Claire and the Lady Billionaire_Book 8

by Giselle Fox

  I peered through a window and saw a man passed-out face-down in the middle of a woven rug with a beer bottle still in his hand. There was a pool table with three people sleeping on top of it. I saw someone roll over, trying to get comfortable on a small rattan love seat, then throw a pillow over his face to block the sun that was streaming in from the window behind him. Sabrina pushed me gently to the side so I wouldn’t step in a puddle of barf that was drying on the stones in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said. Still, there was no sign of Bryce. I hoped that maybe he’d had the sense to leave that place. Then I recognized a face that was staring back at me from the other side of the pool deck.

  “You’re late,” he called. Though he’d only shouted two words, I could tell he was intoxicated. His voice was hoarse as if he’d been screaming like a goon all night. Clearly, the Scandinavian prince thought we were someone else.

  He began to rifle through his pockets and then produced a wad of bills.

  “Is Bryce Bettencourt here?” Leda asked him.

  The guy looked up at her and scowled, grudgingly stuffing his money back into his pocket. “Who are you?”

  “Friends of his,” I said.

  The guy looked at each of us and then laid back in his chair. “Friends. Right.” He closed his eyes and pulled the brim of his ball cap down. He wasn’t going to be much help, but it did seem like Bryce was still there, somewhere.

  We continued the search, staying close together in case any of the zombies got belligerent, but from what we could see, everyone that was awake was too out of it to care that we were trespassing. I hoped we wouldn’t have to go inside the house since I could smell the nastiness from outside, and I really didn’t want to know what was going on up in the bedrooms.

  I peered over the edge of the pool deck down onto a lower patio. Lying stretched out on a broken lounger was Bryce, half-naked and red as a lobster in full afternoon sun. Empty bottles littered the area around him. A blow-up sex doll was partially wedged under his chair. Her open mouth gaped up at us.

  “Oh, great,” muttered Sabrina. “Looks like we’re going to have to carry him up.”

  He was passed-out cold, with no idea that we were even standing there. His chest and face were sunburned. He looked like a drunk piece of bacon.

  “Bryce,” Leda said loudly beside his ear. He didn’t even stir.

  “He smells bad,” Sabrina said leaning a little closer.

  “Let’s get him up,” Leda said.

  We each grabbed a limb and tried to haul him to a sitting position. He was breathing fine but gave no other signs of being sentient. Sabrina was right, he did smell bad.

  We propped up the back of his chair, which sort of worked until he slumped over the side of the armrest again. “Maybe it would be easier if we carried the whole chair up the steps,” I suggested.

  “Except it’s barely holding him now,” Sabrina said. The canvas was ripped all along the bottom so that one of Bryce’s legs had drooped through and was resting on the blow-up doll beneath. The frame was broken on the left side. It looked as if he had stumbled and dropped into it from a great height. Then suddenly, his body jerked and his eyes opened.

  “What the fuck?” he mumbled, trying to focus on us. “Shit! Fuck!” He clutched his head and tried to sit up.

  “You need water,” Leda said.

  “You need to get out of the sun,” Sabrina added.

  “Can you stand?” I asked.

  “Fuck off,” Bryce slurred.

  We all looked at each other and then simultaneously grabbed him under the arms.

  Bryce struggled as soon as we had hold of him, but his fight was weak. Once we dragged him to his feet, Sabrina got behind him, looping one arm under his armpit and then around the back of his neck until he was in a headlock. “Up the stairs,” she said.

  He tried to swing back at her, but she caught his wrist and put it in a lock too. “You know what happens if you fight it,” she hissed. “Start walking.”

  Bryce winced from the pressure on his wrist, but he walked dutifully up the stairs until we were all back up on the pool deck. The prince in the lounger was still there but didn’t seem to care that we were abducting his house mate. He flipped his ball cap up when he heard us, let out a sound that resembled a laugh, and then pulled his cap back down again. Some friend.

