Beach Bar Baby (7 page)

She choked out a laugh—that became a wistful hum as his arm became slack and her own body drifted towards sleep.

Colourful images collected behind her eyes—the glitter of pink sand beaches, the darting sparkle of blue-finned fish, the tangerine glow of fruit juice and rum, and the piercing jade of Cooper Delaney’s eyes.

She swallowed to relieve the clutching sensation in her chest, and tumbled headlong into the rainbow dream.

FIVE

‘Hey, Coop,
get your butt out of bed, it’s past eleven. And I’ve got exciting news.’

The muffled musical voice intruded on Ella’s dream. She squeezed open an eyelid, grateful when the brittle sunlight hitting her retinas didn’t appear to be accompanied by any pain, despite the definite thumping in her head.

Flopping over onto her back, she squinted at the empty bed beside her, the rumpled sheets striped by the sunlight slanting through the shutters. And heard the thumping again. This time, though, it was definitely not in her head, but coming from the hut’s door, which shook on its hinges as the same musical voice from her dream, lilting with the lazy rhythms of a Bermuda native, shouted: ‘No use hiding, man. Henry told me you’d be here.’

Ella shot upright, clasping the bed’s thin sheet to her naked breasts, and swayed as several questions bombarded her at once.

How long had she been asleep? Where were her clothes? Where was Coop? And who the heck was that woman banging on the door?

The answer to number one was hours, if the brightness of the sunlight was anything to go by. Scrambling out of bed as furtively as possible, she located her clothes in a neatly stacked pile on the arm of the sagging sofa, answering question number two. Questions three and four remained a mystery though, as she dressed as soundlessly as she could manage while continuing to scan the hut for any sign of her host.

She jumped as the banging began again.

‘Hey, I can hear you in there. Avoidance won’t do you a damn bit of good.’

Rats, do you have bionic hearing?

She waited a few more strained seconds, while debating opening the shutters and escaping onto the deck, but eventually discarded the idea—given the girl’s hearing capabilities.

The banging continued, and her not entirely settled stomach churned. What if this girl were Cooper’s girlfriend? Or his wife? Was that why he’d disappeared? Because what did she really know about Captain Studly, except that he was gorgeous, knew how to dance the soca and had magic fingers, a very inventive tongue, and a huge and permanently stiff...

Don’t go there.

Squaring her shoulders, she swung the door open ready to face the consequences, to be greeted by a stunningly beautiful barefoot young woman of about twenty, wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes, a T-shirt with the message ‘Don’t Mess with a Libran’, tightly braided hair decorated with multicoloured beads, and a stunned expression.

‘Hi.’ She craned her neck to search the hut’s interior, having gained her composure a lot faster than Ella. ‘Is Coop around?’

‘Um, no, apparently not,’ Ella replied, opting for the only answer she could give with any confidence.

‘Uh-huh?’ The girl gave her a thorough once-over that had the heat steaming into Ella’s cheeks. ‘I guess he’s up at the big house.’

The big house? What big house?

‘Sorry to wake you,’ the girl said. ‘Henry didn’t tell me Coop left the Runner with company last night. Just that he headed for his beach hut. Suppose Henry was messing with me. And Coop.’

And me, thought Ella, annoyed by Henry the barman’s joke, and acutely embarrassed that this girl now knew she was the sort of woman who got picked up in bars.

What had seemed wildly romantic last night, now felt pretty tacky.

Ruby had encouraged her to let her inner flirt loose, but there had definitely been no mention of getting tipsy on rum cocktails, then getting nekkid with Captain Studly and jumping him four...no, five...oh, heck, make that at least a half-dozen times during the night.

‘You Coop’s new lady?’ The girl interrupted Ella’s panicked reappraisal of her behaviour.

‘Um, no, we’re just...’
What? Snorkel mates? Dance partners? Bonk buddies?

The burning in her cheeks promptly hit maximum voltage as she searched for the appropriate term while recalling in X-rated detail exactly how intimately she and the invisible Coop had got acquainted last night, after very little provocation. ‘Friends,’ she finished lamely.

With benefits. Gold-standard benefits.

The phrase hung in the brisk morning air unspoken, but not unfigured out if the girl’s frank appraisal was anything to go by. ‘Do you know when he’s going to be back?’

Hardly, seeing as I have no clue where he is.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Could you tell him I stopped by? I’m Sonny’s daughter, Josie, and I—’

‘Why don’t you come in and wait for him?’ Ella shoved the door wide, determined to make a fast getaway, before this situation got any more awkward. ‘I was just leaving.’

