Flawless Danger (The Spencer & Sione #1) (8 page)

It was a bizarre world in which faceless beings seemed to head back toward what they were walking away from, never making any progress, trapped in an endless cycle of moving back and forward, heading toward nothing.

Stan Ignacio, Belize

Belizean Banyan Resort – Manager’s Office

“Where the hell is my package?”

Sione looked up from the financial reports he was reviewing.

Ms. Edwards stomped into his office and over to his desk. She was frowning and looking damn good in khaki shorts, showing off slender, toned legs, and a tank top with thin straps and a dangerous plunge in the neckline, showing off very enticing cleavage.

Behind Ms. Edwards, in more modest attire—a long skirt and matching blazer—stood his secretary, Marie, frustrated and flustered.

“Did you hear me?” Ms. Edwards scowled. “Where is my package? The front desk called me and said you had it. Where is it?”

“Mr. Tuiali’i, I’m sorry.” Marie shook her head, giving Ms. Edwards the evil eye. “Analee told Ms. Edwards you didn’t want to be disturbed, and she offered to get the package for her if—”

“Analee couldn’t manage to get my reservation right,” Spencer snapped, giving Marie a stink eye of her own. “You think I trust her to deliver a package to me? She’d probably drop it and break it!”

The women went head to head for a few moments until Sione told Marie he would handle it. After a few more distrustful glances, Marie left the office.

Sione moved from behind the desk and went to close the door. Sighing, trying to prepare himself, he turned to Ms. Edwards, who seemed to have gotten prettier in the last few seconds.

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded. “Give me my damn package!”

He stared at her. Was Analee right? Was Spencer Edwards some kind of bitch-and-a-half? Did the woman have some pathological need to be abrasive and contrary? If so, how had she gotten that way? What had happened in her life to convince her she had to be so fierce? And why the hell would he care?

Still, her willful belligerence was irritating. And yet, her sultry abrasiveness rubbed him the wrong way in all the right spots. Or maybe it rubbed him the right way in all the wrong spots. He didn’t know.

“Why don’t you take a seat.” He grabbed one of the chairs sitting in front of the bookshelf in the corner and pulled it closer to the desk, so she could sit. “And I’ll get the package.”

After retrieving the box from the corner, Sione brought it to the desk and sat it on top of the payroll timesheets he’d printed out. The cardboard banker’s box had been delivered that morning to the administration building with no clear indication of the intended recipient.

His secretary Marie had signed for the package and thought it might have been something they’d ordered for one of the casitas—maybe a vase or a lamp. With no other identifying marks on the banker’s box, Sione decided to open the box. An invoice, whether itemized or hand-written, could solve the mystery. When he lifted the lid, what he found was worrisome and disturbing. Beneath the contents of the box, he’d found a crumpled piece of grease-stained paper. The message written across it left him more confused.

“You know, if you’re going to get packages,” he said, sitting on the corner of the desk. “You should let the front desk know, and they’ll deliver them to your casita.”

“Well, I didn’t know the box was coming.”

“You didn’t?” Sione frowned, acutely aware that from his position, he had a tantalizing view of her breasts, heaving against the neckline, and her smooth legs, the left crossed over the right. A tantalizing view that was acutely arousing.

“I mean, I didn’t know when it was coming,” she amended.

A bit too quickly, he noted.

“I wasn’t expecting it to come so soon,” she went on. “I thought it would be here later this week.”

Sione moved back behind his desk, where any wayward evidence of his excitement, should there be any, would go unnoticed, hopefully. An erection would be irrevocably inappropriate, and he had a feeling Spencer Edwards would not be flattered.

He took a deep breath and asked, “So, you were expecting it?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What?”

“Yes, I was expecting the box, but it’s not something I really wanted,” she said, again with the quick, breathless tone.

“Why not?” he asked, thinking of the contents, wondering why Ms. Edwards didn’t want what she had been expecting.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Standing, she grabbed the box by the cut-out handles, and picked it up.

Again, thinking of the contents, Sione figured he probably wouldn’t understand, so he decided not to push the issue and instead asked, “You need help taking the box back to your casita?”

