Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (19 page)

“Well, Sheldon took Jennifer to a party, and their list included an item of underwear from the last person you dated. In Jennifer’s case, that was Slade. So naturally she had to go to his houseboat and get a pair of underwear.”

Karma glanced up at Slade. “Is this true?” she asked. Her mascara was running. He reached up and wiped a dribble of it away.

“I gave her the boxers. Jennifer said she’d bring them back, but I told her to keep them, I had lots more.”

“Jennifer and Sheldon have been together every single night,” Mandi said.

“Oh,” Karma whispered, looking stricken.

Slade pulled
her closer. “I don’t want anyone but you for as long as I live, Karma, and as long as I love. Though I have to tell you that I get tired of rescuing you from watery places.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re my destiny, Karma. You’re my life.” With those words, it was as if she melted, all resistance draining out of her.

She blinked at him. “I am?” Karma couldn’t believe her ears. Those were the words she had wanted to hear from him, needed to hear. They were the words that Uncle Nate had said about Aunt Sophie.

“You are. And I’ve been thinking it over. We can get married whenever you like, go wherever you want on our honeymoon cruise.”

She buried her face in his soggy shirtfront. “I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings about that,” she said. “I never meant to.” The pool was a cauldron of bubbles swirling around their knees.

“I was entirely too quick to make a big deal out of it. I should have listened. I should have been more sympathetic. I hated every minute of being apart. Karma, will you come back to the houseboat with me tonight?” He smoothed her hair tenderly back from her face.

She hiccuped. “I don’t have any dry clothes there.”

“That’s the idea, my darling. You won’t need to wear anything at all for what I have in mind.”

She looked up at him, her cowboy, the man of her dreams. “I like the way you think, cowboy. And I love you, Slade, with all my heart.”

The music drew to a close with a final crash of cymbals, and he swooped Karma up into his arms. He stood there in the sudden silence, letting her drip. In the group of onlookers, someone began to clap, and soon all of them were.

With one last effervescent flourish, the dancing waters became calm—as tranquil as Karma’s mind, as peaceful as her heart now that she had found the love of her life.

Slade gazed down at Karma, his heart overflowing with emotion. “I don’t know what the name of that tune is, my darling, but I think from now on, it’s our song.”

A
FEW HOURS LATER, THEY LAY
in
bed on
Toy Boat,
the reflection of moonlit water shimmering across the ceiling.

“Slade,” Karma murmured sleepily. “When did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I was the one.” She snuggled closer, curving comfortably against his side.

“When I got a look at those lace panties you wore to yoga class.”

“No, be serious!” She smiled into the moonlight.

“It might have been when you rode your bike off my dock. How could I not love somebody who loses her dress before our first date even begins?”

“It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t a dress for that matter, it was a sari, like what I wore tonight.”

“I like those. They peel off so easily, especially when wet.”

“I’m not going to get a serious answer out of you, am I, Slade?”

“Only one. And it’s that I agree to being married on the beach, since that’s what you want. As long as I don’t have to rescue you from drowning again, I mean.”

“Oh, wonderful.” She kissed his neck, and he curved his hand around her breast.

“Ready to go again?”

“No,” she said. “Not until we sleep for a while.”

“There are much nicer things to do,” he said, gathering her into his arms.

Later, when they were about to drowse off, Karma said, “You know when I knew you were the one?”

“Mumphf,” he said, almost asleep.

“It was when I saw you striding down the street wearing cowboy clothes—hat, boots, and everything. And then—”

“Karma, go to sleep. We have to call the travel agent early in the morning and put your name on the cruise ticket.”

“You
did say that you wanted someone who was crazy about you from the very beginning. And I was.”

He kissed her cheek. “Remind me to call the ranch in the morning. I want to make sure we can use that extra room in the pool house for your office.”

“Paulette and I will set things up so that I only have to come to Miami Beach every few weeks. I can handle my half of Rent-a-Yenta by phone and e-mail and computer.”

“Good, because I’ll miss you so much when you’re gone.”

Karma slid her hand into his. “You know, Slade, I think this is the best match I ever made as a matchmaker.”

“It’s the
only
match you ever made.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Good night, dearest.” He pulled her closer so that they spooned together, her back to his front.

“And to think that I found a guy without springing for artificial nipples,” murmured Karma.

Slade stirred, his breath fluttering warm against her neck. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important. Good night.”

It was the strangest thing, but as Karma drifted into sleep, she saw Aunt Sophie floating between the ceiling and the porthole beside the bed.

