The Pleasure Trip

Ignoring the pounding in his head to follow the stupid thrum of his clueless heart, he made up his mind to find out more about The One Who Got Away. For that matter, it’d been months since he’d taken a cruise and now that his divorce was official he found himself homeless and in need of some high seas revelry.

“Hell no, you’re not part of a dying breed. Give me five minutes to shower and I might just be wild and crazy enough to fly you back to Barbados myself.”

* * *

RITA WAS CALLING IN favors at an alarming rate as she sweet-talked the most junior member of the ship security team into telling her everything he knew about Jayne’s illicit escape from the ship the day before. But she’d sewn a prom dress for the guy’s little sister last spring and he ’fessed up without a wince since Jayne had promised to be back onboard the next day.

While the news was reassuring, Rita knew better than most people that Jayne didn’t always stick to a plan.

Now, as she stood on a pier on the opposite end of the marina and watched Harrison shake hands with a local charter boat captain, she wondered how she could ever repay him for all the help he’d given her last night and today. Jayne had never had a problem with accepting kindness from strangers, graciously smiling whenever passengers—men, women and little old ladies—brought her flowers after a performance. But Rita was uneasy with anyone who offered to do too much for her. Somehow, she’d find a way to make it up to Harrison. Maybe he had a sister young enough to need a prom dress?

“We’ve got the boat for four hours.” Harrison stopped in front of the small craft he’d picked out with a practiced eye the moment they’d arrived. “We’ll cruise around to a few of the marinas on the western side of the island and see what happens. The guy in charge of the charter vessels said he’s been here since dawn and hasn’t seen anyone fitting your sister’s description get off a boat.”

“How do you know what my sister even looks like?” She took his hand as he helped her onboard and reminded herself to pop a few ginger tablets as soon as they got settled. It had taken her weeks to get used to the rocking motion of the Venus, never mind that most people on cruise ships never felt the swaying at all. A boat like this would have her seasick in no time if she didn’t take precautions.

“I figured she must look a lot like you since you escaped the show manager’s radar last night.” He moved around the deck like an old sea hand, untying ropes, hauling in buoys or bumpers or whatever they called those fat pads used to make sure a boat didn’t get scratched up by the dock. “By all accounts this Danielle the Dastardly runs a pretty tight show, so if you danced your way out there under her nose without her noticing… I put two and two together.”

“I don’t look anything like Jayne.” Okay, small inevitable family resemblance aside. “She’s the cover of Vogue. I’m the ‘before’ photo on the makeover page when they strong-arm the average woman on the street into a makeup chair.”

“All I know is you look mighty good to me.” He slid behind the steering wheel and fired up the engine. “You like boats?”

“I like them fine once I pop some ginger pills.” Shaking her purse to free up all the infrequently used items in the deepest recesses of the striped satin lining, she followed the sound of rolling tablets in a bottle until she came up with her medicine case chock-full of everything from sleeping pills for the nights when Jayne blasted her radio full-power to aloe caplets for sunburns.

“Is this outing going to bother you?” Harrison moved away from the steering wheel to push off the dock, giving the boat a gentle shove by planting his foot on the pier and propelling them deeper into the water.

Chewing the pills quickly, Rita shook her head. Determined. Ready to make headway.

“Not nearly as much as it will bother me if I don’t find Jayne.”

“You two are pretty close, I take it?” He jogged the few steps back to the wheel and steered them slowly around the docked boats, being careful not to create too much of a wake.

He looked perfectly at home there, the strong Caribbean sun bearing down on his dark hair to give it a burnished glow, his feet spread on the deck like a man who’d navigated plenty of rough waters in his day.

“It’s a relationship forged in fire.” Sinking onto the seat beside him, Rita shoved her heavy purse off her shoulder and tried to relax. Concentrate on the pleasing vision of Harrison’s legs in khaki shorts. “We’ve been through a lot together and that makes us good friends as well as…women who know far too much about each other’s weaknesses.”

“Sort of codependent?”

She bristled at the very idea.

“Hardly. We watch each other’s backs.” Often whether they really wanted to or not.

“So how was she watching your back last night when she ditched you on what Missy seemed to think was the turning point of your career?”

Surprise—and anger—reminded her she couldn’t relax too much around a man she didn’t know all that well despite the romantic night they’d shared. No matter how charming and helpful Harrison seemed, he wasn’t family. He might not understand the world according to a Frazer.

“It wasn’t a turning point. I sewed some outfits for extra cash. And while it would have been helpful if Jayne had been there to do her job—Everybody makes mistakes.” Wrenching her gaze off his fine butt, she retrieved her sunscreen out of her bag to slather over skin with a high tendency to burn.

“Some more than others.” He cranked the boat into a higher gear as they cleared the marina and hit the open water. “I’m close to my family, too, and I can’t remember a time I would have left them holding the bag to chase dreams that could have easily waited a day or two.”

