BOUND TO HAPPEN

by Alison Kent

  Lauren was stripping, wearing what Ray supposed was a swimsuit but looked a lot more like underwear.

  She had her eyes closed and was running her palms over her body, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth as she worked at her self-seduction. Anton didn't even move.

  And then there was Sydney. God, Sydney. She wore almost nothing. Scraps of butterscotch-colored fabric that Ray could easily have seen a stripper wear. A shimmery, glittery two-piece suit that covered her completely, leaving as much to the imagination as it revealed. And what it revealed was plenty, yet nowhere close to enough for Ray's tastes.

  And what she was doing was an amazing lap dance, even though she was doing it for an empty chair. She had one foot propped on the back of her chair as she thrust her lower body forward in a circular motion. As he looked on, she moved her foot to the seat, then to the deck and placed both hands on the chair arms and leaned forward.

  The motion, of course, lifted her bottom Ray's direction, and he didn't like it at all that the other three guys were getting a look at what belonged to him. He growled, a sound that felt as if it came straight from his balls. He had to stop himself from crossing the deck and wrapping her up in his shirt and hauling her off to bed.

  "You know, boys—" Doug draped one arm around Jess's shoulders, the other around Ray's and gave Anton an inclusive nod "—I believe we have died and gone to heaven."

  Ray didn't know about the others, but he was in some kind of private hell.

  * * *

  9

  « ^ »

  "I really like the area where Eric and Chloe are living," Ray said, fielding a barrage of questions from Anton about several of the properties they'd toured before leaving Houston for Coconut Caye.

  The eight vacationers were gathered around the dining table, finally eating the fish the men had caught yesterday evening, the fish they'd looked forward to feasting on at the end of their outing twenty-four hours ago.

  And they would've done just that if, by the time Auralie arrived at the villa to prepare the meal, the women had been in any condition to eat. They hadn't. To a one they had passed out after what had apparently been a hedonistic afternoon spent indulging in booze and sex.

  Or sex talk, anyway, judging by the comments made once Ray and the others had crashed their private dance party.

  He still hadn't figured out how they'd ended up being the bad guys when they hadn't even been around for the bitch session. But the women hadn't wasted any time letting them know that men were dicks, or men had dicks, or whatever.

  Sitting here now in the company of the same four females, this time all sober and oblivious to most of what had gone on, Ray gave up trying to make sense out of any of them.

  After last night's unexpected floor show had ground to a halt, Ray had pulled Sydney down into one of the loungers, settled her backside between his legs and forced her to lean back against his chest while she prattled on about multiple orgasms.

  Kinsey and Doug and Jess and Poe had tackled the circular staircase back down into the villa's main room. Ray had decided he didn't want to risk Sydney breaking her neck or breaking his. Besides, he liked having her in his lap.

  Anton had dragged Lauren and two chairs closer to the railing where they'd sat side by side without speaking. Lauren had taken the bottle of rum with her and had been the first to fall asleep. Sydney had followed soon after.

  Only then had Ray headed to his bedroom for blankets and pillows and a quick shower. On his way through the main room, he'd found Poe and Kinsey crashed on the sectional while Doug and Jess raided the kitchen under Auralie's watchful eye.

  Smelling more like man and less like fish, his arms full of bedding, Ray had made his way back to the staircase, only to end up having to wait for Anton to make the climb down, a passed-out Lauren hanging limply over his shoulder.

  The look in the other man's eye had been crushing, a sad sort of resignation. It looked to Ray like the couple had had all the togetherness they could take.

  Once back on the deck, Ray had used the cushions from the loungers as a bed. And then he'd slept beneath the starry tropical sky with Sydney in his arms.

  Her body, bared as it was in that nothing of a swimsuit, had been cool, her skin smooth beneath the gooseflesh raised by the night's soft breeze.

  But then she'd moved in close to his much larger body, where she'd absorbed his heat, and her skin had taken on the texture of satin. Or silk. Ray didn't know his fabrics.

