Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (27 page)

“You were right about Leah and me,” he was telling
Goldy. “Your tarot cards were right on the market when they said we were going to get married.”

“Money, dear. You mean right on the money, not on the market. Isn’t he cute?” Leah was stood within the circle of Nate’s arm, beaming proudly. Her smile broadened when she spotted Azure.

“Azure! Why, we were looking for you!” she exclaimed, whereupon Azure shot an apologetic look over her shoulder at Lee and heaved an inward sigh of resignation. She loved her uncle Nate, and she thought she could grow fond of Leah, but the last thing she wanted was to be involved in a conversation with them at the moment.

Nevertheless, she presented herself for Uncle Nate’s hug and Leah’s air kiss, quickly pulling away and gesturing toward Lee, who had decided he’d better come inside. “You remember Lee, perhaps, from Karma’s wedding?”

Lee stuck out his hand. “Yes, I’m Slade’s college roommate. It was good to be at his wedding and to meet Karma.”

“I’m happy to meet you,” Nate replied, pumping his hand vigorously.

Leah spoke up. “Are you two going upstairs? I need to borrow a pottery catalog from Paulette.”

Azure felt a stab of dismay at this development, and she tried to think of a polite way to tell Nate and Leah that this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind for the rest of the evening. “Oh, but—”

“I think I’ll run along,” Lee injected smoothly. “I know you have some family visiting to do. How long will you be in town, Azure?”

Wondering how she could salvage time with Lee, she answered
distractedly, “I have to stay until my client calls. He’s the guy who lives on the big yacht anchored off Fisher Island.”

The unexpected revelation hit Lee like a blow to the belly even as Azure went on talking.

“I thought I’d have heard from him by now, but I haven’t. So I’m sure I’ll be here at least for tomorrow.” She gazed at him hopefully.

Her eagerness didn’t escape him, but he was still flabbergasted to realize that Azure must be—had to be—the consultant from Wixler who was supposed to contact him. “I—I see,” Lee said.

“Why don’t you come upstairs with us?” her uncle suggested to Lee.

He appreciated the invitation, but he knew he had to think this through. He had to decide what to do. And it was for sure that he couldn’t tip his hand now with all these other people around. It would be too embarrassing.

“Not tonight,” he said as smoothly as possible. And then, because she looked so expectant, he said, “Azure, I’ll call you.”

Azure’s heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach in consternation. It was a well-known fact among the single women she knew that men always said they’d call you, and few ever did. “Do you have Paulette’s phone number?”

“It’s 555–6734,” Goldy said with a sidelong look up at Lee. “Would you like me to write it down for you?”

“I’ll remember,” he said quickly. Too quickly, Azure thought.

“You can call me on my cell phone,” she said, reeling off the number.

“I’ll remember that one, too.”

For her part, Azure doubted that Lee would remember
either number. Most people wouldn’t, so why should he be different?

“Thanks for everything,” she said, knowing the words sounded lame but feeling hampered by the presence of everyone else. She hated to be saying goodbye to Lee—forever, for all she knew—in this brightly lit lobby with Nate, Leah and Goldy looking on. She hated saying goodbye to him, period. She’d had something else in mind, something thrilling and unexpected and entirely out of character for her. She’d wanted excitement, and now she was feeling vastly disappointed that circumstances had denied it.

Lee touched her hand briefly before he went on out the front door.
The Touch again,
she thought, feeling slightly more positive.

“Nice fellow,” said her uncle, but then Leah began to fuss over her uncle and said that she didn’t want him walking up all those stairs to Paulette’s apartment, whereupon he said he’d done it many times and his doctor said stairs were fine, heart attack or not, and Leah said that was all very well, but doctors didn’t know everything and Nate should take it easy.

As Azure, feeling that the evening had been hijacked, was trailing after the two of them, Goldy beckoned her back to her desk. Through the window she saw Lee’s Mustang pull out of the parking lot and watched as its tail lights disappeared into South Beach traffic.

“That man Lee,” Goldy whispered conspiratorially, “is hiding something. Mark my words, and it’s something important.”

This snapped her to attention. “What do you mean?” Azure said. “Like a corpse in the basement?”

Goldy shook her head, setting her dangly gold earrings
jingling. “No, no, it isn’t anything bad. I don’t know what it is. But it’s something good. Something you won’t mind.”

“Thanks, Goldy,” Azure said with a sigh. “I think.”

“You’re welcome. And don’t worry. He
will
call.”
And if he doesn’t, I won’t care,
Azure told herself in a turnaround brought about by desperation.

