“Well, I don’t understand or know you.”
“Which do you want?”
“Both.”
He chuckled. Sexiest. Grin. Ever.
“I’m Riker Ewan. Thirty-three, ex-marine, no siblings, I was supposed to meet up with somebody, but she didn’t show, and I’m not the kind of clientele that gets catered diamond vodka.”
A jobless wannabe event planner wasn’t that kind of clientele, either, but she said, “Ex-marine at thirty-three? What did it?”
“MARSOC recon job.”
“Where?”
“Afghanistan. Picture-pretty blue afternoon—missile attack. Got a nasty scar from pit to hip. Lucky my arm didn’t get grinded into Hamburger Helper.”
“And in other disturbing visuals...”
“So,” he said lazily, “why’re you still on my stool?”
“Scars don’t spook me.” She had one of her own, one she faced every time she took off her bra. “Oh, and anyone who protects and serves our country deserves a free drink now and then.”
“I don’t need free drinks. Just glad to have a break from fixing drinks. I’m getting my hands dirty in the family business. Pouring folks what they want, wiping the bar, getting in the middle of brawls. Dad’s got a place up in—”
“Boston?” she guessed.
“Yeah.”
“Accent gave you away. It was one of the first things I noticed about you.” Along with his strong-looking legs and, of course, his package.
So he was a bartender. A veteran who worked at his father’s place. An average guy with Boston roots and good old-fashioned appreciation for cold beer.
Did he jog familiar neighborhood streets for exercise? Did he lock up the bar, count the register and work on the books ’til sunrise? Did he flirt for his tips, hook up with patrons? Did he care about sports cars and private jets?
Ona pegged him as an old-neighborhood kind of man—stable in the easy-does-it, work hard, raise some hell, sleep, repeat kind of way. She’d grown up surrounded by men like that, and it made him sort of familiar.
“The ‘clientele’ you mentioned?” she said. “That’s not me. Guest Services ordered that drink for me, and I can imagine the only reason why is because management feels sorry for me.”
Riker’s brows lowered over his eyes, and in the eerie gold and pink light passing through the shadows, it was even more difficult to identify his emotions. “Why?”
“I successfully screwed up my high school’s glee club reunion.”
“Glee club?”
“Oh, that’s funny?” Ona jutted out her chin, and if he touched it she might clock him. “At PAAC, usually the ones who mocked the club were the ones who didn’t make the cut and the jocks.” Sizing him up, she said, “Football player?”
“Baseball. But athletes and artists can get along okay.”
“Not at PAAC. The athletics department went all Pac-Man on the arts department and the glee club was cut right after I graduated.”
Riker grunted. “Well, now, I can see where that’d rain piss on your sunny day. I haven’t swung a bat in years, so does that redeem me?”
“Partially.” She offered a hand. “Ona Tracy. Twenty-eight, former triple threat, no siblings, and I accidentally booked an erotic ship for a private school’s glee club reunion.”
“Triple threat?”
“Act, dance, sing. I’m from Philadelphia, but after graduation I tried to float in London, then settled in New York.”
“You perform?”
“Not since I passed up Chicago.” She sighed. “Aside from this reunion, I’m not really in touch with that world anymore. Or this one. Shredded money doesn’t fall from the sky where I come from.”
“The private school—”
“Is one I attended on a scholarship for low-income students. I’m a talented mezzo-soprano, but depending on which close-minded folks you ask, I’m from the wrong side of Philly. Believe me, the Tracys were more like the Evanses than the Huxtables.” She shook her head. “And you probably have no friggin’ idea what I’m talking about. I reference classic TV sometimes. It’s a quirk. When I get nervous, the quirks come out.”
“Ona...” Again with that yummy smile that, under more ideal circumstances, was likely to get her naked in sixty seconds flat. “I get the references. I’ve seen Good Times and The Cosby Show. I grew up on reruns.”
So this is how you understand me. Because you’re like me—the genuine me.
