Loe raamatut: «In Too Deep / Matched»

CHAPTER ONE

CRASHING WAVES. SUNLIGHT streaming onto his face. A light breeze blowing through the open floor-to-ceiling windows. And a pounding headache.

Alex Stone reached his hand out to the bedside table and groped for his phone, then brought it to life to read the time. 8:37. Shit.

He sat up in bed and swung his legs to the floor, cursing his brother as he grabbed a pair of swimming trunks from his suitcase. Ditching his boxer shorts, he slid the trunks over his bare hips and bent forward to dig around for a T-shirt. His head protested.

Alex may not have minded his headache so much if it was the price for an evening of fun, but the case was anything but. After arriving in Moretta from LA last night, tired and jet-lagged—naturally, Alex had refused his brother’s offer of a private jet to neighboring Barbados in favor of three leg-cramping commercial flights—his considerate rock-star brother had driven him straight to his place, where a raucous party was in full swing. No amount of sleeping pills or pillows over his head could block out the noise and music pounding through the walls of his brother’s home, which lasted until, by Alex’s estimation, about four hours ago.

He glanced at his phone again: 8:40. His scuba-diving lesson was due to start in twenty minutes. He’d taken all the preliminary lessons back in LA, and today was to be his first open-water dive. But right now he was exhausted and feeling anything but mentally prepared for it. It was probably dangerous to dive with so little sleep. He was staying on the island for a week; there was no rush. He should cancel…

Screw that. This was something he needed to do. He’d promised himself he would, and Alex Stone was a man who always kept his promises.

Alex opened his bedroom door. It had been dark when he arrived last night, so between the lack of light and the throngs of bodies crowding the space, he hadn’t gotten a good feel for its layout. Now Alex could see how breathtaking both the house and its setting were. Each of the eight bedroom doors opened onto an expansive piazza with the beach just beyond it. Between a stand of palms on his right and a rocky outcrop to his left, the turquoise ocean lapped gently. As he watched, a tortoise slowly made its way along the sand in his direction.

Alex turned and walked toward the main house, noting that there wasn’t an empty glass or a cushion out of place to be seen, thanks to his brother’s twenty-four-hour housekeeping staff. Passing through the enormous living room, he admired a trio of white sofas the size of queen beds and the tasteful, original artwork on the whitewashed walls. By the time he got to the stainless-steel-and-polished-concrete kitchen with coffee on his mind, his walk from one end of the house to the other felt more like a quest.

“Hey, little brother,” Dev said with a grin as Alex entered the room. Lounging against the counter with a cup of tea in his tanned hand, Dev was the picture of health. For the life of him, Alex would never understand how his brother could party as hard as he did and never look the worse for wear. “Sleep well?”

Alex glared at him as he hit the button on the Starbucks-size espresso machine. “Glad to hear you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“What happened to you, anyway? You missed your own party.”

Alex stared at him in disbelief. “My party?”

Dev shrugged. “Yeah, man. I haven’t seen you in what, four years? My brother comes to visit me—I pull out all the stops.”

“And I always thought the guest of honor was supposed to get a little attention at his own party. My mistake.”

Dev appeared oblivious to Alex’s barb. “Plenty of people there would have loved to give you a little attention,” he said with a wink, turning his head toward the window. Through the glass, Alex could see Dev’s entourage—including several silicone-breasted groupies—lounging by the infinity pool. Alex gave his head a hopeless shake. There was no denying that he and his brother looked alike—same tall build, dark hair and unusual aqua eyes. The eyes were courtesy of their mother, and, Alex thought, looked devastating on Dev’s somewhat prettier face but didn’t quite work with Alex’s more masculine features. But the similarities ended with their appearance; in every other way the brothers were about as different as guitars and boardrooms, much like their respective careers. “I have to get going,” Alex said, downing the last of his coffee.

“Going?”

“Scuba diving. I told you last night.”

“Oh. Right,” Dev replied, but Alex knew better than to think his brother had been paying attention. It had always been like this between the two of them, even when they were kids—Dev busy entertaining his adoring audiences while Alex hurried along behind in his shadow, just hoping for a shred of his attention. “So, scuba diving, huh? That’s kind of unlike you, considering…” Dev trailed off, leaving the thing they’d never talked about hanging in the air.

Alex placed his coffee cup down with a thud. He wouldn’t give his brother the satisfaction of seeing that he wasn’t quite over his fear yet. “Scuba’s been on my radar for a while. And what better time to tackle a water sport than when you’re surrounded by water?” He started to walk away, and then turned back and gave his brother a cool smile. “You should come with me.”

Dev busied himself with fishing his tea bag out of his mug. “Can’t risk the old ears, brother. Be the death of my career.”

“Of course.” Alex left the kitchen, his mood unimproved.

“Take a golf cart,” Dev shouted after him.

