The Pleasure Trip
The Pleasure Trip
Joanne Rock
She may be on a cruise liner, but lately, Rita Frazer's life looks more like a shabby dinghy.Working as a seamstress on a ship called the Venus, Rita hasn't been feeling very goddesslike. More like a Swamp-Thing with red hair and a mouthful of pins. When the ship hosts a fashion show, Rita figures she finally has a chance at being a designer—until she finds herself on the runway, instead of her designs.But Rita's found her muse. And he's watching the fashion show. Harrison Masters is capable of making any woman drop sails, anchor and most of her clothes. And he might be successful with Rita, but she panics when her sister disappears. Now Rita's little dinghy—which was ready for an upgrade to full-on Love Boat only moments ago—is starting to leak. Bail water…or bail out?
She may be on a cruise liner, but lately, Rita Frazer’s life looks more like a shabby dinghy. Working as a seamstress on a ship called the Venus, Rita hasn’t been feeling very goddess like. More like a Swamp-Thing with red hair and a mouthful of pins. When the ship hosts a fashion show, Rita figures she finally has a chance at being a designer—until she finds herself on the runway, instead of her designs.
But Rita’s found her muse. And he’s watching the fashion show. Harrison Masters is capable of making any woman drop sails, anchor and most of her clothes. And he might be successful with Rita, but she panics when her sister disappears. Now Rita’s little dinghy—which was ready for an upgrade to full-on Love Boat only moments ago—is starting to leak. Bail water…or bail out?
Previously Published.
The Pleasure Trip
Joanne Rock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PRAISE FOR award-winning author (#ulink_0571c7d2-3154-52f8-870b-b8f6cb9b4336)
Joanne Rock
“Joanne Rock’s heroes capture and conquer in just one glance, one word, one touch. Irresistible!”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Leto
“Sizzling chemistry with a splash of seductively intense suspense—fabulous Joanne Rock always delivers a page-turning read!”
—RITA
Award winner Catherine Mann
“The storyline is action-packed…and never slows down.”
—The Best Reviews on His Wicked Ways
This book is dedicated to my big sister, Linda, whose love and friendship mean the world to me. Her generous spirit is great inspiration for what sisterhood should be all about. And while our relationship bears little resemblance to Rita and Jayne’s except in the best of ways, Linda’s wizardry with needle and thread (and possibly a glue gun) did provide me with the idea for the sisterly gifts contained in this story. My glitter sneakers are on my list of top ten presents I’ve ever received. Thank you, big sister!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#ulink_bfa6251b-2db3-5a32-ac18-a4f1b84eeba0)
I’d like to thank the staff and crew members of the Carnival Inspiration for their enthusiasm about my book and their help to ensure my questions were answered. My fictional cruise line is not in any way modeled on the commitment to excellence that I saw around me every day on a Carnival ship, but I appreciated the insights about life on board so that I could create a believable world for The Pleasure Trip. Thank you especially to Cruise Director Lenny Halliday and the Carnival promotion department. Thanks also to our dining companions Al and Debbie Moy, who kindly shared their experiences from multiple cruises with a couple of first-timers. Not only did I learn a lot for my book, but I had a great time in the process and can’t wait for another trip!
CONTENTS (#ulink_92640957-adc4-5500-aa93-dc83b88b3660)
Cover (#u5e64cd4d-48f3-543e-8030-570352db7680)
Back Cover Text (#u896937f9-2fac-5221-af0b-6e8b18bf3afe)
Title Page (#u9dca4c3f-c065-5f50-8f7b-16b8e01217c3)
Praise (#ulink_24675a0a-a097-5363-88d9-e138de8528e6)
Dedication (#u6345e815-814e-5dac-81ab-be00cd3800cc)
Acknowledgments (#ulink_d20cce22-4d9a-5e5d-9a97-25b6d52e3eb3)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_552da70f-879f-5269-9c30-6a7d5874b01b)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_59debf66-c73b-5a70-a951-b5f221643a67)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5c3a9b32-34b3-5482-849c-38737922ed0f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_01cb9281-b0e6-5b7b-a215-d18b23d0c2b2)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_9929ba63-c1a9-5d87-a09d-b3eaf5093bd0)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_dd5d50b1-3f79-5fc2-832a-2f00915398c3)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Bonus Features Inside (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_fa0633e8-1c55-54b7-a1e6-fdf3c0ea0030)
EVEN FOR A WOMAN with two left feet, pounding down eight flights of stairs in cheap flip-flops didn’t present a challenge when fueled by anger and the desire to give a well-deserved butt kicking.
Silently fuming, Rita Frazer shoved open the stairwell door on the basement level of Roman Cruise Lines’ flagship, the Venus, where she and her sister had worked for over a year. She glanced down at her insubstantial footwear with blue plastic flowers between the toes. No doubt about it, her flip-flops were a sorry excuse for butt-kicking shoes. But where there was a will, desperate women found a way.
“Jayne!” Rita shouted down the narrow corridor reserved for the ship’s employees, steam hissing from her ears like the boiler beside her cabin. Everyone but her younger sister the showgirl was at work this afternoon, prepping for an influx of passengers after a day docked in St. Kitts, the second island stop on a ten-day Caribbean cruise.
Rita had done the same trip plenty of times as official seamstress for the Venus. But this wasn’t just any cruise, and Jayne knew it. This particular excursion could be Rita’s big financial break since she’d gone out on a limb to create new outfits for the show—outfits five times as good as what they’d bought from manufacturers in the past. She just hoped the cruise management company would agree and pony up an appropriate payout.
And of course, she hoped Jayne—one of the show’s featured performers—didn’t mess up Rita’s big night.
When no answer was forthcoming, Rita stomped her way to the end of the hall, following the scent of the Chanel No. 5 Jayne preferred even though none of the dancers were supposed to wear perfume out of deference to the costumes. The familiar fragrance wafted from the same interior stateroom from which a warbling rendition of “Stand By Your Man” currently emanated.
Rita let herself into the compact room they shared in the bowels of the ship, a room Jayne never bothered to bolt no matter how many times they discussed the potential dangers with an ever-changing crew of nine hundred. The drone of shower water mingled with god-awful singing.
“You are so dead.” Rita figured it would be okay to strangle her sister today since Jayne hadn’t bothered to show for dress rehearsal this afternoon when she knew damn well this was Rita’s one chance to shine in her peon job as a seamstress.
The singing stopped as Jayne popped her head out of the shower, all smiles amid a cloud of steam. “Rita? What time is it?”
“Past time for rehearsal and Danielle already wants your head on a platter for not checking in with her. Star status doesn’t buy you exemption from attending show preliminaries.” She torpedoed a towel against the shower curtain, nailing Jayne in the hip through the white waffle weave. “Besides that, do you know how many corporate managers I corralled into seeing the show tonight to see the new outfits? The boat pulls out in twenty minutes.”
“Crap.” The reference to the timeline at least got Jayne moving as she ducked back into the shower spray to rinse. “I’ve got to hurry.”
Mildly disappointed no butt kicking had been needed, Rita gave her flip-flops the rest of the day off. She stalked out of the closet-size bathroom, noting the unholy mess scattered about their cramped cabin now that she wasn’t focused solely on her beef with Jayne. Clothes were strewn everywhere, the twin beds both covered in discarded silk tops, scarves and skinny hot pants.
“I’m not even going to ask what happened in here.” Rita flung her plastic thongs into the closet and reached for a more forgiving pair of sneakers to wear with her jean shorts. “I’ve got too much on my mind to wade through your wardrobe crisis.”
“That’s okay.” The shower curtain rings scraped over the rod with a metallic ting as Jayne toweled off. “I solved my own crisis, thank you very much, although God forbid you give me any credit for it. I know we’re all excited about your foray into costume design, but you forget your sister is the Queen of Vintage and a fashion force to reckon with in her own right.”
Rita needed to be back at the rehearsal stage to help dress everyone before show time, but her sister’s comment slowed her reach for the door. “What do you need a great outfit for anyway? You’re going onstage as soon as the ship sails.”
She peered across the wardrobe tornado at Jayne sliding into a floral sundress in record time.
“Can’t a girl dress up for her man?” She winked over her shoulder, one long red curl plastered to her cheek. Presenting her back to Rita to zip her up, she smoothed the hem of her short skirt. “How do I look?”
“Flushed and overexcited.” Rita fastened the hook and eye over the zipper and wondered for the umpteen-millionth time how Jayne could appear so movie-star gorgeous with her confident stride and graceful moves while Rita lumbered through life with as much finesse as a linebacker. They were sisters, for crying out loud. Same genes. Same ballet lessons. Same basic looks and size. Where was the justice? “You’re practically bubbling over for that matter. What gives?”
Jayne shuffled around her makeup table that doubled as a desk and poked Rita in the arm with a lipstick case. “Can’t I be excited for you? I’m still in shock you finally talked the management into new outfits for the opening number. They’re normally so stingy about wardrobe.” Uncapping bright fuchsia lipstick, Jayne smeared it on her sister’s mouth in a futile effort to make Rita look pulled together. “Now all you need to do is drag me out of show business and you’ll be happy, right?”
Rita rolled her eyes and tried to stand still for the makeup job even though she’d rather not have her face lacquered while she was working. Didn’t Jayne realize they were going to be late? But some things weren’t worth arguing with her over. Makeup for one. And the fact that Rita hadn’t truly sold the costumes to Roman Cruise Lines quite yet. Jayne would have had a conniption to think her big sister—by all of eleven months—had accepted a work-for-hire job to force the higher-ups into appreciating her. But they’d worked the cruise ship for minimum pay long enough after back-to-back six-month stints. Time to move on to greener pastures.
“Oh please. As if I’ll be able to haul you away from this business or Horatio the Latin lover any time soon.” Although Rita could always hope. She’d tried before to get Jayne to consider moving to New York to make the most of her dance talent, but Rita had never succeeded in convincing her to leave boy-bimbo Horatio behind. “You’re addicted to all that glitters, remember? I’m just happy my costumes came together in time for tonight.”
Rita had been trying to coax her starry-eyed sibling into developing interests outside of dancing since high school, but Jayne had the same stage aspirations as their mother and no promise of any stable, long-term work had ever wooed her away. The job on the cruise ship had been reliable and working on a luxury liner gave the illusion of being on vacation all the time—a welcome fantasy after they’d done their share of waiting tables in dive bars while waiting for Jayne’s big break.
Showbiz opportunities hadn’t been hiding in any of the trucker hangouts on Interstate 95 north of Fort Lauderdale where they’d grown up. And Jayne couldn’t be convinced to try Broadway since their mother had a gambling problem along with a mixed bag of other addictions that kept her daughters on their toes and perpetually bankrupt unless they hid their money very carefully. The cruise stint allowed Jayne to keep tabs on Mom while Rita kept an eye on her baby sister.
Somehow, it all worked. For now.
“I mean it, Ree.” Jayne coated her sister’s eyelashes with industrial-strength mascara. “I think I’m ready to blow this showgirl gig once and for all. Finally, we’re both going to have everything we dreamed about.”
“You really think my outfits are going to be a hit?” Rita had sewn until her fingers bled to pull together the new costumes to unveil at tonight’s program. She’d paid off one of the other dancers to model the extra garments informally around the tables before and after the house lights went up at the main performance. When the dancers weren’t onstage, they spent plenty of time walking around the ship in full showgirl regalia to pose for pictures with the guests, so it wasn’t like Missy didn’t have experience preening while she mingled.
“Absolutely.” Jayne smeared gloss on her lips and finger combed her damp hair into waves around her face. “You’re going to knock ’em dead tonight. It’s high time you came out of hiding to show your talents to the world.”
The words of sisterly support were as welcome as they were rare in a relationship marked by old rivalries and very different perspectives. But deep down, she knew Jayne wanted her to succeed. Didn’t she?
“Thanks.” Rita pulled open the door, feet itching to get back to the stage. She hated it that suspicion held her up once again. “You’re not planning anything unusual for the show, are you? No special theatrics to highlight my outfits or impulsive gestures sure to get us fired?”
Flashbacks to their childhood and her sister charging money from their friends to see her inline skating on a train rail came to mind. Jayne lighting the neighbor’s garage on fire when she practiced her flaming baton routine as a teenager. Jayne slipping a note to the star quarterback in high school, saying that Rita liked him.
And although that last stunt had worked out with rather exciting results for Rita, she’d officially started her first ulcer while waiting to find out if A.J. liked her, too. No way would she tread down Jayne’s road of recklessness again. She’d weathered enough emotional storms from her sister’s revolving-door romances to know she was better off focusing on work.
“Trust me.” Sliding into her high heels, Jayne smiled that angelic grin that had won her Sweetest Sugar Plum in the school Christmas pageant three years running. “You’re going to be very happy tonight.”
Reassured she’d covered her bases with Jayne, Rita sidestepped the elevator that only came to the bottom deck once in a blue moon. With paying passengers finishing up boarding from their shore excursions, the elevator would be too jammed to make the trip to the employee-only level anytime soon.
Not until she hit the second flight of stairs did she remember she’d never pinned down her sister for an estimated arrival time in wardrobe. No doubt, Jayne figured she could slide into her spot late since she didn’t go out until the second number. And for the first time, Rita realized she didn’t care if her sister failed to play by the book.
For just this once, maybe Rita and her two left feet could enjoy a little of the spotlight for herself.
* * *
“TRY BENDING OVER and jiggling.” Sweaty and frazzled two minutes before the curtain went up, Rita waited while the platinum-blond showgirl decked in buttery soft blue leather leaned forward and shook her considerable assets.
Straightening, the jittery young dancer covered in self-tanning cream and a healthy dose of body glitter looked to Rita for approval.
No luck, damn it. Rita ran a skilled finger along the inside of the other woman’s bodice and tugged the material upward. “The twins are still a little uneven, Missy. Do you want me to take in the costume before you go onstage?”
Sighing, the stressed-out blonde waved away the help as she dove for a pink duffel bag on the dressing room table. “My right is bigger than my left. I’ve got a silicone lift in my bag to fill out that side a little.”
Ignoring the usual pandemonium in the cavernous backstage of the Aurora 2 Theater, Rita silently critiqued every costume that streaked by her as dancers and acrobats scrambled for last-minute makeup fixes and hair touch-ups. They were three days into the February cruise with two performances down, but tonight’s show marked the first appearance of the new outfits.
And surprise of all surprises, the costumes looked fantastic for their debut number. As long as the dancers did their part tonight and Jayne showed up soon, Rita was well on her way to getting reimbursed for her hard work with—hopefully—a hefty bonus to show for it, too.
“Places, ladies!” Danielle Divine, a former showgirl and the current Aurora floor-show manager, gave the familiar nudge to her dancers over the backstage P.A. system. “I need everyone lined up now.”
“Gotta go.” Missy stuffed the lift into her outfit and tossed her bag on the nearest dressing table. “Your costumes are fantastic, Rita. And the showy feathered one I modeled earlier was a hit. You really ought to be in New York designing clothes instead of repairing frayed officer uniforms.”
“Thanks.” Uncomfortable with the praise and the thought that she wasted her talents, Rita figured she’d be happy enough once she received payment in full. She hurried past a rolling rack of outfits to follow Missy and the other dancers toward the stage for the first number. The excitement of an opening night still gave Rita shivers, probably a response inherited simply by being a Frazer. Jayne had cheered herself hoarse after she’d landed her slot in the show, launching her into the best gig she’d had since their mother’s last run at the gambling tables had financially ruined the whole family.
“No talking, ladies!” Danielle Divine stepped between them, physically nudging Rita back three steps with her skinny, strong arms. Older than Rita by ten years, she still packed more strength in her toned body than most eighteen-years-olds. Miss Divine took her job as backstage manager damn seriously. “Out of the way, Ms. Frazer. Your costumes are lovely but your fretting mother hen routine is not wanted in this show. Understood?”
Rita might have told Danielle where she could get off, but the house lights were already dimming and the entertainers began to engage in their individual last-minute rituals—visualization techniques, breathing exercises, even a few scattered prayers. No time for talk now.
“Good luck, everyone!” Rita stage-whispered over Danielle’s Miss Clairol number nine head. “And thanks for making the costumes look great.”
Couldn’t hurt to remind them her reputation was riding on their high kicks tonight. Missy gave her two thumbs up as they all filed onto their designated places on top of a wheeled piece of staging that would bring them out onto the stage, the acrobats and singers hanging back as they waited for their turn in the spotlight later tonight.
Rita stood back to cheer them on, the boat rocking gently beneath her feet while she wished Jayne were there to help calm her nerves when the audience got their first glimpse of the outfits. Jayne never had stage fright and always danced like a pro. From preschool pageants to high school plays, she’d never been flustered onstage, never lost her supreme confidence in her ability to perform.
Rita was another story. She’d always done well in rehearsals and could nail any routine in the privacy of her bedroom, but on opening night she froze like a deer in headlights. A supreme disappointment to her torch-singer mother who’d dreamed of seeing her girls onstage.
Thankfully Rita had found work that allowed her to stay backstage, and even tonight, she only sent a small piece of herself out into the bright lights.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice boomed over the house speakers as a drumroll hummed in the background. “Welcome to Roman Cruise Lines’ world-famous Venus floor-show extravaganza.”
Rita watched the wheeled conveyance full of dancers start to move. The synthesized, edgy rock music for the performance began. Danielle Divine whispered last-minute instructions to a very fidgety Missy, who Rita knew was in danger of losing her job just two months into her contract. Poor thing.
Dancing gigs were damn hard to come by and fiercely competitive. If the woman lost this job…
Damn it, the red-eyed dancer wasn’t the only one whose job was on the line. Rita forced herself to stop thinking about everyone else in the show and concentrated on her own responsibilities—making sure her deceptively simple leather costumes looked good enough to eat on stage.
The whole idea for the biker babe number had been Rita’s, from the outfits to the music to the core theme behind the choreography. It had been hell to convince the show managers that the unconventional material could work on stage given its tendency to stretch, but once they’d glimpsed the possibilities and made sure Rita would be on hand for free alterations, they’d been all over the concept.
Nervous energy charging through her, she grabbed Jayne’s outfit for the next number and tiptoed to the edge of the backstage curtain to gauge the audience’s reaction. Jayne played a bigger role in the previous night’s production but in this show, she had a solo dance sequence in just one of the acts. The house was packed, but the only faces Rita could make out were the folks in the front row. Thank God Jayne’s loser boyfriend—Horatio the ass-grabbing blackjack dealer—wasn’t in attendance for once. He normally sat front and center and ogled Jayne along with every other dancer, but tonight that seat belonged to…
Come to mama.
Someone much more interesting.
Rita wasn’t in the market for a man. Especially not a high-roller type who traveled alone and booked Carib bean cruises for the access to round-the-clock gambling. Traditionally, those were the kind of guys who reserved the front row tables at the nightly floor-show touted for a nearly nude revue capping off every performance. No, Rita didn’t like that type of guy at all.
But if she had, her head would have been turned by the prime male specimen currently peeling the label off his bottle of beer while a battalion of leather-clad women sashayed past him. He was a big man. Big enough to make his chair look more like doll furniture than people seating.
His legs sprawled long and muscular beneath the cocktail table in front of him. His shoulders had the kind of width only a custom-made suit would accommodate. Which, of course, he wore. Navy-blue and pinstriped, the clothes gave him the appearance of a forties movie star, the kind of guy her mother would have fallen for in a heartbeat. But then, Margie Frazer had an unusual love of the forties and fifties screen icons, a fact advertised to the world by naming her daughters Rita Hayworth Frazer and Jayne Mansfield Frazer.
Licking her lips at the hot prospect seated in the first row, Rita momentarily forgot about the show and how much she had riding on it. Leaning one shoulder into an empty rolling rack tucked behind the backstage curtain, she indulged the urge to stare for just another moment. How many times in life did a woman feel that overwhelming sense of attraction at first sight?
She hadn’t felt this way since A.J. the quarterback had given her heart palpitations in the eleventh grade. And as sweet as that first crush had been, Rita had to admit that with a woman’s more mature and discriminating hormones at work, her attraction now was a hell of a lot stronger. Earthier. Yummier. Dancing biker babes flooded the stage in a swirl of color and feminine curves while Rita’s gaze narrowed to just one man.
Close-trimmed dark hair framed the stranger’s face, his brooding eyes glued to the bottle label he slowly mutilated. Although his sleek suit and narrow green-and-blue tie broadcast success, his forbidding expression and preoccupation reminded her of the desolate faces she’d seen at the ship’s bar at 4:00 a.m. The shell-shocked folks who came onboard for a good time in the casino and somehow lost half their life savings to the roll of a die or hand of cards.
Foolish, clueless people who had no business indulging in the free drinks available at Venus’s twenty-four-hour casino.
She hoped for this gorgeous man’s sake he wasn’t staring down the throat of a longneck for those kinds of reasons. Maybe his girlfriend had just dumped him and all he needed was a cynical, buxom redhead to put his life back into perspective for the night….
Rita debated taking a chance for once and sending him a drink. But as the music died away and the audience erupted into applause, she warned herself to get her head on straight and find Jayne to help with her costume change while a singing duo took the stage between dance numbers. The other dancers’ next outfits weren’t Rita Frazer Originals, but Jayne’s was. Because Jayne played the central character in a very fluffy musical drama involving lots of feathers and coy smiles, her outfit could be different. Better. Hand sewn by Rita for a little extra spotlight.
Tearing her gaze away from the superstud with dark disappointment in his eyes, Rita waited for Jayne at the edge of the stage, costume already in hand. Too bad Jayne was still nowhere in sight.
Damn it. What was her sister thinking?
Praying Danielle Divine—aka Danielle Domineering—wouldn’t notice the absence, Rita waited to see her sister’s Veronica Lake-style red waves bob around the corner.
And waited.
Until a bad feeling crept into her veins, chilling her skin and setting her every cynical, wise big-sister instinct on edge. Sprinting around the back of the staging area to another dressing room, Rita scanned the small expanse of lighted mirrors and makeup tables for a glimpse of Jayne.
To no avail.
Heart pounding, she mentally shuffled the image of Jayne’s hopeful face with the fact that Horatio the loser blackjack dealer wasn’t in his usual seat tonight. Hadn’t Jayne said she was ready to get out of showbiz?
And hadn’t Rita known damn well that couldn’t be good?
Hightailing it to the other side of the stage where half the dancers were already naked and shimmying their way into their next outfit, Rita found Jayne’s dressing table graced by a glittery star, her duffel bag beneath it. The bag was unusually light given all the stuff Jayne normally hauled around. There was no purse, no bulging makeup case. Just some tissues, hairbrush, masking tape and—a note?
The dread that had been knotting in her stomach traveled up her throat in a burning path.
Don’t be mad at me, big sister! You know this routine inside and out and let’s face it—no one deserves the spotlight as much as you tonight. I had an urgent appointment in St. Kitts because Horatio really wanted to—ready?—elope!!!
Love and kisses,
Jayne
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no freaking way.
Rita didn’t need to run to the nearest porthole to know the big ship had already cleared St. Kitts harbor by a mile. Jayne must have slipped off the boat with seconds to spare considering Rita had seen her in the shower just twenty minutes before the boat set sail. Jayne had timed her defection flawlessly—no surprise there considering her perfect stage routines and the fact that she had every male security guard aboard the Venus wrapped around her finger.
Damn! Shoving aside the wealth of worries for her sister and more than a little resentment for herself, Rita’s fingers tightened around the leopard-print notepaper in one hand, Jayne’s dancing costume in the other.
With performers already lining up, Rita had zero time to make a decision. In fact, she didn’t realize she’d actually made one at all until her clothes were sliding off and she found herself jamming one foot after another into the leg holes of the barely-there feathered concoction.
She could dance, right?
She’d sat in on all the same damn tap, jazz and ballet classes as Jayne until she’d emancipated herself from Margie’s stage-mother stranglehold. Plus, for three months running Rita had rehearsed all of Jayne’s dances so she could get a feel for how the costumes needed to be crafted to keep them fluid and feminine.
Shoving her bare feet into strappy rhinestone sandals that went with Jayne’s ensemble, Rita nearly toppled over as Missy rushed by, headdress askew as Sammy the Somersaulting Albanian tried unsuccessfully to right the heavy tiara.
“Can you help her, Rita?” Sammy whispered, ever mindful of Danielle who wouldn’t hesitate to axe any dancer who couldn’t hold her own.
Or any dancer who did something really, really stupid like elope in the middle of the show.
“I’ll take over, Sammy. Thanks.” Rita let the wiry acrobat off the hook as she picked up speed fastening her rhinestone top, determined not to flub this. Why was she not surprised Sammy looked endlessly grateful as he hurried away with the fluid grace that came naturally to gymnasts?
“What are you doing?” Missy jammed fistfuls of hair into the headdress with no success. “Where’s Jayne?”
What could she say? Jayne’s sucking face with the worst mistake of her life while our careers go up in flames? Yanking her own headpiece off a hook over Jayne’s star-spangled dressing table, Rita plunked the tiara on her head.
“She had an emergency, but that’s just between us, okay?” Snitching a bobby pin from the jumble of accessories on the table, Rita thrust it into Missy’s long blond curls and anchored the heavy headpiece to her scalp, the need to lend a hand still strong even when she had no time to help. “Don’t worry about Danielle once you’re onstage. Just dance.”
As if she had time to dispense career advice while undertaking the stupidest scheme of her life. Even Jayne had never been this impulsive.
Okay, taking into account eloping with Horatio, maybe she had.
“Places, ladies!” Danielle’s throaty call for action multiplied the butterflies in Rita’s stomach.
The last thing she needed was for Danielle to see her in Jayne’s costume. With the headdress on, there was a chance she’d never notice. Thank God every Frazer woman had been given the same five feet ten inches to work with.
She had to at least try to get past Danielle for the sake of Jayne’s job, which wouldn’t be here for her when she came back—oh God, if she came back—without a little intervention.
The music changed as the performers lined up for the scene Jayne called the Wicked Angel. It looked like one big T-and-A fest to Rita’s eyes, but Jayne insisted it was a fallen woman with a heart of gold act. Well, fallen woman with a heart of gold and sexual appetite the size of Texas since the dance involved substantial writhing around on the floor. Though the pastel feathers made the writhing look more innocent, according to Jayne.
