Page 25 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

And why the hell was that stupid handsome face in Collin’s office? This couldn’t be good.

“Clark, uh, come in,” he said, making a welcoming gesture. “Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“No, I won’t be here long.” Clark flipped a sheaf of stapled papers upward like a fucking sleight-of-hand magician. He smirked as he pressed the thick manila paper into Collin’s hand.

Collin’s brows lifted. “What’s this?”

The smirk on Clark’s face twisted into something uglier, gleeful. “You’ve been served.”

Shit.

Clark waited, as if he wanted to see Collin’s reaction to the legal papers he’d just pressed into his hand.

Honestly, this was embarrassing. Collin should have known better, getting served like that.

Years in the corporate world had taught him never to accept an envelope from someone he wasn’t expecting mail from. Rookie mistake.

“This isn’t from your law firm,” Collin noted, keeping his expression impassive as he looked the papers over.

Simply put, his aunt and uncle were trying to claim that as his former legal guardians, they had spent “considerable resources” on him in the brief time he was in their custody.

Their care and the family money had ultimately placed Collin in the position to be successful in life.

And therefore, they had rights to the Duchess.

The fact that Collin had purchased it independently, without “family money,” seemed to escape them.

He was more annoyed than anything else. His lawyers would turn this into legal confetti.

“I’m doing it as a favor for a friend who does work for their firm,” Clark said.

“Do you always serve papers for clients personally?” Collin asked.

“Only for special cases. Anyone in your family is considered a special case,” Clark announced with a little too much authority.

“Look, I don’t have time to deal with you. I’ll have my lawyers call you to explain why this is a pointless exercise.”

“Will do.” Clark’s smile was joyless. “Look, practicing law isn’t personal. It’s not like, let’s say, Alice Seastairs, and the care and attention she gives every customer at the antique shop.”

Collin frowned at him. That was a weird thing to say. “Have you seen the door?” he asked, nodding to the exit. “There’s the door.”

Instead, Clark flopped into the chair across from Collin’s desk, as if they were old buddies casually discussing golf. He seemed disappointed that Collin wasn’t taking the bait. Well, Clark had never spent Thanksgiving with Aunt Cynthia.

“Please, make yourself comfortable,” Collin drawled, taking his own chair.

“I couldn’t help but notice you’re spending time with our Alice,” Clark said. When Collin simply stared at him, Clark continued. “She’s a great girl, isn’t she?”

While Collin wanted to agree that of course, Alice was a great girl, he didn’t want to feed into whatever the hell was going on in Clark’s head. And he didn’t want to say anything that might give Clark a clue that Alice was staying at the Duchess, so he just continued to stare.

“We’ve been on intimate terms for years,” Clark continued, putting an emphasis on the word “intimate” that made Collin distinctly uncomfortable.

“But Alice, she’s, uh, complicated. Doesn’t know what she wants, gets confused sometimes.

That’s why I needed to talk to her the other day, to make sure there were no misunderstandings about the last time we talked.

She can just be so stubborn sometimes when she gets an idea into her head.

She fixates. You know how irrational women can get, overemotional. ”

For the first time, Collin let his frustration show.

He could feel it, in the faintest twitch of his cheek muscle.

Alice wasn’t stubborn. She wasn’t confused.

She certainly wasn’t overemotional. She might fixate, but it was usually about something that would help someone, like tracking down the perfect lamp for Collin, or the stained-glass bathtub.

Alice wouldn’t do anything to hurt Clark. She was trying to avoid Clark.

How many people had Clark spewed this sort of lie to on the island?

How many people had heard tales of Alice being an unstable, emotional wreck?

After what she’d already put up with from her grandparents?

Fury rose in Collin’s chest, burning away the last wisps of fear clinging from last night’s episode.

“Get out of my office,” Collin told him, his voice glacial. “Now.”

“No reason to get touchy,” Clark said, raising his hands. His smile had changed into a more self-satisfied one.

Collin rose, not even moving his hands. Clark practically slithered out of his chair, moving across to the door.

“Be careful of that one, Collin,” Clark told him. “Once she sinks her little teeth into you, it’s hard to shake her off.”

Clark didn’t even do Collin the courtesy of closing his door as he left. Collin clenched his fists.

Fucker.

Alice didn’t want to cling to Clark. She was trying to shake him off.

