by Jane Graves
"Who are you trying to get back at?" she asked him. "Me for leaving you that morning in Park City, or Randall for whatever sibling crap you two can't seem to get over?"
"None of the above."
"Then what?"
"I just want to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into if you marry him."
"Fine. I admit it. If I marry Randall, I'll be miserable for the rest of my life. Got it. Now you can leave the island with a clear conscience."
"If I believed you really thought that, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat. But I don't. And until I do, I think I'll hang around."
With that, he kicked off his flip-flops. Then he pulled his T-shirt off and tossed it aside, his back muscles and biceps flexing with the effort. When he settled back on the lounge with a sigh of satisfaction, his hands behind his head, she got a perfect view of his gorgeous broad chest. For a moment she couldn't pull her gaze away. She quite literally couldn’t stop looking at him. But why? He was no better looking than Randall. They were just different. Randall was the perfect, polished kind of handsome she'd always been drawn to. Nick wasn't even close to that. He was rough around the edges, dashing, carefree, with that scruffy-handsome look she'd never been attracted to before. Then a year ago, the lights had come up in that Park City movie theater, and it was as if the earth shifted on its axis and everything she thought she knew about herself was suddenly in question.
"So where is Randall, anyway?" Nick said.
She almost said, Randall, who? Then she returned to planet earth and realized if she answered his question with the truth, it was going to sound really bad. "He…had something to do."
"Yeah? What?"
She grabbed her bag and dug through it, pretending to look for something she hadn't yet identified. Anything to avoid looking at Nick.
"Work?" Nick asked.
"No, not work. He doesn't work twenty-four-seven, no matter what you think."
"Then what?"
More digging. Finally she pulled out a book. "I'd like to read now. If you'll excuse me, please?"
"Read all you want to. But first tell me where Randall is."
She dropped the book to her lap and glared at him. "If you must know, he took your mother shopping. But before you say anything, he went with her because it's not safe for a woman to run around Montego Bay by herself."
"Uh huh. Which is why the resort has escorted shopping excursions."
Sarah blinked. "It does?"
"Guess Randall didn't tell you that."
She turned away and opened her book, trying to hide her annoyance. Surely after all the years Mona had been coming to this resort, she must have known they had shopping escorts. Yet she'd dragged Randall along?
"Let's think about this for a minute," Nick said. "Randall had a choice between trailing after our mother through every upscale shop in Montego Bay, or watching you sunbathe in that killer red bikini. Does the choice he made tell you anything at all?"
A shiver of foreboding slithered down Sarah's spine. "They say if a man is good to his mother, it's an indication that he'll be good to his wife."
"If he remembers he has a wife. That's not something I'd easily forget."
With that, Nick's gaze slid along her body, taking in every thread of her swimsuit, every square inch of exposed skin, every goosebump that popped out the moment his gaze landed on her. She had the fleeting thought that she'd never seen Randall look at her with this kind of unabashed admiration. Not once. Which led her right back around to Nick's question. Does the choice he made tell you anything at all?
“Have you ever noticed," Nick said, "that if you gave my mother a cigarette holder and a Dalmatian-spotted coat, she’d look just like Cruella De Vil?”
“Nick! Don’t talk like that about your mother!”
“Hey, I gave up trying to sugar coat things a long time ago. She’s bossy and judgmental and thinks the worst sin you can commit is to be socially incorrect."
That's exactly what I've been thinking!
Sarah almost said the words out loud but managed to swallow them at the last minute. And he was right about the Cruella De Vil thing. If Sarah happened to see any Dalmatian puppies scampering around Montego Bay, she’d be inclined to hide them from Mona. Just in case.
“You seem to be a bit of a black sheep in the Baxter family," Sarah said.
“Honey, sheep don’t get any blacker than me.”
“So what did you do to become persona non grata?”
“Better question. What didn’t I do?” Nick tilted his head. "Let's see…back when I was a teenager, there was graffiti. A curfew violation or two. Vandalism." He held up his palm. "Now, before you start thinking how terrible I was for that last thing, where I come from, toilet papering a house qualifies as vandalism."
