Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling

by Pamela Browning

  Azure led the way down a narrow alleyway where they soon came to the back door of the Blue Moon.

  “Shh,” she said as she punched a code into the lock. “You wait here, and I’ll slip up the stairs without saying hello to Goldy. She’s likely to be watching TV and probably won’t hear me.”

  But as soon as the back door of the Blue Moon swung open, Lee’s expectations plummeted as he recognized the O’Connors’s Uncle Nate leaning on the counter above Goldy’s desk and chatting.

  “You were right about Leah and me,” he was telling Goldy. “Your tarot cards were right on the market when they said we were going to get married.”

  “Money, dear. You mean right on the money, not on the market. Isn’t he cute?” Leah was stood within the circle of Nate’s arm, beaming proudly. Her smile broadened when she spotted Azure.

  “Azure! Why, we were looking for you!” she exclaimed, whereupon Azure shot an apologetic look over her shoulder at Lee and heaved an inward sigh of resignation. She loved her uncle Nate, and she thought she could grow fond of Leah, but the last thing she wanted was to be involved in a conversation with them at the moment.

  Nevertheless, she presented herself for Uncle Nate’s hug and Leah’s air kiss, quickly pulling away and gesturing toward Lee, who had decided he’d better come inside. “You remember Lee, perhaps, from Karma’s wedding?”

  Lee stuck out his hand. “Yes, I’m Slade’s college roommate. It was good to be at his wedding and to meet Karma.”

  “I’m happy to meet you,” Nate replied, pumping his hand vigorously.

  Leah spoke up. “Are you two going upstairs? I need to borrow a pottery catalog from Paulette.”

  Azure felt a stab of dismay at this development, and she tried to think of a polite way to tell Nate and Leah that this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind for the rest of the evening. “Oh, but—”

  “I think I’ll run along,” Lee injected smoothly. “I know you have some family visiting to do. How long will you be in town, Azure?”

  Wondering how she could salvage time with Lee, she answered distractedly, “I have to stay until my client calls. He’s the guy who lives on the big yacht anchored off Fisher Island.”

  The unexpected revelation hit Lee like a blow to the belly even as Azure went on talking.

  “I thought I’d have heard from him by now, but I haven’t. So I’m sure I’ll be here at least for tomorrow.” She gazed at him hopefully.

  Her eagerness didn’t escape him, but he was still flabbergasted to realize that Azure must be—had to be—the consultant from Wixler who was supposed to contact him. “I—I see,” Lee said.

  “Why don’t you come upstairs with us?” her uncle suggested to Lee.

  He appreciated the invitation, but he knew he had to think this through. He had to decide what to do. And it was for sure that he couldn’t tip his hand now with all these other people around. It would be too embarrassing.

  “Not tonight,” he said as smoothly as possible. And then, because she looked so expectant, he said, “Azure, I’ll call you.”

  Azure’s heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach in consternation. It was a well-known fact among the single women she knew that men always said they’d call you, and few ever did. “Do you have Paulette’s phone number?”

  “It’s 555–6734,” Goldy said with a sidelong look up at Lee. “Would you like me to write it down for you?”

  “I’ll remember,” he said quickly. Too quickly, Azure thought.

  “You can call me on my cell phone,” she said, reeling off the number.

  “I’ll remember that one, too.”

  For her part, Azure doubted that Lee would remember either number. Most people wouldn’t, so why should he be different?

  “Thanks for everything,” she said, knowing the words sounded lame but feeling hampered by the presence of everyone else. She hated to be saying goodbye to Lee—forever, for all she knew—in this brightly lit lobby with Nate, Leah and Goldy looking on. She hated saying goodbye to him, period. She’d had something else in mind, something thrilling and unexpected and entirely out of character for her. She’d wanted excitement, and now she was feeling vastly disappointed that circumstances had denied it.

  Lee touched her hand briefly before he went on out the front door. The Touch again, she thought, feeling slightly more positive.

