by BETH KERY
“Thanks,” she said earnestly after she’d rinsed out her mouth and taken several swallows. He took back the bottle and capped it when she’d finished.
“What made you throw up?” he asked simply.
She stared at her bent knees and distractedly picked at a piece of grass. “The zip line. I’m scared shitless of heights,” she replied succinctly. When he didn’t reply, she glanced at his face. He looked bemused.
“What’s wrong?” she asked a little defensively. “Lots of people are afraid of heights.”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just … You seemed fine when we unhooked you from the harness.”
“Why’d you follow me, then?”
He quirked his eyebrows. “Not because I thought you were sick. I was just trying to get you alone.”
“Oh,” she said softly after a stunned moment. She studied her knee intently.
“Have you always been afraid of heights?” he asked her. The hairs on her nape and arm stood on end. His voice sounded closer, like he’d leaned in.
“For as long as I can remember. It’s my first memory, waking up in a hospital when I was really little. Apparently I’d fallen off the ladder of an abandoned water tower in my neighborhood.”
“So you must not have always been afraid.”
She glanced at him uncertainly.
“Little Alice wanted to climb. She wasn’t afraid.”
“I don’t know anything about Little Alice. I only know heights are my worst nightmare. Actually, falling is,” Alice corrected with a wry look, her stare locked in his. He returned her smile. He reached up and pushed her bangs off her forehead. The leaves on the trees flickered, dappling his face and shoulders with moving light and shadow.
“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?” he murmured.
“No idea why you’d say that. Do you think I have some unique talent for hurling?” Her words made it all come back to her in graphic detail, how he’d watched it all. Her stomach squirmed. She turned her head away from him, self-conscious of his closeness when she’d just been sick. He laughed, and suddenly he was looping his arm around her waist and shifting in the grass behind her. He pulled slightly and her back fell against his chest.
“I mean you’re amazing because you did that zip line and you were so afraid and sick, and none of us even guessed. Relax,” he said gently when she stiffened and tried to move away from his casual embrace.
“Thad, I just got sick. I don’t want to …” She faded off uncomfortably. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to even if she hadn’t just gotten sick.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not coming on to you. But it’s nice out here. Just sit with me for a minute until you feel better, and then we’ll walk back to camp. Do you want some more water?” he asked, holding up the bottle.
She didn’t, but she took the water anyway, glad for something to do with her hands. After a minute or two, when Thad didn’t try anything, she did start to feel a little better. They started to talk about their past experiences and their impressions of Camp Durand so far.
It wasn’t so bad, sitting in a sun-dappled glade in the woods without a damn Durand manager anywhere in sight, relaxing into Thad Schaefer’s embrace.
IT’D been the only time she’d been paired up with Brooke during their training, although they had to put up with each other for several team challenges. They hadn’t killed each other yet, but their mutual dislike had started to approach genuine hatred after a week of enforced contact.
Or at least on Alice’s part, it had.
Alice was patient. Brooke may think she’d remain unscathed after that zip line incident, but she was wrong.
ALICE had been positive she’d get Brooke as a roommate when they first arrived. It’d be just like fate to shaft her in that way.
Bizarrely, fate had sent Alice a fairy godsister instead.
She came in the form of a fellow counselor: a beautiful, fun-loving, exceptionally smart young Indian-British woman who had been educated at Oxford. Her name was Kuvira Sarin—Kuvi for short. Kuvi possessed a killer accent and a suitcase full of brightly colored tops and shorts, darling swimsuits, fluttering beach cover-ups, awesome strappy sandals, and bangles that looked amazing on her smooth, caramel-colored arms. She was funny and warm and fearless in equal measure, and Alice felt truly blessed to have her as a roommate.
On the last evening of their weeklong training, she and Kuvi entered their cabin, tired out from the rigorous activities of the day, but anticipatory, too. Tonight was the dinner and team flag selection at Castle Durand.
Tonight, Alice would see Dylan Fall again.