Hence the Wicked Angel.
Rita had never explored her inner angel, preferring to barge through life being blunt and direct and simply asking for what she wanted. But tonight she’d play simpering and coy for all it was worth in order to save Jayne’s paycheck.
She just hoped she didn’t fall off her heels. Or turn left when everyone else turned right and possibly high kick her neighbor right in the schnoz.
All of which had happened to her before in her long and colorful career as her sister’s crappy sidekick.
“Hurry up, Jayne!” Danielle the Destroyer glared at her with a look that would have sent heavyweight boxers running for cover. Thank God the abysmal backstage lighting prevented her from discerning Rita’s features under Jayne’s headdress. “You’re on in five. Four…”
Rita’s bare legs quivered beneath her as she prayed for coordination and knew it wouldn’t come. The only way she’d ever been able to get through a solid dance routine had been to isolate herself in a room all alone. Maybe she could close her eyes and pretend she was alone.
“Three. Two…”
The house lights swirled and changed from moody blues to brazen reds. The music kicked up volume. Her knees knocked so hard she wasn’t sure she could haul herself out there. Closing her eyes would definitely result in her spiked heel planted in someone’s instep.
She’d simply choose a focus point. Meditate the rest of the humongous amphitheater away.
“And you’re on!” Danielle’s threatening growl mingled with the beat in the music that cued the first step.
Where Rita’s eyes promptly alighted on the only focus point in the room that interested her. The one man whose presence just might be the key to saving her feather-covered ass.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_462241b3-1cc0-574b-a389-fff45d5d9cff)
SPECIAL AGENT HARRISON Masters knew damn well he wouldn’t find the answers to his problems by staring through the glass of his empty beer bottle like an amber-colored lens. Then again, he didn’t think he’d find a fluffy white feather there, yet that didn’t stop a downy quill from floating through his field of vision to land with a delicate sigh along the back of his hand.
Hauling his thoughts from his quickly-going-nowhere investigative work, Harrison scratched his nose and shook off the bit of fluff. He took in the extravagant floor show and searched for the source of the feather. Visions of snowy doves circling the all-you-can-eat buffet formed in his brain for all of two seconds before he locked gazes with a redheaded chorus girl in the front row.
And damned if he didn’t get struck by a bolt of lightning.
Heat throbbed through him even as he realized the electric jolt had been a laser image broadcast across the dancers through the haze of fake red fog pumped through the amphitheater. When Harrison had left Naples, Florida, to embark on his first pleasure trip in years—even if he wasn’t quite as interested in the recreation as he pretended—he’d briefly toyed with the idea of a vacation fling.
He hadn’t seen a woman to pique his interest until now, however. The hot-as-hell redhead stared at him as if her life depended on maintaining eye contact—so much so that Harrison couldn’t resist sneaking a look behind him to make sure he wasn’t missing something. Like a seven-foot Martian at his six o’clock.
The bawdy, stripper-style music in the background played a mischievous accompaniment to the women garbed in angelic white feathers and strategically placed rhinestones. One dancer wore little more than a couple of quills over her breasts and a tiny G-string made entirely of red jewels.
Not that Harrison really cared what anyone else wore. He was merely curious to see how the rest of the women measured up to the auburn-haired bombshell with a pinup’s body and mile-long naked legs.
They didn’t.
Whoever this brazen dancer was, she seemed unique in her tendency to look right at an audience member. Him.
And yeah, he noticed. He was male and breathing, after all—and totally freaking free since his girlfriend of one year had dumped him eight weeks ago, leaving him high and dry but making him realize he’d never been all that fired-up about their relationship anyway. Too bad he’d been so busy figuring out his father’s hotel business he’d temporarily inherited—a work world so different from the one he’d trained for—he hadn’t even seen it coming.
Worse, he didn’t really mourn the loss of her so much as the loss of her insights on the hospitality industry. No wonder she’d dumped his sorry ass and started dating the resort’s golf pro, who also happened to be Harrison’s best friend. Past tense.
These days, Harrison didn’t think he would be ready for another serious relationship for a long time, at least until he’d untangled the mess he’d made of the last one. But now that he’d embarked on the cruise to follow his missing ex-girlfriend and a pile of absent cash from the resort that had disappeared along with the golf pro a few weeks later, Harrison wouldn’t mind some nonserious adventure if it happened to sashay his way.
Something he’d bet the redhead could provide.
Settling into his chair at one of the handful of VIP tables up front in the theater, he shoved aside his empty beer bottle and concentrated on the woman onstage. Less made-up than her counterparts, she looked younger and older at the same time. Investigative instincts flared to life, cataloging clues to this woman’s psyche for the best way to get into her head—and possibly under her feathers. There was less sophistication in the loose way she wore her hair and the lack of stage makeup around her eyes. Yet she was no nineteen-year-old college student, not with that intense stare of hers.
This woman had character. Some secrets, maybe.
She shimmied, she sashayed, she spun, her gaze always returning to him. To seduce him? Damn but he’d like to think so.
Loosening his tie by a fraction of an inch, he allowed himself to imagine taking this angel to bed. High, generous breasts supported a jeweled bodice that resembled a feminine version of chain mail. And suddenly he was thirteen years old again, studying the bra catalogs for a hint of nipple.
He hadn’t made time for that kind of frivolous pleasure in the past year since he’d delved into the family business after his father collided with a mountain in a debilitating skiing accident. His dad had been forced into early retirement and his mother now dedicated all her time to his rehabilitation. Helping his family through a crisis had seemed more important than a career that once meant everything to him—even if he’d missed the intellectual thrill of cloak-and-dagger games, the adrenaline rush of tapping into big-league crime rings.
But no matter how much he itched to return to the FBI next week now that he finally had a temporary management team in place, he hadn’t ever let himself screw up with the high-end Naples resort that provided much-needed income for his father’s ongoing medical bills—far more than Harrison would ever see as a special agent. And he’d been doing a damn good job as the makeshift manager until Sonia had disappeared during a cruise on the Venus last month.
His instincts had twitched, but he’d wrestled them into submission. Until a considerable amount of cash vanished from the Masters Corporation accounts shortly thereafter. Then, he couldn’t write off his concerns as sour grapes or even misplaced longing for some intrigue in a life grown tedious. He’d hired the temporary management team to ease his transition back to his work as an agent, then he’d driven all the way across Florida to jump on a boat and find out what sort of Bermuda Triangle effect was taking place in the Caribbean these days.
He wasn’t onboard just to play spy. The Venus would dock in Antigua for a day, where he could visit Masters Corporation’s newest hotel property. It was all practical with just enough time for some pleasure in the mix.
The redhead’s sudden high kick right over his table gave him a view of her French-cut bikini bottoms. Long ropes of clear rhinestones seemed to tie the panties around her hips while allowing the trailing stones to caress her pale thighs. There was no way this woman could have been onstage in the first number. She had a knack for commanding his attention, something he didn’t give to many people in a life grown too fractured. He would have noticed her.
Lowering her body to the floor, she rocked her hips in provocative fashion. Writhed on the ground as if she couldn’t wait for fulfillment. For sex. For him.
Damn but she was hot.
Renewed interest in his trip had him clapping and on his feet when her number ended. A wolf whistle fell from his lips without thought.
He didn’t know if she had more dances or if she was done for the night, but either way he made up his mind to go backstage and find out. He might have squelched his aptitude for spontaneity over the last year of putting family first, but he’d always had a flair for closing a deal.
And the brazen bombshell hurrying offstage in glittering silver sandals was one opportunity he wouldn’t let slip away.
* * *
HAULING BUTT OFFSTAGE, Rita wanted to slip out of sight and slink away before Danielle the Demoness could get a hold of her. She’d missed two cues by a fraction of a second. Not enough that the audience would notice, but enough to soften the performance and take off the edge of crisp perfection Danielle drilled into their brains at Jayne’s rehearsals.
It was the man in the front row who’d thrown Rita off. When he’d turned to look at her head-on… She closed her eyes to recapture the hot sensation of desire that had showered over her.
Deep. Dark. Delicious.
If she didn’t need to search for Jayne, she might be tempted to track him down and see what happened. Resigned to giving Danielle the slip and helping her sister keep her job instead, Rita hurried out of her costume before the show manager realized what happened. Luckily, Jayne’s stage perfection usually bought her a wide berth from Danielle who—while she liked to nitpick every detail of her productions—possessed a healthy respect for star talent.
Sliding into her shorts and knit halter top she’d been wearing earlier, Rita rushed out of the backstage through a lesser-used side door out onto the Mercury deck while still securing the knot around the back of her neck.
“Can I help you with that?”
Through the veil of her hair with her neck kinked down, Rita spied the object of her stage fantasies framed by the dark night of the open deck. The man in the navy pinstriped suit looked even better close up. He reached for the tie on her halter top.
Sex-starved lunatic that she was, she actually moved her hand away to let him take over the task. For a nanosecond.
“Wait.” She slapped her hand back on the half-formed knot, dismayed to find his fingers already there. And she was already turned on. Her legs that had been shaking from the performance quivered a little more. Just from this man’s proximity. Amazing.
“What?” His voice was too close. He was too close.
Rita reminded herself she was not the impulsive sister. She was the rock. The stabilizer in her family since she’d pulled her first babysitting gig when she’d been eight and Jayne seven. Rita prided herself on being the only Frazer female not driven by her hormones.
Although in this man’s case that seemed hard to remember.
“I can get it. And I don’t even know you, so I have no intention of letting you dress me.”
He slid his hand out from under hers, although he didn’t remove it altogether. Instead, the warmth of his fingers drifted fleetingly along her shoulder underneath her hair for a moment as she finished tying her shirt into place. The touch was so light she could almost think she’d imagined it.
“I’m Harrison Masters and I run a resort called Masters Inn on the outskirts of Naples.”
“Rita Frazer.” She found herself extending her hand to shake his, even though she didn’t normally fraternize with passengers. But maybe just this once she deserved a little reward for her efforts since she’d gone above and beyond duty by dancing Jayne’s number. She hadn’t even been able to stick around to meet with the Roman Cruise Lines executives to ensure they were pleased with her costumes.
“Nice to meet you, Rita.” His smile created crinkles around his endlessly blue eyes. His hand engulfed hers, the warmth of his fingers stroking the heel of her palm, the sensitive inside of her wrist where her pulse throbbed with awareness. “I hope you don’t mind me following up on our connection during your show.”
“Umm.” She backed up against the rail as an older couple shuffled past them. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” He leaned against the rail while the ship cruised easily through open water, crossing his legs at the ankle as if he had all night. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one engaged in the long, hot looks out there.”
She hesitated, knowing she could hardly deny her unusual behavior. “Sorry about all the long, hot looks.”
“Don’t be sorry on my account. I’m a gentleman and all, and I’ll leave now if I misinterpreted the staring. But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
“I was staring at you. But not for the reason you probably thought.”
“Meaning you didn’t hope I’d come backstage to proposition you?” He shook his head, his broad shoulders slumping just a bit. “Damned if my dating skills aren’t getting rusty.”
She remembered him peeling the label off his beer bottle before she came out onstage and felt a twinge of empathy. If he’d given her a hard-sell pitch to have a drink with him, she could have blown him off in a heartbeat. But she hated to think she’d led him on.
“I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression.”And God knows, she’d thought about jumping him the moment she laid eyes on him. “I just got into a bit of a pickle with the whole dancing thing and I needed a focus—”
“No need to explain.” He held up his hand to halt her, a flash of regret in those gorgeous blue eyes of his. “It’s not your fault and I’m just going to get out of your way so you can—”
“Wait.” Rita’s heart pounded with the need to explain. Or maybe she just didn’t want to let him go. After the day she’d had, Harrison Masters seemed like a lifeline, a rare opportunity to enjoy herself for a few stolen hours since she probably wouldn’t have any luck tracking down the partying newlyweds until dawn at the earliest. Maybe she could forget about being practical just this once. “On second thought, a man with rusty dating skills might be just my speed. You want to get a drink?”
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, Harrison guided Rita toward the uppermost deck of the ship under a fat full moon and had to admit maybe his dating savvy wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. At the very least, he was right to follow the attraction to see where it led because he’d had more fun getting to know her over drinks tonight than he’d ever had in a crowded bar.
“I never date,” Rita blurted as they strolled side by side around the running track on the small, nearly vacant deck.
“Never?” Harrison had discovered speaking her mind was part of her unusual charm, a part he appreciated greatly since he’d never been much for decoding the complicated thought processes employed by women. “I’m positive that’s not because of a lack of offers. Your line of work must bring you a lot of attention.”
“Not exactly.” She slowed down as they reached the forward curve of the rail where they could see six other larger decks sprawled out below them.
From their perch they could see conga dancing around the pool, a teen disco party on another deck and an Irish pub night around one of the other outdoor bars where revelers all wore shiny green plastic leprechaun hats.
Her hedging answer made him wary to press further. “I totally get it if you don’t want to talk about your love life. I’m just glad to be here with you, Rita, because I don’t take much time off to hang out and relax. I’ve had a great time tonight.”
Rita looked too good to contemplate with only a couple of inches separating them. She tossed her thick red curls over her shoulder, releasing the apple scent of her shampoo. She flicked her fingernail gently against her wineglass, creating a soft ringing sound.
“It’s not that. We just got to talking about so many other things downstairs, I forgot to explain to you—” She stopped herself. “I never even told you about the staring thing onstage, either, did I? I got a little nervous before I went out and I thought it would help calm me down if I had a focus point.”
“I was your focus point?” He settled at the rail next to her, enjoying the way their hideaway isolated them while giving them a view of so much of the ship. “And just what is a focus point, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I think it’s a meditation aid or something. My mom told me she used one to help get her through childbirth after the doctor told her Valium wasn’t an option, so I guess I adopted it for other painful experiences. I’m not even really a showgirl. But I was covering for someone.” She shrugged, a flirtatious grin playing about her fuchsia painted lips. “Worked like a charm for me.”
Her brown eyes glided over him, the bold stare at odds with her light words. Only an idiot wouldn’t make a move after a night that couldn’t get much more romantic. Then again, why rush something great when he was enjoying every second in her company? He wasn’t twenty years old.
“It worked damn well for me, too. That costume you wore—” he’d be seeing rhinestones in his dreams for the rest of his life “—I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d never know you weren’t supposed to be onstage. From where I was sitting, you looked like you were born to do high kicks.”
“You liked the outfit?” For some reason, the notion seemed to really please her.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget it.”
“I made it.” She finished off the last of her wine and set the glass at her feet. “I’m the ship seamstress but that kind of sewing doesn’t really scratch the creative itch, so I created a lot of the costumes for the show tonight.”
Intrigued by this newly exposed facet of Rita, Harrison figured there would be no time like the present to reveal he wasn’t a resort manager. But was it so much to ask to have one perfect night in his life? One date that wasn’t overshadowed by his work the way so many other dates had been?
“I’m no sewing expert, but I don’t think I need to be to guess you must be talented.” Reaching to skim her bare arm with his fingers he settled his hand on her shoulder and simply savored the feel of her.
“Thank you.” She shrugged, but somehow the movement seemed to bring her closer. Had he stepped nearer or had she? “For the compliment and for—” she waved her hand vaguely “—this. Tonight. It’s been fun.”
Even though he only touched a few square inches of her smooth flesh, Harrison could feel her heart pounding, could sense the hot rush of blood through her veins. He would have never guessed he could deduce a woman’s attraction so keenly, but he felt hers in every pore of his flesh.
Almost simultaneously he realized he hadn’t been this tuned in to his ex-girlfriend—Sonia. God, he had deserved to be given the boot. But he wouldn’t let past regrets rob him now.
In fact, he welcomed the chance to think about something other than the past few months. Not that any red-blooded man could do much thinking at the moment. Cupping Rita’s bare shoulder in his palm, he made up his mind to seize the moment.
“Trust me, the pleasure has been all mine.” Leaning close, he watched the way her tongue ran round the rim of her lips and his throat went dry.
Without a single thought to practicality, he slanted his mouth over hers and gave her the kiss he’d been thinking about all night.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fbf29c31-35b5-5456-b8aa-fb128df5b149)
JAYNE MANSFIELD FRAZER HAD never believed in luck, preferring to think life handed out plenty of opportunities for those smart enough to make something of them.
So she could hardly blame a run of bad luck now, when her fiancé for all of twelve hours failed to show for their appointed rendezvous outside St. Kitts’ “Island Dreams” gift shop, which just so happened to double as a wedding chapel for eager—or stupidly impulsive—couples.
No, Jayne couldn’t blame anything or anyone but herself for the farce of her plan to elope with Horatio. Even when it started to rain—big, fat earnest drops that meant a serious tropical downpour was on the way—she refused to whine and curse her fate. She tucked deeper under the overhang of the store’s sheltered front porch, her shoulder scraping a blinking neon swordfish mounted on one wall, thinking there wasn’t anyone around to whine to anyway. The whole tiny tourist town shut down once the Venus pulled out of the harbor, taking all of its spendthrift passengers with it and leaving Jayne no place to go tonight.
Nope. She was certain she’d figure out something. Find some hint of opportunity to turn this watery night from hell around and help her get back to the boat before it hit Barbados. Or before her sister hunted her down and kicked Jayne’s tail from one end of the island to the other.
But as she stepped off the protected wooden porch of Island Dreams to get a better look at the small assortment of St. Kitts storefronts for any sign of life, two things happened which convinced Jayne to rethink her stance on bad luck.
Turning on her heel to size up her situation, she snapped off her four-inch stiletto on a brand-new pair of shoes Rita had simultaneously declared divinely gorgeous and a colossal waste of cash. Rain streamed down Jayne’s skin, plastering her silk sundress to a body which—she now recalled—was completely commando since she’d thought she’d be engaging in nonstop monkey sex right after the ceremony. And she slowly realized the only place of business still open and within walking distance housed the one man she never wanted to see again.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking of Horatio. Because while some women might never want to lay eyes on the creep who ditched her in front of a gift shop that doubled as a wedding chapel, Jayne would be all too glad to find Horatio Aldo Garcia and wring his worthless neck with her own—wet—hands.
The man Jayne Frazer didn’t ever want to see again was the proprietor of a dive bar at the far end of this stretch of tourist traps, and he also happened to be the only living man Jayne had ever wasted tears over. A man who had provided her with the hottest sex ever to melt a woman’s knees before proposing three months after they first met on the Venus, planning out their lives together before she’d even caught her breath.
She’d tried to stall him, but the man in question—a big-deal New York corporate type before purchasing the bar and retiring at thirty-five—drove a hard bargain with an all-or-nothing price tag. So, because Jayne had no plans to settle down, the sex god of her dreams had sailed back into the sunset nine months ago.
Now, limping through the warm February downpour into Emmett MacNeil’s bar after all this time seemed to be her only hope of finding shelter before she either caught pneumonia, or washed out to sea. Instead of Emmett hearing rumors through the St. Kitts grapevine that his former lover had gotten married on a romantic whim—and she couldn’t deny the appealing scenario had occurred to her when she agreed to marry Horatio here—now Emmett would see his former lover looking like a drowned rat, complete with the stage makeup she’d nervously applied under Rita’s watchful eye ten minutes before escaping the cruise ship dripping down her cheeks. So much for her grand plan to flaunt her happy bliss under Emmett’s nose to prove his high-handed ultimatums and heart-stomping exit from her life hadn’t fazed her one damn bit.
If ever there had been an argument for the existence of bad luck, this would be it.
Cursing the lack of cabs or buses—hell, she’d settle for a rickshaw—Jayne hobbled through the haze of sheeting rain and steam rising off the ground toward the Last Chance Bar, her existing heel sinking into the muck of the washed-out street with every step. Although even if there had been cabs to take her to a hotel on the island, Jayne would bet her last ten dollars that Horatio hadn’t bothered to make reservations any more than he’d bothered to follow through on the wedding date.
In fact, thinking back, he’d probably only proposed yesterday in a last-ditch effort to get in her pants, and when she hadn’t fallen into his arms then and there, he’d promptly forgotten about all their plans. Horatio hadn’t taken her pledge of celibacy seriously when they first met six months ago, but Jayne meant it when she told him she wanted to be a born-again virgin. She’d given herself away too cheaply the first time when she’d lost it at sixteen in a semimutual romp with one of her mother’s boyfriends.
Definitely not the best way for a girl to lose her innocence, especially since the experience had been all tangled up with guilt at going behind her mother’s back because she’d been mad at Margie that day for—But she wasn’t going to think about that anymore, was she?
Anyway, after ten years of taking sex way too lightly, Jayne had decided to make a change. Hence, her vow of celibacy six months ago.
Number one probable cause for Horatio’s bogus proposal.
She’d worked herself into a full-blown hissy fit by the time she arrived at the little establishment Emmett was rumored to have bought from the island family who had built it. Jayne hadn’t even gone out of her way to find out gossip about Emmett after their breakup, but the crew members who took shore leave here came back from island layovers full of news and word traveled fast when a bar changed hands at one of the boat’s primary stops.
Jayne never told anyone—not even Rita—about the incredible night she and Emmett had shared on the beach in St. Kitts during his cruise. She’d told herself she wasn’t the marrying kind and hadn’t looked back.
Which, of course, called to mind her thwarted attempt to elope with Horatio. What made her say yes to a man with as much live-for-the-moment attitude as her, when she’d turned down a heartfelt offer from a sex god who took his responsibilities as seriously as a woman’s pleasure? Funny how the answer bitch-slapped her in the face now that she’d been stood up. Maybe deep down she’d known all along that “forever” with Horatio wouldn’t be a super-binding agreement.
And wasn’t this a fine time for an epiphany? Apparently a tropical downpour could wash away even the most persistent of self-delusions.
Swallowing old wounds, Jayne refused to let them stand in the way of getting off this godforsaken island and back to the Venus. If Rita had taught her anything in the past twenty-six years, it was that you made your own luck.
She straightened her sodden dress, noticing with a wince her outfit had turned completely transparent, and teetered up the stairs to the aptly named Last Chance Bar. Facing her old lover today would take industrial-strength chutzpah. But never let it be said that Jayne Frazer couldn’t pull off a hell of a good show.
Yanking off her shoes, she tossed them both in a trash can outside the front entrance before tugging open the door.
The scent of cigars and polished wood wafted over her as she stepped into an establishment gone utterly quiet now that the rush of cruise ship patrons had vacated the island for the day. Huge brass ceiling fans whirred quietly overhead in the dim interior, stirring the breeze drifting in from a wall of windows left slightly open on the far side of the bar. A bit of water dripped on the hardwood floor, but no one seemed to notice since the place was completely empty.
Maybe her luck was turning?
Jayne scanned the bar for signs of a pay phone so she could call for a car to take her to the nearest hotel, wondering if she could be in and out of the Last Chance without anyone being the wiser. She peered down a darkened corridor off of one wall but found only a couple of restrooms.
“Can I help you?” A brusque feminine voice from behind caused her to jump.
Turning, she came face-to-face with a lean brunette dressed in a tank top and shorts, a yellow bandanna wrapped around the back half of her head, a burning cigar still perched in her fingers.
Definitely not Emmett MacNeil. Thank God for small favors. Maybe this gorgeous woman with the great legs and golden skin was his bartender, treating herself to a smoke after fending off advances from drunken revelers half the day.
“I missed the cruise ship earlier. Do you have a phone I could use to make some arrangements?” In the silence that followed, the woman eyed Jayne with a wary gaze while her dress dripped audibly on the floor. “Sorry about the outfit. I’ll mop up behind myself, I promise.”
“You’re a passenger on the Venus?” The woman took a drag on her cigar and tipped her head to the side to exhale. Clearly she didn’t believe for a minute that Jayne had booked passage on one of the Caribbean’s pricy luxury liners.
“Actually, I work on the boat.” No need for subterfuge. Jayne took a page from Rita’s book and decided to be as direct as possible so she could get out of here before Emmett put in an appearance. “I’m Rita, a seamstress with the ship’s costume department.”
Okay, so maybe she still needed a little subterfuge. She didn’t want Emmett to get wind of who’d really been in his place today.
The brunette balanced her cigar in a dish on the shiny surface of the wooden bar before thrusting out her hand. “Claudia MacNeil, proprietor of the Last Chance. Pleased to meet you.”
Shock froze Jayne’s hands to her side.
Who knows how much time passed while she stared dumbly at this gorgeous creature who was…probably not Emmett’s sister since he’d once told her he didn’t have any siblings.
“Claudia MacNeil?” If she was going to have a brain malfunction over the idea of Emmett possibly being married, she might as well be sure she’d heard properly.
Belatedly, she remembered to shake the woman’s hand, surprised by how warm and alive Claudia’s skin seemed, while Jayne suddenly felt very cold.
“That’s right, sugar.” The woman retrieved her cigar and took another puff as she pulled out a bar stool. “You just have a seat while I get you a phone. Do you think maybe you spent too much time outside today? You seem like you might have a touch of sunstroke.”
“I’ve got it, Claudia.” A masculine voice rolled through the bar, low and authoritative.
A voice Jayne hadn’t forgotten.
She cast a sideways glance toward an open arch in the back that seemed to lead to an outdoor patio. Emmett MacNeil, the only man ever to come within spitting distance of breaking her heart, stood framed in the door. His gaze remained fixed on the woman who shared his name.
“Thanks. You’ll close up for me, won’t you, love?” The brunette swept past Jayne to meet Emmett in the breezeway, her long fingers patting his face with definite familiarity, her body invading his personal space so far there could only be intimacy between them. “I’ve got to go help my dad move some boxes.”
The impact of seeing Emmett now—with a woman who couldn’t possibly be a blood relation—threatened to level her. She hadn’t wanted him or his ring, hadn’t wanted this life he’d offered that sounded ordinary and boring compared to the glamorous dreams she’d had for herself just a year ago. So why did she feel like a very big bubble had burst?
Leaving her very soggy and more than a little sad.
She took in Emmett’s rough-hewn features, thick dark eyebrows and coal-black hair as he nodded at Claudia and received her kiss on the cheek.
“Bye, Rita.” Claudia gave a jaunty little wave over her shoulder, her yellow bandanna fluttering in the breeze stirred by the ceiling fans. “Nice meeting you, doll, and good luck getting back to your ship!”
