Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (18 page)

“And what did the cards predict?”

Goldy set aside her knitting and leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Let me put it this way, Karma. Nate won’t need to sign on with Rent-a-Yenta to find the perfect mate.”

“You don’t mean—you aren’t saying—?”

“Yes. Mrs. Rothstein. They’re going to tie the knot, wait and see.”

Somehow Karma wasn’t surprised, but she was delighted. “That’s wonderful, Goldy.”

“I think so too. Your uncle is a fine man, and he doesn’t have to be lonely anymore.”

“I know, and I’m happy for him. By the way, have you seen Paulette today?”

“She went over to the Rent-a-Yenta office earlier. She said she’d be back soon.”

“Oh, okay. See you later, Goldy.” Karma ran up the stairs, light on her feet. She thought maybe she’d fix lunch for Paulette, who had been working hard at Rent-a-Yenta without asking for so much as a paycheck. Business was picking up. Paulette, amazingly, had signed up twelve new clients while Karma was at the ranch, which was more than Karma had signed up in two months.

On her own floor, she burst through the door from the stairwell into the hall and almost mowed Jennifer down.

“Karma! I was looking for you. I put a certificate for a
free ear piercing under your door. The special will be over soon, and since it’s two for the price of one, I thought you and Paulette could come together.”

“I’ll ask Paulette,” Karma said, taking in Jennifer’s Outrageous Outfit Of The Day, which consisted of a scarlet exercise bra, much too tight, and silk boxer shorts, white with a black design that consisted of—of the Diamond B Ranch brand?

What?

No. It wasn’t possible.

Karma squinted at the shorts, hoping that her eyesight was failing. But there was nothing wrong with her vision. The design on those shorts was unmistakably a diamond shape enclosing a letter B, the Diamond B Ranch brand. She had seen those boxers before. On Slade Braddock.

Karma went numb even as she spoke. “Um, Jennifer,” she said.

Jennifer, snapping her fingers in time to the rhythm of her chewing gum, tried to brush past, but Karma adroitly blocked her way.

“I really have to go, Karma, I’m running late for the Dolphins’ cheerleader tryout practice. I’m trying out, did I tell you? Wow!” She bounced and executed a dance step in her pristine white sneakers.

“Before you go, would you mind telling me where you got those shorts? Those very
distinctive
shorts?” Karma was hoping that Jennifer would tell her that she had bought them at a Salvation Army store, though she was sure that was the last place Jennifer would shop. She was hoping that Jennifer would say that the shorts were a factory outlet store bargain, though she didn’t know of any that sold silk underwear imprinted with the Diamond B brand.

Jennifer reached down and fingered the fabric. “These? They’re Slade’s. See you, Karma.” She pushed past Karma and through the door to the stairwell, letting it slam behind
her. The sound reverberated through the long hallway like a shot.

Which Karma felt as though it penetrated her heart.

Karma couldn’t think. She couldn’t feel. She couldn’t do anything but let herself into her apartment and stand staring woodenly at the tiny wedge of seascape on the other side of the sliding glass door. The ocean seemed flat and one-dimensional, and the apartment where she usually felt so comfortable was oppressive. Jennifer and Slade, she thought, her mind refusing to move past their names. Jennifer and Slade. She didn’t want to believe it. But she had to believe it, considering the proof.

After a minute or two, she walked over and slid the door open, hoping that the fresh sea breeze would revive her, would make her be able to think and feel again.

But it didn’t.

She moved to the balcony railing and stared down at the cars in the parking lot. During her long nights at the hospital, she had often imagined Slade driving into that parking lot. In her mind’s eye, he would climb out of the Suburban looking tan and fit and cowboyish, wearing his boots and faded jeans and a big smile, and she would welcome him with open arms. She would tell him that she regretted hurting his feelings by asking for time apart and that she really wanted a June wedding, and he would tell her that she was absolutely right and that he’d been out of line to expect her to be married in a church in Okeechobee City in December. And then, arms around each other, they would phone Isis and ask her to be Karma’s attendant, and they would inform Bambi and Norton that the wedding would be on the beach near the Blue Moon, and Slade would call the travel agency and put her name on the ticket for the honeymoon cruise to Alaska.

And all
the while she, Karma, had been longing to see Slade, to reconcile with him, Jennifer had been wearing his silk Diamond B Ranch boxer shorts.

Life wasn’t fair. Not that this was news. If life were fair, Karma would have been born that sexy little ectomorph that Slade had been seeking in the beginning, and maybe then he wouldn’t have committed the act that resulted in Jennifer’s wearing his boxer shorts.

