The Trouble With Paradise

by Jill Shalvis

  Dorie opened her purse and pulled out a small kit of some kind, doing something that included scissors and a needle and thread, all the while engaging in conversation with Cadence and Brandy. He had no idea how women could talk nonstop like that for hours on end; it was just one of those phenomena he attributed to having more estrogen than testosterone. But Andy didn’t appear to mind that, or having her hands all over him as she fixed the pants.

  Andy leaned in to kiss her, and she surprised both men by turning her head and giving him her cheek.

  Andy kissed her, sliding his finger over her shoulder, his gaze briefly dropping to her breasts.

  So did Christian’s.

  Her nipples were no longer hard.

  She didn’t get turned on by Andy, not like she had for Christian. He really wished he didn’t know that.

  “Here he comes,” Cadence whispered.

  Dorie’s heart thumped hard. “Christian?”

  “Baseball Cutie.”

  She turned. Yep, Andy was back, looking determined. Oh boy. He held out a frond. “Do me?”

  “Uh . . .” Once again her tongue swelled and stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  “Make me a visor?”

  “Oh! Sure.” She began twisting the frond, concentrating on that instead of her tongue, but then he sat close enough that their thighs brushed.

  She glanced over at Cadence, who moved away to give them privacy, and then back to Andy. “Andy, I think I’ve given you the wrong impression.” She couldn’t believe she was going to do this. “I think you’re a really great guy.”

  “Uh-oh,” Andy said. “The ‘great guy’ speech.”

  Oh, God. This was hard. But after the past few days, after the way her body had sort of taken over and reacted to Christian, she couldn’t continue with Andy. “I just don’t think I’m right for you.”

  “You’re exactly right for me. You’re beautiful, sweet, and unjaded. You’re like a fresh breeze, and I—”

  “Andy.” She let out a disparaging sound. “Crazy,” she said to herself. “I’m crazy for doing this.”

  “It’s the heat,” he told her earnestly, looking so gorgeous it physically hurt to look at him. “It’s getting to me, too.”

  “No.” She covered her face, then dropped her hands and looked right into his eyes, determined. “It’s not the heat. You’re not right for me.”

  He blinked, the rejection clearly new and foreign territory for him.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “No. No problem. It’s okay, I understand.” And with a baffled smile, he moved off.

  “Don’t feel too bad, honey,” Brandy said, moving in close. “In his world, women throw panties and phone numbers at him, nightly. They wait outside his locker room to have him autograph their boobs and to tuck their hotel keys into his pants. They blow him in those hotels, they don’t blow him off. So really, you’ve done him a favor by giving him this experience.”

  It didn’t feel like a favor. “It’s all my tongue’s fault.” “Hey, a tongue knows what it knows.”

  Was that even possible? Because Christian wasn’t what she wanted . . . or at least not what she wanted to want.

  First night on deserted island—

  Where’s Jeff Probst when you need him?

  As the day turned into the dreaded night and they weren’t rescued, Denny announced that they’d scout out the other side of the island first thing in the morning, by whatever means they could.

  In the meantime, faced with impending dark and the resulting helplessness, they got a rip-roaring fire going, then sat around it, eating a feast of leftovers from the boat, prepared by Ethan.

  He hoisted a bottle of vodka and took the first swig. “To Bobby,” he toasted somberly, and passed the bottle around.

  They each toasted to their fallen ship hand, while Dorie looked around at all their faces, trying to see who felt the most panic at being trapped here overnight.

  But if someone was jumpy—not to mention guilty as hell—they kept it close to their vest.

  She eyed the thick, lush rain forest that seemed to rise straight upward in the falling night, covering the volcanic peaks, stretching so high into the dusk sky that she had to tip her head way back to see it all. From inside that dark jungle came a steady stream of sounds that upped her nerve factor, though Andy assured her most of the strange, eerie calls came from birds.

  Most.

  But not all.