“Ha!” Sophie said, which was how Karma knew that it was really her aunt. “This may be the best match
you
ever made, but it was the hardest match
I
ever made. You kept screwing things up.”

“He was a client. I needed clients. I didn’t think it was right to want him for myself.”

“How do you think I got your Uncle Nate?”

“You mean—?”

“I was supposed to find him a wife. I found him one, all right—me. And by the way, Leah Rothstein is perfect for him.”

“From
your mouth to God’s ears,” Karma said.

“I’ll make sure of that. In the meantime, Karma, take good care of your cowboy.”

“Everything worked out okay in the end,” Karma murmured, her eyelids growing heavier.

“That’s
right,
bubbeleh,
” and
Aunt Sophie smiled
benignly and
blew her
a kiss
before disappearing into a beam of moonlight.

How could she ever trust him again if he didn’t come clean about who he really was? He swore he’d never lose this woman—this smart, sexy, though a little wonky, lady.

Azure turned on a radio in one corner of the large, mostly empty retail space. “But I wantto help. I want to do something,” she said over the loud, lively music. Then she bent and dipped her brush in the paint, and applied it to the wall with a professionalism that put Lee’s meager effort to shame.

He liked it that Azure had a generous side, but when he glanced at his watch he realized the painters—the real ones—would be returning in a mater of minutes. There was only one thing he could do, he figured, and that was to paint as fast as possible, the sooner to get them out of there and not have his secret identity discovered.

Plus, there was the way she was wearing those coveralls, and how they curved around Azure’s delectable derriere that made working beside her a pleasure.

Or correction: make that behind her.

This book is dedicated to my fellow Frog Princesses from Palm Beach High School—Lynne, Sheila, Carole, Bette Anne and Charlene. Even though I missed our Frog Festival reunion this year because I was working on this book, I was there in spirit! (
Ribbit!
)

A
ZURE
O’C
ONNOR TUCKED
her PalmPilot into her purse and tried not to look jaded as the saffron-robed officiant who was uniting Karma and her beloved Slade in marriage began to ramble on about the glories of love. There was, Azure firmly believed, no such thing as love.

There was infatuation. There was lust. There was—

There was her uncle Nate, seventy-five years old or more, gazing soulfully into the eyes of the former Leah Rothstein, a woman of indeterminate age and with more than a passing acquaintance with cosmetic surgery. They had eloped a couple of months ago after his full recovery from a heart attack and were said to be blissfully
happy. Azure turned her head away, unwilling to witness any more bliss than necessary on this occasion.

“…and you may kiss the bride.” The man in the saffron robe stepped back and beamed at the bride and groom.

Barefoot, flowers entwined in her bouncy curls, Karma turned to Slade, her eyes glowing, and Slade gathered her into his arms. Tenderly, joyfully, happily, they kissed. Tentatively at first, then with gusto.

Azure felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into the sand of Miami Beach on her stiletto heels. She had not taken off her shoes like most of the other guests. She agreed with her outspoken mother—a beach wedding wasn’t the way to go. It involved smelly seaweed heaped everywhere, and curious uninvited gawkers, and it offended her sense of order with the chairs for guests scattered here and there, a flute player on one side, a lute player on the other, and bell ringers back on the promenade where you couldn’t even see them. Plus a wind had sprung up and was teasing her hair out of its carefully twisted chignon to blow unwelcome tendrils across her cheeks. And dammit, there must be sand in her eyes. That’s all it could be, right? She was not crying over this stupid wedding. She was
not.

Azure blinked. To her horror, a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Hoping that no one noticed this chink in her armor, she swiped at the tear angrily and repeated her mantra:
There is no such thing as love, there is no such thing as love, there is no such thing….

When her vision cleared, she noticed a guy standing amid the knot of wedding guests on the other side of the makeshift aisle, which was marked by a row of conch shells. He was staring at her intently, a bemused expression on his face.

It was a familiar stare, that one. It held all the hope and
promise of a man’s interest when he first sensed a possibility of—what? Getting laid, most likely. And she was definitely not a candidate.

Now the happy couple, arm in arm, faced their guests in front of an ocean turned the color of amethysts in the waning afternoon light. On cue, someone released a flock of birds—doves? sea gulls?—from a wicker basket, and they swirled toward the sunset, their wings afire with iridescent pink light. Karma kissed her new husband on the cheek, and he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her, too.