  What he did know was that he could get used to the way she felt, the way her backside fit so perfectly into his lap, the way her coconut-scented hair, lying there on the pillow between them, tickled his nose, the way he felt when she slept in his arms.

  Except for that last little deviation from his rules of involvement, it ranked right up there as one of the best nights of his life. Of course in the morning, like a wrench thrown into any good chick flick, when he'd woken up she'd been gone.

  He'd lain there for a good long while, listening to the squawking gulls and the softly rolling surf and the sounds of his co-vacationers stirring in the villa below. And he'd wondered how he was supposed to separate what he'd shared here with Sydney from what circumstances would allow him to share with her back home.

  In one way, this vacation had been a good thing, giving him more than Patrick's disappearance to connect with the Caribbean. The two experiences—the trip with Patrick, the trip with Sydney—couldn't have been any farther apart on the pain-and-pleasure scale. But both delivered their own emotionally gut-busting punch.

  He'd learned to live with the one; he would learn to live with the other. First things first, however. He needed to figure out where it was he was going to live. When he'd moved back to Houston, his parents had told him the family home was his. And to do with it what he wished, because they wouldn't be coming back. He knew their decision had to do with Patrick. He knew that because, even two years after Patrick's disappearance, they still hadn't packed up his room.

  Ray had been in the house a year now. He'd packed and stored his brother's things. But he hadn't decided what to do with the house. The memories weren't enough to drive him away as they'd obviously driven his folks. He worried, in fact, that the opposite was true. That he was keeping the home fires burning for the unlikely event that Patrick returned.

  But he was bothered more by the possibility that he was holding on to the past and the memories of hearth and home because he wouldn't have anything remotely similar in his future. And now, after mentally going through the list of Neville & Storey properties again, comparing the amenities of each to his four-bedroom, two-story, comfortably furnished and lived-in colonial, Ray wasn't sure at all what it was he wanted anymore.

  He finally finished up his answer by saying to Anton, "But, I do have to tell you. I'm still kinda attached to the house I grew up in. Now that the parents have moved to Phoenix, I've got a helluva lot of privacy. Not to mention more room than I could ever need."

  "Yeah, and it's gotta be pretty damn close to being paid for, right?" Jess asked, and Ray nodded, watching the other man digging his fork into the flaky fish.

  The men were due to head for deeper waters in the morning. Menga had promised red snapper the likes of which were rarely seen. But Ray still had business to take care of with Sydney. And their vacation time was rapidly coming to an end.

  They'd had word that the Indiscreet would be returning day after tomorrow. It was time to wrap up any unfinished business. Which meant given a choice between going with the others or spending the time with Sydney, the decision was a no-brainer.

  Doug snorted. "Who cares if it's close to being paid for? He's young. He's single. Not to mention that he's a really hot property these days. Right, Mr. Big Shot Search-and-Rescue Man?"

  Ray rolled his eyes at Doug's ribbing.

  Doug continued to rib. "He needs to be living where the equally hot female action is, not wasting away out in suburbia."

  "You don't care if he's getting any female ac
tion. You just want the sale." Kinsey made the accusation, giving Doug an elbow in the side while she pushed her fork through her spicy rice pilaf.

  "Well, yeah," Doug admitted, and everyone laughed. Everyone but Lauren. And Anton, whose mouth appeared to be smiling but whose eyes were definitely not.

  Ray didn't know if he'd ever seen two people more miserable in each other's company. Two people who, months ago, couldn't get enough of each other.

  It made him wonder what things would be like between him and Sydney a few weeks down the road, if they'd still be on friendly speaking terms, with their fling over and done with and their lives back to normal.

  If his life could ever get back to normal now that he'd seen what he'd been missing the past eight years.

  Ray grimaced. "If I decide to sell, Neville & Storey will get the commission. Trust me on that."

  "You won't hear the end of it otherwise." Doug delivered his ultimatum with the end of his fork pointed at Ray, then jerked a thumb in Anton's direction. "And Neville over there's going to back me up on this."

