The Pleasure Trip

“…can’t you just double-check? Her name is Jayne Frazer. Or else Jayne Garcia. And sometimes for fun she books herself under a code name like Cinderella. Or Ariel. Do you have an Ariel?” Rita covered the handset with her palm while mouthing words to Harrison. “She’s big-time into Disney.”

He knew then and there he had zero chances of getting to know Rita—let alone ever quizzing her about Sonia—until she found her sister. Now, he focused solely on how to find yet another missing person. All his leads on Sonia had dead-ended because he’d allowed the trail to grow cold. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jayne.

“They hung up on me.” Rita slammed the receiver back onto the base and stared at him with cold fury in her eyes. “Do you believe that?”

“We’ll find her.” He was a patient man and he didn’t mind working for the things he wanted. His wild fantasies about Rita would keep.

“We need a boat.” He started working up a plan to help. They should have a real boat. Not some fifteen-story mega-cruise liner that put as much room between their guests and the water as possible. “You could get around the island in a hurry and check with all the harbormasters.”

Too bad Rita didn’t look hyped about the idea. Her face was pretty pale for a woman who’d just inherited the dedicated help of a special agent as an answer to all her problems.

“My God. You don’t think they ever would have tried boating over to Barbados from St. Kitts to meet up with the ship?” In an instant, the phone was tucked back under her ear. “It never occurred to me to check in with the harbormasters.”

Panic welled in Rita’s throat at the idea of brainless Horatio possibly talking her sister into sailing into the port at Bridgetown. But it made perfect sense in a screwed-up way. He wouldn’t want to lose his job aboard the Venus any more than Jayne would want to lose hers.

And Rita had to find Jayne as soon as possible—not only to make sure she kept her job, but also to corral her into helping manage the latest Margie scare. Their mother had telephoned well after midnight in a rare and very expensive phone call to inform Rita that the bar where she’d been singing a couple of nights each week had just installed video poker.

Just exactly what Margie didn’t need. The machines were probably illegal but Rita knew those kinds of laws were poorly enforced. And the Frazer women couldn’t withstand another bankruptcy. Margie could be homeless by the time the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale.

“I think you’d be able to wrangle your answers faster if we rented a boat. Any harbormaster worth his stripes spends more time out on the docks than taking calls anyway. You can bring your phone to keep making calls, but we’ll look around all the docking areas for ourselves once we find a boat.” Harrison explained the strategy patiently enough but he looked ready to bolt from her tiny, cramped cabin. He couldn’t walk two feet in any direction without stepping on Jayne’s strewn clothes, Rita’s sewing jobs or bumping into furniture. “How about we check with some of this guy’s—Horatio’s—friends to see if they knew where he planned to take his bride?”

“Of course.” Nodding at the practical wisdom of his plan she slammed the phone down again. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that right away.”

“You want me to go ask some questions while you get ready to disembark?” He backed toward the door, careful to sidestep a shimmering gold satin bra.

He would do that for her?

“That’d be great.” She’d never had smart, sensible help before while facing a crisis, so having Harrison around seemed really…nice. Most guys who were interested in a cruise fling would have zero desire to play private detective for the sake of a missing sibling, but Harrison Masters was obviously not most guys. “Horatio is friends with a few other casino workers. Mostly a lady pit boss—Fiona, I think—and a nerdy security guard named James who makes sure nobody pockets chips that don’t belong to them.”

“Got it. Meet you by the atrium on the Bacchus deck in an hour? We should be docked within thirty minutes.”

He checked his watch before his eyes went to the clock radio beside her bed. Just that brief flex of his muscles and the sight of big, male hands brought back memories of those hands on her. Amazing how being with him had made all her worries retreat into the far recesses of her mind last night.

“Let’s meet in twenty minutes.” She could pull it together in ten if need be, but she figured Harrison would need at least that much time to track down some of loser-boy Horatio’s friends. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the help.”

“Not a problem.” He shrugged as he stepped out into the corridor of the ship’s lowest deck. “It was high time I had a little excitement in my life anyway.”

