The Pleasure Trip

“I’m in the resort business, too, remember?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Missy, his mussed dark hair brushing his eyebrows in a way that would make any woman’s fingers itch to brush the strands aside. “And no matter how powerful the employer, the rules remain the same for their personnel practices. They can’t fire you without just cause.”

Rita wasn’t sure how sound his advice was about pursuing wrongful termination, but she appreciated his calm insights on the situation. In her family, getting fired would be a major drama involving days of histrionics. The whole family would have to weigh in with an opinion—always a vehement, fiery stance—and then they’d argue the merits of that person’s ideas until they were all hoarse. And if ever there was a cool voice of reason in the mix, it would invariably be Rita’s. So to have Harrison preempt her with such rational logic seemed sort of…deflating.

Which was utterly stupid. She should be grateful Jayne wasn’t around to start a public brawl with Danielle.

“What reason did Danielle give for letting you go?” Rita had never heard of a dancer getting the axe in the middle of a cruise week before. They still had two more shows and a handful of smaller responsibilities like helping the Karaoke King on Open Mike Night or posing for photos with passengers around the pool.

“She said I was late on my cue again tonight.” Missy speared her hand through her long hair, sweeping aside the mass of curls from her face. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job this time but Danielle hauled me aside as the show ended. She asked me a million questions about you and Jayne, then she dropped the bomb that I wouldn’t be returning to the show.”

Her face crumpled as a new round of sobs began.

“She asked about me?” Rita drummed her fingertips on the rail.

“This Danielle is in charge of the performers?” Harrison seemed to be following the conversation better than most outsiders would. For that matter, didn’t most guys bolt at the first sign of tears?

He seemed like a nice guy. A nice, smart guy, which was doubly rare in her experience.

“Yes. She runs the floor show with an iron fist and considers it her job to inspire fear in the hearts of all her dancers. I think she suffers from the delusion this makes them dance better.” Turning back to Missy, Rita needed to get back to an important point. “You said she was asking questions about me?”

“You and Jayne. I don’t think she realized that you covered for Jayne tonight but apparently your stage time ran over by a couple of seconds and that might have tipped her off. You know how she prides herself on running the whole thing by the clock.”

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

Rita had purposely exited the stage on the wrong side to avoid Danielle in case she hadn’t realized she’d taken Jayne’s place. But that opposite stage exit probably took a little longer after the music died, causing the smallest ripple in Danielle’s rigid time scheme.

“By the time she tracked down the problem, I was probably already—” Rita’s gaze went automatically to Harrison “—busy somewhere else. And her frustration with the show was my fault, not yours.”

“You don’t know that.” Missy shook her head in emphatic denial, sending curls flying. “Rita, I’ve messed up a ton of times, and she knows it.”

“But you didn’t mess up tonight.” Rita could just picture Danielle in one of her snits. The obsessive manager had looked for a target for her anger and found someone totally undeserving, someone who’d been working hard at her job while Rita was drooling over a total stranger. “I’ll make sure we straighten this mess out and if there’s a way to get your job back you’ll have it back or we’ll sic Jayne on her.”

Assuming Jayne came back onboard.

Her sister was going to have hell to pay for putting them all in this position. But until Jayne came back to fulfill the position of token Frazer woman gone off the deep end, Rita wouldn’t hesitate to engage in a few histrionics of her own.

Squeezing Missy’s shoulder, she hoped she could find a way to fix this.

“Missy, would you excuse Harrison and me for a few minutes and then I’ll meet you at my room so we can come up with a game plan?” She needed to talk to him. Owed him an explanation, or a makeup date…or a quickie in the elevator to tide over her hunger for him.

“Sure.” Missy scooped up her duffel bag. “And you don’t need to meet with me. I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

“Don’t be silly.” She nudged Missy forward with big-sister muscle she couldn’t help but flex whenever someone needed help. “I’ll catch up with you in a little bit.”

As they waited for the sound of Missy’s footsteps to disappear, Rita could already feel the heat of the man beside her. But as much as she still wanted him, she wasn’t sure how to maintain her Jayne-impulsiveness once they left the dark cocoon of intimacy the Jupiter deck offered.

