Private Paradise (2 page)

Chris, who thankfully always had her back,
had lobbied heavily in Carla's favor. He'd gotten the board to
agree to give Carla a one-year trial period as the acting General
Manager.

In the first six months of her trial, Carla
had come through with flying colors, if she did say so herself.

Until disaster struck, one which made it
imperative that she hire a qualified security director, and
fast.

“
We've been looking for a security head
for a month now, and nothing is happening,” Chris said.

Carla threw up her hands in frustration.
“It's not my fault we haven't found anyone qualified. You saw the
resumes. You told me not to bother bringing any of them in for
interviews.”

“
And now I found someone who's
overqualified, so I jumped on it. You should be thanking me for
taking what's been a major hurdle off your plate.”

If he'd hired anyone other than Sam
O'Connell, she would. “I feel like I've been subverted and I don't
like it.”

Chris's expression, usually so open and
friendly, became grave. “I didn't want to have to hit you with
this, but you know the thefts here have the investors questioning
whether or not you can handle this.”

Carla felt the knot in her stomach pull
tighter. The first six months after she took over, everything went
as smooth as silk. Business was booming despite the down economy,
and Holley Cay continued to get nothing but praise from their
exclusive clientele.

Then a month ago, the panty raider had
struck.

At least, that's what Carla had called him in
her mind. She'd never be so frivolous in front of the women who,
rightly so, were horrified and furious about the fact that, while
at Holley Cay, someone had broken into their rooms, stolen multiple
pairs of underwear, and was now attempting to auction them off on
eBay.

Though most of the world saw it as nothing
more than a silly prank, and the culprit, who turned out to be a
member of the housekeeping staff looking for a creative way to make
an extra buck, was easily tracked through her eBay account, for
Carla and Holley Cay it had been disastrous.

Besides the gorgeous Caribbean setting, the
resort staked its reputation on complete privacy, unparalleled
luxury, and total discretion. Guests were willing to pay thousands
of dollars for the privilege.

Carla had handled the problem as discreetly
and as aggressively as she could, comping the guests who were
victimized and getting rid of the security manager who had not done
the background check required of every single employee. If he had,
he would have found out that the woman in question had worked at
another resort two years before and had been fired for
stealing.

Then Carla had had a brand new, state of the
art key card system installed that tracked employees' usage and
made sure none of the staff were entering rooms or facilities
unless they had reason to be there.

To her face, Chris and the investors had
commended her on how she handled the aftermath, and when business
rebounded and the numbers went back up, Carla had hoped to put the
whole mess behind her.

Now she was afraid that one hiccup―okay, it
was more like a heart attack―was going to ruin her chance to keep
the job she'd worked so hard to earn.

“
What do you think?” she asked, raising
her chin in challenge. “I know you have to answer to the investors,
but you still have a lot of pull. Do you think I'm up to
it?”

“
Of course,” Chris replied, and Carla
felt the tension drain out of his shoulders at his lack of
hesitation. “But the lack of a competent security manager makes
them nervous, and the more nervous they are, the more I get bitched
at.” He lifted a big hand to stifle a yawn. “And between Julie and
Mathilda and twenty families at a time to keep happy, I don't need
to hear it. I ran Sam's resume by them and they loved that he's
former special forces and worked for Argus Securities.”

Carla rolled her eyes. “I don't know a single
person who would choose where to stay based on who was running
security.”

“
Me neither, but that's not the point.
It's your ass if we don't hire someone. Sam practically fell into
our laps, and I can't understand why you're not as happy about this
as I am.”

She knew she was screwed, but she couldn't
keep from lobbing one final protest. “He's practically been a
mercenary for the past five years. That's not exactly a great
foundation for working in the hospitality business.”

Chris cocked a dark eyebrow and gave her an
irritated look.

Carla slumped in defeat. In trying to avert
professional disaster on her behalf, he had no idea he'd brought an
even larger one down on her shoulders. And there was no way she
could tell him, not without completely humiliating herself.

