Chapter 1
“ What do you mean, legal action is pending? ” Carter Stratton glared at his broker over the rims of his aviator sunglasses deflecting the Miami sunset.
“Keep your voice down,” Neville hissed.
Patrons standing on the Vice Lounge’s VIP-only deck paused to stare, then returned to their martinis, cigarettes and conversations when the two of them moved to the deck’s lower level.
Strain creased Neville’s forehead like an accordion. “I said might .”
“I want answers.” Brisk wind riding in off the ocean did nothing to cool Carter’s temper. “You have five seconds before I call my lawyer.”
“No!” Neville cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary. It’s the Pierce acquisition—there’s a petition to scrap the project.”
Carter reeled with shock. “On what grounds?”
“Environmental activists determined your future hotel goes two-hundred yards into a wildlife reserve. And there’s a mandatory three-hundred-yard distance between commercial property and the protected land.”
Yanking off his sunglasses, Carter stated, “I’m out five hundred yards of prime beachfront property I’ve staked fifty million on, because you didn’t do your research?”
At the mention of his cash flow, two emaciated blondes in miniskirts who’d been eyeing him all night reasserted themselves in his personal space.
Carter turned away, heading to the edge of patio. Late fall wind streamed through his hair. The sun sank into the watery horizon, dragging with it dreams of his most high-profile real estate transaction since he went into business for himself.
Neville sidled up to him. “There’s still a chance—”
Carter shook his head. “I’m out.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Brows lowering, Carter warned, “If you signed anything without my knowledge...”
“I put up collateral. That’s what you told me to do.”
“Before I knew the property had major setbacks.” He shook his head. “When things sound too good to be true, they are.” He used to have a nose for rotten deals. He should’ve handled this himself, staked the grounds personally, calculating exact measurements, weighing benefits against risks.
Gripping the wooden railing, he looked down at neon bar lights glinting off the waves. Had he lost his Midas touch?
He’d never been this careless when so much was at stake. Admittedly, he’d grown lax about his investments, stepping back the way Amanda had hounded him to do for months, letting other people take care of the details.
“Never again,” he swore to himself. He turned to Neville. “I should fire you on the spot. Except—”
“I’m the only person who can get your money back,” Neville completed his sentence.
“I’m all for saving the planet. Can’t this be resolved behind the scenes?”
“Not when the father of your recent ex-girlfriend is an official at the Florida Environmental Protection League.”
Great . He couldn’t win for losing. “How much was the collateral?”
“Five million.”
Carter slammed the heels of his hands against the railing. “Unbelievable.”
“Here’s the deal. If you walk away now, your name is in the clear. Let me work my magic. I’ll protect your status in the beachfront real estate industry.”
“In the meantime, my funds are tied up in this mess.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Yeah, well I’ve already shaken hands with the devil. I won’t get burned twice.” Despite the mild southern climate this late in the year, he felt a chill creep through him he couldn’t shake. “You have five business days to resolve this, starting Monday.”
“It takes time—”
“Five days.”
Carter reached into his leather coat pocket for the three-week-old newsprint he’d torn out of Elite Southern Properties Magazine :
There in black and white was a small advertisement printed in bold letters.
For Sale : Elegant hotel on El Dorado Island, beachfront property, historically significant, unmatched charm. Repairs assumed by buyer. Auction commences November 31. Call with inquiries.
It listed a phone number still stamped on his brain despite twelve years passing since he dialed it. Ellie’s number .
“My advice,” his broker continued, “is to lay low. You don’t need to be sucked into a legal battle just because your relationship took a swan-dive like all the others.”
“Motivational speaker—that’s your calling, Neville.”
“You’ll have your money. I swear on my second home.”
Carter’s jaw tightened. “You can’t drop once you’ve hit bottom.”
Neville’s expression revealed a mix of hurt and determination. “I won’t let you down.”
“I’m retaking control of all my investments. From now on, nothing happens without my verbal and written approval.”
Neville held up his palms. “You’ve made yourself clear.”
“I need to take care of some unfinished business. When I get back to Miami Friday night, I want my name spotless and five million back in my bank account. Are we understood?”
Neville nodded vigorously.
“I’ll be in touch.” Carter pushed through the Saturday night crowd that bobbed to the thumping beat of D.J. Tiesto, on his way to the valet. When they pulled his car up, he slid into his pewter Porsche Boxster, slammed it into gear and peeled out of Miami’s Gold Coast as fast as he could. He headed for the small airport where his private jet waited.
Something else awaited him, too. Not just reprieve from the Pierce acquisition, but something far more personal and satisfying.
Despite the grim scenario here, his need to leave town gave him a chance to settle a score with someone whose memory had never left him alone. The only woman who’d slipped under his defenses and put a crack in his heart he’d never been able to fill.
That jagged fissure festered inside him, and became the grounds for every one of his failed relationships since then. That’s what people kept telling him, anyway. After Amanda, he was finally inclined to believe them.
Amanda Estelle—model, activist, sophisticate, intelligent, everything he should want in a woman...but didn’t.
