Private Paradise (7 page)

“
I ran into him at the gym early this
morning,” Bryce said, “but not since. Did you know,” he said, a
dreamy look on his face, “that he can do twenty-five pull ups in a
row?”

Carla rolled her eyes and paged Sam on the
walkie talkie all staff members carried. The sound of static
muffling a feminine giggle made a pit form in her stomach.

Frowning, she pushed her chair back from her
desk. “Focus please. Right now we need to worry about whether or
not Sam can do what we need, not how many pull ups he can crank
out.”

As Bryce followed her out of the office and
down the hall, she heard him murmur something like, “No doubt he
could give me what I need.”

She could hardly blame Bryce for indulging in
his fantasy. Right now her own brain was flooded with images of
Sam, his skin glimmering with sweat, the muscles of his massive
arms and shoulders standing out in stark relief, as he pushed his
body to the brink. Carla felt a spurt of warmth, low in her belly,
and quickly shoved the images away.

She went through the main building and
through the restaurant. Still no sign of Sam.

As they stepped out onto the pool deck, Carla
heard peals of all too familiar laughter and felt her lips
involuntarily curl into a sneer.

“
The mating call of the useless and
famous,” Carla muttered so only Bryce could hear.

“
Looks like they've caught one,” Bryce
said.

The Waters Twins were the latest entrants on
L.A.'s celebutante scene. Twenty-two-yearold Kayla and Karena were
the daughters of a big time movie producer and an Academy
Award-winning actress. They'd parlayed their position as Hollywood
royalty into an incredibly successful reality television franchise.
What had started with a camera crew following them and their silly,
vapid antics through their silly, vapid lives had spawned a slew of
spinoffs featuring everyone from their hairdressers to their dog
groomers.

When their rep had made the reservation at
Holley Cay on their behalf, claiming that they wanted to visit the
resort specifically because they wanted to have a break from the
constant scrutiny of the paparazzi, Carla had inwardly cringed.
She'd caught an episode of their show once and had turned it off,
disgusted, after five minutes.

Still, a high profile client was a high
profile client, and for the next fifteen minutes at least there
were few people more visible than the Waters twins. “Besides,”
Bryce, who was practically trembling like a Chihuahua at the
thought of meeting the twins, had assured her, “you know how a lot
of these people are totally different once they're away from the
cameras. Watch, they're probably totally sweet and down to earth
and just playing up the dippy spoiled girl thing for the show.”

To Carla's dismay and Bryce's disappointment,
what you saw on TV was very much what they got. In fact, it didn't
take long for Carla to decide that the show's editors must have had
their hands full editing the shows so that the girls didn't come
off as completely hateful. In this case, their beauty really was
only skin deep.

Just one day into their stay Carla declared
them by far the most difficult guests in Holley Cay's history. And
having survived the wedding of an actress Carla would forever refer
to as “hurricane Jane,” that was saying something.

“
Looks like the call worked on
someone,” Bryce said.

Carla's skin crawled as she saw them,
stretched out on padded teak lounge chairs next to the pool,
dressed in bikinis that covered less surface area than the
sunglasses perched on their noses. But their virtual lack of
clothing wasn't what made the little hairs on the back of her neck
stiffen and her teeth grind in her mouth.

It was the man who was smiling affably at
them as they giggled and flipped their hair and arched their backs
just in case he didn't notice that four breasts were about to break
free of their moorings.

Sam.

She could see his teeth flashing in the sun,
hear his deep, rumbling chuckle all the way across the pool as he
laughed at something one of the twins said.

Her feet were moving before she even realized
it, her heels a sharp staccato on the concrete slabs lining the
pool deck.

The roar in her head was so loud she barely
heard Bryce say as he hurried behind her, “Remember, 'Impeccable
service to all guests.'” The reminder of item number four on Holley
Cay's list of core values brought her back from the
edge―barely.

