Outrageous Proposal (A British Bad Boy Romance) (5 page)

Instantly Clarice flushed red. “You’re not too bad looking yourself…” She ran her gaze over his defined abs, and that flat little piece of skin just above his waistband that teased to the hidden goodies below. He was only wearing board shorts on his slender frame, and already Clarice could see the outline of his erection pushing against the fabric.

Kyle stepped closer. “I’m glad you think so,” he said. “I was just hanging out here in the gardens, trying to decide if I liked this place, and here you walk in… I knew I had to kiss you when I saw you.”

Clarice’s head was swimming. After years of dude-drought, this was all happening so fast, she could barely believe she wasn’t having some crazy dream. This place made it almost too easy to find a man. “Oh, did you?”

Kyle nodded, taking another step. He was staring at her plush lips, licking his own. “Would that be something you’d like?”

Clarice nodded back before she could stop herself, taking a deep breath as the flood gates of her arousal finally opened. Kyle wrapped himself tightly against her and smashed his lips to hers, moaning and grunting as he hungrily devoured her. Clarice’s skin was fire under his touch. Her palms raced across his tan, smooth skin and taut muscles, his skin warm and inviting.

Like teenagers, they pawed at each other and made out furiously, Kyle pushing Clarice back up against the wall of the garden. His mouth pulled away from hers only to run down the skin of her jaw and neck, licking his way up her collarbone towards her ear. The sensation was electric and Clarice gasped in surprised delight, her eyes closed and hands wriggling through Kyle’s bronze hair.

As one of the gorgeous man’s palms slid up her thigh and under her dress, Clarice suddenly hit a wall of fear that pulled her completely out of the erotic moment. Her eyes flew open and, though there was no one in sight, she felt like a thousand people were watching them. The heat inside her capped quickly, like hot lava violently cooled by the sea.

“Stop, stop,” she said, pulling Kyle’s hands off her body.

Kyle obeyed immediately, meeting her eyes with a concerned face. “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry, did I do something you didn’t like? I’m still getting used to this place.”

Clarice shook her head, embarrassed, unable to look back up into his gorgeous face. Half of her was ablaze with arousal and wanted nothing more than to push Kyle down on the cobblestones and ride him right then and there. But that half wasn’t winning this moment. “No, it’s not you, I’m sorry. I just got here… I’m a little jet-lagged, I guess,” she lied.

Kyle nodded. “I get it. Can I get you some water or something? We could go grab a bite to eat if you want.”

“No, thanks, I think I just need to go lie down.” Clarice stepped away from the wall and he moved out of her path. She stopped first and said, “Don’t… don’t take it personally, okay? You’re really hot. I promise it’s not you.”

Kyle let out a little laugh. “Thanks, so are you. Come find me when you feel better, Clarice.” He lifted her hand and gave it a gentle kiss.

Clarice smiled at him tightly and picked up her clutch from where she had dropped it on the ground. She made quick steps out of the water gardens and back towards the hotel, praying she wouldn’t run into any of the girls on her way back to the room. She felt utterly humiliated and suddenly wanted nothing more than to just go back to New York. She’d have to settle for her room for now.

But the place was a bit of a maze, and she found herself in hallways with décor she didn’t recognize. In fact, there was little décor at all; it was terribly sterile compared to the halls she had been wandering. She figured she had accidentally found her way into the staff areas somehow, the boring places guests didn’t go and so didn’t need decorating. Looking around for a sign or a map, instead she found something better when someone she recognized emerged from behind a closed door.

Clarice stared a moment. It was that tall, dashingly handsome British man who had come up to the desk when they were checking in and asked to speak to the clerk. Even from here, Clarice could see the brightness of his blue eyes, all the more striking thanks to the raven-dark hair on his head — two traits, she realized, they shared. With his broad shoulders, cut body, and gorgeous facial structure, he could have been a supermodel. He had a little bit of five o’clock scruff coming in along his jawline, and even though his face looked tired, his eyes didn’t. He was blazingly handsome, so much so that she almost lost her nerve to speak to him for a moment.