As she and Kuvi entered their cabin, Alice was reminded again of just how lucky they were. It was one of the most luxurious suites Alice had ever seen, let alone stayed in—although she kept that bit of information to herself. It featured two queen-sized beds, a large bathroom with a compact washer/dryer, a large sitting area, and a comfortable outdoor terrace that overlooked a white sand beach and the Great Lake. When she and Kuvi had first entered their cabin a week ago, Alice had immediately gone for the bed that faced both the front door and the patio entrance to the terrace. She always needed to be in a position to see all the entrances to a room while she was in bed.
Force of habit.
Presently both she and Kuvi collapsed on their beds, sighing in comfort at the cool air-conditioned suite and the slow release of tight, sore muscles. Today they’d completed the wall-climbing challenge—another activity Alice had been dreading. Thanks to Thad’s easygoing leadership, however, the fifteen counselors soared through the challenge. Of course, it helped that Thad was aware of her vulnerability when it came to heights. She didn’t think he’d told anyone about her weakness, but he did little things as he’d strategized the team wall climb that made her think he was being sensitive to her irrational fear. At least for the wall climb, her anxiety only lasted for the brief up and down, and was quickly relieved.
Training was finished, and Alice had come through, if not with flying colors, at least without any scars on her record.
“Done,” Kuvi sighed happily.
“Yeah. Now for the hard part,” Alice said, rolling her head on the bedspread and giving Kuvi a grin.
“Do you want to shower first?” Kuvi asked. Alice suppressed an increasingly familiar sinking feeling. She and Kuvi had already discussed the fact that they’d need to shower immediately and get dressed if they wanted to be on time for the meet-up before the dinner at the castle.
“No, you go ahead,” Alice said, sitting up and looking at her closet, forlorn as she imagined the uninspiring contents.
When Alice walked out of the bathroom after her shower forty-five minutes later, Kuvi looked around as she fastened an earring. Kuvi looked very pretty in a high-low fuchsia dress that hung in the back to her calves, and then rose in the front to show her knees. Alice’s cheeks heated when she saw Kuvi’s gaze drop over the sundress she wore.
“I didn’t bring anything for a cocktail party,” Alice said, sounding a little sharper than she’d intended.
“I know, I didn’t bring much either. They didn’t tell us we’d need to dress up. It’s a camp, for Christ’s sake,” Kuvi said, her disgusted, mildly outraged tone applying a bandage to Alice’s acute discomfort. “Is that the only dress you brought?” Kuvi asked her matter-of-factly.
“It was between this and a purple one like it,” Alice said, shifting uncomfortably on her bare feet. Thus far, her lack of nice clothing hadn’t been an issue. All the counselors wore some combination of shorts, T-shirts, swimsuits, tennis shoes, and hiking boots. Alice lived in clothes like that, so she’d felt like she’d fit in just fine. Thanks to Brooke’s pointed query about the attire for the Castle Durand party, however, Alice knew what to expect for tonight.
She’d had all week to dread this moment.
“I’d loan you one of mine, but …” Kuvi shrugged, glancing significantly at Alice’s figure and then hers. Alice was long-limbed, slender and
tall for a woman, while Kuvi was short with lush, feminine curves.
“What size shoe are you?” Kuvi asked, studying Alice’s bare feet narrowly.
“An eight.”
“Perfect. You know that dress isn’t bad at all, and that orange is great for your coloring,” she said, studying Alice closely. “Take off the tube top, though,” she said, referring to the stretchy white top she wore under the dress. “We’re trying to send that dress up the fancy scale, not down.”
“But—”
“Trust me,” Kuvi said, the manic gleam of a challenge entering her hazel eyes. Alice was reminded, as she had been several times that week, that she didn’t ever want to be on Kuvi Sarin’s opposing team. Kuvi opened her top drawer briskly.
“The women in my family are known for their skin,” Kuvi said distractedly as she rooted around for something. “But your skin might beat us all. It’s so smooth, and it’s turning even a prettier color as you get tan. You must have an Indian in your white-girl family tree. Maybe we’re far distant relatives,” Kuvi joked as she extracted a large plastic bag filled with costume jewelry.
