by Lori Ryan
Chad would have preferred to be a little less obtrusive. He’d learned it pays to blend in with the masses and not stand out like a sore thumb when you’re trying to gather information. If he’d planned this trip, he would have chosen a room that was in the middle of the price range with the right number of amenities to allow them to conform to that of most of the people there.
But Jack had planned this job without a word to Chad before this morning. And that seemed damn suspicious to Chad. He had a feeling his cousin was up to something, but he tried to put that thought aside. Jack certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to send Chad and Jennie here for anything other than innocent, work-related reasons. Not after what Chad had told Jack and Andrew over the weekend.
Would he?
Chapter 9
Thankfully, once they began moving, Chad released his hold on her waist. Jennie needed space to salvage the remaining bits of her wits.
She tried to lose herself in thoughts of work as they walked to the private villa on the beach. She couldn’t believe she would share this retreat with Chad for the next two weeks.
The resort was hot and tropical, filled with the sounds of birds and the ocean with a light breeze that teased over her skin. Even the air smelled different here.
They followed the woman who’d introduced herself as Maria when she’d greeted them in the lobby. They went past the common areas and crossed into an area of dense shrubs and trees, following a small sandy path through the growth. When they emerged moments later, their private villa stood in front of them. It was surrounded by the finest white sand Jennie had ever walked on. She took off her sandals and held onto Chad’s arm as they crossed the warm sand to the porch at the front of the villa.
If touching the smooth, hard muscles of Chad’s arm hadn’t stolen Jennie’s breath already, the view certainly would have. They faced the ocean with its crystal-blue water. There was a teak double chaise lounge on the front porch filled with soft pillows, and a hammock off to one side. Sail boats provided a bright splash of color on the pale blue sky.
Jennie gasped when she stepped inside the villa. The house looked like a tiny grass hut from the outside but it was anything but that. It was smothered in luxury and comfort.
“It’s beautiful!” She didn’t know what to look at first. The doors and furniture were made of a beautiful dark wood with ornate carvings and patterns. The chairs and couch looked comfortable and inviting. A small fireplace in the corner promised a real honeymooning couple romantic evenings if the temperature dropped at night. Overhead fans made to look like big leaves turned lazily throughout the room to stir the hot air.
Jennie walked through the living room to large double doors that opened to an enormous master bedroom. In fact, thinking back to the doors she’d seen as she walked through, and the size of the villa from the outside, Jennie had a sneaking suspicion this was the only bedroom. Their bags had already been placed in the room by the hotel staff and the bed was covered in pastel rose petals and towels intricately folded to look like a bouquet of flowers.
That’s right. This is the honeymoon villa.
Try as she might, Jennie couldn’t keep from imagining Chad laying her on the bed, his strong body coming down over her. His heated hands and mouth...
She heard Chad approach and felt his presence behind her a minute later. She turned to see him leaning on the door jamb, hands shoved in his pockets, his bad boy grin firmly in place on his face.
“Big bed,” he said, peering around her.
Jennie laughed at Chad, but on the inside, she felt her body grow hot in response to his presence in the room, to his suggestive tone. It was a battle to steady her breathing instead of letting her body run wild with its response to him.
“It’s all yours, Boss Man. I’ll be sleeping on the couch.”
That got Chad’s attention and he stood and stepped toward her. His no nonsense boss tone was back. “You’re not sleeping on the couch, Jen. I was joking about the bed. I’ll be on the couch. You’re in here.”
“Don’t be silly, Chad. I’m a foot shorter than you. I’ll be fine out on the couch or even on one of the chaise lounge chairs. Hell, any of them look more comfy than my bed at home. Comfy for a person my size, not yours.” She gave him a pointed look as she finished. There was no way he’d be comfortable on a couch at his size. It was ridiculous to even think of doing things his way.
Chad let out something between a growl and a laugh. “Not happening, Jennie.” He crossed the room to grab his bag and headed to the living room.
“You can’t do that, Chad. We’re married, remember? You need to keep your clothes in here or the housekeepers will wonder what you did to land yourself in the doghouse when we’ve only been married a couple of days.”
He looked at her for a long minute. She could see the tension in his jaw as he fought against what he wanted and what they had to pretend to be for the next two weeks.
Without a word, he crossed to the dresser and closet and began to unpack his clothes. Jennie sat on the bed and watched him, amused.
As one might expect from someone who’d spent so many years in the military, everything had its place in Chad’s world. He lined his extra shoes along the bottom of the closet. He folded clothes and organized them in different drawers. Hung dress shirts and pants on hangers and arranged them with precisely one inch between each hanger.
Jennie followed him into the bathroom and watched him set out his toiletries, lining up toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, and razor just so. He left the same distance between each item on the counter.
Chad eyed her as he walked back out of the bathroom. He scooped up the flip flops she had kicked off at the foot of the bed and walked out to the front of the villa. Jennie padded after him and stifled a giggle when he lined up her flip flops by the door. He slipped off the sneakers he had on and lined them up next to her shoes.
Apparently satisfied, he began taking extra pillows off the couch.