Even if she did fess up that a long time ago,
in a Nevada desert far, far away she'd fallen for the one boy-man
she'd known damn well to stay away from, what did it say about her
that after more than a decade she was still so hung up on him she
could barely stand to be in the same room?

Chris, though her cousin and one of her best
friends, was also her boss. She was on thin ice professionally, and
she couldn't let a personal incident from the past affect her
professional present.

As she had reminded herself out on the deck,
she was no longer an idealistic eighteen-year-old with stars in her
eyes and hormones raging through her body. Time to pull up her big
girl panties and face this situation like a grown up.

There was no mistaking the tension in Carla's
posture as she stalked across the patio, Chris hot at her
heels.

Irritated or no, Sam couldn't keep his eyes
off the way her ass swished back and forth and the way muscles of
her calves shifted beneath smooth, tanned skin under the flowy
fabric of her dress. He hadn't been bullshitting her when he said
she looked even better than she had the last time he saw her. At
eighteen, she'd been all wide, dark eyes and wild curls to
match.

Short―she'd barely come up to the middle of
his chest―but lushly curved enough to stop traffic, Carla DeLuca
had been a sweet little armful, one he'd been itching to get his
hands on practically from the first time he laid eyes on her. But
Chris knew Sam all too well and had made it clear he'd kick Sam's
ass all the way to Los Angeles if he so much as looked at his
three-years-younger and infinitely less experienced cousin.

Though Chris had been a match for his size
and played football and water polo, Sam didn't have much concern
about Chris being able to kick his ass. But Chris was one of Sam's
best friends, and Sam tried hard not to ever let his hookups
interfere with his friendships. Plus, he knew Chris was right―Carla
was a good girl, nothing like the girls Sam usually ran with.

So though he'd run into her every so often
through high school and after, he'd tried his damndest to keep his
hands to himself.

“
Tried” being the operative word. Then,
the summer after Carla's senior year, Carla had shown up for
employee orientation at the resort outside Vegas where Sam had
worked on and off for a couple of years.

It had taken less than a week of Carla and
Sam working at the isolated desert oasis, well out of Chris's sight
and influence, for Sam's restraint to break down and for him to do
a full court press on Carla.

Not that she'd been easy. Though she'd
trailed him by three years in high school, she'd been well aware of
his reputation and had flat out told him she wasn't about to become
another notch on his belt.

Which only made him want her more.

In the eleven years since he'd last seen her,
it didn't look like Carla had gotten any easier. With her hair
straightened into a dark, silky curtain and her body toned and
tight, she looked sleek and tough and ready to take on the
world.

She hadn't, however, been prepared for the
bomb Chris had lobbed at her. Sam had tried to dissuade Chris from
springing him on Carla unannounced. He knew damn well Carla
wouldn't, as Chris claimed, “be totally psyched” to have Sam come
work with her at Holley Cay.

And based on the last time he’d seen Carla,
she had a damn good reason why.

Fresh guilt churned in his gut as he
remembered the look on Carla's face that night he'd told her it was
over. Her pain as he'd told her, in the cruelest way possible, that
there was no future for them was seared in his brain like a
brand.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps and
saw Carla and Chris coming through the French doors that opened out
from the restaurant to the patio. He could see the tension on
Carla's face from here. Whatever she'd discussed with Chris, it
hadn't made her any happier.

Had she told him about what had happened?

Sam's conscience pricked him, as it had the
moment Chris had told him that if he accepted the position at
Holley Cay, he'd be working not for Chris, but for Carla.

“
You remember Carla, right?” Chris had
asked.

Hell yeah, he remembered her. And not, as Sam
knew Chris assumed, as the cute girl three classes behind whom he
encountered at one of the many parties Chris had thrown in high
school. Sam should have told Chris then, he knew. Should have come
clean, been a man about it, and let him know all the reasons why
Carla wouldn't want him within a hundred miles of their island
paradise.