“I understand you need to help your friend.” Harrison’s blue eyes saw right through her despite the shadows of the stairwell. “I just hope you’re not having second thoughts about us.”

“No second thoughts.” Although now that they’d been interrupted, Rita wondered if it wasn’t for the best anyhow since they barely knew one another. She was normally a certified chicken when it came to men, even though she liked to tell herself she was just extremely practical. “And I’m sorry tonight didn’t work out.”

“That’s okay.” He squeezed her hand and planted a kiss on the back of her fingers, an old-world gesture that stole her heart.

“Maybe another time.” She couldn’t believe she was angling for another date with him when she’d just convinced herself she didn’t know him well enough to sleep with him. But sometimes, there was no accounting for chemistry and, oh baby, did she have it for him.

“I’d like that. I want you bad, Rita Frazer, but only when you’re one hundred percent into the moment. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this, too.” He watched her with lazy eyes, reminding her how hot things could be between them. “You have no idea how sorry.”

Her body still humming with good vibrations he’d brought her, she shot him a smile and hoped she could find a way to be bold and brazen with this man again soon.

“I have a pretty good idea.”

* * *

TAKING DEEP BREATHS, Jayne steeled herself for confrontation as her long, lost lover poured her a drink. Heavy on the gin, easy on the tonic.

Thank God his bartending abilities were better than his dating skills.

“So you’re traveling incognito these days?” He passed her the drink and the question she didn’t want to answer, all the while staring at her with a lazy look that married men should be forbidden to bestow on unsuspecting females.

The rain still pounded the thatched roof over the bar, the fans whirring gently over the lounge to stir the sultry air.

“It protects my privacy to use my sister’s name now that my fame has spread throughout the Caribbean.” She toasted him with her glass before indulging in a sip, knowing damn well he’d see right through the lie and not caring a bit. “I’ve never been one to cause a stir, you know.”

“And you find the general public immune to transparent clothing?” He leaned forward to peer over the bar, his chocolate-brown eyes raking in every inch of her dripping sundress. “I’ll admit I’m surprised.”

Her heart stuttered for an instant as a shark-tooth pendant clanked against the bar when he’d leaned near, bringing his features into too-enticing focus. He’d grown a patch of hair beneath his lower lip, a close-shorn triangle that she wondered what would feel like against her chin if she…

Snap out of it. Jayne forced herself back to reality by inhaling the scent of damp bamboo. If Rita were here, she would have nudged Jayne in the calf with a sisterly kick.

“I had an unexpected run-in with bad weather.” The gin burned her throat before hitting her veins in a sizzling jolt. No, damn it. That was Emmett’s eyes on her body giving her the sizzling jolt. The gin couldn’t begin to dull senses so sharply attuned to this man’s presence. “Perhaps you could just hand over the telephone and I’ll remove myself and my transparent clothing from your fine establishment?”

She heard the bristly tone in her voice and refused to care that he’d gotten under her skin. He was married, after all. Completely out of her jurisdiction. What did it matter if he thought she was a washed-up has-been in her soggy clothes? He had another woman—a gorgeous, dry woman—waiting for him as soon as Jayne placed her call.

“Technically, it’s no longer my establishment.” He reached under the bar and came up with a telephone. “But feel free to call long distance. I hear the new owner has deep pockets.”

“You sold the bar?” Jayne ignored the phone, her problems of ten minutes ago suddenly less significant. “I thought you were going to stay in St. Kitts forever?”

He’d told her as much when he’d been trying to convince her to give marriage a shot. She’d panicked at the idea of settling down in one place—a fate almost as scary as settling down with just one man—and promptly accused him of loving St. Kitts more than her.

In retrospect, she’d realized it hadn’t exactly been a rational argument. But then, she’d never tried to be the world’s most rational woman. That was Rita’s niche. Up until Emmett, Jayne simply hadn’t been used to men taking her too seriously.

“I guess forever didn’t turn out to be as long as I’d hoped.” He picked up the bottle of tonic and poured himself a glass. “Mind if I join you?”