“And your point is that I must be some kind of messed-up enabler to allow my sister to take advantage of me?” She’d heard that one before, although usually snippy fans of gossip liked to cluck about enabling her mother as opposed to Jayne. Still, the same principle applied. She was cast as the sucker. “Or are you suggesting my sister must be a complete waste-case to flee her job?”

She scrubbed the sunscreen into her skin with extra force.

“Rita—”

“Or worse.” Another scenario smacked her upside the head with more force than a high kick to the temple as she tossed the SPF 45 aside. “You think both those things.”

“Hardly.” He slowed the boat as they neared another marina beside a stretch of ocean-view resort hotels. “I know all about the desire to help out your family and I’ve been down that route too many times myself to blame you for doing that same thing. I just hope your sister realizes what lengths you went to in order to cover for her because from the handful of people I talked to on the Venus about Jayne, I got the impression she takes the spotlight most of the time while you do twice as much behind the scenes.”

“I’d love to know who told you that, especially since you’ve been on the ship for all of three days.” How could her coworkers confide such intimate details to a perfect stranger? Curse the man’s sexy dark stare.

“Nobody said it straight out.” He slowed the motor as they closed in on a small dock. “I gathered as much from other things I heard from your friends and Horatio’s.”

“I forgot you talked to them.” She’d been slowly losing her brain cells to anxiety and fear since last night. Add to that the fear that her skin was burning from want of Harrison and not because of the Caribbean sun, and she was forced to admit she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “Did you find out anything helpful?Anything besides the fact that Jayne and I are codependent enablers?”

She squinted toward a throng of tourists on the dock, a man and three bikini-clad women stepping aside for a young couple on inline skates.

“Only that Horatio was scheduled to work last night and they hadn’t heard anything about him ditching.” He eased the boat around a mammoth-size yacht to give them a better view of the pier. “But I couldn’t locate the casino workers you mentioned, just a couple of bartenders on a different deck from the casino and they were just barely crawling out of bed when I talked to them.”

“Bastard.” Rita’s gaze fixed on the man on the pier as the guy’s hand strayed over one of the women’s tanga swimsuit bottom. Squinting, she couldn’t believe her eyes as the man’s familiar features came into focus. “Maybe they didn’t know about Horatio skipping work because he never left the ship last night.”

“What do you mean?” Harrison cut the motor, presumably so they could ask the group on the dock a few questions.

Indignation pumping through her, she didn’t even bother lowering her voice as she pointed out the assgrabber a few yards away.

“That’s Jayne’s so-called fiancé right there.”

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f5f7c5ea-193e-54d0-9be6-5337cfbed29c)

ON AN INTELLECTUAL LEVEL, Harrison processed the news that the jet-setter type on the dock was the same tool who’d stood up Rita’s sister. But the information seemed less important than the primary data Harrison currently received from his personal observations of the scene on the pier.

Horatio and three fawning females had all just stepped off the big-ass yacht beside the dock from which obnoxious techno-pop music still blared. A party seemed to be in progress onboard the hundred-and-twenty-foot monster where a couple of guys and three other women sipped a rainbow range of bright cocktails, their swimsuits as expensive-looking as the designer sunglasses perched on almost every nose. Money oozed from the yacht along with the mindlessly repetitive club music, and Horatio the runaway groom looked fairly at home with it all for a guy whose paycheck couldn’t be any fatter than what Harrison had pulled down during his time with the Bureau. And Harrison sure as hell could never afford the Breitling timepiece this bozo sported.

“Hey, scumbag, say cheese.” The shout came from Harrison’s elbow as Rita lined up her disposable camera for a shot of Horatio’s hand on the bikini babe’s butt. She clicked the camera before calling over the lens. “My sister’s going to annul this marriage so fast you’ll be a single man by nightfall, dip-wad.”

Harrison secured the boat in record time, recognizing quickly the shit was going to hit the fan. He would have liked to look around the dock more discreetly now that all of his agent instincts were up and running about Horatio’s big money connections, but discretion seemed out of the question since Rita fairly launched out of their rented boat to confront the dealer.

“Sorry to disappoint you, babe, but I’m definitely still a single man.” He squeezed his lady friend’s butt cheek for emphasis. “Good thing, eh?”

Harrison could practically feel the fury rising off Rita as she bared her teeth at him.

“Too busy to elope?” She edged the words past her lips despite the clamped jaw.

Harrison looped an arm around her shoulders and hoped she wouldn’t shove it off or start a big confrontation.

“Come on, Rita.” Horatio shifted his weight in a subtle show of discomfort Harrison wouldn’t have caught without years of experience at reading liars. “You know Jayne’s not the settling-down type. If we tied the knot she would have thrown me over in two months max.”

“With great reason, obviously.” Rita moved toward the back of the boat as if to exit, but Harrison held her back.