Chapter Twenty-Three

In the morning, Andrea arrived at the exercise room a few minutes earlier than usual. Would Mitch show? Her body hummed with anticipation. She chewed her bottom lip. Maybe it would be best if he stayed away.

After ten minutes spent listening for his footsteps while staring at the slow-moving second hand on the clock, the silence became unbearable and, needing to burn off some of her pent-up energy, she covered the entire floor with mats. No Mitch. Stalling to give him more time, she did two dozen stretches to limber up. No Mitch. She glanced at the treadmill and sighed. Disappointment slumped her shoulders. Oh, what the hell, she might as well start her routine.

The door whooshed open, and she turned to see his solid frame filling the doorway. A smile tugged at her lips, and her heart gave a funny little flutter. Her breath stalled at the sight of his strong physique, his sheer masculine beauty. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

“Why not?”

She tried to sound flippant. “You missed yesterday. I thought maybe, since you’d scored, you’d be content to brag to your buddies but not want to get too close, you know, in case I was the clingy type and would get attached.”

Mitch frowned and captured her gaze, walked toward her, letting the door click shut behind him. “We need to clear the air. What happened in my cabin stays between the two of us. Like I said, I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Men say the things women want to hear. I wouldn’t expect you to admit otherwise.”

“Because of your brothers?”

She shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest.

“These brothers of yours. What’s with them?”

She averted her gaze. Shifted her weight to her other leg. “What does it matter?”

“If you’re going to compare me to them, judge me based on their behavior, I think I deserve to know a little more about them.”

She considered blowing him off. Then she snorted softly. Why not give him an answer? “My brothers are immoral pigs. Every day I lived in that house with them they swapped stories and bragged about everything they did, laughed at the intimate details of the girls they slept with. If the girls ever knew how they were discussed, they never would have spoken to any of those louses again.”

“Were these girlfriends or pickups they discussed?”

“Both. Mostly girlfriends. Does it make a difference? One girl in particular was the star of my oldest brother’s stories for months. Everyone in my family knew everything about her, me included, although I was only eleven and my father and brothers didn’t know I knew because I mainly eavesdropped on their conversations. He discussed the sounds she made, the places she liked to be touched, the exotic things she could do with her tongue.” Andrea felt the heat rising in her face. “I got so I avoided seeing her when she came by the house. I couldn’t bear to look at her face, and especially at her mouth. I was afraid I’d blurt out something that revealed what I knew. By the time I left home to go to college, I’d decided that if I ever found out a man had talked like that about me, I’d kill him.”

Mitch nodded. “I can see how an adolescence like that could make a girl grow up cautious.”

She realized she’d exposed too much of herself and shrugged as she steered the conversation toward less-personal generalities. “It’s strange. A lot of girls today don’t seem to care about privacy, might not object to discussions about their bodies. They send my brothers nude pictures in emails, even agree to be videotaped having sex. Maybe I’m an old-fashioned prude, but I just don’t understand how a woman can be so desperate for attention that she’d lower herself that way.”

“Maybe that’s the right word: desperate. Then there’s also deluded.”

“Or just plain stupid.”

He nodded, then frowned. “Didn’t your mother try to censor some of the talk?”

“My dad traveled a lot and cheated on my mom every chance he got. He never even tried to conceal it, seemed to believe he had some God-given right. When I was seven, she’d had enough of his womanizing and left.”

“And she didn’t take you with her?”

“No.” Andrea blew out her breath and picked at an imaginary piece of lint on her arm. “It turns out they had an ironclad prenup, and she was going to get next to nothing in a divorce. She thought she was doing what was best for me, believed my father was better prepared financially to raise me.”

“Financial considerations aren’t everything. Plus, he would have had to pay child support.”

“True, but she felt I was better off living with my Dad in an affluent neighborhood and getting the advantages his money could buy.”

“Didn’t she consider you needed a stable woman in your life?”

“I guess not.” She stared off into near space. “I was a kid. All I cared about was that she abandoned me. I was hurt and angry with her and didn’t talk to her for a long time. I actually would daydream that I was adopted and that someday my birth parents would come and claim me, make me part of a happy, loving family.”