“No, I think I can manage to—wait a minute,” she said. “Are you sure this box is for me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“There’s no address label on it.”

“Well, the note said, ‘Please deliver to Spencer Edwards.’”

She glared at him. “What note?”

“The, uh …” He stopped, struggling to think of a lie, and then blurted out, “The note that was on the bottom of the box.”

“There was a note on the bottom of the box?” She raised the box to peek beneath it.
 

“It wasn’t a shipping label,” he said. “It was just a piece of paper taped to the bottom of the box.”

She stared at him for a moment and then said, “Are you sure you didn’t open this box?”

“I didn’t open the box.”

“You better not have,” she said.

“Ms. Edwards, I want you to know—” Sione stopped, his train of thought lost as he stared at her.

He’d seen beautiful women before, some even prettier than Ms. Edwards, but something about her grabbed him by the throat and shook him. And not in a good way. But not in a bad way either.

“You want me to know what?” she asked, and he would have bet money that any second, her nipples would escape the confines of her tank.

“The privacy of my guests is extremely important to me,” he assured her, or tried to, but he had the feeling she wasn’t in the mood to be reassured. “I would never intentionally, or accidentally, go through your box without your permission.”

Rolling her eyes, she pivoted and walked toward the door, which Sione absolutely enjoyed watching her do. Crossing the threshold, she looked over her shoulder, gave him a sassy, mischievous gaze, and then she was gone.

San Ignacio, Belize

Belizean Banyan Resort - Honeymoon Casita

Back at her casita, Spencer put the banker’s box on the kitchen table and then went to the bedroom to take off the shorts that were way too short and the tank top that barely contained her breasts.

Changing into a University of Houston T-shirt and yoga pants, she thought about the encounter with the resort owner, wondering if she had blown her chance to get close to him. Their meeting this afternoon hadn’t been part of her grand scheme.

When the front desk called about the package, she had to scramble to come up with a game plan, knowing she couldn’t miss the opportunity to see him; hence, the slutty clothes.

Letting it all hang out for the resort owner’s viewing pleasure irritated her, but she’d had to start laying the groundwork for
Step Two
, which meant she had to first figure out if he was even attracted to her. If he had a fetish for redheads or skinny girls with flat asses, she would be finished before she started.

Had the abundance of cleavage and the hourglass curves turned him on or not? Spencer wasn’t sure. It was too soon to tell. His hazel gaze was hypnotic but hard to fathom.

She thought she might have caught him looking at her boobs, but she wouldn’t swear to that, even though she’d had them on permanent display and had made an effort to lean forward provocatively every chance she could.

She might have been too provocative though. There was a fine line between desirability and desperation. She might have crossed it.

Returning to the kitchen, Spencer made a beeline for the refrigerator, opened it, and grabbed a bottle of complimentary Pinot Grigio. Spencer opened the wine and wondered if she should have engaged in a bit of double entendre instead. She could have planted a suggestion in his mind and made him think he wanted her.

It could be an effective trick, but you had to be careful. A double entendre required sexualizing a seemingly innocent word or phrase. Sometimes, you could end up sounding more corny than salaciously clever. Spencer sighed and took a glass from the overhead cabinet.

Things were always easier with older guys. They were half-demented and enjoyed the silly pseudo-sexual back and forth banter. Young guys didn’t get it, or if they did get it, they weren’t savvy enough to know how to respond.

Anyway. Whatever.

Maybe the revealing tank top had worked, after all. Cleavage and hard nipples, a winning combination. The one-two punch. Knocked ‘em out every time, Rae had told her. It would be nice not to have to rely on a double-D push-up bra, but Ben didn’t expect her to entice Sione Tuiali’i with her personality, intelligence, and charitable demeanor. Beauty and charm, those were the tricks of her trade.

She’d gone to college and received a degree in marketing. But, her education didn’t matter. What mattered was the way she looked. All Ben wanted her to be was what she was—gorgeous and sexy.

She swallowed the wine in a few gulps and then opened the banker’s box. Staring at the contents, she rolled her eyes. “What the hell?”