  “Hey!” Bryce shouted. “Help!” But no one came to his rescue. Either they didn’t hear him or they didn’t care.

  We marched him back out through the grounds, past the windows where his buddies on the pool table were passed-out. Past the soaking wet furniture on the front lawn. Past the latrine in the bushes. Bryce never stopped yelling or swearing at us with increasing coherence. When he saw the car waiting for us at the gate, he really began to fight.

  We all had to hold him. I had one arm and Leda had the other. Sabrina had him from behind. The driver stepped out of the car, looking completely bewildered. Leda yelled something to him in Thai that sounded like an offer of money. He promptly opened the back door of the car and held it for us while we stuffed Bryce inside. At last, Sabrina put a choke hold on him and he eventually blacked out. “It was the only way,” she said when we looked at her. Within seconds, we were driving again.

  Bryce regained consciousness soon after. “Let me out!” he screamed. The driver looked worried again but then Leda handed him more cash and he drove faster. Finally. We reached the dock. Sabrina and I stayed in the car with Bryce. The windows were rolled up, the air conditioning was working hard to keep us from boiling alive. Bryce reeked of booze and the fetid stank of overindulgence. Sabrina and I were sweating profusely. We had him pinned in the back seat to the point where we were almost sitting on him. It was all way too close for comfort.

  Leda was outside negotiating our passage to the island residence we had arranged. She was pointing back toward the car, no doubt warning the skipper about Bryce’s wild condition. When we hauled Bryce down to the boat, the skipper just stared at him passively. He didn’t seem to care that another hungover white guy was having a bad day.

  We set off across the water toward a cluster of islands in the far distance. It might have been exciting under other circumstances, but knowing what we were in for when Bryce sobered up kind of put a damper on things. It was day one of many long days ahead.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I’m not getting off this boat,” Bryce said. He sat like a petulant child with his arms crossed in front of him. He looked warily at Sabrina.

  “You have no money and no shoes,” Leda reminded him. “If you don’t get off this boat now, you will be picked up for drunken vagrancy by the police on the other side. If you think this is bad, imagine how nice a Thai prison will be for a drunk man with no papers.

  Bryce considered that. “My passport and everything I own is back at that house.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you have more than one passport,” Leda said. “Here are some clean shorts. You need a bath.” She tossed him a pair of black and red checkered board shorts she’d been thoughtful enough to buy for him and then climbed up onto the dock. “Come on, Bryce.”

  Bryce shook his head and then said something to the skipper in Thai, or tried to at least. The driver looked back at Leda like he didn’t understand a word. Leda seemed to clarify things. The skipper picked up an old fishing net and began to jab Bryce with the handle.

  “Fuck off,” Bryce shouted at him, swiping the net away, but that only made the skipper poke him harder. Eventually, Bryce crawled off the boat since there was no option to stay aboard. We’d all had enough of the blistering sunshine.

  We left him sitting on the sand, tucked under the shade of an outcrop of fronds. I was curious what the house looked like, so the three of us went up to inspect it. Luckily, our provisions for the days ahead had already been delivered. Flats of bottled water lined the counters. There were bags of fruit, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and guavas; dragon fruit, oranges, and limes. There were crates of vegetables and
dried goods; rice, noodles, and packages of tofu, spices, oils, and condiments. “Shit,” I said and almost started to laugh. We’d omitted meat, fish, and dairy from our food order since the three of us were still observing the solidarity diet. I wondered what Bryce would have to say about being vegan when he found out at dinner time.

  Sabrina and I got to work organizing the kitchen and putting food away. Leda went to check on the generator and the water since she knew how to handle such things. We scoped out the bed situation. The place had been advertised as big enough to sleep twelve. I counted only four bedrooms, each with a queen-sized bed, which left the math a little off. Still, there were enough rooms for each of us to have our own space.

  After the set-up was done and our rooms chosen, we reconvened on the deck that overlooked the beach. Bryce was still down by the water, though he looked like he might have fallen asleep again. I walked down there with a bottle of water and an old straw hat that I’d found in my bedroom. I placed both things beside him and then went back up to the deck.

