Girl Gear 3: Bound to Happen (23 page)

And then Lauren was up and out of her chair, dancing for no one's entertainment but her own and taking off her clothes as she did. She stripped off her T-shirt, which left her wearing her shorts and a teeny-weeny bikini top, and twisted the material into a rope she worked down her back to her rump, then slid back and forth between her legs. All the while she tossed her head, her hair slapping back and forth like a braided whip.

Sydney
looked from one to the other to the next, all three of her friends exuding enough sexuality to seduce the entire western
Caribbean
's male population. Getting to her feet, she sighed.

If she couldn't beat 'em she might as well join 'em.

RETURNING FROM AN EVENING
spent fishing the north end of the island with Menga Duarte as their guide, Ray followed Anton, Doug and Jess along the path from the boat dock to the villa. Menga had taken the catch to Auralie to be cleaned and prepared for a late dinner.

Ray had spent a good part of the fishing trip discussing housing options with Anton and Doug.
Houston
's real-estate market was hot with available spaces in dozens of prime locations around the city.

Ray still wasn't sure if he wanted to buy loft space in one of the downtown area's renovated buildings similar to Lauren Hollister's. Or if he preferred to explore the possibilities of a place in one of the historic wards, like the house where Eric Haydon lived with Chloe Zuniga.

Sydney
lived in a Galleria area high-rise, complete with doorman and all the amenities. It wasn't Ray's scene, but
Sydney
certainly fit with the elegant surroundings. Ray was more a suburban kind of guy. Not necessarily the white-picket-fence type, but he liked the idea of sitting on a porch swing and watching the neighborhood kids play.

He couldn't exactly picture
Sydney
sitting beside him. And that was okay. He wasn't looking to spend his life with Sydney Ford. He wasn't looking to do any more than enjoy her as a woman.

Just as he wasn't looking to do any more than staying alive, making it through every mission he was called out for, minimizing collateral damage by getting in, getting the job done and getting himself and any victims out in one piece.

That was the determination that drove him. And that would keep him out of trouble here on Coconut Caye. He knew well how to cover his backside. How to go into dangerous situations and emerge whole. Sydney Ford had the potential for causing a man serious distraction. Ray had been forced to learn to be
indistractable
.

And a good thing, too, considering the sight that greeted the four men after climbing the stairs to the sundeck on top of the villa. It wasn't the scenery, though the gorgeous sunset and expanse of tropical foliage in one direction, the wide Caribbean sea in the other, sure made a hell of a backdrop for the four half-naked dancing women.

The group could've put any men's club strip show to shame. Ray had been the first one to climb the circular staircase to the villa's roof. And now Jess came to a sudden stop on his right, Anton on his left. Doug nearly plowed into Ray's back before barging between him and Jess and coming to a halt.

The music that had drawn them up to the sundeck was blaring from speakers mounted in weatherproof boxes in the four corners of the railing. Bob Marley singing "No Woman, No Cry." A sexy haunting sound that set an intoxicating mood. The scents of citrus and female bodies and rum hung in the air. He hadn't had a thing to drink, but was well on his way to being wasted.

Poe stood on the seat of one of the loungers, her arms raised over her head, her head cast down, her hips swiveling in a belly dance made even more exotic by the low-slung sarong pants tied beneath her hipbones and showing off a helluva lot of her ivory skin. Her bikini top, in a matching peacock blue, barely covered her impressively visible assets. Off to Ray's side, Jess made a strangled sound.

Kinsey was on her knees in the center of the cedar table, her pelvis thrust against the umbrella pole, her thighs on either side, doing exactly what she looked like she was doing. A pole dance. With her head tossed back, her shoulder-length hair nearly brushed the soles of her bare feet. Her eyes were closed, her face wearing an expression as sensual as her skimpy red thong and bandeau top. Doug, on Ray's other side, struggled to breathe.

Lauren was stripping, wearing what Ray supposed was a swimsuit but looked a lot more like underwear.

She had her eyes closed and was running her palms over her body, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth as she worked at her self-seduction. Anton didn't even move.

And then there was
Sydney
. God, Sydney. She wore almost nothing. Scraps of butterscotch-colored fabric that Ray could easily have seen a stripper wear. A shimmery, glittery two-piece suit that covered her completely, leaving as much to the imagination as it revealed. And what it revealed was plenty, yet nowhere close to enough for Ray's tastes.

And what she was doing was an amazing lap dance, even though she was doing it for an empty chair. She had one foot propped on the back of her chair as she thrust her lower body forward in a circular motion. As he looked on, she moved her foot to the seat, then to the deck and placed both hands on the chair arms and leaned forward.

The motion, of course, lifted her bottom Ray's direction, and he didn't like it at all that the other three guys were getting a look at what belonged to him. He growled, a sound that felt as if it came straight from his balls. He had to stop himself from crossing the deck and wrapping her up in his shirt and hauling her off to bed.

"You know, boys—" Doug draped one arm around Jess's shoulders, the other around Ray's and gave Anton an inclusive nod "—I believe we have died and gone to heaven."

Ray didn't know about the others, but he was in some kind of private hell.

