by J. K. Coi
She lifted her eyebrows and stared him down. “You? What’s going on?”
“I talked to Laura this morning and told her we didn’t need anyone.”
“What? Why? Of course we need a guide.”
“I know my way around the island well enough, so I thought it would be nice if it was just us today.”
“You’ve been here before?” she asked with skepticism. “I find it hard to believe that you worked in some trips to Antigua as part of your world domination plan.” From the first day they met, Ben had made it clear that he was focused on rising to the top as quickly and as completely as possible, starting with being top of the class.
He shrugged, but didn’t say anything. She suddenly remembered that one of those pictures from the article in Prestige had been of him and the famous model Meredith Stone standing on the deck of a sleek motorboat.
“I ah…I’m not sure we should go out alone. What if something happens?”
He stepped closer and tipped her chin up. The sudden contact was startling, but not altogether unexpected. Ben had always been about making other people uncomfortable through confrontation, whereas she tended to avoid confrontation. She had no choice but to meet his gaze, and what she saw there made her pulse jump.
“I’ve missed you, Beth,” he said. His earnest voice carved out a piece of her heart. “We used to spend whole days together.”
“I remember,” she whispered.
“So spend the day with me today. For old times’ sake.”
She shook her head and watched his shoulders tighten. He moved to turn away, but she grabbed his arm. “If I spend the day with you, it won’t be for old times’ sake,” she said. “If we do this, it has nothing to do with the people we used to be. We live in the moment just for one day and don’t think about yesterday…or tomorrow.”
The heat in his eyes flared. “Deal.”
She got in the Jeep and turned to look over her shoulder into the open rear seat. There was a large cooler back there, some snorkel equipment, and a navy blue duffel bag with “Optimus Inc.” embroidered in yellow on the side of it.
She remembered when he had told her he was moving to New York and that he wanted her to go with him.
I’ve got a solid partnership offer in New York, and the industry there has started to really take off. If we stay in Seattle, we’d never get off the ground. The market here can’t sustain another tech start-up, but in New York, we’d be unstoppable together.
I can’t go to New York with you.
Why not? What’s keeping you in Seattle?
He’d kissed her then. A kiss that still curled her toes when she dared think about it, that still woke her in the middle of the night with salty tears in her throat and his name on her lips. A kiss that had changed everything…ruined everything.
She’d shoved him away, her heart pounding so hard she hadn’t known if it was out of exhilaration or abject fear. What the hell did you do that for?
I’ve been wanting to do that for months.
Why? Why would you jeopardize what we have? Ruin our friendship?
We could be more than just friends, Beth. We could be more than just business partners too. All you have to do is take a leap of faith and come with me to New York. It’ll be an adventure.
But Elizabeth Carlson was not the adventurous type, and she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t take a leap of faith like that…not on a man like Ben.
She turned back around as he got in the car beside her and turned the ignition. “Do you know where you’re going?” she asked as the engine revved, hoping her nervousness didn’t show.
“Nope. But it’s an island. How could we get lost?” His grin said he was having fun with her.
A smile pulled at her lips despite herself. She’d almost forgotten how easy it was to be around him, how quickly he could set her at ease, and how often he’d made her smile and laugh. “All you had to say was, ‘yes, I know where we’re going.’”
“But that isn’t nearly as much fun as messing with you.” He chuckled and snapped the gear shift into first.
She snorted and reached for her seat belt as he sped down the lane and through the tall iron gates of the resort. The wind whipped through the Jeep and tore at her hair. At first she tried to hold her sun hat on her head, but gave up soon enough and shoved it down on the floor between the seats in the back with everything else, even though it meant constantly tugging hair out of her mouth.
The Jeep accelerated, and she held tight to the little handlebar attached to the door. The roads were narrow and winding, but Ben drove with relaxed confidence. Her gaze fell to his fist on the ball of the gear shift. Veins popped under his skin and worked their way up his hand and arm. Hands like that could wreak havoc over her body.
She swallowed hard. Hands like that would be firm as they dragged over her skin. Firm and deliberate, knowing just where to put extra pressure, getting to know the feel and shape of her.
She shook herself and tried to find something else to focus on. The road they traveled wound away from the shoreline for a little while as they drove through a copse of trees. When it meandered back into the open, across the fields she caught random glimpses of the Caribbean, sparkling like jewels under the sun.
It was a little surreal being in such a place. It was even more surreal being here with Ben Harrison. She wasn’t going to worry about it, though. Not now. It was a beautiful morning and promised to be a scorching hot day. She was in Antigua for goodness sake. It didn’t matter who she was with or where they ended up, she was going to enjoy herself.
And that’s an order.
With that decided, she burrowed into the narrow seat and sighed, letting all of her worries fall away…just for a little while.
She gazed out the window, amazed by the beauty of the island. As excited as she’d been coming off the airplane early yesterday morning, it had been a long, overnight flight from Seattle with a delayed stop in Miami. She’d wanted to pay attention to the sights on the drive from the airport, but nodding in and out in the taxi had been more her speed by that point, so this was her first good look at everything.