  “That was nice,” Sabrina grumbled. She was inspecting a bite mark on her forearm. Bryce had scarred her in a few spots.

  “Have you had a tetanus shot recently?” I asked, cringing at the madness that we had all just endured.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Thank goodness you’re a fighter,” Leda mumbled. “That was exhausting.” She laid her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. “I hope those idiots at that house don’t sell his passport.”

  “Or report him missing,” I said, though they didn’t seem like the conscientious type.

  “I think I could fall asleep,” Leda said.

  “Go lie down if you need to. Sabrina and I can handle him. There’s nowhere for him to go.”

  Leda went and had a lie-down in her room. Sabrina and I hung out on the deck in the shade, keeping watch over our messy friend. He was still passed-out on the sand but the tide was on its way in. I knew he would wake up soon.

  It was the first time that I’d really taken a look at our surroundings. The place was a tropical paradise, nestled inside its own small bay. The water was clear and brilliant blue. Everything smelled fresh and alive. Still, it felt like prison with Bryce there.

  “We should have brought beer,” Sabrina said.

  “We should have,” I agreed. Unfortunately, that was never a possibility. You couldn’t expect a man to dry out with flats of cold beer around.

  “There is a blender,” I said. “And ice.”

  “Smoothie?” Sabrina asked. She’d read my mind.

  We both went into the kitchen and raided the fridge. We threw chunks of dragon fruit and orange, pineapple juice, bananas and coconut milk, and a chunk of ice into the blender and let it rip. Leda came out and joined us, looking a little more refreshed. I poured Bryce a plastic cup of it too and went down to the beach to deliver it. He was sitting up and staring out at the water with his arms hanging limply at his sides. The bottle of water was empty and rolling on the sand beside him. He had his new pair of shorts over his shoulders and the hat, which was too small, perched on his head. He looked up and scowled when he saw me coming.

  “When does the boat come back?” he asked.

  I handed him the smoothie cup and took a few safe steps back in case he tried to throw it at me. “Not for awhile. Better if you just don’t think about it.”

  “This isn’t legal,” he said.

  “You’re worried about legal after that house?”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  “Two reasons: Instagram and Twitter. Your downward spiral has been trending for the last week. We had to do something.”

  “I’m not staying,” he said. “You can’t force me to stay here.”

  “You’re right, we can’t, but there’s no way off this island for at least two weeks. Not for you or for any of us. We’re all stuck here.”

  Bryce let out a string of curses that would have curled a drag queen’s toes. It echoed off the water and rang out across the empty bay.

  “Everything alright?” Sabrina called down from the upper deck.

  “Oh, just fuck off!” Bryce yelled back at her, but his voice sounded choked that time, and it looked like he was going to cry. I figured it was best to leave him with his thoughts.

  “We’ve got heaps of food and plenty of coffee, juice, and water. There’s a nice big bedroom for you upstairs. Why don’t you take a swim and cool off? Maybe it’ll help you feel better.” I left him and walked back up to the house.

  Leda and Sabrina were watching from their chairs out on the balcony. “He’s a mess,” I said.

  “Is he crying?” Leda asked. “His shoulders are shaking.”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “If he wasn’t such an asshole I might feel sorry for him,” Sabrina said.

  “I know,” I agreed. The truth was, I still felt sorry for him. He wasn’t in his right mind and I could totally understand reacting the way he had to basically being abducted, even if it had been for his own good.

  Then, Bryce shot up from his spot on the sand and started running out into the water. He ran until he tripped and then began to swim, cursing and yelling the whole time. It looked like maybe he was going for a power swim until I realized he was going for the mainland.

  “Is he trying to…?” Sabrina asked.

  “It looks that way,” Leda muttered.

  He kept going and going. And going. “He’s too far for us to help him now.”

