Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  He wasn’t going to do anything with it, really. Other than a bit of basic plumbing.

  Buying a used moped…well, a guy needs transportation.

  And stocking the kitchen just meant he had snacks at the ready between swims and naps.

  He grinned again as he surged away from shore, over the rocks he’d now memorized. Cara hadn’t been kidding about the rough water access, but that wasn’t a problem for him. If anything it ensured his privacy, which he needed, because there wasn’t anything impressive about how slowly he moved on the unsteady footing.

  His smile fell away. One wrong twist and he’d be rendered useless, flopping like a fish in the water. His hollow victory over fixing some damn pipes was just that—empty. Meaningless.

  Unimpressive.

  He dove into the surf, a shallow glide that did nothing to restore his faith in his ability. He’d hoped this trip would give him a new purpose in life. Instead, he’d realized that he’d been served a pile of shit to deal with, not of his own making, but now it was his only hope for the immediate future. He didn’t have any other career options. Didn’t want to go into private security like so many of his buddies did. And he didn’t have any other transferrable skills.

  He couldn’t even do something fluffy like bartending, because he was downright rusty on the interacting with other human beings thing. Cara’s pretty face swirled in his mind. Fuck. What he wanted to do was stalk back up to the house and kiss the scowl right off her dusky pink lips.

  Wanted to tell her he wasn’t the bad guy here, he wasn’t the enemy she needed to guard against. He was just a messenger and he didn’t really care.

  Except a part of him did.

  He dove deeper, exhaling effortlessly. The stream of bubbles against his face felt good. Little pops of reality bursting through his denial.

  He didn’t want to be done with life at thirty-five.

  He wanted a new career, a second chance.

  That was why he was pushing back at her. Not because he was just Will’s errand boy.

  He wanted Villa Sucre.

  Pretty, pouting mouths be damned.

  A mistake had been made, but it wasn’t his mistake, and he wouldn’t pay for it. He’d lean on Will to lean on the lawyers, and he wouldn’t let up until they’d broken the news to Ms. Levasseur.

  She was no longer Cara of the curly hair and endless legs. Her full name was the safest way for Mick to think about her now.

  His unfortunate enemy.

  Not of his choosing, but when were they ever?

  In the past, he’d been fighting for the greater good.

  Now he was fighting for himself and his own future. He’d give it all he had. It might not be everything he’d once have brought to a battle, but it was still formidable.

  He almost pitied the Historical Society director and her big, luminous eyes.

  Almost.

  Then he thought of the way she cagily refused to answer his questions and he girded himself against sentiment. She would show him no mercy. He’d give her the same right back.

  Fun time was over.

  * * *

  Cara filled her bucket from the pump in the front garden and hauled it back into the ballroom. She’d swept the room twice, but there was still dust everywhere. For her plan to work, she needed to stake a claim right in the heart of the estate.

  As the cold water splashed over her hand, she tried hard not to think of Mick. He’d sauntered off in the direction of the beach. Was he slicing through the waves right now? Or climbing back out, droplets rolling down that impressive chest?

  Clinging to each defined ridge for a moment before tumbling to the next… She closed her eyes as she pictured it. He was a mountain of a man, complete with his own built-in waterfall system.

  Cara had been born and raised on Miralinda. Fit men in swimsuits were a dime a dozen.

  So this man was visually distracting—big whoop. It meant nothing.

  She thumped the bucket in the centre of the room and grabbed a rag from the pile she’d assembled. Dunking it, she relished the cold grip of water around her hand.

  Time to get real.

  That man was a menace on every level. Visually distracting. Morally bankrupt—obviously a conman, even if by accident. His friend had sent him down here on a fool’s errand and Cara could spare him no sympathy.

  His tough loss that he’d come all this way for nothing.

  And now he wasn’t even getting a quiet weekend in paradise because he’d made the mistake of interrupting the careful flow of work she’d organized.

  She scrubbed the baseboards and the windowsills, all the places where dust had accumulated, until the room shone.

  It was a beautiful room. Villa Sucre was a beautiful estate. Worthy of the protection of the Historical Society. Set aside her own selfish reasons for wanting the project to continue as planned, she also couldn’t let a group of American men stomp in and destroy a building rich with history and tradition.

  She’d protect it from the big, bad, scary man and his so-called friends.

  “Brute,” she muttered under her breath.

  “You talking about me?”

  She screamed and jumped in the air.

  Mick chuckled behind her.

  She whirled around and stabbed her finger at him. “That was mean.”

  He arched one eyebrow as if to say, yeah? So? And that eyebrow of course brought her attention to his wet hair, spiky all over except for right in front, where it was longer and curled onto his forehead. The droplets that ran down his corded neck and onto his—

  No. She didn’t care about how broad his shoulders were or where that water was heading next. “You’re dripping on the floor.”

  “The morning maid failed to leave any towels,” he said dryly.

  “Did you seriously expect hospitality?” She took a deep breath, ready to launch into a tirade about the gall of him, but then her gaze finally met his again—because fine, it had gotten stuck on his stupid shoulders after all—and realized he was laughing.

