Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  She took another fortifying sip of wine and then realized that fortifying herself with the heat-inducing, slightly drugging liquid wasn’t the best idea.

  “I’m tired. Jet lag,” she said. And lines were becoming muddled, thanks to the wine and the sudden revelation about Gage. “I should go to bed.”

  Gage nodded. “Good night, Lily.”

  Later, when she was in her bed, trying to fall asleep, she kept hearing that deep husky voice over and over again, telling her good night. And it was far too easy to imagine he was in her bed saying it, holding her close to his hard, hot body.

  She wrapped herself tightly in her blanket and curled her knees up to her chest, trying to stop the ache that was pounding inside of her. The ache that was turning into a shocking feeling of emptiness that her body seemed to think only Gage could fill.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BREAKFAST with the board was an event. They were businessmen, so they weren’t seeking public displays of affection at least, but they did want to know how the scandal with Maddy was going to affect the bottom line.

  “Not at all,” Lily insisted. “The incident with Maddy barely made a dent in the international media. William Callahan isn’t famous worldwide. And we’re going to make sure we publicize the Forrester Wildlife Preserve that Gage established here on Koh Samui.”

  “The cynical might argue that I set aside all of that land to keep my competition out,” Gage said when the members of the board had left the table, off to a golf game Gage had arranged for them.

  “Yes, the cynical might,” she said. “But your motives aren’t important.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “In this context, yes, I do. As far as life application goes, of course motivation matters. But this is for a sound bite, a press release. They can speculate about your motives all they like, but the important thing is that you did it. At least that’s how those concerned about environmental impact will see it.”

  “Interested in sightseeing today?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t we have paperwork to file, or something?”

  “Not today. I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the island. The main focus of this resort is simply bringing people into the natural beauty of Thailand. That’s why, at my resort, I haven’t made a golf course and built bars along the beach. It would be good PR if you were familiar with the place.”

  She sighed. “Using my job title against me. Shameless.”

  He looked at her. “I can be.”

  Silence, the thick tense kind, settled between them again. Lily licked her suddenly dry lips, and his eyes dropped, following the movement. A rush of pure feminine pride raced through her. That she could affect a man like Gage was nothing short of incredible. She had no experience at all and he had likely slept his way through the phone book.

  But she wasn’t imagining it. He was feeling it too. The insistent beat pounding inside of her, demanding satisfaction.

  She looked away and tried to steady her breathing, tried to think logically. They were adults, and that meant there was only one place an attraction like this would end if it was acted on. And that was in bed. All fine for most people, but she had less experience than most teenagers, and Gage was a thirty-seven-year-old man with years of experience. It was an incongruous, insane combination.

  “Bring a swimsuit,” he said finally, breaking the tension between them. Most of it anyway.

  “I don’t have one.”

  He frowned. “You didn’t bring a swimsuit to an island?”

  “It’s a business trip.”

  He lowered his voice, his blue eyes intense. “I think it’s a little more than that.”

  She shook her head. “No. Don’t say that. Don’t talk about it.”

  “Because if we don’t talk about it we don’t feel it?”

  “Because it’s stupid. We work together.” She didn’t even pretend to be ignorant of what he meant. What would the point of that be?

  No matter how much she wanted to deny it there was an attraction between them. An attraction that, if she was honest, had been there, smoldering since that very first interview, the one that had not resulted in her being hired. Which was why, even though she’d been put out that he’d chosen someone else, she’d been relieved that she wouldn’t be the one who had to work with him every day. Because he’d affected her in ways no other man had, and it wasn’t something she’d been prepared to deal with. She still wasn’t, she just didn’t have a choice now, since she was stuck in a foreign country with the man, pretending to be his fiancée.

  “I don’t swim, actually,” she said, the thought of being that exposed making her feel jittery. It was less a matter of revealing her body, and more a matter of losing her image, her business suits and killer shoes, which always helped her amp up her confidence.

  He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t know how to swim or you don’t swim?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “A pretty big one. The difference between whether or not I have to jump in and save you if you fall overboard.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, I know how, I just don’t.” Not in front of him anyway. “And anyway, if I fell overboard, you know you would jump in after me.”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “Maybe. I’ll have a member of the staff track down a swimsuit for you. You’ll enjoy yourself. Trust me.”

  The boat ride out to the small island just off the south side of Koh Samui was incredible. The water was completely clear, the depths of the ocean clearly visible as they floated over the surface of the water.

  Lily found herself relaxing, even in Gage’s presence, which was a strange feeling. But the scenery was so gorgeous and the small yacht skimmed so smoothly over the small waves, that it was simply impossible to fight the effects.

  Even the swimsuit, a barely there bikini held together with tiny strings, no longer had her feeling so tense. Of course, she was covered with a T-shirt and shorts, so that helped.

