Sunset Rivalry: The Caliendo Resort (By The Lake: The Caliendo Resort Book 2)
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Authors: Shannyn Leah
Sunset Rivalry
The Caliendo Resort
Book Two, Anya Caliendo
By The Lake Series
Shannyn Leah
Copyright © 2016 by Shannyn Leah
All rights reserved
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or transmitted by any electronic or mechanical means including information, storage and retrieval systems, without the permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Shannyn Leah
To one of my very first and fabulous readers, Pam, who has been encouraging and heartening to an author just starting out in the publishing world.
The By The Lake Series has been going strong for one year this month, and I am excited to continue with this amazing series and my amazing readers!
Lots of love, Shannyn xoxo
THE DREARY THICK fog of the summer night made it difficult for Anya Caliendo to confirm the lights were off in each window around the cream-color stucco residence of her family.
The one-level structure peaked with skylights, which lit the tropical paradise inside. The magnificent core of the individual suites built by her father, Robert Caliendo, was literally an indoor heaven get-away with live plants around a pool edged like a rain forest with rocks forming a waterfall and slide.
The private area had eight suites and was a beautiful addition connected to the family business, The Caliendo Resort. The five-star all-inclusive resort was also a five-story magnificent getaway for guests all year around.
Anya watched the west side of the suites first, just as she had for the last three days. It was the section of the building where Anya’s suite was situated between her brother Marc, and her sister Violet’s suites.
Her eyes struggled to verify that both suites were dark, indicating her siblings had retired for the evening. Once confirmation was established, she rounded the bush to the east side of the building to check on the rest of her family.
Anya had purposely chosen the late hour, now almost two in the morning to avoid direct contact with any of her family.
Eliza and Emma’s lights were already off, but it was the youngest Caliendo sibling, Izzy, who Anya thought might still be awake.
Izzy was accustomed to staying up into the early hours of the morning. Anya would bet her trust fund that Izzy hadn’t changed at all in the last couple years. And her trust fund was hefty enough to support a life of luxury without working another day. No work, no job, just play, play, play...thanks to the very trust fund that made it possible for Caliendo siblings to play all day...but not encouraged.
Izzy’s lights were off.
Thank goodness.
Anya sighed a breath of relief.
She was beginning to feel the exhaustion of sneaking around the last few nights in search of the key card that opened the doors of her father’s forbidden office.
She wondered briefly if any of her family were using her father’s office now that he’d passed away or was it just sitting there collecting dust. Just a turn of phrase really since it was regularly tended to by the maids.
The thought was very short, as she moved around the tree, away from her hiding place, her body sent jolts of pain through her shoulders and down her legs. The aching objection, after another long hike from her parked car and through the bushes that lined the Caliendo’s private residence, was a sign that she was pushing her body to the maximum. But more than the physical pain, the grueling search for a card that wasn’t where she clearly remembered leaving it was tormenting.
Anya would never forget that beautiful, bright, sunny afternoon the day her family buried her father. It was like nature’s unusual way of celebrating the man’s death...and he had enough enemies that Mother Nature wasn’t the only one cheering the occasion.
Two years ago, after Anya had packed the bare essentials to take with her, she’d placed the key-card where she wouldn’t forget: the top right drawer in her office desk, tucked away and out of sight between the hand-written pages of her leather-bound recipe book. The book contained her prided personal recipes. Recipes she had once prepared for the guests, when she resided as top chef in The Locket, an on-site restaurant at the resort.
That seemed so very long ago. And, just like every other aspect of the resort that popped into her head, she also wondered if The Locket had changed too?
The memory was so achingly long ago and the feeling of accomplishment, pride and...
happiness
...seemed like a dream she could never seize.
Anya was forced to search every last drawer, every last corner, every last inch of her suite, with the tiniest hope she might find the card. She had no alternative.
This wasn’t the first key card to go MIA on her. A few months before she’d left the resort she’d misplaced her key card. The one with the chip in the corner and the one she had yet to find. It was most likely lost in the lake.
Searching her suite the first night had been a disastrous failure. Not only had she discovered the card was missing, but, while sitting at her desk flipping through the familiar pages of her recipe book, she’d instantly lost the direction of her task.
Each page and each recipe had sentimental meaning that brought forth a flood of emotions she hadn’t been prepared for. As the flashlight in her cell phone moved across the pages, with each word she read, she watched the recipes come to life.
Perhaps it sounded strange to others, that a mere recipe could bring tears to her eyes. She couldn’t explain it either. Cooking was more than a job to her. It was her life’s calling...
had been
her life’s calling.
Anya hadn’t touched a pot or pan in years, and reading what she had once loved, brought a sensation of passion she had no control over.
She could picture the ingredients and almost feel them in her hands as though she was preparing the meal right there at her desk. She swore the smell of the food, the lit stove, and the spices swirled around her like they did when she moved just as swiftly around the kitchen like it was part of her body...her soul.
It felt like home. It felt like life.
It was a distraction she couldn’t afford right now and, as quickly as she’d been transported back, she was snapped to the present. Not a moment too soon, and it reminded her
why
she had been holding the holy grail of her career.
By the time she pulled herself away from the pages of her book that first night, she’d let hours pass by and left no time to explore her suite.
That couldn’t happen again.
Anya needed to get into her dad’s office and get the file without her family knowing.
It would have been easier to ask her family for a new key card instead of slinking around in the dead of night, but she was not ready to answer the questions her return would bring.
Where have you been for the last two years? Are you alright? Why haven’t you talked to anyone? What have you been doing? Why have you been doing it?
