Romance In Paradise: Flirting with the Forbidden / Hot Island Nights / From Fling to Forever

‘Wary.’ Morgan looked out at the busy field. ‘We can hurt each other... No, let me rephrase that. You can hurt me...if we ever change from friends to lovers.’

‘If we change—and I’ll try not to, Morgan—you have to know that I wouldn’t be able to promise you for ever. All I can say is that I would be monogamous, that I’d treat you well as long as it lasted—be it a week or months. But at some point our paths would split and I’d be back in London, doing what I do.’

‘I know.’

‘If you want more from me than a fun time in bed then maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead. Stay as Duchess and Soldier.’ Noah folded his arms and hoped she couldn’t see how much he hoped that she didn’t choose option B. Because that would, well...suck. ‘So, what’s it to be?’

Morgan played with the emerald and diamond studs in her ears. ‘I’m probably going to regret this, but we do have unfinished business between us.’ She sent him a coy look and the humour was back in her eyes. ‘By the way, are you into threesomes?’

If he’d had anything in his mouth he would have sprayed her, or choked. As it was, he felt he had to pick his jaw up from the floor. ‘What the...? Who? What? Are you being serious?’

‘Well, by the time this situation is resolved my friend Sophie from the gallery will be sharing my bedroom. I thought I should warn you.’

Noah felt his heart slow down to a gallop as her words started to make sense. ‘Morgan, you nearly gave me a heart attack! You bought Johnno Davie’s painting?’

‘I did.’ Morgan smiled. ‘It’ll be delivered when the exhibition is over.’

They turned as someone called her name.

‘Ooh, I’m being summoned. I need to go and hand out the prizes and flirt with the players.’

Noah couldn’t help the possessive hand he put on her back, the growl in his voice. ‘Keep it to a minimum, sweetheart. Remember that I’m armed and dangerous. I’d hate to have to shoot one of them.’

Morgan touched her lips to his cheek and whispered in his ear. ‘Just to be clear, soldier, Sophie is the closest you are ever going to get to a threesome that involves me.’

He could live with that. Heck, he was happy fantasising about a ‘onesome’ with her.

* * *

A few days later Noah heard the lobby phone chime and got up from the dining table where he had been working on staff scheduling—his normal Auterlochie work hadn’t stopped, so he worked from Morgan’s dining room table or the MI conference room. He picked up the phone.

‘Hey, Patrick.’

He’d become good friends with the doormen—both ex-cops, with excellent service records—and Patrick’s voice boomed in his ear.

‘I have Miss Riley here, plus two guys carrying mannequins and stuff. Can I send them up?’

‘What? Hold on, let me take a look.’ Noah walked backed to his laptop and pulled up the live feed from the lobby. Patching into the apartment building’s security feed had been his first task when he’d moved into the apartment weeks ago. True enough, there was Riley, chatting to two young guys holding two life-size mannequins.

Why was Riley bringing mannequins up to the apartment? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He went back to the phone and thought for a minute. The situation in Colombia had descended into near anarchy and threats were flying. Hannah and Jedd were still not allowed to leave their house in the Cayman Islands. He’d spent twenty minutes on the phone with James earlier that day and they’d agreed that Morgan should curtail her social obligations. So now he had to try and keep her in the apartment as much as possible...which would be a butt-pain, because resisting the urge to haul her off to bed was now on a par with him splitting the atom.

‘Put Riley, the mannequins and the bags into the lifts and send the men home. I’ll help her unload on this side,’ Noah told Patrick, and went back to his laptop.

When the doors had closed on Riley and her plastic companions, he called to Morgan.

‘Hey, Riley will be here in twenty seconds with some life-size dolls. Why?’

‘Yay!’ Morgan said, coming from the bedroom and towel-drying her wet hair. She draped her towel over the back of the couch and Noah fought the urge to ask her to put it back in the bathroom. He was obsessively neat, courtesy of the army, and she was a slob. Her untidiness drove him nuts.

Noah opened the front door, and walked over to the lift. As the doors opened he grabbed one mannequin and tucked it under his arm. ‘Friends of yours, Ri?’

‘Ha-ha.’

