The Trouble With Paradise

SEVENTEEN

Dorie made it back to camp, passing the fire pit to go directly to the makeshift shelter.

Cadence and Brandy sat on two pads, with a third between them, made up like a bed at a luxury hotel.

“Here, for you.” Brandy patted the empty pad. “Ethan set us up. Four-hundred-thread-count Egyptian silk, can you imagine?”

There was even a chocolate on her pillow.

“Also Ethan,” Cadence said. “Are you going to eat yours?”

“Knock yourself out.” Dorie plopped down on the pad, and feeling Brandy’s steady gaze on her, shifted uncomfortably. “What?”

“You gave up chocolate. Willingly.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Now, see, that right there is a sign.” Brandy looked her over some more. “Plus your hair is a little wilder than usual, and your skirt seems slightly twisted off to the side. Interesting.”

Dorie tried to adjust her skirt.

“But most telling? Your camisoles were layered white over the pink when you left, and now the pink is on top.”

Crap.

“Find what you need out there in the rain forest, hon?”

“Oh, you know…” Dorie lifted a shoulder and tried to be cool. “What are you guys doing?”

“Having a slumber party,” Cadence said. “Which would be better with chips, drinks, and gossip.”

“I’ve got the rest of the chips in my purse,” Dorie said.

Brandy pulled out her flask. “And I’ve got the other two covered.” She took a healthy swig and passed the flask to Dorie. “So. You got laid.”

Dorie choked.

Brandy looked across the fire. Dorie followed her gaze to Christian, who’d reappeared from the forest and stood at the bonfire, staring into the flames. He still had the whole edgy, brooding thing going on, but there was something else, too. A definite lessening of the tension in his body.

Dorie knew what that came from, and felt her face heat.

Cadence blinked. “You had sex with Christian?”

“Okay, I need chips for this.” Dorie opened her purse and the box of condoms fell out.

“Huh.” Brandy fingered the opened box. “Look at that. Wonder how many are missing?”

Dorie snatched the box back and shoved it low in her purse. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Was he yummy?” Brandy asked.

Cadence was still gaping. “You. And the doctor. Holy smokes.”

Dorie found the chips and started shoving them in her mouth even though she wasn’t hungry. “I’m going to need that chocolate back, Cadence.”

Cadence handed it back.

“Oh yes, he was yummy,” Brandy decided, clapping in delight. “And of course he would be. I mean, look at him. He walks with that sexy confidence, the one that says ‘I don’t give a shit what you think of me, I know who I am.’ Gotta love that in a guy.” She sighed. “And then there’s all that attitude.” She shivered. “Yeah, I’d bet big money he knows exactly what he’s doing.” She leaned back with her hands behind her head and studied the stars. “So Cadence, does the captain know what he’s doing, too?”

Cadence set down the flask and blushed beet red. “I told you I didn’t sleep with him. Just… messed around a little.”

Dorie grabbed the flask. “I guess we’ve all been a bit busier than I thought.”

Cadence snatched the chips. “Don’t take this wrong, Brandy, but I’d have sworn that if anyone was going to hook up on this vacation, it’d have been you.”

“Fair assumption.” Brandy accepted the flask back and toasted them. “But I’m taking over your penis embargo for a while.”

“Why?”

“Someone’s got to carry the torch. Besides, this is more fun.”

Cadence laughed in disbelief. “Which part of this is the fun part?”

“Being away from my life is fun,” Brandy said. “And though there’s nothing remotely okay about what’s happened to Bobby, I have to say, this is really nice, with you two.” For the first time all night, she hesitated. “I haven’t made a lot of time for girlfriends.”

“Me either,” Cadence said quietly.

“Or me,” Dorie admitted.

“Well then.” Once again Brandy lifted the flask. “To our friendship. And to whatever adventure is ahead of us.”

They all drank to that, and later, after polishing off the chips, lay back and slowly drifted off to the island’s own personal concert of night sounds.

But Dorie couldn’t fall asleep, and restless, she moved to the fire. She figured it was well past midnight.

Not that time mattered here.

“Dorie?”

At the sound of Andy’s low southern drawl, she turned. He’d gone to sleep beneath a palm tree but he was up now, walking toward her. She searched his face for a sign that he knew she’d turned him down only to have wild animal sex with Christian in the rain forest.

Oh, God.

She’d had wild animal sex with Christian in the rain forest.

