Rage (25 page)

the beach in the other direction.

Cheyenne allowed Saffron to touch her wherever her hands

traveled. She was drunk; it had been long before her pregnancy

since she’d been drunk, and it was liberating to let go of control.

As their leering audience grew, they formed a circle around

them. When Saffron leaned in to kiss her, Cheyenne turned her

head away.

“Let’s go back to my room, Cheyenne. I would love to

show you a few more of my moves.” Saffron whispered as she

nuzzled Cheyenne’s ear like a giant blonde cat. Even though she

was slightly aroused from the attention from the crowd and the

erotic interaction with Saffron, she had no plans to take it any further than the dance floor. She stopped moving and lurched

tipsily away from Saffron. As she opened her mouth to speak,

Scot’s exasperated voice rang out.

“Cheyenne, what in the bloody hell are you doing?”

Cheyenne turned to the sound of his voice. Scot shoved his

way through the crowd to her and took her by the arm. Nathan

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hurried up behind him, his eyes wide. Cheyenne yanked her arm

away.

“I was dancing, Scot. Got a problem with that?” She

crossed her arms.

“No…” Scot began with an eye roll. Saffron uttered a gig-

gle. Kara appeared beside Nathan, and Cheyenne flung her hair

over her shoulders, as if preparing for a face off.

“You are such a bastard, Scot Charles.” Cheyenne pointed

in his face and turned to Kara, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Cheyenne, wait.” She felt Scot’s hand grip her arm again.

He spun her to face him and pinned her body up against his.

Cheyenne kept her gaze on the ground as she struggled against

him. “Look at me dammit.”

“I can’t,” Cheyenne said in a hushed tone. She felt his grip

on her loosen and heard him release a long sigh.

“I really wanted to tell you this later tonight, when we were

alone.” At those words Cheyenne yanked her eyes up to him.

She was no longer able to hold back the tears.

“So now you decide to man up. It’s true then? You and Ka-

ra?” She squirmed out of his arms.

“No.” Scot looked flabbergasted as he shook his head and

ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe you would think I

would do that to us, to our family,”

“But…I
saw
you together. You’re always
disappearing
with her,” Cheyenne slurred as she wiped her eyes with the back

of her hand.

“What you saw was me trying to sort out details of our up-

coming trip,”

“With Kara?”

“Christ, Cheyenne no!” Scot shouted and threw his hands

up in the air. Cheyenne took a moment and glanced around at the

crowd who seemed entirely too invested in the outcome of their

conversation. Nathan chewed on his fingernails, and Saffron

stroked his hair in a comforting manner. Cheyenne turned back

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to Scot, who held out his hand. She looked to it, and then back to his dark eyes, glittery with unshed tears. She swallowed hard as if choking on a grapefruit and placed her hand in his. Scot

brought her hand up to his mouth and gave it a kiss. He took a

deep breath as if gathering himself to forge on with the conversation. “Do you remember when you interviewed me for
The

Sound Wave
?”

“Yes,” Cheyenne felt her voice quiver. Scot reached out and

stroked her cheek lovingly.

“Where did I say I wanted to take you?” His voice was soft.

Cheyenne thought back to that day. Scot dressed in those horri-

ble skinny jeans…the way she had clung to his every word.

“Rio.” She looked deeply into his eyes. Scot gave her a nod.

“I have been planning to take you there after the wedding. I

made arrangements with Kara, so she can take Liam home di-

rectly after the ceremony. I wanted the trip to be a surprise. How often are we going to be this close to my favorite place? We

have never gotten the chance to have a proper honeymoon, my

love.” He ran a hand through her hair and placed his forehead

against hers.

Cheyenne tried to respond, but her voice came out in a

squeak. She couldn’t believe she’d been so insecure about her-

self that she’d lost faith in Scot. He’d never done anything but show her the purest love. She loathed herself for doubting him,

and it was a full minute before she could find her words.

“I am so sorry for thinking…” Cheyenne’s words were lost

under her sobs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and bur-

ied her face into his chest.

Scot pulled her into a tight embrace. “I love you, Cheyenne.

Nothing will ever change that.”

Cheyenne pulled back and looked up at him. Her heart felt

like it would burst from her chest. “I love you, too.”

As Scot brought his lips down on hers, the crowd around

them erupted into whistles and cheers.

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Enrique looked extremely unhappy about taking Stephanie

back to Maravilha in her current state. Her black dress clung to her like a second skin, and wet sand coated her back from her

head to her boots. Her beautiful red cowboy boats that she’d had since college were forever ruined. This made her sad, but that it happened while she was with Phillip seemed strangely appropriate. Evidently this wasn’t the first such occurrence for Noronha guests, since Enrique opened the trunk of the Land Rover and

pulled out a tarp to cover the backseat. Finally tired of all her antics, she’d been banished to the back seat. Even Enrique had

his breaking point. Steph felt tired from her Phillip-induced

adrenaline spike on the beach and curled up in a ball on the back seat in an attempted to keep herself from dying of hypothermia.