Jayne forced a smile that probably only amounted to a fractional lift of one corner of her lips. This was sooo much worse than bad. She’d mark this day on her calendar as the one performance she’d ever flopped.
“Rita?” Emmett’s eyebrows lifted in curious amusement as Claudia disappeared outside, and any semblance of feeling sorry for herself vanished like money on payday.
Summoning her best showgirl posture, Jayne lifted her chin and flounced her way to the bar.
“It’s an alias in my new undercover work, doll. And as long as you’re here, I’ll take a gin and tonic on the rocks with lime. And could you make it quick?” She glanced at her watch gone cloudy from moisture under the glass. Peering back at him, she narrowed her eyes to convey precisely the right amount of hauteur. “I’m in a hurry.”
* * *
HARRISON’S KISS MADE Rita dizzy in the best possible way. She wanted to lose herself in that kiss, to cling to this sexy, gorgeous man for dear life and simply revel in the pure pleasure of the moment. Arching up on her toes, she allowed herself a more firm hold—just for a little longer.
She’d never been an impulsive person before, but then she’d never had to literally step into her sister’s shoes. What if she was turning into Jayne in some sort of Freaky Friday switcheroo? On the plus side, if that were the case, she wouldn’t have to sweat this whole moonlight encounter. She’d simply do whatever felt good, the way Jayne had her whole life.
And Rita had to admit, Harrison’s fingers drifting up her shoulder to the crook of her neck was feeling incredibly good right now.
A bark of drunken laughter drifting up the stairwell from the deck below forced her to pull back. To think. Not easy to do anymore when every breath she took contained a hint of his woodsy scent. His minty breath. His male heat.
“I might not be able to kiss you again without getting carried away.” His whispered words loomed close to her ear and something about a male voice cutting through the utter darkness made her crave a man—him—all the more.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” She shivered as his thumb smoothed over the small of her back. Hadn’t she always prided herself on speaking her mind? Being blunt and direct was her forte and she’d be a hypocrite to deny she wanted to take this further so badly her whole body hummed in anticipation.
The group of late night revelers didn’t stay on the top deck for long since there were no lights to illuminate the Jupiter level and the only features were the running track, some shuffleboards and a great view. Rita knew the area was most popular with early risers, part of the reason she’d steered Harrison this way after drinks.
“I don’t want to spoil a night that’s been—” He looked out to sea for a long moment, as if his answer might be in the dark waves below. “Damn, Rita, it’s been perfect.”
“Trust me, I’m very practical, and getting carried away is the right thing to do.” Taking a deep breath, she reached out to him through the darkness. Sliding her arms around his neck she plastered herself against him. Lips, breasts, hips—every part of her sought him out to cop a feel.
She threaded her fingers through his close-cropped hair, savoring the spiky strands as she drew him close. Her breasts molded to his hard male chest, tongue tangling with his as easily as if they were long-lost lovers.
Only she didn’t have lovers. Long-lost or any other kind. She only had relationships with nice men. Nice, foolish men who didn’t realize she was content to be committed to her career and her sister since it was easier than being tied to a guy with normal dating expectations. Marriage. Picket fences. Family that didn’t include Jayne and Margie and all their combined problems.
But Harrison wasn’t a regular guy. He was fantasy material. A vacation fling. Maybe tonight she could let loose and simply enjoy the moment. And it’s not like she had to worry about setting a bad example for Jayne since Jayne wasn’t around.
Not that Jayne had ever paid attention to what kind of example Rita set, damn it all.
“What if we take this back to your place?” Rita walked her fingers down his scalp to the back of his neck, slipping just under his shirt collar. “Would that be okay?”
A low groan rumbled in his throat. “You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
She smiled against his mouth, her thigh grazing the proof of his happiness. “I have a fair idea.”
She didn’t know how long it had been since her previous sexual encounter. Her last relationship had ended…almost two years ago? No wonder she was unraveling in this man’s arms faster than a spool of thread in a sewing machine.
Although that didn’t explain why him. Or why now. Questions she didn’t want to answer while her blood simmered through her veins, her skin tingling with a combination of hot flashes and sensual shivers everywhere he touched. Good God, how had she ignored her own needs for so long?
“If we do this, there are no regrets, right?” Harrison halted his kiss to cup her face between strong hands. “I’m not going to mess things up with you just because I want you. Badly.”
Her pulse fluttered at his words, the notion soothing some insecure part of her that had always lived in Jayne’s sultry, uninhibited shadow.
Despite her lifelong attempt to be the logical sister, tonight she had every intention of being a bad girl.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d7ded50f-dcc7-5d47-b11b-6156b26f758b)
DECISION MADE, RITA tugged Harrison toward the stairs, hormones kicking up a conga line more enthusiastic than the one they’d watch snake through the pool area two decks down. His kisses had aroused all her senses, tuning her into his every movement, his every breath.
They took the stairs together, striding more quickly now than their leisurely stroll around the running track earlier. But then, they had a very definite, a very delectable goal in mind.
Turning the corner at the end of one flight of stairs, they needed to enter one of the restaurant areas to find the next flight down. But before they re-entered the closed part of the ship, Rita’s heightened senses heard a noise along the rail. A muffled cry?
“Did you hear something?” Harrison stopped short as Rita bumped into him, his suit jacket framing a set of abs any woman would drool over.
“Yes.” She strained her ears to listen while she forced her eyes to look away from rippling male muscles.
“It sounded like a whimper or a sniffle.”
At the mention of a whimper, Rita was immediately plagued with a vision of her sister returning to the boat, crying in the hallway, forsaken and forgotten by her no account boyfriend. Even as she dismissed the idea as impossible in the middle of the ocean, Rita heard a distinctively feminine sob from underneath the stairwell.
The crying female on the other side of the wall wasn’t Jayne. Even in the vacated dimness of the stairwell, Rita could see the tall blonde perched at the rail, her head buried against a pink duffel bag.
Missy.
Hurrying over, she could hear Harrison’s steps following more slowly behind her.
“You okay, Missy?” She reached to touch her friend’s shoulder, instantly on alert even though a part of her still longed to be heading back to Harrison’s room. “What’s wrong?”
Lifting her head to reveal red-rimmed eyes and traces of tearstained stage makeup, Missy shook her head in sniffly despair. She swiped a hand across her face when she noticed Rita wasn’t alone.
“I got fired.” Voice breaking on the last word, Missy fell into Rita’s arms to cry harder.
“Danielle did this? Damn her for a heartless—” Anger burned away the feel-good endorphins Rita had been savoring from Harrison’s kisses. She had the sinking feeling her night to be self-indulgent was rapidly going down the tubes, but how could she walk away from her friend?
“It’s okay.” Missy hiccupped as she swiped more tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. “I’ll find something when we get back home. Sammy—the somersaulter—said he knows some club owners around Fort Lauderdale, so maybe he can help. I just wish Danielle had let me earn out the rest of the week’s paycheck. I could have been at home playing with Annabelle if I wasn’t going to be making any money this week.”
Missy had an eight-month-old daughter back home who stayed with Missy’s mother while she worked. Rita knew they barely made ends meet since the baby’s father—an international crew member Missy had met on a Fort Lauderdale beach—had returned to his Eastern European home rather than help support his family. Missy had hoped the dancing gig on the ship would lead to something more stable. Gazing blankly around the darkened stretch of deck under the stairwell, Rita willed words of encouragement into her head. Too bad her eyes couldn’t move past the abandon-ship evacuation route placard on the wall over Missy’s head, which pointed passengers in the direction of the nearest lifeboat station. The whole ship seemed to be coming apart today.
“Could you go after them for wrongful termination?” Harrison straightened his tie while he seemed to size up the situation faster than Rita. “Some companies are willing to work with you if they’re afraid you’re going to cost them a lot of time and aggravation.”
Missy smiled through her tears as she acknowledged his presence. “I’m Missy, and I’m sorry to ruin your night.” She looked back and forth between Rita and Harrison. “But I wouldn’t ever try to cause anyone aggravation.”
Rita’s gaze met Harrison’s and she felt the heat crackle between them as they both remembered what they’d been about to share. Still, he seemed to understand her growing sense that things weren’t going to progress any further tonight.
“You didn’t ruin anything.” Rita slung her arm around her friend’s shoulders, knowing Jayne could be in the same situation tomorrow if Danielle had realized she’d skipped out on her performance tonight. Gesturing toward Harrison, she introduced him. “And this is Harrison Masters. A really nice guy, but he probably has no idea how little entertainers make for this cruise line or how much power the cruise industry wields.”
“I’m in the resort business, too, remember?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Missy, his mussed dark hair brushing his eyebrows in a way that would make any woman’s fingers itch to brush the strands aside. “And no matter how powerful the employer, the rules remain the same for their personnel practices. They can’t fire you without just cause.”
Rita wasn’t sure how sound his advice was about pursuing wrongful termination, but she appreciated his calm insights on the situation. In her family, getting fired would be a major drama involving days of histrionics. The whole family would have to weigh in with an opinion—always a vehement, fiery stance—and then they’d argue the merits of that person’s ideas until they were all hoarse. And if ever there was a cool voice of reason in the mix, it would invariably be Rita’s. So to have Harrison preempt her with such rational logic seemed sort of…deflating.
Which was utterly stupid. She should be grateful Jayne wasn’t around to start a public brawl with Danielle.
“What reason did Danielle give for letting you go?” Rita had never heard of a dancer getting the axe in the middle of a cruise week before. They still had two more shows and a handful of smaller responsibilities like helping the Karaoke King on Open Mike Night or posing for photos with passengers around the pool.
“She said I was late on my cue again tonight.” Missy speared her hand through her long hair, sweeping aside the mass of curls from her face. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job this time but Danielle hauled me aside as the show ended. She asked me a million questions about you and Jayne, then she dropped the bomb that I wouldn’t be returning to the show.”
Her face crumpled as a new round of sobs began.
“She asked about me?” Rita drummed her fingertips on the rail.
“This Danielle is in charge of the performers?” Harrison seemed to be following the conversation better than most outsiders would. For that matter, didn’t most guys bolt at the first sign of tears?
He seemed like a nice guy. A nice, smart guy, which was doubly rare in her experience.
“Yes. She runs the floor show with an iron fist and considers it her job to inspire fear in the hearts of all her dancers. I think she suffers from the delusion this makes them dance better.” Turning back to Missy, Rita needed to get back to an important point. “You said she was asking questions about me?”
“You and Jayne. I don’t think she realized that you covered for Jayne tonight but apparently your stage time ran over by a couple of seconds and that might have tipped her off. You know how she prides herself on running the whole thing by the clock.”
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
Rita had purposely exited the stage on the wrong side to avoid Danielle in case she hadn’t realized she’d taken Jayne’s place. But that opposite stage exit probably took a little longer after the music died, causing the smallest ripple in Danielle’s rigid time scheme.
“By the time she tracked down the problem, I was probably already—” Rita’s gaze went automatically to Harrison “—busy somewhere else. And her frustration with the show was my fault, not yours.”
“You don’t know that.” Missy shook her head in emphatic denial, sending curls flying. “Rita, I’ve messed up a ton of times, and she knows it.”
“But you didn’t mess up tonight.” Rita could just picture Danielle in one of her snits. The obsessive manager had looked for a target for her anger and found someone totally undeserving, someone who’d been working hard at her job while Rita was drooling over a total stranger. “I’ll make sure we straighten this mess out and if there’s a way to get your job back you’ll have it back or we’ll sic Jayne on her.”
Assuming Jayne came back onboard.
Her sister was going to have hell to pay for putting them all in this position. But until Jayne came back to fulfill the position of token Frazer woman gone off the deep end, Rita wouldn’t hesitate to engage in a few histrionics of her own.
Squeezing Missy’s shoulder, she hoped she could find a way to fix this.
“Missy, would you excuse Harrison and me for a few minutes and then I’ll meet you at my room so we can come up with a game plan?” She needed to talk to him. Owed him an explanation, or a makeup date…or a quickie in the elevator to tide over her hunger for him.
“Sure.” Missy scooped up her duffel bag. “And you don’t need to meet with me. I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”
“Don’t be silly.” She nudged Missy forward with big-sister muscle she couldn’t help but flex whenever someone needed help. “I’ll catch up with you in a little bit.”
As they waited for the sound of Missy’s footsteps to disappear, Rita could already feel the heat of the man beside her. But as much as she still wanted him, she wasn’t sure how to maintain her Jayne-impulsiveness once they left the dark cocoon of intimacy the Jupiter deck offered.
“I understand you need to help your friend.” Harrison’s blue eyes saw right through her despite the shadows of the stairwell. “I just hope you’re not having second thoughts about us.”
“No second thoughts.” Although now that they’d been interrupted, Rita wondered if it wasn’t for the best anyhow since they barely knew one another. She was normally a certified chicken when it came to men, even though she liked to tell herself she was just extremely practical. “And I’m sorry tonight didn’t work out.”
“That’s okay.” He squeezed her hand and planted a kiss on the back of her fingers, an old-world gesture that stole her heart.
“Maybe another time.” She couldn’t believe she was angling for another date with him when she’d just convinced herself she didn’t know him well enough to sleep with him. But sometimes, there was no accounting for chemistry and, oh baby, did she have it for him.
“I’d like that. I want you bad, Rita Frazer, but only when you’re one hundred percent into the moment. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this, too.” He watched her with lazy eyes, reminding her how hot things could be between them. “You have no idea how sorry.”
Her body still humming with good vibrations he’d brought her, she shot him a smile and hoped she could find a way to be bold and brazen with this man again soon.
“I have a pretty good idea.”
* * *
TAKING DEEP BREATHS, Jayne steeled herself for confrontation as her long, lost lover poured her a drink. Heavy on the gin, easy on the tonic.
Thank God his bartending abilities were better than his dating skills.
“So you’re traveling incognito these days?” He passed her the drink and the question she didn’t want to answer, all the while staring at her with a lazy look that married men should be forbidden to bestow on unsuspecting females.
The rain still pounded the thatched roof over the bar, the fans whirring gently over the lounge to stir the sultry air.
“It protects my privacy to use my sister’s name now that my fame has spread throughout the Caribbean.” She toasted him with her glass before indulging in a sip, knowing damn well he’d see right through the lie and not caring a bit. “I’ve never been one to cause a stir, you know.”
“And you find the general public immune to transparent clothing?” He leaned forward to peer over the bar, his chocolate-brown eyes raking in every inch of her dripping sundress. “I’ll admit I’m surprised.”
Her heart stuttered for an instant as a shark-tooth pendant clanked against the bar when he’d leaned near, bringing his features into too-enticing focus. He’d grown a patch of hair beneath his lower lip, a close-shorn triangle that she wondered what would feel like against her chin if she…
Snap out of it. Jayne forced herself back to reality by inhaling the scent of damp bamboo. If Rita were here, she would have nudged Jayne in the calf with a sisterly kick.
“I had an unexpected run-in with bad weather.” The gin burned her throat before hitting her veins in a sizzling jolt. No, damn it. That was Emmett’s eyes on her body giving her the sizzling jolt. The gin couldn’t begin to dull senses so sharply attuned to this man’s presence. “Perhaps you could just hand over the telephone and I’ll remove myself and my transparent clothing from your fine establishment?”
She heard the bristly tone in her voice and refused to care that he’d gotten under her skin. He was married, after all. Completely out of her jurisdiction. What did it matter if he thought she was a washed-up has-been in her soggy clothes? He had another woman—a gorgeous, dry woman—waiting for him as soon as Jayne placed her call.
“Technically, it’s no longer my establishment.” He reached under the bar and came up with a telephone. “But feel free to call long distance. I hear the new owner has deep pockets.”
“You sold the bar?” Jayne ignored the phone, her problems of ten minutes ago suddenly less significant. “I thought you were going to stay in St. Kitts forever?”
He’d told her as much when he’d been trying to convince her to give marriage a shot. She’d panicked at the idea of settling down in one place—a fate almost as scary as settling down with just one man—and promptly accused him of loving St. Kitts more than her.
In retrospect, she’d realized it hadn’t exactly been a rational argument. But then, she’d never tried to be the world’s most rational woman. That was Rita’s niche. Up until Emmett, Jayne simply hadn’t been used to men taking her too seriously.
“I guess forever didn’t turn out to be as long as I’d hoped.” He picked up the bottle of tonic and poured himself a glass. “Mind if I join you?”
Without waiting for her answer, he walked around the bar to join her on the other side. Her side.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea considering you’re married and I’m in a transparent dress, remember?” She tossed out the most obvious obstacles, knowing she didn’t dare let Emmett within five feet of her when she was feeling more than a little vulnerable. “In fact, I promised your wife I’d just make my call and be on my way.”
She meant to reach for the phone. Really, she did. But the visual of Emmett swinging his thigh around one side of a bar stool kept her gaze fastened to him with super-glue sticking power.
“Ex-wife.” Emmett’s eyes remained fixed on a manila envelope at the end of the bar for a long moment, as if totally oblivious to Jayne’s presence. “She’s officially no longer mine as of today.”
The hollow hurt of his words was unmistakable.
If Jayne had been a more sensitive woman, maybe she could have murmured something sympathetic and comforting. Hell, even a total stranger would offer up condolences on his failed marriage. But as his ex-lover, Jayne couldn’t help but ask the question burning through her brain with all the insistence of a migraine.
“How long were you married?” The question would shatter any illusion she might have created of aloofness, but the answer seemed too important to overlook. He’d asked Jayne to marry him nine short months ago.
“Seven months.” Tearing his gaze away from the envelope she could only assume carried his divorce papers, Emmett grinned over the rim of his glass. “A hell of a track record in married life, isn’t it?”
“You bastard.” Hurt reeled through her as her brain computed the proximity of his proposal to her with his proposal to another woman. “What did you do, ask the first woman you saw after I got back onboard the Venus last spring to marry you?”
“You said no.” He shrugged a shoulder the same way he must have shrugged off his so-called love for her. “And I respect that when a woman says no, she means it.”
“I said I wasn’t ready.” As he no doubt damn well remembered since she’d explained to him in detail all the reasons she needed more time. “Last I checked, ‘I’m not ready’ doesn’t mean no.”
“It didn’t mean yes, either, did it?” He swiveled on his bar stool to face her, his long legs almost touching her hip. “And you can take all the haughty feminine satisfaction you want from knowing I made a dumb-ass mistake by getting married in a hurry since I’m now divorced and I lost my bar in the bargain. So why not just make your phone call and you can high-kick your way back to the S.S. Good Times or wherever it is you make your home these days and we’ll forget this little encounter ever happened?”
Jayne felt her mouth drooping open at his unexpectedly heated words and promptly snapped it shut. Reaching for the phone she realized she didn’t have a phone number handy to call for a ride and she didn’t personally know a soul on St. Kitts. Present company excluded.
Settling the handset back in the cradle in the rather awkward silence, she was about to request a phone book when Emmett slammed his glass on the bar.
“And for crying out loud, would you put some damn clothes on?” He reached over the counter and dug blindly around until he came up with a bright orange T-shirt. Even at six foot two he didn’t exactly tower over her, but his strong arms and lean, surfer’s physique gave him a solid power that…communicated itself to her so clearly that it was all she could do not to lick her lips. “Wear this. Or drape yourself in cocktail napkins. But Jesus, woman, put on something.”
“Fine.” Recognizing an old-fashioned snit when she saw one, even if the fit-thrower in question would surely wring her neck if she called it as such, Jayne dutifully dropped the promo T-shirt touting orange-flavored rum over her wet dress.
“While you’re mighty quick to point fingers at me, I’d be willing to bet you haven’t been celibate since we broke up, but you don’t hear me asking you about the whys and whens of your personal encounters.”
She wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Even if she’d tried her very best to be a born-again virgin for the last six months, she couldn’t forget that she’d been pretty quick to drown her sorrows after Emmett.
What a screwed-up, self-destructive pair they made.
“Sorry to hear about the divorce.” She’d never been skilled with an olive branch, but considered this a fair attempt at making peace. “Just because I take offense at the idea of you offering up a marriage proposal to another woman mere days after you made the same offer to me, that doesn’t mean I would wish you ill-will.”
Who said she couldn’t be magnanimous?
“You need a ride somewhere?” Rising off the bar stool he replaced the phone under the bar and fished a set of keys off a hook on the wall. “I thought I heard you say you missed your boat, right?”
“I do need to find a hotel.” She took another halfhearted sip of her gin and tonic, wondering what Emmett had in mind. Desperate women couldn’t afford to be super-choosy about their rescuers and at least he’d had the decency to admit he’d messed up by marrying someone else.
“As luck would have it, so do I. What do you say we blow this clambake and call a truce?”
Let her guard down around Emmett? She’d have to be crazy to make peace with a newly divorced stud in a dangerous mood. But then again, no one had ever accused her of playing it safe.
Besides, she needed a ride.
“Truce.” She reached for her tiny purse, telling herself this was a practical solution to her problem. Even Rita would have to admit Jayne was making the best of a bad situation. “Just as long as we go separate ways once we get there.”
“Fine by me.” He walked over to the manila envelope and jammed the whole packet under his arm in defiance of the Do Not Bend dictate scrawled across the front. “But I’ve got dibs on the bar since I plan on getting rip-roaring drunk tonight. You think you can stay away?”
“I’m sure I’ll hold myself back somehow.” Sailing through the front door he held open for her, Jayne welcomed the raindrops that still poured in earnest from the sky. It was the next best thing to a bucket of cold water being splashed on her face—an age-old cure for a woman thinking completely inappropriate thoughts about a man she had no business daydreaming over.
And no matter that she was furious with him—not to mention hurt—over his rapid defection, Jayne couldn’t deny frequent mind wanderings picturing the man buck-naked. She had to admit he looked damn good. Both in her fantasies and in real life.
He jogged through the rain to a garage beside the bar and hauled open the door. Hurrying behind him, she saw the waves foaming with the storm on the other side of the road, the ocean empty of any ships for as far as the eye could see. She followed him into the dark and dilapidated clapboard structure that looked more suited to a backwoods farm than a tourist street. Squinting, she could see him unlocking the passenger door of a mud-encrusted Jeep.
Holding the door wide for her, he held his hand out to help her inside. She hadn’t touched him yet but couldn’t see how to avoid it now without making too big of a deal about it. No sense letting him know he got to her, right?
She reached for his hand, but his gaze had already fallen to her feet.
“Damn it, why didn’t you tell me you needed shoes?” He lifted her by the waist as if he couldn’t get her bare feet off the garage floor fast enough.
The imprint of his hands on her remained after he set her inside the vehicle, her skin warming all along her side.
“I guess I thought it was obvious I didn’t have shoes.” She wiggled her toes and had a flashback to a day in third grade when she’d outgrown her shoes and Rita had insisted she take hers since money was nonexistent in the years their mother had big gambling losses. Rita had worn an old pair of boys’ tennis shoes a neighbor had donated so Jayne could have their only pair of size five Mary Janes.
“Hell no, it wasn’t obvious since my eyes never made it past the dress.” He pulled a blanket out from behind the seat and tossed it in her lap. “Do me a favor and dry off.”
It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell him to do her a favor and go screw himself, but she would cut him some slack since she’d obviously walked into his life on a bad day. She didn’t know squat about marriage or how to make a go of a relationship but she knew divorce sucked—plain and simple.
Her childhood might have been fairly impoverished from a financial perspective, but at least her family had always been tight-knit and her mother had protected them from the upheaval of divorce by never remarrying. And Jayne had no doubt in her mind that no one besides their sainted father—God rest his soul—could have put up with Margie for long. Wrapping herself in the blanket Emmett had tossed her way, Jayne settled in for the ride while he started the Jeep and pulled out of the garage into the rain. She caught a glimpse of the Last Chance Bar through the downpour and wondered idly if Emmett would ever go back to the business now owned by his ex-wife.
The same business Jayne had made a beeline for in her darkest hour.
God, she’d been so caught up in seeing Emmett again she’d forgotten all about her fury with Horatio and the disappointment of her thwarted elopement. What a sorry excuse for a wife she would have made. She smiled as she tipped her head back against the seat and stared at the pattern of rain blowing across the passenger window.
“You’ll never guess what I was doing in St. Kitts today.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d6f650d5-36d7-5855-b764-c34870a746a8)
HARRISON BYPASSED the wealth of restaurant options onboard the Venus the next morning, ordering his breakfast through room service while he struggled to put Rita out of his mind long enough to brainstorm a game plan for digging up information on Sonia’s disappearance.
No easy feat considering the attraction of a sexy redhead and their thwarted night that would have probably blown his mind. But this cruise couldn’t be all fun. He’d known even when Sonia left on this very same ship that she’d been seeing Trevor, but Harrison still hadn’t been prepared for the blow when Trevor took off for Grand Cayman a week later. And even though the Venus passenger records had shown Sonia went ashore at St. Maarten and never returned, he couldn’t help but think she’d made connections with Trevor afterward.
Blow to the ego, sure. But when 10k had turned up missing in Trevor’s golf store accounts, followed by almost 20k in weeks prior, Harrison had been pissed off on more than a personal level.
He needed to find her, to find the money and figure out what happened, but despite his best efforts over breakfast, he found himself thinking about Rita again and figuring out what happened with her sister. With Missy’s help last night, he’d eventually pieced together enough information to realize his high-kicking date had been filling in for her absentee sibling.
Now, as he carried his tray from room service out onto the ocean-view balcony, he wondered how he could wrangle time with a woman whose list of priorities put his own to shame. She filled in for her sister, gave her friend a shoulder to cry on…plus she had her own job and she’d sewed costumes for a whole production on top of that.
Something about Rita’s unique blend of fiery demeanor and cool practicality appealed to him on a gut level he couldn’t explain, powerful enough to have distracted him from his primary mission on the cruise. He needed to ’fess up to his quest for information about Sonia’s trip before much more time elapsed since he wouldn’t want Rita to think he’d been using her. Not in six years with the Bureau had he ever found cause to kiss a woman for the sake of his job and he wouldn’t let Rita think as much for even an instant.
He debated calling her room and offering his services for the day while she searched for her sister when a knock sounded on his door. Could she have come looking for him instead?
