Girl Gear 3: Bound to Happen (12 page)

And not from Sydney Ford.

He was supposed to be here on vacation, and she was supposed to be his good-time girl. She'd grown up in a big way, while he hadn't been around to keep track. And his good-time plans were now X-rated and very, very adult.

The thought of Sydney, the woman, naked beneath him or, better yet, naked on top, where he could watch her body move and see the expressions she couldn't keep from her face, had him squirming in the cedar deck chair. He couldn't imagine how he'd be squirming when he had her there above him, holding her hips while she rode him.

As if he'd conjured her up, she appeared, her bare feet slapping lightly on the boards of the deck. Handing him a plate with two huge sandwiches, she set a bottle of water down by his chair before she leaned back against the railing and dusted her hands together.

He grinned his thanks.

"Don't get used to the personal service," she said as he bit into the homemade bread and tender chunks of chicken. Her mouth twisted with amusement when she added, "And that's all I have to say about that."

The personal service he wanted from her had nothing to do with food. It was a good thing he had his mouth full, because he might have said so.

"You're not in the mood for Tom Hanks?" she asked, glancing up at the gorgeous night sky.

He looked at her long neck, at the curve of her throat, her smile, the fullness of her breasts. He swallowed—first his sandwich, then a hard knot of desire. Finally he shook his head. "Sorry, no. And if you're in the mood for company, I'm not sure I'm your best choice."

Looking at him, she cocked her head to one side and drew her brows into a thoughtful V. "Why the bad mood?"

What exactly was he supposed to tell her but the truth? he thought, then took a deep breath, blew it out. "I didn't know it would be so rough coming here."

She frowned. "Why would it be rough coming here?"

He'd taken another bite and had his mouth full of sandwich. It made for a good excuse not to have to talk until he'd figured out exactly what he wanted to say, what he wanted to tell her, what he wanted her to know.

Her hands braced on the deck railing,
Sydney
went on, "Are you sorry you brought all of us with you? Or is it about the
Indiscreet?
I hate that you didn't get to finish the cruise you were promised. Nolan's been looking to sell the boat for a while. I guess it's a good thing."

Ray took a slug of water from the bottle to clear his throat and down the rest of his sandwich. "Don't worry about the boat. It's not that at all. And I'm glad everyone's here. I'm especially glad you're here."

"Then why are you hiding on the deck?"

"I've been thinking about Patrick," he answered before second thoughts had a chance to stop him.

"Oh, Ray."
Sydney
closed her eyes, rubbed a hand over her forehead as if wondering how best to ease his pain. Then she swiftly looked back up. "I'm so sorry. I haven't thought about Patrick in so long. I never knew exactly what happened. I knew he'd disappeared, but have you never heard a word?"

He really didn't want to get into Patrick's disappearance with
Sydney
. At least not now, not when it weighed so heavily on his mind, not when he was really more interested in using her body in ways that would keep him from thinking about anything at all.

But he knew he needed to talk. Until now, he'd never wanted to. Until now, he hadn't had
Sydney
to listen. "Patrick and I and two of my frat brothers had gone to
Barbados
. We were celebrating—or at least
I
was celebrating—finishing my master's."

Sydney
's eyes widened. "Wow. I didn't know you'd done your master's."

He nodded, gave a half-hearted shrug of one shoulder. His degree hardly seemed to matter anymore. "I didn't have much of a life from eighteen to twenty-four, if you want to know the truth. What life I did have was all books and study and a lot of brushfires gone out of control."

"How did you manage grad school and fighting fires? Didn't you ever sleep?"

"Sure." It seemed so long ago now that it probably had been a bigger deal than he was making it out to be. "But long shifts at the firehouse make for perfect study time. And most of my professors were big believers in the Internet. I attended more than a few lectures via
videocam
."

"I feel like such a slug." Pushing her bangs from her forehead,
Sydney
ran both hands back over her ponytail. "I've thought more than once that I need to find the time or make the time to go back. Chloe's going back this fall, did you know that?"

Ray shook his head. He didn't keep tabs on any of the gIRL-gEAR partners except for the one who held his interest. "It's a good thing. A feeling of having accomplished something. Having stuck it out, which sometimes I think is all a degree really means."

"Better than the feeling of accomplishment you get from your work?" she asked, her hands moving back to the railing.

"Not really." He wasn't sure he could explain. "Just different. I like to feel I'm doing something positive with my time and my life. Work gives me that. School did, too." He wasn't sure he could clear it up enough for her to understand. "It's a lot better than feeling like I've failed."

"Is that how you feel about Patrick? That you let him down somehow?"

"I didn't just let him down." Ray looked away from
Sydney
and off to the side, where the moon shone on the tops of the coconut palms. "I failed him a hundred ways to Sunday, plain and simple."

"I don't believe it's that simple for a minute," she said, shaking her head. "I don't know you as well as the best of your friends, but I do know you would've done whatever you could do to find him."

She couldn't know. No one knew. No one had any idea of the dead ends he'd hit, the leads he'd exhausted. "I've spent so much time looking. So much time. And nothing. Not a single clue. It's like he vanished off the face of the earth."

