Jill Shalvis: The Trouble With Paradise

© 2007

Day Two on deserted island without cookies,

and it’s not pretty.

Only a week ago, Dorie Anderson’s nighttime fantasies had run along the lines of, say, Matthew McConaughey, but now as she lay on the long, golden stretch of beach, staring past their shelter to the star-riddled night sky, she fantasized about chocolate chip cookies.

Make that double chocolate chip cookies.

Sorry, Matthew, but priorities were priorities. Stuck on a deserted South Pacific island without cookies? Serious suffering going on.

All around her came the sounds that people tended to buy those nature CDs for: the waves gently hitting the shore, crickets chirping, an exotic bird squawking…

Her stomach growling.

She put her hand on her belly, thinking she’d give her right arm for an entire bag of cookies all to herself. Maybe even her left as well.

“How’s the patient?”

Ah, there he was, the bane of her existence. She knew this because just his voice made her nipples go all happy.

Damn nipples.

She felt him sit in the sand at her side but she didn’t look at him. Nope, looking at him was a really bad idea because then her brain would begin that painful tug-of-war.

Want him.

Hate him.

Want him.

Hate him.

She sighed. “Go away.”

“Ah. You’re feeling better.” He lay next to her so that his arm brushed hers, the one she would definitely sell for that bag of chocolate chip cookies.

“Question,” she said.

“Hit me.”

“Do you ever think about chocolate?”

He turned his head and looked at her. He was all hard, lean, sinewy lines to her soft, curvy ones. She imagined if she pointed out how different they were, he’d say he liked those differences very much. “I think about other things,” he said.

“Like?”

“Things.”

His arm shifted, just barely pressing into the side of her breast. And more than just her nipples got happy. Bad. Bad body. “I’m tired,” she said, and yawned to prove it.

“Here’s something to wake you up.” Instead of taking the hint and leaving, he rolled to his side, facing her. “Our bet.”

Oh, no. “We are not going to talk about the bet.” No way.

“That’s because you lost.”

“You cheated.”

He was silent, letting that lie live a life of its own as she remembered the details…

As if she could forget.

“You could just pay up,” he suggested.

That thought shot tingles of excitement directly into certain areas of her anatomy that had no business getting excited. She closed her eyes, a bad idea because her other senses took over. How did he manage to smell like heaven on earth while on a deserted island? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He just laughed softly.

Bastard.

“You didn’t hit your head that hard,” he said. “You know .”

“You’re not going away. Why aren’t you going away?” she asked desperately, knowing exactly what he was talking about, exactly what bet she’d made, and what she now owed him, which involved her.

Dancing.

Naked.

Beneath this very starlit sky. “If you were nice, you’d go.”

He lifted a broad shoulder. “Never claimed to be nice.”

Also true. Damn it.

“Plus we’re stuck on an island,” he pointed out. “Just how far away do you think I can go?”

Keeping her eyes closed, she sighed again. She really hated it when he was right.

Two weeks before,

blissfully ignorant of the hell to come…

Damn, it was hard to run in her cute new cork-heeled sandals, but Dorie pumped her arms and did her best as she made her way through the parking lot. She was only five minutes late for work, but the store manager of the Los Angeles Shop-Mart she worked for had fired people for less. In fact, Mr. Stryowski was on a downsizing spree, firing staff left and right, which meant it’d been a really bad morning for her alarm to malfunction.

Okay, it hadn’t been her alarm. It’d been her hair straightener. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do, and that did not include going to work with frizzy hair, thank you very much.

Into the store, past the food court…

Faster, faster, or it wouldn’t matter how good a hair day she was now having. She burst into the employee-only area, her huge, carry-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink purse banging at her side.

No Mr. Stryowski in sight.

A miracle in its own right, because nothing got past him. Last week he’d heard Kenny sneaking in late all the way from Garden Supplies.

Kenny was now on the early shift, for the rest of his life.

Dorie hated the early shift. She did not do early. But like Kenny, she was paying dues for her sins. Her apparently ongoing sins. Still running, she passed Sally. The Snack Shop clerk was pouring herself a coffee. They waved and grinned at each other, Sally’s sympathetic as she made room for Dorie to get by.

“Great hair today,” Sally called out.

The qualifier “today” did not escape Dorie, but truth was truth. She had a lot of bad hair days. “Thanks!”

“Why are you late? Hot date last night?”

“I wish.” Nope, that phenomenon hadn’t occurred in… yikes. She couldn’t even remember. Statistically speaking, these years were supposed to be the sexual highlight of her life. So where were the highlights already?

She was a single woman in her twenties, with average looks-at least on the days when her hair straightener functioned-and some average smarts. So it bore thinking about-why couldn’t she get a man-made orgasm?

Unfortunately, she had the answer to that. Whenever she got naked with a man, she tended to dwell, and when she dwelled, any self-esteem flew out the window.

Along with her hopes for that orgasm.

Panting for breath now, her tiered crinkle skirt flying around her legs, her darling new sandals already killing her feet-not a good sign with eight hours minimum in front of her-she fumbled for her time card and-

“You’re late !”

At Mr. Stryowski’s bark, Dorie squeaked like the timid little mouse she tended to be in the face of authority and whipped around. He was wearing his default expression-a scowl.

Be cool, she ordered herself, and gave him her best Who, me? smile. Late? Are you sure?

He was skinny, tall, and with his hook of a nose, could have passed for a medieval warlock, except for the bad rug hanging off his forehead. He’d gotten a new toupee last month, and frankly, he hadn’t spent enough. The thing kept slipping in his eyes, making him crankier than usual. “What do you think this place is, Target?” he groused. “You owe me five minutes of your lunch time.”

Dorie glanced at Sally, who rolled her eyes. Neither of them had taken a lunch break all week because he was shorthanded, especially in Dorie’s particular area of expertise-the Junior Fashion area. He was too cheap to hire anyone else, but since Dorie needed her paycheck, she bit her tongue. “No problem.”