
Jake leaned against the bar, soaking it in, taking mental notes about Eli’s new world. Everything sparkled. The lights, the bar, and the disco ball. His eyes roamed the dance floor, then he raised them higher, up to the second level, and he saw him.
No question about it.
That man had to be Eli Thompson. The face matched the images Jake had scoped out online. Like a middle-age Robert Redford, Eli had that golden-boy look to him still. He rested his hands on the railing and surveyed the scene, like a prince presiding over his subjects.
Jake narrowed his eyes. What a sneaky fucker. Stealing from his company, skipping out of town with it in art. Maybe even turning that art back into dough here in the Caribbean.
Funny thing, though. If Eli had poured the dollars he pilfered into this club, the man had picked wisely—much better than his failed cocoa bean investment. But it sounded like the cocoa beans were meant to fail. So he could have this, perhaps? Jake scratched his chin, wondering if this club was the endgame—did the man steal to build this new business?
Judging from the liquor flowing, the cover charge, and the lack of elbow room, the man was making money hand over fist, and he played the part well with a crisp button-down and tailored pants. A feline-esque woman with jet-black hair and a wine-red dress joined him, wrapping an arm around his waist. Eli glanced briefly at her, clasping her hand, then stopping to run a finger across the hollow of her throat.