Trial Run: Addicted To Love Romance Collection (18 page)

He pulled Jason’s head out of the water and held him up while he caught his breath. “Listen to me,” he said, staring at his bewildered best friend. “We’re going to sober you up, and then we’re going to get Amelie back. Agreed?” When Jason didn’t answer fast enough, Rob dunked him again. Ten count. Out again.

Jason spluttered and tried to speak. Rob held him still and waited. “But I… I don’t want to talk to you anymore. And I don’t want you to talk to her either.”

“Fuck what you want, Jason.” Rob dunked him once more. Another ten. And up again. With Jason spluttering and shaking his head, he said, “For once in your life, you’re going to consider what other people might want first, you hear me?”

“We had a deal…”

“A pact with the devil. I was wrong to do what you wanted. I was weak. I should have stood up to you. Only went along with it because you’re my friend. And in doing it, I ignored the free will of another human being. We were wrong to play with Amelie’s life like we did, Jason. Amelie is a person, not an object. Not some kind of pet you own and you want to teach a lesson.”

He made to dunk Jason again, but Jason protested. “No more! No more! I got it. I’m sober now. Amelie is not a person… I mean an object… Shit! I know what you mean. I get it… I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rob. I’m lonely here all by myself. How am I gonna get her back, Rob? She hates me now. Probably more than you.”

Rob doubted that. He let go of Jason, and watched him float gently toward the edge of the pool, where he latched onto the rounded tiles with both his hands.

“She said I was an asshole.”

“She was right. You are. But I behaved like a jerk, too, considering I love her more than my own life…”

A few minutes passed in silence.

“Have you finished dunking me now?” Jason asked warily. “I think I can smell the coffee.”

“Get yourself out and cleaned up,” Rob ordered him. “I need to pay the cab. When I come back, you’d better be ready to discuss options.”

With that, Rob climbed out of the pool and hobbled over to the awaiting cab, wondering whether the driver would mind very much being paid in soggy bills. Maybe he’d get over it if he got paid double.

By the end of the day, he would have a plan in place. By the end of the week, he would have already found her. And by the end of the month, she was going to be his again.
His
– heart and soul. Rob made a mental note to go shopping for a ring the very next day, just in case.

Hmm. The word ‘marriage’ had ceased to make him shudder, Rob realized as he opened the cab door to grab his bag. He grinned, and the driver shrank back in his seat with a worried expression. It made Rob laugh out loud.

He was still laughing as he entered Jason’s home and slung his bag down in the spare bedroom. Rob sure hoped his friend had learned his lesson. He had one chance to prove he had. One last chance. Rob flexed his fist.
Or so help me God!

The two men sat on the patio loungers, just as they had done almost a month and a half before, nursing coffees instead of stiff drinks, and watching two pool boys rush around the decking, sanitizing every last tile and working on replacing the pool water as fast as possible. Jason had offered double their fee for a rush job, which made Rob think he wasn’t entirely sober yet.

Rob still thought cleaning all that up should have been Jason’s job. He should have made him scrub his vomit off the tiles with a toothbrush. That would have sobered him up quicker. Or made him puke again. One or the other.

Too bad the asshole had more money than sense.

However, he could think of a way to make him put all the greens to good use. Pushing the notepad he’d been scribbling on toward Jason, Rob pointed at the writing.

“Anything else you can remember besides these?”

“No. I think you got them all.”

“Pity we lost her laptop when we wrecked. Though, knowing Amelie, she would have saved all her business plans to a cloud, or maybe an external hard drive.”

“If she has, she hasn’t shared that info with me. I don’t think she trusted me much.”

“I wonder why that is,” Rob answered in a dry tone.

“Look, I know what I did was wrong. You can stop making my life miserable any time now.”

Rob let out a chuckle. “As if you were full of joy before I got here.”

Jason made a face. “Moving on…”

Rob sighed and pulled back the pad of paper. Yes, it was time to focus all his energies on finding his girl. Moving on…

“We’re just going to have to check every business registration website in every state she planned a start-up. I’ll take some. You take the others.”

“And how are we going to check for the one in the Bahamas? She really seemed to like that one.”

“The Bahamas is the one place she won’t be.” He drew a thick line through that item.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Put yourself in her place, Jason. She’s just had the worst experience of her life on an island in that general area, plus, thanks to you, she thinks she got her heart broken there. She associates heartache and unhappiness with that place now.”