“What’s making you nervous?” he asked.
“This ship. You.”
“’Cause I’m too close?”
“You are eating into my personal space, but that’s not it. You’re looking at me too closely. Staring. Is that a common marine thing—the hard, disciplined stare?”
“No.” Just “no,” and he continued to stare at, study and penetrate her with his quiet thoughts.
“Riker, if from panties down I’m sexier than erotic art, then from panties up, with expensive vodka all over my dress, what am I?”
Appearing to consider this, Riker pushed off the bar. He straightened to a tall statue of a man who did ruthlessly sexy things to an average green shirt. Grasping both sides of her dress’s wet open collar, he finally eased his stare from her face to her chest.
Instinctively, Ona clamped her hands on to his solid forearms and fine, dark blond hairs teased her palms. She felt his tendons flex as he freed a button and revealed the lace edge of her basic, boring, classic black bra.
“You’re going to strip me in front of everyone in this lounge?”
Those serious blue eyes pinned her puzzled brown ones as the next button escaped, followed by another. “Are you going to let me?”
Sitting on a stool, vodka on her boobs, dress half-open, she wavered long enough to draw his laughter. “Hey, I was deciding.”
“All right, okay. But, Ona, look—” Riker skimmed the dress from the collar to where it gaped open at her breasts, touching her where he had absolutely no right to touch her “—in the time it took you to decide, I could’ve had your clothes on the floor and my hands on your breasts.”
“Is that supposed to mean you work fast? Because I’m wondering what else you accomplish with such lightning-quick speed, and I gotta tell you, it’s concerning.”
“Keep wondering. Or I can show you. I’m at your service.”
Was she on fire with temptation? Yes. But her strength could resist, abstain. To leap from a stranger’s bed to Nicholas’s wasn’t a note from her playbook.
“Ooohhh, no. Button me up, marine.”
“Okay. And, Ona—from panties up, you’re incredible.”
Momentarily speechless, she just watched him from underneath her eyelashes as he started to slowly close her dress. At last she managed, “It’s not you, Riker. It’s not me, either, really. It’s Nick. Nicholas Callaghan.”
He paused, searching her eyes. “Nick Callaghan, huh? Am I going to be getting a visit from an angry boyfriend?” he said, throwing her earlier question back at her.
“No. No.” Ona really ought to let his arms go, except his body fascinated hers. Thick bones. Taut muscle. Warm skin. “I had the hots for him in high school.”
“What’s ‘hots’ for a high school kid?”
“I fantasized about him.”
Riker’s fingers tripped over a button and slid into her pushed-up cleavage. “Uh—”
“Mmm-hmm. But the crush stayed a crush, and I was thinking of changing that during reunion. But I hit a few complications.”
“He’s got a girl? Gay?”
“I don’t know if someone like him sees someone like me as his type.”
“Type?”
“How can I put this in a gentle way?” A PC way, even?
“Ona, I grew up
with a tough-love dad, spent the better part of a decade in the marines, and I toss idiots out of a bar just about every night. I don’t know what ‘gentle’ is.” He fastened the second-to-top button on her dress, and she was decent again. “Say it. Get it over with. Rip it, like a Band-Aid.”
“I don’t know if Nick does black.”
Riker frowned. “If there’s doubt, why the hell would you want to go after a bastard like that? Screw him.”
“That’s unfair, Riker.”
“I’m being unfair?”
“Yes, actually. He’s a pure-hearted guy—a freakin’ saint. If black women or tall women or round-assed women aren’t his preference, that doesn’t make him a bastard. And I said I don’t know if that’s the case. In high school he dated blondes and redheads, but if we’re talking facts, PAAC—oh, that’s the Philadelphia Academy of Arts and Culture—was predominately white. It’s diversified over the past decade, but...”
“Ona?”
“What?”
