Trouble in Paradise

by Capri Montgomery

  Copyright © 2013 Shunta Montgomery

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author’s permission is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions that can only be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Lulu. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Publisher’s Note:

  Trouble in Paradise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by: Sweet Temptation Designs

  www.sweettemptationdesigns.com

  Special Thanks

  Thank you, Barb, for catching the mistakes I missed. Your assist with editing has been wonderful.

  Thank you Nathalie for the name assist. Sterling was a perfect fit for this guy.

  Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.

  Books by Capri Montgomery

  Write Me A Murder: Sing Me to My Grave

  Shadow Hills Returns: Revenge Justified

  Shadow Ridge

  Shadow Hills Returns: Breaking Point

  Shadow Hills Returns: Obsession’s Curse

  Forged in Fire

  The Funeral Planner

  Hiking for Danger

  Shadow Hills Returns: Family Ties

  Providence

  Shadow Hills Returns: The Cost of Love

  The Sixth Sentinel

  On the Line

  Inferno

  When the Heart Breaks

  In Love Before Christmas

  Killing Hannah

  On Thin Ice

  Warriors of Persia

  Sworn to Secrecy

  Explosive: Deadly Connections

  Betrayal of the Dove

  Vendetta

  Shadow Hills: M is for Murder

  Seducing the Bodyguard

  Shadow Hills: No Valentine

  Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero

  Fahrenheit

  Secrets and Lies

  Returning Sheba

  Saints and Sinners

  The McGregor Affair

  Dream Walker

  The Geneva Project

  The Admiral’s Daughter

  Dangerous Obsessions

  Watch Over Me

  And Many Others…

  Chapter One

  “Go kick stone,” Jocelyn yelled. Her eyes were narrowed into tight slits of anger. The tension in her body was near explosive. Was this the start of an argument or the end of one? Either way, the heat level was high and if it didn’t simmer soon there might be a need to call in legal reinforcements. Jocelyn looked as if she were ready to rip somebody’s head off—mainly her mother’s.

  “Oh and what—die?” Jordana tacked her hands to her hips. Her bleached blond over tanned look was something Bambi couldn’t understand. Yes, her name was really Bambi. Yes, her mother was probably still high on pain medication when she named her. And yes, her name was the butt of all jokes until people realized Bambi was not a woman to be messed with.

  “Just go kick stone! You always try to pick a fight with me. Pick it with somebody else.” The fifteen year old darted off down the hall and slammed her door shut. Bambi cringed at the loud bang and what sounded like the rattling of glass. Any harder and something could have fallen and broken. She was there to pick Jocelyn up for her father. He and Jordana had shared custody and Jocelyn, Lyn to her friends, was set to spend the entire summer with her father, Sterling. What a way to kick off a summer, she thought. But then she realized that Jocelyn would be fine once the root of the problem was no longer in sight.

  Her mother, Jordana the Diva Lancaster was the world’s biggest witch. People could drop the w and add the second letter of the alphabet and they would still be accurate. Bambi wasn’t sure just what Sterling Lancaster saw in the woman. He said he was young. He dated her in high school and before going off to the Army he married her. She got pregnant in lightening speed, and then she flipped the script and became somebody he could barely live with. He said he would have left her sooner, but they had Jocelyn to keep in mind. But by year six of yelling, screaming and drama on the base, Sterling had enough. He filed for divorce at the same time he put in his papers for a transfer to an instructor position on base. Then two years later he left the Army and opened his own business. He found something he loved to do and he went with it. He was definitely happy now—except when he had to deal with Jordana. For a big military guy and hardnosed businessman he surely didn’t have a lot of guts when it came to dealing with his ex—which is why Bambi was the one picking up his pride and joy, “best part to come out of his marriage,” teen. On the other end of that, maybe he was just trying not to get arrested for shooting Jordana. Maybe that’s why he stayed away from her.

  “You see what I deal with? His daughter is just like him. She looks like him too. Ugly little cunt.”

  Bambi wanted to hit her now, but she refrained. She was peacekeeper between warring adults, not the garbage lady to take out the trash that was named Jordana. And thank God Jocelyn took more after her father’s family. She was beautiful. Her father was an Aussie-American-Japanese mix. He always laughed about that. His mother was more Australian Aborigine than Japanese. He said most people couldn’t understand the mix. His mother’s father had fallen in love with a Japanese woman touring the outback. He fell so deeply that he gave up his tribal home for her and she gave up her home in Japan. They settled in Sydney for ten years where they had London, his mother. They moved to Japan for all of five years before they moved back to Australia. London had hit the road the moment she graduated—or more like the air. She went to school in America where she met Professor Harris Lancaster, fell in love and married the high blond man with the crystal green eyes and the thick rimmed glasses.