“I guess you’re right. So, what do we begin with?” He pulled out his smart phone in preparation. “Hey, you don’t think she would have started up that belly dancing and strip tease club in upstate New York, do you? Just to spite me?”

“Sorry, but no. It would have reminded her of you, and right now you are not her flavor of the month, remember?” Rob cut another entry off the list.

“Thanks for the reminder,” Jason muttered, but his whine went unnoticed.

Rob traced his finger down the page. “I’d say… Idaho and Pennsylvania.”

“Idaho? Why on earth would she go to the end of the world? She knows more about these parts.”

“You mean these parts where her brother has a tight network of spies at the ready? You chased her away from here, Jason. Face it! You messed up pretty badly.”

Jason sighed, but didn’t argue. They began searching through websites.

“One more thing,” Rob said while he worked. “I’ll need to get back there again as soon as possible. And you’re paying for the trip. Call it your chance to atone for your sins.”

“Back where?”

“To the island we wrecked on.”

Jason stared at Rob as if he was certain he’d lost his mind, scratched his chin, frowned, then shook his head. “No, I don’t get it. Why the hell would you want to retrace your trip to an uninhabited island, one with bad memories, as you keep telling me, and especially now, right at the start of the hurricane season? Have you completely lost your mind?”

“Trust me. I have good reasons.”

“Do you even know which of the hundreds of islands you were on?”

“No. Not exactly.”

Jason threw his hands in the air and stood up. “I’m getting more coffee. Want some?”

“Yeah, why not? Hit me.”

“Don’t say that twice! I’m really tempted.”

“Asshole.”

“Dick.”

It was good to have Jason back and behaving in a more reasonable way again, but it would have been even better if they had been able to get hold of Amelie, too. Unfortunately, she was proving far harder to locate than they had originally thought. By the third day, Rob felt like his head would explode if he didn’t achieve something useful. So, in that frame of mind, he sent Jason to hire two jet skis. They were going to the Bahamas, whether Jason Watts liked it or not.

Fortunately, despite travelling on the thirteenth, they reached Bimini without problem. From there, they hopped on a bigger boat to Nassau.

It took three hours to hire four boats and draw up a battle plan. When he was certain everyone knew what they were supposed to do, Rob forced himself to relax, have something to eat, and then settle down to sleep.

Every day, they would start off from a larger inhabited place, such as Eleuthera or Long Island. Two of the boats would head up north, and two south. One would follow the east coastline, the other the west. They would meet up at the southernmost point of each island, and then at the northernmost point, or the other way around – whichever came first. After each island, they’d decide on the next, so the boats would never lose track of their search partner. Thus, they ensured every yard of coastline was covered.

It was long and tiring work, but definitely worth it, in Rob’s eyes. And unlike Jason, who had been searching without a reference, Rob had a pretty good idea of the shape and size of the island they were looking for. It cut down on wasted time.

The weather held, and on day three, going north from Ragged Island, Rob finally saw an outline he recognized. The storm had blown the damaged
Anything
– the ex-
Mr. Happy
– with himself and Amelie on board much farther south than he’d imagined. He radioed Jason and directed the boat toward the shore.

Their old shelter still held, though the sands had covered many of the traces of human habitation, and the winds had scattered all the make-shift tools they had accumulated. Rob spent a few minutes making a mental note of the things he would need, grabbed a lump of wood that had been wedged between two uprights at the back of the shelter, then, finally happy, got back on the boat and aimed for the hotel in Nassau once again.

It was there, in the overly warm lobby of the hotel, waiting for Jason to come down from his room, that Rob finally found her.

The hotel’s internet connection was slow, but Rob hadn’t been able to stop himself from doing just one more search, just in case. He’d been searching for Amelie for a whole week, so flicking through websites whenever he had a moment to spare had become second nature to him. And it was obviously a good habit to have developed.

His face almost split in two by his enormous grin, he paced the length of the lobby, stopping every few paces to check for Jason’s arrival. It was all he could do, to stop himself from running and thumping on Jason’s door.

By the time Jason arrived by his side, Rob had already planned their next steps and called in a few favors.

Jason had brightened up considerably after hearing Rob’s news. Just knowing where Amelie was, made his day. Now they could concentrate on getting her back.

“So where is she? And how did you find her?” he asked Rob.

“I started thinking from Amelie’s point of view. It really works, by the way. You should try it sometime.”

