“What have you done?” Sassy scrunched up her freckled face. “If you touched my friend I swear–”
“Listen up, little girl. She’s worked herself to exhaustion every day to make this photo shoot happen while you were doing interviews and playing tourist with my brother. You are not going to come here and act as if she has wronged you in any way. You tell her thank you, tell her how much you appreciate her, how fabulous she looks in the bikini she did not want to put on. In fact, you should run to that bungalow and find something to wear and be part of this shot she wants of all the models together. Support her, or we’re going to have a problem.”
The brat had the nerve to roll her eyes. “The first problem we have is with you telling me what to do. I’m not a child anymore.”
“Then act like an adult. For Joe’s sake, and Holly’s, we have to get along. But when you act like a spoiled brat, you make it impossible. You don’t walk onto a set and start throwing accusations around. Holly deserves better than that.”
“She deserves better than you. She may have let you flirt with her, but she’s never going to be one of your conquests.”
He gave into the laugh. If anything, he was hers. “Go find something to wear for the picture, brat. And tell her thank you.”
Sassy shook her head, red hair framing her face. “You need to stop talking to me like I’m a twelve-year-old idiot. I know what to do to help this photo shoot. Holly and I built this business together. I won’t tell you what real estate to invest in and you keep your opinions about my fashion line to yourself. That will help us get along much better.”
She spun on her heel and ran for the bungalow. With her gone the burn of anger waned, the chill of Holly’s actions seized him. She’d acted as if their pose was only for the camera. She’d begun their relationship with a ridiculous game. Had she just been playing with him all along?
Chapter Seventeen
Holly tucked her knees under her and leaned back on the white chaise, the conversation and laughter of the party blending with the Spanish guitar being played by one of the guys who’d modeled today. After the shoot wrapped, everyone had gathered on Harm’s patio. There hadn’t been an agenda, just friends enjoying one another’s company and talking about the day.
It reminded her of home. Odd how such different places could harbor the same sense of community. People pitched in wherever needed because it was the right thing to do. Just to be neighborly. She’d forgotten how comforting a support system like that could be after all the years in Miami and New York.
She felt Harm’s presence even before he sat beside her on the chaise. He handed her a glass and took a sip of his own.
“Does mine have vodka?” She liked soda and lime, but she’d earned a drink and had seen others drinking Anguillan punch. There had to be alcohol in that.
He winked at her. “You can even keep a bottle in the wet bar if you want.”
She ignored the innuendo of that remark. With the way he’d been so grabby and possessive as soon as Saskia had arrived, Holly had a sinking suspicion he’d played her to hurt Sass. “Do you not drink at all?”
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?” Holly took a careful sip, finding the flavor of vodka well hidden in the bubbles and lime.
He shrugged. “It was part of recovery. I didn’t miss it, so I never tried to add it back in.”
She titled her head to the side, remembering the photos of him so frail. Questions had sprinted through her mind all day about what caused him to be so ill, what allowed him such an amazing recovery. But there had been no time to play twenty questions, and besides, she knew men would tell you far more if you listened than if you asked.
He nudged her arm with his. “Why are you looking at me like I sprouted wings?”
“When you say recovery,” she swallowed, climbing over the awkwardness. “Do you mean from an addiction?”
“No.” He pulled away, his back ramrod straight. “Why would you think that?”
“Recovery is a term AA uses. You’ve been very generous with your home and time, but everything about you personally has been hidden away.”
He nodded and took another sip, the melody of the guitar and soft percussion of the waves surrounding them until he finally spoke. “I have celiac disease. Growing up I would have these long spells of illness and pain, but doctors wrote it off as psychological because I’d lost my mother or didn’t like my boarding school. But during college my health unraveled. I had to excuse myself from my masters’ program because I was hospitalized so much.”
She took his hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry. And embarrassed. I had no idea.”
He spread his fingers, lacing their hands together. “It’s hard to find a place in conversation to bring up how your body failed you. Things had gotten pretty desperate before my father found a clinic that specialized in diet therapy. It was hard to believe that after a decade of medical intervention, something as simple as food and exercise could help.”
“It’s hard to believe you were ever so sick.” She looked over the honed muscles of his bare chest, the amazing biceps, his corded forearms. “You’re the picture of health now.”
“It took years to recover. And now that I have the strength and stamina to do things I only dreamed about before, I push myself even harder.”
“Is the diet hard to follow?”
“Not for me. But then, towards the end of my disease I hated all food. Everything made me ill. Now, it’s simple, fresh foods. Meats, fish, vegetables, fruits. With celiac, if I eat something with gluten things get dicey. And I found I do better without any grain or dairy.”
“If I eat a cheese Danish and kiss you…”
“I might pay for it. Vodka is fine though.” He tilted his head towards hers and she closed her eyes, letting him paint her lips with gentle kisses.
This was much more like the night she had planned. She deepened the kiss and wondered if anyone would mind if they ditched the party to head upstairs. There was still time before Sass and Joe were due back from ferrying the crew to St. Maarten.