The wheels of his Porsche squealed as he took a curve too sharply. City lights whipped past in a blur.
Maybe he couldn’t mend things with his now-ex-girlfriend and her connections. He needed to let that go, something he’d never been good at doing.
But in the tangled web of another dream he secretly harbored, he could tear down a few rusty barbed-wire fences from his past. Finally achieve the satisfaction he’d craved since he left El Dorado Island at twenty-two, twelve years ago.
Revenge .
Suddenly nothing seemed more compelling than arriving unannounced when Ellie Montgomery needed him most. He had looked into her hotel property three weeks ago when he’d first seen the ad and hadn’t believed the price. Now he understood why the property was so cheap. The Montgomery Hotel was falling apart, a shadow of its former nineteenth-century glory. Few investors would go near it. Unless they had an agenda.
He’d fly in with an offer and become Ellie’s savior. Right up until she admitted she needed him, body, heart and soul. Then he’d take her to his bed and keep her there for days. Making love to her until she begged him to stop, and then begged him for more. After he had his fill and sealed the fracture inside him, he’d leave her behind. Like she’d done to him, without telling him why—just the attitude of, “Hey, it’s been fun, but I’m done with you, so have a nice life.”
This reunion had been a long time coming.
Glove
d hands gripping the steering wheel, the real estate ad in his jacket pocket, Carter pulled onto the tarmac where his plane waited. The Porsche’s wheels spun rubber as he hit the breaks, leaving black streaks across the hangar. He got out and tossed his keys to the man in the guard booth.
Climbing the steps that were lowered for him, Carter entered his jet’s cabin. “Captain Bromstead,” he addressed his pilot. “Destination: El Dorado Island. Due southeast of Hilton Head, South Carolina.”
After punching in the coordinates, Bromstead cocked his head and touched his earpiece. “Sir, they don’t allow jets on the island. You’ll have to take a hopper from the mainland.”
Carter checked his watch. Nine-thirty. That should put him there by midnight. “Tell the hopper to be ready when we land.”
*
Consumed with worry, Ellie Montgomery ran down her list of VIP accommodations with the woman who knew the Montgomery Hotel almost as well as she did.
“Did you make the bed with monogrammed sheets?” she asked. They showed less wear than the ones they used for regular guests.
“Check,” Matilda said triumphantly. Her graying curls and thick chin bobbed with a nod.
“What about his wakeup call?”
“Check.”
“Breakfast cart?”
“Of course, but—”
Ellie didn’t have time for second-guessing. She’d received only a few hours notice that a new investor had suddenly taken interest in the hotel. He’d arrived late last night.
Her heels clicked on imported marble flooring as she continued her rapid stride toward the first floor colonial State Room. “Fresh flowers?”
“Umm, about that...”
Ellie drew up sharply. The housekeeper almost bumped into her. Matilda refused to meet her eyes, wiping her palms on her apron. Ellie frowned. “What about that ?”
Matilda scrunched her apron in her fists. “See, it’s like this.” She hesitated, then the words poured out in a rush. “Well, when I went to Sam’s Flower Shop, Sam gave me the scolding look. You know that look he gets. So, well, he...” She glanced pleadingly at Ellie. “He says our credit isn’t good there anymore.”
Panic flooded Ellie’s veins. This was the last thing she needed. Every touch had to be perfect for the investor in Suite 1A. Her eyebrows pulled together. “No flowers?”
“There are flowers,” Matilda confirmed. “I paid for them myself. Miss Montgomery, I didn’t know what else to do—”
“Sam should know better.” But Ellie suspected the day would come when a promise from the Montgomery Hotel made people turn away. On a small island like El Dorado, locals depended on revenue from the only luxury hotel. They had suffered financially in the past three years, as much as Ellie had emotionally since the death of her father. The hotel had to remain intact. Or dozens of lives and livelihoods—including her own—would be swept away with the Atlantic tide.
Ellie sighed. “I’m sorry you had to be in that position.” Her throat tightened. “At this time, I can’t offer to...”
“I know.” Matilda straightened proudly. “I bought them because I know how much this place means to you. To all of us.”
Ellie suppressed the tears that stung the backs of her eyes. “I promise you,” she said, touching the housekeeper’s shoulder, “I will make it up to you. No matter what I have to do.” Even if it means subjecting my future to Arnoff Applestone . She shuddered at the thought of the first—so far the only—investor, king of bad comb-overs and sleazy hotel casinos. She swallowed hard. “I will take over your duties for the afternoon.”
“Oh! No, I’d never expect that.”
“It’s the least I can do. I’m sorry for your trouble.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” Matilda’s eagerness drove a knife through Ellie’s heart.
The housekeeper knew Ellie forfeited any income to keep a skeleton crew on staff. All Ellie had was credit backed by the word of four generations of Montgomery’s. And the singular hope of landing an investor who’d buy the 135-year-old hotel in “as-is” condition. In the current dismal real estate market, her chances were bleak.
“It’s all right, Ellie.” The housekeeper sent her a look of sympathy. While Ellie appreciated the gesture, nothing about their dire straights was all right with her.