“You don’t want to be remotely related to my family, trust me.”
Kuvi grinned. “Okay. Off with the tube top.”
The halter dress was a little lower cut than Alice preferred, thus the reason she usually wore a tube top under it. The cut was decent by most standards, but Alice was a little conservative when it came to that sort of thing. Once again, her past experience from Little Paradise intervened on present-day life. If a girl went around wearing anything remotely suggestive in Little Paradise, it was an open invitation to trouble. Taking off the tube top wasn’t as bad as she feared, though. The neckline revealed just the hint of the valley between the swells of her breasts and exposed her upper back.
“You’re built,” Kuvi said frankly when Alice walked out of the bathroom after removing the tube top from beneath the dress and refastening the halter. “You should have heard what Thad said when he first saw you in a bathing suit.”
Alice nearly demanded “What?” but then stopped herself at the last minute. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to know what Thad had said.
Which was weird. Why wouldn’t she want to hear about a gorgeous, smart, sweet guy like Thad Schaefer saying something lecherous about her? He hadn’t tried anything with Alice since that day he’d held her in the woods, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t interested. Alice would have to be an idiot not to notice the heat in his eyes every time they were together.
“What do you usually do, bind those things?” Kuvi asked baldly, staring unabashedly at Alice’s breasts.
“I wear sports bras a lot,” Alice said, willing the air-conditioning to cool her hot face. “I’d prefer to keep them out of the limelight,” she said, waving in the general vicinity of her chest.
Kuvi smirked. “I hear you. Men already don’t take us seriously enough, especially in the business world. Don’t worry. The dress doesn’t make your boobs look huge or anything. It just suggests.”
Kuvi proceeded to confidently costume her in a pair of dangly gold earrings, which showed off nicely next to her near-black hair and tan. “No necklace necessary given your gorgeous neck, chest, shoulders, and back,” Kuvi said in a stern, matter-of-fact assessment before shoving several gold bangles and one purple bangle on her wrist.
She pulled a pair of golden sandals with ankle straps out of her closet and held them up excitedly. The shoes were unapologetically sexy, their purpose solely decorative versus practical—like jewelry for the feet. They looked like something a harem girl might wear. Alice finally balked.
“I can’t wear those, Kuvi.”
Kuvi peered at the shoes critically. “Yeah, you’re right. You have too much substance for these froufrou things,” she agreed, tossing the sandals heedlessly back in the closet.
“I’ll just wear these?” Alice asked hopefully, holding up a pair of inexpensive, neutral-colored flats she owned. Kuvi nodded encouragingly. She really was nice. “Are you sure you don’t mind about me borrowing the jewelry?” Alice asked doubtfully, fingering an earring a moment later.
“Mind? It’s fun,” Kuvi insisted. “You look gorgeous.”
Alice didn’t agree, either about the fun or how she looked, but she didn’t want to ruin Kuvi’s apparent good time. She appreciated her roommate’s efforts, but the glamorization of Alice Reed could only go so far without descending into the ridiculous.
SHE and Kuvi walked out into a clear warm summer evening. A good chunk of their total party of twenty-eight people had already arrived at the assigned spot in front of the main lodge when they strolled up to meet them. Being a social butterfly, Kuvi immediately fell into animated conversation with Thad, Dave, and a pretty, quiet young woman from Stanford University named Lacey Sherwood. Lacey and Alice were both runners. Lacey had competed in track in college, but Alice just jogged for exercise. They’d run together a few early mornings this week, though, and found they were compatible, both for the exercise and the company.
“You guys both look great,” Thad told Kuvi and her when they approached. His gaze was warm on her—Alice—though. He looked pretty amazing himself, wearing a light blue button-down, charcoal-gray suit, and narrow black tie. She really was out of her league, Alice thought. He’d packed that suit to come to a summer camp?
It’s not just any summer camp, stupid. It’s a retreat and training ground for the best executives in the world, and that’s precisely what Thad looks like.