Logically, he knew it was probably housekeeping, but that didn’t stop him from vaulting over an armchair in his haste to get the door. Telling himself it was just the sex—or promise of sex—that had him so keyed up, he forced himself to wait another two-count before opening the door as a penalty for being too eager.
But it wasn’t Rita on his threshold. Missy waited there instead, her blue eyes huge and punctuated with dark circles underneath them. Technically, he recognized her as an attractive female, but she didn’t come close to Rita in his book.
“Sorry. It’s just me.” She apparently read the disappointment on his face in all of a second. “I hate to bother you again, but you were so smart about offering advice last night, I wondered if you could be persuaded to talk to Rita?”
“I was just having my breakfast.” And plotting his way into spending time with the ship’s seamstress. “But I can make time. Everything okay?”
“I think she’s content with giving Danielle a little cool down period first, like you suggested.” She teetered on the threshold of his stateroom as if scared to put so much as a pinkie toe in his suite. “But she’s getting frantic about her sister and—”
Harrison didn’t hesitate. Turning his back on his work, he slid into his shoes and scooped up his cell phone while he listened to Missy pour out the Tale of Two Sisters. It was a lot to absorb, even if they had thirteen floors to descend in order to reach Rita’s cabin on the lowest level of the ship. But Harrison took in everything he could, gleaning that Rita was as much a workaholic as he’d ever been and that her sister played a crucial role in her life. And as Missy related what she knew of the events of the past few days, Harrison wondered if it was such a bad thing that Jayne was missing.
He began to revise the opinion when Rita opened the door for them, however.
Ear glued to a telephone, she had red-rimmed eyes and wild curls flying in every direction as if she hadn’t slept all night but stayed up to pull her hair out. She gave him a halfhearted wave as she admitted him, but when he turned to let Missy enter first he realized the dancer had apparently tucked her tail and run, leaving him to deal with the crisis. From somewhere down the hall he heard the bing of an elevator car and silently cursed Missy for a coward.
In the meantime, Rita paced with the corded phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she carried the base around the room with two fingers. Her room was strewn with half-finished sewing projects, uniforms of all kinds on hangers dangling from a makeshift stretch of rope at the foot of one bed, pins jabbed in hems and sleeves at every angle.
“…can’t you just double-check? Her name is Jayne Frazer. Or else Jayne Garcia. And sometimes for fun she books herself under a code name like Cinderella. Or Ariel. Do you have an Ariel?” Rita covered the handset with her palm while mouthing words to Harrison. “She’s big-time into Disney.”
He knew then and there he had zero chances of getting to know Rita—let alone ever quizzing her about Sonia—until she found her sister. Now, he focused solely on how to find yet another missing person. All his leads on Sonia had dead-ended because he’d allowed the trail to grow cold. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jayne.
“They hung up on me.” Rita slammed the receiver back onto the base and stared at him with cold fury in her eyes. “Do you believe that?”
“We’ll find her.” He was a patient man and he didn’t mind working for the things he wanted. His wild fantasies about Rita would keep.
“We need a boat.” He started working up a plan to help. They should have a real boat. Not some fifteen-story mega-cruise liner that put as much room between their guests and the water as possible. “You could get around the island in a hurry and check with all the harbormasters.”
Too bad Rita didn’t look hyped about the idea. Her face was pretty pale for a woman who’d just inherited the dedicated help of a special agent as an answer to all her problems.
“My God. You don’t think they ever would have tried boating over to Barbados from St. Kitts to meet up with the ship?” In an instant, the phone was tucked back under her ear. “It never occurred to me to check in with the harbormasters.”
Panic welled in Rita’s throat at the idea of brainless Horatio possibly talking her sister into sailing into the port at Bridgetown. But it made perfect sense in a screwed-up way. He wouldn’t want to lose his job aboard the Venus any more than Jayne would want to lose hers.
And Rita had to find Jayne as soon as possible—not only to make sure she kept her job, but also to corral her into helping manage the latest Margie scare. Their mother had telephoned well after midnight in a rare and very expensive phone call to inform Rita that the bar where she’d been singing a couple of nights each week had just installed video poker.
Just exactly what Margie didn’t need. The machines were probably illegal but Rita knew those kinds of laws were poorly enforced. And the Frazer women couldn’t withstand another bankruptcy. Margie could be homeless by the time the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale.
“I think you’d be able to wrangle your answers faster if we rented a boat. Any harbormaster worth his stripes spends more time out on the docks than taking calls anyway. You can bring your phone to keep making calls, but we’ll look around all the docking areas for ourselves once we find a boat.” Harrison explained the strategy patiently enough but he looked ready to bolt from her tiny, cramped cabin. He couldn’t walk two feet in any direction without stepping on Jayne’s strewn clothes, Rita’s sewing jobs or bumping into furniture. “How about we check with some of this guy’s—Horatio’s—friends to see if they knew where he planned to take his bride?”
“Of course.” Nodding at the practical wisdom of his plan she slammed the phone down again. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that right away.”
“You want me to go ask some questions while you get ready to disembark?” He backed toward the door, careful to sidestep a shimmering gold satin bra.
He would do that for her?
“That’d be great.” She’d never had smart, sensible help before while facing a crisis, so having Harrison around seemed really…nice. Most guys who were interested in a cruise fling would have zero desire to play private detective for the sake of a missing sibling, but Harrison Masters was obviously not most guys. “Horatio is friends with a few other casino workers. Mostly a lady pit boss—Fiona, I think—and a nerdy security guard named James who makes sure nobody pockets chips that don’t belong to them.”
“Got it. Meet you by the atrium on the Bacchus deck in an hour? We should be docked within thirty minutes.”
He checked his watch before his eyes went to the clock radio beside her bed. Just that brief flex of his muscles and the sight of big, male hands brought back memories of those hands on her. Amazing how being with him had made all her worries retreat into the far recesses of her mind last night.
“Let’s meet in twenty minutes.” She could pull it together in ten if need be, but she figured Harrison would need at least that much time to track down some of loser-boy Horatio’s friends. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the help.”
“Not a problem.” He shrugged as he stepped out into the corridor of the ship’s lowest deck. “It was high time I had a little excitement in my life anyway.”
She had to smile at the thought, even if she wouldn’t exactly classify Jayne’s disappearance as “excitement.” What woman wouldn’t be attracted to this smart guy who led a sensible, low-key lifestyle without a lot of drama?
“Stick with me, handsome. There’s plenty more where that came from in my family.”
* * *
I CAME TO St. Kitts to elope.
Emmett replayed Jayne’s confession in an endless audio loop in his brain the next morning, his attempts at drowning out her admission with a particularly fine Kentucky bourbon having failed miserably. As he rolled onto his back and smacked a pillow over his eyes, he had to own up to the fact that all he’d succeeded in doing was adding a headache to the news that Jayne had wanted to get married, she just hadn’t wanted to marry him.
Well, welcome to the freaking club.
Claudia hadn’t really wanted to be married to him either, although she seemed damned happy now that he’d signed over the lucrative Last Chance as part of their divorce settlement. Son of a bitch, but he couldn’t get used to seeing all his dreams incinerate before his eyes. He might have the Midas touch when it came to business, but he’d acquired some sort of cursed ability to decimate anything he tried to grasp in his private life. His marriage? Boom. Explosive failure.
Jayne? Pow. He’d sent her running so fast he’d gotten whiplash as she peeled out of his life.
He’d promised to drive her to the local landing strip to catch a charter plane to Barbados today so she could meet up with the Venus, but for all he knew she’d left already. She’d gone real quiet in the Jeep last night after he’d spluttered in disbelief—and possibly yelled a tad about the foolishness of rash plans—at the news of her elopement.
But what had she expected him to say? Good job ditching work to marry a blackjack dealer with zero plans to make a real future with you? For that matter, what kind of loser stood up his bride-to-be?
It’d been on the tip of his tongue to tell her she sure had shit taste in men, but caught himself just in time. Pretty damn humbling to realize he’d fallen into the same category as a guy who couldn’t say “I do” and then didn’t have the balls to say “I don’t” to a woman’s face.
Nice.
An efficient knock at his door echoed through his hungover skull with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He moved the pillow off his head to shout back at the knocker.
“I’m still in bed.” And he wasn’t moving until he had proof positive that Jayne was still in the hotel and needed a ride. If not, he was making the Seawinds Suites his new home now that his divorce was official, his house had become the sole property of his ex-wife, and Claudia had neatly boxed up his every freaking possession and shipped everything to a local storage facility.
His ex might not love him, but she sure as hell had efficiency down to an art form.
“If that’s an invitation, your technique has really fallen apart over the last year.” The voice on the other side of the door sounded both sexy and bitchy and totally turned him on.
What kind of defective libido did he have that a haughty, high-maintenance woman like Jayne could inspire a hard-on even in the midst of a hangover from hell?
“If you get an invitation, woman, I guarantee you’ll know it when you hear it.” Shouting and wincing at the same time, he swung his legs off the bed and pulled on a pair of pants while he went to brush his teeth.
She could damn well wait.
“Emmett?” The conciliatory note in her voice was a surefire clue she needed a favor. He hadn’t dated Jayne for long, but for those few months he’d known her more intimately than any other woman. And he damn well recognized now just from the way she said his name that she needed help.
Did her moronic blackjack dealer understand her needs half so well?
Rinsing and spitting, he stalked to the door and opened it.
“What?”
He’d caught her by surprise. He could tell by the way she quickly pulled her softened features into a mask of cool collectedness. Still, he’d seen the hint of vulnerability on her face, felt her uncertainty for one disconcerting instant.
“There seems to be a problem with my bill because it’s ridiculously high.” She had folded and unfolded the piece of paper in question ten times over as she stepped around a matching sheet on the floor of his suite. “I think I got charged for your room, too.”
Her gaze dipped to his bare chest for a fleeting moment before she breezed past to pull open the curtains on the window overlooking the water.
“This looks right.” He scooped up his bill and compared it to hers, noting his ungodly bar tab and her dry cleaning bill for her dress along with the purchase of a pair of cheap rhinestone-studded flip-flops from the gift shop. “I’ve got it.”
“I don’t expect you to pay for my room. Or my shoes.” She flashed him a better view of her glittery pink thongs as she reached to take back the paper. “I just hadn’t realized these resorts were allowed to rob their guests blind for the chance to sleep in a dry bed.”
“I’m paying the damn bill and I’m not arguing about it since every word I utter reverberates in my head like a steel drum, you understand?” He hadn’t given a thought to the cost when he brought her here last night, but he knew most cruise companies didn’t pay their employees much for their efforts.
Jayne had never shared much about her past, but he’d gotten the impression she came from fairly humble roots not all that different from his own. Life had been kind enough to him since he’d figured out how to translate a gift for stock market prediction into cold, hard cash, but he’d seen the inside of the welfare office enough times in his youth to appreciate not everyone was lucky enough to find an honest means of living well.
“You play, you pay.” She stared out over the endlessly blue water. “Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that one myself.”
Emmett wasn’t touching that one. For all he knew he’d misunderstood what sounded to his clueless ears like an admission of normal human weakness, something completely uncharacteristic of the most proud female he’d ever encountered.
He remained silent so long she finally twirled on her heel to face him, her sundress swirling gently around her thighs with the movement.
“Are you ready to take me over to the landing strip yet, or did you change your mind about the ride?” She nodded toward the vast expanse of ocean out the window, her glossy red curls slithering seductively around her shoulders. “I’ve got to get back to the Venus to kick a certain man’s ass and apologize to my sister before a seven-o’clock rehearsal tonight.”
“You don’t think this loser ex-fiancé of yours is still on the ship?” Emmett reached for his shirt, his head clearing at the thought of losing Jayne for the second time in twelve months.
“He really likes his job. We weren’t planning to quit when we eloped, we just figured we’d take the night off to be wild and crazy.” Shrugging, she fished around in her purse and retrieved a pair of sunglasses. Shoved them on her nose. “Or so I thought. Guess I’m the last of a dying wild and crazy breed.”
Something about seeing proud Jayne Mansfield Frazer duck behind designer knockoff lenses clenched strangely at his gut. She’d changed since their first meeting a year ago and some sucker-for-punishment facet of his ego wanted to know how. Why.
Ignoring the pounding in his head to follow the stupid thrum of his clueless heart, he made up his mind to find out more about The One Who Got Away. For that matter, it’d been months since he’d taken a cruise and now that his divorce was official he found himself homeless and in need of some high seas revelry.
“Hell no, you’re not part of a dying breed. Give me five minutes to shower and I might just be wild and crazy enough to fly you back to Barbados myself.”
* * *
RITA WAS CALLING IN favors at an alarming rate as she sweet-talked the most junior member of the ship security team into telling her everything he knew about Jayne’s illicit escape from the ship the day before. But she’d sewn a prom dress for the guy’s little sister last spring and he ’fessed up without a wince since Jayne had promised to be back onboard the next day.
While the news was reassuring, Rita knew better than most people that Jayne didn’t always stick to a plan.
Now, as she stood on a pier on the opposite end of the marina and watched Harrison shake hands with a local charter boat captain, she wondered how she could ever repay him for all the help he’d given her last night and today. Jayne had never had a problem with accepting kindness from strangers, graciously smiling whenever passengers—men, women and little old ladies—brought her flowers after a performance. But Rita was uneasy with anyone who offered to do too much for her. Somehow, she’d find a way to make it up to Harrison. Maybe he had a sister young enough to need a prom dress?
“We’ve got the boat for four hours.” Harrison stopped in front of the small craft he’d picked out with a practiced eye the moment they’d arrived. “We’ll cruise around to a few of the marinas on the western side of the island and see what happens. The guy in charge of the charter vessels said he’s been here since dawn and hasn’t seen anyone fitting your sister’s description get off a boat.”
“How do you know what my sister even looks like?” She took his hand as he helped her onboard and reminded herself to pop a few ginger tablets as soon as they got settled. It had taken her weeks to get used to the rocking motion of the Venus, never mind that most people on cruise ships never felt the swaying at all. A boat like this would have her seasick in no time if she didn’t take precautions.
“I figured she must look a lot like you since you escaped the show manager’s radar last night.” He moved around the deck like an old sea hand, untying ropes, hauling in buoys or bumpers or whatever they called those fat pads used to make sure a boat didn’t get scratched up by the dock. “By all accounts this Danielle the Dastardly runs a pretty tight show, so if you danced your way out there under her nose without her noticing… I put two and two together.”
“I don’t look anything like Jayne.” Okay, small inevitable family resemblance aside. “She’s the cover of Vogue. I’m the ‘before’ photo on the makeover page when they strong-arm the average woman on the street into a makeup chair.”
“All I know is you look mighty good to me.” He slid behind the steering wheel and fired up the engine. “You like boats?”
“I like them fine once I pop some ginger pills.” Shaking her purse to free up all the infrequently used items in the deepest recesses of the striped satin lining, she followed the sound of rolling tablets in a bottle until she came up with her medicine case chock-full of everything from sleeping pills for the nights when Jayne blasted her radio full-power to aloe caplets for sunburns.
“Is this outing going to bother you?” Harrison moved away from the steering wheel to push off the dock, giving the boat a gentle shove by planting his foot on the pier and propelling them deeper into the water.
Chewing the pills quickly, Rita shook her head. Determined. Ready to make headway.
“Not nearly as much as it will bother me if I don’t find Jayne.”
“You two are pretty close, I take it?” He jogged the few steps back to the wheel and steered them slowly around the docked boats, being careful not to create too much of a wake.
He looked perfectly at home there, the strong Caribbean sun bearing down on his dark hair to give it a burnished glow, his feet spread on the deck like a man who’d navigated plenty of rough waters in his day.
“It’s a relationship forged in fire.” Sinking onto the seat beside him, Rita shoved her heavy purse off her shoulder and tried to relax. Concentrate on the pleasing vision of Harrison’s legs in khaki shorts. “We’ve been through a lot together and that makes us good friends as well as…women who know far too much about each other’s weaknesses.”
“Sort of codependent?”
She bristled at the very idea.
“Hardly. We watch each other’s backs.” Often whether they really wanted to or not.
“So how was she watching your back last night when she ditched you on what Missy seemed to think was the turning point of your career?”
Surprise—and anger—reminded her she couldn’t relax too much around a man she didn’t know all that well despite the romantic night they’d shared. No matter how charming and helpful Harrison seemed, he wasn’t family. He might not understand the world according to a Frazer.
“It wasn’t a turning point. I sewed some outfits for extra cash. And while it would have been helpful if Jayne had been there to do her job—Everybody makes mistakes.” Wrenching her gaze off his fine butt, she retrieved her sunscreen out of her bag to slather over skin with a high tendency to burn.
“Some more than others.” He cranked the boat into a higher gear as they cleared the marina and hit the open water. “I’m close to my family, too, and I can’t remember a time I would have left them holding the bag to chase dreams that could have easily waited a day or two.”
“And your point is that I must be some kind of messed-up enabler to allow my sister to take advantage of me?” She’d heard that one before, although usually snippy fans of gossip liked to cluck about enabling her mother as opposed to Jayne. Still, the same principle applied. She was cast as the sucker. “Or are you suggesting my sister must be a complete waste-case to flee her job?”
She scrubbed the sunscreen into her skin with extra force.
“Rita—”
“Or worse.” Another scenario smacked her upside the head with more force than a high kick to the temple as she tossed the SPF 45 aside. “You think both those things.”
“Hardly.” He slowed the boat as they neared another marina beside a stretch of ocean-view resort hotels. “I know all about the desire to help out your family and I’ve been down that route too many times myself to blame you for doing that same thing. I just hope your sister realizes what lengths you went to in order to cover for her because from the handful of people I talked to on the Venus about Jayne, I got the impression she takes the spotlight most of the time while you do twice as much behind the scenes.”
“I’d love to know who told you that, especially since you’ve been on the ship for all of three days.” How could her coworkers confide such intimate details to a perfect stranger? Curse the man’s sexy dark stare.
“Nobody said it straight out.” He slowed the motor as they closed in on a small dock. “I gathered as much from other things I heard from your friends and Horatio’s.”
“I forgot you talked to them.” She’d been slowly losing her brain cells to anxiety and fear since last night. Add to that the fear that her skin was burning from want of Harrison and not because of the Caribbean sun, and she was forced to admit she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “Did you find out anything helpful?Anything besides the fact that Jayne and I are codependent enablers?”
She squinted toward a throng of tourists on the dock, a man and three bikini-clad women stepping aside for a young couple on inline skates.
“Only that Horatio was scheduled to work last night and they hadn’t heard anything about him ditching.” He eased the boat around a mammoth-size yacht to give them a better view of the pier. “But I couldn’t locate the casino workers you mentioned, just a couple of bartenders on a different deck from the casino and they were just barely crawling out of bed when I talked to them.”
“Bastard.” Rita’s gaze fixed on the man on the pier as the guy’s hand strayed over one of the women’s tanga swimsuit bottom. Squinting, she couldn’t believe her eyes as the man’s familiar features came into focus. “Maybe they didn’t know about Horatio skipping work because he never left the ship last night.”
“What do you mean?” Harrison cut the motor, presumably so they could ask the group on the dock a few questions.
Indignation pumping through her, she didn’t even bother lowering her voice as she pointed out the assgrabber a few yards away.
“That’s Jayne’s so-called fiancé right there.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f5f7c5ea-193e-54d0-9be6-5337cfbed29c)
ON AN INTELLECTUAL LEVEL, Harrison processed the news that the jet-setter type on the dock was the same tool who’d stood up Rita’s sister. But the information seemed less important than the primary data Harrison currently received from his personal observations of the scene on the pier.
Horatio and three fawning females had all just stepped off the big-ass yacht beside the dock from which obnoxious techno-pop music still blared. A party seemed to be in progress onboard the hundred-and-twenty-foot monster where a couple of guys and three other women sipped a rainbow range of bright cocktails, their swimsuits as expensive-looking as the designer sunglasses perched on almost every nose. Money oozed from the yacht along with the mindlessly repetitive club music, and Horatio the runaway groom looked fairly at home with it all for a guy whose paycheck couldn’t be any fatter than what Harrison had pulled down during his time with the Bureau. And Harrison sure as hell could never afford the Breitling timepiece this bozo sported.
“Hey, scumbag, say cheese.” The shout came from Harrison’s elbow as Rita lined up her disposable camera for a shot of Horatio’s hand on the bikini babe’s butt. She clicked the camera before calling over the lens. “My sister’s going to annul this marriage so fast you’ll be a single man by nightfall, dip-wad.”
Harrison secured the boat in record time, recognizing quickly the shit was going to hit the fan. He would have liked to look around the dock more discreetly now that all of his agent instincts were up and running about Horatio’s big money connections, but discretion seemed out of the question since Rita fairly launched out of their rented boat to confront the dealer.
“Sorry to disappoint you, babe, but I’m definitely still a single man.” He squeezed his lady friend’s butt cheek for emphasis. “Good thing, eh?”
Harrison could practically feel the fury rising off Rita as she bared her teeth at him.
“Too busy to elope?” She edged the words past her lips despite the clamped jaw.
Harrison looped an arm around her shoulders and hoped she wouldn’t shove it off or start a big confrontation.
“Come on, Rita.” Horatio shifted his weight in a subtle show of discomfort Harrison wouldn’t have caught without years of experience at reading liars. “You know Jayne’s not the settling-down type. If we tied the knot she would have thrown me over in two months max.”
“With great reason, obviously.” Rita moved toward the back of the boat as if to exit, but Harrison held her back.
Hoping to defuse the tension before Rita knocked this guy’s teeth clear down his throat, Harrison kept his tone casual. “You know where we can find Jayne today?”
“We were supposed to meet at Island Dreams last night on St. Kitts and then catch a hop to Barbados this morning.” He checked his watch in slow motion as if to be sure he kept his name brand visible. “If she caught the flight we talked about, she would have touched down a few minutes ago.”
While Rita assured Playboy Joe that no dancer would ever look twice at him again once she spread the word of an unfortunate condition he’d contracted, Harrison noted the name of the yacht emblazoned on the bow. The Over-Under.
“Nice boat.” Harrison interjected while Horatio’s miniharem stepped back, their high heels a chorus of taps on the dock. “You have friends who like the over-under?”
“I’ve got a lot of friends.” Shrugging, he started to follow the females heading up the pier toward a waterfront restaurant and marketplace. “Who knows what they all like?”
Rita’s hand slipped around Harrison’s elbow, reminding him he couldn’t follow up on his instincts about the blackjack dealer now, even if those instincts were blaring loudly in his ear that something wasn’t right.
“Let’s head over to the landing strip and see if she’s there.” Rita’s simple red flip-flops smacked the back of her heels in rhythmic time as she walked the length of the boat with smooth, efficient strides bearing little resemblance to her stage strut of the night before.
Funny how the practical woman appealed to him as much as the fantasy siren. More, even. He appreciated people who valued hard work and family the way he did.
“Done.” Harrison untied their rented vessel and cranked up the engine, figuring the trip over to the landing strip was as good a time as any to let Rita in on his real motives behind taking the cruise. “But once we’re underway, I need you to tell me everything you can about Horatio.”
“Besides that he’s a two-timing snake with no moral system in place?”
Rita seethed inwardly as Harrison guided the craft away from the creep who’d thought nothing of leaving her sister at the altar. Forget that the altar doubled as a gift shop checkout counter. That didn’t diminish the magnitude of Horatio’s desertion in the least.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you,” Harrison pressed on, “that a lowlife like him could attract not one but three women to keep him company today? He’s running with some big-money friends for a guy who makes pretty average wages.”
“You’re suggesting anyone who works on the Venus must be low-class?” She hadn’t expected economic prejudice from Harrison. He seemed so down-to-earth. So normal.
“Of course not.” He checked the map of Barbados the charter boat captain had given them, the sun casting a glare on the paper no matter where he positioned it. “I couldn’t afford a boat like the one he was on either, but if he doesn’t have any personal charisma and he’s got the morals of a snake as you pointed out, what basis does he have to form a connection with some multimillionaire yacht owner?”
“I’m sure there are plenty of multimillionaires whose morals suck, too.” Rita kept an eye on the coastline, trying to remember where an airport might be, but she’d never made much use of shore time like most of the crew, preferring to sew onboard the ship rather than party in Caribbean clubs.
“My point exactly. And if Horatio is hanging out with those kinds of wealthy, unethical people and sporting a Breitling watch that would be tough to afford on a dealer’s salary, doesn’t that make you suspicious?”
“So you think he’s doing something illegal? When would he have time between working and juggling five different women? The bastard.” Resenting Horatio’s treatment of her sister, she couldn’t get past that anger to think about whatever else he might be doing. “Don’t you hate people who have hidden agendas and stupid little secrets?”
“Uh, in theory, yes.”
“Why can’t people just be honest with each other and say, ‘I have three other women I’m screwing on the side. Would you care to be added to the list, or not?’ That might be skeevy, but at least it’s honest.” Rita knew Jayne had at least made an effort to get her life together over the past six months since she’d really streamlined the number of men she dated. This blow from Horatio had to hurt.
“There’s something we need to talk about.”
The quiet seriousness in Harrison’s tone called her from her sisterly outrage. Then, the stern set to his features as he steered the boat across open water gave her the distinct sense of impending doom.
She so could not handle more bad news today.
“Don’t tell me you’re sleeping with three other women?”
“It’s not as bad as that, but I don’t want you to think I have a secret agenda.”
Although she would have rather simply enjoyed the view as the wind plastered Harrison’s shirt to his muscular chest, Rita didn’t mind playing a few rounds of Worst Case Scenario to keep whatever he had to say in perspective. She couldn’t afford to let him hurt her when she could barely stagger through all that she had on her plate.
“Okay, I’ve got it. You introduced yourself to me last night because you have a thing for showgirls and now that you know me for the seamstress I really am, you want out?” She’d known plenty of guys who could only appreciate glitz and glitter and didn’t have a clue about what lay beneath.