Two hours later, lounging on the couch, Spencer was still talking to her sisters, Rae and Shady, on a three-way connection. They’d been on the phone for the past hour and a half, which was how long it had taken Spencer to catch them up on everything from her arrival in Belize to the moment when she’d raised the lid off the banker’s box.

“Xanax,” Spencer said, reaching for the wine bottle she’d put on the coffee table.

“Xanax?” Rae asked.

“Like the pills for depression?” Shady asked.

“No, not depression. Anxiety,” she said and then explained how she had opened the box, not knowing what to expect, and had been shocked to find three boxes of Xanax. “But it wasn’t really Xanax in those boxes.”

“So, what was really in the boxes of Xanax?” Shady asked.

Spencer told them, her chest tightening as she recounted how she’d opened one of the boxes of anti-anxiety pills and discovered what was really inside.

“Girl, are you serious?” Rae asked. “He used boxes of Xanax to hide—”

“Yes, that’s exactly what he did,” Spencer said, taking a sip of wine from the bottle. “I couldn’t believe it. But I guess I should have.”

“You think he wants you to deliver it?” Shady asked.

“Of course, he wants her to deliver it,” Rae said. “Shady, don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Why was that a stupid question?” Shady asked.

“She told you what was really in the box,” Rae said. “What else would she have to do but deliver it?”

“Y’all forget about Ben for a second,” Spencer said, intervening so they wouldn’t get into a screaming match and hang up before she could discuss what she needed to talk to them about. “What about the resort owner?”

“Do you mean Mr. Got-You-All-Hot-and-Bothered?” Rae asked.

“Mr. Hypnotic-Hazel-Eyes?” Shady joined in.

Spencer took another swig of wine. She wished she’d never told them how good-looking the resort owner was, but they had asked and she’d been honest. When they got bored with the childish teasing, Spencer said, “Y’all think Sione Tuiali’i lied to me? You think he really did open the box?”

“If he did open the box, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Shady said. “Because all he saw was prescription medication.”

“And all he would think is that you’re a neurotic psycho bitch,” Rae said.

Sighing, Spencer said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

After hanging up with Rae and Shady, Spencer went into the bedroom, took the burner phone from her Birkin, and called Ben. When he answered, she bristled. The island lilt, once so enticing, now irritated the hell out of her.

“I got the box,” she said. “Now what?”

Ben gave her the instructions, made her repeat them back to him—twice—and then he said, “You understand what I need you to do?”

“Yes, I understand,” she said, pacing across the bedroom. “I’m not stupid.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, because they weren’t true. She was stupid. Stupid for talking to Ben when he’d sat next to her on the bench in front of the reflecting pool. Stupid for wasting two months of her life with him. Stupid for thinking she was falling in love with him. Stupid for being so afraid to fall in love with him that she’d panicked and made the worst mistake of her life.

Her stupid feelings were to blame for her stupid decision to “date” Ben. And now she felt even more stupid because maybe she hadn’t been falling in love. Maybe she’d just been infatuated because he took her to nice places and pretended to care about her and made her think he was falling for her, too.

“We need to talk about this damn side venture,” she said, pushing the troubling thoughts away. “I thought you said I wouldn’t have to do anything criminal?”

“I said the favor wouldn’t involve anything criminal,” Ben said. “The package I sent you isn’t the favor. Remember, sweet girl, I said it was a side venture.”

“A side venture that could get me in a lot of trouble,” she said, her voice shaking despite her efforts to keep her tone even and not betray the anger and fear churning within her. “But maybe that’s what you planned. Maybe there really is no favor. Maybe you forced me to come to Belize to do this side venture so you can have me arrested.”

“Sweet girl, I really wish you didn’t have to do this favor for me,” Ben said. “I never wanted you to be in the position where you would have to owe me.”

“Ben, I don’t have to be in this position,” she said, ashamed at the desperation creeping into her tone. “You can forgive me. I am sorry for what I did. It was a stupid mistake and if I could go back—”

“If you could go back, what would you do differently?” he asked, the edge in his voice scaring her. “You wouldn’t leave me bleeding on the floor? You wouldn’t stab me?”