  She’d worn a bikini once before. Something she’d purchased herself for her sixteenth birthday. Her mother’s boyfriend had seemed to think it was some sort of invitation. She felt incredibly lucky to this day that he’d been more of a jerk, rather than being outright evil. At least he’d listened when she’d said a very emphatic no. But the lingering memory of his alcohol-flavored kiss was more than enough to remind her of where men sometimes saw invitation and opportunity.

  She didn’t really believe Gage would do anything like that, though. She never had. He would never need to force himself on a woman. He wouldn’t anyway. She was confident in that. But the bikini itself wasn’t the biggest worry. Without her business clothes, without that reinforcing barrier between them, she was afraid she might forget why she couldn’t give in to the attraction they both very clearly felt.

  So don’t forget.

  Gage steered the yacht into an alcove that was surrounded by a sheer rock face that created a natural wall of privacy around what looked like a small swimming area. The water was clear here, too. Lily could see silver flashes beneath the surface that she knew were fish.

  “I can definitely see why you built a resort out here,” she said.

  “I visited Thailand for the first time when I was in college. I knew I wanted to do something here then. I was just waiting for the right time.”

  She sat up in the deck chair she’d been lounging on. “You built the business up by yourself?”

  He nodded. “Started small, with residential homes that I fixed up. Then I found some land to subdivide and built a neighborhood, which got me off to a pretty good start. I started looking for investors after that.”

  “Why resort properties then?”

  “Because they’re more profitable. The industry is more stable. There’s a class of people that will always vacation no matter what.”

  It sounded like her own reasoning for her job. It wasn’t as though she loved public relations more than anything. But she was good at it,
and she made good money at it. It served her sense of ambition, her drive to succeed. Her need to put more and more distance between the new Lily and the Lily she’d left in Kansas.

  “How about you, Lily? Did you start your business by yourself?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “No help?”

  She laughed. “No one in my family would have known how to help. Actually, I don’t have all that much family. Just my mother and whatever man she’s shacked up with at any given moment.”

  More than she’d intended to share. How did he do that? He had a way of making her want to bare all to him. Wanting to make him understand her, when she really should care.

  “It takes a lot of drive to make your own success,” he said, looking at the island in front of them instead of at her.

  “Yes, it does. Why didn’t your family help you, Gage? Your parents had money.”

  “I wouldn’t take money from them. Not after what they did to Maddy.”

  The glint of rage in his eyes was so intense, so feral, that if it had been directed at her, she almost would have been frightened of him. There was so much more to Gage than she’d originally assumed. Carefree playboy. Was that really how she’d seen him just a week ago? Oh, she’d always sensed a level of intensity beneath the surface, but she’d thought that was just ambition, drive for his career. It was more. A lot more.

  “At least she had you,” she said softly.

  There hadn’t been anyone for her. Her mother had been too caught up in the soap opera of her life, and there certainly hadn’t been an ally available in the scores of men her mother had lived with over the years.

  A flash of a feeling, a strange longing, shook her. What would it be like to have someone support her? Stand by her no matter what? To have someone in her life that cared about her in the sacrificial way that Gage loved Maddy.

  She blinked. There wasn’t anyone. And she didn’t need there to be anyway. That was what made her mother so weak. Her mother needed someone else to make her feel complete, needed drama and loud fights and passionate sex to feel alive. Lily made herself feel alive. She pushed herself, supported herself. She was the only one she counted on for anything, and that was the way it had to be. If she let herself down, there was no one else to blame, and there was no one else hurt. It all came down to her.

  Usually, those thoughts left her feeling fortified, but not now. It just made her feel lonely. She used to ache like this all of the time. Wish that someone would care for her, care about her. She’d let it go so long ago she hadn’t realized that those old longings still existed … they were buried, but still there.

  She inhaled a sharp breath of the hot, damp air.

  “Of course she had me,” Gage said, his voice hard. “I would never leave her to fend for herself.”

  A tightening sensation curled in her stomach. Envy, she realized. Envy that Maddy had someone who cared for her so much, to love her so much, even if her parents hadn’t. Lily hadn’t had anyone. She still didn’t.

  “Let’s swim,” she said, the words leaving her mouth before she had a chance to process them. She didn’t really want to reveal her body to Gage. She valued her image, the shield she’d put up around herself, too much to make herself so exposed. But she realized that if she didn’t do something she was in danger of doing something much stupider than that.

  “I didn’t think you swam.”

  “It’s too beautiful to resist.”

  Gage dropped anchor on the boat and stepped back down on to the deck, gripping the bottom of his T-shirt and pulling it off in one fluid movement.

  Lily felt her jaw go slack, and she knew that she looked as awestruck as she felt. She’d never seen Gage without a shirt. She’d mostly seen him in business attire, which was a massive treat for the eyes. And then, in preparation for the yacht trip, when he’d changed from his suit into pair of well-worn, well-fitted jeans and a threadbare T-shirt that revealed hints of his musculature beneath the soft, thin fabric, she’d found him incredible.