But the man spotted her first, anyway, and a smile spread over his face. A charming smile; one that said he liked what he saw. Clarice felt her arousal building again.

Putting his hands in the pocket of his shorts, he approached her casually. “Don’t I recognize you? Have we met?”

She felt so cliché about the way his accent made her want to listen to him talk forever. “Yes,” said Clarice, and then immediately winced at herself. “No, I mean… we haven’t met… but yes, you recognize me. Obviously. You just said you did.” She sighed and shook her head. “Okay, let me start this over.”

The man seemed very amused, but not in a mean way. His eyes sparkled as he chuckled at her. “You look like you’ve had one too many unsolicited dicks offered your way. Is someone bothering you here?”

“No, no, it’s not that at all,” said Clarice with a heaving sigh. “I’m just a little jet-lagged, I think. And, I wasn’t… really ready for this place.” The last sentence slipped out before she could stop it.

“The front desk,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s where I recognize you from. You arrived this morning with your friends. You were at the desk when I popped in to speak with Bruce.”

Clarice nodded, “Yes, that’s what I was trying to say.”

He looked her up and down in a way that made Clarice’s knees weak, then offered her one of his strong looking hands. “I’m Harrison.”

Clarice accepted the greeting. His touch was tender, practiced. “Hi, I’m Clarice. Nice to meet you.”

“Now then, is there something we can do to make your day a little less rough?” he asked. “Having such an attractive woman feeling miserable at my resort is a personal insult to me. It’s also bad for business, but that’s beside the point.”

“Your resort?” Clarice’s eyes went wide.

Harrison gave a little half-shrug and folded his arms. “Mine to run at the moment, and eventually mine to own, yes.”

“That’s… wow, I had no idea who I was talking to.”

“That’s my fault. Usually I walk around here with a big gold crown on my head, but it’s being polished right now. Now, tell me what I can do to make you feel better, Clarice.”

She giggled at him. Even though it was his job to ask, the question threw her off guard in a way she didn’t expect. When was the last time a man —
any
man — had asked her what he can do to help her? “Oh, I… I was just trying to get back to my room for a nap, and I got turned around. I must have come through a wrong door out of the water gardens.”

“That’s my kind of problem to solve: an easy one,” said Harrison, sticking his elbow out towards her. “May I escort you?”

Clarice hesitated. She wasn’t too proud to admit that this handsome, successful man was throwing her off her confidence game just a bit. “Are you sure I’m not keeping you from work? I don’t want to waste your time; I’m sure running a place like this isn’t easy.”

“My guests are my top priority,” said Harrison immediately. “This is exactly where I want to be.”

Clarice blushed a little, but sighed and took his offered arm. Harrison smiled down at her and led her through the winding hallways, somehow keeping pace with her despite him being a good foot taller.

“What brings you to Bali?” asked Harrison as they walked.

“My girlfriends kidnapped me and brought me on a surprise vacation.”

Harrison laughed. “Ah, that never gets old. Got some wonderful friends, it sounds like.”

“They are truly amazing,” said Clarice. “They put up with a lot of grief from me.”

“Why grief?”

Clarice realized she had stumbled into very personal territory with this handsome stranger, and paused uncomfortably. “Oh, uh… I just… I’ve had one of those years. When it rains, it pours. You know, sometimes it makes you not very fun to deal with or be around.”

Harrison nodded slowly, but didn’t look down at her. “Oh, I’m familiar with that.” The tone in his voice said it was true.

As they approached the main lobby, traffic in the halls increased, and Clarice was suddenly aware of the looks she and Harrison were getting as they passed by. The looks from the employees made sense; of course they would acknowledge their boss as he walked by, especially one as high up the totem pole as Harrison. But even some of the guests were staring like they couldn’t help themselves. She didn’t fully understand it, but part of her felt a little bit of a rush at the attention.

