Blame It on Paradise

Blame It on Paradise

Crystal Hubbard

Genesis Press, Inc.

Indigo Love Spectrum

An imprint of Genesis Press, Inc.

Publishing Company

Genesis Press, Inc.

P.O. Box 101

Columbus, MS 39703

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, not known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission of the publisher, Genesis Press, Inc. For information write Genesis Press, Inc., P.O. Box 101, Columbus, MS 39703.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author and all incidents are pure invention.

Copyright© 2008 Crystal Hubbard

ISBN-13: 978-1-58571-571-8

ISBN-10: 1-58571-571-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

Visit us at www.genesis-press.com or call at 1-888-Indigo-1-4-0

Dedication

To Mary Croom Hicks, who made me scream in Michigan City, Indiana.

Acknowledgements

My first Love Spectrum title,
Crush,
was borne of my lifelong affection for the United Kingdom and many of my experiences in Wales and England. The idea for
Blame It on Paradise
exploded in my head the day I saw an exceptionally attractive woman at Logan International Airport. Men were transfixed by that dark-skinned goddess from the other side of the world. Her waist-length black hair was akin to that of a Native American, her mouth, cheekbones and dark brown complexion were distinctly African, and her thin nose and gray eyes seemed typically Caucasian. I had never seen a person, male or female, so strikingly and oddly beautiful. She was kind enough to answer when I asked her where she was from, and she named an island near New Zealand.

To establish one of the settings for this book, I adopted one of the uninhabited Chatham Islands. With no bounds to my boldness in the telling of a story of my own invention, I took the liberty of moving the island closer to the International Date Line.

Nahant Island, the counterpart to my fictional Darwin, is real. Not only is it one of the prettiest pieces of land in New England, it is home to Bobbi Lerman, one of the best storytellers and most thorough researchers I’ve ever read.

My bibliography for this book topped out at three single spaced pages but I’d like to specifically thank the following individuals, groups and organizations for their assistance, generosity and patience in helping me bring Darwin Island to life:

Treehouse designer James Powell, the Treehouse Workshop, Cessna Aircraft Company, Dassault Aviation, the Chatham Islands Department of Conservation, the New Zealand Department of Conservation, Greg Horler of the Awarakau Farmstays, the Te Matarae Farmstays, Chatham Island Fish and Dive Charters, Attorney Robert Enyard and Pacific maritime historian Rhys Richards.

And finally I’d like to thank Sandy, Marjorie, Grant, Ellis and Yael, friends and stalwart travelers who went to the other side of the world before me and brought back stories that spurred me to follow in their footsteps.

Prologue

Her long, lithe form perched atop the highest point of Tuanui Bay. About her face and bare shoulders, a mild breeze set tendrils of her almost waist-length hair dancing, as though it moved to the music of the ocean crashing against the volcanic rock upon which she stood. Unblinking, she watched the subtle artistry of the sunrise painting the sky in muted shades of pink that slowly replaced the pale grey of the between-time connecting night to dawn. She breathed deeply of the cool air, already smelling the heat to come once the sun assumed its throne high above the clouds.

She was completely alone, yet anyone who stumbled upon her might have looked up from the shore and spent a moment wondering if she were some ebony goddess of the sea silhouetted against the dawn, reasserting her ownership of the new day.

As the pastel pink bloomed into blinding yellow, she closed her eyes and tipped her face to receive dawn’s kiss. An unexpected tickle of excitement moved over her skin, and she smiled. She tried to begin each day with the sunrise, right here atop her favorite spot on the island, yet never had she enjoyed such a strong feeling of anticipation. A thrilling current of expectation sizzled low in her belly and tingled in her fingertips.

Something was in the air, figuratively, if not literally. She was certain of it. Whether good or bad, she couldn’t tell. But her gut instincts had never deceived her, and she trusted that something was about to happen. Accepting that what would come would inevitably do so, and that she would face it accordingly, she moved closer to the very edge of the precipice. Then without hesitation, without fear, she threw out her arms and dived off, hanging weightless for a joyous, infinitesimal moment before slicing into the inky black waters of the sea.

CHAPTER 1

“Hold onto your chairs, soldiers, and don’t let your eyes deceive you.” Reginald Wexler, co-founder and CEO of Coyle-Wexler Pharmaceuticals, punctuated his admonition with a sly smile. A slight bob of his rectangular head spurred his personal assistant into motion at the far end of the cavernous executive board room. The fidgety young man jerked open a pair of double-wide mahogany doors and stepped aside.