“The resort we’re staying at is close to the English Harbour, which is nice and deep and has some good diving areas,” Ben said, raising his voice to be heard over the air rushing between them. “But I wanted to take you to Cades Reef. It’s beautiful there. The snorkeling is great, and part of the reef has been turned into an underwater reserve. That’s where the boat is waiting for us.”
She’d never been on a boat, at least not a real one with an actual motor. Hell, she’d never been snorkeling before either. It was starting to sound like she was in over her head before she’d even gotten into the water.
“Are you okay with this?” He frowned, no doubt reading her silence as insecurity. “If you’re not comfortable with it, we could always turn around and hang out back at the resort, or just go to the beach for the day.”
“No,” she croaked with a wave of her hand. “You were right, this sounds like it will be loads of fun. I love to snorkel.” Turning away so he couldn’t see her grimace, she focused on the dirt road winding out in front of the Jeep.
Why couldn’t she just tell him she barely knew how to swim, and snorkeling sounded like something you did in front of the bathroom mirror with a mouth full of Listerine?
Growing up two hours from the Pacific coast meant nothing when she’d rarely gotten out of the city because normal family excursions would have meant time away from work, and neither of her parents had ever heard of the word “vacation.”
When her mother died from cancer—which might have been caught earlier if she hadn’t stubbornly refused to take time off from work to see a doctor—her father had actually given it a half-assed shot. He took a single day off work during the height of the summer when she was seventeen and Daniel was thirteen, rented a rickety old tin boat with wooden oars, and brought them fishing for the afternoon.
That trip was the only memory she h
ad of her father that didn’t involve a glowing computer screen between them or the interruption of an important conference call. Even so, the memory had always tasted bittersweet, probably because it was all she had. And even that had been too little, too late. Liz’s father died in a car crash the following spring, without even seeing her graduate from high school. Not that he would have been there if he’d lived…it probably would have conflicted with a business meeting.
Neither of their parents had ever noticed how their intense career focus had alienated them from their children—and even each other, since she couldn’t remember seeing them connect on a personal level in any meaningful way. But it turned out there wouldn’t have been enough time for either of them to change their ways even if they’d wanted to. They both died too soon…no doubt thinking at the very end that their biggest regret would be leaving their work unfinished.
She pinched her eyes closed against the rush of bitterness she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years, and started to tell Ben she had no idea how to snorkel. But her jaw snapped shut again before even a squeak came out. Stubborn, stubborn.
She’d rather drown in a dramatic tangle of flailing arms and flippered legs than declare out loud that she couldn’t keep up with this particular man on a simple vacation outing. And if that made her bull-headed, then so be it.
She turned her attention back to the scenery. Pretty soon she was entranced, soaking in the sunshine and marvelling at the colorful plant life. Beyond the road and the hills, she could see the clear blue-green of the sea, and a ton of sailing ships out in the harbor spreading their sails. One of them in particular was huge. It would take a pirate crew to sail that thing. She hoped to God that wasn’t the kind of “boat” Ben had been talking about.
After a few minutes of silence, she caught him watching her. “Are you having a good time?” he asked.
“How could I not? This place is gorgeous.” She grinned and threw up her hands, feeling amazingly free. The wind was warm on her face, the scenery was breathtaking, and Ben was looking at her like she was the only woman in the world. She could handle this. In fact, she never wanted it to end.
Ben stepped on the gas, and she squealed as they took the next turn, slapping her hands on whatever she could grab—which happened to be his thigh. She quickly pulled back and gave him a dirty look, but he only laughed.
They drove by another small field. “Oh wait, look at that. Slow down.” She pointed, glancing over at him in her excitement. “Look at those tall white birds standing next to the cows. I’m surprised they don’t get trampled.”
“Those are cattle birds, a type of egret. You’ll only find one bird standing guard for each cow. They wait there for the animal’s hooves to stir the ground and then snatch up the juicy insects that surface from the disturbed earth.”
The entire drive was amazing. She was soon pointing to everything from coconut and cinnamon trees to pelicans and green lizards. Ben would tell her about them all, sounding as knowledgeable as any one of the locals. It was like having her very own tour guide, and she couldn’t hold in her enthusiasm and wonder.
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“You know me,” he said with a shrug, turning back to face the road. “I don’t go into any situation without knowing everything I can about it. Whether it’s my surroundings or…” he glanced at her sharply. “…my competition.”
That was the first time he’d mentioned their businesses. She swallowed hard. “So, am I your competition?”
“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”
She nodded.
He sighed. “It didn’t have to be that way. We could have been working together.”
“Don’t.” She stopped him, not ready for this conversation. “It wasn’t right. We would have been horrible business partners, and I could never have left Seattle.”
Surprisingly, he let it go. When she glanced back at him, his face was a mask of thoughtfulness.