Harrison noticed it, too. “I get the feeling we must make a very attractive couple.”

Clarice turned red. “What?”

“The way everyone’s staring at us,” Harrison smiled down at her. “Like we’re Richard Burton and Liz Taylor heading to our trailers.”

She let out a nervous laugh and blushed, suddenly very interested in studying the floor. Feeling exposed, she cleared her throat and decided to make some small talk to change the subject. “So, are you sick of living in paradise yet?”

Harrison gave her playful grin. “Oh, yeah, I’m definitely hopping the first flight out back to beautiful dull, dreary, gray, freezing, boring England.”

“Yeah, I knew that was a dumb question before I asked it,” said Clarice.

“You don’t have to take my word for it,” said Harrison. He leaned down close to her and pointed discreetly at two employees talking near the lobby coffee service. “Those two, Molly and Corey, they came here as guests once and decided never to leave.”

Clarice giggled. “Seriously?”

“And Bruce, the lad who checked your party in this morning? You didn’t think that was a Balinese accent he had, did you?” Harrison cleared his throat and imitated Bruce’s surfer-dude voice. “No way, bro. He packed up his blunts and board shorts, left the States, and never looked back.”

Clarice laughed. “Just for reference on your future impressions of Bruce, Americans don’t call it the States.”

“Oh, right,” said Harrison in his natural accent. “It’s just America, isn’t it? Or haven’t you dropped it down to just Merica now?” This time, he went for a thick, ugly, Foghorn Leghorn-style southern accent. “Merica! Fuck yeah!”

Clarice clung onto Harrison’s arm as she bust up laughing. “That’s what you think we all sound like, isn’t it?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said Harrison with a stone face. “Either you’re a California surfer dude or you’re Colonel Sanders, British ears are incapable of hearing anything else.”

“Well, you guys say
puma
weird, so there,” said Clarice in a teasing voice.

Harrison made a dramatic look like he was offended. “The nerve. We invented the language, you know.”

“And you’ve been coasting on that for quite a while now, I think,” said Clarice with a playful nudge.

Harrison’s expression cracked and he laughed down at her. A few moments later, he stopped in front of the bank of elevators they had first taken when they checked in. “Well, here you are, Clarice. Do you think you can you find your suite from here?”

“If I can’t, I have bigger problems that won’t be solved by an escort.” She pushed the call button before realizing how her words sounded. “Uh, I mean, a walking escort. Not… not the other kind. Although, I guess that kind of escort also wouldn’t help.”

Harrison’s face was bright with laughter. He smiled down at her, and gave her body another once-over that made her shiver inside. She remembered her conversation with the bellhop earlier, about staff enjoying the perks of their jobs, and felt a flushed heat creeping up her neck. If Harrison was the boss, suddenly the lax regulations on staff joining in on the fun seemed to make a lot more sense. There was no way that a man as attractive and charming as him was not taking advantage of the fine selection of willing women around here.

The thought that he was just another fuckboy looking to bang and bounce made her sad; he seemed like he could be a fun guy, otherwise.

“Thanks for your help,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll get lost again, so hopefully you’re around next time, too.”

She saw an unmistakable lust rise in Harrison’s eyes. “I certainly hope so,” he said.

As the elevator arrived, Harrison bowed his head at her. “Have a lovely day, Clarice.” He gave her a wink before he turned and headed back for the lobby.

As soon as the doors closed behind her, Clarice let out a huge sigh, and decided she was going to need to flip through that room service catalogue full of sex stuff again very soon. In a place like this, if she couldn’t find a man to help her, she was definitely going to need a machine.

