The Trouble with Mojitos: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance

by Romy Sommer

  “Until tomorrow,” he said, slamming the door closed.

  She nodded, mute. It was a long time before she managed to move. Only when his flashy car roared to deafening life and slid out of its parking bay, did she open her own door. It was as though his touch had short-circuited the wiring in her body.

  She had a dreadful suspicion that Lee was going to be very, very disappointed in her when she got back to Blighty.

  “Damn him.”

  ***

  @KenzieCole101: @LeeHill Is Neil in a huff that I got the permission?

  @LeeHill: @KenzieCole101 He’s moaning about cost of travelling caterers & labour but the Director's smiling like he just came. Clock’s still ticking.

  @KenzieCole101: @LeeHill Any word on how the other scouts are doing?

  @Lee Hill: @KenzieCole101 The scout on BVI has connections with Richard Branson. You need to hurry with your pics.

  Kenzie rubbed her temple. As one of the film’s art directors, Lee had not only got her this gig but also had access to all the inside intel, for which Kenzie was grateful. She needed every bit of help she could get. But she was running out of time. Tortuga had better deliver or some other scout would get the glory.

  It was ten the next morning and she waited in the hotel’s reception, on exactly the same velveteen banquette where Rik had lain the other night. Her foot tapped nervously on the tiled floor as she typed a final response to her flatmate.

  She could do this. She was going to return to London a success. She could feel her destiny drawing closer, whatever it was, and Rik wasn’t going to distract her from her goal. He wasn’t a pirate, he was a prince. She didn’t like princes. She wasn’t a Disney kind of girl. Well, except for Flynn Rider …

  She strained to hear the distinctive roar of the sports car, so when Rik strode into reception, not from the car park but from the gardens, he caught her by surprise. Which was so not a good way to start the day. She frowned. “Where’s your car?”

  “Good morning to you too.” He grinned and hefted her camera bag onto his shoulder effortlessly. “We can’t get where we’re going by car, remember?”

  Against her will, she drank him in. Today he wore dark jeans and a white open-necked, collared shirt. The merest hint of tattoo peeked out from beneath his collar. How had he managed to keep that tattoo hidden back in Westerwald? He must have worn nothing but buttoned-up suits and ties. She could hardly imagine it. The Rik who stood before her now looked nothing like a suit and tie kind of man. He looked like a windblown adventurer, with his tan, his days’ old stubble and overlong hair brushing his collar.

  He looked like a man who could give Flynn Rider a run for his money.

  She followed him through the gardens and down to the resort’s pier where a number of pleasure cruisers and luxury fishing boats were docked. She had to run to keep up with his long strides.

  He definitely appeared in better shape today, which was just as well since he’d be transporting her across open ocean, but did he have to keep wrong-footing her? He was not a man she wanted to let have the upper hand. She wasn’t sure her willpower would withstand the test.

  At around forty feet, Rik’s yacht wasn’t the biggest moored alongside the pier, but it was the sleekest, and definitely the most immaculate. Kenzie didn’t know much about boats, but it looked impressive; white and very neat, its wooden deck uncluttered by the ropes and accoutrements of its neighbours. It was certainly more elegant than the workhorse motorboat she’d been skippered around in before.

  “Can you sail this thing alone?” she asked, eyeing the mast with its furled sail in trepidation.

  “This thing is a single-handed boat. And she has an engine.”

  He was laughing at her. She breathed deeply. She was lucky to be going to Tortuga at all. She could put up with anything he threw at her.

  He held out his hand to help her on board, but she ignored it, grasped the railing and hoisted herself up onto the deck. Okay, so it wasn’t elegant, but it sure beat the heart-fluttering sensation which was sure to accompany his touch.

  Rik unsecured the ropes that tethered the boat to the dock, hopped onboard, and made his way nimbly to the helm while Kenzie was still trying to find her balance.

