Cherish Hard Read online

  Another kiss, this one as sensual as the bribes he'd demanded. "Cookies with my sexy redhead." The masculine scent of him wrapped around her, his kiss flavored with the salt of the sea. "I can't wait."

  Bubbles of light in Isa's bloodstream, happiness a giddy dancer in her heart.

  As she turned to run quickly to the car along the darkened edge of the property, her heels in one hand, her clutch in the other, Sailor shoved his feet into his shoes, which he'd carried up. "Hey!" he called out. "Wait! You shouldn't be alone in the dark!"

  Isa turned... and the present collided with the past.

  Hey! Wait! You shouldn't be alone in the dark!

  No. No.

  Isa stared at him. At those blue, blue eyes. At that black hair. It had been shaved that night, all the way down into a buzz cut. His body had been thinner and less developed, and he'd had one hell of a black eye. But it was him. That voice. That face. No wonder she'd kept thinking she knew him. She did.

  From the most humiliating night of her life.

  The night she'd spent seven years trying to erase from her memory banks.

  Her stomach lurched.

  11

  Never Trust a Man Who Offers You Cookies

  ALL BUT THROWING HERSELF INTO the passenger seat of the car, Isa said, "Drive!"

  Nayna quickly slid up from her slumped-down position in the driver's seat and without a question started the engine.

  Sailor was standing on the grass across which Isa had just run, watching the entire process with a frown she could see from here. What if he decided to come over? Isa's heart pounded as Nayna pulled out and zoomed them down the drive. Her friend had turned the vehicle around at some point during her hiding and now they just had to go straight.

  Until they were outside the gate and on the road.

  "Oh thank God," they both said in unison.

  Isa looked at Nayna.

  Nayna looked at her before returning her attention to the road. "You first."

  "No, you," Isa replied, needing time to unscramble the thoughts in her head. "Why were you hiding?" Worry and anger had her spine going steely. "Did that Raj guy do something?"

  Nayna huffed out a breath, another. Hands tight on the steering wheel, she said, "It was fine at first. We were talking, flirting. Then... um..."

  "I can see your smudged lipstick." She decided not to mention the marks on her friend's neck. Nibble marks.

  The kind of marks Isa might've had if the other skinny-dippers hadn't interrupted her and Sailor.

  Nayna groaned. "I'm going to have to come up to your apartment to fix it before I head home. My dad will wait up until I get in."

  "You need to move out."

  "I will, when I get married." Nayna's voice was glum.

  "You don't sound happy about it."

  "Why do you keep going to board meetings?"

  "Low blow," Isa muttered, scowling at the best friend who knew her far too well. "So you and Raj snuck out and kissed?" That, at least, was an encouraging sign.

  "We made out like hormone-crazed teenagers," Nayna admitted, her skin flushing. "In a shadowy corner of the garden. He had his hands on parts of me that no one else has ever touched."

  This was sounding extremely promising. But Nayna's expression was less than ecstatic. "What went wrong?" Isa asked, worried. "Did he get rough? Wanted to go further than you were ready for?"

  "No, no. Nothing like that." Nayna swallowed hard. "He started talking."

  "What?"

  "I'm going to have an arranged marriage, Isa. I've agreed to that with my family. My father's set up meetings with prospective grooms." She pulled over to park on a quiet part of the street, the ocean crashing to shore on their right and large old trees arching their gnarled branches over the car from the left. "I have a voice, but I only get to choose from the men they've already vetted."

  Despite her difficulty in accepting Nayna's decision, Isa knew why her friend had made it, knew that Nayna was trying to mend her family's broken heart by shattering her own. Hurting for her closest friend, she said, "Raj talking changed that?"

  "I just wanted to have this one crazy night, to be the woman I dream about being when I'm lying awake at midnight, a woman who doesn't care anything about the world and does exactly as she wants," Nayna said softly. "Raj fit the fantasy. Hard-bodied hot guy who wanted to do dirty things to me. Then he began talking, and he was saying things that made him sound smart."

  Isa just listened.