H
arrison blew
through his managerial shift as fast as the clock would let him. As he juggled his duties, he ran through a mental list of every woman he had ever known — the ones whose names he could recall, anyway — trying to gather a list of potential candidates he could ask to be his pretend fiancée for the week. He was so distracted that twice he used the wrong names on employees he had known for years, and then he nearly tossed himself over a room service cart coming around a corner. His mind was a million miles away and that was all before he had even run into Clarice.

That small walk to the lifts had felt like time stopped, especially on a day like today. When he saw her there in the hallway in her pretty yellow dress, looking at once perplexed and composed, everything seemed to fade to the back of his mind. She was certainly the most nervous of her little holiday party, but that wasn’t unusual. Harrison had coaxed plenty of first-timers into nights of wild, uninhibited sex. They were usually the most fun once they let their hair down, and he

really wanted the chance to do the same to her.

She was absolutely gorgeous. Something about that petite little body and her long dark hair made him want to lift her up against a wall and fuck her senseless, until she was screaming his name and begging him to stop. The lustful image blazed through his mind like wildfire.

“Hey, did you eat yet?”

Bruce’s voice surprised him out of his thoughts. Harrison looked up from where he sat at his big oak desk and saw his friend leaning casually in the doorway of his wide, bright office.

He shook his head. “Been busy. You off then?”

Bruce thumbed behind his shoulder. “Just clocked out, I’m all yours for the evening.”

“You know just what to say to rev my engines,” teased Harrison with a wink and a lazy smile. He gestured towards one of the plush leather chairs on the other side of the desk. Bruce closed the office door and took a seat.

Lunch was only a phone call away. “Oy, can you send up two plates of the fish tacos to my office please?”

“Hottest salsa,” said Bruce.

“Yes, and extra
picosa
,” said Harrison.

“We’ll have it to you in ten minutes, sir,” said the voice on the other end.

Harrison hung up and stood, wandering across the sandalwood floor towards the bar near the open porch doors. He poured two glasses of whiskey and handed one to Bruce as he returned to his seat.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Bruce.

Harrison rubbed a hand over his face and leaned back to throw his feet up on the desk. “Same as before, mate: find some woman willing to play along for this. It’s not as if I can’t make it worth her time.”

“A wife for hire,” said Bruce with a laugh and a drink.

“Precisely,” said Harrison.

“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard, I guess. This island is basically bursting with single women.”

“No, no, that won’t do,” said Harrison. “It can’t just be any woman pulled up from the beach. She has to be smart enough not to blow the cover, first of all. And she has to be believable.”

“Believable?”

“A believable match for me.”

“So… you’re saying we’re completely fucked,” said Bruce wickedly.

Harrison glared at him. “Fuck off.”

“C’mon, I’m just saying!” said Bruce, finishing his whiskey. “What would a believable match for you even
look
like, Harry? I mean, I’ve seen you with all manner of females, but this is different, right?”

“Yes, of course this is different. This isn’t just trying to get my dick wet, I’m supposed to be marrying this woman and producing all sorts of chubby baby heirs with her.”

“What kind of woman are we looking at, then? Let’s make a list of traits.”

Harrison held his bottom lip in his fingers and thought. “Classy, smart, well-mannered. Someone who isn’t immediately repulsed by children. Attractive, because my mother, God bless her, is vain.”

Bruce coughed. “Age-appropriate.”

“Yes, thank you very much Bruce, let’s put that on the list,” said Harrison, with more than a little bitterness. Bruce was trying to stifle his laughter with little success, so he got up and wandered to the mini-fridge for a beer.

“I know a few women who would meet the description,” Harrison continued, “but the problem is, nearly all of them hate my guts and would sooner throw me into the sea than help me.”

“There’s got to be someone on staff who would fit all of this. What about Constance, the lady who acquires all the local art for the décor? She’s so fancy I’m afraid to talk to her.”.

Harrison shook his head. “That’s too risky. The ones that don’t hate me are too old to want to fuck me, and anyway, I can’t risk that father would find out they were an employee. It would seem suspicious.”

