by Serena Bell
“Because he very obviously has an agenda.”
“Had an agenda. He had an agenda, but that could have changed. People change.”
“No, they don’t.”
For a moment they stared at each other. His expression was surprisingly fierce, and she looked away.
“Either way, it makes sense for us to check his room before we start combing the whole resort,” he said. “Unless you know his cell number?”
She shook her head. She was grateful that he’d said “us.” She had no desire to confront Steve on her own.
They went to the front desk first. Elisa didn’t think the resort would actually give them Steve’s room number, but the woman behind the desk with the lilting accent accepted Elisa’s story that Steve was a member of their party.
When they knocked on Steve’s door, no one answered, and no sounds came from within, even though Elisa shamelessly pressed her ear to the door for a good minute. She felt a small but solid sense of relief.
“Beach?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t checked there yet. It doesn’t seem like a great place to go with a sprained ankle.”
“And Celine Carr is a paragon of good judgment.”
“When you put it like that...”
10
THEY DESCENDED THE stone steps to the beach. Resort patrons sat under a pavilion nestled at the far end of the beach, sipping drinks and eating breakfast. She surveyed that area, but no Celine. She ran her eyes over the beach, looking for a telltale flash of white-blond hair, but she couldn’t locate the petite, buxom, bikini-clad troublemaker. Along the curving shore, she saw red-roofed white buildings and rainbow sails. In the water, people rode Boogie boards and balanced precariously on stand-up paddleboards, and on the sand, a large array of sunbathers greased themselves and rolled to cook evenly, but her scrutiny failed to pick out Celine.
On any other day, under any other circumstances, this would be paradise. The sun shone, and a gentle breeze blew off the stunning green-blue surface of the water. She could smell the salt, the coconut-scented sunscreen, and the faint, perpetual floral perfume of the island.
And the man beside her—any other woman, with any other past, would be licking her lips in anticipation of what he could do to her, sprawling in the sunshine on the beach or back in his hotel room. She wished like hell for a clean slate. If she didn’t know how easily he could break her heart, maybe she’d have just let him kiss her until her instincts had overridden her brain. Instead, she was doing the right thing and wishing like hell she wasn’t.
Before her sandals touched sand, she spotted Morrow on the beach, coming around the curve from the beach beyond. He saw her and waved.
She hooked her shoes on a finger and trotted over to him, the sand heating the soles of her feet. If she weren’t so worried about what Celine was up to, it would have been divine. She would have thrown herself down in the sand and just rested there, the sun warm on her face. Come to think of it, that had been part of what she’d pictured when she’d fantasized about this weekend—sipping tropical drinks on a white-sand beach, gazing at the sea. Snorkeling or scuba diving alongside Celine, watching the younger woman as she flirted with men. Giving her tips about how to keep the ones she wasn’t interested in at bay and how to keep the ones she was interested in at arm’s length, until the right moment came to narrow the gap. She’d hoped, she now realized, for a working vacation.
“Have you seen her?” she asked as she came within hailing distance of Morrow. He wore garish surfer shorts and a white polo shirt, and he was barefoot. He had hairy hobbit feet, she noted.
“Went that way.” He gestured down the beach in the direction he’d come from.
She started off that way.
“At least twenty minutes ahead of you,” called Morrow. “Don’t think they want company.”
She turned back. “They?”
“With the dark-haired guy. Hot and heavy, too.”
“What?”
“Making out on the beach. Had quite an audience.”
“Dammit!”
Morrow looked amused. She glared at him, and his smile faltered.
She felt Brett’s hand come briefly to rest in the small of her back, comforting, steadying, before it moved away again. He’d come up behind her while she was talking to Morrow.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. There was a text from Haven.
In St. Maarten, about to board puddle jumper. What’s going on there? There are pictures up on that paparazzi photo site, Razzle, of her with that guy.
“Okay,” Elisa said. “Okay.” The word was meant to comfort herself, to slow her heart, which was jerking around in her chest cavity like a panicked weasel.
Morrow was watching her curiously. “You want me to give her a message if I see her again?”
“You mean Celine?”
He nodded.
“No.” She had little faith a message would be heeded.
“That guy. The hoodie guy. What’s the deal with him?”
“He’s a paparazzo we picked up. Parasitically, not romantically.”
“You said an exclusive.” His eyebrows drew together in a scowl.
“You have an exclusive,” she said. “Celine and I aren’t doing interviews with anyone except you.”
“He seems awful chummy.”
Behind her, Brett laughed, but cut it short without her even having to glare at him.
She didn’t have time for the videographer’s insecurities. “I said you had an exclusive, and Celine and I won’t give interviews to anyone else. You have full access.” She had a strong desire to cross her fingers as she said it.
He nodded, but the crease between his brows didn’t ease. “She’s talking an awful lot to him.”
“Talking’s not an interview, last I checked.” She needed to find Celine. “We can discuss it more later, if you’re still worried.”
