The Island Of Alphas: A BBW Paranormal Romance (4 page)

She shrugged and took a sip of coffee, seeming like she wasn't going to continue.

I set my own coffee mug back on the island. "But, what? You don't think all the fertility problems on the island are solvable? You don't think yours are?"

She shrugged, sighing. "Honestly, it doesn’t matter what I think. You're the specialist, and it's up to you to determine for yourself if you think the fertility problems on the island are solvable. And that's probably all I should say."

Before I could  ask any more questions, she changed the subject, asking me what I thought about Eric. Spearing a bite of scrambled egg, she glanced up at me with her green eyes twinkling. "He's single, you know."

With a little heat rising to my face, I said I knew. "He's essentially my employer, though, so I'm considering him very off-limits. I plan to be nothing but professional around him at all times."

Laura looked up at me with her eyes twinkling. "Well...let me say that I'm a very happily married woman, satisfied with my husband in all possible ways. But I'm also not blind. Eric is a very attractive man, to say the least. So...good luck with all that acting 'professional around him at all times' stuff. If I were single like you, I'm not sure if I myself could do it. And...well, just judging by a few things he said about you...I don't think Eric
wants
you to remain strictly 'professional around him at all times.'"

I suddenly coughed, nearly choking on a bite of starfruit. "What did he say?"

Laura grinned, laughing a little. "Oh, just a few little things to the effect of that he thinks you're a beautiful woman. He might have mentioned something about your 'ocean blue eyes.' I think he was more than a bit captivated by them. So, if you ever do feel like interacting with Eric on a level other than a professional one, I don't think he'd be opposed. Although...." With her expression becoming more serious, Laura set her fork down. "I feel like I should warn you about something. Something relating to Eric's sex life."

*

When Laura said the words
Eric's sex life
, I half-choked on another piece of starfruit for the second time.

I coughed a bit, then took a sip of coffee to get the piece to go down. "What, um...what exactly do you have to warn me about? And what does it have to do with Eric's sex life?"

With just the hint of a smile curving her pale pink mouth, Laura coughed lightly.

"Well, I guess what I have to warn you about is more about the
fallout
from his sex life. See, over the years here on the island, he's had a couple of serious girlfriends, though none he's ever seemed to have a very strong love connection with. I happen to know some of the particulars of these relationships because Matt, my husband, is Eric's best friend.

“But, anyway, Eric's had three serious girlfriends over the years, and though
he
never seemed to have a true love connection with any of them, the three women themselves seemed to develop some pretty strong feelings for
him
. I'm sure these feelings were partly love feelings, but from what I heard...well, I'll try to be as tactful as possible about this. I'll just say that from what I heard, all three women developed some pretty strong feelings of addiction."

"'Addiction?'"

"Addiction. Ad
dic
tion, to be very crude about it. And, yes, I did just mean to emphasize a syllable that is also a slang term for a part of the male anatomy. Eric's three girlfriends all seemed to become addicted to that part. Apparently, Eric is very well-endowed, and very good in bed."

I let this sink in for a moment, my face flaming for some reason.

With her green eyes holding a bit of twinkle, Laura continued. "Anyway. So, after each breakup, however many years apart, all of them instigated by Eric, the women didn't take things very well, being that they were each, as I said, quite addicted by the time of their different breakups.

“It's always been the same, each time. Eric calls things off; the woman kind of goes nuts, and stalks him, and threatens him, and begs for him to take her back, and generally causes trouble. Eventually, after repeated chances to live in peace, Eric asks her to move to a different part of the island. And not so much as
asks
, really, but
commands
.

“Being that he's our leader, he's obeyed. So, over the past however many years, he's 'asked' three different women to move to different parts of the island, and they each have. See, little sidebar here, there's really four inhabited sections of the island. There's the east side, where our little village, Clearwater, is here, then there are similar inhabited villages of a couple hundred people each, with their own leaders, in the west, north, and south sections of the island.

The island is really somewhat of a big diamond shape, maybe ten miles by ten miles across at the very blunted points, so you can think of the four little villages each getting their own 'point,' so to speak. And as far as the middle of the 'diamond,' well, nobody gets that part, because the most inland area of the island contains the lake, which we don't go near, as I'm sure Eric has already told you."

I nodded, picking up my coffee. "He has."

I was still a bit confused about the dark lake the island was named after, confused about its supposed currents, specifically, and I planned to ask Laura more about them. But not right then. I was still waiting for her to get to whatever she wanted to warn me about in regards to Eric's former flames.

After a long drink of coffee, she continued. "So, three former girlfriends have moved away from Clearwater, to different villages on the island. Two of them seemed to acclimate and move on fairly fine. But the third...Eric's most recent girlfriend from a couple years back...well, she doesn't seem to be completely over him.

“She lives in the village to the north of us, but she's still allowed to come back here to visit because she has a sister here. And when she does...oh, boy. The longing looks she gives Eric whenever she catches sight of him...and the dirty looks she gives to any woman who Eric has so much as smiled at or shared a meal with since she's been gone.

“Clearly, she's still not over him. Her addiction was pretty strong. Her name is Layla, and just so you can recognize her if she ever approaches you, she has dark hair and eyes, pretty attractive, I'll admit, and she's kind of on the shorter side, like you. Hopefully, she'll make her visits to her sister in peace, and she'll leave you alone. But I just thought I'd warn you about her in case she doesn't.