There was no doubt in Karma’s mind that Slade had slept with Jennifer, none whatever. Well, what could she expect, now that his second chakra was unblocked, thanks to her? She didn’t think that he had had sex with Jennifer the night of their one and only date, which she herself had arranged. She didn’t think he was capable of sleeping with Jennifer and then taking her, Karma, home to meet his parents and making love to her. No, it had probably on one of those long balmy nights when Karma was keeping her vigil at the hospital with Nate. Slade would have had plenty of opportunity, and he had been lonely, and Jennifer was all too available.

But that didn’t give Slade the right to sleep with her. Not when he was supposed to be engaged to Karma, when he was telling her that he loved her and he missed her. They’d never agreed that they weren’t going to get married. They hadn’t agreed on when and where, that’s all.

Anger began to percolate behind Karma’s eyelids, a slow-burning, white-hot variety of anger such as she had never known before. Whenever it had happened, whatever had happened, Slade Braddock was the lowest of the low, the rattiest of rats, the king of the cockroaches. Worst of all, she loved him.

She whirled as she heard a key turn in the lock and Paulette breezed in carrying a stack of file folders.

“Hi, Karma. I brought some work back here, I thought I could sit out on the balcony in the sun while I—Karma? Is anything wrong?” Her cousin stopped and set the folders down on the wicker trunk that served as a coffee table.

Karma looked
at her bleakly. “You won’t believe it,” she said.

“It’s not you and Slade, is it?”

“Yes,” Karma whispered, willing herself not to fall apart. “Oh, Karma, I’m sorry,” Paulette said, looking stunned.

Karma bit her lip. “He—he slept with Jennifer.”

“With Jennifer? Oh, you must be mistaken.”

Feeling as if someone else were telling the story, Karma related how she had seen Jennifer wearing Slade’s boxer shorts and how Jennifer had blithely admitted that Slade had given them to her.

“That’s incontrovertible evidence, I’d say.” Still numb, still operating on autopilot, Karma walked past Paulette into the apartment.

“What are you going to do?” Paulette’s expression was somber.

“I’m not going to call him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Paulette slid an arm around her waist. “I don’t blame you. Come sit down, Karma. I don’t suppose you have any cookie dough, do you? I like to pig out on cookie dough when something is getting me down. It’s my ultimate comfort food.”

“No cookie dough, I’m afraid.”

“Too bad. I’ll make you a cup of herbal tea.” She searched through the cabinets. “Do you want chamomile or sarsaparilla?”

“I don’t care,” Karma said distractedly, wrapping her arms around herself and feeling awful. She made herself drink the tea that Paulette brought her, knowing in her heart that it didn’t matter how much you loved a man if he couldn’t be faithful, if he lied, if he exploited. Because when all was said and done, if he didn’t love you back, you were setting yourself up for a life of heartbreak and misery. Uncle Nate had said of Aunt Sophie, “She was my life.” And unless and until Karma found a man who could make her, Karma, his life, she wouldn’t marry him. But oh, it was so hard to come to grips with the fact that it was
over with Slade, really over. Despite their recent difficulties, it seemed strange to think of her life going on without him.

It was an hour or more before she hauled herself up from the couch and told Paulette, “I’m going to lie down for a while, and then you and I are going out, Paulette.”

“We are?”

“Yes. We’re going to celebrate being ourselves. We’re going to rejoice in being single. And we’re going to work out a plan that keeps you here in Miami Beach to help me with Rent-a-Yenta.”

“Oh, Karma, I would love that!”

“Me, too. And if Slade calls, tell him I’m sleeping, tell him I’m busy, tell him anything you want. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to even hear his name.”

“But Karma, don’t you and Slade need closure?”

Karma groaned. “Let me be the psychologist around here, okay?”

Karma retreated into the bedroom and shut the door. She told herself that she hated Slade Braddock. She told herself that she’d been fine before she met him and she’d be fine again. She told herself that she was lucky to have found out what a jerk he was before she married him and moved to the ranch and began to share his life, a life that was now lost to her forever. At the thought of the marriage that was not to be, the tears rushed in like a torrent, and it was a long time before she could stop sobbing.

When she did, she told herself that if she never saw Slade Braddock again, that would be too soon.

S
LADE HUNG UP THE PHONE
after calling Karma’s apartment and talking with Paulette, wondering why he felt so uneasy. Yes, Nate had gone home from the hospital earlier, but Karma was taking a nap and couldn’t talk to him, Paulette had said.

“I’ll call her later. Maybe she’d like to go out,” he told
her, and Paulette had responded much too quickly, “Oh, I doubt it, Slade.”