Nicola Metcalfe was going to be late for work—again. Turning the key in the ignition a second time, she made a frustrated noise in her throat when it gave a dry click…and then nothing. Running an agitated hand through her hair, she jumped off the golf cart and made a beeline back to the tiny staff bungalow she shared with her roommate.

“Kiki!” she shouted furiously as she flung the front door open and strode toward her roommate’s bedroom. “You forgot to fill up the cart again! How am I supposed to get to work?”

On her bed Kiki rolled onto her side, her strawberry blond hair spilling over her pillow, and opened one eye. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I finished work so late last night, and the station was already closed…”

“It’s called planning, Kiki.”

“Planning. Right,” she agreed but was already rolling away again and pulling her pillow over her head.

Nicola sighed, knowing it was hopeless. She loved Kiki—they’d been friends since Nicola had first moved to LA to finish her teaching degree nearly a decade ago, and Kiki was the whole reason she’d moved to Moretta four months earlier, acting as a soft landing for Nicola when she needed it most. After the messy end of Kiki’s marriage two years ago, she’d traded in her crazed career as an executive assistant for a bartending job on Moretta. It still amazed Nicola that her friend had had the organizational skills to orchestrate such a dramatic move—unlike Nicola, Kiki was hopelessly scattered.

Nicola left the house again, then she snatched her satchel off the seat of the golf cart and started a slow jog toward the beach along the island’s main road. In truth it was Moretta’s only road, a meandering loop around the entire island with a crisscross running through the center to allow access to its hillside homes, which traded beachfront property for breathtaking panoramic views of the Caribbean Sea. But on a three-square-mile chunk of land sprinkled with only one boutique hotel, one restaurant, ninety-two estates and a few staff cottages, the beach was only minutes away for each and every resident. Seventy years ago it had been a handful of Barbadian and American judges who first recognized the beauty of the tiny island, flocking in to build majestic homes on inexpensive land that soon skyrocketed in value. The influx had earned the island the temporary nickname of “Judgment Isle,” ironic considering that it had now grown into a destination known for its privacy and lack of judgment.

By the time Nicola was halfway to the scuba shack, she was breathing heavily and the thin white tank covering her bikini top was soaked through between her breasts. In mid-August it was already ninety degrees before 9 a.m., but having grown up in Hawaii she was used to heat like this. She stopped to catch her breath, placing her hands on her knees as she leaned forward. All was quiet aside from her ragged breathing and the sound of a light breeze riffling through the palm leaves. Gathering her hair off her neck as she straightened again, she found herself wishing for one of the elastics she kept in a drawer at the scuba shack.

In the distance she could hear the whine of an engine approaching. She recognized the sound as another golf cart, the chief mode of transportation around the island. Every home boasted at least two of them—except, of course, her home.

Nicola started walking in the direction of the beach again as she heard the cart draw nearer to her. She cast a glance over her shoulder, hoping the driver might be someone she knew—Juan from the restaurant maybe, or Stella from the hotel—but one look told her this was not someone she was going to be bumming a ride from.

The driver was a lone female. Her signature dark wavy hair was wrapped in a pink scarf, and large sunglasses covered half her face. Nicola recognized the woman immediately: Lauren Hayes, just one of the many celebrities who owned a home on the island.

No, Nicola would not be asking Lauren Hayes for a lift to her lowly scuba instructor job.

Nicola lifted a hand briefly in greeting, but the star cruised by with perfectly averted eyes. Nicola shook her head with a small grin. She had no right to complain—this was exactly why she had moved here. On an island overflowing with celebrities, Nicola was an unrecognizable nobody—and that was exactly who she wanted to be.

It was only after Alex had started driving that he realized he wasn’t entirely sure if he was going in the right direction. There were no signs, as Moretta wasn’t exactly welcoming to tourists—apparently, you either belonged here or you didn’t. Even the scuba shack’s website was obtuse—We’re located at the beach, of course!

As Alex drove on, half hoping he was traveling in the wrong direction so he would miss the boat after all, he tried to calm his nerves by bringing his mind back to the whole reason he was here in the first place: John Brissoli. The self-made entrepreneur and ex-lawyer was known to be a recluse, especially since his most successful website had reached stratospheric heights two years ago. The site had spawned a spate of copycats, but Alex was only interested in acquiring the real deal. Never mind that a quick internet search revealed the true scope of Brissoli’s work—he had his fingers in many pies, including the porn industry. But Alex didn’t see that as his concern. He’d learned a long time ago to separate his own ethics from those he did business with, as there probably wasn’t a deal to be made under the sun that didn’t have a little dirt on it.

The idea to acquire the website had come from Alex’s father, the cofounder of the family media empire along with Alex’s mother. Devin Sr. had made it clear to Alex that he was to pay whatever was necessary in order to add Brissoli’s site to their company’s roster. But of course, it was rarely that simple. Mr. Brissoli had ignored Alex’s many emails and calls until a week ago, when he’d sent Alex a one-line response: on moretta if you want to talk.

