Private Paradise Page 5

  As the day of his departure loomed closer, Carla became more convinced that she and Sam were meant to be, that there was no way she could stand to be halfway across the country from him.

  So she came up with a plan. Unfortunately Sam's response hadn't been what she'd been hoping for.

  They were up on their usual spot on the mesa, lying on their backs, staring at the stars. Carla still had her clothes on, though Sam had edged his fingers up under the front of her shirt to draw lazy circles on her stomach. Slowly, gently, in a mesmerizing pattern he worked his way up, until soon his fingers brushed the undersides of her breasts. She knew she only had a short window before hormones took over and she'd be too distracted to think, forget talking.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said, catching his hand before it could reach up to cover her breast.

  “What?” he murmured, his voice muffled as he kissed the spot on her neck guaranteed to make her shiver.

  “The University of South Carolina offers almost exactly the same program as U of A. I talked to the Dean and if I wait until winter quarter to enroll I can probably get a scholarship to cover tuition.”

  His mouth froze on her neck. “So?” The wary tone in his voice should have tipped her off, but miss know it all Carla who saw the solution before everyone else was like a horse with a bit in her teeth, barreling to the finish line.

  “So,” she'd laughed, “that means instead of going to Arizona, I can be close to you while you finish basic.”

  Sam sat up so quickly Carla's head, which had been resting on his arm, thumped against the hard- packed earth under their blanket. “Basic only lasts nine weeks. Then what will you do?”

  Carla's stomach had sunk to her feet at his response. “I― I don't know.” She hadn't thought that far ahead. “I suppose I could transfer to be closer to you―”

  “What, you'll be like my stalker, following me all over the place?”

  Carla remembered how the cold had overtaken her at the cruel tone in his voice. In the moonlight, she could see the change come over his face, his mouth pulling into a sneer, a look of pure meanness on his face that she'd never seen on him before. Still, like a moron, she couldn't stop pushing forward. “Not your stalker,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Your girlfriend.”

  “Who ever said you were my girlfriend?”

  Any response she might have made stuck in her throat as his words hit her like a punch to the chest. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She could only sit there mutely as he went in for the kill.

  “I don't know what you think we've got going here, Carla, but I'm just hooking up.”

  She wanted to point out all the time they'd spent talking, the way they spent every free moment together even if they weren't fooling around, but she couldn't make her mouth form the words.

  “Don't get me wrong, it's been fun. You're hot, and you have a killer rack, but I'm only twenty-one. No way am I going to tie myself down to one girl now.” He made a scoffing sound that made her stomach clench so hard she thought she was going to throw up. “Especially not an uptight virgin who gives a lousy blowjob.”

  She remembered going cold and hot, the roaring in her ears so loud it was like a freight train going through her head. To this day she didn't remember getting up, scrambling down the hill, and sprinting back to her room. At some point she must have fallen, because when she became aware of herself and her surroundings both knees were bloody and her palms were scraped.

  She'd spent that night, curled up on her bed, too stunned to even cry, trying to tell herself that this was all a horrible nightmare. That she was going to wake up, and Sam would be there, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners, his teeth showing white against his tan skin as he smiled down at her in a way that made her feel beautiful, special, like there was no one else in the world for him and never would be.

  But the next morning she'd woken up in her bed, her hands and knees stinging as she pulled on her uniform and went to serve the breakfast shift. On her way to the dining room she'd seen him on his way down to the marina. The smile that automatically pulled at her lips got stuck as he looked past her as though she didn't exist.

  She'd died a thousand deaths in the next three days before he left. It was torture, watching him go on like nothing had happened. To see him smile and flirt with the leggy blond from ASU. She'd walked around feeling like an anvil was crushing her chest, and even though it felt like he'd torn out her heart and crushed it under his heel, she knew if he gave her one smile, one word of apology, she'd fall right back into his arms.

  The day he left, she'd climbed up onto the butte where they'd laid out their blanket so many nights. From there she watched his car pull away from the resort and disappear into the desert. She'd sobbed for hours, and when she finally stopped she vowed to herself that was the last time she'd cry over Sam O'Connell.

  As much as she'd hated Sam for what he did, she'd hated herself more. She'd known who Sam was and what he was like well before he kissed her that first time. She was supposed to be so smart, the top of her class, but like Frank O'Connell said, even the smartest women could be made into fools when it came to the wrong man.

  Eleven years later, Carla felt the pain of her broken heart, the sting of humiliation, as keenly as she'd felt it then. It chased away the lingering arousal from her dream, reminding her that even if her body remembered the pleasure of his touch, she'd never be stupid enough to give in to temptation again.

  Chapter 5

  In case Carla was at all inclined to ignore all the reasons why she shouldn't take a walk down memory lane with Sam, she was presented with an object lesson less than three hours into Sam's first day on the job.

  “Where is Sam?” she snapped impatiently at Bryce, her second in command who managed sales, catering, and events. Looking at her watch, she saw Sam was almost ten minutes late for their meeting to discuss the security strategy for an upcoming wedding. The bride, a daughter of a former president, employed her own security detachment, and they were eager to be briefed on how Sam planned to address the need for heightened security during the event.