“Ha, ha. I don’t have the patience for your witty jokes today, funny boy.”

But he laughed all the same. Finally, Rob put him out of his misery.

“Like I said, I looked at it from her point of view. She is hurting, alone, but fiercely independent. Would she have taken just any waitressing job? Settled for less than her dreams?” Jason shook his head before Rob could continue. “Exactly. She would have acted on it. She would have tried to find some way to finance her venture, because, thanks to you, she knows she can’t get her hands on her money until she’s twenty-five. She would have looked for an investor, so I started surfing through proposals for new developments in the areas we know she favors.”

“Now
that
is clever,” Jason agreed. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because I’m the clever one, that’s why. And you decided drinking yourself stupid was a good enough solution to your problem.”

Jason sighed. “Will you never let it go?”

“One day, maybe,” Rob chuckled. “Now, do you want to hear the rest?”

Jason nodded, so Rob explained he’d found her name on a web page listing proposals for developing a site in Vermont, of all places. “Vermont? Eww, snow!” had been Jason’s reaction. Rob laughed.

There were only two proposals, and the one that had caught his eye was tailored exactly like Amelie’s falls development. She’d changed the location from Colorado to Vermont, which was why they hadn’t found anything in the specific State searches they’d done back home, but Rob was certain this was Amelie’s business idea. Everything fitted, even down to the small tourist village and deal with a local bus operator.

Her proposal was by far the more complex and well thought-out, but also the more expensive. Both participants were requesting funding as part of their tenders on the same lot – obviously, the falls had potential, if they appealed to other people – and there were links to their respective development and funding pages. The one who could fully fund their project in the specified time period, therefore showing they had the backing of the general public, would win the tender.

Amelie’s challenger was looking to develop a smaller business – doing trips and trekking excursions for limited numbers of day trippers – and as his funding requirements were lower, he was almost there. Amelie, on the other hand, had only managed to accumulate about ten percent of what she needed.

There was a contact email on her page. After going to his room for the night, Rob clicked on it and typed a short message, inquiring whether the proposer would be open to suggestions.

A message came back within ten minutes, asking for details of such suggestions. Also, asking for a name.

Rob smiled and wriggled his fingers above the phone. He wasn’t about to tell her who he was. Knowing Amelie, she would likely fly into a rage and refuse the offer for help. So he made his offer. He would cover the whole of the project’s financial needs provided she included trekking and mountain pursuits as part of the development.

Ten minutes passed, then another ten. Rob was beginning to get fidgety when the email pinged.

I would love to take you up on your offer. Trekking and mountain pursuits would fit in with the business plan relatively easily. I was only trying to keep the initial outlay of capital to a minimum. If you are able to give me a couple of hours, I could have a revised proposal complete with figures sent to your email address and, after your approval, uploaded on all relevant web pages later today.

Would you consider sharing your name? We can still keep the online donor label as ‘anonymous’ if you prefer. It’s just that sending a set of figures to Persistentmutt85 feels a little awkward.

Amelie Watts, Developer

Rob smiled and rubbed his hands together. With much difficulty, he held back his jubilation just enough to send one more message.

I look forward to your revised proposal.

Persistentmutt85, AwkwardInvesto
r


He flicked off his phone and danced across the room, then gave up on holding in his jubilation, picked up his phone again, set it to his favorite playlist and went for a jog down the beach.

The steam from his shower was just beginning to dissipate when the ping of his email sounded again. He rushed to check it.

Amelie had been quick and thorough. Rob was impressed. All that remained now was signing an official agreement. He fired off an email to the tender organizers, confirming his intention of fully funding Amelie’s business venture and insisting on anonymity in his dealings with her until such time that contracts had to be signed. A few formalities later, the site reflected his investment, and so did his savings account. The first installment had been placed in a holding account, in preparation for the start of the development.

All that was required now was his signature, and Amelie’s too, on the same sheet of paper. And Rob planned to fix the same on more than one contract, as soon as possible.

Amelie could not believe her luck. She’d won the tender! She would get to build her dream! Yes! She jumped on the bed and began bouncing, her arms flailing, fists punching the air, and laughing, laughing, laughing… until, breathless, she dropped back on the mattress. Oh, boy! Life was so good!