  "Wait a minute." Sydney looked from Doug to Anton and back again. Her eyes flashed and the glare she delivered was not altogether a joke.

  "You, Neville, and you, Storey. Let the man decide for himself where he wants to live and who actually deserves to get paid a commission. You all might play soccer together, but that doesn't mean Neville & Storey is the best firm to sell his family home. Especially when he's not sure he wants to move."

  Ray liked it that she came to his defense. He liked it a lot and gave her a quick wink to tell her so. "Don't worry. I'm not that easy."

  Eyes rolling, Sydney slumped back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Mr. Big Shot Search-and-Rescue Man can take care of himself.

  "I don't know," Poe said, tossing her napkin onto the center of her empty plate and stretching her arms high overhead. "From the tales Sydney told last night, sounds to me like you're pretty easy."

  Ray's brow went up and Sydney's went down as she turned to Poe. "What tales did I tell last night? And, even if I did tell tales," she went on, warming to the subject, "I guarantee that you were in no condition to correctly remember any of what I was in no condition to say."

  "I remember enough. Or close enough. I think," Poe said, but frowned as she did.

  This time Kinsey chimed in. "Yes, but do you remember what you said about Jess?"

  "What about Jess?" Jess asked, and Doug added, "Yeah. What about Jess? And what about me? I'm gonna feel really left out if no one said anything about me."

  But before anyone could answer any of the questions on the floor, Lauren shoved back her chair so hard it fell over, turned, hair flying, stomped from the room and out the front door. Her feet pounded across the veranda and down the steps. Everyone's gaze turned to Anton, who only stared at the last bite of fish in his plate.

  Ray sought out Sydney's gaze and she responded with a helpless sort of shrug. And since no one seemed to know what to say and the atmosphere grew tense, Ray wasn't a bit surprised when Anton left the table, as well, heading for the rooftop deck, not out to the beach after Lauren.

  Poe was the next to get to her feet, welcoming Jess's offer of help in clearing the dishes from the table. The two worked quietly, efficiently, and it was finally Kinsey who spoke into the room's oppressive silence.

  "I don't mean to talk out of turn or behind anyone's back, but I cannot believe those two are having such a hard time getting things together."

  "Some couples never get things together," Poe answered, scraping the leftovers from all the plates onto one. "For a lot of valid reasons."

  The comment made Ray wonder if Poe was talking about Lauren and Anton or about herself. And then he looked at Sydney.

  It struck him that they'd never talked about life after vacation. About what they were doing here together in the first place. Besides sharing the sort of intimacy that he'd never expected to share with any woman, but especially not with her. The sort of intimacy that he had, in fact, avoided for the obvious reason that the luxury of a soul mate was one he couldn't afford.

  He needed to clear the air. Before they went any further, as friends or as lovers, they needed to talk. He'd thought he could pull off a casual affair. After all, Mr. Big Shot Search-and-Rescue Man had done it often enough in the past.

  But this was Sydney and what he was feeling for her wasn't the least bit casual. He wanted her to understand how much he cherished her as a woman, how much the things they'd done together meant to him as a man. Honor demanded that he also make her understand that this island vacation was a fantasy and what went on here would stay here.

  "Hey, dude," Jess said, interrupting Ray's thoughts. "We're still going deep-sea fishing in the morning, right? You and me and the so-called team of Neville & Storey here?" Jess grabbed Doug's shoulder and shook him hard.

  Doug's hair flopped into his face and he reached up to shove it back. "I'm not sure we should trust the womenfolk to do their bazaar-shopping thing on the mainland without us."

  "Excuse me, mister," Kinsey said, gathering up the used drink glasses and carrying the load to the sink. "But we women are perfectly capable of doing our bazaar-shopping thing without you cavemen along."

  "Hey, I'm only going by what went on yesterday." Doug bit into a ripe dessert plum and shrugged. "We came back to what looked like a whole lotta drinkin' goin' on."

  "And?" Poe asked, keeping her response simple and succinct.