  “He’s a good swimmer,” Leda said. “He used to be, anyway.”

  It seemed she was right. Bryce was halfway across the bay by that point and was making good time. I could only assume that he was planning on flagging down a boat—if there even were any—but he still had a long way to go.

  “He’s going to reach the jellyfish soon,” Leda said calmly.

  “What jellyfish?” Sabrina asked.

  “Didn’t you notice them on the way in? They’re everywhere.”

  And right at that moment, Bryce began to shriek. He splashed wildly at the water around him. “Are they poisonous?” I asked, wondering if we should all be a little more concerned.

  “I don’t think they are that poisonous,” Leda said confidently. “Maybe just a little sting.”

  Bryce began to back paddle, kicking at the water with his feet while his arms spiraled behind him. He beelined back to shore even faster than he’d gone out. He dragged himself up the beach and lay down on the sand. After catching his breath he shot up again and ran to the other side. He took off into the thick of the lush green forest.

  “Very bad idea without shoes,” Leda said.

  We heard Bryce shouting and cursing some more, and then he reappeared and ran to the other side of the beach, limping a little on one side. We all sat back down in our deck chairs and watched him dive into the thicket again and then just as soon turn around and grab at his foot. He hurled himself out onto the beach again and glared up at us. “You bitches left my shoes behind!”

  “Oh, now that’s not going to make friends,” Sabrina muttered.

  “Watch your mouth, young man,” Leda called down to him. “There’s a pair of sandals for you in your room if you would only bother to look for yourself.”

  “Aghhhhh!” Bryce shrieked again. “I got stung by jellyfish!”

  “Then why don’t you pee on yourself again,” Leda suggested.

  It was going to be an interesting week.

  Finally, it was time to start prepping dinner. We’d originally thought that two of us would rotate on while one sat out and relaxed, but since sitting out on the deck and watching Bryce was far from relaxing, we all pitched in. Bryce hadn’t come upstairs yet. I’d already gone down with another two bottles of water and some fruit as a peace offering, but he was as surly as ever. It wasn’t like I wanted to make friends with the guy, but I did want to encourage a less hostile environment for all of us.

  “Should we be worried about going to sleep tonight?�
� Sabrina asked Leda.

  Leda chuckled. “He has a big bark-”

  “And a big bite,” Sabrina said holding up her arm as evidence.

  “I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Leda said.

  Sabrina glanced at me. I shrugged. I hadn’t even considered what it would be like to have Bryce detoxing in the next room. I wondered if any of us would get any sleep.

  But Bryce only seemed to get more and more subdued as the night went on. By the time darkness fell, he had moved a little closer to the house; probably because bats were flying about. I lit the torches around the outdoor seating area. We all put on our bug spray and then I tossed the bottle onto the sand next to where Bryce was sitting. “You should put some on,” I said.

  He said nothing but he used it right away. When dinner was ready, I filled a bowl of noodles, vegetables, and tofu with a spicy peanut sauce and brought it down to him. “There’s lots more if you want.”

  He sniffed it suspiciously but then dug into it as soon as I left him.

  After dinner, the three of us sat around the table under the lanterns. Bryce walked up the steps with his bowl and went inside the house. We all looked at one another, raising our eyebrows questioningly. I heard Bryce dole himself out another helping.

  “He’s not going to piss in the noodle pot, is he?” Sabrina whispered.

  “I don’t think he would do that,” Leda said, though she didn’t look a hundred percent sure.

  Bryce was capable of a lot of shitty things, including trying to destroy his sister’s reputation, so I wouldn’t have put it past him. I shot up the stairs just in case. I found him wandering around inside the house, looking like he was just getting the lay of the land.

  “Your room is the first one on the left,” I said.

  “I already figured it out,” he replied. “It’s the only one without a bag.”

  “The flip-flops Leda got you are in there,” I said. “They’ll save your feet.” He was covered in sticky sand and his sunburn looked even angrier than it had that morning. “Do you want some lotion or something?”