by Havana Scott
“Oh? No, nobody has. Should I be expecting someone?” Writing copy for this place would be marvelous, but it would be yet another distraction from my original purpose. Then again…hello, money.
Simon turned around and fetched the waiting pink and green drink and handed it to me. “I think someone will contact you pretty soon. Don’t worry about it now. Enjoy your pomegranate mojito…and your day.”
“Thanks.” I raised my glass and sipped the sweet drink made of rum, mint leaves, and magical rainbows in a liquid form. “Wow, this is good.”
Simon winked, and I tromped off, walking through the main house, a gorgeous high-ceilinged building with dark wooden beams, slow-moving thatched ceiling fans, and gorgeous white couches interspersed between potted bamboo shoots. A few people lazed about, but for the most part, the main house was empty. It was a shame more people didn’t know about this place.
“Ah, the famous novelist!” Turning around, I spotted Natasha Loren from my first day here. Today, she wore a light blue business suit and high ponytail accentuating her arched eyebrows again. “You’re looking well-rested, Miss Jones.”
“You mean pasty.”
“Well, we have the perfect remedy for that. Hiking in the rainforest, a nice sail around the island, maybe a rejuvenating deep-tissue massage?” She tilted her head with a curious look about her. I could so go for something like a spa treatment, since I’d never had one, but what I really wanted was to find Tristan. “Do you know a man who lives out on the water…on his boat, I mean? I think he’s a guide or helper here. He brought me groceries on the first day.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t have guides who fit that description. Do you remember the name of his craft?” Maybe I’d caused her some concern, as though someone unauthorized were loitering out there.
God. I had to say this name out loud. I cleared my throat. “Booty Catcher?”
Natasha stared at me a moment then opened her mouth, as if to say ahhhh, but no sound came out. “Yes, you’re talking about Tristan. Has he not introduced himself to you?” She seemed more surprised by this than the ridiculously offending boat name.
“Yes, he did, but I don’t really know what it is that he does. Only that he’s been…um… Hospitable. Anyway, I was just wondering if you’d seen him. I have something of his I wanted to give back.” Not true, I just needed an excuse to see him.
But Natasha looked like she’d heard that one a thousand times before. She wasn’t buying it, not even with Boardwalk, Park Place, and all four Monopoly railroads. As if every woman on the property wanted to “give something of his back to him.” I felt like a sap, one of the throngs of many. “I’m sure you’ll see him, walking around. Like he owns the place.” She chuckled to herself then turned to speak to an employee waiting for her attention. “Please excuse me, Miss Jones.”
“No problem. By the way, that suit looks fantastic on you, Natasha.” It really did. Really. I wish I had the lithe, long shape to pull it off.
“Oh, that is so sweet!” She leaned into me and did the kiss on both cheeks thing like Europeans tended to do. “Thank you, darling.”
I exited the building and walked down a sidewalk flanked by a sign marked “Marina.” It was after some walking through shady trees, out by a private beach, that I found the familiar (heavenly) form of Tristan Giovanetti standing over a pile of equipment, bent over examining each piece. I paused and took him in.
Damn, I’d hooked up with that man right there. What was I so ashamed of? He was beautiful, and he’d chosen to spend time with me. What a difference one day made to my outlook. “Hey,” I said.
He glanced up, and a big silly grin emerged on his face. I know I blushed. I could feel the rosy heat flushing up my cheeks. I might’ve mistaken his surprise for horror that some girl he’d bedded was back and looking for him, but it wasn’t. He seemed happy to see me. “Paris! Goddess of Writing. Glad to see you took my advice. Ready to scuba dive?”
“What? Me? Uh, hell no. I would drown in a bathtub full of rubber duckies.”
“I’ve seen you swim. And do other things,” he added mischievously. “You won’t drown. It’s easy. I’ll show you everything you need to know beforehand.”
“No, no, Tristan, no, please. Seriously. My dad made me watch Jaws when I was ten and I still haven’t gotten over it. I can’t even take a shower without thinking of being Great White food.”