Josie sent her a doubtful look as she stepped into the room. ‘You sure, I—’

‘Absolutely positive,’ Ella replied, grabbing her bag from the hook by the door and slipping past the girl, before she could ask any more unanswerable questions.

‘You want me to give Coop a message?’

Ella paused on the porch, the clutching sensation she’d had as she fell asleep the night before returning. ‘Would you tell him thanks?’ She cleared her throat, the stupid clutching sensation starting to squeeze her ribcage.

For being a friend when I needed one,
she added silently as she jumped off the hut’s porch and her feet sank into the wet sand.

Josie called out a goodbye and she waved back as she set off down the beach. But she didn’t glance back again. Knowing it would only tighten the band squeezing her chest.

She’d had an amazing night. Maybe she’d gone a little off piste from Ruby’s plan—and discovered the liberating powers of flirtation, soca dancing, Rum Swizzles and sweaty, no-strings sex in the process. Okay, make that a lot off piste.

But it was all good.

Give or take the odd heart murmur.

* * *

‘Up you get, Sleeping Beauty, breakfast is served.’ Coop bumped the hut’s door open with his butt, keeping a firm hold on the tray his housekeeper had piled high with freshly sliced fruit, French toast, syrup and coffee. It had taken Inez a good half hour to assemble everything to her exacting standards—and quiz him mercilessly about his ‘overnight guest’—during which time he’d got stupidly eager to see Ella again. Enough to question why he hadn’t just woken her up and invited her to his place for breakfast.

The fifteen-acre estate that overlooked the cove, and the two-storey colonial he’d built on the bluff, were a symbol of who he was now. And he was super proud of it—and all he’d achieved, after ten long, back-breaking years of dawn wake-up calls refurbing second-hand equipment, long days spent out on the ocean running back-to-back dives, late nights getting his brain in a knot at the local community college studying for his MBA, all while keeping a ready smile on his face to schmooze a succession of tourists and corporate clients and bank managers and investors.

His business—Dive Guys—had made its first million-dollar turnover five years ago, and he’d celebrated by buying himself a brand-new motor launch, and the beach hut he’d been renting since his early days with Sonny. Three years later, he’d expanded the franchise across the Caribbean and had finally had enough to invest in the construction of his dream home on the land he’d bought behind the hut. He’d moved into Half-Moon House two years ago—but still couldn’t quite believe that all those years of work had paid off in a wraparound deck that looked out over the ocean, five luxury en-suite bedrooms, a forty-foot infinity pool, a mile of private beach and an extremely nosey housekeeper.

Normally, he loved showing the place off to women he dated.

But when he’d woken up with Ella cuddled in his arms, he’d decided to keep the place a secret until after he’d finessed Inez into cooking a lavish breakfast for his overnight guest.

There had been something so cute and refreshing about Ella’s breathless enthusiasm when she’d got a load of his first place the night before. She wasn’t the only woman he’d brought to the hut, but she was the only one who had appreciated its charm and overlooked the used furniture and lack of amenities.

For some weird reason it had felt good to know all she’d seen was him—not Dive Guys, or the things it had afforded him.

‘That looks real tasty, Coop. You shouldn’t have bothered, though—I already grabbed a crab patty up at the Runner.’

Coop swung round, nearly dropping the tray, to find Sonny’s daughter, Josie, perched on one of his bar stools. With her long legs crossed at the knee and a mocking smile on her lips, she should have looked all grown up, but somehow all he ever saw was the fresh kid he’d met a decade ago and who had made it her mission in life to be a thorn in his side ever since.

‘Josie, what are you doing here?’ He dumped the tray on the counter, sloshing the coffee all over the French toast, as he took in the empty bed in the far corner, and the empty couch where he’d folded Ella’s clothes into a pile not more than thirty minutes ago. ‘And where the hell is Ella?’

Josie’s grin became smug as she snagged a chunk of fresh pineapple off the breakfast tray. ‘So that’s Sleeping Beauty’s name. I always wondered if she had one.’

‘Ha, ha,’ he said without heat, used to Josie’s teasing.

‘She’s very pretty. But kind of shy. Not your usual type.’

‘Where is she?’ he asked again, not happy at the news that Josie had met her. Somehow he didn’t think someone with Ella’s insta-blush tendencies would appreciate being caught in his bed by a smartass like Josie. ‘Please tell me you didn’t say anything to make her bolt.’