  He stowed her camera bag in a locker beneath the wheel. She perched on the cushioned bench beside the wheel and settled her wide-brimmed sun hat on her head and her sunglasses on her face. “How long will it take us to get there?”

  “Wind’s a good twenty knots, so I’d say a little over an hour. You’re welcome to make yourself comfortable in the cabin, if you’d like.”

  “No thanks. The sun is shining. Where I’m from that’s a pretty big deal and not to be missed.” even though she had a tendency to freckle in even the weakest British sun.

  In spite of the complete inappropriateness of present company, she also didn’t want to miss the impressive view up here on deck. Just because she shouldn’t touch, didn’t mean she couldn’t look .… right?

  She sneaked more than a few peeks as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing another glimpse of ink and some pretty fine muscle.

  He hardly seemed to notice her as he unfurled the sails, edged the boat away from the dock, and set course out to sea. The boat picked up speed as they hit open water and the sails filled.

  He was right about the single-handed thing. Everything seemed to be rigged to operate from the helm with a minimum amount of effort. Trimming the sails took just enough labour that she could appreciate why his hands weren’t as lily-soft as she’d expected. He wasn’t afraid to use them.

  She shivered at that thought.

  They weren’t alone. There were other boats, pleasure craft and fishing boats, plying the smooth, blue sea between the islands, and in the distance she spotted the ferry that ran between the main island of Los Pajaros and the smaller inhabited island of Arelat.

  She recognised a few of the islands they passed from her tour with the charter boat. Popular water sport spots jostled alongside tiki bars and restaurants that served fish pulled straight from the sea. If she got this right, the film crew were going to be in heaven on their days off.

  The islands grew further apart and less populated. The last of the islands she’d toured previously was Sandy Bar, literally nothing more than a massive dune spotted with palm trees.

  Then they were into virgin territory.

  “So where are you from?” Rik asked, settling back beside her in the cockpit.

  “England.”

  “No kidding. I meant where in England are you from?”

  “Hertfordshire born and bred, in a place you’ve probably never heard of. St Albans.”

  “Roman ruins, a duck pond and The Waffle House, right?”

  Wow. How on earth did a prince of a European nation know The Waffle House? But since she wasn’t supposed to know who he was, she asked only “you’ve been there?”

  “I have a friend who lives nearby. Have you ever been on a yacht before?”

  As it happens, she had. It wasn’t exactly a memory she was proud of, though. Bad Boy Number One had been a promising footballer. He’d hung with a crowd who she’d thought had it all – money, beauty, dazzlingly bright futures, while she’d been an ordinary girl from an ordinary end of terrace house in suburbia with nothing more than big dreams.

  They’d taken her sailing around Cowes once and all got horribly drunk – except Kenzie who’d done her usual and tried to be responsible and fix things. But as the sea had grown rougher and the rain lashed down on them, and her footballer was too busy being sick over the railings, she hadn’t been able fix anything. By the time the Coastguard rescued them she’d been in full-scale panic mode, convinced they were all going to drown.

  They’d got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist – her first experience of the kind of influence money could buy – but they’d made the papers and her parents had been livid.

  It wasn’t the only time she’d made the tabloids. After a while, her parents had stopped b
eing livid. They’d just been disappointed. Still were, even though those days were long gone.

  She cringed now. That was all going to change. They’d see, the whole world would see, that she wasn’t just a screw up. That she really was destined for great things.

  She’d felt it since she was a child, this feeling that there was something more for her out there. A couple of times she’d thought she’d found it, like with Bad Boy Number Two, Charlie, heir to an Earldom. Another of those Golden Boys who seemed to have it all. But again, it had been nothing but the brass ring.

  Still, she wasn’t going to give up the faith. Things always worked out in the end. If she didn’t believe that, she’d have been a basket case long before now.

  “I have,” she answered Rik.

  “Great. You take the wheel. I’m going down to get us a drink. Just keep her straight.”

  Oh no! She wasn’t going to relive that particular memory!