“There’s no Great Whites here, Paris.”
“Tristan, I don’t want to get eaten by any type of shark.”
“The shark you’ll most likely see is a nurse shark, and they don’t care about humans, and if they do, it’ll gum you to death, because it has no teeth. So, come on, put this on.” He handed me the vest with a bunch of tubes sticking out of it, and if Tristan weren’t the one presenting me with it, I would’ve run far, far away. But this was an excuse to touch his hands again. “This is your BC—buoyancy compensator.”
“I didn’t say I would scuba dive…”
He looked straight at me, green eyes flat and commanding. “Nope. I did. You’ll love it. I promise. Now put that on, and we’ll adjust it.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake—fine.”
He laughed, looking at me. “You love to curse. That’s a sign of intelligence.”
“Shit, shit, shit, fuck, fuck,” I said.
“I’ll take the last two in bed later.” He winked at me, and the flush I’d mentioned earlier spread all throughout my body. Just the mental image of the two of us engaged in a new position some other time nearly knocked me off balance.
“Don’t be so sure, buddy.” I strapped on the vest, along with a weight belt and other nautical things Tristan handed to me. I felt two hundred pounds.
Once I had it all on, he made me take it all off again, then said, “Now, we’ll go out on the boat about a quarter mile and do it all over again. I just wanted you to see how it feels. When you’re in the water, it’ll all feel lighter. Stay close to me, and I’ll show you an amazing reef we have out there. It’s only twenty-five feet.”
“Twenty-five feet? Down under the water?”
“Twenty-five feet is shallow, Paris.” He reached out to grab my arm and shake it. A friendly gesture. As he grabbed all the equipment and started walking toward the marina where his boat bobbed alongside it, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you okay? From the other night?”
Oof. I knew we’d talk about this at some point, and here it was. “Yeah. About that, I’m sorry I bailed the way I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. Or maybe I wasn’t.”
“You don’t have to apologize. The whole thing was sudden, and you were embarrassed to come like a freight train in front of me. I get it.” He held back a laugh.
“Ahem. I did not come like a freight train.”
“Is there something wrong with that? Hell, I rather liked it. Haven’t stopped thinking about it.” He gave me a roguish grin that made my stomach feel all jittery. “My hand has been cramping all day.”
“Oh, you!” My hand smacked him across the bicep. Ow. Muscle, hard. “You’re embarrassing me right now. And besides, you behaved in much the same way.”
“Paris, you know I’m messing with you. A little levity. Look, don’t worry. Yes, I enjoyed myself very much, but we don’t have to do it again if you don’t want to, okay?” There, those words were enough to put me at ease, the fact that he didn’t expect any more. But…I wasn’t sure I didn’t want more. He was looking absolutely beautiful again, with his solid shiny toned arms, smooth chest, and strong abs.
“The thing is, I need time to myself,” I explained. “It’s not that I don’t want to, because I do. I had fun with you the other night, a really sweet time on your boat, but…I’m scared.” There. I said it.
“Of what?” He leaned in and cupped my face, as trickles of electricity shot through me.
“Of getting too involved. I’m sure that sounds crazy and clingy, but I really like you. You’re sweet, you’re persistent, I don’t know
what you do exactly, but I can tell you’re confident about it, and I can talk to you about things that embarrass me, like now, but you’re very nonchalant about it.” Ugh, way to ramble.
He tugged me by the hand toward the end of the marina. “I’m in the same boat as you.”
“Literally. Ha, get it?”
“Crazy girl,” he mumbled, bumping me with his shoulder. He stopped at his boat and plopped everything inside, then stepped in. “You make me smile, which is a huge deal.”
“Why? You don’t come across as serious to me.”
“Maybe not with you, but my work requires me to be. I’ll tell you more, but we’re burning daylight, and it’s going to rain soon. Let’s go for a quick dive, then we’ll meet tonight at the luau and talk?” Such command to his words. There was a world of mystery beneath Tristan’s exterior, and I was dying to find out what lay there.