  Bambi had laughed at his use of words because Harris was high blond and his glasses were rather thick rimmed. Most cruel kids would have called them coke bottle glasses. The man had the worst eyesight of anybody she had ever met. Remove his glasses and he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. “I’m a scientist,” he had said, “not a model.” He was a brilliant scientist which is probably why he didn’t get kicked out of the Colorado based university for dating and marrying one of his students.

  Harris was a molecular biologist. London was a whiz with computers. She could hack anything that had wires, and Sterling was rather proud of that.

  Sterling had taken a mix of his mother and his father. He had this perpetual tan that seemed Hawaiian sun kissed even in the thick of the Colorado winters. He had a slight slant of his eyes that really brought out the Japanese features—his eyes were so beautiful like that. They were more of a pale green, but his hair was this blondish-black. It was hard to describe because it wasn’t quite blond, but it wasn’t quite black and it wasn’t a blondish-brown either.

  She shrugged. Thinking about Sterling wasn’t her primary concern right now, all she knew was that Jocelyn had her father’s gorgeous slant of eyes, skin tone, and winning personality—when she wasn’t around her mother. What she had of her mother’s features were the blue eyes and black hair�
�had her mother not bleached her hair to extremes. She also had the roundness of her chin. Her father had a slight cleft chin, which Bambi typically hated, but it worked on him. Still, she thought it was good that Jocelyn hadn’t gotten that feature. She was a mix of both parents, but she did look more like her dad. She was probably going to be tall like him too.

  Sterling was five ten, which to Bambi’s five two stature was tall in her book. Jocelyn was on her way there at an even five eight and thinly gorgeous; the woman could grow up to be a model if she wanted to. Of course with a father who was like the king of fitness Bambi didn’t expect anything else from his gorgeous daughter. She looked so much better in body than her mother, who looked like she had a few too many units of fat sucked out of her over the years. The woman was a walking science project. Boob job times three because the first two times just weren’t big enough. She wanted to be in a triple D bra so she kept on going. Then she had her lips injected, a cheek implant, a tummy tuck to get rid of her unwelcome post baby pouch, lipo for her thighs, lipo for her arms, and a bit of Botox for the wrinkles between her eyebrows. Okay, a bit was an understatement. The woman’s face was frozen like Joan Rivers’. She had height though, at five eleven the woman stood tall, and if she didn’t slouch so much she would look taller.

  “Is she packed yet?” Bambi held her control because Jordana was working her last nerve today.

  “I don’t know. Her stupid father should have come get her himself instead of sending his lackey to do it.”

  She was not his lackey.

  “I know you’re just his assistant and I don’t worry about her liking you because you’ll never come close to being her mother. Sterling would never go for somebody as dark as yourself.”

  His mother was darker than she was. Okay, she wasn’t exactly light brown sugar, and when she tanned she was darker than her winter skin. If she didn’t have long silky straight hair and oval shaped eyes she figured people would look at her and assume she was black. On the other end of that, most did assume just that. They usually just assumed she had fake hair on her head. She was Tahitian and black she would say. Her mother was Tahitian and her father had been a bi-racial black and Indian man. His father had been born in America after his family moved from Mumbai to New York. Her father, Kumpar, had joined the Air Force for what she would call a hot minute before he left the service and went into government contract work. That’s how he met her mother in Tahiti—where Bambi had been born and raised. She did her schooling in New York before going west to Colorado and working in the fitness and nutrition field. But eventually she branched out on her own. She set up her business and started offering nutrition package information for a nominal onetime fee. She didn’t just stop at one person at a time type advertising. She hit up companies assuring them how their insurance rates could be lowered by adding her program for their employees to get healthy. When she met Sterling everything changed. The man was determined to do things his way and to possess her time exclusively. He hired her on for her insane asking price. Honestly, she only asked for two point five million because she didn’t think he would do it. But before she could leave his office she was sitting with his lawyer and his lawyer was drawing up the paperwork for her to take to her lawyer.

  Two point five million was more money than she had ever seen and would ever see. Her business was doing well, but she was middle class income at best. She had been in shock when she went home that day. She was so much in shock that she didn’t ask just what her working for his company would fully encompass. She assumed it would be what she did with nutrition and fitness plans already, but it was so much more. She found that out after she signed on the dotted line, closed her own business and went to work exclusively for Lancaster Enterprises.