He shook his head and grunted, “Headed back up. Gotta get lunch. Assuming you don’t need more footage of those two? Let me know if you do need me. Got my number in there?”
“Somewhere,” she managed to say.
He trooped off across the sand.
She buried her face in her hands and felt Brett’s palm on her back again, a soothing antidote to the panic brewing in the rest of her body.
“Lise.”
“I’ve got to find her.”
She dialed Haven’s number. It was hard to hear the phone ringing over the gentle shhh of the surf. She put a finger in her ear, but it didn’t help, and her beautiful surroundings clung like claustrophobia, mean and close.
“You have reached—”
She hung up on Haven’s voice mail. She must already be on the Orville & Wilbur special from St. Maarten to St. Barts.
“What’d she say?”
She showed him the message from Haven.
“What’s Razzle?”
“She told me about it last night. There were a few photos up from the karaoke. It’s a site where anyone can post celebrity photos. Paparazzi do, and people who aspire to be paparazzi.”
“You can aspire to be a paparazzo?”
Despite her tension, she giggled.
“You know this isn’t your fault, right?” His voice was gentle, as gentle as she’d ever heard it.
She turned away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears.
“C’mere.”
He drew her into his arms. She let herself be held, let herself savor how strong he was, how muscular. How the warmth of his body seeped into hers, comforting her. Heating her, until her core responded by glowing with heat of its own. “You did everything you could,” he said into her hair, and she could feel his breath move across her scalp, a tease and a balm. “No one coul
d have done better.”
She had to pull away before she answered her desire to tilt up her face and find his mouth. She looked away from him, down the beach, not willing to let him see the need she knew was written all over her face.
She didn’t want this. She 100 percent didn’t need another complication.
“What do we do next?”
She looked down the beach. “She’s down there somewhere, right?”
“If Morrow’s to be believed.” He didn’t sound at all certain of that.
She crossed her arms. Something about his embrace had resuscitated her determination. She would not go down without a fight.
“So, we wait.”
* * *
HE SAT IN the sand beside her. It was close to midday now, and the sand was hot, soaking through his shorts. His balls snuck up closer to him to escape the radiance—or maybe that was because Elisa looked so good in her clingy pink T-shirt. He was particularly fond of the contrasts she made, sharp collarbones and maybe a rib or two, and then her breasts, a perfect handful, beckoning. In the sun, her skin glowed and her eyes were a bright, soft brown. Even her feet turned him on, her unpolished toes digging in the sand.
The sun was relentless, so hot he wished for a water bottle, or to strip off his T-shirt. He’d love to see the same look on Elisa’s face as when he’d opened the door shirtless. He hadn’t done that deliberately, but when her pupils had dilated and her tongue had peeked out to touch her lower lip—well, he’d been glad he’d forgotten.
He liked the way she’d lit up at the sight of him. It made him think she’d be as eager as he’d imagined, tough and feisty and fun. And damn, there went his own reaction again, and he had to talk it down to avoid the tent-in-the-shorts.
For now, though, he just wanted to erase the misery from her face. To make her smile again, any way he could. He wasn’t sure when taking care of her had become a mission for him, but he knew he couldn’t stand that she held herself responsible for Celine’s antics.
He cast about in his brain for a distraction, but all that came to him were memories of her from college, a flood of silly and meaningless moments. He’d done a good job of compartmentalizing those moments during the two years she’d denied him contact, but now they’d all swarmed back. The good, the bad, and—
He laughed out loud. “Do you remember the snowman?”
“Oh, yeah! Whose idea was that?”
That night had been as different from this moment as it was possible to get. Dark, just a sliver of moon in the sky. Cold, mid-twenties and crisp. Snow was falling, had been on and off all day and most of the week.
Snow had settled on her hair as they’d walked together across the quad. He couldn’t remember where they’d been coming from, and it didn’t matter. They walked together, and the snow on the ground and the snow in the air filled the world with that secret winter hush, a cushion against sound. A bubble of silence around them.
She’d gestured at an enormous pile of snow where the campus maintenance team had shoveled out the walkways on the quad and heaped all the remains at the side of Fletcher Dorm. “That’s a funny pile. If we carved out a little bit there, and then climbed up and piled some more on the top, we could make a giant snowman.”
Her nose had been red in the yellow glare of the streetlamp. There were snowflakes in her eyelashes. He had the unlikely thought that he’d remember that exact moment forever.
He had run to the snow pile and begun carving out huge hunks of it with his mittened hands. She joined him, and they made short work of it, patting down the carved-out snow to shape the bottom third of the snowman. When they were done with that, she had climbed up as high as she could, and he had passed snow up to her to make the top part of the snowman.
She patted the side of her creation. “He has a very small head.”
“I won’t say anything crass.”
“Phone the press!” She clambered down.
Sitting here in the white sand, the aquamarine sea sparkling, that whole night now seemed improbable. But it had happened. They had built a gigantic snowman. It had been hot, dirty, exhausting work. Afterward they had lain back and made snow angels, staring up at a black sky smattered with stars, the snow a blanket around them.
