Bound to Happen

Even from this distance, thirty feet, twenty, fifteen, ten, Sydney could smell his clean skin and just-washed hair. And now that he’d drawn closer, drawn close enough to touch, she could see the still-damp ends brushed back from his face. But his eyes told the tale of his wakeful state of mind. His thoughts were as unsettled as hers.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asked, reaching the beam closest to the one she held on to and, facing her, leaning his shoulder against the support.

“I always have trouble the first night away from home.” Hands curled around either side of the beam, she gave a small shrug. “Strange noises. Though, in this case, the lack of noise may be the culprit.”

“Yeah,” Ray said, working to keep a straight face. “Hard to relax with all those waves breaking onshore. Not to mention the breeze blowing through the palm fronds. Pretty damn noisy, if you ask me.”

The moon’s gentle glow softened Sydney’s view of Ray’s left side, keeping his right half in shadow. His entire body, in fact, was a contrast of moonlit skin and blue denim and shiny clean hair, and a rich silhouette.

Which meant he was seeing her the same way.

Sydney took a step back into the full shade of the covered veranda. She wore nothing but her lemon-colored silk chemise, with nothing but thin spaghetti straps holding the low-cut, slip-style garment in place.

She was clothed, covered, but still she felt vulnerable, with her face scrubbed clean and her feet bare. She’d wanted to be at her seductive best when dealing privately with Ray. Not looking as if she was ready to crawl into bed….

Facing the villa’s second story, the view of the tropical night at her back, she leaned her head against the support beam and smiled, tucking her laced hands behind her. “It’s hard because I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. I feel like if I relax, I’ll miss something grand. I’m always that way my first night here. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“You’ll be exhausted tomorrow.”

“Me? Are you kidding?” She glanced at Ray, glanced back, then let her gaze roam. He was too gorgeous not to give in to the visual pleasure. “I run on adrenaline half the time, anyway. Relaxing is harder to get used to.”

Ray pulled his hands from his pockets, crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his fingers into his armpits. His pectoral muscles bunched and flexed. Mouth awry, he gave an amused shake of his head. “You haven’t changed much, have you. You never were the stop-and-smell-the-roses type, even in high school. Always so serious. All the time.”

Sydney crinkled her nose, afraid he was right and that her personality had retained too much of the restrictive qualities she’d worked so hard to loosen, certain she’d never be the free spirit her mother had chided her to be. “I suppose I should do more to relax.”

“You’re right. You should.” His smile was broad and compelling. “What good is a vacation if you’re too wound up to have a good time?”

“Oh, I won’t have a bit of trouble having a good time,” she answered, even while wondering what Ray considered a good time and if he’d find her notion of one boring. Extreme cost analysis wasn’t quite the same game as extreme Frisbee. Of course, this time, this vacation, she was thinking more along the lines of extreme sex. “I always enjoy myself when I set my mind to it.”

He studied her for several long moments. She felt exposed under the intense scrutiny and couldn’t help but be aware of her complete nudity under her chemise. Was Ray looking at the way the silk draped her body? Or was he looking deeper, searching beneath her reserve for the reasons she’d never learned, except for their one time together, to spontaneously let go?

She wasn’t even sure she could put a name to the cause of her self-restraint. And her actions even on the night they’d made love hadn’t been as spontaneous as they had been calculated. That was one thing she wasn’t sure she should ever let him know.

Finally he said, “Why do you have to work so hard at having fun? Fun should be what happens when you’re not working.”

She understood where he was coming from, but still…“You don’t think working can be fun?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Satisfying, sure. Exciting, you bet. And, yeah, I enjoy what I do. Probably more than a lot of guys. But I wouldn’t call it fun. Never fun.”

Sydney turned first her head, then her entire body to face him…and was immediately struck silent by both the heroic fire and heat of loss burning in his eyes.

Here she’d been casually flirting, waiting for Ray to offer to show her how to relax, to help her have a good time. She’d been thinking about the fulfilling nature of her own work. She hadn’t been thinking at all about what it was he did for a living. About the suffering and devastation he had to encounter in his efforts to minimize disaster and save human life.

Funny how cosmetics and accessories suddenly seemed such a shallow pursuit. And at the same time, how gIRL-gEAR’s new teen-mentoring program took on a new significance.

The effort was one of which Sydney was proud. Of which Ray could be proud. Of which even her flamboyantly unorthodox mother would have to be proud.

Still, Sydney felt compelled to reach out and offer a sympathetic shoulder, even though she had a feeling that Ray’s needs, if any, would be less about a shoulder and more about a willing ear. Or even a friend, though she doubted he opened up more than rarely. She could almost see the words waiting to tumble free.