“Wait, luau?”
He tapped his chin. “Note to self, we need to do a better job of informing guests of activities, even those who hide in their rooms like hermit crabs.” He laughed and shook his head, while I wondered what he meant by we need to do. Maybe he was in management, like Natasha. “Come on, Paris. Get in the boat. Again.” More of the same throaty, deep laugh.
I’d never scuba dove before, but Tristan made the whole process feel natural and easy, much like making love the other night. I should’ve felt awkward breathing through the regulator, hearing my own Darth Vader breath in my mask, or holding his hand underwater as he led me past coral, a variety of colorful fish, even a flying, graceful manta ray.
Not once did I freak out, even when he pointed to a real, live, actual shark and spoke through his high-tech underwater voice gadget. “Nurse shark.” Then, he patted my arm to make sure I was calm. With him, I felt safe. Taken care of. A good thing. A real good thing.
Underwater, everything moved slow and peacefully. Bubbly and billowy, an entire world waiting to be discovered. It was said that up to ninety percent of our oceans were still unexplored, and I thought about how Tristan wasn’t too far from that statistic either. There was still much to learn about him, a whole underwater frontier to discover. And while half of me felt like I should stay away from his potentially dangerous depths, think of him as the water in Jaws, the other half longed to be Jacques Freakin’ Cousteau.
“Oui, oui, oui…” I said into my regulator and laughed so hard, water bubbled up my nose.
Chapter 8
After our scuba expedition, we scrambled onto the boat and booked it back to the resort’s private dock. I don’t think Paris ever noticed the dock was reserved for personnel only or that Booty Catcher was the only boat there, but I had a feeling she was catching onto things. An afternoon thunderstorm was about to hit, and I wanted her back to shore before it did, just in case she had more writing to do.
“What were in your plans for today before I hijacked them?” I checked the sky and took her hand, an easy feeling since we held hands throughout most of the dive anyway. “It’s about to pour.”
What I loved about seeing a woman dripping wet from a shower, dive, or dip in the pool was that you could see right away if her beauty came from makeup, stylish hair, or expensive threads. But Paris had an all-natural girl’s face. Super fucking sexy. “In theory, I should go back and write for the rest of the day, so I can hit the halfway mark.”
I tapped her little turned-up nose. “Don’t forget about the luau tonight. You have to balance life—work hard, play hard, then work again.”
“That sounds so good, Tristan, but my biggest worry is that I won’t work hard enough while I’m here. I know most guests came to vacation, but for me, this month is supposed to be about finishing a project that’s meant so much to me for so long. I’m scared I’m not going to finish, then I’ll have no choice but to go back to my shitty job and live in my shitty boring apartment for the rest of my life, all because I couldn’t get ahead.”
I understood her dilemma completely. I was born to work hard. In fact, my father instilled it in me. He made it perfectly clear that he didn’t have money to just hand us, so my brothers and I were going to have to work our asses off, and so we did. While my friends, Simon and Reece, could afford to party a little harder than the rest of us during college, my focus was on building my dream. One fatal step, and it would be all over.
“I get it. I really do.” Paris’s concern hit home. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be where she was now. “How can I help?”
She gave me a distrustful look. “Why would you want to help, Tristan?”
“Because I like you? I thought that much was obvious.” I smiled, but maybe she wanted an answer beyond that. “Okay, because you remind me of me, Paris, a long time ago. And of my dad and his struggles. So, I want to help you any way I can.” If I could make all her problems go away with money, I would. Another reason to tell her soon that I had plenty of it.
Tonight—I would tell her tonight.
“I remind you of your father, huh? I had no idea he’s a goddess of tempting beauty, charm, and wit.” She clucked her tongue. Mmm, the places I’d want that tongue. There it was, the funny girl whose first words had spoken straight to me. “I get it. I’ll have to tone the awesome down.”
“No, don’t. Don’t change anything about yourself. At all.”
She shied away. “But at the same time, I want to spend more time with you. If I didn’t have a book to write, I’d want to spend all day with you. Is that crazy, that I’m saying all this when we just met a week ago?”
