The Trouble With Paradise

by Jill Shalvis

  Multiple times.

  God, she felt alive, and had since Christian had pulled her into the shower and stripped her out of her clothes.

  Actually, she’d felt this way from that first moment in Fiji when she’d stood watching him board the Sun Song, utterly at ease with himself and everything around him.

  Being with him, especially when she was naked, was heaven. Leaving him, which she would do far too soon, was going to feel like hell on earth.

  Later, she told herself. Go there later . . .

  But she couldn’t help herself. She’d told him she could handle this, and logically, she understood. She did. They came from two entirely different worlds. Not to mention he lived on the complete other side of the planet, pretty much the definition of geographically undesirable.

  But she had fallen anyway.

  She had no idea how that could even happen after only a few days. Maybe it was because of the intensity of it all, and what they’d been through. Perhaps it had sped up the process. Regardless, fact was fact.

  She loved him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Uh-oh,” Dorie whispered, staggered at the realization. She loved him. “Not good.”

  “What’s not good?”

  He’d come up behind her. She glanced at him in the mirror, wondering if what she’d been thinking was all over her face. When she’d left him only a few minutes ago, he’d been wearing nothing but a smile. Now he wore faded Levi’s and a T-shirt, his hair still wet and finger combed off his face. At the sight of him, her body gave one hopeful little shiver of anticipation because it wanted more of what he’d just given her.

  Also not good.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “As if maybe you’re seeing something you’re not all that thrilled about.”

  Well, she wasn’t all that thrilled that she’d gone and gotten her heart involved, because it was going to hurt. Big-time. “Christian, I—”

  He pulled her around to face him and put a finger over her lips. “Wait. Listen.”

  She cocked her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly.” He walked past her. Three bedrooms, all opened and all empty.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “No clue.”

  The silence, which she might have noticed before now if she hadn’t been in a sexual fog, was almost eerie. “Um, how long were we in that shower anyway?”

  His eyes cut to hers, holding a flash of amusement.

  “Just wondering,” she said, and felt her ears heat.

  He stroked a finger over one of them, a rare smile crossing his lips, slow and soft and sexy, and—her heart leapt—filled with genuine affection and heat. “We weren’t that long.”

  Together, they moved down the stairs and through the wide, open living room, to an adjoining room that looked like it had every entertainment setup known to man, complete with a wall of television sets, all on, several turned to sporting events from what Dorie assumed was across the world. Two huge side-by-side screens were showing American baseball. Surely this would have drawn Andy out of wherever he’d been, and yet the room, the entire house, reverberated with an undeniable silence.

  “Weird,” she said.

  “Very.” He looked around them. “Let’s—”

  A scream pierced the air, and though Dorie took a second to process the shocking, startling sound, Christian did not. He was running before she could blink, and all she could do was follow him, through the house, down a hallway, and then another, through what looked like a library because of the miles and miles of shelves filled with books and more books.

  But she was too busy keeping Christian in her sight to take in much. Without him, she knew she’d be hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of hallways, and she didn’t intend to get lost.

  Not with the scream that had sounded like Cadence.

  “This way.” Christian barreled through a set of double French doors that opened onto a wood deck, and a set of stairs that appeared to vanish into thin air.

  Not vanish, she realized with a gulp as she blindly followed Christian, but led straight down at a dizzying pitch at least three hundred feet to the beach, and the deck.

  She moved as quickly as she dared, but her sandals really had to go. Her purse banged into her hip, threatening her balance with every step. Halfway down, Christian pulled out his knife, which made breathing all but impossible, but she couldn’t concentrate on that when she could see what lay ahead, which had her nearly apoplectic with terror.

  Michael’s boat was still docked. On the dock itself, his back to them, stood Denny. He was holding Cadence against him and gesturing to Brandy and Andy, who stood in front of him.

  The knife he held gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Stay back.” His words came over the water with an eerie clarity.

  “Jesus, Denny,” Brandy said softly. “No wonder you can’t keep a woman.”

