Blame It on Paradise (13 page)

“I’m going to give Reginald Wexler what he wants.”

He faced her, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re going to give him the tea? Just like that?”

“I’m going to give him
some
tea.” She bowed her head to the wash of blue-white light from her monitor. “I’ll give him enough of the fresh product for his researchers to process, and twelve weeks to do it. Even if they can’t reproduce the tea synthetically, there’s every possibility that Coyle-Wexler might identify and reproduce the key substance responsible for the weight loss effect he believes the tea to have.”

“Do you think those are legitimate possibilities?”

She avoided his eyes, but Jack caught a glimpse of her smile, which suddenly looked rather devilish. “Anything’s possible, Jack.”

“You’re sending them on a snipe hunt, aren’t you?”

“I’m making them work for what they want, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been through this before, when a French biotech firm wanted to market Darwin mint. It took them twelve weeks to run their tests and trials. I’ll give Coyle-Wexler the tea, twelve weeks, and nothing more.”

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, and Jack itched to know what she was really up to. Not to spy for Coyle-Wexler, but to share in her amusement. He had a hard time hiding his own excitement at the thought of her spending three months in New England. “Lina, if you’re sure that you’ll be miserable here, I know a place where you might be more comfortable.”

Still typing, she absently mumbled, “Another hotel?”

“No. A homestay.”

* * *

One step on the thick, triple-padded heather-grey carpet of the foyer invited Lina to unzip her damp boots and pull her feet free of the tight black leather. She left her boots slumping against the wall near the front door before moving through a short entry hall that opened into a large, airy living room with a thirty-foot ceiling.

Her luggage had already been delivered by courier, and recently, judging by the droplets of melted snow dotting the sleek black dressage leather of her twin-wheeled garment bags. The tight huddle of T. Anthony bags sat unobtrusively at one end of the sofa, which Lina passed on her way to the wall of floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

In some ways, this homestay was as impersonal as the luxury hotel she’d abandoned in Boston. The furniture, a custom-designed collection by the look of its austere chrome lines and understated black leather, was tasteful, sparse and artistically arranged in the vast space. Fixtures strategically embedded in the ceiling mimicked natural light, which the overcast, wintry day kept hidden.

The view from the glass doors more than compensated for what the décor lacked in personality.

As she stared at a bare expanse of blue-gray Atlantic, Lina drew in a long breath. Like a sudden rush of wind through an old attic, Lina’s exhalation carried away all of the anxiety and tension that had settled in her chest. So occupied by the urgent e-mails she’d had to send from her laptop within the confines of the car Coyle-Wexler had arranged for her, she had noticed little of the scenery in the course of her forty-minute ride north of Boston. Upon exiting the car at a sprawling, gray-shingled building of contemporary design, she noticed a vaguely familiar sea-bite in the air, but she hadn’t been able to taste salt or hear the murmur of waves against the shore.

With the high ceilings above her and her toes burrowing into the soft warmth of the thick carpeting, she watched foam-edged waves rush against the shore in a futile attempt to batter an outcropping of pale rock. She slid open one of the doors. Leaning into a blast of frigid sea air, she inhaled, searing her lungs with the clean freshness of the water.

She stepped onto the wide planking of the rear deck and went to the wood railing, well out of the safety of the overhanging roof. The New England winter penetrated her thin wool suit and she crossed her arms over her chest, shivering, the toes of her right foot crossed over her left.

She felt as though she were standing on the very edge of the opposite side of the world. This shore wasn’t a thing like the coast in Darwin, where warmth, softness and green dominated. Cold air bit her nose and ears, and the butterscotch sand that stretched left and right as far as she could see was the only thing that broke the monotonous canvas of gray-blue sky and water
. Not a thing like Darwin,
she told herself,
but still beautiful in its own way.

Grudgingly admitting that her new surroundings were much better than the hotel, she stepped back into the warmth of the living room to explore her new accommodations.