  “Nice fellow,” said her uncle, but then Leah began to fuss over her uncle and said that she didn’t want him walking up all those stairs to Paulette’s apartment, whereupon he said he’d done it many times and his doctor said stairs were fine, heart attack or not, and Leah said that was all very well, but doctors didn’t know everything and Nate should take it easy.

  As Azure, feeling that the evening had been hijacked, was trailing after the two of them, Goldy beckoned her back to her desk. Through the window she saw Lee’s Mustang pull out of the parking lot and watched as its tail lights disappeared into South Beach traffic.

  “That man Lee,” Goldy whispered conspiratorially, “is hiding something. Mark my words, and it’s something important.”

  This snapped her to attention. “What do you mean?” Azure said. “Like a corpse in the basement?”

  Goldy shook her head, setting her dangly gold earrings jingling. “No, no, it isn’t anything bad. I don’t know what it is. But it’s something good. Something you won’t mind.”

  “Thanks, Goldy,” Azure said with a sigh. “I think.”

  “You’re welcome. And don’t worry. He will call.” And if he doesn’t, I won’t care, Azure told herself in a turnaround brought about by desperation.

  But she knew she would care. A lot.

  BACK ON THE SAMOA’S sundeck, Fleck was enjoying the taste of a good cigar complemented by the last of a bottle of equally good scotch. He greeted Lee effusively.

  “Man, you should have seen the chicks crowd around at the marina when I stepped off the launch today,” Fleck said.

  Lee, hardly over his shock at who Azure was and his disappointment in how the evening had ended, eased himself down onto a deck chair and waited for the steward to appear. Right now he could use a drink.

  Sure enough, the young Portuguese steward stepped out of the shadows. “Sir? What is your pleasure?”

  Lee would have liked to say that his pleasure had been canceled by circumstances beyond his control, but he held his tongue. “I’ll have what he’s having,” he said with a tip of his head toward Fleck’s drink.

  “Certainly, sir.” Miguel hurried to the bar, pouring the drink and returning with swift efficiency.

  Though Lee would have been happy with some quiet time for reflection, Fleck seemed determined to give him an update of his day. “I got into your Mercedes and took one of the girls with me,” he was saying. “We drove up the coast for a while, stopped at a hotel, had a few drinks in the bar. You were right about the women, Lee. Money is the greatest magnet in the world.” He took another drag on the cigar and blew a series of smoke rings toward the moon, which by this time hung high in the sky and threatened to disappear behind a cloud. A great night for love-making on the beach, Lee thought glumly.

  “How did it go with you today, buddy?” Fleck leaned forward, ready for the scoop.

  “Not at all as planned.” His first sip of the scotch rolled smoothly across his tongue, and he hoped the alcohol would put him in a better frame of mind.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I found out that Azure works for Wixler Consultants, the company I’ve asked to handle the start-up plan for franchising. She’s the consultant that Harry Wixler recommended so highly.”

  Fleck looked thunderstruck. “You didn’t know this?”

  “I had no idea. Apparently she’s been waiting for me to call her, and I never got the message that I was supposed to. Miguel? Would you please come here?”

  The steward hurried out from a pantry inside the salon. “Yes, sir, Mr. Santori?”

  “Have you given me all the phone messages I’ve recei
ved since we’ve been anchored here?”

  “I think so.”

  Lee knew that Miguel was new to the Samoa and not accustomed to the routine. “Would you mind checking to make sure?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Santori.” The man hurried away.

  “I take it you got along all right with Azure?”

  “In the first place, this morning when I stopped by Rent-a-Yenta, I didn’t get a chance to give Paulette a piece of my mind. Azure gave me a piece of her mind. And then—”

  Fleck aimed a wily leer in his direction. “Azure didn’t give you a piece of anything else, did she?”

  “Nope. No such luck. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask such pointed and crude questions about the woman I love.”

  The words had slipped out. He didn’t know what to think after he said them, and from the looks of it, Fleck didn’t, either.

