Finding Paradise

by Barbara Dunlop

  Cobra pushed his attention past her to the bar. There was a quiet spot at the far end, with a few empty stools near the wall. He ambled over and sat up, catching the bartender’s eye.

  “Hey, Cobra.” Bartender Badger rewiped the surface in front of him.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “We’re hoppin’. What can I get you?”

  “Amber Ice,” Cobra ordered. “And a burger and fries?”

  “Super Bear and gravy?” Badger confirmed, although it was little more than a formality, since Cobra ordered it all the time.

  “Yes, please.”

  Badger moved farther down the bar and filled a mug from the tap. “Didn’t expect to see you in here tonight.”

  Cobra’s cynicism about the event wasn’t a secret from Badger. “I was hungry.”

  “They all seem happy,” Badger said, setting the foamy mug down in front of Cobra.

  “The women or the guys?”

  “Both teams.” Badger canted his head sideways and Cobra followed the direction of his gaze. “AJ’s been chatting up that brunette in the green sweater. But when T and T-Two walked in, she got distracted.”

  T and T-Two, Tristen and Tobias Erickson, were nicknamed because T had arrived first in town, and then T-Two had followed shortly after. Their Norwegian heritage showed through in their height, broad shoulders and blond hair. AJ was shorter, slighter than the Ericksons and only in his early twenties.

  “You’re enjoying this,” Cobra accused Badger, taking a drink of the cold beer.

  Badger gave a sly grin. “It’s more interesting than most Thursday nights, that’s for sure.” He thwapped the edge of the bar with his towel. “I’ll get you that burger.”

  Cobra couldn’t help scanning the restaurant again as he waited for his burger. He was careful not to catch the eyes of any of the women. Not that he expected to be a target, not with guys like T, T-Two, Xavier and Jackson Wilder, with his Hollywood good looks, wandering around. Cobra hadn’t even had a chance to shower after working in the hangar all day. Women would be well-advised to stay clear of him.

  He wondered if he dared shower in his room while he picked up his things. It would feel good to scrub off the grease and sweat. The hangar had hot water, but it was only piped into the main floor sink since a plumbing incident a few years ago.

  His gaze caught again on the red-haired woman. She was in profile now, talking and laughing with Xavier and one of the other women.

  Her red lips were perfect as they moved to make sounds that held the other two’s attention. She obviously hit the punchline of her story, and for some reason, Cobra imagined he could hear her laugh. It didn’t make sense. There was no way her voice stood out above the din from this distance.

  Badger slid the burger in front of him, and Cobra turned his attention to it and the crispy fries he’d been anticipating. “Looks great.”

  “Enjoy,” Badger said. “You good on the beer?”

  Cobra’s glass was still half full. “I’m fine.”

  “Call me if you need anything else.” Badger moved down the bar to fill a drink order for waitress Breena France.

  Cobra took the first satisfying bites. When he looked for the redhead again, she was gone. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d met someone she liked, and if they’d retired to the deck for a private conversation. Not that he cared one way or the other. He was going to be out of here in just a few minutes—back to his room for a quick shower and necessities before the party even got rolling.

  He finished his burger, watching the action with a mixture of amusement and sympathy as AJ flitted from one woman to another, not appearing to have any luck keeping a conversation going.

  “You done?” Breena asked him from behind the bar.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Cobra wiped his hands on a paper napkin and dropped it onto the plate. “You home for some reason?” he asked before polishing off his beer.

  Breena was a software engineering student in Anchorage. She’d grown up in Paradise and still spent her summers here. But the fall semester had started a few weeks back.

  “I didn’t want to miss the early results of my algorithm,” she said, reminding him that she’d been pivotally involved in the matchmaking project. “I only had to cut two lectures to make a long weekend. And I can easily make up the labs.”

  “So far, so good, it seems.” He couldn’t help thinking the Bear and Bar staff were lucky she’d come home to help on a night like this.

  “Yes,” she said cheerfully as she removed his dishes. “And also good for tips.”

  Cobra pulled a couple of bills out of his pocket and set them on the bar. “Keep the change.”

  Her eyes twinkled as she called a thanks over her shoulder.

  A voice sounded behind him. “I sure hope you didn’t tell him anything.”

  Cobra perked up at the sound. It was husky-soft, slightly melodic, threaded with unmistakable concern. And it was her. He was certain of that.

  “Good,” she said, her voice flowing like honey around him. “Don’t.”

  He slowly swiveled on the barstool and met her green eyes.

  She took what looked like a startled step back.

  He would have left the barstool to give her some privacy but standing would have made him tower over her in the narrow space, and he didn’t want to be intimidating.

  “Just let it lie,” she said into the phone, her gaze not leaving his. “Okay. Bye.”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said as an apology.

  “No, no, you didn’t.” She was obviously lying, but he let it go, assuming she was trying to ease his guilt.

  Their gazes held for a moment longer, his curious, hers wary. He knew he had that effect on people, especially women. There was something about his rugged looks and his size that made them nervous. It usually helped if he broke the silence.

