SEALed With a Twist

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

  “If we’re instant BFFs, shouldn’t you have my back here?” Skye asked Quinn, eyes to the pebbled ceiling.

  Quinn slugged back the last drops in her glass. “Not on only the second margarita, no,” she decided, reaching for the nearby carafe to refill her glass.

  “Spill,” Mandy demanded. “And don’t scrimp on the details.”

  “I was drunk!” Skye protested. “And upset! You be made to be a bridesmaid at your sister’s wedding to your ex-fiancé and tell me how you’d handle it!”

  “Holy crap,” Quinn breathed.

  But Skye was on a roll. “Only turns out I didn’t sleep with a security guard, I slept with a Navy SEAL, for cripes sake, and, oh yeah, he’s back here at Casa Blanca this weekend.”

  Mandy leaned over Skye to peer at Quinn. “What did you put in her margarita? Truth juice?!”

  But Quinn was too busy having her own epiphany. “Oh my God, you’re Twist’s debutante!”

  Mandy jerked back to gape at Skye, “You’re a debutante?!”

  “Keep that up, you’ll get whiplash,” Quinn warned.

  “Shit,” Skye muttered. She heard Mandy gasp at profanity coming from her. Skye flopped back in her chaise and threw an arm up to cover her eyes. At this rate, the whole resort would know who she was by the end of the day. And whose fault was that?

  Hers. Maybe more than she realized. Running away had started as a need to get lost after her public humiliation, to not have a front-row seat to the happy couple’s nuptial bliss. She wanted, for once in her life to not be a Thornquist, but she didn’t exactly go far, did she?

  Almost like she wanted someone to find her.

  To care enough to look for her.

  Suddenly, Quinn’s words penetrated and Skye’s head whipped around to the woman.

  “You know Grant? Wait, you’re Jasper’s wife, aren’t you?”

  “You call him Grant?!” Quinn reeled back and regarded Skye with less than friendly eyes. “No one calls him Grant.”

  Skye bristled, even as a warmth swept through her to know she had something with Grant that was unique. “I do.” And Quinn’s narrowed eyes confirmed the woman heard the challenge in Skye’s words. Suddenly, all friendly-BFFs-with-margaritas was out the window.

  “All right. Everyone take a breath,” Mandy soothed, reading the suddenly charged air. She waved her wet nails and considered the other women. “Skye,” she decided. “Start at the beginning.”

  Quinn handed over her freshly filled glass. “Liquid courage. You look like you need it.”

  Skye took the peace offering and threw back a few good swallows.

  “Good thing there’s no pools nearby,” Quinn mumbled to Mandy while watching Skye. “Don’t think she can drown in the Jacuzzi, right?”

  Mandy giggled and Skye shot them both a look. “Cone of silence?”

  The women exchanged speaking glances, then nodded. Skye took another large swallow and thought of where to start.

  “I was engaged to a man I’d been dating for about a year. He was a perfectly acceptable, thoroughly vetted candidate for my hand in marriage. This is important in my world. Any prospective spouse has to meet my family’s approval.”

  “Your family?” Mandy gently prodded.

  At this point, Skye resigned herself to at least these two women knowing her secret. Along with the discrete spa employees, naturally, who continued to work on all three of them while Skye imparted her sad sack tale. Quinn seemed pretty sharp and Mandy was no dummy, so it was hardly like Skye would be giving them a huge revelation at this point. And she figured the spa techs likely had ample experience keeping confidences far more salacious than Skye’s family dramalama.

  “I’m a Thornquist. My family’s been around since the Pilgrims crash landed on that big rock thing and is rich as Croesus and as obnoxious about it as you might imagine.” She shot them both a knowing look. “But I’d be shocked to hear you hadn’t already figured out.”

  “I did,” Quinn allowed carefully, not all the way back to friendly, peace offering or not. “But only five minutes ago—and it’s not like I’ve known you long.”

  “I, ah, I read your grandmother’s obituary,” Mandy admitted. “I’ve known since then.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “You had your reasons. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. At least it explained why you were so classy. I knew you were too good to clean toilets.”