"Still—nice rap sheet."
"It was all kid stuff. Well, there was that one incident of joyriding. Okay, yeah. I should have known that the seventeen-year-old kid I'd been hanging out with probably didn't own a Jag even in Lincoln Park. But seriously—what teenage boy overlooks the opportunity to take a spin in a sixty-thousand-dollar sports car?"
"You are who you associate with.”
"Yeah, and I did a lot of associating I shouldn't have."
"Hmm. Then maybe their opinion of you is justified."
"Give a kid like me zero flexibility, and that's what you get."
"What do you mean?"
"Baxters are allowed only one option, and that's to be a four-pointer at a snooty private school, matriculate to an Ivy League college, and then become part of the family business. My grades sucked, I washed out of college, and the family business gave me hives. There wasn't much left for me to impress them with." He shrugged offhandedly. "So I quit trying."
Just then, something in the bay caught Sarah's attention. A boat was accelerating, dragging a gigantic kite-like thing behind it with two people sitting in it. Slowly it ascended, and a minute later it was sailing high over the water. It made Sarah's heart race just to watch it.
"Ever been parasailing?" Nick asked.
"No."
"It's great. You feel like you're flying. The scent of the ocean, the wind in your face…you have to try it sometime."
She had to admit it did look like fun. But she wasn't really the kind of person who did things like parasailing and zip lines and mountain climbing. "I hear it's dangerous," she said dismissively. "And I sincerely doubt the tour operators here carry proper insurance. If something goes wrong—"
"Come on, Sarah! Think about how much fun you had when I took you snowboarding for the first time. People break legs. Blow out their knees. Plow into trees. But that didn't stop you from loving every minute of it."
For a moment, Sarah was back in Park City on that mountain, feeling the cold breeze and the warm sun, as Nick coached her in the basics of snowboarding. The first time she fell, he hurried to help her up. As he pulled her to her feet, she started to turn away, but he refused to release her hand. Instead, he pulled her right up against him, staring down at her for endless seconds. Then he brushed snow from her cheek, tucked his gloved hand behind her head, and kissed her. She remembered the shot of embarrassment she felt when she realized everybody on the mountain was watching them, but soon the feeling of her cold lips melting beneath his superseded everything else. She became Sarah No-Last-Name, a wild woman who thought nothing of kissing a sexy man in a place where the whole world was looking on. Just the memory of it made her her feel that exhilaration all over again.
But that was then. This was now.
"Maybe I'll do it," she said. "You know. Someday."
"How about now? Let's go."
"Are you trying to make Randall mad?"
"No, I'm trying to go parasailing. But if it makes Randall mad, too, so much the better."
"You think you know me. You don't. And maybe you don't know Randall, either. We're actually very much alike."
"Yeah? You're a lot of fun. Just what kind of hilarity does my brother stir
up?"
"Fun takes all forms."
"Like checking stock prices and playing golf? He thinks those things are fun. How do you feel about them?"
"They're fine."
"No, they're not. They bore you to tears."
How had Nick managed to hit the nail so squarely on the head? It was the golf thing that bored her the most. She'd gone to a tournament with Randall once, and by the time they reached the eighteenth hole she wanted to put a gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
"If Randall's so darned fun," Nick said, "why don't you ask him to go parasailing with you? I know. Crazy concept. It's like asking a Tibetian monk to break dance. But if you want to go, why shouldn't he go with you?"
"No. Time is short. He has…"
"Work."
Sarah turned away.
"Thought you said he didn't work twenty-four-seven."
"He doesn't. But sometimes he can't just drop everything and live it up. He has a lot of responsibility with your family's company, and he takes it seriously."
"Let me tell you a little secret," Nick said. "He'll never drop anything to do something with you. You'll always come second."
No. She didn't believe that. Randall was simply a responsible man. Truthfully, she was a bit of a workaholic herself, so how could she expect Randall not to be?
