Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (6 page)

Ahead of them, a group of people spilled out onto the sidewalk from a neon-lit doorway. “How about here?” he said.

He thought he might be becoming more sensitive to others’ emotions when he recognized a whole raft of them flitting across Karma’s mobile features. Confusion, distrust, sheer terror—not to mention a brief blip of yearning over-laid with what he thought might be desire. But desire for what? For a beer? For his company? For more, even, than that?

“We can stop for a drink,” she said. “I don’t want to be out late, that’s all.”

He took her elbow, and she tensed as if she might shake his hand loose although she did not. They made their way into the club, where hot salsa music accompanied scantily clad bodies gyrating on a minuscule dance floor. Karma slid into a booth, and he slid in beside her.

“How do you know so much about all this chakra stuff, anyway?” he asked her after they’d ordered drinks.

She smiled at the waiter as he slid her glass of white wine toward her. “I guess you could say I was born into
the territory. My parents met on a commune in the late sixties. My sisters and I were raised on soybeans, sprouts, tofu and a lot of other things that you’ve probably never heard of. Chakras, yoga, the freedom to be you and me, and so on. Commune life ended when we all had to go to school and they moved us to Connecticut where my father got a job in an aircraft factory.”

“That sounds normal enough,” he allowed.

“Oh, but there’s more. Life in suburbia was modified by my parents’ history. Jewish woman married to an Irish Catholic and spending their marriage’s first years grubbing around in an organic garden equals not just your ordinary family.”

“Are your sisters like you? Do they have unusual names like yours?”

“My oldest sister is named Azure, the youngest one is Isis, and the middle one is Mary Beth.”

“Karma, Azure, Isis, and Mary Beth?” he said, smothering a chuckle at the incongruity of it.

Karma picked up on his amusement. “Go ahead. Laugh if you want to. We’re used to it.”

“Where did the Mary Beth come from?”

“Mary Beth was named after the midwife who rode five miles on a snowmobile to deliver her. Consequently, Mary Beth has always considered herself lucky that she was born in the middle of the worst winter storm to hit upstate New York in twenty-three years.”

“Are
their occupations as interesting as yours?”

“Isis is married to a dentist and they’re raising his three sons by his first wife, all model students and soccer enthusiasts. Azure is a management consultant based in Boston. Mary Beth is a rabbi. I love to ride by her synagogue and see ‘Mary Beth O’Connor, Assistant Rabbi’ on the sign outside. I imagine that the unexpected juxtaposition of our Irish surname to the title of assistant rabbi merits a few second glances from passersby.” Karma grinned.

Slade laughed. He couldn’t help but be charmed by this woman with her tumultuous hair, offbeat personality, and unusual background. It occurred to him that he hadn’t met an interesting woman in ages. Years. It was why he had come to Miami Beach. It was why he had signed up with a dating service.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’d say we’ve pretty much covered that during the interview.”

“Not about your childhood. Or your family,” she pointed out.

Slade took a sip of his beer before answering. “Grew up in Okeechobee City, went to college, worked the rodeo circuit for a while and eventually came back to run the family ranch. My dad is ready to retire from ranching. He and Ma can’t wait until I come home with my fiancée so they can do some traveling.”

“This fiancée you hope to find,” Karma said carefully. “Do your parents have right of refusal? I mean, what if they don’t like her?”

“They’ll like anybody who decides to put up with me. They’re so eager for a daughter-in-law that they’d accept the bride of Frankenstein if she’d marry me.”

“I hope I can do better for you than that,” Karma said seriously.

He was about to say, I hope you can, too. However, he looked at Karma, really looked at her in that moment, and something in her expression made him bite back the words. He thought she looked regretful, even a trifle upset.

“Now about the way I move,” he said after they had watched the dancers for several minutes. “Why don’t you let me show you that I know how?”

She regarded him with a puzzled expression. “Excuse me?”

“Let’s
dance. In the interest of freeing up my chakra, of course.”

“Don’t make fun of it,” Karma said sharply. “If you don’t believe in the theory, fine. Lots of people do, that’s all.”

“I guess I need to know more about it before I make up my mind. But for now, what about dancing?”