  “I’m not,” Skye objected heatedly. “God, Mandy. Okay, yeah, sure, it’s not the most glamorous job, but there’s honor in what you do, working hard to make something beautiful, maybe for someone who has never stayed somewhere as nice as this, who’s maybe splurging for once or on their honeymoon like Quinn here. Make a room or a villa special for them, those little touches I took for granted before I was responsible for them.

  “And never before have I actually earned my own money, or needed to provide for myself, and you gave me a way to do that and a place, a chance, to find out what I wanted to do next, what I needed to do next.

  “No way am I too good for any of that.”

  There was silence between them for a moment. Then Mandy sniffed once and reached out to squeeze Skye’s hand. Quinn watched her toes get painted and gave them their moment.

  “So, you were engaged,” Quinn prompted, clearly done with said moment. “But it was your sister who had the wedding?”

  “My boyfriend proposed,” Skye continued, accepting a Kleenex from the nail tech with a watery smile. “And for about a week, it was all congratulations and wedding planners. What I didn’t know was there were also boardroom negotiations. Not the customary prenup or anything. Full on corporate merger.”

  She paused because she found the next admission embarrassing on a very female level. “My fiancée didn’t…court me because he wanted me. He did it under orders from his father. Their company was going under and my father made marriage a condition of bailing them out with a merger. My sister had a well-earned reputation on the party circuit; I was deemed the more acceptable option. He asked me out under the condition that I be wooed and kept in the dark about the families’ arrangement.”

  “What a fuckwad,” Quinn said and Skye sputtered into her margarita as Quinn continued, incredulous. “Dude can’t get his own dates, has to have the daddies arrange something for him? Who does that?”

  “It’s not uncommon for families like mine to layer business deals with personal…mergers.” Skye mopped Margarita from her face, careful of her wet manicure. “Keeps it all in the family.”

  “Literally,” Mandy interjected.

  The disapproval in her friend’s voice made Skye feel defensive. It might not be what they were accustomed to, but to her it was how things were done. It wasn’t like she’d been sold.

  Was it?

  “This is how fortunes are made and empires are built. It’s the only way I’ve ever known. My parents weren’t a love match. Why should I expect one?”

  “Ah, because it’s bullshit?” Quinn offered.

  “Quinn’s a bit of a straight-talker,” Mandy explained the obvious. “But she’s usually a bit more tactful about it.”

  “I’m affronted on her behalf,” Quinn shot back, all unfriendly vibes gone in the face of a sister being done wrong. “Sue me.”

  “Noted and appreciated,” Skye said.

  Quinn obviously took that as approval to keep pushing. “You were set to be the sacrificial lamb on the marriage altar and what? The deal fell through?”

  “My sister got pregnant.”

  That thudded between them like the anvil it’d been on her life when Skye had first heard the words.

  There was a collective hard intake of shocked air. “Don’t tell me…” Mandy said.

  Skye rolled her lips together, then confirmed their suspicions. “My fiancé was the father.”

  “Toldja.” Quinn muttered. “Fuckwad.”

  “Quinn,” Mandy chided, then to Skye, not without sympathy, “Are you sure
you don’t live in a soap opera?”

  Skye huffed. “No one’s returned from the dead or a coma yet, but otherwise, pretty much.”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” the nail tech interrupted. “You have about 20 minutes till your massages. Please feel free to sit and relax till then. One of the attendants will collect you when it’s time.”

  They thanked the tech and settled back to let their nails finish drying.

  Skye closed her eyes and let the soothing sounds of Bach seep into her pores. Calling up all the old drama drained her, but it felt good to share it for a change. There’d never been anyone she could talk to about it, certainly not at the time. She’d been alone in her corner, unable even to rely on her grandmother, the grand dame too busy with the machinations to maneuver everyone into a scenario that would best suit the family. Handily, her sister’s unplanned pregnancy was thanks to the man who’d they’d already investigated and vetted to marry into the family. Was it such a big deal to swap one daughter out of the wedding announcement and another daughter into it? The last name didn’t even need to be changed!