"Ask him to go with you," Nick said. "If he says he can't, that should tell you something."
"So you think if Randall won't go parasailing with me, it means we're not right for each other? That's kind of simplistic, isn't it?"
"Actually, it speaks volumes. Today it's parasailing. Tomorrow it'll be something else he thinks is silly or has no time for. And before you know it, your life is over and you never lived it." Then he leaned in and spoke quietly. "If I were in paradise with a beautiful woman, I'd find a way to do anything she wanted."
Nick's intense gaze made Sarah's whole body quiver with energy, and it was all she could do to turn away. In Park City with Nick, she'd felt like a planet circling a blinding white sun, but the last thing she needed to do was get sucked into his orbit all over again.
Randall. She needed to be thinking about Randall.
Wait a minute. Where was he, anyway? Her parents were supposed to be there in an hour, and he wasn't even back yet from shopping with his mother? So much for the two of them relaxing on the beach this afternoon.
"Hey, lookie lookie!"
Sarah turned to see a boy barefooting it through the sand to the edge of her cabana. He was maybe nine or ten years old. He had at least a dozen brightly-colored sarongs over his shoulders and a smile as wide as the Caribbean sea.
“Missa, mi got sumptin nice fah de lady," he said to Nick. "Lookie here.” He fanned a few of the sarongs. "Cheap. Ten bucks." Then turned to Sarah. “Yuh eyes. Wat color?”
She removed her sunglasses. “Blue.”
“Dis one!” He whipped the sarongs off one shoulder and thumbed through them, picking out one that was bright blue with big pink flowers. He held it up for Nick. "Trust mi, mon,” the boy said with a knowing nod. “De gal will look hot inna dis.”
Nick turned and grinned at Sarah. “This kid could sell sand in Egypt. I like that."
"So how 'bout it, missa?" the boy said. "You gonna buy de sarong fah yuh lady?"
“She’s not his lady.”
Sarah spun around to find Randall standing behind her, glaring at Nick. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, if you must know, I was getting ready to buy a sarong."
Randall turned to the boy. “Beat it, kid. You’re not supposed to be soliciting on this beach.”
"Randall, please," Sarah said.
“That’s why we pay a fortune for this resort. So we don’t have to be subjected to this kind of thing.”
"How old are you?" Sarah asked the boy.
"Mi nearly ten years old,” he said, standing up a little taller.
"And you're in business already? Good for you." She turned to Randall. "He's just a boy trying to make a little money. What could possibly be wrong with that?"
"De lady right," the boy said to Randall. "Mi ah business mon." Then he turned and winked at Sarah.
Randall's eyes flew open wide. "Did you see that? He's flirting with you!"
"Uh…did you miss the part where he's ten years old?" Nick said.
The boy frowned at Randall. “Yuh nah ah nice mon.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not a nice kid.”
“Randall!” Sarah said.
“Hey, he started it!”
“He started it,” Nick said, “because you’re being an ass.”
"Oh, yeah? I'm being an ass for thinking the kid ought to obey the law?"
"Obey the law? He's a kid selling sarongs, not a drug lord pushing crack."
"You two hush," Sarah said. "I haven't finished shopping yet." She turned to the boy. "You're right. The blue matches my eyes, but you know what? I think I like the red one better."
"Red?" Randall said.
"Yeah," Nick said smugly. "Red."
Sarah had no idea what that was all about. She turned to Randall. "Pay him."
"What? I'm not going to—"
"Never mind." Sarah grabbed her bag, took out a ten, and gave it to the boy. He handed her the sarong with a flourish and headed down the beach.
"Gee, Randall," Nick said. "I had no idea you liked kids so much."
"I do like kids," Randall snapped. "Well behaved ones, anyway."
"That one just turned a pretty good profit. I'm surprised you didn't shake his hand and offer him a job."
"Randall loves children," Sarah said, then realized she couldn't say a single thing to back that up. Oh, wait. Yes, she could! "After all, he made a ten thousand dollar contribution from Baxter Industries to Child's Play, the nonprofit I work for."