Azure closed her eyes against the sight of their happiness.
There’s no such thing as love, there’s—

Her cousin Paulette stirred beside her. “That’s so romantic, isn’t it, Azure? I mean, I’ve never seen Karma look so great. She even looks smaller, don’t you think?”

Leave it to Paulette to deliver a backhanded compliment! Anyway, Karma wasn’t big. She was tall. And beautiful, especially to Slade, which was kind of touching when you thought about it.

Trying
not
to think about it, Azure turned to follow the other wedding guests down the aisle in the bridal couple’s wake. The aforenoticed man, who was a tall, sandy-haired specimen with shoulders out to here, edged those shoulders toward her. He had, Azure noticed unwillingly, an appealingly crooked grin, which was exactly what you’d expect from a Lust Puppy like him.

Adroitly maneuvering so that Paulette’s body was between them, Azure flicked a speck of sand off her tailored charcoal-gray gabardine suit, which now was beginning to seem like a questionable choice for this freewheeling wedding. The doves savoring their freedom overhead must have thought so, too, because
one of them dropped a little wedding present—splat!—right onto her left lapel, where it sat quivering.

Great,
thought Azure.
Karma gets married, and I get pooped on.

Well, it could have easily been her getting married this month, if her fiancé, Charming Paco, had not absconded with a pair of boobs that just so happened to be attached to one of Azure’s best friends. She supposed that it was better to know that Charming Paco was unfaithful now rather than waiting until after the wedding. At least that’s what she’d been desperately reassuring herself for the past six months. But after a lifetime of kissing frogs in hopes that one of them would turn into a prince, she had been majorly disillusioned over the Paco defection.

Lust Puppy was so tall that he could see her over the heads of the other guests between them. He was still trying to catch her eye, she would swear to it.

Relentlessly broadcasting the message that she wasn’t interested in what he had to offer, Azure pressed on through the crush of wedding guests heading toward the reception at the Blue Moon Apartments a half a block or so away.

She planned to spend as little time as possible making nice with family and friends. She could hardly wait to repair to Paulette’s tiny apartment, also at the Blue Moon, and sleep off the jet lag she had accumulated on last week’s trip back from London.

W
OULDN’T YOU KNOW THAT
K
ARMA
would choose sitar music for her reception? You couldn’t dance to it, at least not in the conventional way. You couldn’t sing along with it. Maybe sitar music was an agreeable complement to making love, but that was a moot point as far as Azure was concerned. Making
love was not on her agenda for the foreseeable future. Charming Paco had soured her on men, maybe for the rest of her life.

The Blue Moon was an art deco monstrosity built in the 1940s, and its roof garden was decorated for the occasion with potted palms and, as things progressed, equally potted people. Under the winking stars of a darkening twilit sky, Azure had dutifully kissed Karma on the cheek in a sisterly manner and shaken her new brother-in-law’s hand formally in a subdued but friendly way. She had edged away from the conversation in which her mother was explaining to a fascinated and wide-eyed Goldy, the desk clerk/mother hen at the Blue Moon, that her occupation was creating cakes modeled after parts of the human anatomy. She’d murmured something polite to her father’s latest conquest, a moneyed widow whom he’d met while he was teaching ballroom dancing on a Caribbean cruise ship. She’d listened to her grandmother’s lengthy account of her latest visit to her chiropractor. Then she’d checked her cell phone in case there were any messages, conscientiously entered Karma and Slade’s new address in her PalmPilot before she forgot, and unsuccessfully tried to remove the bird poop from her lapel with seltzer.

“Azure, Mom wants to see you,” said a voice behind her, and Azure pivoted to face her sister Isis, who as Karma’s lone attendant was wearing an outfit that seemed to be made of opaque blue cobwebs cunningly draped to cover the essentials. Close behind Isis was an elderly friend of their grandmother, who appeared to be in distress. It didn’t take Azure long to find out why.

“I seem to have broken the buckle on my shoe. Barefoot is
okay for you young people, but for me? No way,” said Mrs. Hockleburg, wrinkling her forehead and knitting her brow.

Azure felt sorry for the woman, who had driven Grandma Rose all the way from Connecticut for the wedding. “Would you like me to take a look at it?” she asked politely.

Isis, looking happy to be off the hook, said, “I’ll go find Mom,” before rushing off.

Mrs. Hockleburg slowly eased her considerable bulk onto a chair. Azure sat down beside her as the woman slipped off the shoe. It took only a few seconds of studying the buckle to find out what was wrong. “It’s okay. Look, the prong has slipped sideways. All I need to do is move it over, see?”