But it was enough to slow her gait from a
stomp to a saunter. As she got closer, she could see one of the
twins―Kayla, Carla recognized, because she'd cut her straight blond
hair into a pixie cut―had hijacked Sam's walkie talkie. That
explained the giggle and lack of response.

“
Ladies, I really need that back,” Sam
said, reaching for the walkie talkie. As he did so, Kayla pulled it
to her chest so it nestled between her breasts.

“
Come and get it,” she said with a
flirty smile that made Carla's jaw clench so hard she was afraid
her molars would snap.

Sam returned Kayla’s smile with the same
teasing smile that had haunted Carla’s dreams last night. “Honey,
if you're angling for me to feel you up, we're going to have to do
that when I'm off the clock.”

“
When will that be?” Karena purred as
she ran her fingers down Sam's muscled forearm. “You have a key
right? You can just come to our villa―”

“
You should surprise us,” the other
twin, the one with the walkie talkie squealed. “You could pretend
to break in―”

As she closed in, it was all Carla could do
not to smack both girls across the mouth as they wove their
elaborate burglar/kidnapper fantasy for a grinning Sam. Instead she
took it out on Sam, digging her nails into his arm as she grabbed
it to get his attention.

Her calm tone as she said, “I'm sorry to
interrupt ladies, but Sam is late for a very important meeting,”
was a miracle given the anger that was roaring through her in that
moment.

Sam hid his wince. “Gotta do what the boss
says,” he said with an affable smile and a shrug.

“
And he'll need that back,” Carla said,
holding out her hand to Kayla, hoping her smile didn't look as much
like a snarl as it felt like.

The girl made a miffed huffing sound and
slapped the handset into Carla's waiting hand.

“
Funsucker,” she heard one of them
mutter as she pulled Sam away.

“
I hope he still comes over,” the other
one tittered excitedly.

Carla released Sam's arm and marched back to
her office. “Bryce, would you excuse us?” she said to her assistant
as he started to follow them in. “Sam and I have some things we
need to discuss. It should only take a few minutes.”

She slammed the door shut behind her and
whirled on Sam. “I don't know what Chris told you about what it was
like here before he got together with Julie, but don't you even
think about taking those girls up on their offer.”

“
Are you kidding me?” Sam said, the
insulted look on his face quite convincing, she had to admit.
“Thank God you showed up when you did. They called me over to ask
me a question and the next think I know it was a like a
double-headed octopus had a hold of me.”

“
Right, you really looked like you were
trying to escape.”

Sam threw his hands up in the air. “You spent
two hours yesterday drilling into my head that a large part of my
job is about kissing ass and making sure no one feels insulted. I
was trying to be nice.”

Carla let out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I
know how 'nice' you can be. And I don't care how much they invite
your attention―this time it's two single girls, but how long before
you do someone who's married. I can't risk you pissing off guests
with your indiscriminate sleeping around.”

###

Sam's anger boiled so hot he was pretty sure
steam was coming out of his ears. “I would never risk my job or
yours because I can't control my dick.”

Carla's eyes narrowed. “You forget how well I
know you, Sam.”

He took a step closer, his fists clenched at
his sides. “You haven't known me for a long time, Carla.”

“
I know you well enough to know you
don't care about who you hurt, as long as you get what you
want.”

Her words hit him like a knife in the chest,
the knowledge that no matter how hard he'd worked to pull himself
out of the pit, to make something of himself, to pull his shit
together and act like a man, she would always see him as a selfish,
irresponsible boy. One who had ripped her heart out and ground it
into dust rather than face down his own demons.

For a split second, he saw the pain reflected
in her eyes before she shuttered it. But it was enough to trigger
an apology more than ten years in the making.

“
There isn't a day that goes by that I
don't regret the way I ended it with you.”

“
I don't want to talk about this,”
Carla said, heading for the door.

Sam grabbed her and pushed her back into her
chair, standing over her so she couldn't escape. “No. You cut me
off before, but I need to say this.”

