Joanne Rock - The Pleasure Trip

“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.”

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.”

While Rita assured Playboy Joe that no dancer would ever look twice at him again once she spread the word of an unfortunate condition he’d contracted, Harrison noted the name of the yacht emblazoned on the bow. The Over-Under.

“Nice boat.” Harrison interjected while Horatio’s miniharem stepped back, their high heels a chorus of taps on the dock. “You have friends who like the over-under?”

“I’ve got a lot of friends.” Shrugging, he started to follow the females heading up the pier toward a waterfront restaurant and marketplace. “Who knows what they all like?”

Rita’s hand slipped around Harrison’s elbow, reminding him he couldn’t follow up on his instincts about the blackjack dealer now, even if those instincts were blaring loudly in his ear that something wasn’t right.

“Let’s head over to the landing strip and see if she’s there.” Rita’s simple red flip-flops smacked the back of her heels in rhythmic time as she walked the length of the boat with smooth, efficient strides bearing little resemblance to her stage strut of the night before.

Funny how the practical woman appealed to him as much as the fantasy siren. More, even. He appreciated people who valued hard work and family the way he did.

“Done.” Harrison untied their rented vessel and cranked up the engine, figuring the trip over to the landing strip was as good a time as any to let Rita in on his real motives behind taking the cruise. “But once we’re underway, I need you to tell me everything you can about Horatio.”

“Besides that he’s a two-timing snake with no moral system in place?”

Rita seethed inwardly as Harrison guided the craft away from the creep who’d thought nothing of leaving her sister at the altar. Forget that the altar doubled as a gift shop checkout counter. That didn’t diminish the magnitude of Horatio’s desertion in the least.

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you,” Harrison pressed on, “that a lowlife like him could attract not one but three women to keep him company today? He’s running with some big-money friends for a guy who makes pretty average wages.”

“You’re suggesting anyone who works on the Venus must be low-class?” She hadn’t expected economic prejudice from Harrison. He seemed so down-to-earth. So normal.

“Of course not.” He checked the map of Barbados the charter boat captain had given them, the sun casting a glare on the paper no matter where he positioned it. “I couldn’t afford a boat like the one he was on either, but if he doesn’t have any personal charisma and he’s got the morals of a snake as you pointed out, what basis does he have to form a connection with some multimillionaire yacht owner?”

“I’m sure there are plenty of multimillionaires whose morals suck, too.” Rita kept an eye on the coastline, trying to remember where an airport might be, but she’d never made much use of shore time like most of the crew, preferring to sew onboard the ship rather than party in Caribbean clubs.