“As a man who does do black, I’m going to tell you something. I want to kiss your brown skin, suck your dark nipples into my mouth. I don’t care if you’re in tall shoes, as long as the rest of you’s naked for me. I want to get my hands on that round ass of yours.”
“Oh...” Ona gulped for something—a sip of a drink, air, a taste of his filthy mouth. “That was either perverted or poetry.”
“It was the truth. So swear to me, if he can’t appreciate a smokin’ black woman, move on. Find someone else to fantasize about.”
Already done—and damn you for being the one.
She wasn’t ready to give up on Nicholas for a stranger from Boston. But right now, her attraction to Riker was the most genuine thing about her. She’d come to Miami padded with lies because owning the truth about her life was as harsh as hitting the floor.
A peal of cheers resonated as more handfuls of cash confetti showered the dance floor.
“Gotta say I really friggin’ hate that. There’s luxury, then there’s carelessness.” Restraint seemed to seal off his emotions then, and he shrugged a pair of wide shoulders. “Forget it. I just value a buck.”
“So do I!” Ona swept her hands up and down his forearms, smiling because, thank God, here was someone she could talk to.
She could flirt with Nicholas, reminisce about glee club and PAAC with the others, but she couldn’t truly talk to anyone she’d brought to this ship.
Riker’s face neared hers. “Keep stroking me like that, and you’re gonna get me hot real fast, Philly.”
The smile opened to a head-back, mouth-open laugh. “Shut up, Boston.” But she released him, sobering. “My best friend from high school and I planned the craziest scheme. He was going to pretend to be my man, to see if Nick would get jealous.”
“Where’s the friend?”
“Dead.” Ona’s teeth caught a chunk of the inside of her cheek. “Matty died over a week ago, but no one told me until I showed up on the pier.”
“Hell.”
“Yes, exactly. I want to be angry with the ones who are here. I resent that no one cared enough to let me know. But Matty and I lost contact after graduation, and that’s his fault and it’s mine—not theirs.” She shook her head. “I haven’t cried for him. Maybe I don’t deserve to.”
“You respected him?”
“Very much.”
“Grief doesn’t always show up to the party dressed as tears. But you deserve to mourn your friend. Cross over this.”
“A former marine, current bartender and a therapist? The woman who stood you up should be kicking herself—hard.”
The closed-off stare made its return. “Just paying forward some advice given to me after my last deployment.”
Ona battled the urge to pry, to take down another layer and get even closer. Nicholas was the man she’d shown up on the pier hoping to get closer to, not a stranger who’d understood her before getting to know her and who, in no uncertain terms, wanted to get her naked.
“Thanks, Riker.” She stood, brushing against him, involuntarily heating at the contact. “I’d better take a look at my stateroom and get this dress to the dry cleaner.”
“Okay.” Riker signaled for another beer. “If Saint Nick’s the good guy you believe he is, and you’re thinking about going ahead with that plan to get him jealous, I can take care of that for you.”
“Serious?”
“I don’t know how to be anything but.”
“Riker...”
Confetti pelted her and, taking it as a warning sign, she began to scoot toward the exit. “I can’t have you sacrifice your vacation, so no.”
“Being with you ain’t a sacrifice, Philly.” Swinging up the fresh beer, he saluted her. “Like I said, I’m at your service.”
Chapter 3
I’m such a bastard.
Riker Ewan barely registered the smooth force of his frosty MGD. Sexual demand had crashed his system. Then a shot of guilt. Now he was too numb to savor the characteristics of a simple beer.
One of the military’s elite, a member of MARSOC, he’d been trained to weather the unpredictable, welcome the dangerous, outmaneuver the impossible.
But the US Marines didn’t see Ona Tracy coming. Even skimming six-something barefoot and a walking hazard, she’d captured him in a sneak attack.
The woman wasn’t letting herself mourn the loss of the friend she’d asked to help make some dense prick jealous—and he was keeping a beer company, feeling guilty because he’d lied to her?
What was it about her that did him in?