I faced her, still holding her hand. “No, I get it. Some people just click, Paris. I just never imagined it’d be you and me. I feel like I’ve known you way longer than a week.”
She took my arms and circled them around her waist. Soft honey eyes filled with conflict told me everything I needed to know. Despite her goals, she wanted to enjoy life while she could. “I don’t know how to find that balance you were talking about,” she said, staring at my mouth as she spoke. “But I can try once more. See how it goes.”
“I’m not opposed to that at all.” I reached out to swipe a fallen leaf from her wet hair. “I just don’t want to get in your way.”
She sighed, as though losing a battle between brain and body. “Will you come back to the villa with me?” Her voice adopted a husky tone that lit my body up like a control panel at night.
“Are you sure? Because I want you to succeed. I want you to get published and make millions of dollars.” I dropped the equipment bag I was carrying on the ground. On one hand, I wanted to help her stay focused, but on the other, I wanted to see her face again while coming. And again, and again.
She shrugged, fighting tears and inner upheaval. “You know, I’ll probably never be a millionaire, but I don’t care. I just want to pay my bills with my writing. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Stupid, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t stupid, but in my experience, setting one’s goals too low resulted in less than expected, less than hoped for. “No, but…you have to set your goals higher than that, Paris. Reach for the millions, billions even. Reach hard, work hard, and you’ll see yourself surpass what you just told me.” A crack of thunder signaled we either had to start running or get poured on.
“I get what you’re saying, but honestly, I’m really fine with my income, except—”
“Except you’re not,” I interrupted her, not meaning to, but she was contradicting herself. “You just said you have a crappy job and crappy salary. Do you want out of your situation or not? I know a little about this, and I can help you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, but we need to get moving. I can explain.” I grabbed her hand and led her through a shortcut to the resort beach.
“I mean, I want to write, but I don’t care if I’m not rich. I don’t. I don’t even feel right wishing I had billions. Billionaires seem greedy and excessive to me.” She was agitated by my pressure, I could see, but if she—if anyone—wanted their situations to improve, they had to s
tart doing things differently.
Do I seem greedy and excessive? I wanted to ask. It was a question for later, after I’d told her what I did for a living. Clearly, she had an unhealthy prejudice of people with money. Not everyone was greedy or lived excessively.
But her answer confirmed why I liked her so much—because she was cut from a different cloth than every gold digger who’d ever set foot in this resort, but also because she drove me crazy. If she wanted to move forward in life, she was going to have to think more aggressively, but now was no time to argue. Another crack of thunder and lightning sounded overhead.
“Come on. Let’s go this way.” We turned down another path in the trees, hurrying over fallen limbs and piles of leaves, just as the pelting rain started coming down. It was the perfect diffuser to our discussion. Between the canopy above us and the blackened skies, darkness loomed in the woods. The rain came warm but vicious, even with nature’s umbrella above us. When we reached the storage supply shed I’d been looking for, I unlocked the door and was met with a wall of crap I worked to move aside.
She shrieked playfully above the rain, out of breath from running, chest heaving in her bikini top in the most appealing way. Snippets of memories from the other night—curve of breasts, nipples aching to be kissed—pelted my brain. I finished making a column of space inside the storage shed, big enough for us to step inside. “We can wait in here while the rain dies down.”
I could see the worried slant of her eyes, that she’d already gotten too involved with me. But I could also see her checking me out, her gaze closing in on my arms and chest. I moved in for warmth and to hold her face, loving the splash of sun that’d appeared on her cheeks from our outing today. I had to kiss her. Droplets of rain streamed down the contours of our faces, slipping between our lips and tongue. Fucking perfect. I could kiss her all day, and something told me she wouldn’t mind if I insisted.
Once we were tugging and pushing in that desperate way I loved, I pulled away to get a good, long look at her. A fragile but strong woman making her way toward her deepest wishes. I wanted to be there for her. “Just answer me one question…” I shook her shoulders softly. “What do you want? Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”