What was this guy’s deal ? And how was Collin supposed to approach Alice about it?

Because he was concerned for her on a very personal level, but this seemed like the kind of thing he wasn’t supposed to ask an employee about…

Yeah, this was why you weren’t supposed to kiss employees.

He sank into his chair and dropped his head to his desk. He barely resisted the urge to smack his forehead against the surface of the wood, over and over.

Right next to his ear, his phone rang, making him flinch. Knowing his luck, it was probably Paige, video-calling to demand his reasons for hanging up on her. To his surprise, it was Uncle Lawrence’s number on his screen.

“Oh, for the love of—come on,” Collin sighed.

His aunt and uncle appeared on the screen.

And even while he was massively irritated with both of them, they were the only family he had left, and it was a little painful to see their aging faces after so long.

Uncle Lawrence had the Bancroft gray eyes and a thick head of dark-gray hair, swept back to show the startling white at the temples.

Aunt Cynthia’s strategically tightened face was surrounded by a cloud of carefully coiffed platinum curls.

Both of them looked almost haggard beneath their tans.

Collin wondered if it was financial strain adding the webs of lines around their mouths.

“What, did Clark send you a text notification of delivery?” Collin asked by way of greeting.

Cynthia nodded but Lawrence cut her off.

“Now, Collin, we understand you’re upset,” he said, using a condescending tone, as if Collin was a toddler demanding ice cream. “But with all the changes you’ve been making, we felt we simply had to step in and remind you of what we’re owed as Bancrofts.”

“I cannot wait to hear this,” Collin muttered.

“Collin, the hotel is a family business, and we have the right to have input in this renovation process,” Cynthia protested. “You know how much the Duchess means to the Bancrofts. Surely, that grants us some ownership. If not legally, then emotionally.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘emotional’ ownership of a building.” Collin shook his head. “And the ‘family’ hasn’t owned the hotel in almost a hundred years.”

A light knock sounded at his doorframe. Julie poked her head into his office. When she saw that he was on the phone, she grimaced and was about to retreat, when Collin used his free hand to motion her in.

“And yet, we still feel the loss of the property,” Lawrence intoned. “It’s our birthright, Collin, and it would be wrong to keep it to yourself. To make all these changes to the building without our guidance, it’s nonsensical.”

“The most disturbing of which is firing poor Robert,” Cynthia added.

“Robert is an institution at that hotel. It’s ridiculous that your misunderstanding has gone on this long.

We assumed you’d just had a minor disagreement, and soon after, you’d realize your mistake and put him back in his rightful place. ”

Julie, who had taken a seat in one of Collin’s chairs, full-on winced.

Collin didn’t roll his eyes like a teenager, but it was a near thing.

How would his aunt and uncle even know who Robert was?

Was Robert in contact with them, like some sort of mole?

Was he hoping to leverage that somehow to get his job back?

The last Collin had heard, Robert was lurking around The Wilted Rose, complaining that he was ill-used.

But because he’d never bothered drinking at the Rose when he was manager of the hotel, he had difficulty finding a sympathetic audience.

“How do you even know Robert?” Collin asked. “You haven’t been back on the island in years—”

“That’s beside the point. Surely, you have to see how these drastic changes can only cause chaos at the hotel,” Lawrence insisted just as Cynthia interjected, “Robert brings a nice sense of continuity for the employees.”

Collin shot back, “Robert brought a sense of delegating his job to other people.”

Julie covered her mouth to keep them from hearing her snort. It made him feel better to have Julie in the room. She felt the same way he did about Robert. It meant a lot, that someone he deemed as reasonable agreed with him. He needed the validation, down to his soul. Weird.

“If this legal paperwork was a misguided attempt to help Robert get his job back, in some weird bribery quid pro quo, it is not going to work,” Collin told them. “I bought this hotel, free and clear.”

“With money you inherited from your family,” Lawrence insisted. “So the hotel should be under family control again.”

“No,” Collin told them.

“Collin, we raised you ,” Cynthia cried. “We gave you the best years of our lives.”

“Year,” Collin replied. “You gave me a year. And while I appreciate that—”

“Well, you have a ludicrous way of showing it.” Lawrence snorted.

“We need this,” Cynthia told him. “You don’t know what it’s like, having to economize .”