  But before she could protest, Rik abandoned her at the helm and disappeared through the hatch into the cabin. She clung to the wheel for dear life and concentrated on keeping the boat headed straight.

  Please, please don’t let Rik get drunk again. What would she do on her own on a boat in the middle of the ocean? What if there were rocks or reefs or … ?

  This wasn’t the Isle of Wight and she had no idea who to call for help. Would any local even come to her aid if they were too scared to set foot on Tortuga? They’d probably leave her to the sharks.

  Her hands gripped the wheel so tight her knuckles turned white.

  She forced herself to breathe as she anxiously scanned the sky. Clear and blue and wide, with only the fluffiest of clouds to be seen.

  Was the beam supposed to move like that?

  She gripped the wheel harder. On the day at Cowes, the weather had also started like this. But it hadn’t taken long for the wind to pick up and the sea to turn into a raging monster.

  When Rik finally re-emerged, juggling two bottles of water and two cans of pop – and not a beer in sight – she nearly threw herself at him in relief.

  “I wasn’t sure what you wanted?” he asked, holding out the selection.

  She prised her grip from the wheel and smacked his chest.

  “Ow, what was that for?”

  “Don’t do that to me again!”

  “Do what?” his brow furrowed.

  “Abandon me like that.” She took a bottle of water from him and sagged back on the bench, opened it and glugged down the refreshing liquid.

  That was bad boys all over. Thought of no-one but themselves, dumped you when it suited them, and left you to carry the can. She was so over it.

  ***

  @KenzieCole101: I’m so excited I could throw up. Oh wait, maybe that’s just seasickness.

  Rik adjusted the course of the boat and took a swig from his water bottle. She’d been scared, and he couldn’t work out why. The sea was calm as a lake today, the wind just right, visibility good. And out here, a few miles off Isla Tortuga, there was little chance of other traffic.

  Kenzie was certainly nothing like the women he’d dated before. She appeared confident and capable, yet she clearly wasn’t as self-assured as she seemed. Teresa would never have gone to pieces like that. Nor would his ex-girlfriend have looked at him with that mix of relief, anger and heat.

  Their relationship had been uncomplicated and easy, and he’d never tried to make it anything more. He’d never wondered what Teresa was thinking. With the clarity of hindsight he had to admit he’d never really cared enough to find out.

  “We’ll need to sail around to the leeward side of the island to the break in the reef,” he said, altering their course a little. “There’s a deep lagoon that side that might work for your pirate ship.”

  Kenzie lifted her head, instantly intrigued. “You’ve been here before?”

  “A few times. My brother and I … ” he swallowed. “We used to spend part of our summer holidays here in the islands. When we were teens we dared each other to sail to Tortuga. Teenage boys don’t believe in curses … ” He pressed his lips together.

  They’d come not once, but dozens of times over the years, feeling brave and invulnerable. He was starting to believe in the curse now, though. He’d lost everything he ever loved, and Max had been forced to give up on his dreams, his passion for wine making. If that wasn’t a curse, he didn’t know what was.

  Although, Max must have found a new passion to replace the old if he was getting married. Rik hadn’t paid much thought to the bride before now, but fleetingly he wondered what kind of woman had managed to get his footloose younger brother to the altar.

  Either that, or he’d realised the benefit of a partner to share the burden. Though why he’d chosen some obscure American over a candidate as suitable as Teresa, was anyone’s guess.

  “You’re lucky.” Kenzie shielded her eyes as she looked to where Tortuga loomed out of the sea. “My brother and I rarely did stuff together. Our ideas of fun were always so different.” She worried her lip again. The stirring in his lower half whenever she did that was starting to feel almost familiar.

  He shifted position. “How many siblings do you have?”

  “One is more than enough.”

  “You don’t get along?”

  She shrugged. “James is okay, but we have nothing in common. He’s just so … unadventurous.”