  But now, standing in front of her with nothing but those jeans, low-slung, revealing lines that seemed to point straight down to a part of his body that should be completely off-limits to her, even in her mind, he had the power to stun her completely.

  His chest was essentially mind-numbing. Acres of golden skin with just a slight dusting of dark hair, his muscles well-defined, shifting and bunching as he moved around the yacht, tying off ropes and making sure everything was secure for them to disembark.

  When he straightened she couldn’t help but watch the play of his ab muscles, shifting, rippling.

  Oh, my …

  Her heart thundered and her mouth went completely dry.

  She owned beachfront property. She saw half-naked men every day of the week. And she even liked looking at them. But never, ever, had she been unable to do anything but stare. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.

  Now she really needed a swim. And she hoped the water was cold enough to jar her out of whatever stupor her hormones were lulling her into.

  He unsnapped the top button of his jeans and the intensely provocative motion shook her back to reality. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t say anything, only gave her a wicked grin and lowered the zipper on his pants, shrugging them down his slim hips, revealing his swim shorts.

  She narrowed her eyes and grabbed the hem of her T-shirt before hauling it over her head. She tugged her shorts down and tossed them onto the chair before the full impact of what she’d done and what she was wearing could hit her.

  His eyes raked over her, his expression mirroring everything she was feeling, although he didn’t have the dumbfounded look she was sure had been etched onto her face. No, there was nothing confusing about any of this for him. His expression showed nothing but intent. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what to do about it, and suddenly she felt as if she would trade anything, even half of her kingdom so to speak, for an ounce of that surety. To feel confident. To know she could have what she wanted and suffer nothing for the indulgence.

  Her self-imposed strictures had never bothered her before. She’d been happy simply putting her head down and working, climbing the ladder, doing everything she could to put miles between herself and her past.

  Now, for the first time, she wondered if she’d missed something somewhere along the way.

  Part of her wanted to give him the disclaimer that she never wore such revealing swimwear. But another part of her, the more stubborn part, didn’t want him to know that she felt totally out of her depth being alone with a man in the middle of a tropical paradise, wearing little more than a few strings tied together and passed off as swimwear.

  Instead she reached up and released her hair from its clip, letting it fall down over her shoulders in a wave before she headed over to the ladder that led to the water below them.

  She could feel him watching her, could feel the heat of his gaze, touching her like a caress. A shiver ran through her. Her breasts felt heavy and she knew, without having to look down, that her hardened nipples were clearly visible through the thin fabric of her bikini.

  She turned and put her foot on the first rung of the ladder, very determinedly not looking at Gage. She made it halfway down the ladder when Gage dove over the side of the boat, his perfect entry barely making a ripple in the clear pool of water.

  She rolled her eyes and continued down the ladder. “I’m very impressed,” she quipped when he came back to the surface.

  “I am, too,” he said, not bothering to hide his frank appraisal of her.

  Embarrassment warred with pride and arousal. It was the strangest thing. Men had liked her looks before. Men—adult men—had been making passes at her since she was a freshman in high school. Her first, immediate response had always been to discourage. It always made her feel defensive.

  But this didn’t feel like something she was being subjected to. She felt a part of it, like they were both trapped in the same swirling under
tow, unable to escape the pull. She felt like she knew Gage’s thoughts, knew them and shared them. That their desire mirrored each others.

  She dropped into the water, shocked at how warm it was. Gage swam to her, and put his hand over hers, over where she was still clinging to the metal ladder.

  “You can swim, right?”

  She nodded. “I just haven’t in a long time.”

  His touch was doing all kinds of things to her, making her ache, making her want, but also, offering comfort. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever felt before, and she hated that she was feeling it for him. That she was feeling it for her boss.

  He smoothed his thumb over her ring finger, over the ring that was settled there. His ring. “Don’t lose this. I don’t want to have to send a dive team out.”

  She looked at her hand. “Oh!” She hadn’t even realized the ring was still there. And it had felt so heavy at first that she’d been conscious of it all the time. She didn’t even want to know what that might mean. “I can go put it back.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  He took her hand from the ladder and slid the ring off of her finger, climbing quickly back onto the boat.

  She flexed her fingers. Now they felt bare. It was an irony she didn’t enjoy.

  Gage came back down the ladder and she moved to the side as he slid back into the water beside her. “Can you swim to the shore?”

  She nodded with more confidence than she felt.

  “Let’s see if you can beat me,” he said.

  She couldn’t fight the slight smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You know me so well. How can I resist a challenge?”

  “I knew you couldn’t.”

  He turned and swam toward shore, smooth strokes barely making a splash in the crystal water. She followed, trying hard to keep up, but she couldn’t. He must have known she couldn’t or he wouldn’t have issued the challenge. He probably swam competitively or something.

  She gave up trying to preserve her makeup and slipped under the water, knowing she would be faster that way. When she finally surfaced to get air, Gage was already on shore, lying on the beach, the white sand a light dusting on his golden skin.