9

«
^
»

"
I
REALLY LIKE
the area where Eric and Chloe are living," Ray said, fielding a barrage of questions from Anton about several of the properties they'd toured before leaving
Houston
for Coconut Caye.

The eight vacationers were gathered around the dining table, finally eating the fish the men had caught yesterday evening, the fish they'd looked forward to feasting on at the end of their outing twenty-four hours ago.

And they would've done just that if, by the time Auralie arrived at the villa to prepare the meal, the women had been in any condition to eat. They hadn't. To a one they had passed out after what had apparently been a hedonistic afternoon spent indulging in booze and sex.

Or sex talk, anyway, judging by the comments made once Ray and the others had crashed their private dance party.

He still hadn't figured out how they'd ended up being the bad guys when they hadn't even been around for the bitch session. But the women hadn't wasted any time letting them know that men were dicks, or men had dicks, or whatever.

Sitting here now in the company of the same four females, this time all sober and oblivious to most of what had gone on, Ray gave up trying to make sense out of any of them.

After last night's unexpected floor show had ground to a halt, Ray had pulled
Sydney
down into one of the loungers, settled her backside between his legs and forced her to lean back against his chest while she prattled on about multiple orgasms.

Kinsey and Doug and Jess and Poe had tackled the circular staircase back down into the villa's main room. Ray had decided he didn't want to risk
Sydney
breaking her neck or breaking his. Besides, he liked having her in his lap.

Anton had dragged Lauren and two chairs closer to the railing where they'd sat side by side without speaking. Lauren had taken the bottle of rum with her and had been the first to fall asleep.
Sydney
had followed soon after.

Only then had Ray headed to his bedroom for blankets and pillows and a quick shower. On his way through the main room, he'd found Poe and Kinsey crashed on the sectional while Doug and Jess raided the kitchen under Auralie's watchful eye.

Smelling more like man and less like fish, his arms full of bedding, Ray had made his way back to the staircase, only to end up having to wait for Anton to make the climb down, a passed-out Lauren hanging limply over his shoulder.

The look in the other man's eye had been crushing, a sad sort of resignation. It looked to Ray like the couple had had all the togetherness they could take.

Once back on the deck, Ray had used the cushions from the loungers as a bed. And then he'd slept beneath the starry tropical sky with
Sydney
in his arms.

Her body, bared as it was in that nothing of a swimsuit, had been cool, her skin smooth beneath the gooseflesh raised by the night's soft breeze.

But then she'd moved in close to his much larger body, where she'd absorbed his heat, and her skin had taken on the texture of satin. Or silk. Ray didn't know his fabrics.

What he did know was that he could get used to the way she felt, the way her backside fit so perfectly into his lap, the way her coconut-scented hair, lying there on the pillow between them, tickled his nose, the way
he
felt when she slept in his arms.

Except for that last little deviation from his rules of involvement, it ranked right up there as one of the best nights of his life. Of course in the morning, like a wrench thrown into any good chick flick, when he'd woken up she'd been gone.

He'd lain there for a good long while, listening to the squawking gulls and the softly rolling surf and the sounds of his co-vacationers stirring in the villa below. And he'd wondered how he was supposed to separate what he'd shared here with
Sydney
from what circumstances would allow him to share with her back home.

In one way, this vacation had been a good thing, giving him more than Patrick's disappearance to connect with the
Caribbean
. The two experiences—the trip with Patrick, the trip with
Sydney
—couldn't have been any farther apart on the pain-and-pleasure scale. But both delivered their own emotionally gut-busting punch.

He'd learned to live with the one; he would learn to live with the other. First things first, however. He needed to figure out where it was he was going to live. When he'd moved back to
Houston
, his parents had told him the family home was his. And to do with it what he wished, because they wouldn't be coming back. He knew their decision had to do with Patrick. He knew that because, even two years after Patrick's disappearance, they still hadn't packed up his room.

Ray had been in the house a year now. He'd packed and stored his brother's things. But he hadn't decided what to do with the house. The memories weren't enough to drive him away as they'd obviously driven his folks. He worried, in fact, that the opposite was true. That he was keeping the home fires burning for the unlikely event that Patrick returned.

But he was bothered more by the possibility that he was holding on to the past and the memories of hearth and home because he wouldn't have anything remotely similar in his future. And now, after mentally going through the list of Neville & Storey properties again, comparing the amenities of each to his four-bedroom, two-story, comfortably furnished and lived-in colonial, Ray wasn't sure at all what it was he wanted anymore.

He finally finished up his answer by saying to Anton, "But, I do have to tell you. I'm still kinda attached to the house I grew up in. Now that the parents have moved to
Phoenix
, I've got a helluva lot of privacy. Not to mention more room than I could ever need."

"Yeah, and it's gotta be pretty damn close to being paid for, right?" Jess asked, and Ray nodded, watching the other man digging his fork into the flaky fish.

The men were due to head for deeper waters in the morning. Menga had promised red snapper the likes of which were rarely seen. But Ray still had business to take care of with
Sydney
. And their vacation time was rapidly coming to an end.

They'd had word that the
Indiscreet
would be returning day after tomorrow. It was time to wrap up any unfinished business. Which meant given a choice between going with the others or spending the time with
Sydney
, the decision was a no-brainer.