She had to smile at the thought, even if she wouldn’t exactly classify Jayne’s disappearance as “excitement.” What woman wouldn’t be attracted to this smart guy who led a sensible, low-key lifestyle without a lot of drama?

“Stick with me, handsome. There’s plenty more where that came from in my family.”

* * *

I CAME TO St. Kitts to elope.

Emmett replayed Jayne’s confession in an endless audio loop in his brain the next morning, his attempts at drowning out her admission with a particularly fine Kentucky bourbon having failed miserably. As he rolled onto his back and smacked a pillow over his eyes, he had to own up to the fact that all he’d succeeded in doing was adding a headache to the news that Jayne had wanted to get married, she just hadn’t wanted to marry him.

Well, welcome to the freaking club.

Claudia hadn’t really wanted to be married to him either, although she seemed damned happy now that he’d signed over the lucrative Last Chance as part of their divorce settlement. Son of a bitch, but he couldn’t get used to seeing all his dreams incinerate before his eyes. He might have the Midas touch when it came to business, but he’d acquired some sort of cursed ability to decimate anything he tried to grasp in his private life. His marriage? Boom. Explosive failure.

Jayne? Pow. He’d sent her running so fast he’d gotten whiplash as she peeled out of his life.

He’d promised to drive her to the local landing strip to catch a charter plane to Barbados today so she could meet up with the Venus, but for all he knew she’d left already. She’d gone real quiet in the Jeep last night after he’d spluttered in disbelief—and possibly yelled a tad about the foolishness of rash plans—at the news of her elopement.

But what had she expected him to say? Good job ditching work to marry a blackjack dealer with zero plans to make a real future with you? For that matter, what kind of loser stood up his bride-to-be?

It’d been on the tip of his tongue to tell her she sure had shit taste in men, but caught himself just in time. Pretty damn humbling to realize he’d fallen into the same category as a guy who couldn’t say “I do” and then didn’t have the balls to say “I don’t” to a woman’s face.

Nice.

An efficient knock at his door echoed through his hungover skull with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He moved the pillow off his head to shout back at the knocker.

“I’m still in bed.” And he wasn’t moving until he had proof positive that Jayne was still in the hotel and needed a ride. If not, he was making the Seawinds Suites his new home now that his divorce was official, his house had become the sole property of his ex-wife, and Claudia had neatly boxed up his every freaking possession and shipped everything to a local storage facility.

His ex might not love him, but she sure as hell had efficiency down to an art form.

“If that’s an invitation, your technique has really fallen apart over the last year.” The voice on the other side of the door sounded both sexy and bitchy and totally turned him on.

What kind of defective libido did he have that a haughty, high-maintenance woman like Jayne could inspire a hard-on even in the midst of a hangover from hell?

“If you get an invitation, woman, I guarantee you’ll know it when you hear it.” Shouting and wincing at the same time, he swung his legs off the bed and pulled on a pair of pants while he went to brush his teeth.

She could damn well wait.

“Emmett?” The conciliatory note in her voice was a surefire clue she needed a favor. He hadn’t dated Jayne for long, but for those few months he’d known her more intimately than any other woman. And he damn well recognized now just from the way she said his name that she needed help.

Did her moronic blackjack dealer understand her needs half so well?

Rinsing and spitting, he stalked to the door and opened it.

“What?”

He’d caught her by surprise. He could tell by the way she quickly pulled her softened features into a mask of cool collectedness. Still, he’d seen the hint of vulnerability on her face, felt her uncertainty for one disconcerting instant.

“There seems to be a problem with my bill because it’s ridiculously high.” She had folded and unfolded the piece of paper in question ten times over as she stepped around a matching sheet on the floor of his suite. “I think I got charged for your room, too.”

Her gaze dipped to his bare chest for a fleeting moment before she breezed past to pull open the curtains on the window overlooking the water.

“This looks right.” He scooped up his bill and compared it to hers, noting his ungodly bar tab and her dry cleaning bill for her dress along with the purchase of a pair of cheap rhinestone-studded flip-flops from the gift shop. “I’ve got it.”