  “I’m a man on the fucking edge!” he yelled at her. “You’re supposed to be sweet-talking me, not pissing me off!”

  “I don’t—” But Brandy broke off, looking up at Christian as he flew down the stairs.

  At her movement, Denny whipped around, and when he did, Cadence let out a loud, screeching “hi-yaaaaah” and karate-chopped him in the back of his neck.

  His eyes went wide with surprise for one beat before they fluttered, revealing the whites rolling up. Letting go of Cadence, he hit the wood dock face-first.

  Andy dove on top of him, presumably to hold him down, but Denny was out cold and not going anywhere.

  Brandy grabbed the fallen knife. Christian skidded down the last step to the dock. “Are you hurt?” he asked Cadence.

  Looking shell-shocked, she shook her head, then glanced down at Denny. “I almost gave up my penis embargo for you!” Then she kicked him in the butt.

  Denny stirred and lifted his head. “Hey, that hurt!”

  “So would that knife if you’d have used it on me!”

  “Kick him again, honey,” Brandy directed. “Just for the hell of it.” She sneered down at Denny with disgust. “I should have known you were evil from the moment I saw you treat Bobby like your slave boy. A person who is rude to the hired help is not a nice person.”

  Dorie got onto the dock and reached for Cadence, who looked like a good wind might knock her over.

  “Thanks,” Cadence whispered, squeezing hard, her eyes a little wet.

  “I wasn’t going to use the knife on you,” Denny said, still flat on the deck.

  “How am I supposed to believe that when you used it on poor Bobby!”

  Denny nearly choked. “I did not—” He tried to get up but Andy was sitting on him so he gave up. “Let me up!”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Listen to me. I did not hurt Bobby. And I wasn’t going to hurt Cadence.”

  “Still not letting you up,” Andy said.

  “Goddamnit!”

  Cadence let go of Dorie’s hand and crouched at Denny’s side. “Maybe you should just relax,” she suggested.

  Denny didn’t look like he appreciated the irony. “I am telling you I did not use that knife on Bobby!”

  “Then who did?” Cadence demanded.

  Christian went very still, then whipped toward the boat. “Ethan.”

  Ethan, who’d managed to get onto the Elegance unnoticed, had pushed off from the dock. Already a good hundred feet out, he started the small motor and lifted a hand in a wave. “Ahoy!” he yelled as he sailed away.

  In Michael’s boat.

  Without Michael.

  Without any of them.

  “Oh, Christ,” Andy said, his foot still on Denny’s back. “He’s the one who—”

  “Goddamn, you’re brilliant.” Denny looked furious. “Now can you get off me so I can swim out there and nab his sorry ass?”

  Andy removed his foot from Denny, but when Denny l
eapt to his feet and whipped around, Christian was still standing there, tall and tense, and very much in Denny’s way.

  “Move, man.”

  Christian didn’t budge, didn’t even blink as he spoke. “Someone needs to go after Ethan.” He put a hand on Denny’s chest when he moved to do just that. “Not you.”

  Michael came down the stairs and absorbed the situation in one glance. “Shit, I’ll get help—” His hand went to his belt, but his face slackened in disbelief. “My radio’s gone.”

  Denny laughed but it was mirthless. “Yeah. Ethan used to be a pickpocket.”

  Michael swore, and turning, went running back up the stairs.

  Brandy grabbed Dorie, and they raced after Michael to help however they could. At the top of the stairs, Dorie would have liked to double over and gasp for breath, but Michael didn’t stop. He ran around the back of his huge mansion, toward what looked like a one, two, three, four-car garage directly in front of . . . a moat?

  And another dock.

  Moored there was a small motor craft. Michael hopped in, and the girls did the same. The engine leapt to life, and Michael tossed them life vests. “Put them on!”

  Dorie was still buckling in when he punched the gas, and after a moment of following the small waterway to the open water, they were faces to the wind, heading after Ethan.

