The Trouble With Paradise Read online

  Dorie opened her purse and pulled out a small kit of some kind, doing something that included scissors and a needle and thread, all the while engaging in conversation with Cadence and Brandy. He had no idea how women could talk nonstop like that for hours on end; it was just one of those phenomena he attributed to having more estrogen than testosterone. But Andy didn’t appear to mind that, or having her hands all over him as she fixed the pants.

  Andy leaned in to kiss her, and she surprised both men by turning her head and giving him her cheek.

  Andy kissed her, sliding his finger over her shoulder, his gaze briefly dropping to her breasts.

  So did Christian’s.

  Her nipples were no longer hard.

  She didn’t get turned on by Andy, not like she had for Christian. He really wished he didn’t know that.

  “Here he comes,” Cadence whispered.

  Dorie’s heart thumped hard. “Christian?”

  “Baseball Cutie.”

  She turned. Yep, Andy was back, looking determined. Oh boy. He held out a frond. “Do me?”

  “Uh . . .” Once again her tongue swelled and stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  “Make me a visor?”

  “Oh! Sure.” She began twisting the frond, concentrating on that instead of her tongue, but then he sat close enough that their thighs brushed.

  She glanced over at Cadence, who moved away to give them privacy, and then back to Andy. “Andy, I think I’ve given you the wrong impression.” She couldn’t believe she was going to do this. “I think you’re a really great guy.”

  “Uh-oh,” Andy said. “The ‘great guy’ speech.”

  Oh, God. This was hard. But after the past few days, after the way her body had sort of taken over and reacted to Christian, she couldn’t continue with Andy. “I just don’t think I’m right for you.”

  “You’re exactly right for me. You’re beautiful, sweet, and unjaded. You’re like a fresh breeze, and I—”

  “Andy.” She let out a disparaging sound. “Crazy,” she said to herself. “I’m crazy for doing this.”

  “It’s the heat,” he told her earnestly, looking so gorgeous it physically hurt to look at him. “It’s getting to me, too.”

  “No.” She covered her face, then dropped her hands and looked right into his eyes, determined. “It’s not the heat. You’re not right for me.”

  He blinked, the rejection clearly new and foreign territory for him.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “No. No problem. It’s okay, I understand.” And with a baffled smile, he moved off.

  “Don’t feel too bad, honey,” Brandy said, moving in close. “In his world, women throw panties and phone numbers at him, nightly. They wait outside his locker room to have him autograph their boobs and to tuck their hotel keys into his pants. They blow him in those hotels, they don’t blow him off. So really, you’ve done him a favor by giving him this experience.”

  It didn’t feel like a favor. “It’s all my tongue’s fault.” “Hey, a tongue knows what it knows.”

  Was that even possible? Because Christian wasn’t what she wanted . . . or at least not what she wanted to want.

  First night on deserted island—

  Where’s Jeff Probst when you need him?

  As the day turned into the dreaded night and they weren’t rescued, Denny announced that they’d scout out the other side of the island first thing in the morning, by whatever means they could.

  In the meantime, faced with impending dark and the resulting helplessness, they got a rip-roaring fire going, then sat around it, eating a feast of leftovers from the boat, prepared by Ethan.

  He hoisted a bottle of vodka and took the first swig. “To Bobby,” he toasted somberly, and passed the bottle around.

  They each toasted to their fallen ship hand, while Dorie looked around at all their faces, trying to see who felt the most panic at being trapped here overnight.

  But if someone was jumpy—not to mention guilty as hell—they kept it close to their vest.

  She eyed the thick, lush rain forest that seemed to rise straight upward in the falling night, covering the volcanic peaks, stretching so high into the dusk sky that she had to tip her head way back to see it all. From inside that dark jungle came a steady stream of sounds that upped her nerve factor, though Andy assured her most of the strange, eerie calls came from birds.

  Most.

  But not all.

  The thought would have brought more terror to her gut if there’d been any more room for it, but on the fright scale, she was just about maxed out, something not helped by the low fog that rolled in, upping the creep factor. The wet grayness moved with shocking speed, slipping over the craggy cliffs, like that from a smoke machine on a horror movie set.

  “Oh, God, another storm.” Cadence held her hands out as the first drops of rain fell.

  “It’ll only last a few minutes,” Christian assured her. “The clouds snag on the mountains. The trees on the top trap the moisture until it’s too heavy, and it all drops.”

  “A self-watering forest,” Cadence murmured, still looking unnerved.

  “It’ll be over as soon as the cloud passes overhead.”

  Sure enough, less than three minutes later, when the cloud had passed, so had the rainfall, leaving the sky clear again. It might have all been just a part of the adventure and romance of the cruise, if the Sun Song hadn’t been on its side in the shallow water, permanently grounded. Oh, and if Bobby hadn’t been missing.

  After eating, Christian and Denny used material from the Sun Song’s wrecked sails to add strength to the frond overhang they’d erected, and as darkness fell, Dorie was grateful for the protection, meager as it might be. Cadence worked on the inside of the shelter like a woman possessed, smoothing out the sand floor until Denny made her sit down and relax because she was making him dizzy.

  “I need to keep busy,” Cadence whispered, and shivered even though it wasn’t cold.

  Worried about her, Dorie pulled her back to the bonfire, where she sat next to her new friend and stared at the flames. Gazing at the red glow, Dorie tried to put things in perspective. So they were shipwrecked, so what. This was the new millennium. There were no uncharted waters. They’d be found in no time. Besides, big picture? She was a Shop-Mart salesclerk who’d managed to get herself halfway around the world and was getting an up-front and personal experience on a South Pacific island.

  And, bonus, she was living her life.

  “Truth or dare,” Brandy said, plunking down next to them. “I pick dare. Someone dare me to go skinny-dipping in the waves. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  “How about a PG version?” Dorie asked, not wanting to get naked.

  Brandy sighed. “Fine. Truth.”

  Cadence looked at her. “Truth? Why aren’t you freaked out about being here?”

  “Hell. Skinny-dipping would have been much more fun.” Brandy tipped her head up to the sky, which was becoming littered with stars as night took over. “Maybe I’m enjoying the break from my life.”

  “You think of this as a break?”

  Brandy laughed, but it was mirthless. “Believe me, Cadence, when I tell you there are far worse things than being stuck on a gorgeous deserted island for a few days.” Brandy nudged Dorie. “Truth or dare?”

  She wasn’t ready for truth. “Dare.”

  “Go kiss one of our resident studs.”

  “Did I say dare? I meant truth.”

  Brandy smiled. “Okay, then. If we were playing the X-rated version of truth or dare, which stud would you have kissed?”

  Oh, God. There was only one. Giving herself away, she glanced at Christian and found his gaze on her, intense and hot enough to singe her skin. Matching heat flooded her from the inside out. “Uhm...”

  A scraping sound in the sand had her glancing down, where she discovered that not three inches from her sandals crawled—

  “Alligator,” she cried out.

  The crew came