  He moderated his tone, keeping it as friendly as he could manage. “You’re here with the visitors.” It wasn’t a question, since he’d seen her arrive on the twin otter.

  “No,” she said, tucking her phone back into a little clutch purse. “I mean, not really. I’m not one of them.”

  “You were on the plane,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but I’m . . .” She gave a nervous little laugh. It was too tight in her throat to prove she’d relaxed at all. “I’m sounding embarrassed.”

  “Not really.” He was the one lying now.

  There was a hint of a blush on her pale cheeks, which looked cute with her copper hair. Getting off the plane, she’d been dressed for business. She was more casual now in a pair of black jeans and a cropped pale yellow pullover with a pair of leather ankle boots on her feet. It was the change of shoes that made her shorter, he realized. It hadn’t been his imagination.

  She hesitantly held out her hand, small, soft-looking, thin delicate skin with a perfect pearlescent manicure.

  He was afraid to touch it.

  “I’m Marnie Anton, lawyer, one of the organizers of the event.”

  It would be rude not to shake, so he gently and carefully took her hand, his swallowing it up. He’d meant the contact to be brief, to let go right away, but energy leapt from her skin to his, streaming up his arm to his shoulder. “Conrad Stanford, but everyone calls me Cobra. The nickname is from the military.”

  “Military?” She sounded hopeful and maybe a little less intimidated now.

  “Air force.”

  She tilted her head and gave him the first hint of a smile. “You don’t look like a Conrad.”

  He quirked a small smile of his own. “Probably why they gave me a nickname.” He knew he had to let go of her hand. As he did, he let the pad of his thumb surreptitiously stroke the back of it.

  “It suits you,” she said, and her smile squeezed his solar plexus—in a good way, in a fascinating w
ay.

  A beat went past in silence again.

  “So . . . you’re not here looking for a husband?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I’m not looking for a wife.”

  “It’s good we got that out of the way.”

  The crowd shifted, and a couple of people moved in too close for comfort behind her. She took a half step his way.

  He fought the urge to reach out, to put a protective arm around her waist. It was an irrational impulse. She wasn’t in any danger from random partygoers.

  “I’m not sticking around,” he said, even though he was curious about her. “I’m just here to pick up a few things for the weekend.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Not in the café,” he elaborated. “In my room.”

  “Your room?”

  “The WSA staff housing barracks.”

  Her eyes squinted then she grimaced. “Uh-oh.”

  He glanced around to see what had her worried. Nothing looked wrong. “What?”

  “You just said you were in the military.”

  “Sure. Yeah.” He didn’t know why she’d gone back to that, unless maybe it made her feel safer around him.

  “I think . . . maybe . . .” She bit her bottom lip. “I just saw your hospital corners.”

  He glanced down at himself, baffled by such an odd euphemism. “My what?”

  “The ones on your bed.”

  It took a second for her words to sink in—this was the woman staying in his room.

  “I’m sorry,” she quickly said into the beat of silence. “It was a last-minute thing. We were already at the airport. I wasn’t supposed to come along, but then everybody wanted me . . . for continuity, really. But they also thought I’d be missing out on the fun.” She drew back, cringing as if she was expecting an angry outburst from him. “So . . . here I am.”

  He wasn’t about to get angry with her. Okay, sure, it was an annoyance that he had to move out to the airstrip. And he wished they’d been more organized, and he supposed he wished she wasn’t an impulsive person.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Then he rose from the barstool. “I do have to pick up a few things if you don’t mind.”

  “No, no. Whatever you need.” She glanced around the lively room. “Okay if I walk back with you?”

  “Sure,” he said, surprised by the question.

  He realized he’d prefer it if she did. He couldn’t say why, especially since she wasn’t interested in meeting men, but he didn’t want to leave her here looking eligible among his friends and colleagues.

  * * *

  * * *

  Marnie was relieved to make an early exit from the Bear and Bar, even if it was with a mountain of a man whose rugged face and bulky biceps and sturdy shoulders said he’d probably lived for years on the wild side. A faded blue T-shirt was stretched across his broad chest, and a pair of black cargo pants hung over scuffed work boots that thumped hollowly as he walked along the wooden sidewalk.

  She was far more introvert than extrovert, and a big party wasn’t her idea of fun at the best of times. And now she needed to sort through the jolt of her assistant Bexley Wright’s phone call.

  She told herself to ignore it, to set it aside, not to let something so far away worry her. But she hadn’t heard from her father in five years, not since they’d marched him out of the Wichita courtroom in handcuffs. It was too easy to get rattled by him suddenly reaching out.

  “You’re friends with Mia in LA?” Cobra asked conversationally as they rounded the corner from Main Street onto Red Avenue.

  A single streetlight stood at the intersection of the two streets, though it was too early in the evening to need the illumination. Along Red Avenue, pickup trucks and a few battered-looking SUVs were parked against the raised wooden sidewalk. Most of them were muddy along the bottom. All of them were dusty on the top.