She swallowed hard and looked at Andy intently, but if he knew, he gave no indication of it. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“That was my question for you.”

“I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” Dorie watched him go, then turned back to the flames. The red glow was hypnotic and soothing. Or it would have been if she could shake the certainty that one of the people stuck here with her had hurt Bobby.

She walked to the water’s edge, and with the water lapping at her toes, she looked at Bobby’s hat hanging off the palm tree. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to it. “So sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

Turning at the French voice, she looked up into Christian’s fathomless eyes, and then… and then closed them. “You’re right.” She began to walk back toward the fire. It was for his own good really, because if she stayed one more second, she’d ask for something he couldn’t give her. A hug, maybe.

Or another round of wild sex in the jungle…

The night was dark, the sounds all around so alien and unfamiliar, but she flicked on her flashlight and kept moving down the beach, past the fire. It wasn’t bravery, because she had a feeling she was better off alone, at least until she knew what had happened to Bobby.

She really could use that hug.

Christian was following her, she could hear him. Probably making sure she didn’t get lost again. Damn, more evidence of that sweetness, the kindness she’d convinced herself he didn’t have. She sped up, her silly sandals squishing into the sand. If she ever got home, she was going to design some seriously sensible sandals. They’d be beautiful, of course, but easy to run in.

Risking her neck, she burst into a run now, because suddenly she didn’t trust herself not to beg for that hug, and if he gave it to her, she’d definitely lose her panties. “Ow, ow, ow…” Her damn splinter hurt like hell-

“Dorie.”

Oh, no. Kicking it into higher gear, she turned the corner, away from the glow of the fire, away from the others, needing a private pity party, if only for a moment.

The rocks were stacked one upon another, making cliffs that jutted straight up, hundreds of feet into the sky. By day those cliffs had been green, teeming with lush growth, but now, at night, it was all black, looming, and suddenly terrifying.

Since Christian wasn’t wearing silly sandals, and probably exercised more often than when someone gave him a gift certificate to a gym, he easily caught up with her and grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him.

“I thought you said you don’t do guests,” she huffed, out of breath. “Now you want round two?”

“While that invitation is ever so romantic, no. I had something else in mind.” He pulled out a small first-aid kit.

Opening it, he lifted a-

“Oh, no.” She laughed, then shook her head at the gleaming pair of tweezers. “You’re not going to come anywhere near me.”

“Funny, you weren’t saying that a little while ago.” He still had a gentle but inexorable hold on her, and using that, led her to a large rock, upon which he sat.

She held her own butt, her gaze glued to the tweezers. “I’m not sitting.”

“No. You’re going to bend over and let me take care of your business.” Unperturbed, he calmly fished through the first-aid kit for God knew what else.

“My business has been taken care of.”

He looked up at her words. Met her eyes. His mouth quirked as if he wanted to smile. “Yes, and that was my pleasure, believe me. This”-he gestured to her butt-“this is my job.”

She didn’t budge. “Yeah, um… about that other.”

His eyes heated. “Yes?”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “My… business… doesn’t usually get taken care of so easily.”

Now he did smile. “Like I said, my pleasure. Now get down here.”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.”

“I understand English,” he said. “Quite well, even though it’s my third language. I understand analogies as well. You had an orgasm. Several, actually. I felt each of them, trust me. Watching you come, feeling you contract around me, was the highlight of a very fucked-up evening. Now come here.”

The steel of the tweezers gleamed in the moonlight, making the muscles in her bottom twitch. “It’s just that I don’t understand what came over me, because…”

When she didn’t finish her sentence, he arched a brow. “Because?”

This was simply too difficult with him looking at her. “Nothing. Forget it.” She whirled to go, but he caught her hand. He looked up at her with a patience she would never have guessed at, and she let out a long breath. “I don’t usually come like that… Well, I do, but only because I sort of… Oh, God.” She covered her face.

“Just out of curiosity,” he asked easily. “Are you still speaking English?”

“The last time I slept with somebody, I faked it.”

“Faked it.”

“The orgasm.”

“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Hands still over her face, she groaned. “Seriously, could you just not listen to me?”

“Did you fake it like the When Harry Met Sally fake it?”

“I don’t think I was that good.” She absolutely could not believe her mouth was betraying her this way. “The point is, I don’t usually go so… wild.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Funny,” he eventually said, looking a bit wicked and naughty and far too damn proud of himself. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble with me.”