But she knew she
would
care. A lot.

B
ACK ON THE
S
AMOA’
S
sundeck, Fleck was enjoying the taste of a good cigar complemented by the last of a bottle of equally good scotch. He greeted Lee effusively.

“Man, you should have seen the chicks crowd around at the marina when I stepped off the launch today,” Fleck said.

Lee, hardly over his shock at who Azure was and his disappointment in how the evening had ended, eased himself down onto a deck chair and waited for the steward to appear. Right now he could use a drink.

Sure enough, the young Portuguese steward stepped out of the shadows. “Sir? What is your pleasure?”

Lee would have liked to say that his pleasure had been canceled by circumstances beyond his control, but he held his tongue. “I’ll have what he’s having,” he said with a tip of his head toward Fleck’s drink.

“Certainly, sir.” Miguel hurried to the bar, pouring the drink and returning with swift efficiency.

Though Lee would have been happy with some quiet time for reflection, Fleck seemed determined to give him an update of his day. “I got into your Mercedes and took one of the girls with me,” he was saying. “We drove up the coast for a while, stopped at a hotel, had a few drinks in the bar. You were right about the women, Lee. Money is the greatest magnet in the world.” He took another drag
on the cigar and blew a series of smoke rings toward the moon, which by this time hung high in the sky and threatened to disappear behind a cloud.
A great night for love-making on the beach,
Lee thought glumly.

“How did it go with you today, buddy?” Fleck leaned forward, ready for the scoop.

“Not at all as planned.” His first sip of the scotch rolled smoothly across his tongue, and he hoped the alcohol would put him in a better frame of mind.

“What do you mean?”

“I found out that Azure works for Wixler Consultants, the company I’ve asked to handle the start-up plan for franchising. She’s the consultant that Harry Wixler recommended so highly.”

Fleck looked thunderstruck. “You didn’t know this?”

“I had no idea. Apparently she’s been waiting for me to call her, and I never got the message that I was supposed to. Miguel? Would you please come here?”

The steward hurried out from a pantry inside the salon. “Yes, sir, Mr. Santori?”

“Have you given me all the phone messages I’ve received since we’ve been anchored here?”

“I think so.”

Lee knew that Miguel was new to the
Samoa
and not accustomed to the routine. “Would you mind checking to make sure?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Santori.” The man hurried away.

“I take it you got along all right with Azure?”

“In the first place, this morning when I stopped by Rent-a-Yenta, I didn’t get a chance to give Paulette a piece of my mind. Azure gave
me
a piece of her mind. And then—”

Fleck aimed a wily leer in his direction. “Azure
didn’t give you a piece of anything else, did she?”

“Nope. No such luck. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask such pointed and crude questions about the woman I love.”

The words had slipped out. He didn’t know what to think after he said them, and from the looks of it, Fleck didn’t, either.

“Love? Lee, holy sh—”

Lee cut him off. “Damn! I don’t know where the infamous
L
word came from. I don’t know why I said it.” Bewilderment left him at a loss for more words.

Fleck stared at him incredulously. “You think you’re in
love
with this O’Connor woman?”

Lee took a long pull on his drink as he stared at the lights from Fisher Island rippling on the water. He thought about how Azure had looked in her painter’s coveralls, the end of her ponytail painted green. He remembered the way she had stared up at him in the moonlight, her yearning as strong as his after he’d kissed her, and how she hadn’t turned him down flat when he’d suggested getting a blanket so they could make love on the beach. Was it possible to fall in love with someone you hardly knew over a few things like that? Or had he fallen in love with her at first sight?

“I love her,” he said heavily, feeling even more helpless as the knowledge washed over him. Was he crazy? Had he taken leave of his mind?

Fleck’s questioning was blunt and to the point. “You sure you don’t just want to get her in the sack?”

The scotch had settled into Lee’s stomach, its welcome warmth seeping soothingly through his veins. “I want her
that way, of course. I also want a lot more than that.”

“Okay, Lee. I’m trying to understand.”

“So am I, Fleck,” Lee said heavily. “So am I.”

“And she still hates you?”

“No, she doesn’t hate me. I’m pretty sure of that after tonight.”

Suddenly Lee felt very tired. This business of pretending to be someone else had begun to wear on him earlier in the day, and now the prospect of keeping up the charade seemed exhausting.

Miguel materialized from the salon carrying a fistful of pink message slips. “Here you are, sir, copies of your messages.”