  “Yes, she’s . . . a friend,” Marnie answered. She found herself stretching her spine and raising her shoulders, unsettled by the difference in their heights. She wished she were wearing a pair of her regular shoes to give her a boost.

  “Is there a but in there?” Cobra asked. His voice was rumbling, gentle, but with a distinct thread of steel underlying the low tone.

  “No but,” she said airily. There was nothing at all uncertain about her friendship with Mia.

  “You don’t sound completely sure about that.”

  “Maybe there was an and,” she admitted.

  “And?”

  She couldn’t help but smile at his persistence. “And she’s also a client. I’m her lawyer.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  That got her curious. “What ah?”

  “So, her big court case, that was you.”

  Marnie was surprised he knew about it, then realized Mia’s circumstance must have caused quite a stir while she was hiding out in a town this size. “That was me.”

  “Were you disappointed with the outcome?”

  “No, why?”

  “I heard she lost her house and control of her business.”

  Marnie didn’t like that characterization. “She didn’t lose anything. We won. She was being magnanimous and generous to the twins. Mia’s like that.”

  “Oh.”

  They fell silent for a few paces, then arrived at his room. He gestured for her to go first up the three steps to the door.

  Marnie stopped on the square porch at the top and inserted the key Mia had given her.

  “You locked the door?” Cobra asked from behind.

  She turned to look at him, confused by the question.

  “I never bother,” he said.

  “That’s you.” She gestured at him up and down. “I mean, who in their right mind is going to give you a hard time?”

  He gave an indulgent-looking smile and a shake of his head. “Nobody locks their doors in Paradise. You’d be perfectly safe.”

  She wiggled and jiggled the key, finally getting the sticky doorknob to turn. “It would freak me out to know it was unlocked.” She’d never be able to sleep like that. And every time she came back here, she’d worry someone was hiding inside.

  “You’d get used to it,” he said.

  She doubted that. As they walked inside, her phone rang again.

  Cobra flipped the light switch while she moved to the middle of the compact room and extracted the phone from her purse. The number was unknown, causing anxiety to lurch in her stomach. The odds were remote that it had anything to do with her father or her family, but she wasn’t taking the chance.

  Her finger hovered over the buttons as she debated what to do. She closed her eyes and muttered an expletive, annoyed that her father had the power to get inside her head like this. She gave a little shake and declined the call.

  “Everything okay?” Cobra asked, and she realized he’d seen her hesitation.

  “Unknown number,” she said, which was the truth.

  He considered her for a moment. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” she said breezily, dropping her phone back into her bag and setting the bag on the stripped-down bed, next to a pile of folded sheets and blankets.

  “You really shouldn’t play poker,” he said.

  “Who says I play poker?” She understood what he meant, but the call was none of his business.

  He seemed amused by her misdirection and moved past her to the little closet where he extracted a blue and gray duffel bag. “I take that back. You should definitely play poker with me.”

  She knew she should let it go. “Are you saying you can guess what I’m thinking?”

  “I’m saying you’re bad at bluffing.” He spread the bag open on his bed.

  “It really was an unknown number.” She hadn’t blown off a friend or colleague or anything like that
.

  He passed by her again, moving to the dresser. “I could almost hear the debate inside your head.”

  She knew he was exaggerating. “Now who’s bluffing?”

  He lifted a neatly folded stack of three T-shirts from the top drawer.

  She couldn’t help sneaking a peek inside the dresser. It looked every bit as tidy as the room. It seemed he wore boxers, black boxers. She quickly averted her eyes, realizing she’d seen too much already.

  “Right there,” he said, pausing to point at her eyes, stopping just short of touching her face. “It’s a tell. You had an emotional reaction to the number.”

  It took her a second to speak. “I didn’t know the number.”

  “Hmmm.” He went silent.

  She shook her head at the trick. “Oh, no, no. You don’t get to say hmmm and then wait. You’re fishing, like a carnival tarot card reader, looking for me to give something away so you can sound smart.”

  He quirked an amused grin. “I’m not trying to predict your future. I’m just saying, you’ve got no more than a pair of sixes.”

  “Three of a kind,” she said, stifling her own grin. “Queens.”

  “Then I guess you take the pot.” His gaze was warm now, full of good humor as he set the T-shirts into the bottom of the duffel.

  He moved a stack of boxers and socks, seeming completely unconcerned that she was standing watching him pack his underwear. Then he switched drawers and pulled out some black work pants.

  “I’m a lawyer,” she said.

  “So you said.” He moved to the little bathroom.

  She trailed behind him and leaned on the door jamb while he opened the cabinet, not sure why she was still bothered but genuinely wondering if she’d overestimated her own litigating talents. “I know how to keep my emotions to myself.”

  He collected a razor and a can of shaving cream. “Not so much.” He caught her gaze in the mirror.

  “I argue in court. I’m good at keeping a straight face.”