Читать книгу Extreme Danger - Shannon McKenna - Страница 7

Skinny-dipping. Skydiving. Crewing on a yacht. Camping under the stars in the Sahara. Backpacking through Europe. Getting a cute tattoo. Having passionate love affairs with untamed guys with lots of rippling muscles. The list went on and on, all the crazy things girls did before they calmed down and found The One. Things that Becca Cattrell had never gotten around to trying.

Aw, face it, already. She’d never had the nerve, let alone the time.

Becca stubbed her big toe in the dark on a board that stuck up out of the wooden walkway. She braced herself for the time it took for pain to flash through her nerves and assault her brain. That interval was significantly slowed by the alcohol in her bloodstream. It got there eventually, though, and oh crap, that hurt.

She lifted the uncorked cabernet to her lips and took another swig. The bottle felt suspiciously light. So did her head.

No matter. She had to loosen up. By brute force, if necessary. She was no longer willing to play her divinely ordained role as a dutiful, dependable, reasonable goody-two-shoes twit. She was going to work her way down that list, and do every one of those silly things.

And enjoy them, too, goddamnit. Just watch her.

However, on isolated Frakes Island, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice in terms of running wild. Getting plastered alone, trespassing on some millionaire’s property, skinny-dipping in his pool without an invitation, hey—it was the best she could do without advance planning.

It did seem like something that Kaia would do. Kaia would probably take it a step further, though, and have exotic six-way sex in the millionaire’s pool. But alas, Frakes Island was deserted in mid-April. There was nobody around for Becca to have aquatic erotic adventures with.

Aw. Poor her. What else was new?

Kaia. Thinking about that girl made every muscle in her body contract. Becca shivered. She was naked beneath Marla’s terry-cloth robe, wearing only flip-flops that slapped against the boards of the walkway. She should have scrounged jeans and a sweater from Marla’s vacation garb. Being naked in the woods at night was unnerving. Too quiet for a city girl like her. The silence felt like a pillow, smothering her.

She didn’t have a stitch of appropriate clothing for this island adventure. She hadn’t had a chance to go home and pack before she dodged the tabloid reporters lying in wait for her in front of the Cardinal Creek Country Club. She’d been forced to sneak out the service entrance, and her boss, Marla, had rushed her straight from there to the ferry dock. Bye, Becca. Don’t hurry back. Don’t get eaten by a bear if you can help it.

Good ol’ Marla. Becca silently thanked her again for the heart-warming support.

She must have looked ridiculous when the taxicat guy had brought her over from the mainland in that cool catamaran. Breasting the waves in a houndstooth power suit. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of cab. She took another swig.

To say nothing of her red, puffy eyes, her paleness, her bluish lips. Just call her the Corpse Bride. Hah. Except that she couldn’t get up the aisle as any sort of bride, corpse or otherwise.

She chased that thought away with a bigger swig of wine. Marla had assured her that she’d left plenty of casual clothes at her boyfriend Jerome’s vacation home. Marla was more or less Becca’s size. A bit less than more, actually. So she’d fast till she fit into Marla’s jeans. The wine diet. She stumbled, reeled, caught herself on a tree. Great.

The walkway that went around the perimeter of Frakes Island was abruptly bisected by another path. She lurched to a stop. So. This was the path that led to the millionaire’s swimming pool. The other direction should take her down to the millionaire’s boat dock.

She hazarded a left turn. It was like going through a narrow, vaulted tunnel, the trees were so thick. Bats and moths swooped and fluttered, darting crazily. The beam of her flashlight seemed so feeble.

So did she. God, what a hopeless wuss she was.

After a couple hundred yards, the big, glassed-in poolhouse loomed before her, skirted by a broad wooden deck.

She tiptoed up the steps, shone the flashlight on the door. Take a dip, Marla had urged. They never lock it. The owner is a nice, nerdy software mogul. He won’t mind. They keep it warm year round. I’ve swum there in November. You deserve it, after what you’ve been through.

Becca fitted the key into the door. It sighed open, letting out the faint scent of pool chemicals. She reached into the darkness, groped and flicked the first switch she found, then gasped in silent wonder.

Wow. A circle of lights lit the water from beneath, creating a jewel pattern of overlapping shadows on the mosaic tiles of the oval pool. The walls of the poolhouse were floor-to-ceiling art deco glasswork.

She walked in, dazzled. She set the wine bottle down, kneeled, scooped up some water. Caressingly warm. Swimming in that would be like swimming inside the heart of a perfectly cut sapphire. Magic.

She let the bathrobe puddle around her feet like a Hollywood diva, took off her glasses and shook her hair loose over her shoulders, letting it tickle her back. Becca stretched luxuriously, savoring the anticipation before she dove.

Ah. The shock of the water on her skin was delicious. She swam slowly across the pool in a lazy sidestroke. The water sloshed and gurgled sensually as she moved through it.

So beautiful and so solitary. Bliss. Just what she needed, after the last few days fending off media vultures. The extremely tense interview she’d had today with the club manager hadn’t helped much—the one about “taking some time away until the fuss dies down.”

She was afraid that was a code phrase for “you’re fired.”

Damn it, she liked her job. She didn’t love it, but she liked it, and more importantly, she needed it, with her younger sister and brother both in school and needing her help. Besides, she was the best events organizer the Cardinal Creek Country Club had ever had. She was an organizational freak. Busy, busy Becca. Wrestling a zillion details into a coherent whole satisfied her on a deep, emotional level. Kinky, maybe, but there it was.