Lee thumbed through them, finally finding one requesting him to call A. J. O’Connor at Harry Wixler’s behest. He’d thought that during his brief conversation with Wixler about the matter, the man had said that his representative was going to call him. He wearily pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he stared at the message, realizing that he was supposed to have called her. And Wixler hadn’t mentioned who his representative was. If he had, Lee would have certainly picked up on the name O’Connor. It was clear to him that they had each been waiting for the other to call.

“All right, Miguel. It’s my fault. The messages are all here, but I haven’t been paying enough attention to them, obviously.”

After the steward left, Fleck regarded him with uplifted eyebrows. “
Now
will you tell Azure who you are?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to come clean.” Yet even as he spoke, he knew that things wouldn’t be the same between them once he was Leonardo Santori and she was A. J. O’Connor. They would be required to relate on a business basis, and she would likely become nervous about who he was and what he could do for her company. They would not be able to laugh together in a humble barbecue
place about splashing each other with paint; perhaps they would never get to walk on the beach in the moonlight once she felt self-conscious around him. They might never make love.

Lee drained his glass and heaved himself out of the deck chair. “I’d better rethink this.”

“Look, buddy,” Fleck said slowly, “how about one more day of switched identities?”

Lee thought for a moment or two. He saw no harm in it. “Okay, Fleck. You’re on. One more day and then I spill the beans.”

Fleck rewarded him with two thumbs up. “Right-o. See you in the morning, Lee.”

Lee had serious misgivings about the scheme, but they were overshadowed by his desire to find out if the light in Azure’s eyes when she looked at him could be rekindled by
plain old ordinary Lee Sanders.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Looking for A.J.

a.j., where are you? earth to a.j., earth to a.j.! charming paco asked me if you were out of town and i said yes and he asked when you would be back. what should i tell him? that you’re looking for a real prince?

luv,

dorrie

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, A
ZURE
spent forty minutes on the treadmill at the gym near the Blue Moon. She worked her abs, her glutes, her deltoids, her lats. And when she was through exercising, she treated herself to a sauna, where several other women were chatting as though they knew one another well. At first Azure wished that they’d be quiet so that she could enjoy the sauna in peace, but as they continued to talk, she became more interested.

“They say the
Samoa
’s the most enormous yacht to anchor near Fisher Island in years,” said one, a redhead.

“The biggest since Aristotle Onassis’s yacht back in the seventies,” chimed in the woman in the striped bath
towel.

“Leonardo Santori,” said a third, who nearly swooned as she pronounced his name. “The Dot.Musix whiz.”

Azure’s ears perked up at this. This was the client who was supposed to call her. This was the guy that she was supposed to help with a start-up franchise business plan.

“He’s
soooo
good-looking,” said the redhead.

“I think I saw him running on the beach once.”

“How do you know? He’s plenty reclusive, and hardly anyone knows what he looks like. He never even gives interviews.”

“Still, I hear he’s got scores of girlfriends,” said the one in the striped towel.

“That doesn’t leave much chance for us, does it?” And they all laughed.

This overheard conversation started Azure thinking, though. Harry had said that she should wait for Leonardo Santori to call her, but she hadn’t heard from him yet and she certainly didn’t want to be blamed for letting him get away. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for her to call the
Samoa?

T
HE YACHT SAMOA, NEARLY
the size of a small continent, gleamed blindingly white in the sunshine over near Fisher Island. The women gathered around the Sunchaser Marina’s main dock were in their early twenties and very beautiful. When Azure asked about Leonardo Santori, they weren’t reticent.

“We saw him yesterday,” said one. She was wearing a blue hip-hugger miniskirt and a skimpy white halter top. She nodded toward a hibiscus bush bearing red flowers as big as saucers where one of their group was standing and listening to a
portable CD player. “Ginger went for a ride with him in his Mercedes sports car.”

The girl named Ginger unplugged herself from her earphones. “Leonardo Santori’s no great shakes if you ask me. I’m not going anywhere with him again.”

One of the others spoke up. “So why, pray tell, are you hanging around here today?”

Ginger shrugged. “I liked the looks of the guy who runs the launch. He said that maybe we could get together next time he comes to the marina.” She tossed a head of blond curls.

“Right,” said the other woman sarcastically. She called to two others who were sitting on a boat box and chatting. “You want to go get a drink out of the machine? A Coke or something?”

One of them lifted her hair up so that the breeze could cool her neck. “A cold drink would taste good. It’s hot out here.”