“I don’t expect you to pay for my room. Or my shoes.” She flashed him a better view of her glittery pink thongs as she reached to take back the paper. “I just hadn’t realized these resorts were allowed to rob their guests blind for the chance to sleep in a dry bed.”

“I’m paying the damn bill and I’m not arguing about it since every word I utter reverberates in my head like a steel drum, you understand?” He hadn’t given a thought to the cost when he brought her here last night, but he knew most cruise companies didn’t pay their employees much for their efforts.

Jayne had never shared much about her past, but he’d gotten the impression she came from fairly humble roots not all that different from his own. Life had been kind enough to him since he’d figured out how to translate a gift for stock market prediction into cold, hard cash, but he’d seen the inside of the welfare office enough times in his youth to appreciate not everyone was lucky enough to find an honest means of living well.

“You play, you pay.” She stared out over the endlessly blue water. “Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that one myself.”

Emmett wasn’t touching that one. For all he knew he’d misunderstood what sounded to his clueless ears like an admission of normal human weakness, something completely uncharacteristic of the most proud female he’d ever encountered.

He remained silent so long she finally twirled on her heel to face him, her sundress swirling gently around her thighs with the movement.

“Are you ready to take me over to the landing strip yet, or did you change your mind about the ride?” She nodded toward the vast expanse of ocean out the window, her glossy red curls slithering seductively around her shoulders. “I’ve got to get back to the Venus to kick a certain man’s ass and apologize to my sister before a seven-o’clock rehearsal tonight.”

“You don’t think this loser ex-fiancé of yours is still on the ship?” Emmett reached for his shirt, his head clearing at the thought of losing Jayne for the second time in twelve months.

“He really likes his job. We weren’t planning to quit when we eloped, we just figured we’d take the night off to be wild and crazy.” Shrugging, she fished around in her purse and retrieved a pair of sunglasses. Shoved them on her nose. “Or so I thought. Guess I’m the last of a dying wild and crazy breed.”

Something about seeing proud Jayne Mansfield Frazer duck behind designer knockoff lenses clenched strangely at his gut. She’d changed since their first meeting a year ago and some sucker-for-punishment facet of his ego wanted to know how. Why.

Ignoring the pounding in his head to follow the stupid thrum of his clueless heart, he made up his mind to find out more about The One Who Got Away. For that matter, it’d been months since he’d taken a cruise and now that his divorce was official he found himself homeless and in need of some high seas revelry.

“Hell no, you’re not part of a dying breed. Give me five minutes to shower and I might just be wild and crazy enough to fly you back to Barbados myself.”

* * *

RITA WAS CALLING IN favors at an alarming rate as she sweet-talked the most junior member of the ship security team into telling her everything he knew about Jayne’s illicit escape from the ship the day before. But she’d sewn a prom dress for the guy’s little sister last spring and he ’fessed up without a wince since Jayne had promised to be back onboard the next day.

While the news was reassuring, Rita knew better than most people that Jayne didn’t always stick to a plan.

Now, as she stood on a pier on the opposite end of the marina and watched Harrison shake hands with a local charter boat captain, she wondered how she could ever repay him for all the help he’d given her last night and today. Jayne had never had a problem with accepting kindness from strangers, graciously smiling whenever passengers—men, women and little old ladies—brought her flowers after a performance. But Rita was uneasy with anyone who offered to do too much for her. Somehow, she’d find a way to make it up to Harrison. Maybe he had a sister young enough to need a prom dress?

“We’ve got the boat for four hours.” Harrison stopped in front of the small craft he’d picked out with a practiced eye the moment they’d arrived. “We’ll cruise around to a few of the marinas on the western side of the island and see what happens. The guy in charge of the charter vessels said he’s been here since dawn and hasn’t seen anyone fitting your sister’s description get off a boat.”

“How do you know what my sister even looks like?” She took his hand as he helped her onboard and reminded herself to pop a few ginger tablets as soon as they got settled. It had taken her weeks to get used to the rocking motion of the Venus, never mind that most people on cruise ships never felt the swaying at all. A boat like this would have her seasick in no time if she didn’t take precautions.