  Yes, she thought now with a fresh stab of neglect. It was a big deal. It had been a colossal deal to her. But how Skye was affected never came into play. Not how she felt or how she’d been betrayed or how humiliated she’d be to stand up as a bridesmaid where she should’ve been the bride. Not one time had anyone thought about her in any of their social triage.

  Not even her grandmother.

  If she’d ever doubted her place in the pecking order before, being so easily discarded from her own wedding brought her true value home and fast.

  “How did you find out?” Mandy asked Skye, breaking into her brooding reflection. “Was there some…dramatic reveal?”

  This time, Quinn shot her a look. “I doubt Susan Lucci descended a grand staircase in an evening gown to lay down the shock.”

  Mandy threw up her drying hands with exasperation. “Well, I don’t know!”

  “I love that advert,” Skye told Quinn. “It’s all right, Mandy. I know this all must feel very…unusual. A family meeting was called and, yes, my grandmother officiated, but no, sorry Quinn, there were no evening gowns or grand staircase descents.”

  “Susan Lucci?” Quinn asked hopefully. Mandy snorted.

  “Sadly, no there too,” Skye replied and how weird did it feel to be smiling over this nonsense. But she was and it was all due to these two ladies, bringing levity to the most crushing event of her life.

  Bless them.

  She drank more of her margarita, sips now lest she get ideas about that Jacuzzi after all, and continued. “By the time they confessed, Melissa was through her first trimester. The longer they waited, the more she’d show in the pictures. High priority for my sister and hence the rushed wedding here.” She gestured to the resort at large, then turned her eyes to Mandy.

  “Those Barefoot Brides wedding planners of yours are amazing. Because, of course, it had to be a spectacle, short-notice notwithstanding. My sister wasn’t about to not have her special day in the spotlight, regardless of how she got it. Making it a destination wedding was Grandmother’s idea. It took the attention off of why it happened so quickly and gave a good excuse for the somewhat abbreviated guest list. It also meant I had to be a good girl and be a bridesmaid to keep the gossips from getting any more fodder.”

  Both women gaped at her. “She stole your man and was carrying his kid and you had to stand next to her while she married him?”

  Put like that with Quinn’s low, husky voice breaking it down to the bare bones, it sounded, well, as bad as it was.

  “Did you love him?” Mandy quietly wondered.

  “No,” Skye admitted, a hard-won realization she’d arrived at weeks earlier. “But I liked him. I slept with him. I was prepared to have children with him someday.” She sighed. “When my father let slip that we weren’t a love match in the first place, I was horrified that he knew. I didn’t realize at first that we were an arrangement made by our parents who didn’t believe love a requirement for marriage.”

  Quinn hesitated before saying, “I gotta ask, where does Twist fit into all this?”

  Skye grimaced. “When I woke up after our one night, he was gone. I was mortified, hungover, and alone. I had nowhere to go but back to my family and suffer through the agonies of that wedding. But once I got home, I couldn’t stand being around them anymore, not even Grandmother. I put together some cash and clothes and…walked out. No one was paying attention to me anyway, too caught up in the impending birth and putting through the company merger. I doubt anyone even noticed I’d gone for some time.

  “I came here because,” she shrugged, “it was as good a place as any. Didn’t require a passport to get to but was out of the way enough not to be too obvious. If they looked, my family wouldn’t have thought I’d be here first, and certainly not as an employee.” Idly, she rubbed the Aztec tattoo on her outside shoulder. “I roughed up my look, put streaks in my hair and a few temporary tattoos and you hired me anyway, Mandy. I’ll never know why.”

  “Because you looked like you needed a break, honey. Lacey gave me one back when I was starting Mimosa Maids. I worked hard for it, but she took a chance on hiring my then fledgling business for the resort. I took one on you and you not once made me regret it.”

  “Ah, I hate to be a broken record,” Quinn broke in, “but, Twist?”

  “Ugh,” Skye moaned, doing a facepalm into her now butter-soft hands. “I’ve messed that up so badly. I was so surprised to see him again, you know? And here? It seemed so, I don’t know, fated. Like, of course he’d be here. Maybe I was even waiting for him to show up. And then he didn’t even have the good grace to remember me!”