Glass shattered and they broke apart. Saskia’s accusatory stare cut through them. Her stomach plummeted and twisted. There wasn’t enough vodka in the world to deal with this.
“What the hell is going on?” Saskia demanded. Joe rushed to her side, confusion marring his face.
Harm stood, a humorless smile stretched across his face. “Sassy, I have guests. And they’re all staring at your theatrics. Let’s take this inside and we can show you how adults have conversations without breaking things.”
Sass pulled back her arm like she was about to slap him. Every muscle tightened and Holly jumped between them because, given their history, it just might happen.
“Harm’s right. Let’s go inside and talk.”
“There is nothing either of you can say to make me okay with this.” Tears welled in Saskia’s blue eyes and Holly found it hard to resist the urge to hug her. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Harm strode past them all, heading through the open glass doors into the villa. Joe turned Sass and led her inside, leaving Holly to trail behind like a caboose on a runaway train.
Everyone had been so happy and carefree moments ago, all these strangers who’d helped her without expecting anything, and now they looked at her with a curious pity. They knew Harm’s reputation, guessed she was no different than his usual victim.
Except he was different than they all thought. Wasn’t he? A war battled in her head and heart between what she knew and what she felt. At the doors she turned and faced the hushed group.
“Stay and enjoy yourselves, everyone. You deserve it for helping us today. This little kerfluffle will be smoothed out and boring in no time. Somebody do something scandalous so the island isn’t stuck talking about how Harm and Sassy are still fighting or how a few of Anguilla’s most beautiful were crushing on the photographer.” She winked and pointed at one of the models who had been obviously flirting with Jason.
Laughter returned to the group, so she headed back towards the sounds of yelling. She despised mediating arguments. With her three older brothers she’d stepped in to keep things from coming to blows, with her parents she’d interceded and distracted, and whenever Saskia’s red-headed temper flared at distributors or suppliers she found common ground.
But this was different. This time she was the common ground, the cause of the fighting. She’d never wanted to run away more. If she gambled on Harm, she’d hurt Saskia and risk being wrong about him. If she turned her back on him Saskia would be appeased, but it would feel like she’d removed her soul and was left to walk around the world hollow. He’d forever be a what-if, anchoring her from moving forward with her life.
“You have no say in this,” Harm roared from inside the TV room. She peeked in to find them each standing behind one of the recliners positioned in a semi-circle in front of the mammoth screen. Like the giant chairs could protect them from the barbs they tossed at one another.
“The hell I don’t. She is my best friend and I’m not going to let you use her.” Saskia moved in front of Harm’s recliner.
“Hannes, handle your woman. If she hits me again I’ll pick her up and toss her out of my house on her ass.”
Johannes clapped his hands. “Do I need a ring bell for you two? Mannus, you have to watch your tone with her. And, schatje, you have to let them talk.”
“I’m not going to let him take advantage of her. Holly is the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” she said, stepping into the fray. “I love you too, Sass. But you need to calm down. Harm hasn’t done anything to me.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I knew you were smarter than that.” Sass rushed towards her and wrapped her up in a hug she desperately needed. Except it wasn’t the embrace of a friend she wanted.
She caught Harm’s dark gaze, letting it swathe her in his reassurance. He couldn’t fake that, could he? This bone-deep connection had to be real.
An I-like-trouble grin brightened his features. “Holly kissed me first. I haven’t been the same since.”
Saskia released her and spun around to face Harm. “In your dreams.”
“Yeah, there too.” His cocksure grin was so not helping.
“Harm, really? I know you’re trying to get a rise out of her, but you’re making me look like an idiot.”
Sass staggered back as if the information had slapped her across the face. “Why? Why would you kiss him?”
“I got to know him. Or maybe it was the him he wanted me to see. I don’t know. I haven’t seen this side of him since you left.”
“Okay, we have to get you out of here.” Saskia took her hand, patting the back of it like a distant cousin at a funeral. “I never should have left you alone with him. It’s like he’s brainwashed you. Come with me and we’ll take a couple of days to figure out what happened.”
“The hell you will.” Harm rounded his chair and reached for her. “Holly is staying right here, with me.”
Panic lanced through her, making her heart race and her mind flash with crazy images of being pulled apart in a gruesome game of tug-o-war. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to stomp down the blackness rising up to grab her ankles. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t make them both happy. And she didn’t think she’d be able to be happy without both of them in her life.
“I am not some toy you fight over on a playground.” Her voice shook with emotion. Adrenaline raced through her body, urging her to run far and fast. But she couldn’t outrun them, either of them. She’d invested everything in Sassy V, years in her relationship with Sass. You couldn’t sever something like that without hanging yourself.
Which meant Harm was the element that had to go. Her stomach lurched and bile burned the back of her throat. She clutched her middle tighter and eyed the door.
