Just Another Day in Paradise

“I saw you watching. You looked like you were wondering how it felt.”

“You saw me from up there?” she said, not quite believing him.

He reached out, touched her hair with his fingertips. “You stand out.”

In an instant the air between them seemed charged. She held her breath, afraid to move. He drew his hand back, looking at it in surprise, as if he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. He curled his fingers to his palm, and shoved on the sunglasses he’d been holding in his other hand.

“Come on,” he said. “Catch a ride before they wrap it up for the day.”

She looked at the current flyer, who suddenly looked much higher than before. She wanted to try it, but a bit of shiver down her spine stopped her from immediately jumping at the chance. “I’m not sure,” she said.

“You’ll love it. I promise.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Dinner. On me. Rudy has a new dish he wants to add to the menu.”

Dinner again, she thought. As neatly as that he’d put her in a corner. If she said no, he’d think she hadn’t forgiven him, that she wasn’t sticking to their agreement to put it behind them. And if she said yes…

If she said yes, she could end up marooned at a table with him, truly testing the strength of her resolve to not think about what had happened between them anymore.

So, you’d better love this little adventure then, she thought. “All right,” she said.

As she walked beside him down the beach, Paige had the strange but persistent feeling she’d done more than just say yes to a physical flight of fancy.

Chapter 4

Noah didn’t help as the operator got her into the harness, and Paige wondered if he was avoiding touching her again. He seemed to have gotten over his tense reaction. He was cheerfully encouraging her, treating her like anyone else here.

“Tomorrow we’ll hook up the tandem rig,” the man was telling Noah.

“Fine,” Noah said, “but right now you’ve got one of our most valued people.”

The man took the hint and concentrated on her rigging.

“Pay attention here now,” Noah said with mock sternness as the man began to give her safety instructions. “I doubt very much that doing a nosedive, or drowning because you can’t get out from under yards of wet fabric is in your plans for the day.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Charming. Are you trying to make sure I don’t enjoy this?”

He grinned. “Don’t put it past me. Maybe I really want that dinner. In fact, if I’m right and you do love it, you can buy. Employees’ rate, of course.”

“Gee, thanks.”

And then it was time. The man signaled the driver of the boat, and the engine changed pitch. For an instant she wanted to yell at them to stop, she’d changed her mind, but it was too late. She was committed now.

She thought it would take more time or speed, but before she even realized it, she was on her way, her feet lifting off the back of the boat. Lifting so easily it stunned her. It was like flying, she thought, finally remembering to breathe. Or at least close to flying. The sensation without the work. But tethered to the boat below—frighteningly far below—it was also without the control.

But the sensation was amazing, the wind of their passage whipping at her braid, the literal bird’s-eye view of the resort and this side of the island. She hadn’t realized the coast curved so much, she thought as she looked down through her dangling feet. She could see the variations in color in the water from here, how it changed from green to aqua to deeper blue in undulating lines. And Redstone Bay Resort itself, looking as if it had always been here, subtle, blending with the landscape.

By the change in her view she realized the boat was heading back toward the beach. She could see the group of people, all staring up at her. She thought of what Noah had said, that he’d seen her from up here, and began to look for him.

It took her only a moment. Even though he wasn’t the only one in a Redstone T-shirt, he stood out to her immediately. Something about the way he held himself, or the way he was watching her so intently and not chatting with those around him. Rather inanely she thought of waving, then realized she wasn’t about to let go of her grip on the lines.

Even from up here, she realized rather glumly, he fascinated her. Phil had been a high-powered businessman, but for a much smaller company. In essence Noah held a much higher position, and yet he was so much more at ease with it and with himself. He didn’t seem driven, just good. Nor was he arrogant, as Phil had been with people under him. Noah treated them with respect, making it clear their contributions were valued.

And for a few days, during a ghastly time of her life, he’d made her feel valued. He’d made her feel as if she were someone who deserved to be taken care of, as if there were truly people who cared about her and wanted to help her get through this. He’d been there for Redstone, but he’d made it personal, believable.

Her mind wanted to swerve down that old track, drag up again the memory of how she’d repaid him for that, but she quashed it. She felt too wonderful to tread that old road again. They’d made a pact, and she’d keep her word. Maybe she would even pay off on that bet.

This was wonderful, she thought. Indeed exhilarating. She couldn’t think of anything she’d done that was more exciting than this.

Except maybe kiss Noah Rider.

She was not having much luck keeping her promise to put that behind her, she thought wryly. But at least she could make sure he didn’t know that.

She felt the change as the boat began to slow. She was sorry it was over, but that passed as she concentrated on what the man had told her about landing. As it turned out, she drifted down easily, slowly enough that she could even enjoy it. She ended up a bit off target from where they’d told her she’d land, but Noah was there, waiting. And when she hit, barely hard enough to stagger her, he was there to steady her, to keep her clear of the chaos of lines and sail.