  “And you are?” He cocked an eyebrow at her, and she blushed and looked away. She certainly looked like an adventurer, in her cargo pants, hiking boots and khaki hat, but the image that flashed through his mind at her blush had absolutely nothing to do with clothing. No clothing at all, in fact.

  “Why do the locals believe the island is haunted?” she asked, keeping her gaze averted.

  “Not so much haunted as cursed. It’s said that anyone who visits Tortuga will suffer lifelong grief and heartache.” And violent death.

  “Why?”

  “There’s a local legend that a sorcerer cast a curse on the island after he lost the love of his life to another man, a pirate from Tortuga.”

  Rik completely understood that urge for revenge. Those first weeks after he’d arrived in Los Pajaros he’d been angry at the world, and his loss had been far greater than the loss of a prospective wife. After all, wasn’t the love for one’s nation far greater than love for a woman?

  He breathed out heavily. It was just a tragedy that had happened a long time ago. He hadn’t reached this point in his life because of some old curse. He was here because his life had been built on lies, and his mother, one of only three people in the world he’d trusted implicitly, had been the liar.

  He concentrated on looking for the break in the coral reef that circled the island, sheltering Tortuga’s bays from the open sea. He’d swum and snorkelled in these coves often enough to know where the deepest channels were, where the tide pulled hardest, where the fish were most plentiful. And also where the wrecks were.

  “You’ll need to mark this entrance into the lagoon with buoys. And since it’s illegal to drop anchor on the reef itself to protect the corals, I’d recommend keeping bigger boats out beyond the reef and using smaller boats to get in close. You could build a mooring for them in one of the coves close to the lagoon.”

  Kenzie pulled a notebook and pen from a side pocket of her rucksack and began scribbling notes.

  Rik circled the island to a cove that was deep enough to get them in close to the shore. Kenzie sat up straighter, her gaze fixed on the sandy beach.

  He dropped the anchor and furled the sails. “I’ll show you a bay later that I’d recommend for a pier. Since the locals won’t come here, you’ll need to bring your own labour and your own boat crews.”

  She nodded. “There’ll be a lot of extra costs, but my producer wasn’t too fazed when I spoke to him last night. The tax benefits the mayor agreed to probably helped.” She grinned. “And he was probably so stunned I’d actually got permission for us to film here. Neil never expected me to get
this far.”

  “What is it with you and your boss?”

  She shrugged, looking away. “Like everyone else, he underestimated me. Let’s get going, shall we?”

  He dropped the dinghy over the side, climbed down the swimming ladder, then turned to help Kenzie, allowing his hands to linger on her waist as he lifted her down. The buzz between them was as delicious as he remembered.

  She flicked a glance up at him, her big blue eyes wide and startled beneath the long, pale eyelashes. “You can let me go now.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” he teased, enjoying her blush. Kenzie Cole made him want to do bad, bad things. He was going to enjoy exacting his payment from her.

  He withdrew his hands and bent down to fire up the outboard motor. There was no need to hurry this. Seduction was better taken slowly. And by the time he got what he wanted from her, Kenzie would be begging for him to take it.

  But for a moment, a sense of disquiet unnerved him. The images he’d pictured in that brief moment of contact were not the sort of things he’d contemplated doing with any other woman before. Kenzie definitely had something he wanted. And with each passing day he seemed to want it more. With the kind of passion he didn’t trust and didn’t want.

  When the dinghy slid up onto the hot white sand, she jumped out as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. But she wasn’t looking at him. The blush was gone, but her face was still flushed, her eyes alight now with excitement. A purely professional excitement.

  By the time he’d pulled the dinghy above the high tide line, she’d already started snapping photographs, a panoramic view of the bay.

  Then she began jotting notes in her book. “What’s the name of this bay?” she called over her shoulder.

  “It doesn’t have a name. We’re modern day explorers. You can call it whatever you like.”

  She grinned. “I think I’ll call it the Bay of Hope, then.”

  “Esperanza,” he suggested, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He’d been to Tortuga several times over the last few months and hope was the one thing he hadn’t found here.