“No, it’s not alright. But I will make it better.” No matter what it takes .
At that moment Matilda’s husband, James, rushed up to them. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Madam, I regret to inform you, the gentleman in Suite 1A has not responded to our wakeup calls. And his breakfast tray is cold to the touch.”
The blood drained from her face. “Didn’t he check in last night?”
“The guest sheet has initials scratched there, but it’s indecipherable.” James shrugged.
“No one has seen him?” When James and Matilda shook their heads, Ellie experienced a rush of humiliation. “If we went to all this trouble and expense for nothing...” She set off toward the suite.
She would not let this place be run into the ground—financially through foreclosure, or morally through Arnoff Applestone. Something had to come through. They were practically giving the hotel away. She’d be left with nothing in the end, but hopefully she could keep her job as hotel manager and earn a paycheck.
The problem was she had few other work skills to offer. Plus she’d be competing for work in this depressed island economy against the very people she’d grown up with, but apart from. Everyone who had watched her once-wealthy father, and then Ellie, fall from grace. That notion became a bitter pill that lodged in her digestive tract, slowly churning into an ulcer of constant anxiety.
Compounding this was her refusal to leave the island. She would not become another casualty, like the rest of her family, punished by the curse that afflicted the Montgomery’s when they left this small sanctuary. The only place Ellie had ever called home.
Her fate would be played out here.
And right now the investor in Suite 1A could make a difference in the course of her life. She marched up to the door of that “someone’s” room. She knocked. After thirty seconds, she knocked again.
“Hello? Sir?”
Her knuckles ached with the third and fourth knocks, which were loud enough to echo through the hall and disturb the sconces flanking the door.
“Hello! Is anyone in there?”
No answer.
Against policy, she swiped her all-access card. When the light flashed green, she pushed the door open and entered cautiously.
“Sir? This is management,” she called out.
The only response came from pipes overhead, clanking and rattling as water rushed through the antiquated plumbing. She winced, recalling the pipe that burst last winter, almost a year ago. The hotel had shut down for two weeks. The leak was repaired, but their finances never recovered.
“Are you here?” Please be here .
No reply.
She ventured further into the impressive main room of the suite, which maintained its French-Colonial décor from the hotel’s history. Moving past the velvet chaise lounge, Ellie nudged open the closet door. No clothes hanging, no luggage thrown open on the luggage rack. Hopes fading, she entered the master bedroom suite.
There, she froze.
The door to the master bath stood wide open. A cloud of steam hovered in the air, raising goose bumps on her arms. The clean scent of warm towels and tea tree soap preceded the image of male perfection that appeared before her.
Her mouth parted, but no sound followed. She shamelessly stared at the man’s immaculate body. His thick biceps expanded and contracted as he towel-dried his hair. The way his eight-pack abs flexed as he moved. His chiseled muscular chest.
Fingers trembling, she restrained her desire to run her hands along that hard expanse. She melted a little imagining how it would feel to be held by those arms, close to his strength, sheltered from her fears of the future and the pain of the past, his damp naked skin gliding ag
ainst hers.
Her eyes followed droplets of water that cascaded down his torso, wet trails she envisioned following with her lips. Her attention slid below his waist. She blinked. Her mouth fell open.
Suddenly, every refined muscle in his body went rigid.
Ellie’s gaze snapped up, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. In the next moment, her blood turned to ice.
Piercing gray eyes took her breath away. Turbulent, fierce and compelling, like the ocean during a storm. Like Carter Stratton .
A strangled word wheezed out. “How...?”
The angles of his face softened slightly, but those eyes remained sharp, calculating, like a hawk targeting its prey. Ever so slowly, he slid the towel down from his ruffled hair, drew it along his chest, finally tucking it around his waist. An obnoxiously confident smirk lifted one corner of his mouth.
Was he taunting her?
Ellie didn’t feel mocked, she felt intimidated. He had changed. “Carter, what are you doing here?”
Ignoring the question, he asked, “Is this the new wakeup call?” He stepped toward her, droplets clinging to the spiked ends of his hair. “I think I like it.”
The closer he came, the further she retreated. “This isn’t—I’m not here to—”
“I think you are.”
Her shoulder blades hit the wall.
He didn’t stop until his hands were flattened on either side of her head. “You’re here to pick up where we left off.”
“I didn’t even know you were coming!”
Eyelids lowering, he murmured, “Not yet, but we can work on that.”
“Carter,” she hissed.
He grabbed her chin, angling her mouth up to him. God help her, she wanted him to kiss her. So badly she ached from head to toe. It seemed like ages since she’d felt such a strong sexual response to a man.
Her lips trembled. “I—”
“Why the hesitation? You knew this day would arrive.” His body came up solidly against hers. Ellie stifled a moan. “Remember what I told you twelve years ago?”
She nodded shakily.
“I always keep my promises.”
The instincts of terror and surrender collided inside her. “I know,” she whispered.
The Tycoon's Seductive Revenge Page 1