Just as he had five years ago, he kept her balanced and safe.

She drew in a deep breath, knowing she was grinning like a kid.

“How was it?” he asked.

“Looks like I’m buying dinner,” she said.

Rider ran a hand through his hair wearily. It wasn’t that anything was really going wrong. In fact, the most important things were progressing right on schedule. It was the little things that were not quite coming together and driving him nuts.

The best thing he could say was that it wasn’t because of any of the Redstone people: it was people on the outside who were falling down on the job. The man who was supposed to have run the final test on the air-conditioning system had been delayed. And two important shipments of extra bedsheets—Redstone Resorts always triple sheeted the beds, so no blanket ever touched a guest’s skin—and the last of the gym equipment were held up in Arethusa, something about a bomb scare. He made a note to put that in his next report to Redstone. If the unrest kept escalating, they might have to make other arrangements.

He glanced at his watch as he’d been doing all afternoon. Still plenty of time before dinner. His mouth twisted wryly; he was acting like a teenager with a hot date. But he couldn’t deny he was eager—and apprehensive—about dinner with Paige tonight. They’d kept it light, under the guise of a bet being paid off, but he knew she could have gotten out of it if she’d wanted to, since she’d never actually agreed to that part of it.

But she hadn’t. And he wasn’t sure why. Was she only trying to show him she was keeping to their agreement? Or did she want to—

“Mr. Rider?”

He glanced up to find Elan Kiskeya, the young man they’d decided to give a shot at replacing Bohio, in his doorway.

“Come on in,” he said, glad enough of the interruption.

“I won’t keep you,” the young man said. “I just wanted to tell you the elevator system is ready for you to check.”

“Already?” Rider asked, surprised.

“Yes, sir.” Kiskeya’s voice was full of pride. And rightfully so, Rider thought.

“Good job, Elan. I figured we were a couple of days away on that.”

“Thank you. And thank you again for taking a chance on me.”

“No…thank you,” Rider answered. “You’re making me look good. I’ll be sure they hear about you at Redstone.”

“Thank you. I already enjoy working for them.”

He liked it when a gamble paid off, Rider thought as the young man hastened away, off to work even harder, he guessed. When Josh had first given him the power to make field promotions, he’d been wary; personnel wasn’t his field. But he’d been right more than he’d been wrong, and that was all Josh asked.

In a way, Rider thought, he was in a unique position to understand the vast scope of Josh’s vision. He’d come directly from an earthquake-ravaged part of the Middle East, where Redstone was helping finance a massive rebuilding effort, to this place catering to the movers and shakers. He found it to be an education in itself. And after nearly fifteen years Rider was as impressed as he had been in the beginning.

He decided abruptly that three hours in this office dealing with paperwork and details was enough for today, and got to his feet. He needed to check the generator tests, and then he’d stop by and sign off on Kiskeya’s work. By then Barry would be waiting—and probably fussing—to start the final check on the rooms in the north building, and after that he’d head back. He’d already told Rudy to fire up the grill for his special meal.

By the time he finished, including some reinforcement of his appreciation for Kiskeya’s good job, he was running late. He took the shortcut back to the main building where his room was, cutting through the garden.

He froze in front of a hibiscus bush when some leaves rustled off to his left. A much more definite rustle than just the current slight breeze. In a burst of idiocy his brain ran through the list of creatures native to the island—iguanas, the odd but harmless mastiff bat, tiger beetles—even though he already knew none of them were particularly threatening to humans.

He held his breath and listened with a hunter’s ears. The old, long-unused skills came back surprisingly well. Something large, and tall, the sounds were coming from at least a couple of feet above the ground. Only one thing fitted that description on the island. And then the breeze shifted slightly, he caught the smell of cigarette smoke, and he knew he was right.

He turned and took a careful step, then another, moving silently, in the old stalking way, past the hibiscus and into the tropical grass that was the flowering bush’s backdrop. There he found his quarry; a boy crouched hiding in the thicket of tall grasses, smoking a cigarette.

Or trying to; the face he was making and the sudden burst of smothered coughing told Rider he hadn’t been at it long.

“Get rid of the butt of that cancer stick somewhere else,” he said.

The boy let out a strangled yelp and scrambled to his feet. His baseball cap fell backward off his head. The sunglasses he wore slipped to the end of his nose. The cigarette dropped onto his shirt, and he swatted it wildly. It hit the ground, glowing orange. The boy instinctively moved his foot to crush it out, but stopped abruptly, apparently remembering shoes hadn’t been in his wardrobe today.

Rider stepped on the cigarette, but didn’t grind it. He picked it up, and handed it back to the boy.

“Tell me you didn’t get that here.”

“Huh?”

Rider tried again. “Where’d you get the cigarette?”

“Oh. I brought it from home.”

“Good.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t want to have to fire somebody.”