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Joanne Rock
She may be on a cruise liner, but lately, Rita Frazer's life looks more like a shabby dinghy.Working as a seamstress on a ship called the Venus, Rita hasn't been feeling very goddesslike. More like a Swamp-Thing with red hair and a mouthful of pins. When the ship hosts a fashion show, Rita figures she finally has a chance at being a designer—until she finds herself on the runway, instead of her designs.But Rita's found her muse. And he's watching the fashion show. Harrison Masters is capable of making any woman drop sails, anchor and most of her clothes. And he might be successful with Rita, but she panics when her sister disappears. Now Rita's little dinghy—which was ready for an upgrade to full-on Love Boat only moments ago—is starting to leak. Bail water…or bail out?
She may be on a cruise liner, but lately, Rita Frazer’s life looks more like a shabby dinghy. Working as a seamstress on a ship called the Venus, Rita hasn’t been feeling very goddess like. More like a Swamp-Thing with red hair and a mouthful of pins. When the ship hosts a fashion show, Rita figures she finally has a chance at being a designer—until she finds herself on the runway, instead of her designs.
But Rita’s found her muse. And he’s watching the fashion show. Harrison Masters is capable of making any woman drop sails, anchor and most of her clothes. And he might be successful with Rita, but she panics when her sister disappears. Now Rita’s little dinghy—which was ready for an upgrade to full-on Love Boat only moments ago—is starting to leak. Bail water…or bail out?
Previously Published.
The Pleasure Trip
Joanne Rock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PRAISE FOR award-winning author (#ulink_0571c7d2-3154-52f8-870b-b8f6cb9b4336)
Joanne Rock
“Joanne Rock’s heroes capture and conquer in just one glance, one word, one touch. Irresistible!”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Leto
“Sizzling chemistry with a splash of seductively intense suspense—fabulous Joanne Rock always delivers a page-turning read!”
—RITA
Award winner Catherine Mann
“The storyline is action-packed…and never slows down.”
—The Best Reviews on His Wicked Ways
This book is dedicated to my big sister, Linda, whose love and friendship mean the world to me. Her generous spirit is great inspiration for what sisterhood should be all about. And while our relationship bears little resemblance to Rita and Jayne’s except in the best of ways, Linda’s wizardry with needle and thread (and possibly a glue gun) did provide me with the idea for the sisterly gifts contained in this story. My glitter sneakers are on my list of top ten presents I’ve ever received. Thank you, big sister!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#ulink_bfa6251b-2db3-5a32-ac18-a4f1b84eeba0)
I’d like to thank the staff and crew members of the Carnival Inspiration for their enthusiasm about my book and their help to ensure my questions were answered. My fictional cruise line is not in any way modeled on the commitment to excellence that I saw around me every day on a Carnival ship, but I appreciated the insights about life on board so that I could create a believable world for The Pleasure Trip. Thank you especially to Cruise Director Lenny Halliday and the Carnival promotion department. Thanks also to our dining companions Al and Debbie Moy, who kindly shared their experiences from multiple cruises with a couple of first-timers. Not only did I learn a lot for my book, but I had a great time in the process and can’t wait for another trip!
CONTENTS (#ulink_92640957-adc4-5500-aa93-dc83b88b3660)
Cover (#u5e64cd4d-48f3-543e-8030-570352db7680)
Back Cover Text (#u896937f9-2fac-5221-af0b-6e8b18bf3afe)
Title Page (#u9dca4c3f-c065-5f50-8f7b-16b8e01217c3)
Praise (#ulink_24675a0a-a097-5363-88d9-e138de8528e6)
Dedication (#u6345e815-814e-5dac-81ab-be00cd3800cc)
Acknowledgments (#ulink_d20cce22-4d9a-5e5d-9a97-25b6d52e3eb3)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_552da70f-879f-5269-9c30-6a7d5874b01b)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_59debf66-c73b-5a70-a951-b5f221643a67)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5c3a9b32-34b3-5482-849c-38737922ed0f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_01cb9281-b0e6-5b7b-a215-d18b23d0c2b2)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_9929ba63-c1a9-5d87-a09d-b3eaf5093bd0)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_dd5d50b1-3f79-5fc2-832a-2f00915398c3)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Bonus Features Inside (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_fa0633e8-1c55-54b7-a1e6-fdf3c0ea0030)
EVEN FOR A WOMAN with two left feet, pounding down eight flights of stairs in cheap flip-flops didn’t present a challenge when fueled by anger and the desire to give a well-deserved butt kicking.
Silently fuming, Rita Frazer shoved open the stairwell door on the basement level of Roman Cruise Lines’ flagship, the Venus, where she and her sister had worked for over a year. She glanced down at her insubstantial footwear with blue plastic flowers between the toes. No doubt about it, her flip-flops were a sorry excuse for butt-kicking shoes. But where there was a will, desperate women found a way.
“Jayne!” Rita shouted down the narrow corridor reserved for the ship’s employees, steam hissing from her ears like the boiler beside her cabin. Everyone but her younger sister the showgirl was at work this afternoon, prepping for an influx of passengers after a day docked in St. Kitts, the second island stop on a ten-day Caribbean cruise.
Rita had done the same trip plenty of times as official seamstress for the Venus. But this wasn’t just any cruise, and Jayne knew it. This particular excursion could be Rita’s big financial break since she’d gone out on a limb to create new outfits for the show—outfits five times as good as what they’d bought from manufacturers in the past. She just hoped the cruise management company would agree and pony up an appropriate payout.
And of course, she hoped Jayne—one of the show’s featured performers—didn’t mess up Rita’s big night.
When no answer was forthcoming, Rita stomped her way to the end of the hall, following the scent of the Chanel No. 5 Jayne preferred even though none of the dancers were supposed to wear perfume out of deference to the costumes. The familiar fragrance wafted from the same interior stateroom from which a warbling rendition of “Stand By Your Man” currently emanated.
Rita let herself into the compact room they shared in the bowels of the ship, a room Jayne never bothered to bolt no matter how many times they discussed the potential dangers with an ever-changing crew of nine hundred. The drone of shower water mingled with god-awful singing.
“You are so dead.” Rita figured it would be okay to strangle her sister today since Jayne hadn’t bothered to show for dress rehearsal this afternoon when she knew damn well this was Rita’s one chance to shine in her peon job as a seamstress.
The singing stopped as Jayne popped her head out of the shower, all smiles amid a cloud of steam. “Rita? What time is it?”
“Past time for rehearsal and Danielle already wants your head on a platter for not checking in with her. Star status doesn’t buy you exemption from attending show preliminaries.” She torpedoed a towel against the shower curtain, nailing Jayne in the hip through the white waffle weave. “Besides that, do you know how many corporate managers I corralled into seeing the show tonight to see the new outfits? The boat pulls out in twenty minutes.”
“Crap.” The reference to the timeline at least got Jayne moving as she ducked back into the shower spray to rinse. “I’ve got to hurry.”
Mildly disappointed no butt kicking had been needed, Rita gave her flip-flops the rest of the day off. She stalked out of the closet-size bathroom, noting the unholy mess scattered about their cramped cabin now that she wasn’t focused solely on her beef with Jayne. Clothes were strewn everywhere, the twin beds both covered in discarded silk tops, scarves and skinny hot pants.
“I’m not even going to ask what happened in here.” Rita flung her plastic thongs into the closet and reached for a more forgiving pair of sneakers to wear with her jean shorts. “I’ve got too much on my mind to wade through your wardrobe crisis.”
“That’s okay.” The shower curtain rings scraped over the rod with a metallic ting as Jayne toweled off. “I solved my own crisis, thank you very much, although God forbid you give me any credit for it. I know we’re all excited about your foray into costume design, but you forget your sister is the Queen of Vintage and a fashion force to reckon with in her own right.”
Rita needed to be back at the rehearsal stage to help dress everyone before show time, but her sister’s comment slowed her reach for the door. “What do you need a great outfit for anyway? You’re going onstage as soon as the ship sails.”
She peered across the wardrobe tornado at Jayne sliding into a floral sundress in record time.
“Can’t a girl dress up for her man?” She winked over her shoulder, one long red curl plastered to her cheek. Presenting her back to Rita to zip her up, she smoothed the hem of her short skirt. “How do I look?”
“Flushed and overexcited.” Rita fastened the hook and eye over the zipper and wondered for the umpteen-millionth time how Jayne could appear so movie-star gorgeous with her confident stride and graceful moves while Rita lumbered through life with as much finesse as a linebacker. They were sisters, for crying out loud. Same genes. Same ballet lessons. Same basic looks and size. Where was the justice? “You’re practically bubbling over for that matter. What gives?”
Jayne shuffled around her makeup table that doubled as a desk and poked Rita in the arm with a lipstick case. “Can’t I be excited for you? I’m still in shock you finally talked the management into new outfits for the opening number. They’re normally so stingy about wardrobe.” Uncapping bright fuchsia lipstick, Jayne smeared it on her sister’s mouth in a futile effort to make Rita look pulled together. “Now all you need to do is drag me out of show business and you’ll be happy, right?”
Rita rolled her eyes and tried to stand still for the makeup job even though she’d rather not have her face lacquered while she was working. Didn’t Jayne realize they were going to be late? But some things weren’t worth arguing with her over. Makeup for one. And the fact that Rita hadn’t truly sold the costumes to Roman Cruise Lines quite yet. Jayne would have had a conniption to think her big sister—by all of eleven months—had accepted a work-for-hire job to force the higher-ups into appreciating her. But they’d worked the cruise ship for minimum pay long enough after back-to-back six-month stints. Time to move on to greener pastures.
“Oh please. As if I’ll be able to haul you away from this business or Horatio the Latin lover any time soon.” Although Rita could always hope. She’d tried before to get Jayne to consider moving to New York to make the most of her dance talent, but Rita had never succeeded in convincing her to leave boy-bimbo Horatio behind. “You’re addicted to all that glitters, remember? I’m just happy my costumes came together in time for tonight.”
Rita had been trying to coax her starry-eyed sibling into developing interests outside of dancing since high school, but Jayne had the same stage aspirations as their mother and no promise of any stable, long-term work had ever wooed her away. The job on the cruise ship had been reliable and working on a luxury liner gave the illusion of being on vacation all the time—a welcome fantasy after they’d done their share of waiting tables in dive bars while waiting for Jayne’s big break.
Showbiz opportunities hadn’t been hiding in any of the trucker hangouts on Interstate 95 north of Fort Lauderdale where they’d grown up. And Jayne couldn’t be convinced to try Broadway since their mother had a gambling problem along with a mixed bag of other addictions that kept her daughters on their toes and perpetually bankrupt unless they hid their money very carefully. The cruise stint allowed Jayne to keep tabs on Mom while Rita kept an eye on her baby sister.
Somehow, it all worked. For now.
“I mean it, Ree.” Jayne coated her sister’s eyelashes with industrial-strength mascara. “I think I’m ready to blow this showgirl gig once and for all. Finally, we’re both going to have everything we dreamed about.”
“You really think my outfits are going to be a hit?” Rita had sewn until her fingers bled to pull together the new costumes to unveil at tonight’s program. She’d paid off one of the other dancers to model the extra garments informally around the tables before and after the house lights went up at the main performance. When the dancers weren’t onstage, they spent plenty of time walking around the ship in full showgirl regalia to pose for pictures with the guests, so it wasn’t like Missy didn’t have experience preening while she mingled.
“Absolutely.” Jayne smeared gloss on her lips and finger combed her damp hair into waves around her face. “You’re going to knock ’em dead tonight. It’s high time you came out of hiding to show your talents to the world.”
The words of sisterly support were as welcome as they were rare in a relationship marked by old rivalries and very different perspectives. But deep down, she knew Jayne wanted her to succeed. Didn’t she?
“Thanks.” Rita pulled open the door, feet itching to get back to the stage. She hated it that suspicion held her up once again. “You’re not planning anything unusual for the show, are you? No special theatrics to highlight my outfits or impulsive gestures sure to get us fired?”
Flashbacks to their childhood and her sister charging money from their friends to see her inline skating on a train rail came to mind. Jayne lighting the neighbor’s garage on fire when she practiced her flaming baton routine as a teenager. Jayne slipping a note to the star quarterback in high school, saying that Rita liked him.
And although that last stunt had worked out with rather exciting results for Rita, she’d officially started her first ulcer while waiting to find out if A.J. liked her, too. No way would she tread down Jayne’s road of recklessness again. She’d weathered enough emotional storms from her sister’s revolving-door romances to know she was better off focusing on work.
“Trust me.” Sliding into her high heels, Jayne smiled that angelic grin that had won her Sweetest Sugar Plum in the school Christmas pageant three years running. “You’re going to be very happy tonight.”
Reassured she’d covered her bases with Jayne, Rita sidestepped the elevator that only came to the bottom deck once in a blue moon. With paying passengers finishing up boarding from their shore excursions, the elevator would be too jammed to make the trip to the employee-only level anytime soon.
Not until she hit the second flight of stairs did she remember she’d never pinned down her sister for an estimated arrival time in wardrobe. No doubt, Jayne figured she could slide into her spot late since she didn’t go out until the second number. And for the first time, Rita realized she didn’t care if her sister failed to play by the book.
For just this once, maybe Rita and her two left feet could enjoy a little of the spotlight for herself.
* * *
“TRY BENDING OVER and jiggling.” Sweaty and frazzled two minutes before the curtain went up, Rita waited while the platinum-blond showgirl decked in buttery soft blue leather leaned forward and shook her considerable assets.
Straightening, the jittery young dancer covered in self-tanning cream and a healthy dose of body glitter looked to Rita for approval.
No luck, damn it. Rita ran a skilled finger along the inside of the other woman’s bodice and tugged the material upward. “The twins are still a little uneven, Missy. Do you want me to take in the costume before you go onstage?”
Sighing, the stressed-out blonde waved away the help as she dove for a pink duffel bag on the dressing room table. “My right is bigger than my left. I’ve got a silicone lift in my bag to fill out that side a little.”
Ignoring the usual pandemonium in the cavernous backstage of the Aurora 2 Theater, Rita silently critiqued every costume that streaked by her as dancers and acrobats scrambled for last-minute makeup fixes and hair touch-ups. They were three days into the February cruise with two performances down, but tonight’s show marked the first appearance of the new outfits.
And surprise of all surprises, the costumes looked fantastic for their debut number. As long as the dancers did their part tonight and Jayne showed up soon, Rita was well on her way to getting reimbursed for her hard work with—hopefully—a hefty bonus to show for it, too.
“Places, ladies!” Danielle Divine, a former showgirl and the current Aurora floor-show manager, gave the familiar nudge to her dancers over the backstage P.A. system. “I need everyone lined up now.”
“Gotta go.” Missy stuffed the lift into her outfit and tossed her bag on the nearest dressing table. “Your costumes are fantastic, Rita. And the showy feathered one I modeled earlier was a hit. You really ought to be in New York designing clothes instead of repairing frayed officer uniforms.”
“Thanks.” Uncomfortable with the praise and the thought that she wasted her talents, Rita figured she’d be happy enough once she received payment in full. She hurried past a rolling rack of outfits to follow Missy and the other dancers toward the stage for the first number. The excitement of an opening night still gave Rita shivers, probably a response inherited simply by being a Frazer. Jayne had cheered herself hoarse after she’d landed her slot in the show, launching her into the best gig she’d had since their mother’s last run at the gambling tables had financially ruined the whole family.
“No talking, ladies!” Danielle Divine stepped between them, physically nudging Rita back three steps with her skinny, strong arms. Older than Rita by ten years, she still packed more strength in her toned body than most eighteen-years-olds. Miss Divine took her job as backstage manager damn seriously. “Out of the way, Ms. Frazer. Your costumes are lovely but your fretting mother hen routine is not wanted in this show. Understood?”
Rita might have told Danielle where she could get off, but the house lights were already dimming and the entertainers began to engage in their individual last-minute rituals—visualization techniques, breathing exercises, even a few scattered prayers. No time for talk now.
“Good luck, everyone!” Rita stage-whispered over Danielle’s Miss Clairol number nine head. “And thanks for making the costumes look great.”
Couldn’t hurt to remind them her reputation was riding on their high kicks tonight. Missy gave her two thumbs up as they all filed onto their designated places on top of a wheeled piece of staging that would bring them out onto the stage, the acrobats and singers hanging back as they waited for their turn in the spotlight later tonight.
Rita stood back to cheer them on, the boat rocking gently beneath her feet while she wished Jayne were there to help calm her nerves when the audience got their first glimpse of the outfits. Jayne never had stage fright and always danced like a pro. From preschool pageants to high school plays, she’d never been flustered onstage, never lost her supreme confidence in her ability to perform.
Rita was another story. She’d always done well in rehearsals and could nail any routine in the privacy of her bedroom, but on opening night she froze like a deer in headlights. A supreme disappointment to her torch-singer mother who’d dreamed of seeing her girls onstage.
Thankfully Rita had found work that allowed her to stay backstage, and even tonight, she only sent a small piece of herself out into the bright lights.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice boomed over the house speakers as a drumroll hummed in the background. “Welcome to Roman Cruise Lines’ world-famous Venus floor-show extravaganza.”
Rita watched the wheeled conveyance full of dancers start to move. The synthesized, edgy rock music for the performance began. Danielle Divine whispered last-minute instructions to a very fidgety Missy, who Rita knew was in danger of losing her job just two months into her contract. Poor thing.
Dancing gigs were damn hard to come by and fiercely competitive. If the woman lost this job…
Damn it, the red-eyed dancer wasn’t the only one whose job was on the line. Rita forced herself to stop thinking about everyone else in the show and concentrated on her own responsibilities—making sure her deceptively simple leather costumes looked good enough to eat on stage.
The whole idea for the biker babe number had been Rita’s, from the outfits to the music to the core theme behind the choreography. It had been hell to convince the show managers that the unconventional material could work on stage given its tendency to stretch, but once they’d glimpsed the possibilities and made sure Rita would be on hand for free alterations, they’d been all over the concept.
Nervous energy charging through her, she grabbed Jayne’s outfit for the next number and tiptoed to the edge of the backstage curtain to gauge the audience’s reaction. Jayne played a bigger role in the previous night’s production but in this show, she had a solo dance sequence in just one of the acts. The house was packed, but the only faces Rita could make out were the folks in the front row. Thank God Jayne’s loser boyfriend—Horatio the ass-grabbing blackjack dealer—wasn’t in attendance for once. He normally sat front and center and ogled Jayne along with every other dancer, but tonight that seat belonged to…
Come to mama.
Someone much more interesting.
Rita wasn’t in the market for a man. Especially not a high-roller type who traveled alone and booked Carib bean cruises for the access to round-the-clock gambling. Traditionally, those were the kind of guys who reserved the front row tables at the nightly floor-show touted for a nearly nude revue capping off every performance. No, Rita didn’t like that type of guy at all.
But if she had, her head would have been turned by the prime male specimen currently peeling the label off his bottle of beer while a battalion of leather-clad women sashayed past him. He was a big man. Big enough to make his chair look more like doll furniture than people seating.
His legs sprawled long and muscular beneath the cocktail table in front of him. His shoulders had the kind of width only a custom-made suit would accommodate. Which, of course, he wore. Navy-blue and pinstriped, the clothes gave him the appearance of a forties movie star, the kind of guy her mother would have fallen for in a heartbeat. But then, Margie Frazer had an unusual love of the forties and fifties screen icons, a fact advertised to the world by naming her daughters Rita Hayworth Frazer and Jayne Mansfield Frazer.
Licking her lips at the hot prospect seated in the first row, Rita momentarily forgot about the show and how much she had riding on it. Leaning one shoulder into an empty rolling rack tucked behind the backstage curtain, she indulged the urge to stare for just another moment. How many times in life did a woman feel that overwhelming sense of attraction at first sight?
She hadn’t felt this way since A.J. the quarterback had given her heart palpitations in the eleventh grade. And as sweet as that first crush had been, Rita had to admit that with a woman’s more mature and discriminating hormones at work, her attraction now was a hell of a lot stronger. Earthier. Yummier. Dancing biker babes flooded the stage in a swirl of color and feminine curves while Rita’s gaze narrowed to just one man.
Close-trimmed dark hair framed the stranger’s face, his brooding eyes glued to the bottle label he slowly mutilated. Although his sleek suit and narrow green-and-blue tie broadcast success, his forbidding expression and preoccupation reminded her of the desolate faces she’d seen at the ship’s bar at 4:00 a.m. The shell-shocked folks who came onboard for a good time in the casino and somehow lost half their life savings to the roll of a die or hand of cards.
Foolish, clueless people who had no business indulging in the free drinks available at Venus’s twenty-four-hour casino.
She hoped for this gorgeous man’s sake he wasn’t staring down the throat of a longneck for those kinds of reasons. Maybe his girlfriend had just dumped him and all he needed was a cynical, buxom redhead to put his life back into perspective for the night….
Rita debated taking a chance for once and sending him a drink. But as the music died away and the audience erupted into applause, she warned herself to get her head on straight and find Jayne to help with her costume change while a singing duo took the stage between dance numbers. The other dancers’ next outfits weren’t Rita Frazer Originals, but Jayne’s was. Because Jayne played the central character in a very fluffy musical drama involving lots of feathers and coy smiles, her outfit could be different. Better. Hand sewn by Rita for a little extra spotlight.
Tearing her gaze away from the superstud with dark disappointment in his eyes, Rita waited for Jayne at the edge of the stage, costume already in hand. Too bad Jayne was still nowhere in sight.
Damn it. What was her sister thinking?
Praying Danielle Divine—aka Danielle Domineering—wouldn’t notice the absence, Rita waited to see her sister’s Veronica Lake-style red waves bob around the corner.
And waited.
Until a bad feeling crept into her veins, chilling her skin and setting her every cynical, wise big-sister instinct on edge. Sprinting around the back of the staging area to another dressing room, Rita scanned the small expanse of lighted mirrors and makeup tables for a glimpse of Jayne.
To no avail.
Heart pounding, she mentally shuffled the image of Jayne’s hopeful face with the fact that Horatio the loser blackjack dealer wasn’t in his usual seat tonight. Hadn’t Jayne said she was ready to get out of showbiz?
And hadn’t Rita known damn well that couldn’t be good?
Hightailing it to the other side of the stage where half the dancers were already naked and shimmying their way into their next outfit, Rita found Jayne’s dressing table graced by a glittery star, her duffel bag beneath it. The bag was unusually light given all the stuff Jayne normally hauled around. There was no purse, no bulging makeup case. Just some tissues, hairbrush, masking tape and—a note?
The dread that had been knotting in her stomach traveled up her throat in a burning path.
Don’t be mad at me, big sister! You know this routine inside and out and let’s face it—no one deserves the spotlight as much as you tonight. I had an urgent appointment in St. Kitts because Horatio really wanted to—ready?—elope!!!
Love and kisses,
Jayne
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no freaking way.
Rita didn’t need to run to the nearest porthole to know the big ship had already cleared St. Kitts harbor by a mile. Jayne must have slipped off the boat with seconds to spare considering Rita had seen her in the shower just twenty minutes before the boat set sail. Jayne had timed her defection flawlessly—no surprise there considering her perfect stage routines and the fact that she had every male security guard aboard the Venus wrapped around her finger.
Damn! Shoving aside the wealth of worries for her sister and more than a little resentment for herself, Rita’s fingers tightened around the leopard-print notepaper in one hand, Jayne’s dancing costume in the other.
With performers already lining up, Rita had zero time to make a decision. In fact, she didn’t realize she’d actually made one at all until her clothes were sliding off and she found herself jamming one foot after another into the leg holes of the barely-there feathered concoction.
She could dance, right?
She’d sat in on all the same damn tap, jazz and ballet classes as Jayne until she’d emancipated herself from Margie’s stage-mother stranglehold. Plus, for three months running Rita had rehearsed all of Jayne’s dances so she could get a feel for how the costumes needed to be crafted to keep them fluid and feminine.
Shoving her bare feet into strappy rhinestone sandals that went with Jayne’s ensemble, Rita nearly toppled over as Missy rushed by, headdress askew as Sammy the Somersaulting Albanian tried unsuccessfully to right the heavy tiara.
“Can you help her, Rita?” Sammy whispered, ever mindful of Danielle who wouldn’t hesitate to axe any dancer who couldn’t hold her own.
Or any dancer who did something really, really stupid like elope in the middle of the show.
“I’ll take over, Sammy. Thanks.” Rita let the wiry acrobat off the hook as she picked up speed fastening her rhinestone top, determined not to flub this. Why was she not surprised Sammy looked endlessly grateful as he hurried away with the fluid grace that came naturally to gymnasts?
“What are you doing?” Missy jammed fistfuls of hair into the headdress with no success. “Where’s Jayne?”
What could she say? Jayne’s sucking face with the worst mistake of her life while our careers go up in flames? Yanking her own headpiece off a hook over Jayne’s star-spangled dressing table, Rita plunked the tiara on her head.
“She had an emergency, but that’s just between us, okay?” Snitching a bobby pin from the jumble of accessories on the table, Rita thrust it into Missy’s long blond curls and anchored the heavy headpiece to her scalp, the need to lend a hand still strong even when she had no time to help. “Don’t worry about Danielle once you’re onstage. Just dance.”
As if she had time to dispense career advice while undertaking the stupidest scheme of her life. Even Jayne had never been this impulsive.
Okay, taking into account eloping with Horatio, maybe she had.
“Places, ladies!” Danielle’s throaty call for action multiplied the butterflies in Rita’s stomach.
The last thing she needed was for Danielle to see her in Jayne’s costume. With the headdress on, there was a chance she’d never notice. Thank God every Frazer woman had been given the same five feet ten inches to work with.
She had to at least try to get past Danielle for the sake of Jayne’s job, which wouldn’t be here for her when she came back—oh God, if she came back—without a little intervention.
The music changed as the performers lined up for the scene Jayne called the Wicked Angel. It looked like one big T-and-A fest to Rita’s eyes, but Jayne insisted it was a fallen woman with a heart of gold act. Well, fallen woman with a heart of gold and sexual appetite the size of Texas since the dance involved substantial writhing around on the floor. Though the pastel feathers made the writhing look more innocent, according to Jayne.
Hence the Wicked Angel.
Rita had never explored her inner angel, preferring to barge through life being blunt and direct and simply asking for what she wanted. But tonight she’d play simpering and coy for all it was worth in order to save Jayne’s paycheck.
She just hoped she didn’t fall off her heels. Or turn left when everyone else turned right and possibly high kick her neighbor right in the schnoz.