  “I ran into him at the gym early this morning,” Bryce said, “but not since. Did you know,” he said, a dreamy look on his face, “that he can do twenty-five pull ups in a row?”

  Carla rolled her eyes and paged Sam on the walkie talkie all staff members carried. The sound of static muffling a feminine giggle made a pit form in her stomach.

  Frowning, she pushed her chair back from her desk. “Focus please. Right now we need to worry about whether or not Sam can do what we need, not how many pull ups he can crank out.”

  As Bryce followed her out of the office and down the hall, she heard him murmur something like, “No doubt he could give me what I need.”

  She could hardly blame Bryce for indulging in his fantasy. Right now her own brain was flooded with images of Sam, his skin glimmering with sweat, the muscles of his massive arms and shoulders standing out in stark relief, as he pushed his body to the brink. Carla felt a spurt of warmth, low in her belly, and quickly shoved the images away.

  She went through the main building and through the restaurant. Still no sign of Sam.

  As they stepped out onto the pool deck, Carla heard peals of all too familiar laughter and felt her lips involuntarily curl into a sneer.

  “The mating call of the useless and famous,” Carla muttered so only Bryce could hear.

  “Looks like they've caught one,” Bryce said.

  The Waters Twins were the latest entrants on L.A.'s celebutante scene. Twenty-two-yearold Kayla and Karena were the daughters of a big time movie producer and an Academy Award-winning actress. They'd parlayed their position as Hollywood royalty into an incredibly successful reality television franchise. What had started with a camera crew following them and their silly, vapid antics through their silly, vapid lives had spawned a slew of spinoffs featuring everyone from their hairdressers to their dog groomers.

  When their rep had made
the reservation at Holley Cay on their behalf, claiming that they wanted to visit the resort specifically because they wanted to have a break from the constant scrutiny of the paparazzi, Carla had inwardly cringed. She'd caught an episode of their show once and had turned it off, disgusted, after five minutes.

  Still, a high profile client was a high profile client, and for the next fifteen minutes at least there were few people more visible than the Waters twins. “Besides,” Bryce, who was practically trembling like a Chihuahua at the thought of meeting the twins, had assured her, “you know how a lot of these people are totally different once they're away from the cameras. Watch, they're probably totally sweet and down to earth and just playing up the dippy spoiled girl thing for the show.”

  To Carla's dismay and Bryce's disappointment, what you saw on TV was very much what they got. In fact, it didn't take long for Carla to decide that the show's editors must have had their hands full editing the shows so that the girls didn't come off as completely hateful. In this case, their beauty really was only skin deep.

  Just one day into their stay Carla declared them by far the most difficult guests in Holley Cay's history. And having survived the wedding of an actress Carla would forever refer to as “hurricane Jane,” that was saying something.

  “Looks like the call worked on someone,” Bryce said.

  Carla's skin crawled as she saw them, stretched out on padded teak lounge chairs next to the pool, dressed in bikinis that covered less surface area than the sunglasses perched on their noses. But their virtual lack of clothing wasn't what made the little hairs on the back of her neck stiffen and her teeth grind in her mouth.

  It was the man who was smiling affably at them as they giggled and flipped their hair and arched their backs just in case he didn't notice that four breasts were about to break free of their moorings.

  Sam.

  She could see his teeth flashing in the sun, hear his deep, rumbling chuckle all the way across the pool as he laughed at something one of the twins said.

  Her feet were moving before she even realized it, her heels a sharp staccato on the concrete slabs lining the pool deck.

  The roar in her head was so loud she barely heard Bryce say as he hurried behind her, “Remember, 'Impeccable service to all guests.'” The reminder of item number four on Holley Cay's list of core values brought her back from the edge―barely.

  But it was enough to slow her gait from a stomp to a saunter. As she got closer, she could see one of the twins―Kayla, Carla recognized, because she'd cut her straight blond hair into a pixie cut―had hijacked Sam's walkie talkie. That explained the giggle and lack of response.

  “Ladies, I really need that back,” Sam said, reaching for the walkie talkie. As he did so, Kayla pulled it to her chest so it nestled between her breasts.

  “Come and get it,” she said with a flirty smile that made Carla's jaw clench so hard she was afraid her molars would snap.

  Sam returned Kayla’s smile with the same teasing smile that had haunted Carla’s dreams last night. “Honey, if you're angling for me to feel you up, we're going to have to do that when I'm off the clock.”

  “When will that be?” Karena purred as she ran her fingers down Sam's muscled forearm. “You have a key right? You can just come to our villa―”

  “You should surprise us,” the other twin, the one with the walkie talkie squealed. “You could pretend to break in―”

  As she closed in, it was all Carla could do not to smack both girls across the mouth as they wove their elaborate burglar/kidnapper fantasy for a grinning Sam. Instead she took it out on Sam, digging her nails into his arm as she grabbed it to get his attention.

  Her calm tone as she said, “I'm sorry to interrupt ladies, but Sam is late for a very important meeting,” was a miracle given the anger that was roaring through her in that moment.