Karma bit her lip. “Well,” she said. “I was thinking it was time for me to go home.”

“You won’t turn into a pumpkin, Cinderella. Humor me.”

“Any reason why I should? You’re my client. I’m not supposed to—”

“But that’s exactly the point. I
am
your client.”

“I should be finding the perfect date for you. I shouldn’t be out having a good time and forgetting that this is a business relationship.” She seemed troubled.

“Are you having a good time, Karma?” he asked softly, letting the words sink in. Because I am, too. I’d have a better time if you’d dance with me.”

After a moment’s hesitation during which Karma seemed to weigh the pros and cons, the pros must have won out. She got up and Slade followed her onto the crowded dance floor. No sooner did they get there than the song that was playing stopped and segued into a smooth ballad.

He took her in his arms, liking the solid feel of her, liking the way she melted into him. She was lighter on her feet than he would have expected, and he led her to the center of the floor where lights from a revolving glass ball overhead played across her features.

“So, Karma, tell me—do I move all right?” he asked after they’d been at it for a few minutes. He was teasing her to see what she’d say.

He expected a saucy retort, maybe a challenge. But she surprised him. “Oh, yes,” she murmured.

“So do
you. But in case I don’t express myself enough to bring my most repressed feelings out into the open, what should I do?”

“Our previous discussions make me suspect that this is an insincere question.”

“Insincere is as insincere does,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I asked for advice, and if I take it, you’ll know that I’m far more interested than I’ve let on.”

“This is a verbal sparring contest.”

He tightened his arm around her waist. “At the moment, it’s more physical than verbal as far as I’m concerned.”

“Yikes,” was Karma’s inelegant remark. “Double yikes.”

“So?”

“Well, if you really want to do something about movement and gain a little inner peace as well, you could try yoga, like I mentioned before.”

“And where would I learn this yoga?”

“We hold yoga classes on the roof at the Blue Moon on Tuesday nights. Eight o’clock sharp.” She spoke with a breathy little hitch in her voice that he found unbelievably sexy.

He pulled her even closer, felt her breasts pushing against his chest. “And you will be there, I suppose.”

“I suppose. I mean, definitely. Unless I have something else to do.”

What would this woman do in her spare time? he wondered. Make tofu-cilantro goodies such as the ones she’d lost at the bottom of the bay along with her bicycle? Hang out with Goldy in the lobby of the Blue Moon? Go on a date?

It occurred to him that Karma O’Connor might have a boyfriend. Or worse. She might be engaged. If she ran a dating service, she could have her pick of clients.

“You’re not taken or anything, are you?” he demanded out of the clear blue, surprising himself as well as her.

“Taken?” She
moved away and blinked at him. He noticed that her eyelashes were curly and long.

“As in going steady. Or engaged. Or something,” he said, stammering around and feeling stupid.

“No.” She moved closer now, tightening her arm across his shoulders. This gave Slade an exultant feeling that he would have been hard put to describe. He knew she wasn’t his type. But he also knew that he might have a chance to get lucky for tonight. Or maybe the next few nights, if he played this right.

Not that it was only sex he was interested in. He wanted to know what made Karma O’Connor tick. He wanted to know why she thought the way she did, why she danced with her eyes closed. He wanted to know why she was running a place called Rent-a-Yenta and what she’d done before that. He wanted to know—

“You could come tomorrow night.”

He had to think for a few seconds to put this statement in its proper context. “To yoga class, you mean.”

“Yes, it would be good for you.”

“If I promise to be there, will you leave here with me now?” he said, sounding more urgent than he intended.

“And where would we go?” she asked. In another woman, this might have sounded coy, but he didn’t think Karma was capable of coyness.

“Somewhere away from the music, the smoke and other people. A walk on the beach, maybe.”

“You like walking on the beach?”

“I think so. I haven’t had many chances to do it.” Well, there was last night, but he’d rather forget that whole fiasco.

“It’s another way to bring movement into your life. Okay, you’re on.”

They broke
apart, and Slade felt a pang of regret for the fact that he no longer held Karma in his arms. Watching the way she moved as they traversed the area between the dance floor and the door was some compensation, however, and putting his arm around her once they were outside on the sidewalk was even more.