Oh, this is too good to resist.
Jennie went to the small bar in the living room and opened a can of soda for herself.
“Want one?” she asked Chad, holding up the can.
“No thanks. I’ll probably go to sleep soon. I wasn’t planning on such a long day of travel and I was up half the night getting a few reports ready for Jack.”
“You didn’t know about this trip ahead of time?” She frowned.
He shook his head. “Not a clue. I found out about it the same time you did.”
She paused mid sip and looked at him. “Isn’t that weird? I mean, don’t you usually plan these things? If you didn’t plan it, who did?” She’d had been so busy trying to convince herself she could do this job when they'd been in Jack’s office earlier, she hadn’t even looked at Chad to see if he looked surprised. Now she had to wonder if he was as thrown as she was.
While she waited for his reply, she walked over to the front door and slipped her feet in her flip flops. She walked back to the couch, sat down next to Chad, kicked her flip flops off, and curled her feet up under her on the couch.
“Jack and Andrew planned this one on their own. I think it was pretty last minute. The friend that asked for a favor went to school with them so I think they wanted to help the guy out.” As Chad spoke, he eyed Jennie’s shoes on the floor beneath them.
She smiled her most innocent smile as she watched Chad size up her shoes. He stood and picked them up again and put them back by the door before coming back to the couch.
Oh my God. I had no idea he was such a neat freak.
“Jack’s sending us info to look over tomorrow. He emailed and said Peter sent financials earlier and there are a few areas we need to look into. Something about the boating trips and scuba diving,” Chad said. “That’s all I know for now.”
Jennie popped up off the couch and wandered to the kitchen. “I wonder if they have snacks in here.” She began opening and closing cabinets and the fridge and calling off anything she found.
“Bott
led water. More sodas. No snacks. Hmmmm. We should stock up on late night snacks.” She walked back to the front door, slipped her shoes on, and wandered back to the bedroom.
“We pick up the phone any time we want anything and have it sent, Jennie,” Chad said and she could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke.
She came back into the room carrying her toothbrush and kicked her shoes off at the marble-topped table in the kitchen before plopping into one of the chairs.
“But, what if I just want popcorn in the middle of the night?”
Chad laughed and shook his head. “They’ll get you anything you want, any time. Day or night. It’s that kind of place and I’m pretty sure Jack booked us that kind of package. He seems to have gone with premium everything. We don’t have to lift a finger for the next two weeks. Might as well enjoy it.”
“Huh. Nice. All right. I’m hittin’ the shower, Big Man.” Jennie popped up again and began to cross the room but kept one eye on the room behind her.
Sure enough, the second she stepped away from her shoes, Chad crossed the room to put them back by the door again. Jennie turned and watched him.
When he returned to the couch, he lay down and closed his eyes. He put his feet up on one arm of the couch and his head on a pillow he’d braced across the other arm.
She tiptoed over to the front door and raised her foot to slip into the flip flops once again.
“Whaaaaa!” Jennie squealed as Chad wrapped a strong arm around her waist. He lifted her off the floor before she could get so much as a toe into her shoe.
Laughing, she squeaked as he walked to the bathroom with her locked in place. “Put me down!”
She heard Chad’s low laugh and felt the rumbling it brought to his chest. God, he felt so damn good she wanted to cry.
And he smelled good, too. Spicy clean and manly.
He dropped her to her feet in the bathroom and shut the door.
“Good night, Jen,” she heard through the door.
By that time, the laughter had left her system, replaced by heat. She’d felt pure lust spread through her traitorous body when she was pressed against the hard expanse of Chad’s chest and the flat chiseled muscles of his stomach.
She’d wanted to grind against him, pressing her hips back into him as she did. She’d wanted to spin in his arms and wrap herself around him to kiss him senseless. As she stood in the bathroom without him, she could think only one thing: she wanted that strong arm wrapped around her again, holding her tight, hugging her to him. Wanted and didn’t want…all in one breath.
Chapter 10
“Hey Jack, what ya got for us?” Chad asked as he and Jennie sat on opposite sides of his phone, which was set on speaker. Between the size of the couch and the temptation of Jennie in the room next to him, Chad hadn’t slept well at all.
Touching her last night had been a mistake. Wrapping one arm around her for the brief minute it took to move her to the bathroom before she could get to her flip flops again was all it took to have Chad stirred up.
He now knew how she would feel as she writhed beneath him. Knew how soft her body felt against his. How she brought the temperature up with just that slight connection. How she would feel as he pressed his body into hers, holding her tight for one agonizing thrust after another as he drove them both over the brink.
And that knowledge had tormented him all damned night.
“Did you get the financials I emailed?” came Jack’s reply, whipping Chad back to reality.
“Yes. We looked them over this morning,” he glanced at Jennie. “I think we need a little more guidance here. We don’t know what to look for.”
“I figured you might. It’s a weird situation. The resort is owned by Jonathan Masters, owner of Master Blend Winery. His winery focuses on inexpensive blends of wine marketed as everyday table wine. You’ve probably seen it.”