As Azure handed the shoe back to Mrs. Hockleburg, she saw the tall man who had been staring at her at the wedding regarding her with interest. Not wanting to encourage him, she focused her attention on helping Mrs. Hockleburg with her shoe and was therefore trapped when her mother pounced.

“Now, Azure, I hate it that our planes leave so early in the morning! I thought maybe we could get together for brunch, but all of us—Isis and the kids and her husband and me—have to be at the airport so long before boarding! Security, you know. Promise you’ll drop by Sedona to see me next time you fly to Flagstaff.”

“I promise, Mom. It won’t be for a few months, though.” Her mother, who had changed her name from Lois to Saguaro, like the cactus, after her divorce from Azure’s father, patted her on the arm. “Whenever, whatever. And when you come, I’ll make your favorite bulgur-and-goat-cheese casserole.”

Azure didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that bulgur and goat cheese had never been her favorite casserole. And,
like her three sisters, she wasn’t a vegetarian anymore, which her mother also didn’t know.

“I’m going to bug out of this reception, Mom. I’ll call you at your hotel before you leave in the morning, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie.” Her mom hugged her before descending on Mrs. Hockleburg.

Azure moved restlessly toward the door and away from a barechested waiter who was bearing down on her with some kind of macrobiotic hors d’oeuvre. She stopped once to comfort a stray moppet who was crying because she had dropped her cracker on the floor. Azure plucked a cracker off the waiter’s tray for the kid and packed her over to her parents, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from their offspring by Eamon O’Connor’s demonstration of a ballroom dance step with his merry widow friend. The sitar player had stopped momentarily and was watching with the others, though his expression was more disapproving than not.

When the dance demo was over, Azure hugged her father, said goodbye to the widow, and refused her father’s request that she accompany them to Key West for a few days. “You’d like the Keys,” Dad said, but Azure doubted it.

Sleep beckoned, and pleasantly after this rooftop reception, which, though the view of the ocean and Miami Beach was stunning, had turned into a real ordeal. Sleep, however, wasn’t the only thing beckoning. So was Paulette, who was wearing one of her most aggressive smiles as she accosted Azure slightly short of the escape route. That smile put Azure in mind of a set of shark’s teeth she had once seen at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

“Azure, darling,” Paulette caroled, reminding her how
much she hated her own name. And since when had Paulette ever called her darling, jealous as she was of Azure and her sisters, who had taken perverse pleasure in making Paulette’s life a living hell back in their old Connecticut neighborhood? It had been easy to drive Paulette up the wall in those days, unfettered as the four O’Connor sisters had been after their parents, reformed hippies, had summarily snatched them from their early life on the commune and set them down in suburbia.

“Azure, darling,” Paulette repeated as if for effect. “Azure, this is my client Mr.—” Paulette began, which was when Azure realized that it was Lust Puppy, the same sandy-haired fellow who had stared at her on the beach.

“Lee,” the man interjected smoothly, his twinkling gaze resting on Azure’s mouth before moving to her throat and even lower. Azure had the sudden and irrelevant notion that he was picturing her in a teddy or even less. Which was ridiculous because she didn’t even own a teddy and furthermore never intended to.

She forced a grin and shuffled off to the right like a veteran vaudeville player. “Got to go grab some sleep! Jetlagged from trip! Nice to meet you! ’Bye!” was what she blurted; at least that’s what she thought she said. A path appeared through the crowd, a miraculous welcome path to the door, and she fled. At that moment, another miracle: An instant wall of people rose up between her and Paulette and Mr. Lee, and Azure made it through the door to the inside hall without being stopped.

She executed a quick beeline down the stairs to Paulette’s apartment, where, as her cousin’s house guest, she occupied the fold-out couch. She soon fell asleep to the sound of chatter and laughter from the party overhead. She couldn’t hear the
sitar music, but maybe that was just as well.

A
ZURE STUCK HER
P
ALM
P
ILOT
back under her pillow and stretched in an attempt to wake herself all the way up. Paulette was making way too much noise in the kitchen, slamming doors, crumpling paper, running the disposal.

“Azure?” Her cousin came to the kitchen door, a pink sleep mask pushed up over her hair, which was colored Outrageous Raspberry to coordinate with her dress for yesterday’s wedding. “I’m so glad you’re an early riser. I knew we’d get along great.”

Azure wasn’t so sure, and she would have liked to point out to Paulette that she wouldn’t have been an early riser if Paulette hadn’t been making enough noise to wake a zombie.