“I figured she must look a lot like you since you escaped the show manager’s radar last night.” He moved around the deck like an old sea hand, untying ropes, hauling in buoys or bumpers or whatever they called those fat pads used to make sure a boat didn’t get scratched up by the dock. “By all accounts this Danielle the Dastardly runs a pretty tight show, so if you danced your way out there under her nose without her noticing… I put two and two together.”

“I don’t look anything like Jayne.” Okay, small inevitable family resemblance aside. “She’s the cover of Vogue. I’m the ‘before’ photo on the makeover page when they strong-arm the average woman on the street into a makeup chair.”

“All I know is you look mighty good to me.” He slid behind the steering wheel and fired up the engine. “You like boats?”

“I like them fine once I pop some ginger pills.” Shaking her purse to free up all the infrequently used items in the deepest recesses of the striped satin lining, she followed the sound of rolling tablets in a bottle until she came up with her medicine case chock-full of everything from sleeping pills for the nights when Jayne blasted her radio full-power to aloe caplets for sunburns.

“Is this outing going to bother you?” Harrison moved away from the steering wheel to push off the dock, giving the boat a gentle shove by planting his foot on the pier and propelling them deeper into the water.

Chewing the pills quickly, Rita shook her head. Determined. Ready to make headway.

“Not nearly as much as it will bother me if I don’t find Jayne.”

“You two are pretty close, I take it?” He jogged the few steps back to the wheel and steered them slowly around the docked boats, being careful not to create too much of a wake.

He looked perfectly at home there, the strong Caribbean sun bearing down on his dark hair to give it a burnished glow, his feet spread on the deck like a man who’d navigated plenty of rough waters in his day.

“It’s a relationship forged in fire.” Sinking onto the seat beside him, Rita shoved her heavy purse off her shoulder and tried to relax. Concentrate on the pleasing vision of Harrison’s legs in khaki shorts. “We’ve been through a lot together and that makes us good friends as well as…women who know far too much about each other’s weaknesses.”

“Sort of codependent?”

She bristled at the very idea.

“Hardly. We watch each other’s backs.” Often whether they really wanted to or not.

“So how was she watching your back last night when she ditched you on what Missy seemed to think was the turning point of your career?”

Surprise—and anger—reminded her she couldn’t relax too much around a man she didn’t know all that well despite the romantic night they’d shared. No matter how charming and helpful Harrison seemed, he wasn’t family. He might not understand the world according to a Frazer.

“It wasn’t a turning point. I sewed some outfits for extra cash. And while it would have been helpful if Jayne had been there to do her job—Everybody makes mistakes.” Wrenching her gaze off his fine butt, she retrieved her sunscreen out of her bag to slather over skin with a high tendency to burn.

“Some more than others.” He cranked the boat into a higher gear as they cleared the marina and hit the open water. “I’m close to my family, too, and I can’t remember a time I would have left them holding the bag to chase dreams that could have easily waited a day or two.”

“And your point is that I must be some kind of messed-up enabler to allow my sister to take advantage of me?” She’d heard that one before, although usually snippy fans of gossip liked to cluck about enabling her mother as opposed to Jayne. Still, the same principle applied. She was cast as the sucker. “Or are you suggesting my sister must be a complete waste-case to flee her job?”

She scrubbed the sunscreen into her skin with extra force.

“Rita—”

“Or worse.” Another scenario smacked her upside the head with more force than a high kick to the temple as she tossed the SPF 45 aside. “You think both those things.”

“Hardly.” He slowed the boat as they neared another marina beside a stretch of ocean-view resort hotels. “I know all about the desire to help out your family and I’ve been down that route too many times myself to blame you for doing that same thing. I just hope your sister realizes what lengths you went to in order to cover for her because from the handful of people I talked to on the Venus about Jayne, I got the impression she takes the spotlight most of the time while you do twice as much behind the scenes.”

“I’d love to know who told you that, especially since you’ve been on the ship for all of three days.” How could her coworkers confide such intimate details to a perfect stranger? Curse the man’s sexy dark stare.