“Oh, honey.” Sass stepped closer and rested a hand on her arm. “For the last three months you’ve been telling me things were moving too fast with me and Johannes, and I’ve known him all my life. We just have to get you away from Harm so you can get your bearings again and see this for what it was. A mistake.”
“The hell it is.” He gripped Holly’s shoulders and spun her to face him, raw vulnerability beaming from his dark eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening between us because I’ve never felt it before. But I’ll do anything to keep feeling it. When it is just you and me and the world goes quiet, nothing is better than that.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, trying to swallow over the ninja star knifing her throat. She was not going to be all girl about this and actually cry. Tears solved nothing. She had to come up with some solution, but the emotions swamping her left her brain murky and slow. There had to be an answer.
“Don’t listen to him, Holly. This is a game he’s playing. He’s using you to get back at me.”
She shrugged off Harm and spun to face Saskia, her heart pounding in her ears. “Wow. Nice one. Because a man like him could never actually be interested in the chubby girl from Alaska. It’s nothing I haven’t thought. What in the world could he see in me?”
Saskia blanched, her blue eyes going wide. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Good,” Harm barked from behind her. “Because that would be wrong, and fucking rude, and you really should have learned some manners by this point.”
Saskia clenched her fists and moved towards Harm. Holly went numb as she stepped aside, her body growing cold. She cared about them both too much to be the cause of any of this ugliness. Decision made, she kept walking until she was out the door.
Chapter Eighteen
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Joe’s voice, the Dutch accent softer than his brother’s, floated towards the sea.
Odd how she’d known it wasn’t Harm just from the way he climbed the iron stairs to the roof. She could recognize him by footfalls. She stared unblinking at the horizon, waiting for logic and reality to harden her heart.
The cushion dipped as Joe sat beside her on the rooftop bed. They sat in the stillness, watching the sea swallow the sun. She tried to believe that just like the strokes of color on the horizon, this feeling would fade into blackness.
“I have to choose her.” The words sounded tight and strangled, even to her own ears.
“I didn’t choose.” He leaned back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Yes, you chose her.” Which made this patently unfair. But no one would be happy trying to exist beneath that kind of tension.
“You think?” His carefree tone felt mocking. She wanted to like him, really. She was trying to do the right thing for everyone and it was as if he were calling her out.
“Harm thinks so.” She closed her eyes and swallowed though her throat had all but swollen shut. She knew she needed to go downstairs and pack, spend the rest of her time on Anguilla in Saskia’s childhood bedroom. Or maybe she should just head to New York on the first flight she could find and let Sass deal with setting up the condo.
“He wouldn’t say that. And he would never ask me to choose.”
“Lucky you.” She looked out at the wisps of color stretching and fading into the lavender sky. She wanted to scream at them to wait, to hold on tight until she could gather her courage.
“He’s not asking you to take sides either.”
“It isn’t worth ruining my personal relationship with Saskia or my career. She and I won’t work as smoothly with this between us, and things are moving too fast with Sassy V for there to be snags I can avoid.”
“How professional of you.” Did he sound angry? He did not get to be the angry one.
“He hasn’t been able to sustain a relationship in more than a decade.”
“What’s worse? Keenly knowing what you don’t want, or stringing along some woman trying to make yourself want her?”
She turned towards his lounging form, annoyance beginning to fester. “I live in New York, and he lives on a Caribbean
tourist paradise with a never-ending stream of vacationers looking for a good time. He won’t be lonely long.”
Joe nodded, then rose from the bed. He brushed his hands on his shorts and pinned her with penetrating stare. “When I came up here, I was looking for him. This is where he comes to think.”
“I didn’t know.” She’d only been looking for a place she wouldn’t be found and cornered by the two people she loved the most. Did she love him? She couldn’t. It was too soon for love. Much too soon.
“He’s been looking for you, and Sass is downstairs packing your trunks and waiting for you to come back.”
“So they can tear me in two again. I can’t see why I’m not racing back for more. Doesn’t everyone want to be a toy for two people who hate each other to fight over?”
“They don’t hate each other.”
“You do know we’re talking about Harm and Sass, right?”
“If he hated her he wouldn’t bother, and if she hated him she wouldn’t care what he thought.”
“You might be right about how he feels, but Sass genuinely can’t stand him. I’ve heard about how awful he is every day for the last few months.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, the crochet overlay of her dress imprinting on her arms and palms. Saskia had spent days working out the design, promising to work some kind of magic with the pattern that would make it flattering on a curvier frame.
Holly couldn’t forget that eagerness, nor could she turn her back on the way Sass got flustered in business meetings. They were better together than they were individually. Who to choose was such a no brainer, it gave her a headache that she struggled with the choice.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Harm was hard on all of us growing up, very parental after our mother died. He expected a lot and called us out whenever we disappointed him. Antonnis and I love him for it, but it never worked with Sass. I’m trying to get him to meet her where she lives, to see that she succeeded in spite of doing things differently.”
“No offense, but you haven’t made much progress in the last three months.”
Caribbean Casanova: Under the Caribbean Sun, Book 2 Page 9