The Trouble With Paradise Read online

  Multiple times.

  God, she felt alive, and had since Christian had pulled her into the shower and stripped her out of her clothes.

  Actually, she’d felt this way from that first moment in Fiji when she’d stood watching him board the Sun Song, utterly at ease with himself and everything around him.

  Being with him, especially when she was naked, was heaven. Leaving him, which she would do far too soon, was going to feel like hell on earth.

  Later, she told herself. Go there later . . .

  But she couldn’t help herself. She’d told him she could handle this, and logically, she understood. She did. They came from two entirely different worlds. Not to mention he lived on the complete other side of the planet, pretty much the definition of geographically undesirable.

  But she had fallen anyway.

  She had no idea how that could even happen after only a few days. Maybe it was because of the intensity of it all, and what they’d been through. Perhaps it had sped up the process. Regardless, fact was fact.

  She loved him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Uh-oh,” Dorie whispered, staggered at the realization. She loved him. “Not good.”

  “What’s not good?”

  He’d come up behind her. She glanced at him in the mirror, wondering if what she’d been thinking was all over her face. When she’d left him only a few minutes ago, he’d been wearing nothing but a smile. Now he wore faded Levi’s and a T-shirt, his hair still wet and finger combed off his face. At the sight of him, her body gave one hopeful little shiver of anticipation because it wanted more of what he’d just given her.

  Also not good.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “As if maybe you’re seeing something you’re not all that thrilled about.”

  Well, she wasn’t all that thrilled that she’d gone and gotten her heart involved, because it was going to hurt. Big-time. “Christian, I—”

  He pulled her around to face him and put a finger over her lips. “Wait. Listen.”

  She cocked her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly.” He walked past her. Three bedrooms, all opened and all empty.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “No clue.”

  The silence, which she might have noticed before now if she hadn’t been in a sexual fog, was almost eerie. “Um, how long were we in that shower anyway?”

  His eyes cut to hers, holding a flash of amusement.

  “Just wondering,” she said, and felt her ears heat.

  He stroked a finger over one of them, a rare smile crossing his lips, slow and soft and sexy, and—her heart leapt—filled with genuine affection and heat. “We weren’t that long.”

  Together, they moved down the stairs and through the wide, open living room, to an adjoining room that looked like it had every entertainment setup known to man, complete with a wall of television sets, all on, several turned to sporting events from what Dorie assumed was across the world. Two huge side-by-side screens were showing American baseball. Surely this would have drawn Andy out of wherever he’d been, and yet the room, the entire house, reverberated with an undeniable silence.

  “Weird,” she said.

  “Very.” He looked around them. “Let’s—”

  A scream pierced the air, and though Dorie took a second to process the shocking, startling sound, Christian did not. He was running before she could blink, and all she could do was follow him, through the house, down a hallway, and then another, through what looked like a library because of the miles and miles of shelves filled with books and more books.

  But she was too busy keeping Christian in her sight to take in much. Without him, she knew she’d be hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of hallways, and she didn’t intend to get lost.

  Not with the scream that had sounded like Cadence.

  “This way.” Christian barreled through a set of double French doors that opened onto a wood deck, and a set of stairs that appeared to vanish into thin air.

  Not vanish, she realized with a gulp as she blindly followed Christian, but led straight down at a dizzying pitch at least three hundred feet to the beach, and the deck.

  She moved as quickly as she dared, but her sandals really had to go. Her purse banged into her hip, threatening her balance with every step. Halfway down, Christian pulled out his knife, which made breathing all but impossible, but she couldn’t concentrate on that when she could see what lay ahead, which had her nearly apoplectic with terror.

  Michael’s boat was still docked. On the dock itself, his back to them, stood Denny. He was holding Cadence against him and gesturing to Brandy and Andy, who stood in front of him.

  The knife he held gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Stay back.” His words came over the water with an eerie clarity.

  “Jesus, Denny,” Brandy said softly. “No wonder you can’t keep a woman.”

  “I’m a man on the fucking edge!” he yelled at her. “You’re supposed to be sweet-talking me, not pissing me off!”

  “I don’t—” But Brandy broke off, looking up at Christian as he flew down the stairs.

  At her movement, Denny whipped around, and when he did, Cadence let out a loud, screeching “hi-yaaaaah” and karate-chopped him in the back of his neck.

  His eyes went wide with surprise for one beat before they fluttered, revealing the whites rolling up. Letting go of Cadence, he hit the wood dock face-first.

  Andy dove on top of him, presumably to hold him down, but Denny was out cold and not going anywhere.

  Brandy grabbed the fallen knife. Christian skidded down the last step to the dock. “Are you hurt?” he asked Cadence.

  Looking shell-shocked, she shook her head, then glanced down at Denny. “I almost gave up my penis embargo for you!” Then she kicked him in the butt.

  Denny stirred and lifted his head. “Hey, that hurt!”

  “So would that knife if you’d have used it on me!”

  “Kick him again, honey,” Brandy directed. “Just for the hell of it.” She sneered down at Denny with disgust. “I should have known you were evil from the moment I saw you treat Bobby like your slave boy. A person who is rude to the hired help is not a nice person.”

  Dorie got onto the dock and reached for Cadence, who looked like a good wind might knock her over.

  “Thanks,” Cadence whispered, squeezing hard, her eyes a little wet.

  “I wasn’t going to use the knife on you,” Denny said, still flat on the deck.

  “How am I supposed to believe that when you used it on poor Bobby!”

  Denny nearly choked. “I did not—” He tried to get up but Andy was sitting on him so he gave up. “Let me up!”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Listen to me. I did not hurt Bobby. And I wasn’t going to hurt Cadence.”

  “Still not letting you up,” Andy said.

  “Goddamnit!”

  Cadence let go of Dorie’s hand and crouched at Denny’s side. “Maybe you should just relax,” she suggested.

  Denny didn’t look like he appreciated the irony. “I am telling you I did not use that knife on Bobby!”

  “Then who did?” Cadence demanded.

  Christian went very still, then whipped toward the boat. “Ethan.”

  Ethan, who’d managed to get onto the Elegance unnoticed, had pushed off from the dock. Already a good hundred feet out, he started the small motor and lifted a hand in a wave. “Ahoy!” he yelled as he sailed away.

  In Michael’s boat.

  Without Michael.

  Without any of them.

  “Oh, Christ,” Andy said, his foot still on Denny’s back. “He’s the one who—”

  “Goddamn, you’re brilliant.” Denny looked furious. “Now can you get off me so I can swim out there and nab his sorry ass?”

  Andy removed his foot from Denny, but when Denny l