The Billionaire Op - Lori Ryan Page 0,20

him to all new levels of pain. If he kissed her again, his body would be wound so tight and hard, he wouldn’t be able to manage the walk across the resort.

“Please,” was all she whispered but the damage was done and she knew it. She smiled and winked at him, knowing she’d won that round. As Jennie turned and walked toward one of the restaurants, he smacked her in the ass.

If she was going to change her tactics on this trip, so was he. She squealed and took a few running steps to get ahead of him. Shit, he could work with that, too. He hung back and enjoyed the view all the way to breakfast.

Jennie Evans in a skirt and sandals was a sight to behold.

Chapter 11

Four days into their trip, Jennie and Chad had a good sense of the layout of the resort and it was already clear the nephews did little to run the place. So far, they’d seen them flirting with guests, drinking all day, and playing golf.

They schmoozed with some of the guests, but that was about the extent of it. They didn’t even seem to engage with the managers much. From everything Chad had seen, they let the managers run the show.

It took everything Chad had in him not to go caveman when Jennie was talking to the Masters brothers. In classic Jennie style, she simply swam over to them at the swim up bar and started flirting.

They were buying her drinks in no time and she was doing her airhead routine. By the time she signaled Chad to come break up the party and get her out of there—which he gladly did, playing the role of the jealous meathead husband—she’d found out a lot about the brothers.

They didn’t lift a damn finger. They liked to play the big shots, even going so far as to refer to the resort as ‘their’ resort. They soaked up the sun and played and took credit for the resort’s success, but that was it.

When Jennie put on those big doe eyes and twirled a finger through her hair, saying how hard it must be to run the place, they laughed. They looked around and shrugged their shoulders and said, “This is it. We’re free to play with you all day.”

Today, she and Chad were trying to figure out more about the marina. There were a lot of extra activities guests could purchase at the resort. Everything from swimming with dolphins, to a trip to a national park or a four-day fishing trip, and more.

Every afternoon, the representatives from the different tour agencies were in the lobby, signing people up for excursions. You signed up with the tour company of your choice, paid the representative directly, and booked a date for your activity.

For everything except the marina. For the marina, you spoke to the tour representative to choose an activity and book a date, but then they gave you a slip to take to the front desk where you paid for your tour.

So far, Jennie and Chad hadn’t been able to pick up on a reason for that additional step. If need be, Jack would flat out ask the owner why things were done this way, but they liked to try to get a sense of things on their own sometimes first.

It was amazing the things they found out when Jennie and Chad went into some of the companies they looked at.

Just three weeks before, Jennie had gone into a company and in less than a week discovered that the medical research the company promised was about to revolutionize diabetes treatment had already been proven to be a bust, internally.

The owners thought they could get funding from Jack based on the outdated early findings and use that funding to buy more time to make new discoveries and hopefully come out on top.

The sad thing was, if they’d been up front with Jack, he might have given them money anyway. Their ideas were promising and they had a few things in the early stages that people in the medical field Jack consulted with thought were promising. But the fact that they were trying to pull one over on Sutton Capital, instead of being upfront, killed their chances for good.

With any luck, Jennie would work her magic here and figure out if the resort owner or its management had anything to hide.

The resort had two docks. One where the fishing boats and the boats taking guests scuba diving docked.