Page 29 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

O n their manic drive back to the Tuscan villa and back toward safety, Nina explained what had happened in the luxury Florence hotel.

When she realized that they wouldn’t be able to see the private investigator, when she realized that the receptionist was a guard dog ready to protect her guests, Nina slunk up the stairs and made her way to the room where he was staying.

“I figured if you look like you know what you’re doing, people will let you do anything,” Nina explained, her breathing still ragged.

“That’s why I called him anyway,” Charlotte remembered, gripping her knees. “I figured you’d need a distraction.” She felt like the cops were chasing them, but every time she glanced in the rearview mirror, there was just another fast Italian driver who wanted to pass them.

“That was smart. I didn’t guess for a second that there were two people in the room.

But when I knocked, I heard two men talking about room service.

I guess they’d ordered brunch or something.

I hovered off to the side, waiting. And when Alexander opened the door, he was still talking to the private investigator.

He wasn’t paying any attention to me. I almost had a heart attack.

I mean, he was still wearing his pilot uniform!

That was when I realized a staff member was wheeling a big cart of food toward his door.

It was their room service! I ducked out of sight and ran to the stairs, where I found you.

” Nina shook her head. She was sweating through her shirt.

“He was wearing his pilot uniform?” Charlotte gasped with disbelief. She’d only ever see photographs of him on the internet, all decked out as an official-looking pilot, speeding thousands through the skies. So many people put their trust in him. And Charlotte herself hadn’t seen him since 1998.

He’d gotten rid of the family. He’d dismissed them.

Why, then, was he trying to spy on them by way of a private investigator?

Charlotte closed her eyes. “Why would Alexander do this to us?”

“The only reason I keep coming back to is money-related,” Nina breathed.

“The treasure?” Charlotte demanded.

“Maybe,” Nina said. “Who knows if it’s real? But it’s gone to enough people’s heads over the years.”

“But Alexander doesn’t need treasure, does he?” Charlotte asked.

“I don’t know. Alexander is a stranger,” Nina said.

“We were all strangers until very recently,” Charlotte offered.

“No, but even before,” Nina said, still speeding down a Tuscan road. “Alexander was so much older than me. You and Jack were my only friends in the family, really. Alexander had responsibilities. He was sort of cold. Remember?”

Charlotte admitted that her eldest brother had always been a sort of mystery to her. “How do we figure this out?” she whispered. “How do we tell Mom?”

“We don’t,” Nina said firmly. “Not until we know more.”

“And how do we learn more?” Charlotte asked.

“We have the private investigator’s phone number,” Nina remembered. “Mom has it. Maybe we can trick him into telling us more, somehow. We carry more cards than we should.”

“But we still don’t carry very many,” Charlotte said.

They sat in stunned silence for a moment.

It was then that Charlotte felt that same idea, wiggling its way back to the surface. “If we try to reopen the White Oak Lodge, that will make a big splash. Don’t you think?”

Nina groaned. “But how?” What she meant was how would they get the money?

Charlotte sniffed. “I’m going to ask around. Vincent knows people in the industry. He thinks it’s a great idea. And I’m beginning to think, well… If there’s treasure, we’re bound to find it. When and if we break ground on a refurbishment.”

Nina threw her head back. “You sound crazy.”

“I’ve sounded crazy since this all began,” Charlotte reminded her. “But it’s the only way to lure all the Whitmores back to Nantucket. It’s the only way to get to the root of all our problems. Come on. You have to admit that it’s got some logic.”

Out the window, the glorious yellow and green landscape flashed past. Charlotte watched it, knowing in her heart that she didn’t belong here in Italy, that her soul would forever yearn for Nantucket Island.

She yearned to wrap Vincent in a hug, to kiss him the way they had before she’d left the other day.

She yearned to rebuild a life she’d been shoved away from for reasons that still mystified her.

“Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to find the truth?” she asked Nina.

After a glorious and nurturing few days in Tuscany with their grandparents and mother, Nina and Charlotte returned to Nantucket Island with a renewed mission.

They were going to reopen the White Oak Lodge, no matter what.

Their first meeting was with Vincent and Amos, both of whom had agreed to help them with their plan.

In fact, Vincent and Amos were both waiting for them at the airport, their arms ladened with roses and their smiles enormous.

Charlotte wrapped her arms around Vincent and covered his face with kisses.

It felt as though they were hovering at the edge of an abyss.

If they made one false move, they would fall.

That night, as she and Vincent sat in their secret spot and listened to the ocean roll up onto the beach, Charlotte placed her head on Vincent’s shoulder. “I’m scared.”

Vincent swept his hand over her hair and kissed her brow. “Me too.”

But Charlotte wasn’t entirely sure what it was they were more scared about.

Their second-chance romance? Their rebuilding of the White Oak Lodge?

Going up against Tio Angelo and whatever he’d been involved in?

Finding Jack again? For too long, Charlotte had dabbled in darkness.

She’d let herself fall apart—that was, until she had knocked on her door and forced her back to life.

That night, back at the house on Madequecham Beach, Charlotte set up her film equipment. With Vincent on the sofa, she asked him a series of questions, some about their past and some about their future. She asked him, “What did you feel when I walked through the doors of Chez Paul?”

Vincent was thoughtful, his eyes soft and eager and slightly tired. They’d spent all night in one another’s arms, making up for lost time. “I thought, I can’t believe she’s back. I can’t believe I might get another chance.”

“Another chance?” Charlotte asked, smiling on the other side of the camera. She loved the way he looked, both through the lens and outside of it.

“We were too young to know what we had,” Vincent said. “We were too young to realize that we were special. I dropped my gloves and sped out of the kitchen, ready to meet you head-on. And you ran out of that restaurant like I was a ghost!”

“You were!” Charlotte said.

Vincent looked somber. “Do you still think of me like that?”

Still with the camera running, Charlotte crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Vincent. They kissed in a way that, she knew, would never make it in any documentary. It was too intimate. It belonged to them and them alone.

They deserved a future together. Charlotte and Vincent—and Charlotte and the remaining Whitmores, wherever they were. It was up to Charlotte and Nina to reopen the White Oak Lodge and find them. They wouldn’t rest till they were finished.