Bird of Paradise (7 page)

“Certainly. Er…let's see…” he juggled Jesus and his
orientation packet for a moment, then set the cat down and rustled
through the papers until he found a small brass key. “I'm in cabana
seventeen. According to the map, that's just beyond the fitness
center. Where are you?”

She held out a key. “Cabana one-twenty-two, next to
the croquet court.”

“You're closer. If you don't mind stopping to let
Jesus do his business, I'll walk you there.”

“I don't mind in the least,” Hero said as they
exited the ballroom. Long walkways lined with shrubs, small palms,
and lots of flowers crisscrossed the main resort compound. Discreet
signs pointed visitors to the various amenities. Adam and Hero
turned right and headed toward the west side of the resort.

“To tell you the truth,” she admitted with a shy
smile that tugged on his heart, “I'm a bit overwhelmed by the
resort. It's lovelier than anyplace I've seen. The flowers alone
are breathtaking, and the scenery…it really is just as I imagine
the Garden of Eden to have been.”

Adam paused and discreetly turned his back when
Jesus disappeared under a low-growing shrub.

“It's a big muggy, but I expect we'll get used to
that in time.” Dirt scattered on the paving stones before Adam's
feet, kicked out from under the shrub. He shifted uncomfortably.
Hero was dreamily looking off in the distance, past a line of
coconut palms to where the roar and crash of the surf could be
heard pounding onto a rocky outcropping. More dirt splatted on the
pathway. He brushed it aside with his foot, wondering what Hero
wanted to talk to him about. A small pink and white orchid, roots
still attached, was flung out from under the shrub onto the tops of
his shoes. He tugged on the leash, smiling wolfishly at Hero as she
turned to look at him.

“He likes flowers.”

Hero looked at the orchid Adam placed on the edge of
the path.

“He does?” she asked with one eyebrow cocked in
disbelief before turning back to gaze out toward the palms.

Adam fidgeted. He hated having to make chitchat. He
never had been any good at it, and now here he was stuck with a
woman who stirred his desire more than he'd felt in years, and his
cat was evidently excavating to China. “Er…so, is this your first
time in the Caribbean?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

He tugged a bit more persistently on the leash. The
shrub trembled for a moment, a few twigs snapped sharply, and then
a low, threatening growl heralded Jesus's arrival. Branches parted
to reveal a feline rear end. The cat backed out of the leaves,
rumbling softly to himself as he dragged a small piece of sky-blue
cloth over to his owner, plopping his butt down on Adam's toes to
present him with his find with a look of great satisfaction.

“What the hell…?” Adam wrestled the cloth from the
cat's mouth and claws. “Let go of it, dammit! Whatever it is, it's
dirty. I don't want you to have it.”

Hero watched in silence as he scooted the cat off
his feet, squatting next to the animal, prying his mouth open to
unhook the cloth from Jesus's sharp teeth.

Adam looked up. “I think there's a
bit of retriever in him,” he joked weakly, mentally moaning to
himself. This was just what he needed, for Jesus to act up and make
him look like an idiot in front of the one woman he wanted to make
a good impression on. “Give it to me, cat! Damn it, I'm not playing
with you,
give me the blasted
thing
!”

Jesus spat out the cloth and turned to Hero,
standing on his back legs and patting her knees with his front
paws, giving her his piteous silent meow and a look that would do a
starving orphan facing eviction into a blizzard proud.

“Oh, you poor thing!” she crooned, clearly falling
for his pathetic act. She bent down to scoop him up, staggering a
little when she tried to straighten up with the full weight of him
in her arms. She recovered nicely, however, and glared at Adam over
the cat's head. “You shouted at him!”

Adam held up his hand. A torn and dirt-encrusted
pair of women's sky blue underwear dangled from his fingers. “Yes,
I did. I have a rule that he's not allowed to bring home strange
women's panties. I'm silly that way.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You trained
your cat to fetch knickers from women who are
not
strangers?”

“No, certainly not! He just likes them.”

The look of disbelief on her face said it all.

“I mean, he just likes to find things and retrieve
them. It doesn't matter what the object is.”