Without waiting for her answer, he walked around the bar to join her on the other side. Her side.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea considering you’re married and I’m in a transparent dress, remember?” She tossed out the most obvious obstacles, knowing she didn’t dare let Emmett within five feet of her when she was feeling more than a little vulnerable. “In fact, I promised your wife I’d just make my call and be on my way.”

She meant to reach for the phone. Really, she did. But the visual of Emmett swinging his thigh around one side of a bar stool kept her gaze fastened to him with super-glue sticking power.

“Ex-wife.” Emmett’s eyes remained fixed on a manila envelope at the end of the bar for a long moment, as if totally oblivious to Jayne’s presence. “She’s officially no longer mine as of today.”

The hollow hurt of his words was unmistakable.

If Jayne had been a more sensitive woman, maybe she could have murmured something sympathetic and comforting. Hell, even a total stranger would offer up condolences on his failed marriage. But as his ex-lover, Jayne couldn’t help but ask the question burning through her brain with all the insistence of a migraine.

“How long were you married?” The question would shatter any illusion she might have created of aloofness, but the answer seemed too important to overlook. He’d asked Jayne to marry him nine short months ago.

“Seven months.” Tearing his gaze away from the envelope she could only assume carried his divorce papers, Emmett grinned over the rim of his glass. “A hell of a track record in married life, isn’t it?”

“You bastard.” Hurt reeled through her as her brain computed the proximity of his proposal to her with his proposal to another woman. “What did you do, ask the first woman you saw after I got back onboard the Venus last spring to marry you?”

“You said no.” He shrugged a shoulder the same way he must have shrugged off his so-called love for her. “And I respect that when a woman says no, she means it.”

“I said I wasn’t ready.” As he no doubt damn well remembered since she’d explained to him in detail all the reasons she needed more time. “Last I checked, ‘I’m not ready’ doesn’t mean no.”

“It didn’t mean yes, either, did it?” He swiveled on his bar stool to face her, his long legs almost touching her hip. “And you can take all the haughty feminine satisfaction you want from knowing I made a dumb-ass mistake by getting married in a hurry since I’m now divorced and I lost my bar in the bargain. So why not just make your phone call and you can high-kick your way back to the S.S. Good Times or wherever it is you make your home these days and we’ll forget this little encounter ever happened?”

Jayne felt her mouth drooping open at his unexpectedly heated words and promptly snapped it shut. Reaching for the phone she realized she didn’t have a phone number handy to call for a ride and she didn’t personally know a soul on St. Kitts. Present company excluded.

Settling the handset back in the cradle in the rather awkward silence, she was about to request a phone book when Emmett slammed his glass on the bar.

“And for crying out loud, would you put some damn clothes on?” He reached over the counter and dug blindly around until he came up with a bright orange T-shirt. Even at six foot two he didn’t exactly tower over her, but his strong arms and lean, surfer’s physique gave him a solid power that…communicated itself to her so clearly that it was all she could do not to lick her lips. “Wear this. Or drape yourself in cocktail napkins. But Jesus, woman, put on something.”

“Fine.” Recognizing an old-fashioned snit when she saw one, even if the fit-thrower in question would surely wring her neck if she called it as such, Jayne dutifully dropped the promo T-shirt touting orange-flavored rum over her wet dress.

“While you’re mighty quick to point fingers at me, I’d be willing to bet you haven’t been celibate since we broke up, but you don’t hear me asking you about the whys and whens of your personal encounters.”

She wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Even if she’d tried her very best to be a born-again virgin for the last six months, she couldn’t forget that she’d been pretty quick to drown her sorrows after Emmett.

What a screwed-up, self-destructive pair they made.

“Sorry to hear about the divorce.” She’d never been skilled with an olive branch, but considered this a fair attempt at making peace. “Just because I take offense at the idea of you offering up a marriage proposal to another woman mere days after you made the same offer to me, that doesn’t mean I would wish you ill-will.”

Who said she couldn’t be magnanimous?

“You need a ride somewhere?” Rising off the bar stool he replaced the phone under the bar and fished a set of keys off a hook on the wall. “I thought I heard you say you missed your boat, right?”