  "I didn't want to know him." Nayna was almost crying. "I didn't want to find out that he's not just a good-looking hunk. I didn't want to know that he likes rock-climbing and that he was thinking about going to an exhibition on Egyptian art. He invited me." Her voice shook. "And I..."

  "What, Nayna?" Isa reached out to close her hand over her friend's. "What happened?"

  "I told him to be quiet. That I wanted his body and nothing else."

  Isa's mouth fell open. "You said that?" It came out a squeak. "Really?"

  Nayna threw her hands over her face as she nodded. "I had my hand inside his half-open shirt at the time. His hand was... Let's just say he didn't take it well," she whispered through her fingers. "He turned to ice so fast it was like I was in Antarctica."

  Finally dropping her hands, she banged her head against the back of the driver's seat. "When he turned around to swear at the night, I slipped off my shoes and ran away."

  "Did he come after you?"

  "I don't know." Biting down on her lower lip, Nayna folded her arms across her middle, as if hugging in the tearing confusion of her emotions. "The music was pretty loud by then, even out in the garden, so he probably didn't even know I was gone until he turned back around."

  Isa blew out a long breath. "Do you want to go back?" she asked, even though that was the last thing she wanted. For Nayna, she'd face even that nightmare. "Try to explain?"

  "How can I possibly explain being that much of a bitch?" Her voice trembled. "Hi, Raj, I just wanted to use your body, then forget all about you, because sometime in the next twelve months, I'm planning to marry a man I don't love and probably won't even really desire."

  She shook her head so hard that it sent the silky strands of her hair flying to stick to her cheeks. "Somehow I don't think that would go over well." A shuddering exhale. "Please tell me you had a better time." Pleading eyes. "I need at least one of us to have had a successful night of debauchery."

  "Technically," Isa said, "you did get in the debauchery before it all turned to custard. Was his chest nice?"

  Nayna laughed wetly. "Oh my God, Isa. I didn't know it could be so much fun to just..." She wiggled her fingers as if digging them into a man's pecs. "And the way he smelled... I wanted to bury my nose in his throat while I rubbed myself all over him."

  Isa nodded. "I did rub myself all over Sailor. Naked."

  Nayna actually eeped before pausing to look carefully at Isa's face. "That's not a happy-sexy-times face," she said, her tone morose. "Was he an ass?"

  Shaking her head, Isa confessed the truth. "He was wonderful. I knew he was a mistake, but I couldn't help myself from starting to fall." It was her turn to become agitated, her hands flying to thrust through her hair without her conscious volition.

  "So what happened?" Nayna frowned. "I saw him with you before you two left the party. He was eating you up with his eyes."

  "He was there that night... with the Slimeball." Isa felt her stomach lurch as the horrible memory roared to the forefront of her mind all over again.

  Nayna's eyes widened. "One of Cody's friends?"

  "I guess so," Isa muttered, hands fisting. "It was Cody's party after all." Nayna hadn't been able to come that night, her parents far stricter than Isa's had ever been; often, as a teen, Isa had wished for parents who actually cared about her whereabouts.

  "Are you bothered because he saw what happened that night?"

  "My ritual humiliation?" Face hot, Isa told herself it was over, in the past. "No, why would I be bothered tha
t a man I want to be naked with saw someone call me a tub of lard?" Her skin felt like fire.

  "Your gardener clearly doesn't share that opinion from the way he looks at you." Nayna poked her in the shoulder. "Why are you acting crazy?"

  "I'm not."

  "Yes, you are." Her friend pinned her to the spot with her eyes. "Yes, it sucks that he had bad taste in friends at college, but remember that one day at school when you thought Suzanne might be a nice person? We all make mistakes."

  "I was new!" Isa cried. "I had no idea she was hiding horns and a tail under her blinding smile and shiny hair."

  "Whatever." Nayna waved off that moment of shame. "Back to your hot gardener. What's the deal? Why are you so discombobulated?"