She liked the tall, wide, glassed-in fireplace, which shared a wall with the formal dining room. The all-white kitchen was well stocked, and she took a bottled water with her when she left it to continue her tour.

The décor could use the warmth of a woman’s touch, but it was better than the false sense of home offered by the hotel. The furniture had clearly been chosen with care to match the oceanfront view and not with an eye toward an impressive display of wealth, although she knew that the sleek, museum-quality pieces had to be obscenely expensive.

Lina climbed the open staircase gracefully spiraling from the entry hall to the upper floor. She was pleased to discover that three bedrooms had full, spectacular views of the ocean, with the huge master bedroom having the best view of all with its wall of one-way glass.

She flopped backwards onto the king-sized bed, splashing a little of her water over the light grey duvet cover.

“Excellent recommendation, Jack,” she smiled to herself as she counted the blades of the motionless ceiling fan suspended high over her head. “I’ll have to think of a very special way to thank you.”

She rolled onto her stomach and watched the ocean pound the shore, and the forceful image gave her a few provocative ideas about exactly how to thank him. Like the ocean, her thoughts built in intensity, and they flooded her lower belly with phantom memories of the waves Jack had created within her on Darwin.

She’d missed him, plain and simple. She’d spent each day since his abrupt departure trying so hard not to think of him that she gave herself tension headaches that abated only when she let her memories of him wash over her. Despite her best efforts, she had failed in making herself hate him enough to forget him. And then seeing his shock and—annoyance?—in Wexler’s boardroom, when she’d revealed herself to be the very J.T. Marchand he’d sought on Darwin, well…that look had almost won her forgiveness.

But not quite.

She hopped off the bed and set her water on the gleaming onyx surface of a black dresser spanning half the length of one wall. The dresser shared a wall with a workstation complete with a computer, two printers, two telephones, a scanner, a fax machine and a paper shredder.

Facing the foot of the grand bed was a massive armoire that matched the dresser. An almost imperceptible seam marked the place where the doors opened, but for all her pressing, pulling and banging, Lina couldn’t open it. Glancing around, she spotted a streamlined black remote on one of the nightstands flanking the bed.

Scrambling across the bed on her hands and knees, she settled into the nest of pillows nearest the windowed wall before grabbing the remote control and pressing the
power
button. The doors of the armoire whispered apart, disappearing to reveal a full entertainment chamber with a giant, flat-screen television at its center. The television blipped on, tuned to CNN.

After experimenting with a few more buttons, she discovered the radio feature and managed to exchange the mind-numbing chatter of the television for the amusing noise of a local radio station. With Boy George and Culture Club crooning in the background, she resumed her investigation of the master bedroom.

The walk-in closet set between the dresser and workstation was straightforward, and she grasped a pair of black knobs to part the doors. They, too, were automated, and the mere touch sent the doors sliding into their hidden pockets. The overhead lights came on as well, fully illuminating the deep, wide space.

She stumbled back a step, surprised to see clothes already filling the closet. Business suits dominated, dangling from their shaped cedar hangers and organized into groups of black, navy and gray. Lina drew a suit from the nearest rack. It was tailored so well that the jacket maintained its shape even on the hanger.

Several items wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic caught Lina’s eye from the farthest end of the rack and seeded a thick lump in her chest. She rifled through the bagged items, recognizing each one. They were items she’d helped pick out on Darwin.

CHAPTER 10

Jack’s index finger spent one second hovering over the doorbell before he lowered it.
What the hell am I doing
, he asked himself before stepping up to the security console affixed to the doorframe.
This is my house. I don’t need permission to enter it. And it’s not as if she showed me the courtesy of knocking that first night she came to me on Darwin.

Despite his assertive reaffirmation of home ownership, Jack didn’t want to scare Lina with his sudden presence, so he hesitated once more before punching in the digits of his security code. He made a mental note to give Lina the code as well, so that she could come and go freely.

If she was still there, of course.