  The thought would have brought more terror to her gut if there’d been any more room for it, but on the fright scale, she was just about maxed out, something not helped by the low fog that rolled in, upping the creep factor. The wet grayness moved with shocking speed, slipping over the craggy cliffs, like that from a smoke machine on a horror movie set.

  “Oh, God, another storm.” Cadence held her hands out as the first drops of rain fell.

  “It’ll only last a few minutes,” Christian assured her. “The clouds snag on the mountains. The trees on the top trap the moisture until it’s too heavy, and it all drops.”

  “A self-watering forest,” Cadence murmured, still looking unnerved.

  “It’ll be over as soon as the cloud passes overhead.”

  Sure enough, less than three minutes later, when the cloud had passed, so had the rainfall, leaving the sky clear again. It might have all been just a part of the adventure and romance of the cruise, if the Sun Song hadn’t been on its side in the shallow water, permanently grounded. Oh, and if Bobby hadn’t been missing.

  After eating, Christian and Denny used material from the Sun Song’s wrecked sails to add strength to the frond overhang they’d erected, and as darkness fell, Dorie was grateful for the protection, meager as it might be. Cadence worked on the inside of the shelter like a woman possessed, smoothing out the sand floor until Denny made her sit down and relax because she was making him dizzy.

  “I need to keep busy,” Cadence whispered, and shivered even though it wasn’t cold.

  Worried about her, Dorie pulled her back to the bonfire, where she sat next to her new friend and stared at the flames. Gazing at the red glow, Dorie tried to put things in perspective. So they were shipwrecked, so what. This was the new millennium. There were no uncharted waters. They’d be found in no time. Besides, big picture? She was a Shop-Mart salesclerk who’d managed to get herself halfway around the world and was getting an up-front and personal experience on a South Pacific island.

  And, bonus, she was living her life.

  “Truth or dare,” Brandy said, plunking down next to them. “I pick dare. Someone dare me to go skinny-dipping in the waves. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  “How about a PG version?” Dorie asked, not wanting to get naked.

  Brandy sighed. “Fine. Truth.”

  Cadence looked at her. “Truth? Why aren’t you freaked out about being here?”

  “Hell. Skinny-dipping would have been much more fun.” Brandy tipped her head up to the sky, which was becoming littered with stars as night took over. “Maybe I’m enjoying the break from my life.”

  “You think of this as a break?”

  Brandy laughed, but it was mirthless. “Believe me, Cadence, when I tell you there are far worse things than being stuck on a gorgeous deserted island for a few days.” Brandy nudged Dorie. “Truth or dare?”

  She wasn’t ready for truth. “Dare.”

  “Go kiss one of our resident studs.”

  “Did I say dare? I meant truth.”

  Brandy smiled. “Okay, then. If we were playing the X-rated version of truth or dare, which stud would you have kissed?”

  Oh, God. There was only one. Giving herself away, she glanced at Christian and found his gaze on her, intense and hot enough to singe her skin. Matching heat flooded her from the inside out. “Uhm...”

  A scraping sound in the sand had her glancing down, where she discovered that not three inches from her sandals crawled—

  “Alligator,” she cried out.

  The crew came
running at her shriek of terror, Christian at the head of the pack.

  Dorie didn’t move, just stared down at the foot-long, dinosaur-looking creature strutting past all of them as if it was king, holding a still squirming frog in his mouth.

  “Iguana,” Christian said.

  The thing had wide beady eyes with a vertical pupil that gave it an alienlike expression, not to mention the prickly spiked ridges over each eye that almost made it look like it was wearing glasses. Its teeth were disarmingly plentiful, gripping its prize.

  “He’s got his dinner,” Ethan noted.

  Dorie did her best not to lose hers. “That poor frog is still alive!”

  “Not for long.” Ethan offered the bottle of vodka. “Here, this might help.” He also had the last bag of chips. “Anyone?”

  Brandy took the alcohol.

  Cadence wanted to share.

  Dorie went for the chips, and wished they were chocolate.

  Denny went back to brooding on the Sun Song, and Christian and Andy tended to the fire.

  Ethan stayed with the women. “Pass the vodka.”