All of which had happened to her before in her long and colorful career as her sister’s crappy sidekick.
“Hurry up, Jayne!” Danielle the Destroyer glared at her with a look that would have sent heavyweight boxers running for cover. Thank God the abysmal backstage lighting prevented her from discerning Rita’s features under Jayne’s headdress. “You’re on in five. Four…”
Rita’s bare legs quivered beneath her as she prayed for coordination and knew it wouldn’t come. The only way she’d ever been able to get through a solid dance routine had been to isolate herself in a room all alone. Maybe she could close her eyes and pretend she was alone.
“Three. Two…”
The house lights swirled and changed from moody blues to brazen reds. The music kicked up volume. Her knees knocked so hard she wasn’t sure she could haul herself out there. Closing her eyes would definitely result in her spiked heel planted in someone’s instep.
She’d simply choose a focus point. Meditate the rest of the humongous amphitheater away.
“And you’re on!” Danielle’s threatening growl mingled with the beat in the music that cued the first step.
Where Rita’s eyes promptly alighted on the only focus point in the room that interested her. The one man whose presence just might be the key to saving her feather-covered ass.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_462241b3-1cc0-574b-a389-fff45d5d9cff)
SPECIAL AGENT HARRISON Masters knew damn well he wouldn’t find the answers to his problems by staring through the glass of his empty beer bottle like an amber-colored lens. Then again, he didn’t think he’d find a fluffy white feather there, yet that didn’t stop a downy quill from floating through his field of vision to land with a delicate sigh along the back of his hand.
Hauling his thoughts from his quickly-going-nowhere investigative work, Harrison scratched his nose and shook off the bit of fluff. He took in the extravagant floor show and searched for the source of the feather. Visions of snowy doves circling the all-you-can-eat buffet formed in his brain for all of two seconds before he locked gazes with a redheaded chorus girl in the front row.
And damned if he didn’t get struck by a bolt of lightning.
Heat throbbed through him even as he realized the electric jolt had been a laser image broadcast across the dancers through the haze of fake red fog pumped through the amphitheater. When Harrison had left Naples, Florida, to embark on his first pleasure trip in years—even if he wasn’t quite as interested in the recreation as he pretended—he’d briefly toyed with the idea of a vacation fling.
He hadn’t seen a woman to pique his interest until now, however. The hot-as-hell redhead stared at him as if her life depended on maintaining eye contact—so much so that Harrison couldn’t resist sneaking a look behind him to make sure he wasn’t missing something. Like a seven-foot Martian at his six o’clock.
The bawdy, stripper-style music in the background played a mischievous accompaniment to the women garbed in angelic white feathers and strategically placed rhinestones. One dancer wore little more than a couple of quills over her breasts and a tiny G-string made entirely of red jewels.
Not that Harrison really cared what anyone else wore. He was merely curious to see how the rest of the women measured up to the auburn-haired bombshell with a pinup’s body and mile-long naked legs.
They didn’t.
Whoever this brazen dancer was, she seemed unique in her tendency to look right at an audience member. Him.
And yeah, he noticed. He was male and breathing, after all—and totally freaking free since his girlfriend of one year had dumped him eight weeks ago, leaving him high and dry but making him realize he’d never been all that fired-up about their relationship anyway. Too bad he’d been so busy figuring out his father’s hotel business he’d temporarily inherited—a work world so different from the one he’d trained for—he hadn’t even seen it coming.
Worse, he didn’t really mourn the loss of her so much as the loss of her insights on the hospitality industry. No wonder she’d dumped his sorry ass and started dating the resort’s golf pro, who also happened to be Harrison’s best friend. Past tense.
These days, Harrison didn’t think he would be ready for another serious relationship for a long time, at least until he’d untangled the mess he’d made of the last one. But now that he’d embarked on the cruise to follow his missing ex-girlfriend and a pile of absent cash from the resort that had disappeared along with the golf pro a few weeks later, Harrison wouldn’t mind some nonserious adventure if it happened to sashay his way.
Something he’d bet the redhead could provide.
Settling into his chair at one of the handful of VIP tables up front in the theater, he shoved aside his empty beer bottle and concentrated on the woman onstage. Less made-up than her counterparts, she looked younger and older at the same time. Investigative instincts flared to life, cataloging clues to this woman’s psyche for the best way to get into her head—and possibly under her feathers. There was less sophistication in the loose way she wore her hair and the lack of stage makeup around her eyes. Yet she was no nineteen-year-old college student, not with that intense stare of hers.
This woman had character. Some secrets, maybe.
She shimmied, she sashayed, she spun, her gaze always returning to him. To seduce him? Damn but he’d like to think so.
Loosening his tie by a fraction of an inch, he allowed himself to imagine taking this angel to bed. High, generous breasts supported a jeweled bodice that resembled a feminine version of chain mail. And suddenly he was thirteen years old again, studying the bra catalogs for a hint of nipple.
He hadn’t made time for that kind of frivolous pleasure in the past year since he’d delved into the family business after his father collided with a mountain in a debilitating skiing accident. His dad had been forced into early retirement and his mother now dedicated all her time to his rehabilitation. Helping his family through a crisis had seemed more important than a career that once meant everything to him—even if he’d missed the intellectual thrill of cloak-and-dagger games, the adrenaline rush of tapping into big-league crime rings.
But no matter how much he itched to return to the FBI next week now that he finally had a temporary management team in place, he hadn’t ever let himself screw up with the high-end Naples resort that provided much-needed income for his father’s ongoing medical bills—far more than Harrison would ever see as a special agent. And he’d been doing a damn good job as the makeshift manager until Sonia had disappeared during a cruise on the Venus last month.
His instincts had twitched, but he’d wrestled them into submission. Until a considerable amount of cash vanished from the Masters Corporation accounts shortly thereafter. Then, he couldn’t write off his concerns as sour grapes or even misplaced longing for some intrigue in a life grown tedious. He’d hired the temporary management team to ease his transition back to his work as an agent, then he’d driven all the way across Florida to jump on a boat and find out what sort of Bermuda Triangle effect was taking place in the Caribbean these days.
He wasn’t onboard just to play spy. The Venus would dock in Antigua for a day, where he could visit Masters Corporation’s newest hotel property. It was all practical with just enough time for some pleasure in the mix.
The redhead’s sudden high kick right over his table gave him a view of her French-cut bikini bottoms. Long ropes of clear rhinestones seemed to tie the panties around her hips while allowing the trailing stones to caress her pale thighs. There was no way this woman could have been onstage in the first number. She had a knack for commanding his attention, something he didn’t give to many people in a life grown too fractured. He would have noticed her.
Lowering her body to the floor, she rocked her hips in provocative fashion. Writhed on the ground as if she couldn’t wait for fulfillment. For sex. For him.
Damn but she was hot.
Renewed interest in his trip had him clapping and on his feet when her number ended. A wolf whistle fell from his lips without thought.
He didn’t know if she had more dances or if she was done for the night, but either way he made up his mind to go backstage and find out. He might have squelched his aptitude for spontaneity over the last year of putting family first, but he’d always had a flair for closing a deal.
And the brazen bombshell hurrying offstage in glittering silver sandals was one opportunity he wouldn’t let slip away.
* * *
HAULING BUTT OFFSTAGE, Rita wanted to slip out of sight and slink away before Danielle the Demoness could get a hold of her. She’d missed two cues by a fraction of a second. Not enough that the audience would notice, but enough to soften the performance and take off the edge of crisp perfection Danielle drilled into their brains at Jayne’s rehearsals.
It was the man in the front row who’d thrown Rita off. When he’d turned to look at her head-on… She closed her eyes to recapture the hot sensation of desire that had showered over her.
Deep. Dark. Delicious.
If she didn’t need to search for Jayne, she might be tempted to track him down and see what happened. Resigned to giving Danielle the slip and helping her sister keep her job instead, Rita hurried out of her costume before the show manager realized what happened. Luckily, Jayne’s stage perfection usually bought her a wide berth from Danielle who—while she liked to nitpick every detail of her productions—possessed a healthy respect for star talent.
Sliding into her shorts and knit halter top she’d been wearing earlier, Rita rushed out of the backstage through a lesser-used side door out onto the Mercury deck while still securing the knot around the back of her neck.
“Can I help you with that?”
Through the veil of her hair with her neck kinked down, Rita spied the object of her stage fantasies framed by the dark night of the open deck. The man in the navy pinstriped suit looked even better close up. He reached for the tie on her halter top.
Sex-starved lunatic that she was, she actually moved her hand away to let him take over the task. For a nanosecond.
“Wait.” She slapped her hand back on the half-formed knot, dismayed to find his fingers already there. And she was already turned on. Her legs that had been shaking from the performance quivered a little more. Just from this man’s proximity. Amazing.
“What?” His voice was too close. He was too close.
Rita reminded herself she was not the impulsive sister. She was the rock. The stabilizer in her family since she’d pulled her first babysitting gig when she’d been eight and Jayne seven. Rita prided herself on being the only Frazer female not driven by her hormones.
Although in this man’s case that seemed hard to remember.
“I can get it. And I don’t even know you, so I have no intention of letting you dress me.”
He slid his hand out from under hers, although he didn’t remove it altogether. Instead, the warmth of his fingers drifted fleetingly along her shoulder underneath her hair for a moment as she finished tying her shirt into place. The touch was so light she could almost think she’d imagined it.
“I’m Harrison Masters and I run a resort called Masters Inn on the outskirts of Naples.”
“Rita Frazer.” She found herself extending her hand to shake his, even though she didn’t normally fraternize with passengers. But maybe just this once she deserved a little reward for her efforts since she’d gone above and beyond duty by dancing Jayne’s number. She hadn’t even been able to stick around to meet with the Roman Cruise Lines executives to ensure they were pleased with her costumes.
“Nice to meet you, Rita.” His smile created crinkles around his endlessly blue eyes. His hand engulfed hers, the warmth of his fingers stroking the heel of her palm, the sensitive inside of her wrist where her pulse throbbed with awareness. “I hope you don’t mind me following up on our connection during your show.”
“Umm.” She backed up against the rail as an older couple shuffled past them. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” He leaned against the rail while the ship cruised easily through open water, crossing his legs at the ankle as if he had all night. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one engaged in the long, hot looks out there.”
She hesitated, knowing she could hardly deny her unusual behavior. “Sorry about all the long, hot looks.”
“Don’t be sorry on my account. I’m a gentleman and all, and I’ll leave now if I misinterpreted the staring. But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
“I was staring at you. But not for the reason you probably thought.”
“Meaning you didn’t hope I’d come backstage to proposition you?” He shook his head, his broad shoulders slumping just a bit. “Damned if my dating skills aren’t getting rusty.”
She remembered him peeling the label off his beer bottle before she came out onstage and felt a twinge of empathy. If he’d given her a hard-sell pitch to have a drink with him, she could have blown him off in a heartbeat. But she hated to think she’d led him on.
“I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression.”And God knows, she’d thought about jumping him the moment she laid eyes on him. “I just got into a bit of a pickle with the whole dancing thing and I needed a focus—”
“No need to explain.” He held up his hand to halt her, a flash of regret in those gorgeous blue eyes of his. “It’s not your fault and I’m just going to get out of your way so you can—”
“Wait.” Rita’s heart pounded with the need to explain. Or maybe she just didn’t want to let him go. After the day she’d had, Harrison Masters seemed like a lifeline, a rare opportunity to enjoy herself for a few stolen hours since she probably wouldn’t have any luck tracking down the partying newlyweds until dawn at the earliest. Maybe she could forget about being practical just this once. “On second thought, a man with rusty dating skills might be just my speed. You want to get a drink?”
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, Harrison guided Rita toward the uppermost deck of the ship under a fat full moon and had to admit maybe his dating savvy wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. At the very least, he was right to follow the attraction to see where it led because he’d had more fun getting to know her over drinks tonight than he’d ever had in a crowded bar.
“I never date,” Rita blurted as they strolled side by side around the running track on the small, nearly vacant deck.
“Never?” Harrison had discovered speaking her mind was part of her unusual charm, a part he appreciated greatly since he’d never been much for decoding the complicated thought processes employed by women. “I’m positive that’s not because of a lack of offers. Your line of work must bring you a lot of attention.”
“Not exactly.” She slowed down as they reached the forward curve of the rail where they could see six other larger decks sprawled out below them.
From their perch they could see conga dancing around the pool, a teen disco party on another deck and an Irish pub night around one of the other outdoor bars where revelers all wore shiny green plastic leprechaun hats.
Her hedging answer made him wary to press further. “I totally get it if you don’t want to talk about your love life. I’m just glad to be here with you, Rita, because I don’t take much time off to hang out and relax. I’ve had a great time tonight.”
Rita looked too good to contemplate with only a couple of inches separating them. She tossed her thick red curls over her shoulder, releasing the apple scent of her shampoo. She flicked her fingernail gently against her wineglass, creating a soft ringing sound.
“It’s not that. We just got to talking about so many other things downstairs, I forgot to explain to you—” She stopped herself. “I never even told you about the staring thing onstage, either, did I? I got a little nervous before I went out and I thought it would help calm me down if I had a focus point.”
“I was your focus point?” He settled at the rail next to her, enjoying the way their hideaway isolated them while giving them a view of so much of the ship. “And just what is a focus point, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I think it’s a meditation aid or something. My mom told me she used one to help get her through childbirth after the doctor told her Valium wasn’t an option, so I guess I adopted it for other painful experiences. I’m not even really a showgirl. But I was covering for someone.” She shrugged, a flirtatious grin playing about her fuchsia painted lips. “Worked like a charm for me.”
Her brown eyes glided over him, the bold stare at odds with her light words. Only an idiot wouldn’t make a move after a night that couldn’t get much more romantic. Then again, why rush something great when he was enjoying every second in her company? He wasn’t twenty years old.
“It worked damn well for me, too. That costume you wore—” he’d be seeing rhinestones in his dreams for the rest of his life “—I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d never know you weren’t supposed to be onstage. From where I was sitting, you looked like you were born to do high kicks.”
“You liked the outfit?” For some reason, the notion seemed to really please her.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget it.”
“I made it.” She finished off the last of her wine and set the glass at her feet. “I’m the ship seamstress but that kind of sewing doesn’t really scratch the creative itch, so I created a lot of the costumes for the show tonight.”
Intrigued by this newly exposed facet of Rita, Harrison figured there would be no time like the present to reveal he wasn’t a resort manager. But was it so much to ask to have one perfect night in his life? One date that wasn’t overshadowed by his work the way so many other dates had been?
“I’m no sewing expert, but I don’t think I need to be to guess you must be talented.” Reaching to skim her bare arm with his fingers he settled his hand on her shoulder and simply savored the feel of her.
“Thank you.” She shrugged, but somehow the movement seemed to bring her closer. Had he stepped nearer or had she? “For the compliment and for—” she waved her hand vaguely “—this. Tonight. It’s been fun.”
Even though he only touched a few square inches of her smooth flesh, Harrison could feel her heart pounding, could sense the hot rush of blood through her veins. He would have never guessed he could deduce a woman’s attraction so keenly, but he felt hers in every pore of his flesh.
Almost simultaneously he realized he hadn’t been this tuned in to his ex-girlfriend—Sonia. God, he had deserved to be given the boot. But he wouldn’t let past regrets rob him now.
In fact, he welcomed the chance to think about something other than the past few months. Not that any red-blooded man could do much thinking at the moment. Cupping Rita’s bare shoulder in his palm, he made up his mind to seize the moment.
“Trust me, the pleasure has been all mine.” Leaning close, he watched the way her tongue ran round the rim of her lips and his throat went dry.
Without a single thought to practicality, he slanted his mouth over hers and gave her the kiss he’d been thinking about all night.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fbf29c31-35b5-5456-b8aa-fb128df5b149)
JAYNE MANSFIELD FRAZER HAD never believed in luck, preferring to think life handed out plenty of opportunities for those smart enough to make something of them.
So she could hardly blame a run of bad luck now, when her fiancé for all of twelve hours failed to show for their appointed rendezvous outside St. Kitts’ “Island Dreams” gift shop, which just so happened to double as a wedding chapel for eager—or stupidly impulsive—couples.
No, Jayne couldn’t blame anything or anyone but herself for the farce of her plan to elope with Horatio. Even when it started to rain—big, fat earnest drops that meant a serious tropical downpour was on the way—she refused to whine and curse her fate. She tucked deeper under the overhang of the store’s sheltered front porch, her shoulder scraping a blinking neon swordfish mounted on one wall, thinking there wasn’t anyone around to whine to anyway. The whole tiny tourist town shut down once the Venus pulled out of the harbor, taking all of its spendthrift passengers with it and leaving Jayne no place to go tonight.
Nope. She was certain she’d figure out something. Find some hint of opportunity to turn this watery night from hell around and help her get back to the boat before it hit Barbados. Or before her sister hunted her down and kicked Jayne’s tail from one end of the island to the other.
But as she stepped off the protected wooden porch of Island Dreams to get a better look at the small assortment of St. Kitts storefronts for any sign of life, two things happened which convinced Jayne to rethink her stance on bad luck.
Turning on her heel to size up her situation, she snapped off her four-inch stiletto on a brand-new pair of shoes Rita had simultaneously declared divinely gorgeous and a colossal waste of cash. Rain streamed down Jayne’s skin, plastering her silk sundress to a body which—she now recalled—was completely commando since she’d thought she’d be engaging in nonstop monkey sex right after the ceremony. And she slowly realized the only place of business still open and within walking distance housed the one man she never wanted to see again.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking of Horatio. Because while some women might never want to lay eyes on the creep who ditched her in front of a gift shop that doubled as a wedding chapel, Jayne would be all too glad to find Horatio Aldo Garcia and wring his worthless neck with her own—wet—hands.
The man Jayne Frazer didn’t ever want to see again was the proprietor of a dive bar at the far end of this stretch of tourist traps, and he also happened to be the only living man Jayne had ever wasted tears over. A man who had provided her with the hottest sex ever to melt a woman’s knees before proposing three months after they first met on the Venus, planning out their lives together before she’d even caught her breath.
She’d tried to stall him, but the man in question—a big-deal New York corporate type before purchasing the bar and retiring at thirty-five—drove a hard bargain with an all-or-nothing price tag. So, because Jayne had no plans to settle down, the sex god of her dreams had sailed back into the sunset nine months ago.
Now, limping through the warm February downpour into Emmett MacNeil’s bar after all this time seemed to be her only hope of finding shelter before she either caught pneumonia, or washed out to sea. Instead of Emmett hearing rumors through the St. Kitts grapevine that his former lover had gotten married on a romantic whim—and she couldn’t deny the appealing scenario had occurred to her when she agreed to marry Horatio here—now Emmett would see his former lover looking like a drowned rat, complete with the stage makeup she’d nervously applied under Rita’s watchful eye ten minutes before escaping the cruise ship dripping down her cheeks. So much for her grand plan to flaunt her happy bliss under Emmett’s nose to prove his high-handed ultimatums and heart-stomping exit from her life hadn’t fazed her one damn bit.
If ever there had been an argument for the existence of bad luck, this would be it.
Cursing the lack of cabs or buses—hell, she’d settle for a rickshaw—Jayne hobbled through the haze of sheeting rain and steam rising off the ground toward the Last Chance Bar, her existing heel sinking into the muck of the washed-out street with every step. Although even if there had been cabs to take her to a hotel on the island, Jayne would bet her last ten dollars that Horatio hadn’t bothered to make reservations any more than he’d bothered to follow through on the wedding date.
In fact, thinking back, he’d probably only proposed yesterday in a last-ditch effort to get in her pants, and when she hadn’t fallen into his arms then and there, he’d promptly forgotten about all their plans. Horatio hadn’t taken her pledge of celibacy seriously when they first met six months ago, but Jayne meant it when she told him she wanted to be a born-again virgin. She’d given herself away too cheaply the first time when she’d lost it at sixteen in a semimutual romp with one of her mother’s boyfriends.
Definitely not the best way for a girl to lose her innocence, especially since the experience had been all tangled up with guilt at going behind her mother’s back because she’d been mad at Margie that day for—But she wasn’t going to think about that anymore, was she?
Anyway, after ten years of taking sex way too lightly, Jayne had decided to make a change. Hence, her vow of celibacy six months ago.
Number one probable cause for Horatio’s bogus proposal.
She’d worked herself into a full-blown hissy fit by the time she arrived at the little establishment Emmett was rumored to have bought from the island family who had built it. Jayne hadn’t even gone out of her way to find out gossip about Emmett after their breakup, but the crew members who took shore leave here came back from island layovers full of news and word traveled fast when a bar changed hands at one of the boat’s primary stops.
Jayne never told anyone—not even Rita—about the incredible night she and Emmett had shared on the beach in St. Kitts during his cruise. She’d told herself she wasn’t the marrying kind and hadn’t looked back.
Which, of course, called to mind her thwarted attempt to elope with Horatio. What made her say yes to a man with as much live-for-the-moment attitude as her, when she’d turned down a heartfelt offer from a sex god who took his responsibilities as seriously as a woman’s pleasure? Funny how the answer bitch-slapped her in the face now that she’d been stood up. Maybe deep down she’d known all along that “forever” with Horatio wouldn’t be a super-binding agreement.
And wasn’t this a fine time for an epiphany? Apparently a tropical downpour could wash away even the most persistent of self-delusions.
Swallowing old wounds, Jayne refused to let them stand in the way of getting off this godforsaken island and back to the Venus. If Rita had taught her anything in the past twenty-six years, it was that you made your own luck.
She straightened her sodden dress, noticing with a wince her outfit had turned completely transparent, and teetered up the stairs to the aptly named Last Chance Bar. Facing her old lover today would take industrial-strength chutzpah. But never let it be said that Jayne Frazer couldn’t pull off a hell of a good show.
Yanking off her shoes, she tossed them both in a trash can outside the front entrance before tugging open the door.
The scent of cigars and polished wood wafted over her as she stepped into an establishment gone utterly quiet now that the rush of cruise ship patrons had vacated the island for the day. Huge brass ceiling fans whirred quietly overhead in the dim interior, stirring the breeze drifting in from a wall of windows left slightly open on the far side of the bar. A bit of water dripped on the hardwood floor, but no one seemed to notice since the place was completely empty.
Maybe her luck was turning?
Jayne scanned the bar for signs of a pay phone so she could call for a car to take her to the nearest hotel, wondering if she could be in and out of the Last Chance without anyone being the wiser. She peered down a darkened corridor off of one wall but found only a couple of restrooms.
“Can I help you?” A brusque feminine voice from behind caused her to jump.
Turning, she came face-to-face with a lean brunette dressed in a tank top and shorts, a yellow bandanna wrapped around the back half of her head, a burning cigar still perched in her fingers.
Definitely not Emmett MacNeil. Thank God for small favors. Maybe this gorgeous woman with the great legs and golden skin was his bartender, treating herself to a smoke after fending off advances from drunken revelers half the day.
“I missed the cruise ship earlier. Do you have a phone I could use to make some arrangements?” In the silence that followed, the woman eyed Jayne with a wary gaze while her dress dripped audibly on the floor. “Sorry about the outfit. I’ll mop up behind myself, I promise.”
“You’re a passenger on the Venus?” The woman took a drag on her cigar and tipped her head to the side to exhale. Clearly she didn’t believe for a minute that Jayne had booked passage on one of the Caribbean’s pricy luxury liners.
“Actually, I work on the boat.” No need for subterfuge. Jayne took a page from Rita’s book and decided to be as direct as possible so she could get out of here before Emmett put in an appearance. “I’m Rita, a seamstress with the ship’s costume department.”
Okay, so maybe she still needed a little subterfuge. She didn’t want Emmett to get wind of who’d really been in his place today.
The brunette balanced her cigar in a dish on the shiny surface of the wooden bar before thrusting out her hand. “Claudia MacNeil, proprietor of the Last Chance. Pleased to meet you.”
Shock froze Jayne’s hands to her side.
Who knows how much time passed while she stared dumbly at this gorgeous creature who was…probably not Emmett’s sister since he’d once told her he didn’t have any siblings.
“Claudia MacNeil?” If she was going to have a brain malfunction over the idea of Emmett possibly being married, she might as well be sure she’d heard properly.
Belatedly, she remembered to shake the woman’s hand, surprised by how warm and alive Claudia’s skin seemed, while Jayne suddenly felt very cold.
“That’s right, sugar.” The woman retrieved her cigar and took another puff as she pulled out a bar stool. “You just have a seat while I get you a phone. Do you think maybe you spent too much time outside today? You seem like you might have a touch of sunstroke.”
“I’ve got it, Claudia.” A masculine voice rolled through the bar, low and authoritative.
A voice Jayne hadn’t forgotten.
She cast a sideways glance toward an open arch in the back that seemed to lead to an outdoor patio. Emmett MacNeil, the only man ever to come within spitting distance of breaking her heart, stood framed in the door. His gaze remained fixed on the woman who shared his name.
“Thanks. You’ll close up for me, won’t you, love?” The brunette swept past Jayne to meet Emmett in the breezeway, her long fingers patting his face with definite familiarity, her body invading his personal space so far there could only be intimacy between them. “I’ve got to go help my dad move some boxes.”
The impact of seeing Emmett now—with a woman who couldn’t possibly be a blood relation—threatened to level her. She hadn’t wanted him or his ring, hadn’t wanted this life he’d offered that sounded ordinary and boring compared to the glamorous dreams she’d had for herself just a year ago. So why did she feel like a very big bubble had burst?
Leaving her very soggy and more than a little sad.
She took in Emmett’s rough-hewn features, thick dark eyebrows and coal-black hair as he nodded at Claudia and received her kiss on the cheek.
“Bye, Rita.” Claudia gave a jaunty little wave over her shoulder, her yellow bandanna fluttering in the breeze stirred by the ceiling fans. “Nice meeting you, doll, and good luck getting back to your ship!”
Jayne forced a smile that probably only amounted to a fractional lift of one corner of her lips. This was sooo much worse than bad. She’d mark this day on her calendar as the one performance she’d ever flopped.
“Rita?” Emmett’s eyebrows lifted in curious amusement as Claudia disappeared outside, and any semblance of feeling sorry for herself vanished like money on payday.