  She still wasn’t completely sure what Lancaster Enterprises did, but she knew it was more than face value. Sterling had a military boot camp style training facility where some of the finest in government employees would go to train. He also trained high end bodyguards, people who provided protection for high end clients with a lot of money. From celebrities to royalty, Lancaster’s employees were guarding them all. Still, that didn’t tell her how the man had amassed so much money.

  He kept Jocelyn happy without spoiling her. She still had to work for the money she received. Even though he would splurge sometimes he thought it was only fair to let her understand that money did not grow on trees. He said he was glad he hadn’t had the money he had before his divorce otherwise Jordana would be cleaning him out right now. Since he had been moderately middle class during their divorce, Jordana had settled for stealing the house his parents had left to him when they moved back to Australia. She had been content with taking a huge chunk out of his bank account. And she had forgone serious alimony payments for a larger child support payment. Thankfully, with shared custody the judge had gone lighter on Sterling than she could have. Nearly one thousand a month in child support, a lost family home, and about two hundred thousand of his three hundred fifty thousand dollar bank account at that time was all he had lost. He said it was worth it to gain his freedom.

  “Is it okay if I go back to get her?” She wasn’t going to squabble over words. She wasn’t his lackey and she wasn’t his assistant either. She was…well, she wasn’t sure. She traveled with him all the time, going to his companies around the U.S. and Europe, but she was training and educating on nutrition while doing a softer side of fitness for the employees who were more administrative than get thee to a Charge that needs protecting. That’s what they called their clients—Charges.

  “Go on. That little slut won’t open the door though.” She stormed off toward the kitchen.

  “She’s not a slut,” she mumbled as she walked toward the back of the house. She rapped on the closed mahogany wood door. “Jocelyn,” she called loud enough for her to hear. “It’s me. We really have to get ready to go. Open the door, honey.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to talk to you through the door.”

  “Is that woman the law calls my mother out there?”

  Bambi looked behind her. “No.”

  The locks on the door turned. Jocelyn had added a few since the last time Bambi had been here. She heard four locks turn and a chain slide backwards which told her she had installed a deadbolt too.

  She walked inside and watched as Jocelyn locked the door back. “Um…overkill,” she laughed.

  “That woman picked the lock when I just had the one, and then the two, so I upped it to some hardcore locks I bought with my allowance. I would love the kind of locks Dad’s people install for their Charges.”

  “Hmm,” she nodded. She would love those kinds of locks too, but she didn’t have the know-how to install them and they weren’t cheap. Sure, she had money now, but two point five million with taxes and everything else could be gone before she could blink if she didn’t spend frugally. “We have to go. Are you packed?”

  Jocelyn shrugged. “I guess,” she looked at the open case that had jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. Bambi shook her head.

  “Honey it’s going to be so much nicer once we leave. I know you’re angry and sad now, but she’s not coming with us.”

  “Did she call me a cunt again? She called me that yesterday, and the day before. I asked one of my friend’s dad what that meant he looked embarrassed to tell me, but he told me. I hate her.”

  “She’s your mother. She has some…issues.” She tried to keep her tone neutral and her words diplomatic. It wasn’t easy.

  “So says the law and our DNA, but I beg to differ.”

  She would too if she had a mother like that. In fact, she felt the same way about her sister Cammie that Jocelyn felt about her mother. Bambi and Cammie—like that didn’t get them picked on in school...Jeeze! What was her mother high on when she delivered them? And her father…well that was easy—anything her mother wanted she got. Lilly was her mom’s name. She had a nice, normal name, while they were Bambi and Cammie. She rolled her eyes.


  “Still, those are all the wrong clothes. Let’s do this quick because your dad is waiting for us at the airport.”

  “I didn’t know he was in town! Why didn’t he come get me?”

  She laughed. “Because he is guarding your surprise.” And because he was guarding his freedom and sanity by sending her to meet the wicked witch of the west.

  Bambi pulled clothes from the closet and drawers. Shorts, nice formal dresses, sundresses, loads of comfortable sandals and sneakers, and some workout gear too. Jocelyn always loved to workout with her, but she wouldn’t be able to do much this time. This time Sterling had set up a video shoot for Bambi. He wanted her to do a workout video for the employees to be able to have when she wasn’t around. He also said they could sell them online to those who wanted to slim down and get in shape. She liked that idea. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought of doing a video before, but his idea far surpassed what she thought she would ever do.