  Dorie offered to pass the chips around as well, but Brandy shook her head. “I might as well lose a few pounds while I’m here, because if we don’t get rescued in a timely fashion, I’m going to get fired. Being fit will help me get a job somewhere else.”

  “If I don’t get back soon,” Cadence said, “I won’t finish a painting I’m doing on spec for a customer, and I’ll lose my rent money for the month.”

  “If I don’t get back . . .” Dorie paused. If she didn’t get back, what would happen?

  Nothing.

  Nothing would happen, and nothing would change.

  Not such a great thought. “I think I have changes to make,” she said softly. “Serious changes.” She realized they were all looking at her. “It’s that whole waiting for life to happen thing. I need to stop doing that, and make it happen.”

  “Well, you could always go kiss a stud . . .” Brandy took a big swig of vodka. “In the name of the game.”

  Dorie’s gaze locked on Andy and Christian. Andy stood on the far side of the fire, staring in the flames. Christian moved from the pit, walking toward the water’s edge.

  “Actually,” she murmured. “You might be on to something.”

  “She is?” Cadence asked, shocked.

  Brandy smiled. “You go, girl.”

  “Wait.” Ethan snagged the bottle from Brandy and offered it to Dorie. “You might need a shot of this first.”

  Dorie took a swallow, choked, then handed it off. She stood, grabbed her purse, and started walking.

  “Which one is she going after?” Ethan whispered.

  “Not sure,” Cadence whispered back. “But she has her purse and the box of condoms.”

  “A box?” Brandy asked.

  Dorie kept walking, past the fire.

  She heard Cadence’s surprised intake of breath, or maybe that was her own. But she was no longer unsure of her next move. There was really only one thing to be done, probably there’d always only been one thing. Actually, one man.

  And she headed directly toward him.

  SIXTEEN

  As Dorie approached Christian, he looked up, his face streaked with sand, sweat, and a barely banked misery that pretty much ripped her heart right out of her chest. “What is it?” she asked.

  He lifted a hat, which he’d clearly just pulled from the water, an Astros baseball cap.

  “Bobby’s,” she gasped.

  He hung the hat off the closest palm tree and shoved his fingers through his hair.

  “Christian?”

  Swiping an arm over his forehead, he waited for her to talk.

  She swallowed hard. For whatever reason, she’d had some misguided idea that she could approach this tall, dark, and attitude-ridden man, and seize the day. Her day. Now she simply wanted to give him some comfort, but was suddenly at a loss. She glanced back at Cadence and Brandy, who waved her on. Right.

  She could do this.

  “Can we walk?” It was a procrastination strategy, but he shrugged and grabbed his flashlight. They headed up the beach, Christian not saying a word, Dorie’s heart hammering so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t have spoken to save her life. The long, dark beach curved around, and within a few minutes they could no longer see the glow from the campfire, could see nothing but the dark outline of the island jutting up to the heavens on their right and the glimmer of the faint starlight on the waves on their left.

  Dorie had always imagined a deserted island would be silent, but she’d been very wrong. The water crashed onto the sand. Insects buzzed, and given the ear-splitting decibels of the hum, they were damn large insects. The small, colorful, plentiful birds hadn’t gone to sleep with the setting sun, and their cries were piercing. Haunting. And she’d have sworn that not all those screeches and hoots were avian based, but she didn’t want to think on that too long.

  At a sharp curve in the beach, they met the rocky climb they’d made earlier, and silently took it again.

  Ten minutes later, the steep incline once again gave way to the plateau that provided a windy, sweeping view of the dark beach far below. Dorie stood there, panting for breath.

  She really needed to get serious about exercise. Assuming she survived her vacation, that is.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Seizing my day. My life.”

  “Huh?”

  “I . . .” Want to jump your bones. “Um—”

  “Shh,” he said suddenly. “Do you hear that?”