They had turned to walk down the street toward the beach when he caught a glimpse of red hair sprouting from a knot on top of a head. The woman under the hair was on her way into the club that they had recently left, and it wasn’t just any woman. It was, he realized with a sinking heart, the woman he’d met last night, the one who had accompanied the men he was with into the alley as they tried to rob him. The woman whose bikini top had ended up in his pocket.

There are certain moments in life that you can see coming from a distance away, and when that happens, the best thing to do is avoid them at all costs. And he didn’t want to meet up with this redhead, whose name, he recalled, was Brenda.

But it was too late. Brenda had already seen him. Not that he was all that inconspicuous, as tall as he was and with the flamboyant Karma O’Connor on his arm.

“You!” Brenda shouted. “Come back here!”

“Looks to me like we’d better get out of here,” he muttered close to Karma’s ear. Fortunately at that moment a bunch of men wearing red fezzes on their heads tumbled out of a charter bus between him and Brenda, who let out a squawk of outrage.

Karma craned her neck. He had no doubt that she could see over the heads of the men in the red hats.

“That woman,” she said. “Is she trying to talk to you?” Brenda hollered something, the words indistinct.

“I think so,” Slade said. “We’d better run for it.”

He hadn’t anticipated the effect these words would have on Karma. Instead of agreeing with him, or better yet putting one foot in front of the other as fast as could be managed, she dug in her heels and said, “Why?”

“Because
that woman and her companions tried to rob me last night. Because I decked the two guys, and she went off screaming down an alley.”

Karma narrowed her eyes. “What preceded this? I mean, why would you—”

Yesterday replayed itself in Slade’s memory. Plenty had happened, but there was no way he could explain it to Karma in the few moments remaining before Brenda clawed and climbed her way over the wedge of men who were still good-timing their way out of that bus.

“It was a matter of survival,” he said. “Let’s go!”

Karma was not to be hustled, however, and to his horror, he saw four of the men lifting Brenda up and passing her over their heads until she was gently set down on the other side of their still-moving line.

Brenda let out a little “Yow!” of triumph and bounced toward them. “Slade! Isn’t that your name?” she said, sparing a quick assessment of Karma, who stood mutely at his side.

Slade tried to edge away, but Karma was firmly rooted in place. She was staring at Brenda’s chest, which was a fine example of silicone art at its worst.

“You have my bikini top,” Brenda said without further preamble. “I want it back.”

“I don’t—”

“You do! You grabbed it up off the floor when I was dancing! I saw you!”

“But—”

“Hef gave it to me as a token of his esteem when I was Playmate of the Month!” Brenda was getting decidedly red in the face, almost as red as Slade remembered the disputed bikini top to be.

“Slade, is any of this true?” said Karma through tight lips.

“Some of it,” he admitted.

“Great. I’ve just signed up a pervert at Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma muttered under her breath, but at least his admission did what he hadn’t been able to do. It got Karma moving.
She set off down the sidewalk at a pace that could only be described as rapid.

Slade turned to face Brenda, thinking that he might be able to talk her into being reasonable. “Your swimsuit top is at the houseboat. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.”

“No,” said Brenda, stubbornness flaring in her eyes. “I want it now.”

“Tomorrow. No problem,” he said, backing away as placatingly as he could.

“Now! We’re going there right away! If you think I’m going to let you keep any article of my clothing for any length of time, you’re nuts. After what you did to my friends—”

“They deserved it,” he told her. “They tried to take my wallet.”

“I don’t care,” Brenda said, on the verge, he was sure, of another tirade or maybe hysterics from the look of her. But then fate intervened in the form of a very large woman walking a very large and very hairy dog, which began to sniff around Brenda’s feet in the way that dogs checked out fireplugs.

Uh-oh, thought Slade as the dog lifted its leg and Brenda curdled the air around them with a high-pitched scream. The dog panicked at the sound of Brenda’s ungodly shriek, and it began to run around in circles. The woman yanked on the leash and yelled, “Heel! Heel!” Brenda kept on screaming. And he, Slade, made tracks.