Replaying her moments with Phillip raised her temperature,

though it didn’t stop her from shivering. She looked out at the

tropical blackness and obsessed about the weight of him as he

pinned her in the sand, his sultry breath against her neck, his

large calloused hand up her skirt…

She’d never wanted to be with anyone like she had with

Phillip on the beach. It was so insane it was almost laughable

that she wanted him to nail her while they hammered the final

nail into the coffin of their romance. The fact was, she was more attracted to Phillip while in the death throes of their relationship than she’d ever been with anyone else in the honeymoon phase.

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RAGE

She tried to focus on the physical, assuring herself that it

was understandable, rational even, that their strong physical

chemistry would lead them down that path. She was absolutely

certain she needed to stay an arm’s length away from him from

here on out. If he touched her again, she knew she couldn’t guarantee she’d have the strength to push him away, and she’d feel

even worse afterwards.

Phillip may very well have been the love of her life, but he

was her past. There was way too much water under that bridge.

Even thinking of the bridge cliché made Steph think of the aged

bridge outside the front door of their cottage, and a choked sob escaped her. Enrique shot her a concerned look in the rearview

mirror, and she buried her face in her hands. She hated herself in that moment more than she ever had. Where did she get off even

feeling like a damsel in distress? She had absolutely no right to play that role.
She
had caused the chain of events that led her to this particular moment in time. Here, sitting all alone in the back seat of an overpriced SUV on some remote island getting sympathetic looks from a would-be Latin lover while she caught pneu-

monia.

If it had been anyone else, Steph would have wanted to

open hand slap her and tell her to quit acting like an ingénue in some romantic comedy and cowgirl up. Fade to black on the after-school special, for the love of baby Jesus. But it was her. And no matter how she tried to mentally pull herself up by the pro-verbial bootstraps, she kept flailing. She felt like she was wandering the woods without a map. She needed to find her com-

pass. She needed Christopher.

Christopher was her present and (if he hadn’t abandoned all

hope—like the sensible man he was) possibly her future.

Phillip was in her past.
It felt like a mantra.

“I loved you, Stephanie.”

Loved. Past tense.

She trudged up the stairs, her wrecked boots making putrid

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sloshing sounds, and she was so lost in he own thoughts that she tried to unlock the wrong room door. When she heard the

thumping sound of techno bleeding through the crack under the

door, she remembered that she now was across the hall in her

own room. It sounded like at least one of the bridesmaids had

skipped the luau and was having a hell of a party.

Immediately after Steph entered her room, she pulled off

her boots and peeled off her dress, dropping them directly where she stood. She jumped into a piping hot shower and practically

scrubbed her flesh raw. Part of her wished she had brought

Christopher instead of Cedric. Phillip would have remained

blissfully ignorant of their lost child, and she wouldn’t have had to talk to him and experience the sensation of losing him all over again. Her “together” façade would have remained firmly in

place, and she and Christopher would have taken their relation-

ship to that all important next level. She just kept making bad

choice after bad choice.

She toweled off and wrapped her stinging pink flesh in her

fluffy white robe. She reached for her camera case and cele-

brated the fact that she had made one good choice—buying a

waterproof one. If only she were as fastidious about protecting

her heart as she was about her camera, life might have been a bit less complicated. She pulled out her phone and tried Christopher again. Straight to voicemail. She redialed and frowned as she

heard a loud banging in hall. She peeked through the peephole

and saw Phillip beating on what used to be her hotel door. Her

eyes flew wide as she heard Christopher’s voicemail pick up

again as she leaned her forehead on the door.

“Please go away…please go away.” She whispered and then

realized that she was being recorded on Christopher’s voice mail,

“Shit!”

She hung up. The door across the hall swung open and the

“fat” bridesmaid answered the door. She heard several voices cry out once the occupants spotted Phillip.

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RAGE

“Phillip! Want a drink?” someone cried. It sounded like

Bret.

“Uhh…” Phillip seemed disturbed and alarmed, “Where’s

Stephanie?”

As Steph wished she had telepathy and could mentally beg

them not to tell, the bridesmaid pointed to her door. Phillip

turned in her direction, and Steph realized she was holding her

breath.

He was at the door before she could even back away from

the peephole. He knocked right next to her head.

“Stephanie?” The way his accent caressed her name brought

back too many conflicting memories. She knew she couldn’t

pretend to be asleep with that racket across the hall, and she

knew they both needed some sort of closure to this train wreck

they called a relationship. Cedric’s voice rang in her ears.

“
It’s time to face your demons.”

She unlocked the door and turned the knob.

Phillip leaned against the doorframe, looking as if he’d

jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool full of ice water and

then rolled around in a box of kitty litter. His luscious lips were turning blue.

“Can we please just talk?”

Steph nodded and backed away from the door so he could

enter the room. He crossed the threshold, and she shut the door, immediately grabbing a robe from the closet.

“Here. You have to change. I’ll give you privacy.” She

tossed him the robe and went into the bathroom. She was glad

the bathroom door didn’t have a peephole. As she leaned against

the door, she heard the all too familiar sound of wet clothes hitting the floor. Steph couldn’t stop herself from imagining Phillip standing naked in her room, and she knew she couldn’t be trust-ed. She reached down to the doorknob and locked it.

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