  Cocking her head, she listened. She could hear the wind rustling the trees. More insects buzzing. And then the lone cry of a bird. Surrounded by the wet, dark rain forest that she couldn’t see, the lushness of it dripped with moisture, and even by the moon’s glow, seemed vacuous. “I hear lots of things.”

  “Water.” He pulled her off the rock and into—big gulp—the rain forest.

  It swallowed them up whole.

  One moment she could hear and see the waves below, and above the slender moon and billions of stars, and then the next moment, nothing. “Christian.”

  Taking her hand, he tugged her along. Damp branches and leaves brushed her arms and legs. Something touched her cheek, and with a squeak, she glued herself to Christian’s back.

  “What?” he asked.

  She brushed a hand over his pagan-god-like shoulder. “You had something on you.”

  Seeing right through her, he snorted, then continued on, but suddenly went still.

  Oh, God, what now?

  “Look,” he said.

  She realized she’d closed her eyes in terror, and with a brave swallow, she opened them to find herself standing before a cliff that zoomed so high up she couldn’t see where it ended. From somewhere up there fell a waterfall, landing into a natural pool about thirty feet below them. Lit by the moon, the water shimmered like live crystals, but the pool, shadowed by all the lush growth, lay still as smooth, black marble. Still but not quiet. Here even more insects buzzed, and the birds continued to chirp and squawk. Coming in all around them was the damp, warm night air, making everything seem too close.

  Too intimate.

  “Fresh water,” he marveled, their feet sinking into the heavy, wet growth beneath them.

  It looked like heaven on earth, and drawn to it, she took a step forward, only her foot went right through the thick growth and sank into the sand at the edge of the water.

  “Watch it.”

  Watching it didn’t seem to be her forte, but instead of letting her fall, he tugged her back against his nice, hard chest, which was beginning to be very familiar.

  “You need a keeper, you know that.” Arms still around her, he leaned back, spine to the tree behind him, chest damp and hard, he stuck to her everywhere they touched, which was in some very interesting places. “Tell me you didn’t just twist your other ankle.”

  She took quick stock. Nope. In fact, held against him as she was, her s
pine to his torso, backs of her thighs to the fronts of his, her bottom snugged to his crotch, everything felt pretty darn warm and fuzzy and happy.

  Very happy. “Ankle’s good.”

  “And you didn’t lose that purse.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not. You didn’t even lose it in a shipwreck, so what am I thinking.”

  She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was thinking damn, it felt good to be held against his body, good to forget, even for a minute, the hell they’d found themselves in. Twisting to face him, she opened her mouth to apologize for this whole mess. But he kissed her.

  She’d figured maybe they’d talk through their grief, but as a grief release, this worked, too. This worked just fine. Their hands grappled for purchase on each other while their tongues did the tango. When he slid a hand beneath her tops and found her nipple with his thumb, her knees buckled . . . “I can’t stand,” she gasped.

  Without missing a beat he whipped her around so that she was pressed to the tree, held there by his body. “How’s that?”

  “Good.” Incredible.

  “Good.” And he kissed her again.

  Her flashlight dropped to the ground and skittered away, the beam shining off into the distance as his hands claimed her breasts while his mouth attached itself to her throat.

  A freight train of lust surged through her veins. It’d been a long time, too long. Over a year ago she’d gone out with a guy five times before he got this far, and in his haste to get to the good stuff, he’d removed only the essential clothing on both of them, and had touched her breasts almost by accident as he’d made his way to ground zero (which he’d missed by a good three inches), getting inside her with just enough time to go off like a bottle rocket.

  Leaving her over-revving her engine at the starting gate, and once again faking it.

  But Christian seemed to have a whole other agenda going on, and she didn’t have to fake anything, certainly not her reaction. He wasn’t panting like a lunatic, whispering “Oh God, please don’t let me come too fast . . .”

  In fact, he wasn’t saying a word, but that might have been because his mouth had other things to do. As he kissed her, long and wet and deep, she felt herself slipping under his spell, her body coming alive so that it practically shivered with anticipation, humming with a pleasure she couldn’t quite contain. The sound of it escaped her with every whimpering breath.