Something in Paulette’s voice had given him pause. She had sounded prickly, annoyed, and the slightest bit disgusted.

And it seemed odd to him that Karma hadn’t called him herself to tell him that she was free tonight. On the other hand, Karma was worn out from taking care of her uncle, and she could be expected to need some extra rest.

Well, no matter what Paulette said, he would call Karma later, and even if she were resting and he didn’t talk with her, he’d try to get an idea from Paulette what was going on.

He heard a step on the deck of
Toy Boat
and went to the door of the salon. It was Phifer, grinning ear to ear.

“Hey, Slade, want to go out tonight and let me buy you a couple of drinks? I caught a sailfish today, my first. It’s an occasion, man. Let’s do it!”

“Sure,” Slade said, feeling lackluster in spite of Phifer’s enthusiasm.

“I’ll come by later. See you then.” Phifer left, looking jaunty.

Slade wish he felt more upbeat, more enthusiastic about the evening ahead. Maybe he’d feel better after a shower and shave.

He headed for
the master stateroom, unable to shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong.

K
ARMA AND
P
AULETTE TREATED
themselves to dinner at Fontaine’s, the best restaurant in town, famed for its snow crab. It was also known for its Fountain of the Dancing Waters where multiple lighted water jets rose and fell to beautiful music every half hour. Fontaine’s was where Karma would have asked Slade to take her if they had gone out on this night, and she was determined that dressing up in her blue sari with the gold edging and going there with Paulette would banish thoughts of him from her mind.

Not that it worked, however. She thought of Slade—and of his betrayal—every minute.

That didn’t stop her from outlining her plans for Rent-a-Yenta to Paulette, a plan that had begun to seem like a possibility back at the ranch and took shape on those long nights at the hospital with her uncle. And, with Paulette in need of a job, she kept thinking that Aunt Sophie would have approved. It also seemed to her that her aunt would have approved even more if marriage to Slade were still in the works, but even so, Karma’s idea had merit for both Karma and Paulette.

“If you could handle the business side of Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma told Paulette, “I could handle the rest of it. You know, the psychological profiling. The contacts with people who have expressed an interest.”

“That would work,” Paulette said excitedly. “Why, it’s perfect. You’re good at the psychological side of things,
and I’ve enjoyed every minute of looking after the accounts and organizing the office.”

“Together, we can bring in more business. Rent-a-Yenta will be a going concern again.”

“I want to put all the accounts on computer. You can enhance the psychological profiling.” Paulette looked as if she could hardly contain her glee.

“It’s a deal then?”

“A deal.”

“To Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma said, raising her glass of wine, and they drank a toast to their joint venture.

Feeling reckless, Karma ordered steak, which made Paulette regard her with doubt. “Are you sure you want to order meat in a restaurant known for its snow crab?” she asked skeptically.

“Sure,” Karma said, beckoning to the waiter so she could order another glass of wine. “I like meat. I didn’t know it before, that’s all.”

“Until you went with Slade to the ranch?”

“I don’t want to think about him. Or the ranch. Or Bambi and Norton or the Alaska cruise.” She drained her glass.

Paulette leaned across the table. “Karma, should you be drinking so much?”

“Why not?” Karma retorted. “Please don’t go judgmental on me, Paulette. We’re celebrating.” This didn’t feel much like a celebration, though the wine was helping. She wanted to forget about Slade and Jennifer for a while, and if a heavy dose of merlot could accomplish that, more power to the grape. She lifted the new glass of wine to her lips.

“I don’t know, Karma. I realize you’re upset, but I’m not sure it’s wise to make yourself sick over Slade Braddock.”

Paulette could be irritating at times,
and her present diatribe made Karma want to grind her teeth in order to drown out her voice.

“I’m not making myself sick.” She stood up. “Be back in a minute.” The Fountain of the Dancing Waters outside the window with all its tinkling and trickling made her want to go the ladies’ room.

She headed for the back of the restaurant, realizing that she was going to have to walk through the bar to get where she was going. She felt big and bulky in her trailing sari, but at the same time she felt as if she were shrinking away inside, recoiling from the pain she felt over Slade’s deceit.

In the rest room, she stared at herself in the mirror. She looked slightly wild-eyed, so no wonder Paulette kept carping about the wine. Well, too bad. It wouldn’t hurt to drown her sorrows this one time.

On the way back to the table as she was negotiating the twists and turns through the cluster of tables in the bar, she saw Mandi waving at her across the room. Mandi detached herself from a group that was watching some sporting event on TV and headed toward her.