  “What are we going to do when we catch him?” Brandy yelled.

  “Depends on if he’s hurt my boat.” Michael spoke evenly enough but there was underlying violence there. Dorie wouldn’t want to be the one crossing him or his million-dollar boat, that was for sure.

  “Why didn’t you use this thing to take us directly to Fiji?” Brandy wanted to know. “Instead of putting up with us in your place?”

  Michael glanced over. “This is just a ski boat. You do know how far from Fiji you are, right?”

  “No idea.”

  “Let’s just say it’s going to take Ethan days to get anywhere close to a place he could possibly even think about hocking my boat.”

  “How long for us to catch up with him?”

  Michael pointed, and as they came around a sharp, craggy curve of the island, they saw a white dot that was the Elegance, a few miles out on the horizon. It didn’t take them long to get closer. Ethan wasn’t having the easiest time sailing the huge yacht by himself.

  Dorie looked back. She could just barely make out the vague outline of Michael’s house high on the rocks, and far below, the beach where though she couldn’t see them, she knew the others were with Denny.

  Ethan tried to cut left, out to open sea, and got tangled up in a sail, which allowed them the precious seconds they needed to get closer. He was on deck struggling with the lines, swearing the air so blue it blew his hair back.

  “Need a hand?” Michael asked politely, cutting his engine to be heard.

  Ethan whipped toward them, and it wasn’t the glint of a knife that stopped Dorie’s heart this time, but the flash of a gun.

  Going off.

  Michael flew back against Brandy, who was propelled off her seat to the floor, with Michael in her arms. He rolled off of her, gritting his teeth before he could say anything. “It’s just a knick. Duck, now, before he shoots again.”

  But Ethan had lost interest in them and was battling with the yacht, trying to hoist a different sail.

  “Take the controls, Dorie,” Michael commanded. “Quickly.”

  Gulping because his white shirt was covered in blood, Dorie whipped around and look at the controls. They might as well have belonged to a spacecraft.

  “That’s more than a knick,” Brandy accused him, panic in her voice.

  Dorie didn’t look. She was trying to figure out how to make the boat go. At her elbow, something squawked, making her jump.

  A radio.

  “Base to Phillips,” came a very French voice. “Tell me that wasn’t a gunshot we just heard.”

  “They’re at the other dock.” Michael’s face was shiny with sweat, tight in a grimace of pain. “Tell him to get out my Stryker. It’s an offshore runner. He can catch Ethan on that.”

  “He’s not going anywhere because we’re bringing you straight there to him,” Brandy said. “Do you hear me?”

  Michael’s face was cushioned between Brandy’s two very expensive and beautiful breasts, and he didn’t look as if he minded. “Hard not to hear you,” he said. “You’re shouting.”

  “Goddamnit, answer me,” came Christian’s voice over the radio, sounding very unhappy.

  Dorie eyed Ethan. He was making headway, moving away from them with alarming speed. She lifted the radio to her mouth. “Yes, that was a gunshot. Ethan’s getting away and Michael’s shot and I’m trying to get back to you but I don’t know how—” She ended this with a scream when a large swell slapped at the front of the boat and splashed her right in the face.

  “Hit the throttle,” Michael yelled at her. “Steer into the swells, not with the swells!”

  Damn it. Maybe he could operate the radio and drive at the same time but she could not.

  “Base to Phillips,” came Christian again. “Pick up your goddamn radio or I’m going to kick some serious ass!”

  “What the hell is his problem?” she shouted back to Brandy and Michael. “I answered him!”

  “Hon, you have to push the button when you talk.” Brandy had ripped off her shirt, and was pressing it to Michael’s wound, leaving her in nothing but a tiger-striped bra and those hot Daisy Dukes. “Now forget the radio and drive this sucker home.”

  “I swear, I’m trying.”

  “Push the throttle all the way down,” Michael told her.