The executives of Coyle-Wexler operations—save the dearly departed Gardner Coyle—and a fleet of attorneys turned to watch an elegant, shapely woman make a cheerful and gracious entrance.

“Gentlemen,” Reginald started, “and ladies,” he added, acknowledging his trio of female executives: the Puerto Rican vice president of marketing, the African-American vice president of communications and the Korean vice president of customer service. “I’d like you to meet the new Mrs. Reginald Wexler.”

Jackson DeVoy sat back in his plush leather chair, slowly swiveling to follow the new Mrs. Wexler’s long and stately walk from the doorway to her husband’s side at the head of the gigantic conference table. Jackson’s heavy eyebrows met in the incisive scowl he normally reserved for opposing attorneys as he thoughtfully took his chin between his thumb and forefinger. He studied the woman. The new Mrs. Wexler looked like Ann-Margret, circa
Grumpy Old Men
. A red knit dress flattered her curvaceous figure, hugging it in all the right places, making her look like a belated Christmas present. Her auburn hair was swept into a simple twist that accentuated her cheekbones, and her makeup had been applied with a light and careful hand. Her coffee eyes were her most striking feature, and they seemed to laugh while her mouth merely smiled.

The
new
Mrs. Wexler? Jack cocked a suspicious eyebrow.

She responded to his expression with a surreptitious wink.

“Mr. Wexler, I’d like to be the first to congratulate you on your surprise nuptials. I don’t know about anyone else here, but I wasn’t aware that your excursion to the South Pacific six months ago was a honeymoon trip.” Edison Burke bumped Jack’s chair, hard, as he vaulted out of his seat to approach Reginald and his wife. His skinny arms and legs encased in an ill-fitting striped suit, he scurried to the head of the room and clamped Mrs. Wexler’s hand between both of his, shaking it so hard that his frameless glasses bounced on the bridge of his nose. “I believe I speak for everyone in this room when I say that we had no idea that you were contemplating divorce, never mind remarriage.”

Edison brought Mrs. Wexler’s hand to his face and pressed his lips to the back of it. She absently wiped her hand on the skirt of her dress when Edison turned his silvery blue eyes on Reginald. “May I also say that your new wife is a vision of sheer loveliness, truly an upgrade, compared to the former Mrs. Wexler.” He guffawed, shoving an elbow into Reginald’s ribs.

In a gesture of infinite patience, Reginald passed a claw-like, liver-spotted hand through the white floss covering his head. “Burke. Sit.”

“Yes sir.” The words left Burke in a humble whisper as he backed toward his seat.

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here this morning.” Reginald addressed the forty-five people seated at the conference table, but he kept his gaze on his wife. “It was to meet my wife, yes, but—”

“Not your new wife,” Jack said.

Mrs. Wexler’s face broke into a smile, and then she chuckled. “Jack, how did you know?”

He stood, straightening his exquisitely tailored jacket as he did so. His presence alone commanded the attention of every man in the room, and his dark, golden good looks captivated Wexler’s trio of female veeps.

“Your eyes.” Jack neared Mrs. Wexler, still not quite believing what he was seeing. “You can change the body, but the eyes…they can’t hide.” He allowed Wexler’s wife to give his hands a brief squeeze, and then he set a chaste kiss on her cheek. “You look wonderful, Millicent.”

Reginald gave Jack a proud pat on the back. “Very good, Jackson, my boy. Once again, you’ve shown why you’re my number one.”

Millicent Wexler—the first and
only
Mrs. Wexler—beamed. She clapped her hands to Jack’s face and gave him a grandmotherly smooch full on the lips. “Jack, you’re such a smart cookie!”

“Okay, Millie, enough’s enough.” Reginald impatiently ushered her into an empty chair. He picked up a remote control and used it to simultaneously dim the lights overhead and lower a projection screen at the front of the room. With the click of another button, an image appeared on the screen. Jack took his seat.

“This is Millicent Wexler, one year ago.” Reginald paused to give his audience the chance to absorb the sight of Millicent Wexler’s pale, doughy flesh overspilling the confines of a floral bathing suit. “Millicent topped the scales at an all-time personal high of two—”

“Must you, Reginald!” Mrs. Wexler’s voice drowned out the rest of the number.