“She's so bitter about losing Eric that she might try to threaten you to stay away from him or something. Just try to ignore her if she does. Tell Eric, too. Everyone wants you to be happy here, and if Layla tries to upset you, I think Eric might ultimately forbid her from coming back here at all. Layla's sister might have to go visit
her
, in the north, instead of the other way around."

I nodded, sitting back in my chair, stuffed from breakfast. "All right. Hopefully, she won't bug me, but if she does, I'll go to Eric. And thanks for the warning, by the way."

"Of course. Now, before we head over to the clinic, do you have any other general questions about the island? Or questions about anything else at all?"

“Well...maybe just a couple. How long have you all been here? And
why
did you all come here? I mean...you and Eric both have American accents, so were you all part of some sort of group back in the States? Or were there several families that came here, or were you all just individuals, strangers to each other, or...."

Unable to think of any more scenarios, I didn't finish the thought. Suddenly, Laura looked very uncomfortable.

Frowning a little, with her gaze on her plate, she picked at her last few bites of fruit with her fork. "The answers to your questions are kind of...well,
involved
. And maybe it's better if Eric fills you in sometime."

A little surprised, because I didn't think the answers to my questions should be
that
complicated, I said all right anyway.

Laura looked up, smiling, seeming very eager to change the subject. "Ready to see the clinic? I'm ready to go if you are."

We soon left my little bungalow, and Laura introduced me to a few people and gave me a brief tour of the village of Clearwater on our way to the clinic. The people I met were friendly, and the island was nearly indescribably beautiful. The pale, almost white, sand on the beach stretched out in either direction as far as the eye could see, and the ocean was, as the name of the village indicated, crystal clear. The color of it was a bright turquoise blue, so gorgeous it made my chest ache in a strange way just to look at it.

Set back a short distance from the beach, there were a couple dozen bungalows similar to mine, with tall palm trees and stretches of rocky land and patches of grass between them. Hibiscus bushes were everywhere. Their blooms, in brilliant shades of pink, red, purple, orange, and yellow, were the biggest I'd ever seen, some of them nearly the size of dinner plates.

Behind the bungalows grew more palms and other trees, densely clustered with thick, ropy vines wrapped around their trunks. They appeared to lead into acres and acres of jungle terrain, with tall green hills, maybe even big enough to be considered small mountains, rising some miles in the distance.

Laura explained that as far as creatures on the island, like tropical snakes and spiders, I didn't need to worry at all. "There
are
snakes and spiders around, and very occasionally you might see them, though there's nothing here that's poisonous. So, feel free to wander around to your heart's content with no fear of getting any kind of a poisonous bite from anything.

“Oh, and by the way, speaking of wandering...Eric told me to let you know that you're more than welcome to wander wherever you like. He said to tell you to please make yourself right at home. However, miles and miles apart, there are wooden signs that serve as markers between our village and the others, and please don't go past those. You'd have to walk an awfully long time to reach either of them, though, so pretty much all the beach you can see is yours to stroll.

“Also, there are some marked hiking trails in the jungle area behind the bungalows, and feel free to hike all you'd like, but just don't go beyond the marked trails for any reason, ever. They extend maybe a mile or so into the jungle, to the foot of some of the lowest hills, and that's plenty far enough. No reason to get any nearer to Black Lake, not that you'd want to anyway. I've never been there myself, but I've been told it's just...well, it's just an ugly place. No reason you'd ever want to go there anyway."

I was sure there wasn't, but at the same time, I was growing increasingly intrigued by Black Lake.

Beyond the stretch of bungalows, there were a few different outbuilding-type structures that Laura said were for food production and storage. Behind them was a cleared space for animals, and then well to the east of that, were several enormous vegetable gardens. Connecting all the bungalows and buildings was a long boardwalk of wooden planks, much easier to walk on than the stony, sandy ground a ways up from the beach.

Further down the island from the outbuildings sat several dozen wooden structures that could only be described as huts.

Laura glanced at them, shrugging. "Some of us prefer the bungalows, and some of us prefer more 'natural' island living. Thank God, Matt is like me and prefers a bungalow. I'm not sure our marriage would survive if he wanted to live in one of those huts. I'm the type that needs electricity and a washer and dryer that runs on it."

I was definitely of the same mindset.

Before leaving the area of the huts, Laura introduced me to a dozen or so people, mostly women who were hanging laundry out on lines between the huts. I noticed there were only a couple of children around, and none of them appeared to be younger than six or seven.

While we continued on to the medical clinic, which was the last building at the edge of the village, I realized that while Laura had been showing me around, I hadn't seen one particular thing that I felt like I should have. Something that should have taken up a lot of space.

Something that should have been pretty hard to miss. I hadn't seen the airstrip that Eric and I surely had to have cruised in on in the private jet. There was really no way it could have been any further inland on the island, either, on account of all the trees, unless there was some clearing I just wasn't seeing. But it seemed to me that any airstrip would have had to have been fairly close to the beach. Yet, I just hadn't seen it. It almost seemed as if there wasn't one, though I knew that was impossible.