"What happened?" she asked softly.

He felt the rush of words before he could figure out how to stop them. "We'd rented a sailboat and were making our way through the
Virgin Islands
. We had a guide, the boat owner. We weren't totally stupid. We'd planned to do a lot of drinking and needed someone to keep us from taking ourselves out across the
Atlantic
. Besides, he promised us he knew all the best places to find warm, willing women."

Sydney
crossed her arms and shook her head with mock disdain. "Booze and women. I suppose boys will always be boys."

He liked the way she sounded all high and mighty, because he knew she was nothing of the sort. "We drank and screwed our fair share, to tell you the truth. Patrick thought he'd died and gone to heaven."

"What happened?"
Sydney
prompted again. "If you don't want to talk about it, I understand. But I'd really like to know."

"We were boarded by pirates."

"What?" she gasped.

"Unbelievable, right? But it's true. Another boat. They waved us over. We thought they were in trouble. They were signaling that they had no radio. And there was some serious black smoke billowing from the hold."

"And your instincts and training kicked in."

"I guess. But the fire was all contained. A fifty-five-gallon drum of who knew what set to produce as much smoke as possible. Definitely not amateurs. They robbed us blind. And they took Patrick as insurance. He was cutting up, laughing. Telling us he'd be okay. We were supposed to wait twenty-four hours. Then we could follow. And pick him up at a designated location. But when we got there…"

"He wasn't there,"
Sydney
finished for him.

Three years, and the pain still ripped him apart. He swallowed thickly. "I don't know why I thought he would be. We could all ID the bastards. Patrick especially. They would never have been as successful as they obviously were if their MO had included releasing their hostages."

Ray was silent for several long, lonely heartbeats. He drew a shuddering breath. "I'm guessing they shot him and threw him to the sharks. That makes the most sense, considering in three years we haven't turned up so much as a shoelace.

"Goddamn. He was only twenty-two years old." Ray sat forward and dragged both hands down his face. "He was having the time of his life and then it was over. Just like that. I only hope it was fast. And that he didn't suffer."

"Oh, honey, don't do this to yourself."
Sydney
moved closer and eased down to sit in his lap, pressing both palms to his chest, as if she could absorb his hurt. "If I'd known the
Caribbean
reminded you so much of bad times, I could've had the crew take us anywhere."

"Yeah? And where would we have ended up?" Ray asked with a short laugh. "Floating twelve miles out to sea? Besides, I love the
Caribbean
. And being here actually helps me work through a lot of the bad staff." A statement he hadn't realized was true until he put it into words.

Or maybe it was the feel of a soft woman in his lap that soothed his memories. He would drown in those compassionate blue eyes if he didn't lighten the mood. He tilted his head. "Besides, I had to be sure wherever we went I'd get to see you in a bikini."

"What?" she asked in mock insult. "You don't like me in a one-piece?"

"I like you any way I can get you. And right now I'm liking you a whole lot right where you are."

"Unless I'm reading you wrong, Ray Coffey, that sounds like you're hitting on me."

He didn't know how she could be reading him any way but right, because his lap was beginning to stir and harden. "I don't make it a habit of hitting on defenseless women. And that's all I have to say about
that."

"Good," she said, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I'm glad we got that cleared up."

He wasn't sure what exactly she now saw with more clarity, but he hoped she was telling him she wasn't the least bit defenseless. He draped one arm across her legs and moved his other hand into her hair. Not kissing her didn't even cross his mind.

Her lips pressed to his in tentative exploration. They weren't the lips he'd imagined. They were soft and slow-moving, testing their way, reliving, remembering, realizing that nothing was the same.

Her taste was richer, her scent a headier mix of perfume and arousal. And her subtle movements raised the stakes, an underlying question asking him if he wanted her. Even had she been blind, she wouldn't have needed Braille. Not if her sense of touch had risen anywhere close to his heightened level.

The hand she had splayed over his chest she now moved up to hold his jaw still. As if he was going anywhere. But he let her keep him right where she wanted him, anyway. He liked that she wasn't defenseless. He also liked that she was bold, that she had no trouble feeling her way toward what she wanted.

She nipped lightly at his lower lip to let him know she wanted him to open up. He smiled and he opened, because he'd been waiting for this too long not to let her have things her way, any way. Whatever she wanted, he was patient.

The slats of the cedar chair creaked. A gentle breeze lifted strands of
Sydney
's hair, blowing it to tickle Ray's face. He caught a whiff of coconut, of wild grass, of air that blew in from the sea. The sky above was spotted with balls of cotton clouds and a moon that seemed to take up half of the tropical night.

Ray closed his eyes and went to heaven, sitting back and sitting still while
Sydney
used her tongue to feel her way through his mouth. The surface of his teeth, his lips, his palette, his cheeks. His texture and his taste and his own tongue, which she finally engaged.

She kissed as if it was an art, as if the more time she spent in methodical, paint-by-numbers practice the more pleasurable the sensory result. Ray wasn't sure his senses could take much more of the way she'd decided to ease her way into an embrace.