CHAPTER 1
SOMETHING WAS OFF. The Caribbean jungle beyond the chain-link fence had gone quiet.
The back of Caitlyn’s neck prickled and beads of moisture gathered on her skin as she and her dog strolled the grassy strip at the edge of the runway. Nascent sunlight washed the sky in pale gold, banishing the shadows, and at the end of his leash, Rockley lifted his leg and peedon a fencepost.
If something were wrong, wouldn’t he sense it too?
“Come on, Ro.” She flicked the leash and he quit sniffing the ground.
No less than eight guards tracked her progress toward the plane. Their presence should have made her feel secure.
About halfway to her ugly-but-reliable six-seater prop, Treavor Lambert and three men entered the airfield through a small gate that led tothe house. His two guards—Jack, a hulking white man with a shaved head and a thick beard, and a lanky black man with cornrows named Christophe—flanked him. With their AK-47s and shiny muscles, the pair could have walked straight out ofSoldier of Fortunemagazine.
His son Glenn came third.Damn. He was back from his three-week tour of Europe. Late twenties, sandy hair, blue eyes, chiseled features,gym-honed muscles, and a tennis-court tan. The type who looked airbrushed and superfluous despite his Ivy League education. The type who probably tortured kittens and charmed his mother with the same zeal.
“Good morning, Ms. Brevard,” Lambert said in his deep, booming voice.
She stopped and waited for the group to join her. “Morning.”
Lambert somehow looked cool and fresh in a gray suit tailoredfor his tall, trim frame, not a single strand of salt-and-pepper hair out of place. He bent over and stroked Rockley’s black fur. “He looks better every week. You’re taking good care of him.”
“Thank you, sir. He just needed a little love.” Someone had dumped the lab mix on the road near Rockley Beach, beaten and bloody, his coat matted and mud-caked. The poor boy was only now starting to lookhealthy again. “Lucky he’s a good flier or I wouldn’t have been able to keep him.”
As if she could have abandoned him to who-knows-what fate.
“Dad,” Glenn said, stepping forward. “We should move off the tarmac.”
Rockley darted behind her legs and growled softly.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn said at Glenn’s sharp look, tugging the dog toward the plane. “He’s still not comfortable around white men underforty.” More specifically, a creepy frat boy who couldn’t understand a woman not falling at his feet for a chance to sample his awesomeness.
“Is that your excuse too?” Glenn fell into step behind her as she trailed Lambert and his security detail. He’d asked her out repeatedly during the year since she’d started providing frequent hops between St. Isidore and the other Eastern Caribbean islandsfor his father.
Rather than take the hint each time she declined, he seemed only more intent on changing her mind.
“You know I don’t date people I work with,” she said. Even when they weren’t self-important assholes.
He leaned close and whispered in her ear, his hand skimming down her back. “Make an exception. It’ll be worth it.”
Caitlyn’s skin crawled and she jerked away as his hot breathtouched her neck. “That’s—”
“Come to the music festival in Sancoins with me this weekend,” he cut in. “You’ll have fun.”
Sure, if one’s idea of fun was getting date raped.
If Glenn had been her client, she would’ve turned down the steady work after the first flight, and damn the money. But he wasn’t, and she didn’t want to let him ruin what was otherwise a good thing, so she’d been reluctantto stir up trouble. But she should talk to Mr. Lambert, request that Glenn not accompany him on her plane anymore. “No, thank you,” she said. “Nothing’s changed.”
His handsome face twisted into a scowl. “If you and this guy are so hot and heavy, how come he lives in DC and you’re here?”
Kurt would probably laugh at the irony of her using his name to fend off unwanted advances, but she’d realizedearly on that it was better for business to pretend she was in a serious relationship. Fewer bruised egos and unwelcome propositions.
But her story had grown suspicious after so many years of “dating,” so last month she’d faked an engagement. She now wore a modest CZ solitaire she’d ordered from the Internet on her left ring finger.
“We’re working on it,” she said, skirting around Glenn. “Healready popped the question, we just need to sort out the details.”
“I’m starting to doubt this fiancé of yours is even real.”
Her heart skipped. None of this was his business, and her story was supposed to convince him to back off.