  Sam hid his wince. “Gotta do what the boss says,” he said with an affable smile and a shrug.

  “And he'll need that back,” Carla said, holding out her hand to Kayla, hoping her smile didn't look as much like a snarl as it felt like.

  The girl made a miffed huffing sound and slapped the handset into Carla's waiting hand.

  “Funsucker,” she heard one of them mutter as she pulled Sam away.

  “I hope he still comes over,” the other one tittered excitedly.

  Carla released Sam's arm and marched back to her office. “Bryce, would you excuse us?” she said to her assistant as he started to follow them in. “Sam and I have some things we need to discuss. It should only take a few minutes.”

  She slammed the door shut behind her and whirled on Sam. “I don't know what Chris told you about what it was like here before he got together with Julie, but don't you even think about taking those girls up on their offer.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sam said, the insulted look on his face quite convincing, she had to admit. “Thank God you showed up when you did. They called me over to ask me a question and the next think I know it was a like a double-headed octopus had a hold of me.”

  “Right, you really looked like you were trying to escape.”

  Sam threw his hands up in the air. “You spent two hours yesterday drilling into my head that a large part of my job is about kissing ass and making sure no one feels insulted. I was trying to be nice.”

  Carla let out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I know how 'nice' you can be. And I don't care how much they invite your attention―this time it's two single girls, but how long before you do someone who's married. I can't risk you pissing off guests with your indiscriminate sleeping around.”

  ###

  Sam's anger boiled so hot he was pretty sure steam was coming out of his ears. “I would never risk my job or yours because I can't control my dick.”

  Carla's eyes narrowed. “You forget how well I know you, Sam.”

  He took a step closer, his fists clenched at his sides. “You haven't known me for a long time, Carla.”

  “I know you well enough to know you don't care about who you hurt, as long as you get what you want.”

  Her words hit him like a knife in the chest, the knowledge that no matter how hard he'd worked to pull himself out of the pit, to make something of himself, to pull his shit together and act like a man, she would always see him as a selfish, irresponsible boy. One who had ripped her heart out and ground it into dust rather than face down his own demons.

  For a split second, he saw the pain reflected in her eyes before she shuttered it. But it was enough to trigger an apology more than ten years in the making.

  “There isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret the way I ended it with you.”

  “I don't want to talk about this,” Carla said, heading for the door.

  Sam grabbed her and pushed her back into her chair, standing over her so she couldn't escape. “No. You cut me off before, but I need to say this.”

  She sat, stiffly, as Sam knelt in front of her, his hands on the arms of her chair effectively blocking her in. Her face was as pale and stiff as marble, her gaze locked on a point past his shoulder as she refused to meet his gaze.

  Sam powered through, unable to stop the words from bursting to the surface. “Even thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. But you have to know, I did it because I didn't want you to throw your life away over a loser like me. I didn't want to see your disappointment when you realized what a massive mistake you'd made.”

  He paused, waiting for her response.

  “Are you finished?” she asked in a voice chilly enough to form ice crystals on her lips.

  Sam pushed to his feet, a lead weight forming in his stomach as he realized how completely she had closed him out. “I just need you to know the truth. I really cared for you, Carla. You were and are beautiful, kind, and smart, and way better than I deserved.”

  She straightened in her chair, shifting in her seat as though shaking off a layer of dust. “Well, there's something we can agree on at least,” she said in a falsely bright
tone. “And while I'm happy you got that off your chest, an apology really wasn't necessary. Like I said before, I'd all but forgotten about what happened between us.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to argue that she wouldn't have accused him of scheming to bang every guest in sight if it was so far back in her memory banks. but before he could say a word, she was up out of her chair and calling Bryce back into the office to start their meeting as though Sam hadn't just spilled his guts all over the place.

  A week later, there wasn't so much as a crack in Carla's cool facade.

  While he, Sam thought as he pounded out a mile on the treadmill in the resort's gym, had come to the conclusion that working with Carla was torture. Absolute, fucking torture. And damned if he could find a way out.

  When they interacted, Carla was all cool politeness and courtesy, treating Sam like he was nothing more than some distant acquaintance, someone she wouldn't have even remembered had he not reappeared in her life.

  While Sam was resorting to this, he thought as he started another punishing circuit of the resort's state of the art gym: a six minute mile on the treadmill, followed by fifty each pull ups, sit ups, pushups, and squat thrusts. Over and over every single morning because this was the only way he could deal with the simmering ache of frustrated desire that dogged him every second of every day he spent with Carla. So close, so unreachable.

  Every time he sat across her desk from her as they discussed particular strategies for their high profile guests, he had to fight not to reach out and grab her, lay her across the wide wooden surface. Make her remember everything they were to each other and all the ways he knew how to make her scream with pleasure.

  Every time he watched a male guest run his eyes appreciatively over Carla's toned, curvy body, Sam had to fight not to put the guy in a headlock. It was getting so bad, Sam actually considered doing it just so she'd have a legitimate excuse to fire him.