“Karma! Want to watch the golf match with us?” Mandi wore high-heeled gold boots and a tiger-print bodysuit. Her sparkly eye shadow appeared to have been layered on with a trowel.

Karma’s knees were feeling slightly wobbly, and she managed only a brittle smile. “Who’s us?” she said, expecting that Jennifer would be part of the group.

“Oh, me and some friends.”

“Paulette and I are having dinner. And I’m not eager to see Jennifer right now.”

“Jennifer? I didn’t say Jennifer was here.”

“The two of you are usually together.”

“That was before Jennifer found a guy. She’s out with him tonight.”

My guy,
Karma
thought to herself. “Yes, well, they can wear their matching underwear all around South Beach. They’ll look so cute together in their black-and-white diamond-print boxer shorts.”

“Black and diamond—?” Mandi seemed mystified, but Karma wasn’t up to any more discussion. She wheeled and started to walk toward the dining room, her path slightly wavery. Behind her Mandi bleated something about Jennifer and how she was in love with this way hunky guy and how her mother was so pleased and—well, the bleating stopped when Karma reached the dining room where a group of waiters gathered around one of the tables to sing “Happy Birthday,” blocking Mandi’s entry.

Karma sat down at the table and drew a deep breath. “What do you say we chugalug a whole bottle of that wine?” she said to Paulette.

S
LADE ORDERED BOURBON
and water from the bartender at Fontaine’s and thought briefly about moving closer to the television set in one corner before discarding the idea as too much trouble. He wished he’d stayed home. This glitzy watering hole felt all wrong, out of character, out of sync.

He stood up, thinking that it was time to call Karma at home. He’d tried earlier, but no one had answered, not even the answering machine. As he headed away from the bar, someone called his name.

“Mandi,” he said as she worked her way through the crowd toward him.

“Hi, Slade,” she said with more than her usual share of perkiness. “You’re here looking for Karma, right? Well, I just spoke to her. She’s in the dining room.”

In the dining room? Here? Karma was supposed to be napping. Slade tried to hide his surprise.

“She seems a little strange, Slade.”

He eyed Mandi in her tiger-print bodysuit, gold boots and thick eyeliner. Mandi thought Karma was strange?

He stuck
his thumbs through his belt loops. “You want to elaborate on that?”

Mandi shrugged. “Saying crazy things. Acting like she’s snarfing magic mushrooms or something. Like, I told her Jennifer was out with her boyfriend, and she said something about they’d look cute in their matching black-and-white diamond-print boxer shorts.” Mandi fluttered her hand and rolled her eyes. “Weird.”

“She talked about matching diamond-print boxer shorts?”

“Yeah, go figure that one out.”

Diamond-print boxer shorts. Jennifer. Matching.

It dawned on him then, a flash of horrified realization. “Whoa,” he said unsteadily.

“Whoa?”

He slugged back his drink. “Excuse me, Mandi, I’m out of here.” Mandi shrugged and began to make her way back to the group.

Phifer was holding fort at a table surrounded by guys. “Phifer, look, I’ve got business to tend to. You can get back to the marina on your own, right?”

Considering that he had interrupted Phifer’s fish story, the man was amazingly goodnatured. “Sure, Slade, is anything wrong?”

“Only everything,” Slade said through gritted teeth, and he stalked out of the bar.

S
LADE SPOTTED
K
ARMA SITTING
at the table with Paulette. She looked beautiful, her hair caught up in a jeweled clip, her eyes bright. In that moment, he realized how much he loved her and how all her unusual attributes made her so special. He had been a goner from the word go, captivated by her charm, her style, and her easygoing personality.

As he approached the table, she lifted her eyes to his face. But her immediate scowl signaled that she wasn’t happy to see him—far from it.

“You!” she
exclaimed, throwing her napkin on the floor and leaping to her feet.

Well, scratch her easygoing personality. But she was majestic in her anger.

“Yup, it’s me,” he said mildly. “Would you mind explaining why Paulette told me you were napping?” Paulette sat quietly, looking stricken, her gaze bouncing back and forth between the two of them.

“Sure,” Karma said, and he realized as she slurred the word that she must be slightly tipsy. “As soon as you explain why you slept with Jennifer.”

It seemed in that moment as if a hush fell over the room and as if every pair of eyes was focused on him.

“Karma, I didn’t.” He kept his voice level, his gaze straightforward. He touched her arm, but she shook his hand away and began to stride toward the entrance.

“Wait! I can explain!”