  “He didn’t remember you?” Quinn asked. “Twist never forgets anything.”

  “Well he forgot me!” Skye practically wailed the words into Quinn’s face.

  “Honey,” Mandy interjected. “Maybe you’ve had enough margarita for now.”

  “Maybe?!” Quinn repeated as she plucked the glass from Skye’s hand. But Skye was on a roll.

  “Have you seen the man? There is no ‘enough’ with Grant ‘Twist’ Sisti. The man gave me three orgasms in one night!”

  “Whoa,” Mandy breathed.

  Skye nodded knowingly. “I know, right?! And that’s much harder for women to do when drunk, ya know?”

  “Never stopped me,” Quinn muttered.

  “The man’s a master,” Skye announced.

  “Oh, Lord love a duck. Never tell him that. He’s insufferable enough as it is.” She eyed Skye. “Did you two hook up again last night? Is that why he ditched my wedding reception without a word to Jasp?”

  “He did that?” Skye shook her head and immediately regretted it. Talk about whoa. “No, we weren’t together. I mean, we were, but not then.”

  Skye took a breath and accepted the glass of water Mandy had someone bring her. She had to start sounding like a rational human being or this woman was going to think the worst of her, if she didn’t already.

  “I saw him earlier at the reception,” she explained. “He was on the phone and didn’t see me. That was the first I knew he was here. I certainly didn’t know it was his villa I was cleaning. I was behind schedule because, well, you know,” she said to Mandy who nodded. “And I was…upset and clearly not thinking right when I—” here she shot her friend a guilty look. “I stripped down and jumped into the villa’s pool.”

  Exasperated, Quinn flopped back in her chaise. “What is it with you and pools?! No, for real, I wanna know. Do you have some sort of aquatic fetish?”

  “Quinn!”

  “I like to swim, okay?!” Skye quickly explained over Mandy’s objection. “I used to do it a lot with my mom before she left. That time last year was the first time I’d been in the water in years, and I’m not sure it counts since I was blitzed. After seeing Grant again and learning about Grandmother’s funeral and—” She heaved in an audible breath. “It felt like the right thing t
o do. I didn’t think the reception would end yet for a while and I had plenty of time. But he came back early.”

  “Yeah, and don’t think Jasper didn’t give him an earful about that. Given his filthy mood last night, bet he was just thrilled to find you in the pool.”

  “We had…words. He threatened to get me fired and I climbed out naked and offered to be friendly if he didn’t.”

  “You propositioned him?!” Mandy reached out and whacked Skye on the arm. “What is wrong with you, girl?!”

  “I’m horrible. I know,” Skye agree, wretched with shame. “Where are the margaritas? I’m far too sober for all this confessing. And don’t worry,” she told the wife of Grant’s best friend. “He turned me down. Like, flat down. Wasn’t nice about it either. Except then he kissed me before throwing me out.”

  “Holy shit. You two are the definition of hot mess.”

  “Then today, he tracked me down at Pleasant Pointe. Told me he’d remembered who I was and he was going to figure me out. Called me a Rubik’s Cube.” She cast a baleful glance at Mandy. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  “Only if you’re very, very lucky,” her friend replied. “Let’s break this down, shall we? First, you had a drunken one-night stand the night your pregnant sister married your ex-fiancé. Then, after your lover vanished on you in the morning, you went home, packed your bags, dyed your hair, and came back to Barefoot Bay posing as a maid. Now he’s back in Barefoot Bay, you’ve once again propositioned him, this time naked, and he turned you down, but not before sticking his tongue down your throat. Now he’s pursuing you across the island and determined to figure out what makes you tick. That sound about right?”

  “I guess,” Skye whined with a pout. “You don’t have to make it sound so…sordid.”

  “It’s the good kind of sordid. A sexy Lifetime movie. Too hot for basic cable.”

  “Gotta admit, it’s hot,” Quinn agreed. “When you society bitches go slumming, you don’t mess around.”

  “I wasn’t slumming,” Skye snapped, insulted. “No woman could look at Grant and think she was lowering herself. I’m not at his level, all that…honor and…patriotic devotion and…really, really hard muscles.”