Summoning her best showgirl posture, Jayne lifted her chin and flounced her way to the bar.
“It’s an alias in my new undercover work, doll. And as long as you’re here, I’ll take a gin and tonic on the rocks with lime. And could you make it quick?” She glanced at her watch gone cloudy from moisture under the glass. Peering back at him, she narrowed her eyes to convey precisely the right amount of hauteur. “I’m in a hurry.”
* * *
HARRISON’S KISS MADE Rita dizzy in the best possible way. She wanted to lose herself in that kiss, to cling to this sexy, gorgeous man for dear life and simply revel in the pure pleasure of the moment. Arching up on her toes, she allowed herself a more firm hold—just for a little longer.
She’d never been an impulsive person before, but then she’d never had to literally step into her sister’s shoes. What if she was turning into Jayne in some sort of Freaky Friday switcheroo? On the plus side, if that were the case, she wouldn’t have to sweat this whole moonlight encounter. She’d simply do whatever felt good, the way Jayne had her whole life.
And Rita had to admit, Harrison’s fingers drifting up her shoulder to the crook of her neck was feeling incredibly good right now.
A bark of drunken laughter drifting up the stairwell from the deck below forced her to pull back. To think. Not easy to do anymore when every breath she took contained a hint of his woodsy scent. His minty breath. His male heat.
“I might not be able to kiss you again without getting carried away.” His whispered words loomed close to her ear and something about a male voice cutting through the utter darkness made her crave a man—him—all the more.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” She shivered as his thumb smoothed over the small of her back. Hadn’t she always prided herself on speaking her mind? Being blunt and direct was her forte and she’d be a hypocrite to deny she wanted to take this further so badly her whole body hummed in anticipation.
The group of late night revelers didn’t stay on the top deck for long since there were no lights to illuminate the Jupiter level and the only features were the running track, some shuffleboards and a great view. Rita knew the area was most popular with early risers, part of the reason she’d steered Harrison this way after drinks.
“I don’t want to spoil a night that’s been—” He looked out to sea for a long moment, as if his answer might be in the dark waves below. “Damn, Rita, it’s been perfect.”
“Trust me, I’m very practical, and getting carried away is the right thing to do.” Taking a deep breath, she reached out to him through the darkness. Sliding her arms around his neck she plastered herself against him. Lips, breasts, hips—every part of her sought him out to cop a feel.
She threaded her fingers through his close-cropped hair, savoring the spiky strands as she drew him close. Her breasts molded to his hard male chest, tongue tangling with his as easily as if they were long-lost lovers.
Only she didn’t have lovers. Long-lost or any other kind. She only had relationships with nice men. Nice, foolish men who didn’t realize she was content to be committed to her career and her sister since it was easier than being tied to a guy with normal dating expectations. Marriage. Picket fences. Family that didn’t include Jayne and Margie and all their combined problems.
But Harrison wasn’t a regular guy. He was fantasy material. A vacation fling. Maybe tonight she could let loose and simply enjoy the moment. And it’s not like she had to worry about setting a bad example for Jayne since Jayne wasn’t around.
Not that Jayne had ever paid attention to what kind of example Rita set, damn it all.
“What if we take this back to your place?” Rita walked her fingers down his scalp to the back of his neck, slipping just under his shirt collar. “Would that be okay?”
A low groan rumbled in his throat. “You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
She smiled against his mouth, her thigh grazing the proof of his happiness. “I have a fair idea.”
She didn’t know how long it had been since her previous sexual encounter. Her last relationship had ended…almost two years ago? No wonder she was unraveling in this man’s arms faster than a spool of thread in a sewing machine.
Although that didn’t explain why him. Or why now. Questions she didn’t want to answer while her blood simmered through her veins, her skin tingling with a combination of hot flashes and sensual shivers everywhere he touched. Good God, how had she ignored her own needs for so long?
“If we do this, there are no regrets, right?” Harrison halted his kiss to cup her face between strong hands. “I’m not going to mess things up with you just because I want you. Badly.”
Her pulse fluttered at his words, the notion soothing some insecure part of her that had always lived in Jayne’s sultry, uninhibited shadow.
Despite her lifelong attempt to be the logical sister, tonight she had every intention of being a bad girl.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d7ded50f-dcc7-5d47-b11b-6156b26f758b)
DECISION MADE, RITA tugged Harrison toward the stairs, hormones kicking up a conga line more enthusiastic than the one they’d watch snake through the pool area two decks down. His kisses had aroused all her senses, tuning her into his every movement, his every breath.
They took the stairs together, striding more quickly now than their leisurely stroll around the running track earlier. But then, they had a very definite, a very delectable goal in mind.
Turning the corner at the end of one flight of stairs, they needed to enter one of the restaurant areas to find the next flight down. But before they re-entered the closed part of the ship, Rita’s heightened senses heard a noise along the rail. A muffled cry?
“Did you hear something?” Harrison stopped short as Rita bumped into him, his suit jacket framing a set of abs any woman would drool over.
“Yes.” She strained her ears to listen while she forced her eyes to look away from rippling male muscles.
“It sounded like a whimper or a sniffle.”
At the mention of a whimper, Rita was immediately plagued with a vision of her sister returning to the boat, crying in the hallway, forsaken and forgotten by her no account boyfriend. Even as she dismissed the idea as impossible in the middle of the ocean, Rita heard a distinctively feminine sob from underneath the stairwell.
The crying female on the other side of the wall wasn’t Jayne. Even in the vacated dimness of the stairwell, Rita could see the tall blonde perched at the rail, her head buried against a pink duffel bag.
Missy.
Hurrying over, she could hear Harrison’s steps following more slowly behind her.
“You okay, Missy?” She reached to touch her friend’s shoulder, instantly on alert even though a part of her still longed to be heading back to Harrison’s room. “What’s wrong?”
Lifting her head to reveal red-rimmed eyes and traces of tearstained stage makeup, Missy shook her head in sniffly despair. She swiped a hand across her face when she noticed Rita wasn’t alone.
“I got fired.” Voice breaking on the last word, Missy fell into Rita’s arms to cry harder.
“Danielle did this? Damn her for a heartless—” Anger burned away the feel-good endorphins Rita had been savoring from Harrison’s kisses. She had the sinking feeling her night to be self-indulgent was rapidly going down the tubes, but how could she walk away from her friend?
“It’s okay.” Missy hiccupped as she swiped more tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. “I’ll find something when we get back home. Sammy—the somersaulter—said he knows some club owners around Fort Lauderdale, so maybe he can help. I just wish Danielle had let me earn out the rest of the week’s paycheck. I could have been at home playing with Annabelle if I wasn’t going to be making any money this week.”
Missy had an eight-month-old daughter back home who stayed with Missy’s mother while she worked. Rita knew they barely made ends meet since the baby’s father—an international crew member Missy had met on a Fort Lauderdale beach—had returned to his Eastern European home rather than help support his family. Missy had hoped the dancing gig on the ship would lead to something more stable. Gazing blankly around the darkened stretch of deck under the stairwell, Rita willed words of encouragement into her head. Too bad her eyes couldn’t move past the abandon-ship evacuation route placard on the wall over Missy’s head, which pointed passengers in the direction of the nearest lifeboat station. The whole ship seemed to be coming apart today.
“Could you go after them for wrongful termination?” Harrison straightened his tie while he seemed to size up the situation faster than Rita. “Some companies are willing to work with you if they’re afraid you’re going to cost them a lot of time and aggravation.”
Missy smiled through her tears as she acknowledged his presence. “I’m Missy, and I’m sorry to ruin your night.” She looked back and forth between Rita and Harrison. “But I wouldn’t ever try to cause anyone aggravation.”
Rita’s gaze met Harrison’s and she felt the heat crackle between them as they both remembered what they’d been about to share. Still, he seemed to understand her growing sense that things weren’t going to progress any further tonight.
“You didn’t ruin anything.” Rita slung her arm around her friend’s shoulders, knowing Jayne could be in the same situation tomorrow if Danielle had realized she’d skipped out on her performance tonight. Gesturing toward Harrison, she introduced him. “And this is Harrison Masters. A really nice guy, but he probably has no idea how little entertainers make for this cruise line or how much power the cruise industry wields.”
“I’m in the resort business, too, remember?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Missy, his mussed dark hair brushing his eyebrows in a way that would make any woman’s fingers itch to brush the strands aside. “And no matter how powerful the employer, the rules remain the same for their personnel practices. They can’t fire you without just cause.”
Rita wasn’t sure how sound his advice was about pursuing wrongful termination, but she appreciated his calm insights on the situation. In her family, getting fired would be a major drama involving days of histrionics. The whole family would have to weigh in with an opinion—always a vehement, fiery stance—and then they’d argue the merits of that person’s ideas until they were all hoarse. And if ever there was a cool voice of reason in the mix, it would invariably be Rita’s. So to have Harrison preempt her with such rational logic seemed sort of…deflating.
Which was utterly stupid. She should be grateful Jayne wasn’t around to start a public brawl with Danielle.
“What reason did Danielle give for letting you go?” Rita had never heard of a dancer getting the axe in the middle of a cruise week before. They still had two more shows and a handful of smaller responsibilities like helping the Karaoke King on Open Mike Night or posing for photos with passengers around the pool.
“She said I was late on my cue again tonight.” Missy speared her hand through her long hair, sweeping aside the mass of curls from her face. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job this time but Danielle hauled me aside as the show ended. She asked me a million questions about you and Jayne, then she dropped the bomb that I wouldn’t be returning to the show.”
Her face crumpled as a new round of sobs began.
“She asked about me?” Rita drummed her fingertips on the rail.
“This Danielle is in charge of the performers?” Harrison seemed to be following the conversation better than most outsiders would. For that matter, didn’t most guys bolt at the first sign of tears?
He seemed like a nice guy. A nice, smart guy, which was doubly rare in her experience.
“Yes. She runs the floor show with an iron fist and considers it her job to inspire fear in the hearts of all her dancers. I think she suffers from the delusion this makes them dance better.” Turning back to Missy, Rita needed to get back to an important point. “You said she was asking questions about me?”
“You and Jayne. I don’t think she realized that you covered for Jayne tonight but apparently your stage time ran over by a couple of seconds and that might have tipped her off. You know how she prides herself on running the whole thing by the clock.”
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
Rita had purposely exited the stage on the wrong side to avoid Danielle in case she hadn’t realized she’d taken Jayne’s place. But that opposite stage exit probably took a little longer after the music died, causing the smallest ripple in Danielle’s rigid time scheme.
“By the time she tracked down the problem, I was probably already—” Rita’s gaze went automatically to Harrison “—busy somewhere else. And her frustration with the show was my fault, not yours.”
“You don’t know that.” Missy shook her head in emphatic denial, sending curls flying. “Rita, I’ve messed up a ton of times, and she knows it.”
“But you didn’t mess up tonight.” Rita could just picture Danielle in one of her snits. The obsessive manager had looked for a target for her anger and found someone totally undeserving, someone who’d been working hard at her job while Rita was drooling over a total stranger. “I’ll make sure we straighten this mess out and if there’s a way to get your job back you’ll have it back or we’ll sic Jayne on her.”
Assuming Jayne came back onboard.
Her sister was going to have hell to pay for putting them all in this position. But until Jayne came back to fulfill the position of token Frazer woman gone off the deep end, Rita wouldn’t hesitate to engage in a few histrionics of her own.
Squeezing Missy’s shoulder, she hoped she could find a way to fix this.
“Missy, would you excuse Harrison and me for a few minutes and then I’ll meet you at my room so we can come up with a game plan?” She needed to talk to him. Owed him an explanation, or a makeup date…or a quickie in the elevator to tide over her hunger for him.
“Sure.” Missy scooped up her duffel bag. “And you don’t need to meet with me. I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”
“Don’t be silly.” She nudged Missy forward with big-sister muscle she couldn’t help but flex whenever someone needed help. “I’ll catch up with you in a little bit.”
As they waited for the sound of Missy’s footsteps to disappear, Rita could already feel the heat of the man beside her. But as much as she still wanted him, she wasn’t sure how to maintain her Jayne-impulsiveness once they left the dark cocoon of intimacy the Jupiter deck offered.
“I understand you need to help your friend.” Harrison’s blue eyes saw right through her despite the shadows of the stairwell. “I just hope you’re not having second thoughts about us.”
“No second thoughts.” Although now that they’d been interrupted, Rita wondered if it wasn’t for the best anyhow since they barely knew one another. She was normally a certified chicken when it came to men, even though she liked to tell herself she was just extremely practical. “And I’m sorry tonight didn’t work out.”
“That’s okay.” He squeezed her hand and planted a kiss on the back of her fingers, an old-world gesture that stole her heart.
“Maybe another time.” She couldn’t believe she was angling for another date with him when she’d just convinced herself she didn’t know him well enough to sleep with him. But sometimes, there was no accounting for chemistry and, oh baby, did she have it for him.
“I’d like that. I want you bad, Rita Frazer, but only when you’re one hundred percent into the moment. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this, too.” He watched her with lazy eyes, reminding her how hot things could be between them. “You have no idea how sorry.”
Her body still humming with good vibrations he’d brought her, she shot him a smile and hoped she could find a way to be bold and brazen with this man again soon.
“I have a pretty good idea.”
* * *
TAKING DEEP BREATHS, Jayne steeled herself for confrontation as her long, lost lover poured her a drink. Heavy on the gin, easy on the tonic.
Thank God his bartending abilities were better than his dating skills.
“So you’re traveling incognito these days?” He passed her the drink and the question she didn’t want to answer, all the while staring at her with a lazy look that married men should be forbidden to bestow on unsuspecting females.
The rain still pounded the thatched roof over the bar, the fans whirring gently over the lounge to stir the sultry air.
“It protects my privacy to use my sister’s name now that my fame has spread throughout the Caribbean.” She toasted him with her glass before indulging in a sip, knowing damn well he’d see right through the lie and not caring a bit. “I’ve never been one to cause a stir, you know.”
“And you find the general public immune to transparent clothing?” He leaned forward to peer over the bar, his chocolate-brown eyes raking in every inch of her dripping sundress. “I’ll admit I’m surprised.”
Her heart stuttered for an instant as a shark-tooth pendant clanked against the bar when he’d leaned near, bringing his features into too-enticing focus. He’d grown a patch of hair beneath his lower lip, a close-shorn triangle that she wondered what would feel like against her chin if she…
Snap out of it. Jayne forced herself back to reality by inhaling the scent of damp bamboo. If Rita were here, she would have nudged Jayne in the calf with a sisterly kick.
“I had an unexpected run-in with bad weather.” The gin burned her throat before hitting her veins in a sizzling jolt. No, damn it. That was Emmett’s eyes on her body giving her the sizzling jolt. The gin couldn’t begin to dull senses so sharply attuned to this man’s presence. “Perhaps you could just hand over the telephone and I’ll remove myself and my transparent clothing from your fine establishment?”
She heard the bristly tone in her voice and refused to care that he’d gotten under her skin. He was married, after all. Completely out of her jurisdiction. What did it matter if he thought she was a washed-up has-been in her soggy clothes? He had another woman—a gorgeous, dry woman—waiting for him as soon as Jayne placed her call.
“Technically, it’s no longer my establishment.” He reached under the bar and came up with a telephone. “But feel free to call long distance. I hear the new owner has deep pockets.”
“You sold the bar?” Jayne ignored the phone, her problems of ten minutes ago suddenly less significant. “I thought you were going to stay in St. Kitts forever?”
He’d told her as much when he’d been trying to convince her to give marriage a shot. She’d panicked at the idea of settling down in one place—a fate almost as scary as settling down with just one man—and promptly accused him of loving St. Kitts more than her.
In retrospect, she’d realized it hadn’t exactly been a rational argument. But then, she’d never tried to be the world’s most rational woman. That was Rita’s niche. Up until Emmett, Jayne simply hadn’t been used to men taking her too seriously.
“I guess forever didn’t turn out to be as long as I’d hoped.” He picked up the bottle of tonic and poured himself a glass. “Mind if I join you?”
Without waiting for her answer, he walked around the bar to join her on the other side. Her side.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea considering you’re married and I’m in a transparent dress, remember?” She tossed out the most obvious obstacles, knowing she didn’t dare let Emmett within five feet of her when she was feeling more than a little vulnerable. “In fact, I promised your wife I’d just make my call and be on my way.”
She meant to reach for the phone. Really, she did. But the visual of Emmett swinging his thigh around one side of a bar stool kept her gaze fastened to him with super-glue sticking power.
“Ex-wife.” Emmett’s eyes remained fixed on a manila envelope at the end of the bar for a long moment, as if totally oblivious to Jayne’s presence. “She’s officially no longer mine as of today.”
The hollow hurt of his words was unmistakable.
If Jayne had been a more sensitive woman, maybe she could have murmured something sympathetic and comforting. Hell, even a total stranger would offer up condolences on his failed marriage. But as his ex-lover, Jayne couldn’t help but ask the question burning through her brain with all the insistence of a migraine.
“How long were you married?” The question would shatter any illusion she might have created of aloofness, but the answer seemed too important to overlook. He’d asked Jayne to marry him nine short months ago.
“Seven months.” Tearing his gaze away from the envelope she could only assume carried his divorce papers, Emmett grinned over the rim of his glass. “A hell of a track record in married life, isn’t it?”
“You bastard.” Hurt reeled through her as her brain computed the proximity of his proposal to her with his proposal to another woman. “What did you do, ask the first woman you saw after I got back onboard the Venus last spring to marry you?”
“You said no.” He shrugged a shoulder the same way he must have shrugged off his so-called love for her. “And I respect that when a woman says no, she means it.”
“I said I wasn’t ready.” As he no doubt damn well remembered since she’d explained to him in detail all the reasons she needed more time. “Last I checked, ‘I’m not ready’ doesn’t mean no.”
“It didn’t mean yes, either, did it?” He swiveled on his bar stool to face her, his long legs almost touching her hip. “And you can take all the haughty feminine satisfaction you want from knowing I made a dumb-ass mistake by getting married in a hurry since I’m now divorced and I lost my bar in the bargain. So why not just make your phone call and you can high-kick your way back to the S.S. Good Times or wherever it is you make your home these days and we’ll forget this little encounter ever happened?”
Jayne felt her mouth drooping open at his unexpectedly heated words and promptly snapped it shut. Reaching for the phone she realized she didn’t have a phone number handy to call for a ride and she didn’t personally know a soul on St. Kitts. Present company excluded.
Settling the handset back in the cradle in the rather awkward silence, she was about to request a phone book when Emmett slammed his glass on the bar.
“And for crying out loud, would you put some damn clothes on?” He reached over the counter and dug blindly around until he came up with a bright orange T-shirt. Even at six foot two he didn’t exactly tower over her, but his strong arms and lean, surfer’s physique gave him a solid power that…communicated itself to her so clearly that it was all she could do not to lick her lips. “Wear this. Or drape yourself in cocktail napkins. But Jesus, woman, put on something.”
“Fine.” Recognizing an old-fashioned snit when she saw one, even if the fit-thrower in question would surely wring her neck if she called it as such, Jayne dutifully dropped the promo T-shirt touting orange-flavored rum over her wet dress.
“While you’re mighty quick to point fingers at me, I’d be willing to bet you haven’t been celibate since we broke up, but you don’t hear me asking you about the whys and whens of your personal encounters.”
She wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Even if she’d tried her very best to be a born-again virgin for the last six months, she couldn’t forget that she’d been pretty quick to drown her sorrows after Emmett.
What a screwed-up, self-destructive pair they made.
“Sorry to hear about the divorce.” She’d never been skilled with an olive branch, but considered this a fair attempt at making peace. “Just because I take offense at the idea of you offering up a marriage proposal to another woman mere days after you made the same offer to me, that doesn’t mean I would wish you ill-will.”
Who said she couldn’t be magnanimous?
“You need a ride somewhere?” Rising off the bar stool he replaced the phone under the bar and fished a set of keys off a hook on the wall. “I thought I heard you say you missed your boat, right?”
“I do need to find a hotel.” She took another halfhearted sip of her gin and tonic, wondering what Emmett had in mind. Desperate women couldn’t afford to be super-choosy about their rescuers and at least he’d had the decency to admit he’d messed up by marrying someone else.
“As luck would have it, so do I. What do you say we blow this clambake and call a truce?”
Let her guard down around Emmett? She’d have to be crazy to make peace with a newly divorced stud in a dangerous mood. But then again, no one had ever accused her of playing it safe.
Besides, she needed a ride.
“Truce.” She reached for her tiny purse, telling herself this was a practical solution to her problem. Even Rita would have to admit Jayne was making the best of a bad situation. “Just as long as we go separate ways once we get there.”
“Fine by me.” He walked over to the manila envelope and jammed the whole packet under his arm in defiance of the Do Not Bend dictate scrawled across the front. “But I’ve got dibs on the bar since I plan on getting rip-roaring drunk tonight. You think you can stay away?”
“I’m sure I’ll hold myself back somehow.” Sailing through the front door he held open for her, Jayne welcomed the raindrops that still poured in earnest from the sky. It was the next best thing to a bucket of cold water being splashed on her face—an age-old cure for a woman thinking completely inappropriate thoughts about a man she had no business daydreaming over.
And no matter that she was furious with him—not to mention hurt—over his rapid defection, Jayne couldn’t deny frequent mind wanderings picturing the man buck-naked. She had to admit he looked damn good. Both in her fantasies and in real life.
He jogged through the rain to a garage beside the bar and hauled open the door. Hurrying behind him, she saw the waves foaming with the storm on the other side of the road, the ocean empty of any ships for as far as the eye could see. She followed him into the dark and dilapidated clapboard structure that looked more suited to a backwoods farm than a tourist street. Squinting, she could see him unlocking the passenger door of a mud-encrusted Jeep.
Holding the door wide for her, he held his hand out to help her inside. She hadn’t touched him yet but couldn’t see how to avoid it now without making too big of a deal about it. No sense letting him know he got to her, right?
She reached for his hand, but his gaze had already fallen to her feet.
“Damn it, why didn’t you tell me you needed shoes?” He lifted her by the waist as if he couldn’t get her bare feet off the garage floor fast enough.
The imprint of his hands on her remained after he set her inside the vehicle, her skin warming all along her side.
“I guess I thought it was obvious I didn’t have shoes.” She wiggled her toes and had a flashback to a day in third grade when she’d outgrown her shoes and Rita had insisted she take hers since money was nonexistent in the years their mother had big gambling losses. Rita had worn an old pair of boys’ tennis shoes a neighbor had donated so Jayne could have their only pair of size five Mary Janes.
“Hell no, it wasn’t obvious since my eyes never made it past the dress.” He pulled a blanket out from behind the seat and tossed it in her lap. “Do me a favor and dry off.”
It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell him to do her a favor and go screw himself, but she would cut him some slack since she’d obviously walked into his life on a bad day. She didn’t know squat about marriage or how to make a go of a relationship but she knew divorce sucked—plain and simple.
Her childhood might have been fairly impoverished from a financial perspective, but at least her family had always been tight-knit and her mother had protected them from the upheaval of divorce by never remarrying. And Jayne had no doubt in her mind that no one besides their sainted father—God rest his soul—could have put up with Margie for long. Wrapping herself in the blanket Emmett had tossed her way, Jayne settled in for the ride while he started the Jeep and pulled out of the garage into the rain. She caught a glimpse of the Last Chance Bar through the downpour and wondered idly if Emmett would ever go back to the business now owned by his ex-wife.
The same business Jayne had made a beeline for in her darkest hour.
God, she’d been so caught up in seeing Emmett again she’d forgotten all about her fury with Horatio and the disappointment of her thwarted elopement. What a sorry excuse for a wife she would have made. She smiled as she tipped her head back against the seat and stared at the pattern of rain blowing across the passenger window.
“You’ll never guess what I was doing in St. Kitts today.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d6f650d5-36d7-5855-b764-c34870a746a8)
HARRISON BYPASSED the wealth of restaurant options onboard the Venus the next morning, ordering his breakfast through room service while he struggled to put Rita out of his mind long enough to brainstorm a game plan for digging up information on Sonia’s disappearance.
No easy feat considering the attraction of a sexy redhead and their thwarted night that would have probably blown his mind. But this cruise couldn’t be all fun. He’d known even when Sonia left on this very same ship that she’d been seeing Trevor, but Harrison still hadn’t been prepared for the blow when Trevor took off for Grand Cayman a week later. And even though the Venus passenger records had shown Sonia went ashore at St. Maarten and never returned, he couldn’t help but think she’d made connections with Trevor afterward.
Blow to the ego, sure. But when 10k had turned up missing in Trevor’s golf store accounts, followed by almost 20k in weeks prior, Harrison had been pissed off on more than a personal level.
He needed to find her, to find the money and figure out what happened, but despite his best efforts over breakfast, he found himself thinking about Rita again and figuring out what happened with her sister. With Missy’s help last night, he’d eventually pieced together enough information to realize his high-kicking date had been filling in for her absentee sibling.
Now, as he carried his tray from room service out onto the ocean-view balcony, he wondered how he could wrangle time with a woman whose list of priorities put his own to shame. She filled in for her sister, gave her friend a shoulder to cry on…plus she had her own job and she’d sewed costumes for a whole production on top of that.
Something about Rita’s unique blend of fiery demeanor and cool practicality appealed to him on a gut level he couldn’t explain, powerful enough to have distracted him from his primary mission on the cruise. He needed to ’fess up to his quest for information about Sonia’s trip before much more time elapsed since he wouldn’t want Rita to think he’d been using her. Not in six years with the Bureau had he ever found cause to kiss a woman for the sake of his job and he wouldn’t let Rita think as much for even an instant.
He debated calling her room and offering his services for the day while she searched for her sister when a knock sounded on his door. Could she have come looking for him instead?
Logically, he knew it was probably housekeeping, but that didn’t stop him from vaulting over an armchair in his haste to get the door. Telling himself it was just the sex—or promise of sex—that had him so keyed up, he forced himself to wait another two-count before opening the door as a penalty for being too eager.
But it wasn’t Rita on his threshold. Missy waited there instead, her blue eyes huge and punctuated with dark circles underneath them. Technically, he recognized her as an attractive female, but she didn’t come close to Rita in his book.