A little while later, they parked the Jeep and walked down the boardwalk to the docks. She followed him, but wasn’t paying much attention to where they were going, because she was staring at all the yachts. When Ben stopped and pointed to the boat they were going to take to the reef, her mouth fell open in shock and dismay. “That isn’t a boat. It’s a race car on water.”
The monstrosity had to be at least thirty-five feet long. Not as big as most of the other boats, but too big for a simple snorkeling trip for two people. It looked like a shark coming out of the water, all pointy up at the front like a fin—was the front called the bow? Or was it the aft? The stern? Beth knew as much about boats as a cat did about cross-stitch.
Either way, what she could only assume was the hood of the boat extended across the top to a windshield at about the half-way point, which came over the dash and front driver and passenger seats. Then the rest of the deck was left open to the balmy sea air.
Maybe it was shaped like that for aerodynamics. That, and the two propeller things sitting in the water on the back of the boat probably meant it went really fast.
Like…super fast.
Her heart did a quick double thump.
Speaking of fast, the paint job was all white and black stripes that ended in a decorative, sporty swirl. The boat had dark tinted windows like the rebuilt Mustang her high school boyfriend used to drive around town. She’d broken up with him after he drag raced some other guy in a souped-up Honda Civic on the curving mountain roads, with her in the passenger seat.
A railing went all the way around the front of the boat—she was pretty sure boat people called it the bow—of the ship. Ship. Not a boat. It didn’t feel right to call this a simple boat.
“Where’s the captain?”
He smiled. “I’m the captain.”
“Somehow, I can’t believe the hotel or the tour company or whoever owns this thing is okay with letting us take that out all by ourselves. Wouldn’t we need some kind of license?”
“I mentioned that I’ve been to Antigua before, right? I guess I forgot to add that I have a boating license.” Ben threw the snorkel gear over the little railing.
He held out his hand with a raised brow. “Are you okay with this? I just figured that this way we’ll be able to spend as much time out on the water as we want, and there’ll be no one else around to get in the way.”
“It seems to me that’s something you could have mentioned back at the hotel before we left.”
“You were already on the verge of cancelling. That would have pushed you over the edge.”
She sputtered. “You don’t know that.”
“And you need this break,” he continued.
“You’re starting to sound like my friend Sarah.”
“Are you saying you weren’t this close to coming up with an excuse not to come today?”
He was right, and they both knew it. She glared up at him, but after a long moment she muttered a choice swear word under her breath, grabbed his hand, and let him lead her up onto the deck.
The idea of willingly letting him drive her around in this speeding, sinkable death trap made her break out in hives, but she was determined never to admit it and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.
That didn’t mean the ship wasn’t absolutely gorgeous. The deck was made of beautifully polished cedar, and the chairs and benches spread out across the back end were upholstered in a pristine white leather. Sitting out in the open with all the gulls flying overhead, it was like begging one of them to drop a present, but she supposed not even the birds dared mar the perfection of the water craft.
She looked around at all the spotless chrome and the pristine, polished wood floors. The hatch leading down into the hull of the boat was open, and she caught a glimpse of mirrors and more leather. It didn’t look very big, but had they managed to fit a bed down there?
Never mind. She didn’t want to know that.
“What do you want me to do?” She was completely out of her element and was pretty sure i
t showed.
“You don’t need to do a thing. Just sit down and relax while I get us launched.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have a cell phone or any other valuables that you want me to store? Wouldn’t want anything to get wet that shouldn’t get wet.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t bring anything.”
There was a long bench seat at the back of the boat behind the captain’s chair, and she perched on it stiffly while Ben put his cell phone in the boat’s dashboard compartment and then went to store their gear below deck. When he returned, he handed her a bottle of water and took a long swig from another one, head tipped back. A single drop escaped his lips, tracking down his chin and the column of his throat. She held her breath and followed its progress into the collar of his shirt.
She snapped the cap on her bottle and took a small, distracted sip, watching him over the small circular rim. The water was nice and cold, a good check on her overheated libido, which was obviously flaring up at the slightest provocation.
He strolled about the deck taking stock. After only a minute or two, Liz heard his cell phone ring from within the dash. He glanced over but didn’t rush to answer it. “Shouldn’t you get that?” she asked, remembering how her father could never let the phone ring more than once before he grabbed it.
“It’s fine, everyone knows I’ve got the day off today.”
She raised her eyebrows, but hid a smile behind her water bottle. She noted the way his biceps flexed as he unsnapped covers and wrapped them up for storage. He disembarked to do a walkabout of the craft, smiling at people hanging out on the dock as he did whatever it was he needed to do to get ready for them to leave.
She found herself twisting around to keep him in her sights, even leaning her chin on her arms to watch him move. Then he came back on board and started flipping switches on instrument panels. Hell, even the way he did that was sexy. Damn it.
Her mouth went dry when he bent over the edge of the boat to catch the ropes someone down on the dock had untied and threw up to him.
Ben moved to stand in front of the wheel—which was no bigger than one you would see in a car and didn’t look anything like the big captain’s wheels on the pirate ships in the movies.