Joanne Rock - The Pleasure Trip

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.”

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.