“Nobody said it straight out.” He slowed the motor as they closed in on a small dock. “I gathered as much from other things I heard from your friends and Horatio’s.”

“I forgot you talked to them.” She’d been slowly losing her brain cells to anxiety and fear since last night. Add to that the fear that her skin was burning from want of Harrison and not because of the Caribbean sun, and she was forced to admit she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “Did you find out anything helpful?Anything besides the fact that Jayne and I are codependent enablers?”

She squinted toward a throng of tourists on the dock, a man and three bikini-clad women stepping aside for a young couple on inline skates.

“Only that Horatio was scheduled to work last night and they hadn’t heard anything about him ditching.” He eased the boat around a mammoth-size yacht to give them a better view of the pier. “But I couldn’t locate the casino workers you mentioned, just a couple of bartenders on a different deck from the casino and they were just barely crawling out of bed when I talked to them.”

“Bastard.” Rita’s gaze fixed on the man on the pier as the guy’s hand strayed over one of the women’s tanga swimsuit bottom. Squinting, she couldn’t believe her eyes as the man’s familiar features came into focus. “Maybe they didn’t know about Horatio skipping work because he never left the ship last night.”

“What do you mean?” Harrison cut the motor, presumably so they could ask the group on the dock a few questions.

Indignation pumping through her, she didn’t even bother lowering her voice as she pointed out the assgrabber a few yards away.

“That’s Jayne’s so-called fiancé right there.”

CHAPTER SIX

ON AN INTELLECTUAL LEVEL, Harrison processed the news that the jet-setter type on the dock was the same tool who’d stood up Rita’s sister. But the information seemed less important than the primary data Harrison currently received from his personal observations of the scene on the pier.

Horatio and three fawning females had all just stepped off the big-ass yacht beside the dock from which obnoxious techno-pop music still blared. A party seemed to be in progress onboard the hundred-and-twenty-foot monster where a couple of guys and three other women sipped a rainbow range of bright cocktails, their swimsuits as expensive-looking as the designer sunglasses perched on almost every nose. Money oozed from the yacht along with the mindlessly repetitive club music, and Horatio the runaway groom looked fairly at home with it all for a guy whose paycheck couldn’t be any fatter than what Harrison had pulled down during his time with the Bureau. And Harrison sure as hell could never afford the Breitling timepiece this bozo sported.

“Hey, scumbag, say cheese.” The shout came from Harrison’s elbow as Rita lined up her disposable camera for a shot of Horatio’s hand on the bikini babe’s butt. She clicked the camera before calling over the lens. “My sister’s going to annul this marriage so fast you’ll be a single man by nightfall, dip-wad.”

Harrison secured the boat in record time, recognizing quickly the shit was going to hit the fan. He would have liked to look around the dock more discreetly now that all of his agent instincts were up and running about Horatio’s big money connections, but discretion seemed out of the question since Rita fairly launched out of their rented boat to confront the dealer.

“Sorry to disappoint you, babe, but I’m definitely still a single man.” He squeezed his lady friend’s butt cheek for emphasis. “Good thing, eh?”

Harrison could practically feel the fury rising off Rita as she bared her teeth at him.

“Too busy to elope?” She edged the words past her lips despite the clamped jaw.

Harrison looped an arm around her shoulders and hoped she wouldn’t shove it off or start a big confrontation.

“Come on, Rita.” Horatio shifted his weight in a subtle show of discomfort Harrison wouldn’t have caught without years of experience at reading liars. “You know Jayne’s not the settling-down type. If we tied the knot she would have thrown me over in two months max.”

“With great reason, obviously.” Rita moved toward the back of the boat as if to exit, but Harrison held her back.

Hoping to defuse the tension before Rita knocked this guy’s teeth clear down his throat, Harrison kept his tone casual. “You know where we can find Jayne today?”

“We were supposed to meet at Island Dreams last night on St. Kitts and then catch a hop to Barbados this morning.” He checked his watch in slow motion as if to be sure he kept his name brand visible. “If she caught the flight we talked about, she would have touched down a few minutes ago.”