“Yeah, it’s in just about every grocery store and liquor store in the United States,” Jennie said. “The one with the skinny old guy with a pipe and glasses leaning into a huge barrel of wine on the label.”
Jack laughed. “That’s the one. And, in fact, that’s a caricature of Jonathan Masters. He’s now in his seventies and rarely spends time at the resort. He has no interest in running it. He’s left his two nephews, Matt and Alan Masters, running it for him for the last few years, but he’s looking to get out. My friend Peter is thinking of buying it but he’s a little unclear as to how well those nephews have been running the place. Peter has known the Masters family for a long time and always got the sense that the nephews were pretty lazy.”
“We can try to track them down today and check them out,” Chad said.
“Good. See if you can find out if they’re really running things or if the managers are running it and the nephews are taking a salary just for sitting on their asses. It seems like the place is a little heavy on managers if, in fact, the nephews are working. If they’re token employees, their salaries would disappear and turn into instant profit for Peter” said Jack.
Jennie shrugged and looked at Chad. “Should be easy to find out. I’ll get close to them,” she said with a grin.
Chad rolled his eyes, but on the inside, he seethed at the idea of her getting close to any man other than him.
Jack continued, obviously unaware of Chad’s feelings on the matter. “I’m also confused about how they’re running money through the business out there. The marina is operated by a separate company. It’s an independent contractor that runs fishing boats, kayak rentals, scuba diving trips, and that kind of thing from the two docks at the resort. The setup is odd, though.”
They listened as Jack explained his concerns. “The resort collects all the fees for the services and rentals and then pays the money out to the contractor, taking a percentage. It’s an odd way to set up the system rather than simply leasing the docks and beach area to the company for a monthly fee. It makes a lot of extra work for the front desk people to book things that way. My hunch is the nephews don’t know any better and the marina company is taking advantage of them. If that’s the case, Peter can change the setup if he buys the place, but I want to be sure. Can you snoop around and see what you can find out?”
“You got it,” Chad said.
“Okay. In the meantime, I’ll find out who owns the company that runs the marina,” Jack said.
“Anything else?” Chad asked.
“Yeah, how’s the villa?”
“It’s horrible, Jack. I expect hazard pay for these two weeks,” Jennie said, laughing.
“Wise ass,” came Jack’s unorthodox reply. None of them really had a traditional employer and employee relationship at this point. Jennie was more like a sister to Jack now, than someone who worked for him.
“I’ll tell Kelly you’re having the vacation of a lifetime,” Jack said.
“We’ll call when we have something, Jack,” Chad laughed as he hit the button to end the call.
As Jennie and Chad came off the secluded pathway that connected their villa to the more populated area of the resort, he reached down and took her hand in his.
“Where do you want to eat, hon?” He asked Jennie. There were several choices of restaurants in the resort, all included in the price of the package. Guests didn’t need to bring their wallets anywhere for food or drink.
“Casual for breakfast and lunch, fancy for dinners?” Jennie asked. He recognized her proposal for what it was. She was stepping into their negotiation mode. He and Jennie had a shorthand way of cutting deals and agreeing on things when they were on assignment. Sometimes the negotiations were easy. Other times, they butted heads and their negotiation became real.
He made a face. “We’re on vacation. No fancy dinners.”
In a move she’d never employed in their negotiations before—and which Chad had to attribute to the fact they were posing as newlyweds, since Jennie was always very careful to keep space between them and avoid any unnecessary touching—she turned and pressed her full body agains
t his. He felt her soft thighs, gorgeous hips, and those irresistible breasts of hers press against his hard body. He gritted his teeth to resist her pull, but he couldn’t completely prevent his body’s response.
Hell. Two weeks in hell.
She went up on tiptoes, brushing her body against his with that witchy, captivating smile on her face that she always got when she was being playful. He stood stock-still. She whispered in his ear, her hot, sweet mouth so close to his. He thought for a brief second about turning his head to capture it in a searing kiss, but he knew he’d pay for it if he did.
Not because she’d do anything, but because it would bring him to all new levels of pain. If he kissed her again, his body would be wound so tight and hard, he wouldn’t be able to manage the walk across the resort.
“Please,” was all she whispered but the damage was done and she knew it. She smiled and winked at him, knowing she’d won that round. As Jennie turned and walked toward one of the restaurants, he smacked her in the ass.
If she was going to change her tactics on this trip, so was he. She squealed and took a few running steps to get ahead of him. Shit, he could work with that, too. He hung back and enjoyed the view all the way to breakfast.
Jennie Evans in a skirt and sandals was a sight to behold.
Chapter 11
Four days into their trip, Jennie and Chad had a good sense of the layout of the resort and it was already clear the nephews did little to run the place. So far, they’d seen them flirting with guests, drinking all day, and playing golf.
They schmoozed with some of the guests, but that was about the extent of it. They didn’t even seem to engage with the managers much. From everything Chad had seen, they let the managers run the show.
It took everything Chad had in him not to go caveman when Jennie was talking to the Masters brothers. In classic Jennie style, she simply swam over to them at the swim up bar and started flirting.
