Bird of Paradise (10 page)

Loud pulsing music poured out from the speakers
overhead. Cameramen and sound people moved into place as each table
obediently formed a line. Hero stood behind Adam (who, to her
surprise, did not hurry to take a place next to Sally), and in
front of a man with a skull-and-crossbones earring and tattoos of
flames licking up his wrists.

It was going to be a long night.

True be told, she admitted to herself a few minutes
later, it was an amusing game. The first person in the line held
the orange under her chin, while the man next to her more or less
embraced her in order to get close enough to try to take it from
her. She giggled as he nuzzled her neck, trying to capture the
orange under his own chin, he laughed when she writhed against him,
trying to push the orange toward his neck, the cameraman tightened
his shot on the two in a seemingly very intimate embrace; and Hero
watched it all with her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes
turned to where Adam stood in front of her, applauding when the man
finally retrieved the orange. She was going to have to take the
orange from him. She was going to have to stand very close to him,
her arms on his, her jaw brushing his to take the orange.

She had to be mad.

The next woman in line was Sally. She gave it a game
shot, but dropped the orange. So did Greg, but Hero suspected that
was because he had no neck to speak of, and thus no way to hold the
orange. A short strawberry-blonde woman took up the orange next,
and giggled in Adam's ear as he doubled over to try and retrieve
the orange from her. With some careful maneuvering, he managed to
get it without too much trouble, and turned to face Hero with the
orange clamped between his chin and collarbone.

“You can do it; it's easy,” he encouraged her, his
words somewhat slurred because he couldn't move his jaw. She stared
into his glittering blue eyes for a moment, and wondered if the
laughter she saw in there was directed at her, or at the silly
situation. It didn't matter, she told herself as she stepped up to
him, placing her hands on his arms as she leaned into his chest.
All that mattered was that she get the points. The points were
everything. She couldn't afford to be left behind, not even with
Adam as a ringer.

She had no idea what brand of aftershave he used,
but she highly approved of it. The scent of him, part spicy
aftershave, part something uniquely Adam, teased her senses as her
jaw brushed his. She angled her head to capture the orange under
her chin, ignoring the fact that her breasts, pressed up against
him, were on fire with the contact. His breath was hot and rapid in
her ear as his hands came around her waist to steady her. She could
see the pulse beat rapidly in his neck. The scent of him, the heat
from his chest touching hers, the slight abrasion of his whiskery
chin against her neck, and the nearness of his mouth to an ear
suddenly turned into a highly erogenous spot almost undid her, but
the flicker of light as the cameraman moved to a better angle
reminded her that they were being filmed.

She bit back the desire to lick the pulse point on
his neck and clamped her chin down on the orange. Adam groaned
slightly and lifted his head to release the orange, but her grip
wasn't as good as she thought it was. The orange slid from beneath
her chin and started to drop. She shrieked and slammed herself
against Adam, rocking him backwards. He regained his balance, his
hands tight on her arms.

“Of all the ignominious positions,” she grumbled
into his chest. She was half crouched, the orange caught slightly
above her breasts, pressed into his stomach.

“Are you all right?” Adam asked, his hands warm on
her shoulders.

“Yes, fine, the bloody thing is on my…it's between
my chest and your stomach.”

The others in their line called out encouragement
and advice.

“If you slide down slowly you
should be able to catch it under your chin again,” Adam said,
holding her firmly to him. She knew it was so the orange would not
continue its downward path and
not
because he wanted her body pressed against his,
but she couldn't help enjoy the contact.

“Is that the only way?”

“It'll be easy. Just move slowly,” he told her.

She nodded into his chest, took a grip on his waist,
and started to slide slowly down him. She almost had it under her
chin when Adam jerked and yelled, “Jesus, no!”

The orange dropped six inches. She caught it by
pressing it against Adam with her cheek. Breathing heavily with the
effect of being so close to him, and the spurts of adrenaline that
shot through her every time the orange dropped, she rolled her eye
to the side to assess where she was.