She sat, stiffly, as Sam knelt in front of
her, his hands on the arms of her chair effectively blocking her
in. Her face was as pale and stiff as marble, her gaze locked on a
point past his shoulder as she refused to meet his gaze.

Sam powered through, unable to stop the words
from bursting to the surface. “Even thinking about it makes me sick
to my stomach. But you have to know, I did it because I didn't want
you to throw your life away over a loser like me. I didn't want to
see your disappointment when you realized what a massive mistake
you'd made.”

He paused, waiting for her response.

“
Are you finished?” she asked in a
voice chilly enough to form ice crystals on her lips.

Sam pushed to his feet, a lead weight forming
in his stomach as he realized how completely she had closed him
out. “I just need you to know the truth. I really cared for you,
Carla. You were and are beautiful, kind, and smart, and way better
than I deserved.”

She straightened in her chair, shifting in
her seat as though shaking off a layer of dust. “Well, there's
something we can agree on at least,” she said in a falsely bright
tone. “And while I'm happy you got that off your chest, an apology
really wasn't necessary. Like I said before, I'd all but forgotten
about what happened between us.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to argue that
she wouldn't have accused him of scheming to bang every guest in
sight if it was so far back in her memory banks. but before he
could say a word, she was up out of her chair and calling Bryce
back into the office to start their meeting as though Sam hadn't
just spilled his guts all over the place.

A week later, there wasn't so much as a crack
in Carla's cool facade.

While he, Sam thought as he pounded out a
mile on the treadmill in the resort's gym, had come to the
conclusion that working with Carla was torture. Absolute, fucking
torture. And damned if he could find a way out.

When they interacted, Carla was all cool
politeness and courtesy, treating Sam like he was nothing more than
some distant acquaintance, someone she wouldn't have even
remembered had he not reappeared in her life.

While Sam was resorting to this, he thought
as he started another punishing circuit of the resort's state of
the art gym: a six minute mile on the treadmill, followed by fifty
each pull ups, sit ups, pushups, and squat thrusts. Over and over
every single morning because this was the only way he could deal
with the simmering ache of frustrated desire that dogged him every
second of every day he spent with Carla. So close, so
unreachable.

Every time he sat across her desk from her as
they discussed particular strategies for their high profile guests,
he had to fight not to reach out and grab her, lay her across the
wide wooden surface. Make her remember everything they were to each
other and all the ways he knew how to make her scream with
pleasure.

Every time he watched a male guest run his
eyes appreciatively over Carla's toned, curvy body, Sam had to
fight not to put the guy in a headlock. It was getting so bad, Sam
actually considered doing it just so she'd have a legitimate excuse
to fire him.

While she was apparently able to dismiss what
had happened between them like it had never occurred, Sam was going
batshit crazy, living in an agony of frustrated desire. He'd always
thought people who claimed you never got over your first love were
crazy. But now...

Whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Just
because you're still dying to fuck Carla DeLuca at age thirty-two
doesn't mean you feel the same way you did when you were
twenty-one. As if you could really call that love anyway...

Not that Sam knew much about it either way,
and now he shied away at the thought that what he'd felt for Carla
back then was far and away more than he'd felt for any other woman
before her or since.

He shook off the thought. He cared for her,
true. And he wanted her. So much he was afraid he would
spontaneously combust if he didn't get relief from something other
than his right hand in the very near future.

Which was why he was here, at the resort's
state of the art workout facility at the ungodly hour of six a.m.,
as he'd been every morning for the past five, pushing himself to
the brink of exhaustion to take the slightest edge off the grinding
need coursing through his body every second of every goddamn
day.

At this early hour it was deserted, as even
the most fitness conscious guests wouldn't start wandering in for
yoga or Pilates until after nine when regular classes began. Good
thing, because the way he'd been grunting and sweating his way
through his workouts this week any observer would be likely to
think he was about to have a coronary.