Lacey was almost as quiet as Alice as they all chatted, not because she was a loner like Alice, but because she was shy. Alice caught Thad staring at her bare shoulders, arms, and breasts a few times, which was sort of unsettling, but was also nice. She felt glaringly out of place for the event. Having a gorgeous guy openly admire her certainly helped ease her discomfort. For a few minutes, Alice actually started to feel like maybe her nervousness all week about this event had been for nothing.
Until Brooke and Tory walked up, anyway. Naturally, Brooke had pulled Tory’s name during the roommate selection. Luck always favored women like them.
Brooke looked sophisticated and chic in a white dress that snuggly hugged her fit figure and flared in pleats to just above her knees. The color set off her golden tan and shoulder-length brown hair. Alice had no doubt that the earrings and watch she wore glittered with real diamonds. She was the epitome of tasteful elegance and money. Tory looked almost as magazine-cover worthy in a floaty silver-gray chiffon number.
Alice’s cotton sundress and borrowed costume jewelry suddenly seemed especially tacky in comparison. The thought irritated her. The warmth and generosity of Kuvi’s loan of the jewelry was worth a thousand times Brooke’s diamonds.
“Don’t you two look … colorful,” Brooke said dubiously after she greeted Alice and Kuvi. Then she turned her complete attention to Thad and Dave.
“I just overheard Kehoe saying it was too nice of a night to drive the vans up to the castle. We’ll see who’s laughing when Brooke has to walk up that steep bluff wearing those heels,” Kuvi whispered to Alice under her breath, her voice brimming with suppressed laughter.
Kuvi was right. Alice did get a flash of amused vindication looking over her shoulder and seeing Tory and Brooke trudging up the very steep road in their spiked heels several minutes later. She turned back around, determined to ignore Brooke for the rest of the night.
The road they trekked up was lined with gorgeous hydrangea and rose bushes. The tallest spires and towers of the castle poked over the crest of the hill in front of them. The mansion slowly rose above the horizon as they walked toward it, like it was floating.
She was about to enter Dylan Fall’s home.
THREE
The guest entrance faced opposite the Great Lake, although Alice caught a glimpse of the shimmering blue water through a grove of trees as they approached. They crossed a drive that circled around for front-door drop-off. The group gathered on and around the steps. Sebastian
Kehoe authoritatively rapped on the pair of massive carved wood doors using a brass doorknocker. When he dropped his hand, Alice realized the large ornate doorknocker was in the shape of a knight in armor. She started when Kehoe suddenly reached up and used the brass sword to rap on the shield again, the sound jarring her.
“You okay?” Kuvi asked under her breath from beside her.
“Yeah,” Alice assured with a swift, reassuring smile. Luckily, no one else seemed to notice her flash of nerves.
She held her breath at the sound of someone moving inside the house. A woman in her mid to late thirties opened one of the doors wearing a wide smile. Alice exhaled shakily in relief. She’d been expecting Fall right off the bat.
“Louise,” Sebastian said familiarly, taking her hands between his. “I hope we aren’t giving you too much trouble tonight,” he said as Louise beckoned them inside.
“No trouble for me. You know how Marie is with these things. I just stay out of the generalissimo’s way,” Louise joked as their large party trooped into a huge light-filled entry hall.
Louise had a very compact, neat figure and was dressed with casual professionalism in a pair of black pants, a fashionable belted cotton blouse, and ballet flats. Who was she? Was she related to Fall somehow? Alice glanced around curiously, seeing graceful archways that led to various parts of the house, carved teak paneling, museum-quality oil landscapes, stunning flower arrangements on gleaming tables, and a sweeping grand staircase. Soft evening light emanated from a circular bank of oversized windows at the landing of the stairs. Above them, a crystal chandelier hovered, looking like a giant suspended crown waiting patiently for its wearer. It was a given that Alice would be in awe of the surroundings, but even Brooke and Tory looked impressed.
Who was Louise? Alice recalled that Dylan Fall was single. Maybe his marital status had altered since she’d done her research?