He’d had his secretary arrange for a car to bring her to Nahant, the pretty little rocky island he called home. It was close to Boston, the skyline of the chaotic city plainly visible from his rear deck even on cloudy days. But in all the ways that mattered most to him, Nahant was worlds away from Boston. He was certain that some of those ways mattered to Lina, and convinced that she’d be more comfortable on Nahant, he’d made sure that she ended up there.

Question was, had she remained…

There was only one way to find out, and he tapped the
enter
key. A quiet beep signaled the release of the front door locks, and Jack went into his house. Painful arrows of relief shot through his gut when he saw a sexy pair of women’s boots lazily resting against the wall. He forgot to unbutton his black cashmere overcoat in his haste to take it off, and an embarrassed blush warmed his cold-kissed cheeks as he tried to dial down his eagerness to see Lina. After hanging his coat in the foyer closet, he carried his briefcase into the kitchen, half hoping to find her there enjoying the dinner he’d had delivered to her.

The kitchen was empty. He set his briefcase on the deserted oval of the table in the breakfast nook and quickly crossed the living room to peek into the dining room. The stylized chandelier burned brightly, but the long glass table and twelve chrome chairs beneath it were empty. Cloaking his disappointment in logic, he told himself that it was late, that she’d probably already eaten and gone to bed, and he started for the stairs.

But then a flicker of light from the deck caught his eye, and his steps slowed as he changed direction and headed for the sliding glass doors.

* * *

Lina sat on the deck, bundled in a blanket from the waist down. One of Jack’s sweaters, a thick, hand-knitted charcoal-grey fisherman’s sweater she’d found in his closet, kept all the rest of her toasty.

Dinner, much to her surprise and delight, had been brought to her a little over an hour ago. Friendly and efficient deliverymen wearing white chef’s smocks under their parkas had delivered her dinner and laid the meal on the deck, at her request, although given the cold temperatures, they’d recommended she dine in the kitchen or the dining room. After explaining that she’d been shut up inside long enough, the men acceded to her wish, even lighting a votive candle for her that they’d found in Jack’s kitchen.

The men were Cape Verdean, and Lina had taken advantage of the chance to practice her Portuguese and the more difficult Caboverdiano.

“You are the most beautiful and most gracious woman to ever visit Mr. DeVoy,” one of the men had said before leaving, his smile a toothy flash of white against his bronze skin.

“
Ela é a
única
mulher para visitar Sr. DeVoy
,” his partner had added with a wink after accepting Lina’s generous tip.

Hmm
, Lina had thought with interest, translating his Portuguese in her head as she’d returned to the deck.
So they think that I’m the
only
woman to visit Jack’s home…

Her speculations regarding Jack’s past female houseguests vanished the instant she’d lifted the small silver dome concealing her first course. The savory scent of a thick, creamy soup tickled her nose and started her stomach grumbling.

“So this is New England’s famous clam chowder,” she muttered before gently blowing on her first spoonful. She’d barely eaten all day and couldn’t wait for the soup to properly cool before she shoved the first taste into her mouth. It was so good, she had moaned out loud as she’d tasted the plump, tender clams and the potatoes that melted on her tongue.

She’d made quick work of the chowder before uncovering her second course. The tantalizing aroma of crab-and-breadcrumb stuffed shrimp piqued her appetite anew, and she’d taken up her cutlery for a hearty first bite. Crispy on the outside, succulent and spicy on the inside, the sweetness of the shrimp and crab was heightened by the buttery goodness of the breadcrumbs, and almost had her writhing in her cushioned chair. She ditched her knife and fork to eat it with her hands, after which she’d toasted the brilliance of the unknown chef with the cold Sam Adams lager her traveling wait staff had opened for her.

She’d next sampled the Tuscan bread, its crispy crust leaving crumbs on the front of Jack’s sweater. The bread was heavenly, almost as good as Levora’s best sourdough. She’d noted its characteristics, the satiny, moist interior with its big air bubbles and the sweet tang of its sourdough flavor, to take back to Levora.