He rolled his eyes skyward and took a deep breath before continuing. “Honestly, Millie, everyone in this room knows you used to be—”

Jack felt the heat of the fiery stare Mrs. Wexler pinned on her husband.

Reginald snorted impatiently. “This is a scientific presentation,” he stated gruffly. “Full disclosure is key here, and that includes your weight.”

Mrs. Wexler stubbornly crossed her arms.

“Would
you
like to handle this presentation, Millie?”

“Actually, I would,” she said, standing. “Thank you, Reginald.” She plucked the remote from his palm before taking his shoulders and guiding him into her unoccupied chair.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that indeed is a photo of me from last year.” Millicent began a leisurely stroll around the conference table. “That’s me in the pool at our house on Cape Cod on our thirty-fifth anniversary. I weighed in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds. As many of you know, I’ve tried every weight loss aide offered by Coyle-Wexler and every other pharmaceutical company in the Western Hemisphere as well as all the diets on the bestseller lists, every homeopathic remedy, hypnosis, acupuncture and even a few things that aren’t legal within the United States.

“Nothing worked for me. I tried low-carb, low-fat, all-vegetable, all-liquid, citrus, cabbage, soy, fasting, water binging…” She stopped to catch her breath. “I’m an older woman, but I’m not an old woman, no matter what you young hotshots might think. I wanted to improve my health as well as my looks, but nothing helped me manage my weight. Just when I began considering drastic surgical options, I discovered something better.”

She clicked the remote. A leafy green plant appeared on screen.

“What’s that?” Edison snickered. “The parsley diet?”

“It’s mint,” Millicent said. “It grows half a world away, in the mountains of Darwin Island. I spent six weeks on Darwin with Reginald, my sister and her husband. While we were there, we were served a delicious mint tea that’s brewed from freshly picked young leaves. By the end of our third week, my sister and I had each lost nearly twelve pounds, and we weren’t dieting. On the contrary, we gorged ourselves on every delicacy the islanders set before us.

“By the end of the six weeks, I’d lost twenty pounds and my sister had lost sixteen. I brought some of the tea back with me, and once it was released from quarantine, I resumed drinking it. Within five months, I’d lost another sixty pounds, and I’d never felt better. I
ran
the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure a few months ago, I took the 55-and-over doubles title in my indoor tennis league, and I’ve reached my goal weight. I’d fit right in on Darwin now. The women there are exceptionally fit and healthy, and we were told it was because of this mint tea. The women drink it the way we here in the United States drink soda.”

Millicent switched photos, now showing a beach shot featuring a sampling of the island’s female residents. Every man in the room sat up straighter, some shifting from side to side to get a better, unobstructed view of the screen.

“The women on Darwin are beautiful as well,” Millicent said, “which probably has more to do with the various ethnicities of its residents rather than the tea.”

Other than a slightly quirked eyebrow, Jack showed no outward reaction to the smiling, nubile figures on screen. Dressed in skimpy bathing suits, simple cotton dresses or topless, the women of Darwin ranged in complexion from strawberries and cream to ebony. Jack’s eyebrows drew together in curiosity as he picked out a very fair-skinned woman with very full lips and a broad, flat nose, and then a dark-skinned woman with straight, honey-blonde hair. Jack knew that Aborigines could be born with blonde hair, but he’d never seen such a thing, even in photos.

Edison openly leered at the attractive women in the photo. “It’s like that scene in
Mutiny on the Bounty
, the one where the native women choose their mates from among the English sailors.”

Reginald grimaced. “Keep it in your pants, Burke. Millie, may I take it from here?”

She handed over the remote. Reginald raised the lights, drowning the image of the island beauties in fashionable track lighting. “According to Darwin’s Ministry of Health, the average woman on the island is five-foot-seven and weighs 135 pounds. Her measurements are 35-24-36, and she lives to be 84 years old. On Darwin, obesity is unheard of for the natives.”

The stout vice president of new developments raised a pudgy pink hand. “Does this Darwin mint have the same effect on men as it does on women?”

“Yes.” Reginald nodded his appreciation for the question. “In fact, the tea’s effect seems to work even faster.”

“Figures,” muttered the female vice president of marketing.

“People, my wife has given you a firsthand testimonial as to the effectiveness of Darwin mint, but as you know, our stockholders and the Food and Drug Administration require far more than that.” Reginald clasped his hands behind his back.