To find an investor willing to finance her dream business in its entirety was more than she had ever hoped for; it would make life so much easier. But to find someone so soon, within a couple of weeks of lodging her application, was incredible. She kept pinching herself, to check she wasn’t dreaming.

At first, when she’d seen the slow progress of her proposal compared to her competitor’s, her heart had sunk. Reality was a bitter pill to swallow, and she’d had plenty of doses lately, enough to turn her sour for a lifetime. But now, she was floating on air!

Maybe she was due some good fortune, after all she’d lived through this past year. She was still smarting from the wound Rob had left behind, and the fact he’d been in cahoots with Jason hurt more than anything, but at least her career was moving in the right direction. She rubbed gentle circles on her stomach, though she wasn’t showing, and wouldn’t be for a few weeks yet.

Smiling, she did what she hadn’t done in ages: she relaxed.

Lying in a warm bath with scented bubbles tickling her chin, she wondered who the mystery investor could be. A thought creased her frown, but no, it couldn’t be Jason. For one, she was pretty sure she’d covered her tracks well. Jason didn’t know her well enough to track her down, and that was fine by her. She’d find him, if she ever found it in her heart to forgive him. If. And two, Jason would never agree to finance such a venture.

Her thoughts drifted to Rob, and she sighed. Rob would always occupy a special place in her heart, but it was time to move on now. She was taking great strides toward a brilliant future, one that she would craft herself, for herself, and for her beautiful baby. Rob’s baby. Their baby.

And just like that, tears started streaming down her cheeks. They had been good together. They loved each other. They’d made beautiful things together. Had she been too hasty and impetuous, back at the hospital, leaving that small chunk of wood on his bedside table in place of goodbye? Should she have given him a chance to explain himself first?

Maybe she should get on a plane back down to Florida and try to track Rob down.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was for the best that she’d walked away when she did. It would give her the chance to begin healing faster. And him… to start his X-rated film career without any strings attached.

The repetitive bleeping of her phone put an end to her musings. Splashing her face a few times, to clear both her head and her tears, she shoved all thoughts of Rob to the back of her mind. Time to concentrate on the here and now.

She patted herself dry with one of the hotel’s fluffy towels and checked her messages. Five from the tender organizers, one automatic confirmation from the bank that acted as the secure holder, and one from Persistentmutt85.

Though impatient to see what he had to say, Amelie made herself work through the emails in chronological order. They were all to do with the legalities of the business transaction, so she read them carefully. It seemed everything was going according to plan. The investor had checked out and the first installment of the investment had been deposited in the holding account. She could proceed.

Amelie yelped with joy, hopped up on the coach and bounced around for a few minutes more, until she remembered she was pregnant and should therefore behave with more dignity. Short of breath after her second bouncing session of the day, she plopped down and curled up her legs beneath her, ready to deal with Mr. Persistentmutt. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just go ahead and tell her his name. She would see it soon enough anyway, when it was time to sign on the dotted line.

His message took her by surprise. He was going to be away for a business meeting in Hong Kong the following week, and so was wondering whether it would be convenient to meet up and sign the papers this current week.

Well, considering she couldn’t wait to get started, this played right into her hands. She could always postpone her first check-up. She was still in her first trimester; a few days’ delay wouldn’t make much difference.

Then he went on to say he was committed to attending the wedding of one of his business associates, and was currently on his way to Kingston, Jamaica. He was going to be there for a limited time, waiting for a transfer to a private flight out to one of the islands. If she could manage the timeframe, he was certain he could delay the ongoing flight long enough to sort out any paperwork. His lawyer had already organized it all.

Well, that was a bit… strange, she thought. Still, there didn’t seem to be much of a choice, so she checked the flights schedule before emailing him back.

I could take the next flight out, but I’m afraid that would put me in Kingston at a very unsocial hour – 4.48 am.

Amelie Watts, Developer

The Caribbean Airlines BW16 from JFK? No problem. I’ll be waiting for you in Arrivals.

Persistentmutt85, Investor

And how would I know who to look for? Could you at least tell me your name?

Amelie Watts, concerned Developer

I’ll find you, don’t worry. See you tomorrow.

Persistentmutt85, rushed Investor

Hmm. Amelie scrunched up her face, but that didn’t make the email exchange any clearer, so she gave up on that and made her booking. Persistentmutt must have been a real person, since his bank details had been checked and funds had been transferred. Tomorrow, the mystery would be solved.

Until then, she had two hours to get ready, and a flight to catch.