  At her.

  She growled. “That’s not funny.”

  “It kind of was.” He let his own gaze linger on her face for a moment, then he looked past her. And the laugh lines disappeared. “What is that?”

  She grinned. “My tent.”

  “What is it doing here?”

  Her smile got wider and she didn’t answer. This felt good. Hello, upper hand. Nice to make your acquaintance.

  “Are you…staging some sort of sit-in?”

  “That’s not how I’d describe it.” She crossed her arms, belatedly remembering she had a dirty wash rag in her hand. She tried not to flinch as the wet, filthy cloth hit the back of her arm. Ew.

  “You have so much work to do this weekend that you can’t go home to sleep?”

  Okay, maybe it was a sit-in. “Honestly, Mr. Frasier, I’m not sure I can trust you to be alone on the property.”

  “I told you, call me Mick. What do you think I might do?”

  She gave him an incredulous look, because really? “You’ve already admitted to messing with plumbing. We have a set schedule for tradespeople to come in and do work. You interfered with it once already today. How do I know you won’t sabotage something else? You clearly have the skills, although I’m sure they’re…amateur.”

  He returned her glare of indignation with a slow, hooded look that she pretended didn’t affect her at all. “You haven’t even seen my handiwork.”

  Ignoring the double entendre, she turned on her heel and dropped her washcloth in the bucket. “I don’t need to see whatever hackney workaround you’ve figured out. I have no doubt you’ve done your worst to the plumbing in the servant’s quarters.”

  “It’s perfectly fine!”

  She jerked her head around, glaring at him over her shoulder. “It’s not. Not perfectly fine, not funny, not anything. You don’t belong here, Mr. Frasier. You are a nuisance, and you need to stop interfering. Don’t. Touch. Anything. Else.”<
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  “My. Name. Is. Mick. And maybe I’m helping.”

  “More like you’re helping stall until your friend can show up and take this con to the next level.”

  “Con?” He propped his hands on his hips. “You think I’m conning you?”

  “The Parrys are ruthless business people.”

  Something flickered in his gaze. He wanted to spit something back at her, but he was holding himself in check.

  She tested that again. “I’m sure your friend doesn’t fall far from the matriarchal tree in that regard.”

  Yep. Definitely didn’t like his friend being questioned.

  The nervous tremor in her gut annoyed her. So what if he was loyal?

  She’d known him for less than twenty-four hours, and Mick Frasier was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent a threat to everything she’d worked toward for the last four years.

  And if he managed to somehow still come off as a good guy—call me Mick, look at me worry about my friend, blah blah blah—that just meant he was good at what he did.

  She wouldn’t fall for it. “Look, I don’t really care what your game is. The point is, I see right through you. And besides, it doesn’t matter. We’re well under way with our work, and there’s no stopping the project now.”

  “What the hell are you doing beyond fixing it up?” Now he though it was his turn to glare at her?

  She huffed. “We’ve commissioned an architect to modify the parts of the building that can’t be restored in a historically appropriate way.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We'll happily take over that commission and have him redraw the plans to our specifications."

  Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask… She couldn’t help herself. She braced herself and asked, “What kind of specifications?"

  "A gun range. Weapons vaults. An obstacle course. The usual."

  Oh, sweet mother of God. It was worse than she’d suspected. They were going to destroy the estate. “The usual?”

  He leaned in close, probably to make sure she wouldn’t miss just how serious he was. “That’s just the start of it.”

  Her nose twitched uncontrollably and she could feel her cheeks turning what was probably an embarrassing shade of red. “This is a historic building and you can’t just—”

  “Oh, but I can.” He stepped back and squared his shoulders again. The man was disturbingly geometric. Human beings shouldn’t have that many angles. Or that much confidence. “It might be old, but it’s not protected, right?”

  Well, no, it wasn’t…but that wasn’t how the island did things. And… She narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t know that.”

  His expression gave nothing away.

  That was enough of a tell. She swallowed hard and lied. “We’ve begun the process to protect this as a historic site. You’re too late.”

  A twitch. Just one, right above his right eyebrow. He doubted himself. Good.

  “There’s nothing historic about this monstrosity.” He ground out the words from between tightly gritted teeth.

  “Now you’re pretending that it’s a monstrosity?”

  “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours, here, sweetheart. I know just exactly how run-down it is.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Until thirty minutes ago, when you set up your ridiculous little tent, it had sat unoccupied for more than ten years. It’s full of more rats and birds than I can shake my fist at, and no exterminator could fix that. We’re going to need to rip everything back to the studs anyway, so we might as well keep going and knock out a few walls.”

  * * *

  Mick could tell that every word of his last sentence landed squarely. Cara’s eyes got wider and wider, and then snapped shut, like she didn’t want to hear anymore.

  He ignored the visible tremor in her cheek and the wobble of her full lower lip. She was a distraction, nothing more, and he wouldn’t let her bother him another minute.