“Sounds like you had a right to be miserable and angry.”

“I understood better a few years later, when I was older and she explained her reasons. By that time I was in boarding school, and her behavior didn’t seem as bad in comparison to the selfish things parents had done to some of the other girls. One girl’s mother had sent her away because a teenage daughter made the mother seem old to the young men she wanted to bed. Another was there so her mom and new stepfather could have sex anywhere, anytime with privacy.”

She kicked off her flip-flops and raised her chin. “So anyway, now you know all about my wonderful family and why I won’t blindly trust you, or any man, to be discreet. Are we going to exercise or not?”

He stepped closer and framed her face with his hands. “I’m not like your brothers, Andrea.”

She gazed into his eyes and saw what she hoped was sincerity. “I’d like to believe that.”

He gifted her with one of his dazzling smiles. “I brought you a present—maybe that will help you like me better.” He bent and pulled a small box from a bag on the floor she hadn’t noticed before, then stood. “Hand-dipped chocolates to replace the box I took and sent to the lab, which were not poisoned, by the way.” He opened the box. “Crème or caramel?”

“Before breakfast?”

“Sure. You’re going to need energy to exercise.”

She started to reach for one, but he pulled the box away. “Crème or caramel?”

“Crème.”

He removed one from the box, set the box aside, and brought the individual chocolate to her mouth. “Open.”

She grinned at his intent to feed her. She opened her mouth as instructed, then struck by an attack of playfulness, quickly closed her lips around his thumb and finger, sucking gently. Once the sweet candy had melted in her mouth, she raised a hand and held his wrist while she swallowed. Watching his eyes, she thoroughly licked each of his fingers in turn.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You do not play fair. So. We need to discuss the subject we’ve both been avoiding.”

“The huge gray elephant beside me?”

“That one.”

She closed her eyes as he leaned toward her mouth. He kissed her nose and eyelids. “What about it?” she asked breathlessly.

He nibbled her earlobe. “Did you like it?”

“Immensely.”

He slid his hands up to rest under her breasts, said in a velvet voice, “Want to do it again?”

“Most definitely.”

He kissed her neck while rubbing his thumbs over her peaked nipples. “When?”

“Right this minute.” She reached for the hem of his shirt.

He pressed his mouth over hers in a hot kiss. For a microsecond, her brain argued for caution and resisted. Then his tongue teased the crease of her lips, a shiver of pleasure rushed down her spine, and she was lost.

One of his hands held the back of her head, pressing her mouth to him. The other slid to the zipper of her leotard and tugged the tab downward.

“You taste like chocolate.” His mouth traveled her bare shoulder and neck, leaving heat and tingling in its wake. “Delicious.”

“Think of all the extra energy I have, too.”

He pushed her leotard lower, unhooked her sports bra, and found her nipple, drawing it into his mouth, surrounding it with his warmth. He sucked gently, and an answering wave of need rippled through her lower abdomen.

She lifted his shirt and tugged it off over his head. Then her fingers sought the shape of him in his shorts and caressed his rock-hard shaft.

They sank to the mats together.

In minutes, she was naked and he was pushing inside her, filling her with hot sensation and feverish need, bringing her to the edge of an ethereal cliff. She met each thrust with an arching of her back. Her breath came in tiny gasps. She clutched his waist and murmured his name, her entire body shuddering.

An inferno blazed within her and burned away the last of her reserve. When she fell into the black hole created by their passion, the world seemed right.

An hour later, Andrea sat at the breakfast table enjoying a second cup of coffee and a warm, gooey cinnamon bun delicious enough to die for. She winced at the thought. When a person was playing the part of the staked lamb and waiting for the tiger to show, thinking in terms of “to die for” was a no-no.

She glanced around her at the opulent setting. The table was in an area that a real estate agent would label a breakfast nook. But in this case, the description could hardly do the room justice, and on a boat, she didn’t think the same labels applied. A wall of windows arced around the “cozy” glass-topped table for eight set with fine crystal and china. Plush ivory carpet coated the floor. The soft notes of a harp filled the air. Outside the windows, the blue water of the harbor shimmered in the sunlight like the surface of the Hope Diamond.