  “Love? Lee, holy sh—”

  Lee cut him off. “Damn! I don’t know where the infamous L word came from. I don’t know why I said it.” Bewilderment left him at a loss for more words.

  Fleck stared at him incredulously. “You think you’re in love with this O’Connor woman?”

  Lee took a long pull on his drink as he stared at the lights from Fisher Island rippling on the water. He thought about how Azure had looked in her painter’s coveralls, the end of her ponytail painted green. He remembered the way she had stared up at him in the moonlight, her yearning as strong as his after he’d kissed her, and how she hadn’t turned him down flat when he’d suggested getting a blanket so they could make love on the beach. Was it possible to fall in love with someone you hardly knew over a few things like that? Or had he fallen in love with her at first sight?

  “I love her,” he said heavily, feeling even more helpless as the knowledge washed over him. Was he crazy? Had he taken leave of his mind?

  Fleck’s questioning was blunt and to the point. “You sure you don’t just want to get her in the sack?”

  The scotch had settled into Lee’s stomach, its welcome warmth seeping soothingly through his veins. “I want her that way, of course. I also want a lot more than that.”

  “Okay, Lee. I’m trying to understand.”

  “So am I, Fleck,” Lee said heavily. “So am I.”

  “And she still hates you?”

  “No, she doesn’t hate me. I’m pretty sure of that after tonight.”

  Suddenly Lee felt very tired. This business of pretending to be someone else had begun to wear on him earlier in the day, and now the prospect of keeping up the charade seemed exhausting.

  Miguel materialized from the salon carrying a fistful of pink message slips. “Here you are, sir, copies of your messages.”

  Lee thumbed through them, finally finding one requesting him to call A. J. O’Connor at Harry Wixler’s behest. He’d thought that during his brief conversation with Wixler about the matter, the man had said that his representative was going to call him. He wearily pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he stared at the message, realizing that he was supposed to have called her. And Wixler hadn’t mentioned who his representative was. If he had, Lee would have certainly picked up on the name O’Connor. It was clear to him that they had each been waiting for the other to call.

  “All right, Miguel. It’s my fault. The messages are all here, but I haven’t been paying enough attention to them, obviously.”

  After the steward left, Fleck regarded him with uplifted eyebrows. “Now will you tell Azure who you are?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to come clean.” Yet even as he spoke, he knew that things wouldn’t be the same between them once he was Leonardo Santori and she was A. J. O’Connor. They would be required to relate on a business basis, and she would likely become nervous about who he was and what he could do for her company. They would not be able to laugh together in a humble barbecue place about splashing each other with paint; perhaps they would never get to walk on the beach in the moonlight once she felt self-conscious around him. They might never make love.

  Lee drained his glass and heaved himself out of the deck chair. “I’d better rethink this.”

  “Look, buddy,” Fleck said slowly, “how about one more day of switched identities?”

  Lee thought for a moment or two. He saw no harm in it. “Okay, Fleck. You’re on. One more day and then I spill the beans.”

  Fleck rewarded him with two thumbs up. “Right-o. See you in the morning, Lee.”

  Lee had serious misgivings about the scheme, but they were overshadowed by his desire to find out if the light in Azure’s eyes when she looked at him could be rekindled by plain old ordinary Lee Sanders.

  6

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

  To: A_OConnor@wixler.org

  From: D_Colangelo@wixler.org

  Subject: Looking for A.J.

  a.j., where are you? earth to a.j., earth to a.j.! charming paco asked me if you were out of town and i said yes and he asked when you would be back. what should i tell him? that you’re looking for a real prince?

  luv,

  dorrie

  THE NEXT MORNING, AZURE spent forty minutes on the treadmill at the gym near the Blue Moon. She worked her abs, her glutes, her deltoids, her lats. And when she was through exercising, she treated herself to a sauna, where several other women were chatting as though they knew one another well. At first Azure wished that they’d be quiet so that she could enjoy the sauna in peace, but as they continued to talk, she became more interested.

  “They say the Samoa’s the most enormous yacht to anchor near Fisher Island in years,” said one, a redhead.