Those were the questions she feared and requested answers she wouldn’t give them...the answers she
couldn’t
give them.
Anya emerged from the bushes and crossed the stretch of grass between it and her suite’s front door. She was quick and steady, hoping no one would glance outside and see her shadow moving across the yard.
With her house key clenched in one hand, she hopped up the stairs without stopping her fluid movement and unlocked the front door.
Slipping inside, she shut the door quietly and leaned against it, letting the relief of not being caught calm her quick breathing.
She was too old for this game of cat and mouse and she hated being the devious mouse.
Closing her eyes, Anya let the familiar smell of home tease her homesick senses yet again and dig into the deep desire to return.
But how could she?
How could she face her family and tell them the truth about where she had been the last two years...and the devastating reason why? They wouldn’t look at her the same if she explained that while she’d been trying to right a wrong, she’d made the situation worse...a lot worse.
Not only had her actions affected herself, but it almost cost one individual her life.
Two weeks ago Rebecca opened her confused eyes for the first time since that day two years ago, and sent the world Anya had become accustomed to collapsing down around her.
This time she would make it right. This time she would do what her father had sent her to do in the first place.
Her father.
Anya could so easily turn the blame from herself to her father and her family wouldn’t second guess her.
Robert Caliendo had been a mean, selfish man until the last months of his life. Greedy for money. Greedy for power. Greedy in every sense of the word. And his greed had created a monster. A monster that wrecked the lives of others. Just like Rebecca’s life...just like Anya’s life.
In fact, her family wouldn’t be shocked at all if Anya pointed the blame in Robert’s direction and she didn’t doubt they would rush to support her for being involved in one of his dirty messes. It would be so easy.
Coward...just like your dad.
The intense fear of being caught by her family was trampled down as her guilt-laden conscious scolded herself for even thinking of directing the blame elsewhere. It was a devious Robert move.
Anya would have never been talking to Rebecca two years ago, or been on that street with her, or reached her hand out to stop the hysterical woman, if Robert hadn’t asked his daughter to do so. But it hadn’t physically been Robert that insisted and argued with the other lady on the street that night. It hadn’t been Robert that promised the terrified woman a life of freedom, a life she no doubt ever expected or dreamed possible.
How could Anya resume her own luxurious life when she’d taken one away from another?
Anya could now feel the tears stinging her eyes. It was always like this. Tears stinging and nose sniffling...she had become the saddest person she’d ever encountered. A constant feeling of sickness so severe that she couldn’t even stomach food.
That night played over in Anya’s head every day since, conjuring up how she could have approached Rebecca differently and changed the horrible events that transpired. She should have been prepared for Rebecca’s reaction to who Anya was: A Caliendo.
Anya was responsible for the outcome, the horrific outcome that haunted her nights and weighed down her days. She feared more than her family’s reaction about her involvement with Rebecca, she feared they would play the situation down.
You couldn’t play down a life. Anya
wouldn’t
play down a life. This was her responsibility, and she was going to fix it and live with the consequences.
Tonight, her hands didn’t automatically reach for the lights, as they had each night before. Instead, her feet moved from the foyer across the marble open-concept floor of the luxurious suite. She passed the kitchen, ignoring where she had once filled the counters with fresh food and boiled, cooked, and fried delicacies and headed down the hall instead toward her bedroom.
Her bedroom and the memory-filled kitchen were the only rooms in her suite she hadn’t searched.
Even being gone all these years, her bedroom still welcomed her with the smell of soft vanilla, making her want to crawl under her
own
sheets in her
own
bed and sleep away the life she was living as a horrible nightmare. She couldn’t.
Anya was quick, checking her dresser first and riffling meticulously through each drawer and its contents.
Nothing.
Her nightstands were next.
When she came up empty handed, she wanted to scream...or cry. She dreaded going on a hunt through her congested closet.
One key card. One file. How was this so difficult?
Anya had been so deeply lost maintaining her fury, that she hadn’t been prepared for the hands that gripped her arms.
It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to release the scream from deep down in her lungs.
There was no warning. Not a sound, not a shadow, not the thud of footsteps behind her...nothing.
The intruder whipped Anya around with such force that even if she’d been prepared, her strength couldn’t compete with the strength of this person.
Her disadvantage disoriented her vision. She fell against a solid chest.
A man’s chest.
There was no way in hell this brawny torso belonged to her brother. Marc was a fit, trim man, always had been, but he wasn’t built like the machine her body collided with now. Nor was there any way Marc would be creeping around in the dark waiting to attack her...like a cat hunting the sneaky little mouse.
She hated this game!
Then, in an instant, just giving her enough time to inhale the deep, rich smell of her attacker, he spun her around. Her feet hardly touched the ground and Anya landed face first on the bed.
Her scream turned into a gasp.
She bounced once off the mattress then the body of the attacker pushed against her back, from her head to her rear, pressing her firmly against the bed.
Oh my gosh, I’m going to die. I’m going to die breaking into my own house.
The irony.
Her wrists were bound above her head by the intruder’s firm grip. No tugging would free them, not that the knowledge stopped her from trying.
She could feel his warm breath kiss the side of her face and his warm scent brought back a quick glimpse of a similar incident...only it had been sexually satisfying, where this one was terrifying.
“Breaking and entering is such a Caliendo thing to do. But usually I’m paid to do it so the Caliendo’s don’t get their hands dirty.” The low, harsh whisper sent another wave of hot breath against her ear, subduing the terror as the voice she thought she’d never hear again registered through her pounding fear.