“Sorry. It’s just me.” She apparently read the disappointment on his face in all of a second. “I hate to bother you again, but you were so smart about offering advice last night, I wondered if you could be persuaded to talk to Rita?”
“I was just having my breakfast.” And plotting his way into spending time with the ship’s seamstress. “But I can make time. Everything okay?”
“I think she’s content with giving Danielle a little cool down period first, like you suggested.” She teetered on the threshold of his stateroom as if scared to put so much as a pinkie toe in his suite. “But she’s getting frantic about her sister and—”
Harrison didn’t hesitate. Turning his back on his work, he slid into his shoes and scooped up his cell phone while he listened to Missy pour out the Tale of Two Sisters. It was a lot to absorb, even if they had thirteen floors to descend in order to reach Rita’s cabin on the lowest level of the ship. But Harrison took in everything he could, gleaning that Rita was as much a workaholic as he’d ever been and that her sister played a crucial role in her life. And as Missy related what she knew of the events of the past few days, Harrison wondered if it was such a bad thing that Jayne was missing.
He began to revise the opinion when Rita opened the door for them, however.
Ear glued to a telephone, she had red-rimmed eyes and wild curls flying in every direction as if she hadn’t slept all night but stayed up to pull her hair out. She gave him a halfhearted wave as she admitted him, but when he turned to let Missy enter first he realized the dancer had apparently tucked her tail and run, leaving him to deal with the crisis. From somewhere down the hall he heard the bing of an elevator car and silently cursed Missy for a coward.
In the meantime, Rita paced with the corded phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she carried the base around the room with two fingers. Her room was strewn with half-finished sewing projects, uniforms of all kinds on hangers dangling from a makeshift stretch of rope at the foot of one bed, pins jabbed in hems and sleeves at every angle.
“…can’t you just double-check? Her name is Jayne Frazer. Or else Jayne Garcia. And sometimes for fun she books herself under a code name like Cinderella. Or Ariel. Do you have an Ariel?” Rita covered the handset with her palm while mouthing words to Harrison. “She’s big-time into Disney.”
He knew then and there he had zero chances of getting to know Rita—let alone ever quizzing her about Sonia—until she found her sister. Now, he focused solely on how to find yet another missing person. All his leads on Sonia had dead-ended because he’d allowed the trail to grow cold. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jayne.
“They hung up on me.” Rita slammed the receiver back onto the base and stared at him with cold fury in her eyes. “Do you believe that?”
“We’ll find her.” He was a patient man and he didn’t mind working for the things he wanted. His wild fantasies about Rita would keep.
“We need a boat.” He started working up a plan to help. They should have a real boat. Not some fifteen-story mega-cruise liner that put as much room between their guests and the water as possible. “You could get around the island in a hurry and check with all the harbormasters.”
Too bad Rita didn’t look hyped about the idea. Her face was pretty pale for a woman who’d just inherited the dedicated help of a special agent as an answer to all her problems.
“My God. You don’t think they ever would have tried boating over to Barbados from St. Kitts to meet up with the ship?” In an instant, the phone was tucked back under her ear. “It never occurred to me to check in with the harbormasters.”
Panic welled in Rita’s throat at the idea of brainless Horatio possibly talking her sister into sailing into the port at Bridgetown. But it made perfect sense in a screwed-up way. He wouldn’t want to lose his job aboard the Venus any more than Jayne would want to lose hers.
And Rita had to find Jayne as soon as possible—not only to make sure she kept her job, but also to corral her into helping manage the latest Margie scare. Their mother had telephoned well after midnight in a rare and very expensive phone call to inform Rita that the bar where she’d been singing a couple of nights each week had just installed video poker.
Just exactly what Margie didn’t need. The machines were probably illegal but Rita knew those kinds of laws were poorly enforced. And the Frazer women couldn’t withstand another bankruptcy. Margie could be homeless by the time the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale.
“I think you’d be able to wrangle your answers faster if we rented a boat. Any harbormaster worth his stripes spends more time out on the docks than taking calls anyway. You can bring your phone to keep making calls, but we’ll look around all the docking areas for ourselves once we find a boat.” Harrison explained the strategy patiently enough but he looked ready to bolt from her tiny, cramped cabin. He couldn’t walk two feet in any direction without stepping on Jayne’s strewn clothes, Rita’s sewing jobs or bumping into furniture. “How about we check with some of this guy’s—Horatio’s—friends to see if they knew where he planned to take his bride?”
“Of course.” Nodding at the practical wisdom of his plan she slammed the phone down again. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that right away.”
“You want me to go ask some questions while you get ready to disembark?” He backed toward the door, careful to sidestep a shimmering gold satin bra.
He would do that for her?
“That’d be great.” She’d never had smart, sensible help before while facing a crisis, so having Harrison around seemed really…nice. Most guys who were interested in a cruise fling would have zero desire to play private detective for the sake of a missing sibling, but Harrison Masters was obviously not most guys. “Horatio is friends with a few other casino workers. Mostly a lady pit boss—Fiona, I think—and a nerdy security guard named James who makes sure nobody pockets chips that don’t belong to them.”
“Got it. Meet you by the atrium on the Bacchus deck in an hour? We should be docked within thirty minutes.”
He checked his watch before his eyes went to the clock radio beside her bed. Just that brief flex of his muscles and the sight of big, male hands brought back memories of those hands on her. Amazing how being with him had made all her worries retreat into the far recesses of her mind last night.
“Let’s meet in twenty minutes.” She could pull it together in ten if need be, but she figured Harrison would need at least that much time to track down some of loser-boy Horatio’s friends. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the help.”
“Not a problem.” He shrugged as he stepped out into the corridor of the ship’s lowest deck. “It was high time I had a little excitement in my life anyway.”
She had to smile at the thought, even if she wouldn’t exactly classify Jayne’s disappearance as “excitement.” What woman wouldn’t be attracted to this smart guy who led a sensible, low-key lifestyle without a lot of drama?
“Stick with me, handsome. There’s plenty more where that came from in my family.”
* * *
I CAME TO St. Kitts to elope.
Emmett replayed Jayne’s confession in an endless audio loop in his brain the next morning, his attempts at drowning out her admission with a particularly fine Kentucky bourbon having failed miserably. As he rolled onto his back and smacked a pillow over his eyes, he had to own up to the fact that all he’d succeeded in doing was adding a headache to the news that Jayne had wanted to get married, she just hadn’t wanted to marry him.
Well, welcome to the freaking club.
Claudia hadn’t really wanted to be married to him either, although she seemed damned happy now that he’d signed over the lucrative Last Chance as part of their divorce settlement. Son of a bitch, but he couldn’t get used to seeing all his dreams incinerate before his eyes. He might have the Midas touch when it came to business, but he’d acquired some sort of cursed ability to decimate anything he tried to grasp in his private life. His marriage? Boom. Explosive failure.
Jayne? Pow. He’d sent her running so fast he’d gotten whiplash as she peeled out of his life.
He’d promised to drive her to the local landing strip to catch a charter plane to Barbados today so she could meet up with the Venus, but for all he knew she’d left already. She’d gone real quiet in the Jeep last night after he’d spluttered in disbelief—and possibly yelled a tad about the foolishness of rash plans—at the news of her elopement.
But what had she expected him to say? Good job ditching work to marry a blackjack dealer with zero plans to make a real future with you? For that matter, what kind of loser stood up his bride-to-be?
It’d been on the tip of his tongue to tell her she sure had shit taste in men, but caught himself just in time. Pretty damn humbling to realize he’d fallen into the same category as a guy who couldn’t say “I do” and then didn’t have the balls to say “I don’t” to a woman’s face.
Nice.
An efficient knock at his door echoed through his hungover skull with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He moved the pillow off his head to shout back at the knocker.
“I’m still in bed.” And he wasn’t moving until he had proof positive that Jayne was still in the hotel and needed a ride. If not, he was making the Seawinds Suites his new home now that his divorce was official, his house had become the sole property of his ex-wife, and Claudia had neatly boxed up his every freaking possession and shipped everything to a local storage facility.
His ex might not love him, but she sure as hell had efficiency down to an art form.
“If that’s an invitation, your technique has really fallen apart over the last year.” The voice on the other side of the door sounded both sexy and bitchy and totally turned him on.
What kind of defective libido did he have that a haughty, high-maintenance woman like Jayne could inspire a hard-on even in the midst of a hangover from hell?
“If you get an invitation, woman, I guarantee you’ll know it when you hear it.” Shouting and wincing at the same time, he swung his legs off the bed and pulled on a pair of pants while he went to brush his teeth.
She could damn well wait.
“Emmett?” The conciliatory note in her voice was a surefire clue she needed a favor. He hadn’t dated Jayne for long, but for those few months he’d known her more intimately than any other woman. And he damn well recognized now just from the way she said his name that she needed help.
Did her moronic blackjack dealer understand her needs half so well?
Rinsing and spitting, he stalked to the door and opened it.
“What?”
He’d caught her by surprise. He could tell by the way she quickly pulled her softened features into a mask of cool collectedness. Still, he’d seen the hint of vulnerability on her face, felt her uncertainty for one disconcerting instant.
“There seems to be a problem with my bill because it’s ridiculously high.” She had folded and unfolded the piece of paper in question ten times over as she stepped around a matching sheet on the floor of his suite. “I think I got charged for your room, too.”
Her gaze dipped to his bare chest for a fleeting moment before she breezed past to pull open the curtains on the window overlooking the water.
“This looks right.” He scooped up his bill and compared it to hers, noting his ungodly bar tab and her dry cleaning bill for her dress along with the purchase of a pair of cheap rhinestone-studded flip-flops from the gift shop. “I’ve got it.”
“I don’t expect you to pay for my room. Or my shoes.” She flashed him a better view of her glittery pink thongs as she reached to take back the paper. “I just hadn’t realized these resorts were allowed to rob their guests blind for the chance to sleep in a dry bed.”
“I’m paying the damn bill and I’m not arguing about it since every word I utter reverberates in my head like a steel drum, you understand?” He hadn’t given a thought to the cost when he brought her here last night, but he knew most cruise companies didn’t pay their employees much for their efforts.
Jayne had never shared much about her past, but he’d gotten the impression she came from fairly humble roots not all that different from his own. Life had been kind enough to him since he’d figured out how to translate a gift for stock market prediction into cold, hard cash, but he’d seen the inside of the welfare office enough times in his youth to appreciate not everyone was lucky enough to find an honest means of living well.
“You play, you pay.” She stared out over the endlessly blue water. “Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that one myself.”
Emmett wasn’t touching that one. For all he knew he’d misunderstood what sounded to his clueless ears like an admission of normal human weakness, something completely uncharacteristic of the most proud female he’d ever encountered.
He remained silent so long she finally twirled on her heel to face him, her sundress swirling gently around her thighs with the movement.
“Are you ready to take me over to the landing strip yet, or did you change your mind about the ride?” She nodded toward the vast expanse of ocean out the window, her glossy red curls slithering seductively around her shoulders. “I’ve got to get back to the Venus to kick a certain man’s ass and apologize to my sister before a seven-o’clock rehearsal tonight.”
“You don’t think this loser ex-fiancé of yours is still on the ship?” Emmett reached for his shirt, his head clearing at the thought of losing Jayne for the second time in twelve months.
“He really likes his job. We weren’t planning to quit when we eloped, we just figured we’d take the night off to be wild and crazy.” Shrugging, she fished around in her purse and retrieved a pair of sunglasses. Shoved them on her nose. “Or so I thought. Guess I’m the last of a dying wild and crazy breed.”
Something about seeing proud Jayne Mansfield Frazer duck behind designer knockoff lenses clenched strangely at his gut. She’d changed since their first meeting a year ago and some sucker-for-punishment facet of his ego wanted to know how. Why.
Ignoring the pounding in his head to follow the stupid thrum of his clueless heart, he made up his mind to find out more about The One Who Got Away. For that matter, it’d been months since he’d taken a cruise and now that his divorce was official he found himself homeless and in need of some high seas revelry.
“Hell no, you’re not part of a dying breed. Give me five minutes to shower and I might just be wild and crazy enough to fly you back to Barbados myself.”
* * *
RITA WAS CALLING IN favors at an alarming rate as she sweet-talked the most junior member of the ship security team into telling her everything he knew about Jayne’s illicit escape from the ship the day before. But she’d sewn a prom dress for the guy’s little sister last spring and he ’fessed up without a wince since Jayne had promised to be back onboard the next day.
While the news was reassuring, Rita knew better than most people that Jayne didn’t always stick to a plan.
Now, as she stood on a pier on the opposite end of the marina and watched Harrison shake hands with a local charter boat captain, she wondered how she could ever repay him for all the help he’d given her last night and today. Jayne had never had a problem with accepting kindness from strangers, graciously smiling whenever passengers—men, women and little old ladies—brought her flowers after a performance. But Rita was uneasy with anyone who offered to do too much for her. Somehow, she’d find a way to make it up to Harrison. Maybe he had a sister young enough to need a prom dress?
“We’ve got the boat for four hours.” Harrison stopped in front of the small craft he’d picked out with a practiced eye the moment they’d arrived. “We’ll cruise around to a few of the marinas on the western side of the island and see what happens. The guy in charge of the charter vessels said he’s been here since dawn and hasn’t seen anyone fitting your sister’s description get off a boat.”
“How do you know what my sister even looks like?” She took his hand as he helped her onboard and reminded herself to pop a few ginger tablets as soon as they got settled. It had taken her weeks to get used to the rocking motion of the Venus, never mind that most people on cruise ships never felt the swaying at all. A boat like this would have her seasick in no time if she didn’t take precautions.
“I figured she must look a lot like you since you escaped the show manager’s radar last night.” He moved around the deck like an old sea hand, untying ropes, hauling in buoys or bumpers or whatever they called those fat pads used to make sure a boat didn’t get scratched up by the dock. “By all accounts this Danielle the Dastardly runs a pretty tight show, so if you danced your way out there under her nose without her noticing… I put two and two together.”
“I don’t look anything like Jayne.” Okay, small inevitable family resemblance aside. “She’s the cover of Vogue. I’m the ‘before’ photo on the makeover page when they strong-arm the average woman on the street into a makeup chair.”
“All I know is you look mighty good to me.” He slid behind the steering wheel and fired up the engine. “You like boats?”
“I like them fine once I pop some ginger pills.” Shaking her purse to free up all the infrequently used items in the deepest recesses of the striped satin lining, she followed the sound of rolling tablets in a bottle until she came up with her medicine case chock-full of everything from sleeping pills for the nights when Jayne blasted her radio full-power to aloe caplets for sunburns.
“Is this outing going to bother you?” Harrison moved away from the steering wheel to push off the dock, giving the boat a gentle shove by planting his foot on the pier and propelling them deeper into the water.
Chewing the pills quickly, Rita shook her head. Determined. Ready to make headway.
“Not nearly as much as it will bother me if I don’t find Jayne.”
“You two are pretty close, I take it?” He jogged the few steps back to the wheel and steered them slowly around the docked boats, being careful not to create too much of a wake.
He looked perfectly at home there, the strong Caribbean sun bearing down on his dark hair to give it a burnished glow, his feet spread on the deck like a man who’d navigated plenty of rough waters in his day.
“It’s a relationship forged in fire.” Sinking onto the seat beside him, Rita shoved her heavy purse off her shoulder and tried to relax. Concentrate on the pleasing vision of Harrison’s legs in khaki shorts. “We’ve been through a lot together and that makes us good friends as well as…women who know far too much about each other’s weaknesses.”
“Sort of codependent?”
She bristled at the very idea.
“Hardly. We watch each other’s backs.” Often whether they really wanted to or not.
“So how was she watching your back last night when she ditched you on what Missy seemed to think was the turning point of your career?”
Surprise—and anger—reminded her she couldn’t relax too much around a man she didn’t know all that well despite the romantic night they’d shared. No matter how charming and helpful Harrison seemed, he wasn’t family. He might not understand the world according to a Frazer.
“It wasn’t a turning point. I sewed some outfits for extra cash. And while it would have been helpful if Jayne had been there to do her job—Everybody makes mistakes.” Wrenching her gaze off his fine butt, she retrieved her sunscreen out of her bag to slather over skin with a high tendency to burn.
“Some more than others.” He cranked the boat into a higher gear as they cleared the marina and hit the open water. “I’m close to my family, too, and I can’t remember a time I would have left them holding the bag to chase dreams that could have easily waited a day or two.”
“And your point is that I must be some kind of messed-up enabler to allow my sister to take advantage of me?” She’d heard that one before, although usually snippy fans of gossip liked to cluck about enabling her mother as opposed to Jayne. Still, the same principle applied. She was cast as the sucker. “Or are you suggesting my sister must be a complete waste-case to flee her job?”
She scrubbed the sunscreen into her skin with extra force.
“Rita—”
“Or worse.” Another scenario smacked her upside the head with more force than a high kick to the temple as she tossed the SPF 45 aside. “You think both those things.”
“Hardly.” He slowed the boat as they neared another marina beside a stretch of ocean-view resort hotels. “I know all about the desire to help out your family and I’ve been down that route too many times myself to blame you for doing that same thing. I just hope your sister realizes what lengths you went to in order to cover for her because from the handful of people I talked to on the Venus about Jayne, I got the impression she takes the spotlight most of the time while you do twice as much behind the scenes.”
“I’d love to know who told you that, especially since you’ve been on the ship for all of three days.” How could her coworkers confide such intimate details to a perfect stranger? Curse the man’s sexy dark stare.
“Nobody said it straight out.” He slowed the motor as they closed in on a small dock. “I gathered as much from other things I heard from your friends and Horatio’s.”
“I forgot you talked to them.” She’d been slowly losing her brain cells to anxiety and fear since last night. Add to that the fear that her skin was burning from want of Harrison and not because of the Caribbean sun, and she was forced to admit she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “Did you find out anything helpful?Anything besides the fact that Jayne and I are codependent enablers?”
She squinted toward a throng of tourists on the dock, a man and three bikini-clad women stepping aside for a young couple on inline skates.
“Only that Horatio was scheduled to work last night and they hadn’t heard anything about him ditching.” He eased the boat around a mammoth-size yacht to give them a better view of the pier. “But I couldn’t locate the casino workers you mentioned, just a couple of bartenders on a different deck from the casino and they were just barely crawling out of bed when I talked to them.”
“Bastard.” Rita’s gaze fixed on the man on the pier as the guy’s hand strayed over one of the women’s tanga swimsuit bottom. Squinting, she couldn’t believe her eyes as the man’s familiar features came into focus. “Maybe they didn’t know about Horatio skipping work because he never left the ship last night.”
“What do you mean?” Harrison cut the motor, presumably so they could ask the group on the dock a few questions.
Indignation pumping through her, she didn’t even bother lowering her voice as she pointed out the assgrabber a few yards away.
“That’s Jayne’s so-called fiancé right there.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f5f7c5ea-193e-54d0-9be6-5337cfbed29c)
ON AN INTELLECTUAL LEVEL, Harrison processed the news that the jet-setter type on the dock was the same tool who’d stood up Rita’s sister. But the information seemed less important than the primary data Harrison currently received from his personal observations of the scene on the pier.
Horatio and three fawning females had all just stepped off the big-ass yacht beside the dock from which obnoxious techno-pop music still blared. A party seemed to be in progress onboard the hundred-and-twenty-foot monster where a couple of guys and three other women sipped a rainbow range of bright cocktails, their swimsuits as expensive-looking as the designer sunglasses perched on almost every nose. Money oozed from the yacht along with the mindlessly repetitive club music, and Horatio the runaway groom looked fairly at home with it all for a guy whose paycheck couldn’t be any fatter than what Harrison had pulled down during his time with the Bureau. And Harrison sure as hell could never afford the Breitling timepiece this bozo sported.
“Hey, scumbag, say cheese.” The shout came from Harrison’s elbow as Rita lined up her disposable camera for a shot of Horatio’s hand on the bikini babe’s butt. She clicked the camera before calling over the lens. “My sister’s going to annul this marriage so fast you’ll be a single man by nightfall, dip-wad.”
Harrison secured the boat in record time, recognizing quickly the shit was going to hit the fan. He would have liked to look around the dock more discreetly now that all of his agent instincts were up and running about Horatio’s big money connections, but discretion seemed out of the question since Rita fairly launched out of their rented boat to confront the dealer.
“Sorry to disappoint you, babe, but I’m definitely still a single man.” He squeezed his lady friend’s butt cheek for emphasis. “Good thing, eh?”
Harrison could practically feel the fury rising off Rita as she bared her teeth at him.
“Too busy to elope?” She edged the words past her lips despite the clamped jaw.
Harrison looped an arm around her shoulders and hoped she wouldn’t shove it off or start a big confrontation.
“Come on, Rita.” Horatio shifted his weight in a subtle show of discomfort Harrison wouldn’t have caught without years of experience at reading liars. “You know Jayne’s not the settling-down type. If we tied the knot she would have thrown me over in two months max.”
“With great reason, obviously.” Rita moved toward the back of the boat as if to exit, but Harrison held her back.
Hoping to defuse the tension before Rita knocked this guy’s teeth clear down his throat, Harrison kept his tone casual. “You know where we can find Jayne today?”
“We were supposed to meet at Island Dreams last night on St. Kitts and then catch a hop to Barbados this morning.” He checked his watch in slow motion as if to be sure he kept his name brand visible. “If she caught the flight we talked about, she would have touched down a few minutes ago.”
While Rita assured Playboy Joe that no dancer would ever look twice at him again once she spread the word of an unfortunate condition he’d contracted, Harrison noted the name of the yacht emblazoned on the bow. The Over-Under.
“Nice boat.” Harrison interjected while Horatio’s miniharem stepped back, their high heels a chorus of taps on the dock. “You have friends who like the over-under?”
“I’ve got a lot of friends.” Shrugging, he started to follow the females heading up the pier toward a waterfront restaurant and marketplace. “Who knows what they all like?”
Rita’s hand slipped around Harrison’s elbow, reminding him he couldn’t follow up on his instincts about the blackjack dealer now, even if those instincts were blaring loudly in his ear that something wasn’t right.
“Let’s head over to the landing strip and see if she’s there.” Rita’s simple red flip-flops smacked the back of her heels in rhythmic time as she walked the length of the boat with smooth, efficient strides bearing little resemblance to her stage strut of the night before.
Funny how the practical woman appealed to him as much as the fantasy siren. More, even. He appreciated people who valued hard work and family the way he did.
“Done.” Harrison untied their rented vessel and cranked up the engine, figuring the trip over to the landing strip was as good a time as any to let Rita in on his real motives behind taking the cruise. “But once we’re underway, I need you to tell me everything you can about Horatio.”
“Besides that he’s a two-timing snake with no moral system in place?”
Rita seethed inwardly as Harrison guided the craft away from the creep who’d thought nothing of leaving her sister at the altar. Forget that the altar doubled as a gift shop checkout counter. That didn’t diminish the magnitude of Horatio’s desertion in the least.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you,” Harrison pressed on, “that a lowlife like him could attract not one but three women to keep him company today? He’s running with some big-money friends for a guy who makes pretty average wages.”
“You’re suggesting anyone who works on the Venus must be low-class?” She hadn’t expected economic prejudice from Harrison. He seemed so down-to-earth. So normal.
“Of course not.” He checked the map of Barbados the charter boat captain had given them, the sun casting a glare on the paper no matter where he positioned it. “I couldn’t afford a boat like the one he was on either, but if he doesn’t have any personal charisma and he’s got the morals of a snake as you pointed out, what basis does he have to form a connection with some multimillionaire yacht owner?”
“I’m sure there are plenty of multimillionaires whose morals suck, too.” Rita kept an eye on the coastline, trying to remember where an airport might be, but she’d never made much use of shore time like most of the crew, preferring to sew onboard the ship rather than party in Caribbean clubs.
“My point exactly. And if Horatio is hanging out with those kinds of wealthy, unethical people and sporting a Breitling watch that would be tough to afford on a dealer’s salary, doesn’t that make you suspicious?”
“So you think he’s doing something illegal? When would he have time between working and juggling five different women? The bastard.” Resenting Horatio’s treatment of her sister, she couldn’t get past that anger to think about whatever else he might be doing. “Don’t you hate people who have hidden agendas and stupid little secrets?”
“Uh, in theory, yes.”
“Why can’t people just be honest with each other and say, ‘I have three other women I’m screwing on the side. Would you care to be added to the list, or not?’ That might be skeevy, but at least it’s honest.” Rita knew Jayne had at least made an effort to get her life together over the past six months since she’d really streamlined the number of men she dated. This blow from Horatio had to hurt.
“There’s something we need to talk about.”
The quiet seriousness in Harrison’s tone called her from her sisterly outrage. Then, the stern set to his features as he steered the boat across open water gave her the distinct sense of impending doom.
She so could not handle more bad news today.
“Don’t tell me you’re sleeping with three other women?”
“It’s not as bad as that, but I don’t want you to think I have a secret agenda.”
Although she would have rather simply enjoyed the view as the wind plastered Harrison’s shirt to his muscular chest, Rita didn’t mind playing a few rounds of Worst Case Scenario to keep whatever he had to say in perspective. She couldn’t afford to let him hurt her when she could barely stagger through all that she had on her plate.
“Okay, I’ve got it. You introduced yourself to me last night because you have a thing for showgirls and now that you know me for the seamstress I really am, you want out?” She’d known plenty of guys who could only appreciate glitz and glitter and didn’t have a clue about what lay beneath.
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Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: She may be on a cruise liner, but lately, Rita Frazer′s life looks more like a shabby dinghy.Working as a seamstress on a ship called the Venus, Rita hasn′t been feeling very goddesslike. More like a Swamp-Thing with red hair and a mouthful of pins. When the ship hosts a fashion show, Rita figures she finally has a chance at being a designer—until she finds herself on the runway, instead of her designs.But Rita′s found her muse. And he′s watching the fashion show. Harrison Masters is capable of making any woman drop sails, anchor and most of her clothes. And he might be successful with Rita, but she panics when her sister disappears. Now Rita′s little dinghy—which was ready for an upgrade to full-on Love Boat only moments ago—is starting to leak. Bail water…or bail out?