The ramp lowered, admitting the howl of engines, a blast of humid air. Attached to the ramp, ready to hook to their harnesses, was a bungee rig like the one they’d practiced on the day before.
I’m going to do this. Anna clung to her orange seat.
A tethered cameraman edged forward and crouched close to the ramp. The wall-mounted video screen displayed a curving panorama of the Caribbean. Through the open hatch, Anna spotted a much smaller red helicopter following the Chinook with telephoto lenses.
Ryan stood and addressed them through their headsets. “I want you brides to be absolutely confident this jump is safe.”
“He’s up to something,” Lani murmured.
Behind his sunglasses, Chris frowned disapproval.
Ryan continued, “So I’m going first.” He passed his headset to Bobbie. “You see,” he shouted, “you just snap on….” The helicopter shuddered. Ryan stumbled and missed the jumping rig. He staggered backward, flung out his arms, and teetered dramatically on the end of the ramp. The bridacudas screamed.
Nobody from the production crew looked the least bit alarmed.
Anna clenched her fists. He’s going to jump. A moment later, Ryan bent his knees and executed an elegant backward dive off the ramp. The cameras chased him through three neatly-piked somersaults, and then he entered the ocean with perfect form.
Ryan bobbed up, waved to the helicopter, and swam toward the pickup boat.
The video screen replayed Ryan’s jump from different angles. Chris had mentioned he used to dive out of helicopters. This must be what he meant.
“Well!” Bobbie beamed at the cameras. “As demonstrated by my better half, it’s all perfectly safe! Who’s going first?”
“I will.” Tiffany sashayed to Chris and wrapped his neck in her arms. “I’ve already fallen for you, handsome.” She kissed him. “Might as well do it again.”
Chris clipped Tiffany’s jump harness to the bungee rig. She spent an unnecessary moment adjusting her red-white-and-blue bikini top, kissed Chris again, and turned to face the ramp.
“U.S.A!” Tiffany pumped one fist. “This jump’s for you!” She ran three steps and sailed straight into space. The cord whipped out. The screen showed Tiffany falling, twisting and somersaulting like a professional cheerleader. She bounced and flipped a half-dozen times, yahooing into her harness microphone. When she was done, Tiffany released the bungee and tried to copy Ryan’s dive. But she’d started too low and hit the water with a colossal smack.
The rescue boat zipped over. The video screen replayed Tiffany’s belly flop five times before she climbed out, face and stomach scarlet from impact.
Lani and Anna hid matching snickers behind their hands.
“Great start!” Bobbie applauded. “Who’s next?”
Anna glanced at Lani, who shook her head. They sat together while the next bridacuda, Jessica, crept to the ramp. With stony discipline, Chris took his place in front of the terrified woman. He tipped her back into the sky, the way their jump instructor had done the day before, until the only thing that kept her up was their mutually clasped wrists. Chris opened his hands, allowing Jessica full control. Panicked determination flooded the woman’s face and then she let go and plummeted, howling, off the ramp. Jessica’s voice screeched over her microphone as she hit bottom, recoiled, and bounced. She didn’t stop yelling until the Chinook lowered her to the waves, and then she dangled, shaking her head, refusing to release. At last Ryan stretched up on tiptoe from the boat and opened Jessica’s harness. The woman dropped, flailing, but a moment later she climbed out of the water with an enormous smile.
Chris took off his sunglasses, wiped his face, and put them on again.
“Next?” Bobbie prompted.
Anna watched Chris in silent sympathy while Marguerite and Veronica took turns. Chris leaned each woman over the drop with mechanical precision. Marguerite, clutched his wrists for three full minutes, refusing Chris’ offer to pull her in. At last her hands gave out and she fell, chanting a Spanish prayer. The bungee sprang. To Anna’s surprise, Marguerite managed two difficult corkscrew flips, released the cord, and entered the water cleanly. Like Jessica, she climbed aboard the speedboat grinning.
That left Anna and Lani.
“Fuck this.” Lani shook her head. “Fuck this and the dolphin it swam in on. I pass.”
“Very well.” Bobbie looked at Anna. “How about you?”
