Page 53 of Sunburned

“I don’t take it personally.” He took a drag of the spliff. “And not all the guests are so terrible.There was a man who had been coming here since the sixties. An old hippie—he was in his eighties when I knewhim, still smoking ganja every afternoon—but very wealthy, friends with the Rockefellers, who used to own a big estate here. I took him surfing and he treated me like a son, taught me everything he knew about business, and when he died, I found out he’d written me into his will.”

Maybe that was how he could afford to live in this exclusive island paradise. “He’s the one that gave you the car?”

He nodded.

“He must have really cared about you.”

He exhaled a line of smoke, leaning his back against the wall. “I did for him as well.”

I reached for the spliff, our fingers brushing as he handed it to me. I didn’t cough this time when I exhaled. “It must be hard to maintain personal relationships, working as much as you do.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked, fixing my gaze on the burning cherry.

He laughed. “I would not be standing here with you if I had a girlfriend.”

“I don’t know,” I teased, relieved. “You are French.”

“And you’re Swiss. Do you take a neutral position on everything in your life?”

“I like to think I’m fair. But really, I’m American,” I countered. “And we both know I own a firearm, so I think I’m doing a pretty good job of living up to the stereotype.”

He laughed and dropped the smoke, stubbing it out with his heel, then took a sip of his whisky, coming to stand directly in front of me. “Nothing about you is a stereotype, Audrey.”

Damn if I wasn’t a fool for the way he said my name. I leaned back against the rough bricks, my breath shallow as he set his glass on the ledge and placed a hand on the wall behind me, his body tantalizingly close. His gaze dropped to my lips. “I don’t get involved with guests,” he whispered.

“No,” I returned, my heart hammering. “You shouldn’t.”

He raised his free hand and ran his smooth fingertips along the strip of skin exposed by the cutouts in my dress. “This dress…”

I shivered with desire, our faces inches apart as he looked at me from beneath his brow. There was no better word for what his eyes were doing than “smoldering.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I reached for him, burying my hand in his thick hair as I brought his mouth to mine. The release was like a detonation inside me, sparks and smoke and hissing steam as he kissed me slowly, sensuously, his body lightly skimming mine, his hand stroking the skin of my rib cage.

It was even better than I had imagined it would be. I pulled him closer, pressing the length of my body against him, relishing the warmth of his lips on mine, the feel of his muscles against my chest. His tongue caressed the roof of my mouth as his fingers brushed the hem of my dress, our breath coming fast.

However inconvenient and ill-fated our entanglement might be, God it felt good.

Suddenly, the door at the far end of the alley on the other side of the dumpster burst open.

“I hate him so much I wish he was dead!”

Laurent and I broke apart to see Samira and Gisèle stumble into the alley in their heels, clearly trashed. “That motherfucker!” Samira screamed through tears, throwing her champagne glass against the wall and balling her fists as it shattered into a million pieces.

They were so wrapped up in their anger, they didn’t seem to have spied Laurent and me, but it was only a matter of time if we continued to stand there slack-jawed. He sank to the ground, pulling me with him, the dumpster between us keeping us out of their line of sight.

“I can’t do this anymore,”Samira wailed.

“So leave him,”Gisèle said.“Fuck the money.”

“But then the time I’ve put in already is worth nothing,”Samira protested.“All this pain, worth nothing.”

One of the girls kicked something that went scuttling across the pavement.“He may get rid of you before you have the chance to leave,”Gisèle pointed out.

“If he does that, he has to pay me. Not as much, but something.”

“So force his hand,”Gisèle suggested.

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