The beer had nicely complemented the meal, rounding out all the flavors, including those of her final course, a salad of fresh, ripe pear slices, crumbled gorgonzola and toasted spiced walnuts atop a nest of frisée and arugula. A light drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette had made the salad one of best she’d ever had.

In a haze of culinary satisfaction, she’d curled up in her chair with her beer and her blanket, one forearm lazily draped over her full belly. Even now, as she gazed upon the darkened sea, she again wondered how to go about thanking Jack, this time for the wonderful meal. A growing and insistent part of her regretted that he hadn’t been there to share it with her.

She lifted the votive and watched the tiny flame fight for life against the swirl of the wind off the water. It wasn’t her birthday, but she didn’t think it out of order to make a wish as she blew out the candle. Focusing all of her concentration on the object of her wish, she pursed her lips and aimed a quick, hard breath at the guttering flame.

The glass door behind her slid open with a soft whoosh. With the smoky spirit of her dying wish still twisting into the air, she set the votive holder back down on the table and turned to see Jack.
Oh heavens, it works,
she thought in amazement.

Silent and unsmiling, he sidestepped her, remaining well out of reach. He stopped at the railing, propping both hands on it as he leaned into the night.

Lina wanted to say something to him, but she couldn’t work a greeting past the emotion paralyzing her vocal chords. His presence reawakened the strong feelings of exhilaration and terror she’d first felt upon realizing that she was in his house. That she was now on
his
island.

She quietly cleared her throat. “This isn’t a homestay. It’s a home. Yours.”

He meant to keep his eyes on the water. It was his habit to come home after his eighteen-hour days in Boston and allow the ocean to medicate him. Watching the hypnotic movement of the water, listening to its unique symphony…it was better than antidepressants, better than booze, better than anything. Except, he now realized, the sexy allure of Lina’s throaty rasp.

“Dinner was quite delicious,” she said.

He finally turned halfway, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the corner of the railing.

“And this…” She lifted her Sam Adams and gently swirled the last inch of liquid in the bottle. “It’s very nearly as good as Darwin’s mint tea.”

Lina wondered how long he’d been home before he’d ventured onto the deck. He was still wearing the suit she’d seen him in that morning at the Coyle-Wexler offices, but now his tie was gone and his hair was slightly spiky in front, as though he’d been scrubbing his hand through it.

“I like your outfit,” she said.

Jack clamped his jaw to suppress a smile. She was throwing his first words to her back at him.

“Is it an Oxxford?” With no response from him, she answered herself. “It must be. No one else designs such an attractive silhouette. Personally, I’ve always believed that it’s the man that makes the suit, and not the suit that makes the man.”

The clouds had cleared to display a fat pearl moon. Jack looked away from Lina, hoping that the moon’s light wouldn’t reveal the blush creeping from his collar. His three-thousand dollar suit was indeed an Oxxford. Reginald Wexler had recommended the Chicago-based company years ago, on Jack’s first day at Coyle-Wexler, when he’d shown up for his first meeting in the worsted wool suit he’d worn to his law school graduation, a suit his mother had purchased on sale at the venerable Filene’s Basement “for a steal” at ninety-nine bucks.

“Do you speak English?” Lina asked, reclaiming Jack’s attention in time for him to see her bring the rim of the beer bottle to her lower lip.

A sly smile fought its way through Jack’s determination to remain impassive.

“
¿Usted habla español?
” she asked.

He watched the tip of her tongue taste the rim of the bottle, and a short, choppy exhalation slipped from his parted lips. She set the bottle on the table, tilted her head, and thrust the fingers of both hands into her hair, smoothing the glimmering fall of darkness from her face. His sweater seemed to have swallowed her whole, the sleeves bunching at her elbows and coming down over her hands. But as she moved her head, enough of her neck was exposed to make Jack forget about the frigid night air at his back and instead worry about the mounting heat situated behind the zipper of his overpriced trousers.