Chris took off his sunglasses. His face was absolutely blank. He doesn’t want me to go. Anna felt torn. But sitting and waiting, she’d had an idea. Maybe Ryan was right to bring Chris up in a helicopter. Maybe he needed to see them all do this and survive. Besides, despite her butterflies, Anna wanted to try it. She walked to the bungee rig, clipped on, and felt Chris’ strong hands close on her wrists. They’d barely spoken since the afternoon of the wedding. But now, arms clasped, she thought they understood each other perfectly.
Chris held her gaze. “You’ll be fine.” She couldn’t hear him over the chopper, but she could read his lips.
Anna nodded and leaned back into dazzling sun. Below, the Chinook’s downdraft etched a flat circle in the waves.
Chris’ hands opened. Anna held on, balancing herself between ocean and sky.
Let go, she willed, but nothing happened. Let go.
Chris waited patiently while Anna struggled for courage. Then all at once her nerves evaporated. She smiled—her first real smile all day—and opened her hands.
Wind roared. Blue sea rushed upward. Anna shouted in exultation. The bungee stretched, caught, recoiled. She tried a flip, bounced, rolled into a somersault, and then spread her arms and legs and flew. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever done. She never wanted to come down. Anna swung herself to gain momentum and then tucked her knees and flipped again. At last she saw Ryan, waving, calling her in. Anna released her safety clip, dove fifteen feet into the waves, and nearly choked on seawater, she was laughing so hard.
The speedboat picked her up and Anna rode to shore on a wave of euphoria. Her good mood lasted past docking, past waiting for the Chinook to land, past watching the bridacudas fuss over Ryan. She didn’t quit smiling until Chris stepped out of the helicopter, nodded distantly behind his sunglasses, and walked away.
The Chinook’s rotors whined to a stop. The contest women dragged Ryan to the monitors to watch votes come in. Anna removed her jumping harness and let the video equipment dangle from her hand.
“Anna!” Lani pushed through the group. “You rocked!”
Her thoughts flashed back to flying and Anna grinned. “You should have tried it! I’m ready to go again!”
“You’ve shot way up in popularity.” Lani held out her phone. “Look!” The screen showed the Vacation Bride website. Anna watched a video of one of her somersaults. Not brilliant, but they’d caught her excited grin. She edged into fifth place, ahead of Jessica, and then to fourth in front of Marguerite. Lani kept a firm hold on second place behind Tiffany, despite the fact she hadn’t jumped.
“Watch out.” Lani switched off her recording equipment and stepped out of her jumping harness. “Or else you’ll win the contest and have to marry Chris!”
Anna blushed. “I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to marry anyone.”
“Probably not. Well then, forget husbands.” Lani pointed to a table where the Paradise staff were setting up a picnic. “We’ll have to settle for lunch.” Neither one of them had dared eat breakfast before their helicopter ride.
“I don’t know. The show’s still shooting. Maybe we ought to wait.”
“Nobody wants us. They’re too busy recording Ryan Andersen and his internet harem.”
That was true. The cameras were focused on Ryan while he flirted outrageously with the bridacudas. Chris, meanwhile, had left the field and was already sitting down with his laptop. He looked stressed and exhausted, completely different from the romantic boat captain she’d sketched her first day.
“It isn’t fair,” Anna grumbled. “Chri
s works so hard, and everyone treats him like dirt.”
“They’re bridacudas. They like their men rich.”
Chris was rich. Except nobody knew it. “They only used to snub him off camera. Now they’re doing it all the time.”
“You have to admit, Ryan’s easier to get along with.”
“He is not!”
“Well….” Lani eyed Anna sideways. “Ryan’s more willing to fake it. He encourages the bridacudas to flirt. It’s good for ratings.”
“The man’s a newlywed!”
“Yeah, but he and Bobbie are splitting up.”
“Already?” Their elopement had been such a fairy tale. “That’s awful.”
“It isn’t awful if you’re a bridacuda. It means there’s still a chance to snag the billion-dollar prize.” Lani nudged Anna toward the picnic table. “And since the two of us aren’t chasing billionaires, let’s snag food!”