“Ginger?”

“Not me. It’s about time for that launch to show up and pick up the daily supplies.”

As the three women headed toward the drink machine, which was sheltered under a porch outside the marina office, Azure leaned against a dock piling. Scents of tar and brine tickled her nose, and a brown pelican swooped low over her head before skimming the bay in search of his dinner. In the distance, the
Samoa
rode easily on gentle waves, her flags fluttering in the breeze. No activity seemed to be taking place on deck, though the woodwork shone and the highly polished brass fittings gleamed brightly in the sun.

“That’s some boat,” Azure said, almost to herself.

Ginger clicked the CD player shut. “I know. I’ve heard there are marble bathrooms and solid gold fixtures shaped like swans. We all want to go on it.” She
sounded wistful.

“I don’t want to see the yacht,” Azure said carefully. “I only want to know how to contact someone on board.”

“Oh, is that all? That’s easy enough. I have a number for a phone there.” Ginger seemed to be boasting or, at the very least, trying to impress Azure that she, in contrast to the others, had an in.

Azure tried not to show her surprise. “You do?”

“Uh-huh. The guy who brings the launch in—Mario—gave the phone number to me. He said to call and let him know if I’d be here today, and I did. I haven’t told the others yet. They’d be
tooooo
jealous.” Ginger rolled her eyes, and then she giggled. “I can’t wait to see their faces when I step into that launch and ride off to the yacht with Mario. He’s real good-looking.”

“Ginger, I’m not interested in Mario, but I would like to have that phone number,” Azure said quickly. She handed Ginger her card.

Ginger studied it. “You’re not from around here?”

Azure shook her head and smiled. “No. I have no personal interest in anyone on the
Samoa.
My reason for wanting to contact the
Samoa
is purely business.”

“I’ll give you the phone number, but don’t say where you got it. And don’t tell the others.” She glanced toward the three women. They were sitting around a concrete picnic table in the shade of a palm tree. “They’re peeved because I went out with the great Santori yesterday. I thought he really liked me, but not all that much, as it turned out.” She gave a little laugh and fished a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “Here’s the phone number. Do you have a pencil so you can write it down?”

Azure produced a pencil from her fanny pack and wrote down the
phone number that Ginger offered. “Thanks, Ginger. You’ve been a big help. And good luck with Mario.”

Ginger shoved the bit of paper back into the pocket of her shorts. “Thanks.” She settled her earphones over her ears before Azure set off down the dock.

“Giving up already?” one of the women at the picnic table called when she saw Azure headed toward the street.

“Yes. It hardly seems worth it to wait around here.”

The three women exchanged knowing glances. “Oh, it is. Believe me, it is.”

Well, maybe something was wrong with her, Azure reflected as she jogged back toward the Blue Moon. But she’d rather spend time with a beach bum who liked her instead of a billionaire who didn’t give a hoot. And who had, apparently, no lack of gorgeous women in his life.

P
AULETTE HAD NOT TAKEN
any messages for her so far this morning, and neither had Goldy. A check of stored messages on her cell phone didn’t produce any, either, but it was still early. Maybe Lee would call later.

Azure certainly didn’t intend to tell Paulette that she and Lee had almost made love on the beach last night. It just slipped out as they were in Paulette’s tiny kitchen drinking iced tea.

“You mean you wanted to?” Paulette said with frank amazement.

Azure, perched on a kitchen stool painted with orange and blue polka dots, stirred her unsweetened tea. While she’d been working out, she had decided to give up sugar, which made for flab. Which made for body anxiety. Which was not good when you were contemplating taking off your clothes in front of somebody for the first time whether or not he had a tattoo on his abdomen
to distract you.

“Yes, I wanted to sleep with him. It was—” Azure groped for words. It was not easy to voice your exact feelings on the subject of why you wanted to have sex with a man. She hardly understood it herself.

“Last night was magical,” Azure said, knowing that didn’t cover the half of it. “It was mindbending. Marvelous. Memorable.”

“It was Miami Beach,” Paulette said flatly. “The tropical climate, the rush of the sea to shore, the freedom of being away from it all and on vacation. Sex with a new person seems special at the time, Azure, but you know as well as I do that these vacation flirtations don’t last.”

“Did I say I wanted it to last?”

Paulette shrugged. “From what I can tell, most women crave permanence. In the back of their minds there’s always the possibility that a fling could be the real thing.”