  When she did, the boat leapt to life. Okay, that was good. Speed was good, because her flesh was crawling, flinching in anticipation of a bullet tearing through it. She risked a look behind them.

  Ethan had figured things out and was beginning to really move.

  “First-aid kit,” Brandy yelled. “Where is it?”

  “Forget that.” Michael said this through gritted teeth, sitting up with Brandy’s help. “Dorie, keep going. Circle around him, he’s going to ruin the—”

  “Oh, you are not going to be a guy about this,” Brandy told him. “Screw Ethan and your damn boat. You’re going straight back. Christian’s a doctor, the best. He’ll patch you up—”

  But Michael wasn’t listening. His eyes had changed. Grown heavy.

  Closed . . .

  “Michael!” Brandy cried.

  He didn’t open his eyes but nodded. “Still here.”

  Both Dorie and Brandy sagged in relief, but he was bleeding like crazy, and Dorie began to worry that he could actually bleed out. “You have to stay with us, Michael.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

  Oh, God. There was a shocking amount of blood pumping from his shoulder, soaking into Brandy’s shirt, and Dorie did the only thing she could. She faced the terrifyingly choppy water and pushed the throttle all the way to the metal.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Faster,” Brandy cried. “We’ve got to get him back faster.”

  “On it.” Dorie looked down at the swells barreling into the boat. “But I don’t want to kill us.”

  “Circle around.” Michael spoke without opening his eyes. “Head into the swells, hit them perpendicular, so we don’t capsize.”

  Right. No capsizing. She whipped them around, the boat nearly tipping up on its end when she hit a swell too hard.

  “Into them,” Michael ordered again.

  Into the swells. Into the swells. Into the swells. Dorie repeated it to herself like a mantra. She could see the house, the little canal they’d come out of, the dock that she was going to pull up to—if there was a God—and a figure standing on that dock.

  Legs apart, radio up to his mouth, hair whipping around his face in the wind, Christian looked right at her from hundreds of yards away. “Are you hit?”

  The button. God, she’d forgotten Christian still hadn’t heard a word sh
e’d said. She picked up the radio and pushed in the button. “Michael was shot! We’re coming in—theoretically. Because I don’t know how to park this thing.”

  “I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up. Are you fucking hit?”

  “Not me. Michael.”

  “What?”

  Jesus! She looked up, screamed at the swell she drove straight into, nearly flipping them over, and tossed the radio aside to use both hands on the wheel. Sorry, Christian. She had to concentrate to turn into the canal.

  Only she missed. She actually missed. “Oh, God.”

  “Gentle,” Christian’s voice said, and she realized he was speaking to her through the radio lying on the seat. “Gentle on the wheel, that’s all.” His voice came soft and easy. Laid-back. As if they had all the time in the world. “Make a wide turn and come back, try it again. That’s it,” he said as she followed his directions, and this time made it into the canal. “Don’t worry about anything but this,” he said. “Denny’s tied up, and I’ve still got Ethan in sight. You’re doing great, Dorie.”

  Bullshit, she was doing great. She was hyperventilating. Her heart was in her throat and her legs were sweating. “The steering on this is stupid!”

  He couldn’t hear her, but he responded anyway. “Ease up on it, there you go. Ten more feet and I’ve got you.”

  In five, he took a flying leap from the dock and landed like a cat right next to her, pushing her aside to maneuver the boat into the slip with an extremely irritating ease. “Tie us,” he called to Andy and Cadence, who were running toward them to help.

  Then Christian let go of the wheel and hauled her up to her toes. “Thank Christ,” he said, looking her over. “Jesus, I thought—” He shook his head, his breathing hard and uneven.

  At the sound and feel of him, her heart sort of swelled, and then jammed in her throat, which didn’t explain why her eyes began to burn. Strong as she’d had to be the past few days, she felt strongest right here, right now, surrounded by him. What she felt for him was so, so much bigger than she’d even imagined, and, more shocking, couldn’t be contained. “I love you,” she whispered, the words escaping without permission.