Jessica and Marguerite wrestled Ryan to the ground. Tiffany and Veronica sat on his chest, tickling him. Instead of protesting, Bobbie repositioned the cameras to get a better shot.
The bridacudas pushed up Ryan’s shirt and took turns licking his stomach. Tiffany accidentally-on-purpose popped out of her bikini top. She stuffed her boobs back into the fabric, grabbed Ryan’s swimming shorts, and dragged them completely off of his body. Tiffany swung the shorts over her head and ran whooping over the grass.
Ryan jumped up—commando—to chase her.
Anna turned and followed Lani, more than a little horrified. Ahead, Chris was already working on his computer, oblivious to the contest. The man got no time off. Anna had seen him up at dawn inspecting the resort, squeezing in business meetings beside the pool. He’d even helped the resort’s real maintenance man service the air conditioners—as promised that first day—between appearances on Vacation Bride.
Ryan caught Tiffany, tossed her over one shoulder, and spanked her bikini bottom. She threw his swimming shorts to Veronica, who gleefully took up the game of keep-away.
Anna couldn’t stand any more of this. Not Ryan Andersen, and not the women on the show. “That’s it. I’m done.” She slammed her jump harness onto a picnic bench. “I’ve had enough of this madhouse.”
Lani dragged her eyes from the spectacle. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re in fourth place. You could win.”
“I don’t give a damn about winning.”
“But you give a damn about Chris.”
“Why me?” Anna waved her hands. “I mean, why only me?” Not that she wanted other women chasing Chris. Stealing his shorts. Anna gritted her teeth.
“The bridacudas came here for Ryan.”
“Chris is better!”
“Ryan’s more fun.”
“Chris is smart!”
“Ryan’s rich.”
“So is Chris! You should see his yacht! Just because he works at an honest job—” Anna gulped. “Oh, no.” Her stomach twisted. “Oh, that’s a secret. Please don’t tell….” She shut her mouth, feeling ill.
An eerie silence began to flow across the field. Even the trade winds died.
Beside the helicopter, the game of keep-away ground to a halt. Ryan scrambled into his shorts, looking confused. Whispers rippled outward through the production crew, from the sound editor to the camera crew to the cast. Someone murmured in Ryan’s ear. He glanced at Anna. “Oh, holy crap!”
Anna looked down. Beside her on the picnic bench—exactly where she’d dropped them—sat the harness and video equipment from her jump. I turned it off. She was positive she had. But the microphone light glowed an incriminating red.
Lani wouldn’t have to worry about keeping Chris’ secret.
Anna had just announced it to the world.
Chapter Thirteen
Growing up, Chris hadn’t spent much time with his father’s side of the family. There’d been childhood summers in Denmark and he had assorted relatives on St. Thomas, but apart from Ryan, the only Andersens he’d been close to were the young cousins who’d died in the helicopter crash. He’d barely known their father, who left Chris money more out of spite toward the rest of the family than from any personal affection.
Still, during the last two years, Chris had come to know and respect the family lawyer, his uncle Henrik Andersen. It was Henrik who helped Chris purchase the Paradise Resort, Henrik who set up the necessary holding corporations to manage Chris’ fortune, and it was Uncle Henrik who organized the paperwork for Chris to marry Anna. Of course, Henrik also wrote the contract that landed Chris on Vacation Bride, but since he was Ryan’s attorney, too, Chris couldn’t hold it against him.
“So.” The lawyer sat at the small conference table in the Paradise Resort’s concierge office, exactly halfway between his two nephews. “I think we’ve always known the time would come when Chris’ inheritance became public knowledge. The question is, what next?”
Things had been surprisingly quiet during the twenty-four hours since Anna’s comment went live. Apart from two women who’d tried to hide in Chris’ bed and wound up—to their regret—in Doris’ room by mistake, the only fuss had been a couple of requests for interviews from local TV stations.
Chris glanced sideways at the office computer, which was streaming live video from Vacation Bride. The show was holding a sandcastle competition to eliminate four of the six remaining contestants. At least, they called it a sandcastle competition. As usual, the main point seemed to be to make a spectacle of the women.