Josie sucked on the pineapple, shaking her head. ‘Uh-uh. She bolted all on her own. Seemed kind of spooked that you’d disappeared.’

He ran his fingers through his hair. Damn it, he’d only been gone a half-hour and Ella had looked totally done in. After the workout they’d both had last night he would have bet she’d be comatose for hours yet. The thought had him eyeing his uninvited guest. ‘You woke her up, didn’t you, you little...?’

He made a swipe for Josie, but she leapt off the stool and danced out of his reach, laughing. ‘What’s the big deal? You don’t date the tourists, remember? In case they get ideas.’

Not Ella.

The thought popped into his head, and had him stopping dead in front of Josie—the quest for retribution dying a quick death.

What was with that? Sure Ella had been sweet, and eager and inventive in bed, but how had she got under his guard so easily? Knowing what he did about tourists who liked to slum it in neighbourhood bars, how come he had never thought of Ella as one of them? And why had he crept out of bed and harassed Inez into making her breakfast? He didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Not since... He stared at the ruined toast, the creeping sense of humiliation coming back in an unpleasant rush of memory.

Not since the evening of the junior prom in Garysville, Indiana, when he’d stood like a dummy on Amy Metcalfe’s porch, his neck burning under the collar of the borrowed suit, and a corsage clutched in his sweating palm that had cost him ten of his hard-earned dollars, while Amy’s old man yelled at him to get lost, and his prom date sent him a pitying smile from the passenger seat of his half-brother Jack Jnr’s Beemer convertible.

‘Don’t you want to know why I’m here?’ Josie stared at him, her usual mischief replaced with excitement. ‘I’ve got news.’

Shaking off the unpleasant memory, he clamped down hard on the dumb urge to head out after Ella. ‘Sure? What news?’ He tossed a piece of papaya into his mouth, impressed with his own nonchalance.

The smile on Josie’s face reached ear-to-ear proportions. ‘Taylor popped the question last night and I said yes.’

‘What question?’ he said, trying to process the information while his mind was still snagged on Ella and why the hell she’d run out on him. Wasn’t Taylor that pimply kid Josie’d been dating for a while?

Josie’s eyes rounded. ‘Damn, Coop, even you can’t be that dumb. The “Will you marry me?” question. Duh.’

Coop choked on the mango chunk he’d just slung in his mouth. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ His eyes watered as his aggravation over Ella’s sudden departure was surpassed by horror. ‘You’re way too young to be getting married.’ Plus marriage was for chumps—and Josie was a smart kid—what was she thinking?

Josie whacked him hard on the back, dislodging the chunk and nearly dislocating his shoulder. ‘I’m twenty,’ she said, indignantly. ‘Taylor and I have been dating for four years.’ She propped her hands on her hips, striking the Wonder Woman pose he knew meant she was about to start lecturing him. ‘And we love each other. Marriage is the obvious next step. So we can think about babies.’

‘Babies!’ he yelped, as a blood vessel popped out on his forehead and began to throb. ‘You cannot be serious?’

‘Just because you’re dead set on being the Oldest Player in Town,’ she countered, ‘doesn’t mean everyone’s that cynical and immature.’

‘I’m immature?’ he snapped. Seeing her flinch, he struggled to lower his voice, and regain some of his usual cool.

But damn it, first Ella’s disappearing act, and now this? Had all the females in Bermuda been hitting the crazy sauce while he slept?

‘Honey, I’m not the one planning to get hitched when I’m still in college.’ Not to mention have a parcel of rugrats. Was she nuts?

The look she sent him went from pissed to pitying. ‘Why does the thought of that terrify you so much, Coop? Maybe you should try it some time yourself?’

‘What? Marriage? And kids?’ he scoffed, barely suppressing the shudder. ‘No way.’

‘Not that, not yet, but...’ Josie searched his face, the pitying look starting to annoy him now. ‘Couldn’t you at least try dating the same woman for longer than a week?’ Her eyes shadowed with concern. ‘Haven’t you ever thought there might be more to women than just hot and sweaty sex?’

‘Damn it, give me a break.’ He slapped his hands over his ears. ‘Don’t talk to me about that stuff—my ears are bleeding.’ He’d never kept his dating habits a secret, but Josie butting into his sex life was just wrong. On so many levels.

She glared at him. ‘So who’s being immature now?’

He dropped his hands, having to concede that point. ‘Fine, you win that one, but conversations about sex are off limits, okay?’ The last thing he needed was some snot-nosed kid giving him dating advice.