While she was thinking this over, Azure got up and rinsed her glass in the sink. “Not,” she said, “after Charming Paco. That was supposed to be the real thing, and I thought it was a stable relationship. Then—boom!—a naked, wet Tiffany was being royally soaped by my equally naked and wet boyfriend in
my
bathtub. I ask you, how can I ever think anything is real after that?”

“Well, her
boobs
were real enough,” Paulette pointed out.

“Right,” Azure said with a sigh. She glanced at her watch. “Now that I’ve got a phone number for the
Samoa,
I’m going to call that client, despite what Harry said. I’d like to know what’s what.”

Paulette got up and began to load the dishwasher. “Say, aren’t we going shopping today? I wanted to buy a pair of shoes to wear to the seminar.”

“How about later? I’m hoping Lee will call.”

“Did Lee actually tell you to expect a phone call from
him?”

“He said, ‘I’ll call you,’ and he has your number as well as my cell phone number. But you know as well as I do how men say they’re going to call and never do.”

“You know why? Karma and I did a survey on that for Rent-a-Yenta. It’s because they didn’t like the sex. They think it’s polite to say they’ll call afterward even when they have no intention of doing so. They have no idea how nerve-racking it is for the woman who waits by a phone that never rings.” Paulette closed the dishwasher door and shoved the box of detergent back under the sink.

“But Lee and I have never
had
sex.”

“Then he’ll call. Chances on he’ll keep calling until he gets you in the sack. He’ll want to know if you’re good at it.”

“Is
that
what it’s all about?”

“For a lot of guys it is.
Are
you good at sex?”

“Paulette!”

Her cousin only grinned. “Just curious.”

“As it happens,” Azure said with dignity, “I am
very
good at it. At least according to Paco.”

“Who ran off with a pair of 40DDs.” With a final knowing look, Paulette flounced off to her bedroom, where she commenced shuffling papers around on her desk.

Sometimes Azure didn’t like this cousin of hers much at all. Also, she resented Paulette for raising the question of whether or not she was good in bed. Based on Charming Paco’s enthusiastic response and the self-help tests she’d completed in
Cosmo,
she thought she was fine, even remarkably adept at times. And she enjoyed sex.

But would Lee think she was good at it?

And would her life be ruined if he never even had a chance to find out?

Well, no. We weren’t talking ruined lives here if she
never heard from him again. But we were talking a ruined week or so, which was bad enough when that week was in Miami Beach and there was an ocean and a moon and stars urging you on to fulfillment of your heart’s desire. Or at least what passed for your heart’s desire while on vacation.

A
ZURE DRUMMED HER FINGERS
on the arm of the lounge chair as she listened to the measured
bleep!
of the ship-to-shore telephone on the other end of her cell phone. She wished she were at the beach right now. But no. She was trying to reach Harry’s elusive client.

The phone picked up.
“Samoa,”
said a nonchalant male voice.

“Hello, this is A. J. O’Connor of Wixler Consultants, and I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Santori.”

A long silence, so long that she thought she might have been disconnected. Then, experimentally, “You’ve got Santori.”

She hadn’t expected this. She had expected to talk to an assistant, a steward, a secretary—not to the man himself.

She cleared her throat. “Mr. Santori, I’m hoping that we can get together soon to discuss your plans for franchising
your Grassy Creek business.”

Another long silence. “Sure, that’s a great idea. Uh, I mean, a good idea. To talk, you know.”

Azure frowned. Somehow all she had heard about Leonardo Santori had led her to believe that he was a man of well-spoken sensibilities. This man sounded ill-at-ease and, moreover, too tentative ever to have been head of a major company like Dot.Musix.

“Perhaps you could suggest a time?”

“What’s good for you?”

Usually clients were more specific, since they knew they were calling the shots. “May I take you to dinner on Friday?”

“Take me to dinner? Well, okay.”

“I’ll be glad to pick you up, if you like, at your landing dock at the marina.”

“Kewl! Is seven o’clock all right?”

“Of course. I’ll see you then.”

“Right-o.”

After they hung up, she sat for a moment shaking her head at her preconceived notions. Mr. Santori might be rich, but he sounded extremely unsophisticated. Well, he might not be what she expected, but at least they had an appointment.

When she went back inside the apartment, Azure booted up her laptop and checked her online mailbox for messages. Not surprisingly, there was one from her boss.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Client

A.J., I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for Wixler Consultants to retain Leonardo Santori’s goodwill. If he
doesn’t phone you within the next twenty-four hours, I strongly suggest that you call him. STRONGLY, A.J. Harry Wixler