“Suspicious that you fell in love at your workplace?” shrugged Bruce. “That happens all the time man, that’s not unbelievable. It’d be like a Sam and Diane thing.”

“Who?”

“
Cheers
? Didn’t you guys have that show in the UK? You guys use that word enough, I just figured.”

Harrison shrugged, and Bruce made a disappointed noise.

“Just trust me, he won’t like it if he thinks she works here. He would find it lazy,” said Harrison with a snort. “And I don’t need any more wild rumors about me floating around the staff. Enough of them are true as it is, anyway.”

There was a knock at the door as their food arrived, and the two hushed up about the problem until the room was private again. The delicious smell of fresh fish wafted into the warm air, and having a full stomach might make the problem at hand seem more solvable to Harrison.

During lunch they came up with their list and a plan. They’d call around and try to get a feel for who would be the most willing to go forward before giving them all the details. It was too risky to just blurt out the whole situation to everyone, because that’s how rumors get started and it would surely get back to his father. Or even worse, someone might think they could use that information as blackmail.

They spent the next two hours calling every woman on the island that either Bruce or Harrison thought fit their profile. But almost every one of them refused or hung up on them before they even got past the point of asking for a favor, and then the few who were willing to hear more backed out when they heard it had something to do with fooling his father.

“Apparently, your reputation precedes you?” guessed Bruce as he hung up one such call.

“What reputation? I didn’t realize the Moore’s’ had one to be concerned about. It’s not like we’re a family of sweatshop owners.”

“Power is power,” shrugged Bruce. “You’re technically king of this island, dude, and your dad might as well be the Emperor of England to these women. They’re probably scared something will happen to them if what you have planned doesn’t work and your dad catches you lying to him.”

“What, like he’ll have her rubbed out for helping me making a fool of him? Don’t be stupid.”

“Is that really so crazy? Rich people do shit like that all the time, I bet. Why wouldn’t they, who’s going to stop them?”

“Well, I can think of a few people my father should have had rubbed out by now, then, if he was going to do that. I think you’ve been watching too much telly.”

Bruce cracked them open another round of beers and stretched out across both visitor chairs. “Point is, the truth doesn’t matter, bro. Only matters what these women think is true, and they’re not down to play as long as they feel that somehow it won’t end well for them. Can you really blame them? They’re probably thinking the world is less
Pretty Woman
and more
Hostel
, if you get my drift.”

“I suppose you have a fair point, but it doesn’t help my situation. I sincerely didn’t think it would be this difficult to talk someone into a bit of acting,” said Harrison with a shake of his head. “The telly lied to me, too.”

“People talk big a lot, you know that. We see it on the beach all the time with those asshole tourist surfers. Everyone thinks they’re into intrigue and adventure, but when they get to that fork in the road where they have to pick between adventure and safety…” Bruce held up both his hands in a V, and then made a zooming noise as he split one of them apart. “They’ll pick safety nine times out of ten.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone does. I don’t. You didn’t,” said Harrison, pointing.

“I said nine out of ten,” repeated Bruce. “And even you and I make the safe choice
way
more than you think.”

“Bullocks,” challenged Harrison. “Name
once
you’ve seen me take a safe choice.”

Immediately Bruce got cocky. “Uh, how about that day at Padang Padang when you bitched out of riding that 45 foot curl because you thought you saw a shark?”

“I
did
see a shark,” insisted Harrison. “Brave doesn’t have to be stupid.”

“I’m not trying to rag on you for making the choice, I’m just trying to point out the choice that you made. That’s exactly my point: you chose safety. I didn’t say it was a bad thing, I just said some people choose safety way more than they choose adventure. You and me, we made some big adventure choices for sure, and that’s why we’re here right now. But don’t kid yourself, bro. We’re as comfy and cozy and safe here as a housewife in Omaha is at her Sunday church service.”

“I really don’t understand that analogy, or where Omaha is.”