She only tossed a scalding look over her shoulder and kept walking past a group waiting for tables at the entrance. Outside, the quiescent Fountain of the Dancing Waters lay in front of them. Its shallow pool, the size of a basketball court, glimmered aquamarine in the lights from overhead.

“Karma,” he said, his way blocked by a group wearing name tags.

“I have to get the car,” she said tightly. She clutched a ring of keys in her hand.

Several people were making their way toward a tour bus to their right, and a limousine glided to a stop in front of him. Behind it, another car blocked the exit.

“Karma, I didn’t sleep with Jennifer,” he said, getting desperate.

“He didn’t sleep with Jennifer, he said,” a blue-haired dowager declared loudly to her companion. “Imagine that!”

Karma,
meanwhile, was threading her way through the vehicles. “Go away, Slade. I can’t handle this right now.” Her gait was none too steady.

She reached the rim of the fountain and paused, seemingly unsure what to do next.

Slade wished for a lasso so he could rope her and reel her in. Lacking that, he wrenched open the limousine door. The driver let out a strangulated yelp, and the couple in the back seat shrank back into the luxurious upholstery as he scrambled over their feet.

“Excuse me,” he said politely, taking care not to slam the door on anyone as he exited on the other side.

By this time, Karma had climbed up onto the fountain rim, which was about two feet high. It looked to Slade as though she were planning on walking along the rim to the parking lot, since the traffic in the driveway was so congested.

She spotted him as soon as he emerged from the limo. “I told you to go away,” she said.

“I won’t. I can’t. I love you, Karma. I didn’t sleep with Jennifer, you have to believe me.”

Karma, balancing carefully, began to mince along the fountain rim. She held her long skirt up with one hand. He jumped up onto the rim so he could talk to her without shouting, and at the precise moment when he could have reached out and touched her, the car keys she had been holding sailed into the pool. He saw them glittering on the bottom, too far away to fish out.

“I dropped my keys,” she said unnecessarily.

“I’ll get them. And then we need to talk.” He sat down on the rim and pulled his boots off. Then he swiveled around and jumped into the knee-deep water. The people watching, and there were many by this time, let out a collective gasp.

He bent over to retrieve the keys and was stunned by a jet of water squirting into his face. The jetting water was accompanied by a clash of cymbals, and he realized that the Fountain of Dancing Waters had begun to dance. Sure enough, the bright overhead lights dimmed and softer lights
in red and blue and green and a whole host of colors in between winked on below the water’s surface.

He started to reach for the keys again, but he couldn’t see them below the frothing water. Karma, who had been watching silently, had clasped her hands in front of her chest, and her mouth had assumed the shape of the letter O. He saw Paulette and Mandi running, and they stopped in astonishment when they spotted him in the pool and Karma balanced so precariously on its rim, the colors of the lights flashing rainbowlike across her face.

“Karma!” yelled Paulette so that Karma jerked her head around to look, losing her balance in the process. In slow motion, she toppled and fell, her gown spreading out around her like wings, her hair loosening from its clip.

As other jets began to dance and sway all around, as the music rose into succeeding crescendos, Karma landed in Slade’s arms with a gentle
“Oof!”
Not one to overlook random blessings, he clasped her to his heart.

The song blaring from the surrounding speakers was something he didn’t recognize, but it seemed to require a lot of splashing, spurting water.

“I told you to go away,” Karma said thickly.

He held her fast. His hair and face were wet. He didn’t care. “Never, my darling. I can explain everything.”

“She was wearing your Diamond B Ranch shorts. Your silk underwear.”

Out of the corners of his eyes, Slade saw Paulette and Mandi leaning over the edge of the pool. “Jennifer didn’t sleep with Slade. She’s in love with Sheldon!” Mandi hollered.

Karma turned her head toward Mandi. Water dripped off the end of her nose. Her dress was soaked. He thought she looked wonderful.

“What?” Karma said.

Mandi leaned farther over the rim, and Slade hoped she
wouldn’t fall in, too. He didn’t know how many wet females he could handle.

“Sheldon! The guy her mother set her up with! And I can explain the underwear!”

“She can explain the underwear!” Paulette echoed. “You’d better listen to this, Karma.”

“You’d better,” Slade said, deciding that this might turn out all right after all.

They waited for another burst of music to play itself out, and Slade had to pull Karma back behind the bank of water jets that were currently pluming and spuming. The jets were between them and Mandi, and they made it harder to hear her.

“Karma, haven’t you ever been on a scavenger hunt?” Mandi called.

“Sure, Scavenger hunts. You’re at a party and you get a list, and the first one who returns to the party with all the items on the list wins.”