  Doug rolled his eyes. "And I give up. I'm just a man on vacation trying to get along."

  Poe shooed him away. "Well, then, get along out of here. You, too," she said, extending her shooing away to Ray and to Jess, who had already hustled his way to the front door. "We womenfolk have to figure out how we'll ever manage going shopping all on our own."

  Reluctantly Ray got to his feet, making eye contact with Sydney while doing what he could to ignore a hovering Poe. "Are you going shopping tomorrow?"

  "I'm not sure," Sydney answered, bracing her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her palms. Her eyes were not the least bit tentative or questioning as she captured his gaze.

  And Ray knew they were on the same wavelength when she answered his question with a question of her own.

  "Are you going fishing?"

  Ray swore all his blood had settled in the lower half of his body. And he wasn't talking about his feet. "I was thinking I might just hang out around here. I'm getting close to being fished out. Might be nice to just relax."

  Sydney pressed her lips together as if fighting to keep her expression neutral. "I was thinking of doing the same thing. I've definitely seen all there is to see at the bazaar."

  "Okay, then," Ray said, his heart thumping all the way from his throat to his groin.

  "Oh, puh-leeze," Poe said. "You two make me sick." She pushed Ray toward the front door where Jess and Doug waited. "Go play in the deep end of the ocean."

  Ray let himself be driven from the villa. He'd said what he needed to say. Tomorrow, once they were alone, he'd talk to Sydney. He'd tell her of his convictions, explain where he stood and why.

  And then they'd make love, with the air cleared between them and nothing else standing in the way of their remaining vacation fun.

  For some reason, Ray mused, that sounded just a little too simple.

  Sydney lay on her stomach on the cushions she'd pulled from the loungers, beach blanket on top of the makeshift bed and hands stacked beneath her cheek. She'd arranged the comfy bunk on the far side of the deck, setting it up between the railing and the two umbrellas she'd propped on their sides for privacy.

  Alone at last on Coconut Caye, she was taking full advantage of the solitude to sunbathe. In the nude. Beneath the wonderfully warm tropical sun and the wind that swept over her skin in gentle kisses. Actually that wasn't quite true. The part about being alone, anyway. Because she wasn't.

  Ray was here, as well, though she wasn't sure where he was on the island. The rest of the vacationer
s had left an hour or so ago. The women were on their way to the mainland with Auralie, their sights set on the city's bazaar. And the men were headed farther out to sea for what Menga promised to be the fishing trip of a lifetime.

  Sydney knew she and Ray weren't fooling anyone. Their tête-à-tête after dinner last night had been witnessed by everyone but Lauren and Anton. For some reason, having the others know that she and Ray would be spending the day together bothered Sydney less than she would have imagined even a week ago. She and Ray seemed to have settled into a comfortable routine, an easygoing relationship that she'd found impossible to share with him back in the States.

  There she'd been busy with gIRL-gEAR, the never-ending balance sheets, the marketing and promotion, the personnel issues. She'd been busy dealing with the details for the mentoring program, as well as the details for restructuring should the six partners vote to take on a seventh. She'd been busy trying to salvage what she could of her plans to help Isabel Leighton fund her foundation's famine-relief efforts—plans that Sydney thought had been settled.

  And they had been settled. Until Nolan screwed up everything by going back on his word and, instead of helping Sydney, making the choice to help her mother. And that choice, that betrayal, hurt more than anything.

  Sydney shook off the thought. She did not want to be thinking of her father. If only Ray would show his face. Or, anything else, for that matter. Where in the world was he?

  She did know he'd accompanied the men to the boat dock and helped with the loading of the fishing equipment. But the group had left an hour ago and she hadn't seen him since.

  Her lemon-yellow bikini was draped over one of the umbrellas. The book she'd brought with her to the deck remained closed. The sun warmed her body through the lotion she'd rubbed into her skin. Eyes closed, cheek resting on her stacked hands, she listened to the rustle of the palm fronds, to the low drone of the sea, to the gulls squawking high overhead.