But the powers that be at the club had a horror of bad publicity. Whether this sordid mess was her fault or not, the result might be the same. She might have to retool her resume. Do the old job hunt cha-cha-cha.

But who would want to hire a pathetic laughingstock like her?

At least if she was canned, she’d be spared the snickering from her ex-fiancé Justin’s guy friends at the club. Smirking, stinking, oinking bastards.

The pool was beautiful, magical, but her soul could not be soothed tonight. Her thoughts harried her like a hungry dog with a bone. What the hell was wrong with her, anyhow? Where were her wires crossed? She was a good person, damn it. Smart, sensible, practical, hardworking, unselfish. Relatively pretty, if not a raving beauty. She gave all she could to her family, her job. Her fiancé. She deserved better. She tried so freaking hard. All the time.

But such qualities evidently did not give men erections. Men wanted a whole different set of attributes and gifts. Men wanted women like Kaia. The pigs.

Gah. If only she’d played it cooler, hadn’t made such a big public deal of the engagement. But it had seemed too good to be true. Telling the four winds had made it feel more real. Justin was a great catch, after all. Charming, handsome. Rich, prominent family. Big plans. Justin was an up-and-coming prosecuting attorney with political ambitions. He’d told Becca once that she’d be a perfect politician’s wife.

She’d taken it as a sweet compliment at the time. Her heart had gone pitty-pat, imagining herself as the devoted political wife on the campaign trail with her handsome husband. Hah. How innocent.

She’d been so ready to move on from her rented apartment in a ramshackle old house. Ready to buy a real home, with a lawn for the kids she hoped to have. A minivan, with space for the car seats. Cargo room for strollers, travel cribs, dirt bikes, skateboards, scooters. Camping equipment for those family vacations. All day shopping trips to Ikea and Costco.

Her daydreams seemed so silly. To think she’d been holding court at their bachelor/bachelorette bash, giggling as she opened up Kama Sutra bath salts and his-n-her bath towels. Prattling like a ninny about the merits of marble countertops versus tile for her dream kitchen. And all the while Justin was giving his college girlfriend Kaia “a ride home.”

Some ride. Tall, sun-browned, sandalwood scented Kaia, with her yellow cornrow braids. Sun tattoos on her shoulders. Funky Nepalese jewelry. Nose and navel piercings.

Ready, willing, and able to perform a blow job on Justin as he drove down a busy city street. In Becca’s own car, no less. As it happened, Justin’s driving had been no match for Kaia’s skill at fellatio. Becca’s car had ended up wrapped around a telephone pole smack in the middle of a bustling shopping district. It was blind luck that he hadn’t killed someone. Or many someones.

Kaia now sported a collar and head brace. And as for Justin, well. A ring of tooth marks on that bastard’s dick was the least that he deserved. Becca could not find it in her heart to feel sorry for him.

It had just been a goodbye, for old times’ sake, Justin had protested, as soon as he was lucid enough to talk. He’d implied that Becca should be grateful he’d gone for oral sex, not vaginal penetration. How noble of him, to sacrifice his own pleasure out of respect for his fiancée. She ought to be overcome with gratitude at his manly restraint.

Um, not.

She’d expressed her feelings forcefully. Justin had gotten angry in his turn. He’d said several ugly things, calculated to make a woman want to huddle alone on a fog-bound island, far from everyone who knew what had happened. Which was to say, the whole world.

Becca stopped at the edge of the pool, hoisted herself partly out and pressed her hot face against her folded arms. Tears welled up and spilled. More fucking tears. She could fill this pool with them.

The scandal was too lurid to keep quiet. Justin’s family was too well known and it was all over the Internet. She’d googled herself and found thousands of mentions. And those reporters, baiting her, trying to get a reaction. Bottom-feeding bastards. The notoriety hurt. A storybook princess with a ring on her finger, she’d been recast in a crass burlesque. And not even a lead role. More like second banana. The reason poor, sex-starved Justin felt compelled to unzip his pants, just to get some blessed relief. The butt of a dumb dirty joke.

No one could talk about it without laughing, but it wasn’t funny. Her ex-fiancé had another girl’s tooth marks on his penis because Becca hadn’t been able to keep him satisfied in bed. Justin said so, when he got over feeling guilty and started getting pissed.

She’d tried, that was for sure. Justin was an attractive guy and a good kisser. But she’d always been sort of awkward and stiff when it came to sex. She’d been so sure it would get better as their intimacy deepened, as their trust grew, when she finally had a chance to relax.

So she wasn’t a red hot orgasmatron. So sue her. She tried to please. She did her best. She tried to be open-minded. Uninhibited. But as Justin had taken pains to point out, trying to be uninhibited was a contradiction in terms. Either you were, or you weren’t. Period.

That struck her as so unfair, that there were things that honest, earnest effort just couldn’t change. Either you turned a guy on, or you didn’t. Either you were sexy and fascinating, or you weren’t. Either you were a wild woman who gave blow jobs in a moving car, or you were the bland, safe type who would make a good politician’s wife.

Better now than after they got married, had kids. Narrow escape.

She shoved away from the poolside and launched into another angry lap, arms pinwheeling through the water.

Sparks. That was what Justin said she lacked. Seeing Kaia had made him realize this. Kaia was crackling with sparks. Becca wondered if the head brace would cramp her fiery sexual style. Poor thing. Big shame.

She touched the side, twisted to prepare for another push off—and two huge, strong hands seized her under the armpits and wrenched her up out of the pool. A thick, steely arm locked across her throat. Something hard pressed her temple. A gun. Oh God. A gun.

“Who the fuck are you?” The voice in her ear was a rasp of pure menace.