In the luxury and peacefulness of the morning, the threats on Karli’s life seemed surreal, nothing but the leftovers of a nasty dream.

Her exercise with Mitch also seemed like a dream, only much more pleasant than any she’d experienced in her life before. She’d always scoffed at the lyrics of love songs that made the mating ritual seem like a magical event. Now some of those lyrics echoed in her mind when she should have been concentrating on work. She only had to think about seeing Mitch to have her pulse speed up in anticipation. Colors were brighter. Music caressed her bones. When she walked, her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor.

She sipped her coffee, scraped up the last drips of spicy cinnamon and icing. Mitch had added spice to her life and made her happy to be alive. But where was their relationship going? Should she even think of it as a relationship? He’d said he wasn’t a long-term relationship kind of guy, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at her, something that made her want to hope he could change his mind. His eyes held more than lust. More than a physical need. She couldn’t place what she saw in his gaze in any recognizable category. And strangely, that gave her joy while simultaneously scaring her to death. Because she was on totally unfamiliar ground. She usually approached sex with a casual air, choosing her partners carefully, planning the when, where, and how. Yet she and Mitch had sex spontaneously, recklessly, without even using a condom. How had she been so swept away that she’d forgotten the threat of pregnancy or STDs, forgotten everything, in fact, even the risk of someone walking in the exercise room door? Why did this man have the power to short-circuit her brain and make her only want to feel?

At a loss for answers, she turned to watch the maid roll a cart holding a fresh flower arrangement for the table into the room. The scent of gardenias floated through the air. Andrea breathed in deeply and sighed in contentment.

The local florist had a standing order to bring fresh flowers every three days, a luxury Andrea wished she could afford back home in Boston where her tiny apartment often lacked any sign of life, and even more often, smelled stale and musty.

“Ms. Stone?”

Andrea picked up her coffee cup. Paused with it in midair. “Yes?”

“A long box with your name taped to the outside came with the delivery.”

Andrea swung her gaze to the maid’s cart, wondering who would send flowers. Mitch? She pictured the flower he’d brought with the burgers. And the chocolate he’d fed her before they made love. He had a romantic streak. Maybe he sent his lovers flowers after taking them to bed—or the floor of an exercise room. But they’d been together only an hour ago, hardly time for an order to be included in today’s delivery. Plus the box looked like the kind that held long-stemmed roses, and roses didn’t seem like they’d match unpretentious Mitch’s style. He was more daisies or violets, or whatever flower—like the yellow bells—that might be the Virgin Islands equivalent.

The woman said, “There are three tight ties around this box. I’d better cut them or you’ll break your nails.”

Andrea shook off her thoughts of Mitch. He couldn’t send her flowers on the yacht even if he wanted to. They had to keep up appearances: she was Karli, and he was the hired help.

If not Mitch, then who? The death threat! Her intuition kicked into gear. Maybe the box contained another bomb and the ties around it were detonators. “No, wait.”

Too late. The woman’s scissors had already clipped two of the ties and were closing on the third.

Andrea held her breath. The last tie fell away. Nothing exploded. She released a sigh of relief and grinned, feeling somewhat silly. Maybe she was just jumpy and being overcautious.

Then the box lid gave a strange little shake, and one end lifted slightly.

She lowered her cup to the table and it hit with a clink. She stared at the box. What the hell?

The lid rose up another inch of its own accord. Or not. Something black appeared at one end, pushing the lid up farther.

Andrea jumped to her feet, almost knocking over her chair. Her eyes went wide as the head of a fat black snake slithered over the side of the box. Its tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air for the scent of predators, its beady eyes seeming to be seeking prey. As if finding a target, the snake oozed from the box, crawled to the side of the cart, and dropped toward the floor.

Before his first scale touched the carpet, Andrea joined the maid in a bloodcurdling chorus of screams.