  “The biggest since Aristotle Onassis’s yacht back in the seventies,” chimed in the woman in the striped bath towel.

  “Leonardo Santori,” said a third, who nearly swooned as she pronounced his name. “The Dot.Musix whiz.”

  Azure’s ears perked up at this. This was the client who was supposed to call her. This was the guy that she was supposed to help with a start-up franchise business plan.

  “He’s soooo good-looking,” said the redhead.

  “I think I saw him running on the beach once.”

  “How do you know? He’s plenty reclusive, and hardly anyone knows what he looks like. He never even gives interviews.”

  “Still, I hear he’s got scores of girlfriends,” said the one in the striped towel.

  “That doesn’t leave much chance for us, does it?” And they all laughed.

  This overheard conversation started Azure thinking, though. Harry had said that she should wait for Leonardo Santori to call her, but she hadn’t heard from him yet and she certainly didn’t want to be blamed for letting him get away. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for her to call the Samoa?

  THE YACHT SAMOA, NEARLY the size of a small continent, gleamed blindingly white in the sunshine over near Fisher Island. The women gathered around the Sunchaser Marina’s main dock were in their early twenties and very beautiful. When Azure asked about Leonardo Santori, they weren’t reticent.

  “We saw him yesterday,” said one. She was wearing a blue hip-hugger miniskirt and a skimpy white halter top. She nodded toward a hibiscus bush bearing red flowers as big as saucers where one of their group was standing and listening to a portable CD player. “Ginger went for a ride with him in his Mercedes sports car.”

  The girl named Ginger unplugged herself from her earphones. “Leonardo Santori’s no great shakes if you ask me. I’m not going anywhere with him again.”

  One of the others spoke up. “So why, pray tell, are you hanging around here today?”

  Ginger shrugged. “I liked the looks of the guy who runs the launch. He said that maybe we could get together next time he comes to the marina.” She tossed a head of blond curls.

  “Right,” said the other woman sarcastically. She called to two others who were sitting on a boat box and chatting. “You want to go get a drink out of the machine? A Coke or something?”

 
; One of them lifted her hair up so that the breeze could cool her neck. “A cold drink would taste good. It’s hot out here.”

  “Ginger?”

  “Not me. It’s about time for that launch to show up and pick up the daily supplies.”

  As the three women headed toward the drink machine, which was sheltered under a porch outside the marina office, Azure leaned against a dock piling. Scents of tar and brine tickled her nose, and a brown pelican swooped low over her head before skimming the bay in search of his dinner. In the distance, the Samoa rode easily on gentle waves, her flags fluttering in the breeze. No activity seemed to be taking place on deck, though the woodwork shone and the highly polished brass fittings gleamed brightly in the sun.

  “That’s some boat,” Azure said, almost to herself.

  Ginger clicked the CD player shut. “I know. I’ve heard there are marble bathrooms and solid gold fixtures shaped like swans. We all want to go on it.” She sounded wistful.

  “I don’t want to see the yacht,” Azure said carefully. “I only want to know how to contact someone on board.”

  “Oh, is that all? That’s easy enough. I have a number for a phone there.” Ginger seemed to be boasting or, at the very least, trying to impress Azure that she, in contrast to the others, had an in.

  Azure tried not to show her surprise. “You do?”

  “Uh-huh. The guy who brings the launch in—Mario—gave the phone number to me. He said to call and let him know if I’d be here today, and I did. I haven’t told the others yet. They’d be tooooo jealous.” Ginger rolled her eyes, and then she giggled. “I can’t wait to see their faces when I step into that launch and ride off to the yacht with Mario. He’s real good-looking.”

  “Ginger, I’m not interested in Mario, but I would like to have that phone number,” Azure said quickly. She handed Ginger her card.

  Ginger studied it. “You’re not from around here?”

  Azure shook her head and smiled. “No. I have no personal interest in anyone on the Samoa. My reason for wanting to contact the Samoa is purely business.”