She gave him an encouraging smile. “I guess your line of work wouldn’t be. Fun, that is. Though it has to be dozens of times more rewarding than running a fashion empire.”

Ray avoided her efforts to draw him into the conversation about himself. “Would that make you an empress?”

“No,” she said, determined to try again later. “Just your garden variety CEO.”

His mouth quirked into a lopsided grin as he shook his head. “Nothing about you has ever been garden variety, Sydney Ford. I knew that the first time I laid eyes on you.”

“When was the first time you saw me?” She knew precisely the first time she’d seen him.

“My senior year,” he said, moving to brace both hands on the balcony railing and leaning forward. He looked out to sea as he spoke. “You would’ve been a junior. You came into the computer lab where we were working on the school paper. You were with Isabel Leighton. She was dropping off a disk with one of her infamous last-minute stories.”

He leaned farther forward, his forearms supporting his body weight as he laced his hands together. “You stood just inside the doorway with your arms wrapped around a stack of books. You were wearing pinstriped dress pants and a lacy white blouse in a school where the girls who wore anything that covered their legs wore jeans. Nobody wore dress pants. But then I found out who you were and it all made sense. Pinstripes and lace were exactly what the Ice Queen would wear.”

He turned his head. His brows drew together in a thoughtful frown even as he smiled. “What I never could figure out was why you went to public school. No one understood why you weren’t enrolled in some private, rich-girl academy.”

“My mother,” Sydney admitted, realizing that, though the resentment had faded, the ramifications of her mother’s decision remained. Her school years hadn’t been particularly happy, even though they’d proved to be a strong foundation from which she’d learned to stand up for herself, to concentrate on taking care of Sydney Ford.

“My mother didn’t want me to get a big head, thinking I was better than anyone else because I had money.” Sydney hugged herself. “I don’t think she got it that I stood out more at public school, that I never quite fit in. Even the other kids who had money labeled me a snob.”

“Because you had so much more.”

She’d often wondered how different her life would’ve been without money. Even now, her falling-out with her father was a betrayal rooted in the financial choices he’d made. Still, it wasn’t about money as much as it was about broken promises….

“Nolan made his first million before he was thirty, did you know that? And my mother wasn’t exactly a pauper. She came from money, yes, but her abstract oil paintings struck a chord with collectors. Her gallery showings sold out every time. She never depended on my father for monetary support.” Though, to Sydney’s chagrin and, more so, to her heartache, things had apparently changed.

Ray nodded, as if digesting the information. “And you’re following in the family footsteps. Making a lot of money and doing it your way. Not depending on anyone but yourself.”

Sydney wasn’t sure whether to frown or smile, but finally went with the latter. “I’m going to take that as a compliment, even though I’m not sure if that’s how you meant it. Yes, I grew up with the advantages of wealth. I never had to worry about how I was going to pay for my education. And Nolan did seed gIRL-gEAR.

“But I wouldn’t have gotten the money from any venture capitalist if I hadn’t known what I was doing. Trust me. Nolan’s not that altruistic.” Or at least, she mused with more than a touch of resentment, he didn’t used to be.

Ray glanced over, hair falling over his forehead. His expression conveyed an unwavering understanding. “You don’t have to justify your family’s wealth to me, Sydney.”

She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly. Why did she let herself get so worked up over money? “Is that what I’m doing?”

He shrugged, then looked back out to sea. “Sure sounds like it to me.”

She stuck out her tongue, anyway. “Then it’s all your fault for reminding me of feeling like I had to justify it to everyone in high school.”

“Everyone except Isabel Leighton.”

Sydney took a deep breath. Ray couldn’t have known of her latest connection to the one friend from school who’d kept her sane, who’d put so many things into perspective, who’d given her support and a shoulder when she’d needed both more than she’d needed food and water. It was just a coincidence that he’d brought up the one name that, considering recent circumstances, gave her heart a jolt.

“Izzy was the best,” Sydney said, working to relax. “She’s still the best and has done amazing things with her life. But as far as high school went, you’re right. She couldn’t have cared less where I came from. She was that way with all her friends. I had other friends, too. Good friends. Just not as many as Izzy had.”

“And not as many as you might’ve had at private school,” he stated, standing up to face her.

“True,” Sydney admitted, knowing it wouldn’t help her cause to leave Ray with the wrong impression about her own schooling preferences. And so she gave in to the smile tugging at her mouth. “But the private schools Nolan was interested in weren’t coed. Even if I didn’t date, I still enjoyed going to school with boys.”