“We’re settled here, we know what’s going to happen, give or take. No surprises, our lives are adventures compared to the people back home who took the desk job and family prize package, but we have routines too. We go to work, hit the beach and the bars, we get laid, we sleep, and then we go back to work again.” Bruce shrugged. “We just happen to be doing it in a luscious paradise.”

Harrison gave his friend a slow smile as the words sank into his consciousness. “Fuck me. I guess you’re right as usual, you weird little hippy.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“I never really like to think of myself as routine, but you’re absolutely right. I suppose I can’t really blame them.” He rubbed a tired hand over his face and leaned back in his comfortable office chair. “It still doesn’t change the fact that I need a solution to my little problem, and I need it quickly. I need
someone
to be brave.”

“You need to find that tenth,” said Bruce, tipping his beer towards Harrison.

“Yes,” agreed Harrison. “The tenth woman, the one who will step away from the crowd, who won’t just go along with a thing because it’s what everybody’s doing, even if that thing is…” He trailed off as an epiphany hit him and cleared his mind completely of anything else.

Bruce tilted his head curiously. “What is it?”

“Someone who will do something that everyone else isn’t doing,” repeated Harrison. “Of course, why didn’t I think of it before? It’s her.”

“Who?”

“Clarice,” he said, getting up from his desk. He felt a sudden surge of energy that came with problem solving, like a high he couldn’t get enough of. “The one who will step away from the crowd.”

“Who’s Clarice?”

“You checked her and her party in this morning, do you remember? The four-piece of upper crust women from New York?”

“Oh, yeah! They’re trouble,” said Bruce with a laugh and a drink. “I’m definitely going to make a move for the brunette. I saw her checking me out. I want her to be mean to me.”

Harrison spoke as he cleaned up the leftovers on his desk and changed his shirt from a selection he kept in a small wardrobe near the balcony. “Clarice was the dark-haired one hovering in the back like a shy little squirrel. I bumped into her earlier today and helped her find her way back to the lifts, and we got to talking. She’s got everything we need Bruce, she’ll be perfect. Beautiful, classy, well-mannered, respectable, and I already know she’s not afraid to follow the beat of her own drum.”

“How do you know that?” asked Bruce.

“Because she told me she didn’t like it here, even after she knew I was the owner,” said Harrison. “Her friends dragged her halfway around the world for a paid vacation in paradise, and she’s still not having it unless it’s on her terms. That’s the kind of woman I need to work with. One who knows what she wants and will lay out her terms. Then all I have to do is meet them. Simple as pie.”

“Which you’re assuming you won’t have any trouble doing.”

“Of course I won’t, I’m rich and gorgeous,” said Harrison. “I could get her anything she wants.”

“What if all she wants is
your heart?”
mocked Bruce in a dramatic, movie-trailer-style voice.

“Hell, to get out of this clusterfuck, I’d probably have to give it to her.”

Bruce just chuckled and threw his feet off the desk. “So where are you going now?”

“To the shops,” said Harrison. “And then to my room to get ready. I’ve got to have everything I need before I ask Clarice to marry me.”

“Shit, you make it sound so official and dramatic,” said Bruce. “You’re not seriously getting a ring at the shops are you?”

“She’s going to need one, isn’t she?” said Harrison. “Or do you have a handy explanation to give to my father about why she doesn’t have one when he shows up?”

“It’s getting fitted?”

“Bruce, I forget sometimes that you’re not super rich. Not to be a cad about it, but trust me when I say my father will not believe for one moment that I’m waiting for anything to be fixed or fitted. It would be done already because I would have paid to have it done. Buying her one is the simplest solution here.”

As Harrison led him out of the office and shut the lights off behind them, Bruce had one final comment. “Well, at least you weren’t a cad about it, whatever the hell that is. Just promise me you’re not actually going to try and make a traditional proposal out of it, okay? You’ll look like a fucking idiot.”