She continued to stare at him, making him feel as
though he were in fourth grade and caught kissing Betty Sue Seymore
behind the jungle gym. “Look, he's a strange cat; I have little
control over him. He likes to find things. I can count the number
of times he's brought me panties on the fingers of one hand.” He
thought for a moment. “Well, all right, two hands, but that's only
because my girlfriend was living with me at the time and there were
panties everywhere. I couldn't expect him to just ignore them, now
could I?”

She pursed her lips, looked like she was going to
argue the point, then shook her head and simply said, “I think,
perhaps, we should let this particular subject drop.”

“I think you're right,” he agreed with no little
sense of relief. What was it about this woman that made him feel
like he were a gauche young man on his first serious date?

Hero frowned at the underwear, then down on Jesus's
head. The cat's look of smug satisfaction at being held melted into
one of innocence and feline sainthood. Adam was not amused. He
tossed the underwear into a nearby trash receptacle and retrieved
his cat, setting him on the ground. “Behave yourself and I'll let
you have a can of sardines later.”

Jesus gave him a one-eyed, annoyed stare before
leading the way down the path.

“He's limping quite heavily, don't you think you
should carry him?” Hero asked as she strolled next to Adam, her
eyes on the cat a few feet ahead of her. “His leg must be
hurting.”

“Just ignore it, it's an act. He's fine. When his
leg hurts, he lets me know.”

“How?” she asked, just as he knew she would.

“He bites me, “ Adam replied, enjoying the
tantalizing scent of sun-warmed woman the soft ocean breeze carried
his way. He breathed deeply, feeling the familiar prickles of
arousal start to stir before he clamped down on the unwelcome
sensation. What the hell was he doing? What sort of terrible things
did it say about him that he was ready to take advantage of an
innocent young woman while pretending to be someone else? What had
happened to honor and pride? Had he really sunk so low that he
would even contemplate lying—by word or by deed, they were both the
same—to someone he wanted to have a relationship with? Had it
really come to this?

Hero's hand brushed his as they walked down the palm
tree lined pathway toward a sweeping crescent of small cabanas
lining a lush green lawn. Pure desire rippled through him at the
contact.

“Yes, yes it has come to this,” he muttered as he
stepped aside for her to open the door to the furthest most
cabana.

“Did you say something?” she asked as she paused
before the door.

“Nothing worth repeating.”

The small puzzled frown was back between her eyes,
but she said nothing as she unlocked the door and entered the
cabana. Jesus marched in after her, his whiskers twitching as he
surveyed the room, locating the whereabouts of anything that might
be of possible interest to him.

“Don't get too comfortable, this isn't our room,”
Adam told him, unsnapping the leash before looking up at Hero. She
was examining the room as well.

“This is quite nice, much nicer than I expected. Oh,
I'm sorry, do please sit down. This won't take but a minute.” She
pulled a suitcase off a wicker chair and waved him toward it.

“I don't suppose you asked me here in order to cast
yourself into my manly arms and beg me to make you a woman
tonight?” he asked with a smile that he sincerely hoped was not
tinged with desperation.

Hero paused in the act of sitting down in the chair
opposite his. “What?”

He tried to make his smile friendly and reassuring,
and not in the least bit that of a sex-starved man who finds
himself in a room with the living personification of Aphrodite and
Venus all rolled into one tempting package. “That was a joke. A
very poor one, I realize, but since you seemed to be a bit peeved
with me earlier, and as my cat is probably even now sitting on your
toilet playing in the water, I figured it might be called for.”

“I see.”

“Clearly it wasn't.”

“Perhaps not,” she agreed, her lovely grey eyes
large with worry. She probably was concerned he'd pounce on her the
second she looked away. He heaved a mental sigh. Wasn't this day
turning out to be just jim dandy fine? First she caught him in the
blatantly illegal act of smuggling his cat through quarantine; then
said cat retrieved out a pair of underwear for him like he did that
every day of his life, and now that she had invited him into her
cozy little cabana for two, he was acting like a sex maniac. Oh,
yes, his life was turning out very well, indeed.

“I have a proposition to make you,” Hero interrupted
the contemplation of recent events.