He thought, looking around at the scantily clad tourists, soaking up the bright and noise and heat of this beach, that it had been one of the best nights of his life.
She smiled at him, the smile he’d hoped to coax from her. Straight white teeth and soft pink lips and—
That night he had not let himself think that he could kiss her. There were women you slept with, and then there was Elisa. If he slept with her, who would he make snowmen with?
When he had made his big mistake, the night he had finally given in to temptation and settled his mouth on hers, he had felt like the world had been remade. Elisa was his, hot and soft and mobile in his arms, everything he’d ever wanted and been afraid to ask for. But as the heat had risen, one thought surfaced: this is the end of our friendship.
That was what had made him run. That was what had made him bury the pleasure and the relief, and pretend it had never happened.
That was what had made him think he could wash the madness away with Julie, which of course hadn’t worked. Julie was so much like Elisa, so visually tempting, and even some of her mannerisms were the same. But early in the morning of their date, midway through their second B-grade horror movie, when he’d tried for the third time to get Julie to provide color commentary with him, and she’d shushed him, he’d felt so tired. Too tired. Shortly after that, they’d kissed good-night, a kiss that was brief and desultory. And he’d sent her home to her sister, not understanding. Where had it gone, all the attraction he’d felt for her earlier that week, earlier that day, earlier that evening? Could it just vanish like that? And why wouldn’t his attraction for Elisa do that?
That attraction still hadn’t diminished.
She was smiling as she remembered that snowy night. “Your mittens were the eyes, and my gloves were the nose and mouth.”
“Did you ever get yours back?”
“Never. But it was worth it.
They grinned giddily at each other. Sand, water and blue sky made a dizzying background that contrasted with her reddish hair, and if they hadn’t been in public and things hadn’t been so screwed up, he would have kissed her just the way he should have that night in the snow. Maybe he would anyway—
Only she frowned suddenly. “I don’t think they’re coming back this way. What’s down there?”
She crawled a few feet over to where two women sunbathed beside them. “Excuse me,” she said. “If someone goes down the beach that way, is there another way up?”
“Sure.” The woman was clad in a red bikini, her skin an alarming wrinkled brown. “There’s another flight of stairs a ways down. And if you walk around the point, there are more resorts and more stairs.”
Elisa jumped, then clapped her hand to the pocket of her capris and tugged out her vibrating phone. She looked at the screen and said, “Oh, shit. Haven’s here.”
She held out the phone, and Brett looked.
It was a fuzzy photo, but against a background of Caribbean blues and whites dotted with sailboats and red roofs, there was no mistaking Celine and Steve, lips locked.
11
ELISA TOLD BRETT he didn’t have to come with her, but he followed her from the beach back to the main resort lobby. The lobby was simple and beautiful—white walls, white-tiled floor, white columns holding up arches. Along the walls there were mirrors and windows and dark wood tables and benches, one of which Brett now lounged on, the picture of patient and casual. Her heart gave a little twinge, and she told it to shut up.
Haven stood beside a tall white planter overflowing with green and pink foliage, matched in intensity only by her
hot-pink patent-leather wheeled carry-on. The petite PR genius was balanced precariously on high-heeled sandals on the lobby tile, resplendent in skinny jeans, a tight black top and an unholy amount of makeup, her dark hair long and glossy. Elisa hadn’t registered her as quite so intimidating the first few times they’d met. But of course, Haven hadn’t had reason to be bullshit angry at her before.
The first thing Elisa said was, “I’m so, so sorry.” She braced herself for the worst.
But Haven only smiled, her severe face softening. “Sweetie. You cannot beat yourself up about this.”
“You had to fly here.”
“I chose to fly here.”
“Your mom is sick.”
Haven smiled wryly. “When you work for Celine Carr, no one’s allowed to get sick.”
“I—”
“I should have known better than to throw you in the deep end like this. Celine’s tough enough to manage under controlled circumstances. I’m just sorry this has turned out this way. I know you were hoping—I was hoping, too. For your sake, but of course for mine, as well.”
It sounded an awful lot like an ending to Elisa. “We could find her. It’s only midday Saturday. We have two more days. We could—” She wanted, still, to redeem herself. She wasn’t ready to believe that Celine’s impetuous dating style was incurable.
“Sweetie,” said Haven kindly. So kindly it made tears gather behind Elisa’s eyes again. “Sometimes you just have to cut your losses with Celine. She texted me this morning to say she wants to call off the weekend because she’s met the man of her dreams. She says she’s in love with this guy, Steve.”
“She’s known him twenty-four hours.”
“We both know Celine isn’t in love with this guy. Who, by the way, is not a very nice guy. He has a history of exposing celebrities this way, by publicizing their locations on the web. There was one situation where a celeb was sexually assaulted by a fan who got her location off one of those sites—from one of his photos—and when he was called out on it, he was pretty unrepentant.”