But he knew if he fessed up, he most likely
wouldn't get to see her again. And though he hadn't let himself
dwell on her in years―white hot dreams where he finally got to do
all the things she wouldn't let him didn't count―at the mention of
her name he felt the need to see her with an urgency unlike
anything he'd felt in a long time.

In fact, the last time he'd felt it, it had
been when he knew he needed to drive her away before she wasted her
life on a loser like him.

But when Chris told him about the position,
and how Carla was on the verge of losing her job because of the
previous security breach, Sam had been overwhelmed by the need to
help her. Any flashes of common sense that tried to warn him this
was a terrible idea were immediately drowned out by the urge to
come to her rescue, as though somehow that could make up for the
way he'd treated her before.

As Chris crossed to him, Sam rose from his
chair and studied his face, looking for signs of anger. Though he
looked frustrated, Chris didn't look pissed. Sam let down his guard
now that he was reasonably sure he didn't need to brace himself to
take a punch.

Check that, he thought as his gaze shifted
back to Carla, who looked ready to skip the punch and go straight
for a kick in the nuts.

“
So, looks like you're our new head of
security,” she said. He thought the expression on her face was
supposed to be a smile but it looked more like a baring of teeth.
And if looks could kill, he'd be nothing more than a pile of ash on
the flagstone patio slabs. “Since Chris hired you, I'll have him
show you to your office and get you set up―“

“
I'm going to have to head out,” Chris
interrupted. “We've got a wedding for five hundred tomorrow so I
need to relieve the nanny.” He gave Sam a wink and slapped him on
the shoulder. “Seriously, nothing but non-stop action here in the
tropics. We'll have you over to our place to catch up soon.” Chris
took his leave, and Sam turned his attention back to
Carla.

“
Did you know when you took this job
you'd be working for me?” she asked him point blank as soon as
Chris was out of earshot.

Sam nodded.

“
Why? In what universe did you think
this would be a good idea?”

Without waiting for an answer she turned and
started marching back inside, leaving Sam no choice but to follow.
“I knew you wouldn't be overjoyed to see me―“

“
You think?” she said over her shoulder
as she cut through the restaurant, back outside, and through the
breezeway that connected the restaurant with the resort's main
building. He followed her past the reception counter and down a
hall that led to a large windowed office. “This is my office,” she
said, indicating a room with picture windows that offered views of
turquoise blue water and white sand beach. Off in the distance Sam
saw a two-mast sailboat making its lazy way across the horizon.
“Bryce, our sales and events director, sits in here with me. You'll
meet him later.”

She continued further down the hall and
opened a door on the left. “And this is where you'll be.” It was
smaller than hers, no more than fifteen by fifteen or so, but like
hers it offered a view of the sea that Sam could happily stare at
for hours. “You didn't answer my question. Why?”

“
Like Chris said, I needed a change of
pace. I've been to some nasty places over the years.” That was
putting it lightly. His stint in the Rangers had sent him to Iraq
and Afghanistan, and in the five years he'd worked for Argus he'd
seen more suffering and death than he ever had in the military. “I
got tired of getting paid to help multi-billion dollar corporations
screw the locals in the most fucked up places on the planet, so
when Chris offered up a job in paradise, how could I not jump at
it?”

And when Chris had said Holley Cay was
paradise, he hadn't been exaggerating. When he was a kid he'd
looked at pictures in magazines, watched commercials for places
like Club Med and wondered what it would be like to be able to go
to a place like that. Holley Cay was about a hundred notches above
Club Med in luxury, but it wasn't just the five star quality of the
place that caught Sam's attention.

From the second Sam had stepped off the water
taxi that had transferred from nearby St. Thomas, he'd felt a sort
of calm seep into his bones. It was like nothing he'd ever
experienced. He'd grown up on the outskirts of Vegas, away from the
glamour of the strip where the neon lights and wads of cash gave
way to desperation. He'd never seen a place so beautiful and
pristine.