Edison’s snort resounded through the room. “You intend to market that weed under the Coyle-Wexler trademark?”

“That’s exactly what I plan to do.” Thirty years of sharpening his claws on pipsqueaks like Edison Burke put a gleeful shine in Reginald’s eyes as he braced his hands wide on the glossy tabletop. “Do you have any objections, counselor?”

“N-No, sir.” Edison’s hands trembled slightly as he straightened his already straight tie.

Jack bowed his head to hide a grin.

Reginald directed their attention to the folders set before them on the table. “Over the past few months, I’ve had our research department working to chemically synthesize this tea. So far, we’ve had no success in reproducing it. In fact, our trials have been dismal failures. One of the women in our initial test study gained twenty pounds in eight days. Another version of the tea had side effects of, and I quote, ‘temporary blindness, irritable bowel syndrome, acute sleeplessness and episodes of speaking gibberish.’ Either the sample we’re working with is too small, or there’s something in this tea that cannot, and clearly should not, be duplicated in a lab.”

“Why can’t we just buy the rights to Darwin mint from the growers on the island?” Jack asked.

Reginald, grinning smugly, narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at Jack. “That’s where you come in, my boy.” He greedily rubbed his hands together. “The mint grows exclusively in the Paradise Valley region of the Raina Mountains on Darwin Island, which is privately owned by J.T. Marchand, who has ignored all of our inquiries regarding Darwin mint tea and its outright purchase. Now, gentlemen—and ladies—clinical trials on the tea are ongoing, even as we speak. But once we get clearance from the FDA to market the tea, Coyle-Wexler Pharmaceuticals fully intends to be the sole producer and distributor.”

Reginald strolled to the expanse of one-way glass forming the east wall of the boardroom. He gazed at an unparalleled view of Boston from sixty stories up as he said, “Darwin mint tea is what the world has been waiting for. It’s a weight loss aid that has no discernible side effects. It’s impossible to overuse it, as it seems to paradoxically act as an appetite stimulant if consumed in massive quantities. This tea will change the face, and the figures, of the world. J.T. Marchand is idling on the gold mine of the millennium, and I want in on it.”

Reginald turned away from the wall of glass. “I’m sending my best man to work out a deal with J.T. Marchand. Burke…”

Surprised, Edison sat taller and offered the room a gloating smirk.

“I want you on standby, in case I need a second down there,” Reginald finished.

His smirk morphing into a petulant pout, Edison sat back heavily in his chair.

Reginald issued his closing command. “Jack, pack your bags. You leave for Darwin today.”

* * *

By the time he had departed Boston’s Logan International Airport and arrived in Sydney, Australia, where he’d boarded a chartered flight bound for Christchurch, New Zealand, Jack felt comfortable in his knowledge of Darwin Island. He’d read the comprehensive report Coyle-Wexler’s research department had prepared and now considered himself a walking encyclopedia of trivial information about Darwin.

J.T. Marchand was another subject entirely. In an Internet-driven information age, Marchand had a canny knack for staying out of newspapers, magazines and web sites. The hasty Internet search Jack had conducted on his own in the air above the Rocky Mountains had yielded only the most basic information.

Marchand, a descendant of the French, English and Aboriginal settlers who colonized the island in the late 1700s, inherited the whole of Darwin at an early age. Like the Vatican and the tiny country of Malta, Darwin Island was a sovereign entity under international law, which made Marchand the closest thing to a genuine potentate Jack ever hoped to meet. What most intimidated Jack was the fact that Marchand was a summa cum laude graduate of Stanford Law School and a corporate attorney with an undefeated record.

A perfect winning record was one thing Marchand and Jack had in common, and he mused on that as he stepped off of the charter from New Zealand to set foot on Darwin for the first time.

“Welcome to Darwin, the pearl of the South Pacific,” greeted a woman with a bright smile, flawless terra cotta skin and a clipboard bearing the passenger manifesto. A warm, fragrant breeze made her long, black hair dance and shimmer about her shoulders and upper arms. It played in the wispy grasses of her low-slung skirt, which revealed a considerable expanse of her taut, honey-dark abdomen and rounded hips. The five male passengers disembarking after Jack trained their eyes on their hostess’s exposed flesh and the straining contents of her floral bandeau top while she stamped Jack’s passport and visa.