Riley handed him a duffel bag and he walked back to the apartment and dumped them in the hallway. He went back for the second dummy and Riley followed him, carrying the second smaller bag.

He watched, amused, as Morgan and Riley sat the mannequins—expensive ones, with arm and leg joints—on the colourful couches. Morgan squealed and immediately reached for the duffel bags. Thinking that they probably needed alcohol for whatever they were up to, he went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine. When he returned with two glasses in hand his eyes widened at the rainbow-hued lingerie now scattered over the coffee table. No, not lingerie...sexy-as-sin burlesque costumes. Beaded and decorated corsets with fluffy skirts and feathers. And there were some without skirts, skimpy, with oversized clips to attach to stockings.

His mind instinctively imagined Morgan in one of those outfits and he cursed when his pants stirred. High heels, stockings... He thought of the survival courses he’d taken in the SAS. Nothing sexy about those...

Thoughts of sex bolted away and his heart ran cold as Morgan picked up a duffel bag and a treasure trove of jewellery rained down on the table. Emeralds, rubies, diamonds, gold...so much gold. Pearls, sapphires... If Morgan had liberated the MI jewellery collection from the walk-in safe on the fourth floor—and he knew she had access to do that—he was going to freakin’ kill her. Slowly, and with much pleasure.

‘Oh, my, look at his face.’ Morgan chuckled as she held Riley’s arm and doubled over with mirth. ‘Quick, grab your mobile and snap a pic. We’ll call it Nervous Noah.’

‘In a moment you are going to be Mortuary Morgan,’ Noah replied as he approached them. He handed over the wine and picked up a necklace with a canary-egg-size diamond hanging off a gold clasp. He examined the stone, didn’t see the deep sparkle and reflections a diamond that size should have and his blood pressure dropped. ‘Paste. You nearly gave me a heart attack!’

Morgan grinned. ‘They are all paste, and it’s fantastic that we have them to play with.’

Noah held up his hand. ‘I think I need wine for this...hold on.’ He went back to the kitchen, brought another glass and the bottle back and perched on the arm of the chair. ‘Now, what are you doing, exactly?’

Morgan crossed her legs Indian-style and with her wet hair and make-up-free face she looked a teenager. Like she had when she was nineteen, when she’d stolen his breath from his lungs. Nothing much had changed there, Noah thought.

‘Okay, so you said that we can’t have live models showing off the collection...’

‘Categorically not,’ Noah said.

‘So, Riley and I want to place mannequins on round plinths throughout the ballroom, each of them in a gold burlesque birdcage à la Moulin Rouge. We’ll put them in provocative poses—on swings, bending over, et cetera. The mannequins will all be dressed in burlesque costumes—sexy corsets and stockings, high heels and masks.’ Morgan picked up a handful of lace and stockings. ‘The great thing is that we have paste copies of all the jewellery collection and Riley has the mannequins, so we can experiment before we make a final decision.’

‘Why?’ Noah asked.

Morgan, who was examining a pearl necklace, frowned up at him. ‘Why what?’

‘Why do you have paste copies of the jewellery collection?’ Noah asked patiently.

‘Oh...a Great-Something Moreau needed to raise some cash to buy another mine and he handed over the collection as collateral. He didn’t want it known that he was cash-strapped, so before he did that he had paste copies made of the jewellery. He got the jewels back but ever since, whenever the family acquired a new piece, a copy was made. Riley and I played with these as kids.’

‘Huh. So they are exact replicas?’

‘Absolutely.’ Riley draped a long string of pearls around her neck. ‘So what do you think of our birdcage idea, Noah? Can the real jewels be secured?’

Noah thought for a minute. ‘I want an area between the guests and the cages, about a foot and a half, where we can put a pressure plate so that if anyone steps up to a mannequin it’ll trigger a silent alarm.’

Morgan looked at Riley. ‘We can do that.’

‘I want in on the design of the birdcages. I want to put laser beams between the rods, so that if anyone breaks the beam it’ll trigger an alarm.’

Morgan lifted a bustier of white silk embossed with silver beads and waved his security issues away in order to play with the colourful garments and the fake bling.