Was it the carefreeness of her springing from foot to foot at the glass tower as the silvery-pink color on her toenails shimmered? Was it the naughtiness of her pulling down her underwear for him and then letting him work open her dress right here in Sirens’ Song? Was it that she was the clumsiest, oddest, realest woman he’d ever ached to get his hands on?
Again, guilt bloomed. He took a harsh swig of beer, resenting emotions he’d fought like hell to store in a vault. The vault kept him calm, easy, alert.
As for Ona... Any of his comrades would’ve categorized her as a 10 and closed the case.
Riker’s brain and body and everything in between groaned yes. Forget skin that looked like smooth, pale chocolate and was guaranteed to taste even better? Erase the slam of heat he’d felt when she’d first set her wide-eyed gaze on him? Pretend the note of naïveté that amplified every sexy, dirty thing about her hadn’t already killed him a thousand times over?
This ship wasn’t an ark, and Riker hadn’t infiltrated The Lure to get a soul mate. If he had the sense God gave him, he’d force himself to forget Ona and his crazy-ass offer to step in for her friend.
Fake a relationship—yes, he could do that for her. Ona’s sweet vulgarity disqualified her for cute, but he preferred his women funny and frank, and being her man wouldn’t be a hardship. But to step aside for some guy who was ignorant to her offbeat sexiness?
The idea of it had him tightening his fist around the beer bottle until he finally took his hand away before the glass could fragment.
“Good deeds ain’t on my agenda.” The hoarse growl of words was lost in random voices and jazzy music. Giving up the MGD, he shook off the light cascade of confetti and left Sirens’ Song.
A series of mistakes had brought Riker and Ona together on a ship where neither of them belonged. Sort of an act of fate, if he had the mind to go for ideas about luck and soul mates and everything else Marisol had sobbed about when she’d walked out two years ago.
Quiet night—one of those sweaty, airless Boston summer nights. Marisol had suggested pot roast and potatoes for dinner; he’d countered with sandwiches and Italian ice at the deli a few streets over, and she’d wiggled off her engagement ring and put it in his palm.
A d
iamond—one she’d picked from a jeweler’s front window. Princess cut, ’cause Marisol had made herself out to be a princess settling for a blue-collar ex-marine.
We don’t mesh. She’d entwined her fingers with his. This doesn’t feel right—you know it doesn’t. We can’t even conceive. It’s fate, Riker. Fate says we’re not right.
Whether or not fate told her it was okay to marry someone else, move to California and crank out a pair of babies, Riker didn’t know. But she was happy, sent a Christmas card to Dad’s bar every year, and he was okay with that.
Fate did right by Marisol, because she was better off in California with her kids and a man who worshipped her. Riker had offered her love and lies. Maybe Marisol carried his love with her, because now all he had left were lies.
Or lies were all he’d had to begin with.
And the legit reason he’d interrupted his stable routine in Boston, left Pint’s in Emory Ewan’s hands and had boarded this ship was one he wasn’t proud of.
Paring down his mother’s assets wasn’t something he’d swung out of bed and decided to do, but Kate Russ had called his bluff and pissed him off when she’d left him high and dry at Stewart-Russ Cruise Line’s headquarters.
So, yeah, what he’d told the smokin’ klutz from Philadelphia about the no-show woman he’d been geared up to meet with was true—in a hazy, technical, slick way.
Only Kate, Emory, a congregation of expensive attorneys and Riker knew the truth. Once shipping magnate heiress Kate Russ’s mind bounced off its axis, her secrets had begun to escape.
She’d named him power of attorney.
She’d made him star of her will.
The other secrets Riker didn’t want to confront. Not now.
Riker and Kate were connected only by biology and money. Accepting the estrangement, he’d stayed out of her way until her legal group had coerced them to agree to a face-to-face meeting in Miami. Yet she’d escaped him by jetting off to some foreign resort town.
Blissful Summer: Make You Mine AgainUnraveled Page 12