“I do need to find a hotel.” She took another halfhearted sip of her gin and tonic, wondering what Emmett had in mind. Desperate women couldn’t afford to be super-choosy about their rescuers and at least he’d had the decency to admit he’d messed up by marrying someone else.

“As luck would have it, so do I. What do you say we blow this clambake and call a truce?”

Let her guard down around Emmett? She’d have to be crazy to make peace with a newly divorced stud in a dangerous mood. But then again, no one had ever accused her of playing it safe.

Besides, she needed a ride.

“Truce.” She reached for her tiny purse, telling herself this was a practical solution to her problem. Even Rita would have to admit Jayne was making the best of a bad situation. “Just as long as we go separate ways once we get there.”

“Fine by me.” He walked over to the manila envelope and jammed the whole packet under his arm in defiance of the Do Not Bend dictate scrawled across the front. “But I’ve got dibs on the bar since I plan on getting rip-roaring drunk tonight. You think you can stay away?”

“I’m sure I’ll hold myself back somehow.” Sailing through the front door he held open for her, Jayne welcomed the raindrops that still poured in earnest from the sky. It was the next best thing to a bucket of cold water being splashed on her face—an age-old cure for a woman thinking completely inappropriate thoughts about a man she had no business daydreaming over.

And no matter that she was furious with him—not to mention hurt—over his rapid defection, Jayne couldn’t deny frequent mind wanderings picturing the man buck-naked. She had to admit he looked damn good. Both in her fantasies and in real life.

He jogged through the rain to a garage beside the bar and hauled open the door. Hurrying behind him, she saw the waves foaming with the storm on the other side of the road, the ocean empty of any ships for as far as the eye could see. She followed him into the dark and dilapidated clapboard structure that looked more suited to a backwoods farm than a tourist street. Squinting, she could see him unlocking the passenger door of a mud-encrusted Jeep.

Holding the door wide for her, he held his hand out to help her inside. She hadn’t touched him yet but couldn’t see how to avoid it now without making too big of a deal about it. No sense letting him know he got to her, right?

She reached for his hand, but his gaze had already fallen to her feet.

“Damn it, why didn’t you tell me you needed shoes?” He lifted her by the waist as if he couldn’t get her bare feet off the garage floor fast enough.

The imprint of his hands on her remained after he set her inside the vehicle, her skin warming all along her side.

“I guess I thought it was obvious I didn’t have shoes.” She wiggled her toes and had a flashback to a day in third grade when she’d outgrown her shoes and Rita had insisted she take hers since money was nonexistent in the years their mother had big gambling losses. Rita had worn an old pair of boys’ tennis shoes a neighbor had donated so Jayne could have their only pair of size five Mary Janes.

“Hell no, it wasn’t obvious since my eyes never made it past the dress.” He pulled a blanket out from behind the seat and tossed it in her lap. “Do me a favor and dry off.”

It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell him to do her a favor and go screw himself, but she would cut him some slack since she’d obviously walked into his life on a bad day. She didn’t know squat about marriage or how to make a go of a relationship but she knew divorce sucked—plain and simple.

Her childhood might have been fairly impoverished from a financial perspective, but at least her family had always been tight-knit and her mother had protected them from the upheaval of divorce by never remarrying. And Jayne had no doubt in her mind that no one besides their sainted father—God rest his soul—could have put up with Margie for long. Wrapping herself in the blanket Emmett had tossed her way, Jayne settled in for the ride while he started the Jeep and pulled out of the garage into the rain. She caught a glimpse of the Last Chance Bar through the downpour and wondered idly if Emmett would ever go back to the business now owned by his ex-wife.

The same business Jayne had made a beeline for in her darkest hour.

God, she’d been so caught up in seeing Emmett again she’d forgotten all about her fury with Horatio and the disappointment of her thwarted elopement. What a sorry excuse for a wife she would have made. She smiled as she tipped her head back against the seat and stared at the pattern of rain blowing across the passenger window.

“You’ll never guess what I was doing in St. Kitts today.”