Randall looked at her with confusion. "Is that the name of it? I thought it was Tomorrow's Children, or something like that."
Sarah's eyes drifted closed. "That's the one I used to work for."
"Oh." Randall looked at Nick with a smile of satisfaction. "That ten grand? Great tax write-off."
Shut up, Randall. Just please shut up!
"Speaking of shopping," Nick said, "did Mom do her part to prop up the economy of Montego Bay?"
"You told him I went shopping with Mom?" Randall asked Sarah.
"Don't worry," Nick said. "Sarah thinks that's a good thing. After all, you know what they say. If you want to know how your husband will treat you, just watch how he treats his mother."
Sarah cringed, sure Randall would hear the sarcasm in his brother's voice. Instead, Randall looked pleased with himself. "That's right," he told her. "I'm glad you realize that. By the way, your parents are here."
Sarah sat bolt upright. "Already? They're not due for another hour!"
"Don't worry. My mother is chatting with them at check in."
"Your mother?"
Sarah leaped to her feet. She hadn't intended to throw her parents to that particular shark without running a little interference. She had to get to the lobby, and she had to get there now.
6
Sarah slid into her shoes, threw on her cover up, and grabbed her bag. Leaving Nick behind, she stumbled out of the cabana with Randall hurrying along beside her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she said.
"I just did."
She plowed through the beach sand, breathing hard. She finally reached the boardwalk, trotted alongside the pool, then circled around to the sliding glass doors leading inside. She raced down the hall and turned the corner to the atrium and the check-in area beyond. She swept her gaze left and right, finally spying her parents standing near the front desk.
Her mother wore a pair of blue cotton pants and a flowered shirt with a Disney World tote bag slung over her shoulder. Her mouse-brown hair was set in its usual immovable style, which meant Laura Lee at the Cut & Curl had done her weekly set and comb-out before she'd left, topping it off with about half a can of hair spray. Sara
h's father stood beside her mother wearing a John Deere T-shirt, a pair of denim shorts, and brand new sneakers with Velcro closures, his white crew socks pulled up almost to his knobby knees.
Sarah winced. But then again, what had she expected? Her parents were from Big Fork, Texas, where the local fashion expert was the queen of the annual wheat festival. Mona, on the other hand, looked tall and elegant in a pair of white capris, a flouncy turquoise top, and sparkly sandals. Standing beside her parents, she looked like a champion Afghan hound next to a pair of pound puppies.
"Mom! Dad!" She gave them both hugs. "You're early."
"The plane was ahead of schedule," Treva said. "They say that never happens. And that customs thing. They whisked us right on through."
"Guess we don't look like terrorists," Carl said.
"Our luggage was right there, and the cab driver got us here in no time."
Carl frowned. "Drove like a bat outa hell."
Randall shook Carl's hand and gave Treva an obligatory hug, with a lot of So nice to see yous! all around.
"We've been having such a nice chat," Mona said. "I was just telling your mother how lovely her shoes are. Pink canvas is just perfect for a beachside resort. And Treva…wherever did you get that lovely bracelet?"
"There's a lady in our town who welds them out of pieces of Coke cans. Then she glues on the sparkly stones."
"Well, you simply must give me her name and website address," Mona said.
"JunktoJewelry.com," Treva said, as if Mona were actually serious. "Bonnie Brantley can take just about anything and make something pretty out of it."
Sarah winced. Yep, Mona would love the gum wrapper necklaces, the bottlecap brooches, and the chicken feather earrings. For less than fifty bucks, she could accessorize her entire wardrobe.
Mona looked Sarah up and down, then smiled at her sweetly. "I see you've been at the beach."
"Yes."
"I'm not smelling sunscreen," she said in a cheerful, sing-song voice.
"It's a generic brand," Sarah said. "Unscented."
"Young people sometimes forget the importance of protecting their skin," Mona said to Carl and Treva, as if she couldn't see the stark baseball-cap line between her father's pristine white forehead and the sunbaked skin beneath.