Adam sat up a bit straighter in his
chair and casually crossed his legs so she wouldn't see just what
sort of affect her nearness and the word
proposition
was having on him. He had
to clear his throat before he could speak. “A proposition? What
sort of proposition?”

Dare he hope it involved their bared flesh and a
fresh mango or two?

“It's like this—I have a reason, which I don't care
to reveal just now, to wish to be present at least through the
third and fourth weeks of the show, and not eliminated at the end
of the second week. It is vitally important to me, you understand.
I assume if you've gone to the time and trouble, not to mention the
risk of possible imprisonment, of smuggling your cat into the
country, you must also wish to see the whole show through as
well.”

There was nothing he'd like more than to go
home…assuming she'd like to come with him, but he supposed he
shouldn't say that. He tried to look like he was anticipating a
grand and glorious time on the island of Mystique, and nodded his
head.

“Excellent. Simply put, I
propose—
A
aaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee!
What the bloody
hell is that
?
”

Hero leaped from a sitting position straight onto
the seat of her chair and did a horrified little dance as she
pointed a shaking finger toward the bathroom. Framed perfectly in
the doorway, Jesus strolled nonchalantly into the room with a small
creature perched on his head.

Adam sighed again, this time aloud. Jesus was going
to be the death of him, he really was. Or if not him specifically,
at least of his romantic life. “It would appear my cat has found a
friend.”

“But what is it? It's yellow! It looks poisonous!”
Hero shrieked, still doing her fascinating little dance on the
chair. Adam gave himself a moment to admire the flashes of leg that
were visible as she bounced up and down, then turned his attention
back to the cat, who had now wandered into the room and sat with
his tail curled around his feet, looking for all the world like a
feline version of Buddha.

One with a gecko on his head.

“Will it harm him? Where did he find it? Did he find
it in my room? Oh, Lord, I'll have to have my room fumigated! I
can't stay in a room with great herds of wildlife living in
it!”

Adam rose and walked over to the cat to take a
closer look. “It's nothing poisonous, and fumigating wouldn't do
anything. It's just a house gecko, Hero, not a tarantula or
anything that bites or is poisonous, although I did see a scorpion
as we left the ballroom, so you might want to be wary about going
around barefoot outside.”

“Eeeeeeek!” Hero screamed louder, and scrabbled onto
the tiny round table that sat between the two wicker chairs.
“Geckos! Scorpions! Tarantulas! No one said anything about them in
the promotional literature!”

He stroked a finger down the yellowish brown back of
the gecko. It was about three inches long, and looked back at him
with shiny black unblinking eyes. “You just had to take on a
hitchhiker, eh?” Adam asked his cat softly, giving him a quick
scratch behind his ear where the gecko's tail curled. Jesus rumbled
in reply. The gecko slowly blinked. Hero made distressed
noises.

“Come here and meet the gecko,” Adam said as he
turned, holding out his hand for her. “It won't hurt you, I
promise. It's just a harmless little lizard that eats bugs. You'll
be thankful to have him once you see how many insects he takes care
of for you.”

Hero looked at him as if he'd ripped off all his
clothing and painted his penis bright blue. “You expect me to touch
it?”

The aforementioned penis twitched at the very
thought of her words. He mentally pointed out to his genitals that
she was referring to the gecko, not to them. “Yes, I expect you to
touch it. Make friends with your house gecko, and he'll do right by
you, that's what an old Bahamian once told me, and he was
absolutely correct. Come on, I promise he won't do anything scary.”
He wiggled the fingers of his outstretched hand at her. She looked
at his hand like it was crawling with geckos and shook her head. He
tsked, then grabbed her waist with both hands and swung her down
off the table. She slid down his chest in a manner that made his
not-painted-blue penis cheer with happiness.

Her knees seemed to buckle once her feet hit the
ground, so he held onto her waist until she was steady. That was
the excuse he gave himself; the truth was he just liked holding her
close to him. A breeze from the window ruffled her auburn curls,
sending the flowery scent of her to dance a tantalizing dance
around him, stirring his libido to new heights. He regretted the
morning's choice of bikini underwear, and made a mental note to
wear boxers from that moment on.