Guiding her hair over one shoulder, she gave him a smile that wrapped around his heart and gave it a fearsome squeeze. “
Je parle français.
” she uttered softly. “
Et vous?
”

Jack wanted to slap himself, hoping that it would help him resist the sorcery of hearing his owns words spoken by Lina. They had started the day as adversaries and had now come full circle back to where they’d been on Darwin. With the tension in his trousers rapidly becoming a yearning pain, Jack realized that whether they were on Darwin in the South Pacific, or on Nahant in the Atlantic, there was no place he’d rather be than with Lina.

Laughing lightly to himself, he bowed his head and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“
Avete una risata bella
,” Lina said, complimenting his laugh in the language she saved for the most special occasions, and in so doing, she closed the coffin on Jack’s free will. She pushed back her chair and drew aside the blanket, which Jack recognized as part of a set from one of the never-used spare rooms. She stood, and Jack hoped that she would come to him just as she had on Darwin, exactly as she had on Darwin.

His chest sank into his stomach when she stepped toward the deck doors, but it merrily bounced back in place once the table no longer obscured her lower half. His sweater was too big for her, and it exposed the supple lengths of her bare legs as she circled around the table. She opened the deck doors and climbed the single step leading into the living room, giving Jack a teasing glimpse of her bare bottom in the process.

A few steps into the living room, she turned. “I want to kiss you, but I don’t know how to ask you.”

Jack made a vague note to thank her for leaving the door open, which spared him crashing through the tempered, polarized glass to get to her. Breathing hard, he quickly closed the short distance between them, clasped his hands to the small of her back and the back of her head, and he brought his mouth hard upon hers. Like one of the tropical vines of Darwin, she wrapped herself around him and eagerly returned his kisses.

One easy motion robbed her of the sweater, leaving her fully exposed to the cold air rushing through the open deck door and the heat generated by Jack’s touch. He kept silent, his eyes communicating with her in a common language older than speech as he tore off his jacket and allowed Lina to help him strip away the rest of his suit.

Right there on the cushiony carpet, he reacquainted himself with every inch of her as she learned anew the secret, intimate responses of his body. Through touch they expressed how much they had missed each other, how eager they were to relive the moments they had spent together on Darwin. Neither spoke, not even after they were joined at the hands, heart and hips and climbing beyond frustrated need, voracious want, even blind lust.

Consumed by her inside and out, Jack stifled a cry in her neck when he could no longer hold off the inevitable climax that would join them completely even as it ripped them apart. Lina rode the wave with him, a sharp, desperate cry climbing from her throat as her fingertips burrowed into the hard meat of his shoulders.

Jack caught her cries with hard kisses that softened as they floated back to the place where cold ocean air tickled their bare skin. Without completely leaving her, Jack dragged his suit coat over her to give her a measure of protection against the cold.

There was so much he wanted to say to her, things that only just now seemed to have occurred to him, but he couldn’t find the words to articulate them. ‘I love you’ just wasn’t big enough, not when he was so unsure about the depth of her feelings for him.

Lina lost herself in his eyes as he gazed upon her between kissing her nose and lips and tickling her with a lock of her own hair. He had taken her to paradise with a quiet urgency unlike their couplings on Darwin. Something had happened to him, or
was
happening to him, and all she could do was hope that it was the same thing that had happened to her…the complete and irretrievable loss of her heart.

Jack noticed the subtle change in her expression and chose that moment to ask, “Are you going to stay here? With me?”

“I’d like to, yes.” She was certain that his question, and her answer, were fraught with more meaning than he realized.

“You’ll have a car at your disposal, 24/7. The commute really isn’t bad between Nahant and Boston, but then again, I usually leave for the office at six and don’t get home until nine or so. You’ll be very comfortable at C-W. I’ll make sure that you get an office with a view of the harbor. The trials on the tea will be over before you know it, and in the meantime we can keep trying to hammer out a package agreeable to you and C-W, if the trials fail to yield the desired results. Now, what was the name of that biotech firm in France? I’m wondering if they’d be willing to share their science with Coyle-Wexler. There might be something use—”