CHAPTER FIVE

HARRISON BYPASSED the wealth of restaurant options onboard the Venus the next morning, ordering his breakfast through room service while he struggled to put Rita out of his mind long enough to brainstorm a game plan for digging up information on Sonia’s disappearance.

No easy feat considering the attraction of a sexy redhead and their thwarted night that would have probably blown his mind. But this cruise couldn’t be all fun. He’d known even when Sonia left on this very same ship that she’d been seeing Trevor, but Harrison still hadn’t been prepared for the blow when Trevor took off for Grand Cayman a week later. And even though the Venus passenger records had shown Sonia went ashore at St. Maarten and never returned, he couldn’t help but think she’d made connections with Trevor afterward.

Blow to the ego, sure. But when 10k had turned up missing in Trevor’s golf store accounts, followed by almost 20k in weeks prior, Harrison had been pissed off on more than a personal level.

He needed to find her, to find the money and figure out what happened, but despite his best efforts over breakfast, he found himself thinking about Rita again and figuring out what happened with her sister. With Missy’s help last night, he’d eventually pieced together enough information to realize his high-kicking date had been filling in for her absentee sibling.

Now, as he carried his tray from room service out onto the ocean-view balcony, he wondered how he could wrangle time with a woman whose list of priorities put his own to shame. She filled in for her sister, gave her friend a shoulder to cry on…plus she had her own job and she’d sewed costumes for a whole production on top of that.

Something about Rita’s unique blend of fiery demeanor and cool practicality appealed to him on a gut level he couldn’t explain, powerful enough to have distracted him from his primary mission on the cruise. He needed to ’fess up to his quest for information about Sonia’s trip before much more time elapsed since he wouldn’t want Rita to think he’d been using her. Not in six years with the Bureau had he ever found cause to kiss a woman for the sake of his job and he wouldn’t let Rita think as much for even an instant.

He debated calling her room and offering his services for the day while she searched for her sister when a knock sounded on his door. Could she have come looking for him instead?

Logically, he knew it was probably housekeeping, but that didn’t stop him from vaulting over an armchair in his haste to get the door. Telling himself it was just the sex—or promise of sex—that had him so keyed up, he forced himself to wait another two-count before opening the door as a penalty for being too eager.

But it wasn’t Rita on his threshold. Missy waited there instead, her blue eyes huge and punctuated with dark circles underneath them. Technically, he recognized her as an attractive female, but she didn’t come close to Rita in his book.

“Sorry. It’s just me.” She apparently read the disappointment on his face in all of a second. “I hate to bother you again, but you were so smart about offering advice last night, I wondered if you could be persuaded to talk to Rita?”

“I was just having my breakfast.” And plotting his way into spending time with the ship’s seamstress. “But I can make time. Everything okay?”

“I think she’s content with giving Danielle a little cool down period first, like you suggested.” She teetered on the threshold of his stateroom as if scared to put so much as a pinkie toe in his suite. “But she’s getting frantic about her sister and—”

Harrison didn’t hesitate. Turning his back on his work, he slid into his shoes and scooped up his cell phone while he listened to Missy pour out the Tale of Two Sisters. It was a lot to absorb, even if they had thirteen floors to descend in order to reach Rita’s cabin on the lowest level of the ship. But Harrison took in everything he could, gleaning that Rita was as much a workaholic as he’d ever been and that her sister played a crucial role in her life. And as Missy related what she knew of the events of the past few days, Harrison wondered if it was such a bad thing that Jayne was missing.

He began to revise the opinion when Rita opened the door for them, however.

Ear glued to a telephone, she had red-rimmed eyes and wild curls flying in every direction as if she hadn’t slept all night but stayed up to pull her hair out. She gave him a halfhearted wave as she admitted him, but when he turned to let Missy enter first he realized the dancer had apparently tucked her tail and run, leaving him to deal with the crisis. From somewhere down the hall he heard the bing of an elevator car and silently cursed Missy for a coward.

In the meantime, Rita paced with the corded phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she carried the base around the room with two fingers. Her room was strewn with half-finished sewing projects, uniforms of all kinds on hangers dangling from a makeshift stretch of rope at the foot of one bed, pins jabbed in hems and sleeves at every angle.