On screen, Anna finished building a sturdy, traditional castle and went to help the struggling Jessica. The camera cut to Tiffany, scowling ferociously.
Chris ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t blame Anna for spilling his secret. Not really. He didn’t blame Captain Greta for wrongly assuming Chris had been open and honest with his bride. He didn’t even blame Ryan. The fault’s mine…. Chris stopped himself, surprised to find he no longer felt guilty about the helicopter crash. Sad, yes. He desperately missed the little cousins who used to follow him, like baby ducks, around the Paradise Resort. But not responsible. The accident wasn’t his fault.
“There are plenty of wealthy people in the Virgin Islands.” Chris turned back to his uncle. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance my story will slip under the radar?”
“It might have when you first inherited, but now….” Henrik adjusted round wire-frame glasses. “A handsome, young bachelor with a tragic family history searches for love on a reality television show—”
“Web series,” Ryan corrected.
“—web series. The drama mounts. Ratings climb. And then one day, the humble bachelor is revealed to be a secret billionaire. If the production company had arranged this deliberately, I’d be impressed.” He blinked watery blue eyes at Ryan. “As things stand, of course, it’s merely bumbling.”
“I guess that means you and Dad won’t be releasing my assets any time soon?”
“If we could lock them tighter, they’d be in jail.”
“Hah-hah.” Ryan took out a cigarette, gazed thoughtfully at Doris’ empty desk, and put it away. “Fortunately I’ve got a backup plan. After my ex-wife bankrupts me, I’ve got a career lined up in the restaurant business.”
“Working in my snack bar,” Chris clarified. “Emptying trash and scouring the grill.” He checked the monitor. At the beach, Tiffany had all six water buckets and was filling them in the surf. She carried the heavy load up the sand, delivered buckets to Marguerite and Lani, and then stumbled unconvincingly and released her load. The buckets tipped and rolled, destroying one of Marguerite’s towers. The Spanish woman flew at Tiffany and knocked her to the ground. They rolled back and forth across the sand, scratching and pulling hair, flattening Anna’s castle and crushing one side of Jessica’s moat before Lani poured a bucket of sandy water on both of their heads. The bridacudas jumped up, hiding their ruined hair and makeup, and hurried off camera.
The screen filled with Anna, standing beside the lumps of sand that were all that remained of her castle. She said so
mething to Lani, shrugged philosophically, and knelt to help Jessica repair her moat.
Uncle Henrik reached past Chris and switched off the monitor. “Setting aside Ryan’s future employment prospects, the question is, what security measures are needed to protect you and your guests at this resort?”
Security. Chris brought his mind back to the conference. Security. How he hated that word.
Ryan drummed his fingers on the conference table. “Bobbie’s closed the production set to visitors and instructed the crew to keep out reporters. I have to say, though, I think she’d ship in news teams by the boatload if she thought it would improve the ratings.”
Chris frowned. “Your wife’s a regular humanitarian.”
“Ex-wife-to-be.” Ryan made a face. “Bobbie’s not horrible, but she’s determined to build her reputation from Vacation Bride.”
“It hardly matters,” Henrik commented. “The situation calls for professional security. Short term, I’ve taken the liberty of engaging your cousins, Lars and Lucas. Their plane arrives from Copenhagen tonight.”
“Lars and Lucas?” Chris dimly recalled two snot-nosed brothers. “A bit scrawny, aren’t they?”
“They’ve filled out,” Henrik replied dryly. “Apart from that, I strongly advise you to quit the show immediately and travel abroad. Ryan and I” —his eyes narrowed— “will stay here to sort out any legal or financial difficulties.”
“I can’t abandon the Paradise Resort.”
“If you’ll permit me to say so, you can. The property is in excellent condition, thanks to your efforts these past two years. Any competent general manager should be able to step into your shoes. On the other hand, it will be impossible for guests to enjoy their stay if the resort is overrun by paparazzi.”
Chris couldn’t let that happen. Some families saved for years to take a vacation in the Caribbean. He sighed. “What if I move to the yacht?”
Vacation Bride: A Billionaire Marriage of Convenience (Brides of Paradise Book 1) Page 9