Her face and the orange were pressed against his
crotch.

“Oh, Lord,” she swore into his genitals, wondering
if her life could get any worse.

“Jesus! Sit! No, damn it, that does
not mean come here, it means sit!
Sit
!”

A loud crash indicated a chair was turned over, but
it was the laughter and calls of the people at her table that told
her what was going on behind her back. Adam had tied the cat's
leash to the chair while he was participating in the games. Jesus
didn't seem to mind since he was curled up asleep after his meal of
snails, but evidently he had woken up and suddenly felt the need to
join in the fun.

He dragged the chair over to where Hero was
face-to-genitals with Adam. She sighed.

“Any brilliant ideas how I'm to get it now?” she
asked him, her words slurred because of the orange pressed against
her cheek. She absolutely refused to look at his crotch. She
refused to notice how strained his zipper looked, or acknowledge
that his fingers were biting into her arms and his breathing was
just as erratic as hers.

“You're going to have to turn your face a little so
you can get it under your chin,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Damn
it cat, I told you not to come over here.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, ignoring the
people laughing at her, at the cat, at everything, and tried very
hard not to dwell on what turning her face toward Adam's groin was
going to mean. The points, she needed the points. The points were
everything. She had to do this.

A hard head butted her hip where she knelt before
Adam.

“Leave her alone, cat,” he growled above her. Jesus
paid no mind his owner and rubbed himself along Hero's thigh in an
obvious attempt to get her attention.

She ignored the cat as she warned Adam, “I'm going
to take the orange now.”

A second cameraman joined the first. She ignored
them as well.

“Carefully,” Adam pleaded.

She smiled a grim little smile to herself and
simultaneously rose a little and turned her face inward until her
mouth was pressed against his belt, and the orange held firmly
against her voice box. She lowered her chin carefully. Behind his
zipper, Adam twitched. She stopped for a moment, feeling an
answering twitch within herself, deep down where the heat pooled
uncomfortably in her womanly parts. Deciding it was best to pretend
the twitches never happened, with careful movements she clasped the
orange between her chin and chest and pulled slowly away from him.
The orange remained solid under her chin. She gave a heartfelt sigh
of relief, and with one hand on Adam's belt for balance, started to
rise to her feet.

He jerked her head back, almost releasing the orange
from her hold.

“What the…damn. Hold on a minute, your hair is
tangled on my belt buckle. No, Jesus, leave her alone—”

In the end it wasn’t her hair caught on his belt, or
Jesus crawling over her in an attempt to get her to pet him,
thereby tangling her legs in the leash that led to the chair he
dragged behind him, it wasn't even the cameraman who squatted down
in front of her, laughing so hard he had difficulty filming her as
she crouched red-faced next to Adam's groin while he worked her
hair free. It was a small, insignificant thing that caused her to
drop the orange and lose fifty points she well needed.

The gecko evidently decided that as her head was
higher than the cat's, it would provide a better vantage point for
insect sighting. The little creature leaped off of the cat and
scurried up her arm and onto her head before she realized what it
was doing.

An hour later she sat in a chair outside her cabana
on a wooden lounge, rubbing the sore spot on her head. Hopefully it
wouldn't take long for her hair to grow back, but it wasn't really
the loss of a shilling-sized clump of hair that pained her. No, it
was the footage the cameramen had shot, no doubt gleefully, of her
screaming and racing around the table batting ineffectually at her
head while Adam chased after her, telling her to stand still so he
could remove the gecko, finally achieving that goal when she
tripped over Jesus and his chair, sprawling out on the ground in
front of everyone with her dress hiked up almost to her bum. The TV
audience would eat it up.

Her shoulders sagged until her head drooped down
onto her hands. She didn't think life could get any worse, but she
had no doubt it would. Fate was often like that.