Moretta. It figured. The same island his rock-star only sibling spent a third of his time on; the same island Alex had been avoiding for that very reason ever since his brother had bought a home here several years ago. Knowing the size of Moretta, Alex had had no choice but to tell his brother he was coming, which maddened him all the more because he didn’t actually have a clue what he was going to do once he reached the island. Alex’s follow-up messages to Brissoli had once more gone unanswered, so now here he was—four thousand miles away from home with no cell phone number for his contact, no meeting time or place, staying with a brother he’d stopped trying to forge a relationship with years ago. Even the stunning views of the island as he drove weren’t enough to cheer him up.

Alex sighed deeply as he rounded a corner in the road, swerving slightly to avoid a crossing tortoise. Beautiful island or not, he couldn’t wait to track Brissoli down, get the meeting over with and hightail it out of here.

That was what Alex was thinking when he saw her.

Behind her, Nicola heard another golf cart approaching. She broke her jog, slowing to a walk as the cart pulled up beside her.

“Excuse me,” said a deep male voice. When she turned to face him, her breath, which was coming out fast from her run, literally caught in her throat. The man who had spoken the words to her was drop-dead gorgeous. Square jaw, dark mussed hair, and his eyes—they were the exact same color as her own. No one had the same shade of eyes as her. When she was little, her mother used to tell her they were proof that she was born with the ocean in her.

“Yes?” Nicola managed to get out.

“Am I going in the right direction? I’m looking for the beach.”

The beach? Hot or not, it was an obvious pickup line, and a bad one at that. Nicola had heard plenty of those since she’d moved here. This guy was obviously some C-list celebrity staying with an A-list friend and thinking that moved him up two letters in the alphabet. What was it about celebrities that made them think you were supposed to fall at their feet if they deigned to talk to you?

Nicola started walking again, looking straight ahead. In her peripheral vision, she saw the cart crawling along beside her. “Keep driving in any direction. You can’t really miss it.”

“Of course. The, uh—the main beach, I guess I meant. In the town center.”

“Not much of a town, but keep going straight and you’ll be there in about a minute.”

“Thanks.” He paused, and then, “You looked like you were in a bit of a hurry. Can I offer you a lift?”

Nicola turned to look at him again, setting her face in a firm expression of disinterest that belied the flutter she felt in her belly.

God, he was beautiful.

He was wearing swimming trunks and an old gray T-shirt with a rip in the neckline, a flaw in his clothing that only served to highlight the perfection of the body beneath it. She couldn’t help herself—she followed the line of his smooth biceps down to his large hands to check for a ring. Now more than ever, married men were a definite deal breaker for Nicola. But his fingers were bare, allowing her to imagine them sliding up her thighs, tugging on the ties of her bikini bottom and…

Stop it.

But she couldn’t. Judging from the length of his bent muscular legs, he was at least six foot three—perfect for her, as at five foot nine, she felt too tall around many men. One last look between his legs revealed an impressive bulge that she could imagine undressing, stroking, until he was rock-hard, and then…

Enough!

She was thinking like a sex-crazed teenager, probably because she hadn’t actually had sex since long before she moved here. Everything that had gone down in LA hadn’t exactly worked wonders for her libido.

“I’m happy walking,” she lied, and then started doing just that to prove it. She could feel his eyes burning into the side of her face.

“Suit yourself,” he said, shrugged and then drove away.

Really, it was a good thing she hadn’t accepted the ride, because Alex was pretty sure there was no way she wouldn’t have noticed the swelling under his swimming trunks. Jesus, she was fucking beautiful. Trim, toned figure, long blond hair and those eyes…the same shade as his. Though if she’d noticed that, she certainly hadn’t let on. He wasn’t sure why she’d been so standoffish with him when he was just asking innocent questions, but he figured it might have something to do with the fact that she looked familiar. Like almost everyone else on this island, she was a someone, and she wanted to be sure to send the message that she was way out of his civilian league. Not to mention that a woman as hot as her was most likely off the market.

Alex shook his head, trying to clear it of the image of the glistening sweat between her breasts, the tanned slice of tummy he’d spied between her tank top and shorts, the heavy breathing that had made him think of only one thing. He wanted to hear her breathe like that again, but this time because of his cock driving into her again and again, her nipples thrusting upward to meet his hungry mouth…

Get yourself together. You’re about to be sixty feet beneath the surface with nothing between you and a lungful of killer water but a couple of rubber tubes.

Right. He needed to focus. He had come here for two reasons—to close a deal and to once and for all conquer his childhood fear of the ocean, and he wasn’t about to be distracted from either of those goals by any woman.

No matter how fucking hot she was.