  Flushing, Isa swallowed hard... and admitted the truth. Because yes, she was acting crazy and it wasn't only because Sailor had witnessed the most horrible moment in her life--though that didn't help. "I like him so much, Nayna. And if he was friends with Cody..." Her eyes grew hot. "You know the kind of guys Cody called friends." Isa had never been comfortable with his crowd, and they'd been total assholes to her around campus after Cody dumped her.

  "Did your gardener--"

  Isa shook her head. "I never saw him again after that party, but... if those were the people he hung out with back then, how can I trust my instincts about him now? How can I trust him not to turn on me? For all I know, he still hangs out with Cody and Suzanne."

  Nayna released a shaky breath. "Okay, yeah, that I get. But you've had a chance to see this guy a couple of times now. Does he seem anything like the Slimeball?"

  "That's just the thing. Cody was nice when we began dating." And Isa had believed him, believed in him. "It makes me sick to think I might be repeating history. I just can't, Nayna." Not even for a blue-eyed man who asked her out on cookie dates and took her skinny-dipping.

  Later that night, she opened her laptop and began to skim through the photos on Cody's social media profile. His privacy settings were ridiculous--she could see pretty much all the images he'd posted. She ignored all the images of Suzanne, her search focused on only one person.

  And then she found it: Sailor's face.

  It was in an image of a bunch of guys wearing rugby gear so muddy it was hard to tell what their uniform colors might be. Sailor had been snapped talking to an equally muddy Cody.

  Fingers shaking, Isa sat back and just stared. She'd hoped she was wrong and Nayna was right, that Sailor's friendship with Cody had been a college thing that had fizzled out when he figured out his friend was a monumental ass. But this shot was from the last rugby season.

  Her hot gardener was still friends with the Slimeball.

  * * *

  SAILOR HAD A TERRIBLE NIGHT'S sleep. He'd been home from the party before eleven--and he hadn't even had to ditch Raj. His friend had been in a hell of a mood, with no desire whatsoever to interact with any other humans.

  The other man wasn't a big talker, but Sailor figured it had something to do with the pretty woman in the bandage dress. The depth of Raj's reaction might've intrigued him on another day since his friend wasn't known for his temper, but last night Sailor had been distracted by the promise of seeing Isa again, probably within the hour.

  He hadn't worried too much about how she'd literally run across the grass and away from him, figuring her rush had something to do with the message she'd received from her friend. Some female emergency. After all, he hadn't done anything dastardly in the seconds before she'd run--he'd literally just asked her to wait so he could walk her to the car.

  Like a gentleman. And so he could sneak a final, scorching kiss.

  After dropping Raj off at his place, anticipation a knot in Sailor's gut, he'd waited. And waited. And waited. And finally realized that there wasn't going to be any cookie-bar date. He'd been stood up.

  The redhead had gotten away from him a third time.

  And he still didn't know her name.

  Aggravated, he'd gone online and ordered a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. The next time he saw his curvy little con woman, he was going to lock her to some immovable object--namely himself--until he figured out why she kept leaving him in her dust.

  Unsurprisingly, he'd dreamed of the cute, lying redhead all night long, woken up with a cock so hard it was painful. He wondered if his perfidious redhead realized he hadn't finished his job at the school. One of these days he was going to run into her again. And when he did, he was going to bring out those handcuffs. Then, when she was stuck and unable to run, he'd tell her what he thought of cute redheads who promised a man a night of sweet heaven and delivered a night of frustrated aggravation.

  Snarling at the memory of how soft she'd been under his hands, how lusciously responsive, he tried to convince himself it was a good thing she'd stood him up. Sailor had a plan for his life, and a cute, sexy redhead didn't figure into it, not when his dreams depended on obsessive focus on a single overriding goal.

  Neither his brain nor his body were convinced by the argument.

  Rising in a black mood, he showered, then got himself ready for work. Just because it was Sunday didn't mean he didn't have things to do--he wanted to put in a few hours on a small project he was fitting between bigger ones. And today was a good day for it; he had no other commitments--definitely no kissable redhead in his bed as he'd hoped for last night--and the weather was holding beautifully.

  Once at the site, he put his back into it, worked like a demon, and was done by seven that night--an entire weekend ahead of schedule. Gabriel had invited him over for dinner with a couple of other rugby buddies, but Sailor told his brother he couldn't make it.