Chapter Five

“Moonlight is the stuff that magic is made of,” Hero
said decisively to no one in particular, which, considering she was
sitting alone on a bench, was good. “It's romance, it's fantasy,
it's excitement and mystery. Moonlight in the Caribbean—” She gazed
out across the velvety croquet playing field, the rich green grass
tinted black and silver by the waxing moon. She flexed her bare
toes into the lawn, enjoying its coolness against the soles of her
feet. It felt so good, she scooted off the bench and sat
cross-legged on the ground, the grass tickling her bare legs.
Absently plucking a piece of grass, she looked across the way to
where a line of coconut palms rustled in the fragrant evening
breeze, standing like guardians along a curved stretch of protected
beach. The distant thunder of waves pounding onto the island was a
muted undertone to air filled with soft noises of night birds and
faint strains of Caribbean music from an open-air lounge on the far
side of the resort, punctuated occasionally by a shriek and burst
of laughter from the swimming pool next to the lounge.

She sighed and tossed the blade of grass away.
“Moonlight in the Caribbean is the most romantic thing in the
world, and should be outlawed when you're alone and have no one to
enjoy it with and are feeling very sorry for yourself.” She looked
around. The line of cabanas was uniformly dark except hers.
Evidently everyone had gone off to dance under the stars, or
partake in the moonlight swim mentioned as part of the evening's
after-hour activities.

Everyone but her. True, she had been asked. Adam,
escorting her back to her cabana after the horrible orange
incident, had said he'd heard several people were planning on
enjoying a swim later, and would she be interested in joining
them?

She blanched at the thought then,
and she blanched now. Appearing in front of everyone in her
swimsuit was
not
her idea of fun. Although she told herself she cared little
what Adam thought about her—nipple exploding womanizer that he
was—she knew she was lying to herself. She did care, rot his hide.
And because she cared, she wasn't going to expose herself to the
look of horror sure to be in his eyes when he caught sight of all
her exposed flesh.

“Buck up, old girl,” she told herself. “This too
shall pass. Just a couple of weeks and you'll be home and he'll be
forgotten and everything will be the way it was.” With, she
suspected, the exception of her heart. She greatly feared she was
in danger of losing that particular organ to Adam. She wasn't happy
about that idea, but as it was clearly the result of her snapped
mind, there was little she could do.

Other than repeatedly deny the attraction. And to
reiterate his bad points to herself. And there was the matter of
his fan club, as she'd taken to thinking of the women that seemed
to chase after him everywhere.

“He's American,” she told her bare toes as they
bobbed in time to the distant music. “Which is always a black mark.
He's a smutmonger, too, giving sexual advice to women on the radio.
And he has an obsession with a woman who clearly wants nothing to
do with him. Not to mention the fact he enjoys discussing his
nipples in public. No, he's quite obviously not at all the sort of
man any decent woman would want to know. He's just too—oof!”

A large grey animal landed in her lap, slamming into
chest and driving out all the air in her lungs.

“Jesus, down! Stop mauling Hero, you're getting dirt
all over her.”

Hero pushed the cat down until he was sitting on her
legs, and glanced up at Adam, taking a deep breath to refill her
lungs.

The breath strangled in her throat as he stopped
before her. Her eyes bugged out a little at the sight of him. He
was almost naked, wearing one of those skimpy little swimsuits that
men in tropical climes seemed to favor. She'd never given them a
thought before, but now she sent up fervent prayers of gratitude to
whoever had the brilliant idea of allowing men to parade around in
nothing but a bit of lycra. Her eyes started at his bare feet and
moved up over nice calves, cute little knees, and muscled thighs.
Her gaze skittered over the lycra-covered bits, and continued up to
a lovely tanned stomach, broad chest with just the right amount of
chest hair swirling around two impudent nipples, and arms that were
well-muscled without being grotesque.

“I'm sorry about this, he got away.” Adam slung the
towel he held in one hand over a shoulder and held out a broken
leash. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

She tried not to stare, but she couldn't help it.
His dark hair was wet, slicked back from his brow, emphasizing the
slight widow's peak that made her heart beat faster. Oh, who was
she trying to fool, it was all of him that made her heart race.