  He took one last grim look at her ridiculous tent and offered a platitude he almost definitely didn’t mean. “If you need me, I’ll be in my quarters.”

  “They’re not your quarters. And I’m not going to need you,” she hollered as he strolled out of the ballroom.

  She would, though, if she hung around long enough. The only running water was in his bathroom. Now that she was staking her ridiculous claim in the middle of the ballroom, he’d have to play hardball.

  Which was a shame, because when she wasn’t yelling at him, Cara was…interesting. Smart. Pretty, too. Definitely someone he’d be happy to share a shower with.

  But no hot water for her.

  She wanted a fight? He’d give her one.

  The tiny little historian with the crazy curls and flashing eyes had no idea who she was messing with.

  4

  Mick had already established his high-ground position near the running water. Next step in surveying the battlefield: recon.

  So he spent his second twenty-four hours on Miralinda watching a beautiful woman through the windows of her house. Sort of. It might be his house. Or his-adjacent. His by proxy.

  She always changed inside the tent, so it was pretty PG-13 as far as perving went.

  But it was still stalker-esque. And no good intel came from it. She actually spent her Saturday night and Sunday morning working, as she claimed. She moved through the rooms, cataloguing the dilapidated furniture and referencing a clipboard with only God knew what other information on it.

  If he were in her shoes, it would be a list of everything that should get tossed on a bonfire. Starting with the few remaining pieces of furniture, which surely housed families of mice, and including all the interior walls, because they only looked lovely if one squinted.

  Or if one were overly affected by nostalgia.

  She had a computer set up in one of the upstairs rooms, and when she left for an hour on Sunday afternoon, he snuck in and checked it out.

  It wasn’t even password protected.

  There was no wifi, and the only files on it were old copies of letters saved to the computer’s desktop. A thank-you note to a donor, a dry-as-dust memo to the board of directors.

  There was no drama here, other than a mix-up. One of them would get some disappointing news, and life would move on.

  Until then, he had beach access and a hammock at his disposal, and he wasn’t taking proper advantage of either of them. Enough of playing Spy-vs-Spy.

  * * *

  Cara had the world’s fastest shower at her apartment in Petite Ciotat, then quickly booted up her laptop. She’d slipped away quietly enough—Mick probably hadn’t even noticed her leave. And she wouldn’t be gone long.

  Just long enough to wash off the grime and do a little research.

  Mick didn’t seem to have a social media presence. No Facebook account, at least not under that name and with a picture of his face. No profiles on any of the lesser, business-oriented pages. For that matter, neither did Will Parry. But there was mention of Mick’s friend, at least obliquely, in a society pages article about the Parry clan.

  Twin grandsons had joined the Navy.

  Will and Quinn.

  And neither of them had any digital footprint, either.

  Cara tapped her index finger against her lip. Her mind went in a million different exciting directions. CIA, drug-wars, undercover operations. None of which she’d want anywhere near her villa.

  Her shoulders sagged. What was she doing? Hoping the Internet would offer up a perfect solution for kicking Mick out of Villa Sucre?

  Yeah.

  Too bad the Internet hadn’t gotten the memo.

  She set her laptop aside and padded to her small bedroom. She needed more clothes at the estate. Grabbing a few items, she shoved them into a bag, then headed for the kitchen. Mick couldn’t be the only one who stocked the kitchen with supplies. She didn’t have quite the eye for balanced rations that he clearly did, but she surely had enough food in her pantry to sustain herself for a few days.

 
Rations.

  Navy.

  She screeched to a halt, practically tripping over her toes as the obviousness of it all dawned on her.

  Was Mick in the Navy, too? That would explain the close friendship and his defensiveness over his buddy’s motives. Brotherhood and all that. Plus there was his body…

  Maybe he was built like a machine for a reason.

  But why was he here?

  The question bugged her for the rest of the day. She thought about it as she settled back into the ballroom, then made lunch in the kitchen, taking her sweet time in case she might catch a glimpse of him out the window.

  She didn’t.

  It bothered her when he finally roused, late in the afternoon. She watched as he wandered out of the servant quarters and, after stretching and yawning, headed straight for the beach. He always moved at an annoying, leisurely pace. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  It ran contrary to the fire she saw in his eyes every time they clashed.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  And he wasn’t giving her any further clues, so by the time the sun dropped low over the jungle that separated the estate from Petite Ciotat, she gave up and crawled into her tent with a good book.

  She was on the third chapter when she heard him quietly enter the kitchen through the back door.

  She had a couple of options. Ignore him being the most obvious and best one. Or she could go and stake a claim on the kitchen. If he had the running water, maybe she should draw a line at the kitchen door. You get the showers, I get the refrigeration.

  Stay in her cozy little tent nest.

  Go to the kitchen and poke the mysterious bear.

  She set her book aside and stared up at the tent poles curving above her. They didn’t line up exactly. There were three of them, and they all fed through a nylon loop at the centre of the roof, but one was off-center. She sighed and sat up, reaching for the offending pole. She nudged it back into place. It stayed lined up with the other two for a few a seconds, then snapped back to where it had been.