  He needed time to brood.

  Which he did until he fell exhausted into bed.

  Waking the next morning with his mood not appreciably better, he showered and shaved with care before dressing in the single business suit he owned. He'd bought it a couple of years back, taking Gabe's advice and getting one good suit rather than three cheap ones; it was his go-to outfit for meeting with his loan manager at the bank. And today, for what might be his first major corporate client.

  He paired the dark gray suit with a blue shirt that "made the most of his eyes," according to his mom, who'd given him the shirt on his last birthday. He made sure his hair was neatly combed and his dress shoes polished. For a second, as he looked in the mirror, he could almost touch it, the goal that drove him, the need to prove himself a gnawing on his bones that wouldn't stop until he'd done it.

  Until he'd shown the world that he wasn't anything like the man whose face he bore.

  "Keep going, Sailor," he told his reflection. "No excuses. No distractions."

  Especially not a redhead who'd already haunted him for seven years.

  Grabbing some coffee with a scowl, he thought about the handcuffs as he ate four pieces of toast before heading out for his eight thirty meeting in the city. Most days, he'd already have done at least an hour's work by now, but he hadn't wanted to risk being late to this meeting--or being anything but sharply dressed. He'd done his research, knew that the CEO he intended to approach was always crisply dressed, the people she worked with the same.

  That appearance counted for a lot was going to be part of Sailor's pitch.

  Speaking of which, his beat-up gardening truck, the bed full of bags of soil, looked utterly out of place in among the glossy BMWs and Mercedes in the parking lot of the building in Auckland's central business district. He could--and would--do nothing about that. Sailor was a landscape gardener and proud to be one, and this company was looking for a man just like him.

  They just didn't know it yet.

  "Balls to the wall, man," he told himself, then picked up his large presentation folder and walked through the front door of the Crafty Corners headquarters.

  12

  Decapitated Teddy Bears and a Skeptical Dragon

  SAILOR MIGHT'VE BEEN TAKEN ABACK by the sight of the two receptionists stitching together a fluffy brown teddy bear if he hadn't already read up
on the company. As it was, he smiled and said, "I have a meeting with Jacqueline Rain in ten minutes."

  "Mr. Bishop?" At Sailor's nod, the Polynesian receptionist--dressed in gray pants and a pale pink shirt, complete with cheerful Crafty Corners cufflinks--put down the bear's decapitated head and rose to his feet. "Please follow me. Jacqueline told us to bring you right up."

  Surprised by the courtesy, though perhaps he shouldn't have been given Jacqueline Rain's reputation in the industry, Sailor did as the receptionist had asked. Behind him, the other receptionist--a tanned blonde in a sky-blue dress--began pushing stuffing into the unlucky bear's head with sharp, stabbing motions of her shiny red nails.

  Crafting was clearly a far more bloodthirsty hobby than he'd ever imagined.

  Two steps later, he came to the realization that Jacqueline was probably calling him up early so she could get rid of him before her day began in earnest. It had taken a lot of fast-talking on Sailor's part to convince her to see him in the first place--and that was after he'd talked his way past two gatekeepers to be put through to her.

  Sailor had no intention of letting all his hard work go to waste.

  The receptionist led him to the left and up a curving flight of stairs to the mezzanine level. "This way," he said with a smile as he took Sailor through to a smaller but just as colorful reception area where a brunette woman in a sleek black wheelchair sat working on what looked to be a jewelry box in the shape of a love heart.

  Looking up, she smiled, and it was bright enough to compete with the sparkles on her craft project. "You must be Mr. Bishop." She wheeled herself out from behind the counter. "I'll take it from here, James. Thank you."

  The receptionist stepped back. "See you later, Ginny. That jewelry box is coming along great."

  Sailor had to fight not to burst out laughing; he wondered how many jewelry boxes and other craft items these poor people had to make during the course of a working week. And where did it all go?

  "If you'll come with me, Mr. Bishop." Ginny's words were accompanied by a subtly appraising look from a set of deep brown eyes.