The boy looked blank. “Fire somebody?”

“For selling them to an underage kid.”

The boy stiffened. “I’m not a kid.”

“Prove it. Be smart enough not to smoke.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the boy muttered in the tone of one who’d heard it all before. As perhaps he had. Then he gave Rider a sideways look. “You’re Rider, aren’t you? The big kahuna around here?”

“I’m Rider, at least,” he agreed.

“I remember you.”

Rider blinked. He hadn’t met any of the children on the island yet, so how could—

It hit him then. “You’re Kyle?”

The boy nodded. “I remember when you were there. When my dad died.”

He said it levelly enough, but Rider could hear the lingering pain behind the words.

“That was a tough time.”

“My mom said you made sure he got brought home.”

“I did what I could.”

The boy stood up straighter. “Thanks,” he said, and held out his hand. Startled, Rider took it. While the boy’s grip was firm, his palm was sweaty. But the gesture was very adult, and Rider treated it that way.

“You’re welcome, Kyle. I wish I could have done more.”

And in the next instant the boy was back. He plucked a leaf from the hibiscus, and nervously started to fold it into a tiny square. “You going to tell my mom? About me smoking?”

He had been only ten when his father had died, and when Rider had first seen him he’d been dazed by what had happened, not quite comprehending yet that death truly did mean forever. He’d changed a lot, of course, since then, but Rider could still see traces of the child in the teenager, although the sullen set of the mouth was new, as was the half-shaved head with the thick mop of slightly maroon hair above it, and the earrings piercing his left lobe.

“Well? You gonna tell her?”

“I’m not sure.” He drew in a breath; the smell of smoke was fading now. “How much will it hurt her?”

The boy flinched but recovered quickly. “Probably none. She doesn’t care what I do.”

“Oh?” If there was one thing about Paige he was certain of, it was that this boy was her life.

“She doesn’t care about me at all. If she did, she wouldn’t have dragged me here, away from my friends.”

“So why did she?”

“She says it was to keep me out of trouble. But I wasn’t really in trouble, she just doesn’t understand. She never does.”

“At least she cared. Maybe you should be glad of that.”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy said sarcastically. “Look, she doesn’t like my friends, doesn’t like what I like to do, doesn’t like my video games. She doesn’t like anything!”

She liked flying, Rider thought, picturing her face this morning and the huge smile she’d given him when she’d landed.

“And now she’s my teacher, too, and it really sucks.”

“I can understand how that would be tough,” Rider said neutrally.

“She just wants me to work and study all the time.” Kyle added a four-letter word that succinctly pronounced his opinion of that.

“You know, swearing doesn’t make you an adult any more than smoking does.”

“Oh, yeah, and I guess you never swear?”

“Me? Oh, sure I do, when provoked. In fact, I can say what you just said in about nine different languages.”

“Nine languages?” Kyle looked intrigued. Then he frowned. “So why are you on my case?”

“Swearing is best saved to make a point. If you use it all the time, it becomes meaningless.”

“Huh?”

Rider smothered a sigh; he’d never realized talking to teenagers was so much work. “Look, if you wanted to…say, scare somebody with a firecracker. You set one off and they jump. You set off a whole string, they jump at the first one, but by the end of the string they’re used to it and it doesn’t scare them anymore.”

“Oh.”

Kyle said nothing more, but at least he looked thoughtful. Rider glanced at his watch and winced. He wondered if the boy knew he was going to be having dinner with his mother in less than ten minutes. He started walking again, and to his surprise the boy followed.

“Have you seen your mother this afternoon?” he asked.

“Nah. I try to avoid her.” Kyle grimaced. “She’s probably hunting for me for dinner by now, though. If I don’t go back she’ll be really snarly.”

“Actually, maybe not,” Rider told him. “She and I are having dinner at the restaurant in just a few minutes. Chef Aubert is using us as guinea pigs for something new.”

The boy looked startled, then shrugged. “Rudy’s cool. He’s been just about everywhere in the world.”

“I know. I ate at his restaurant in London, and then in Rome. After that I went on a campaign to get him for Redstone.”

“You’ve been to London? And Rome?”

Rider nodded. “And just about every place in between.”

“Wow.” The boy was genuinely impressed now. “My dad used to travel a lot.”

“I know.” He said it carefully, not wanting to open up a subject he had no desire to get into.

“Once he brought me back something, too. A model of the Eiffel Tower, from Paris.”

Odd, Rider thought. The boy spoke as if he’d had the perfect father, with nothing but love and sadness at his loss in his young voice. As if it didn’t matter why his father had been on that plane when he died.

And you’d think a traveling father would bring something back for his only son more than once.

On impulse he said, “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, if you want. You have to eat, anyway, and Rudy always has some good stories to tell when he’s got a captive audience.”

The boy hesitated, and suddenly Rider was anxious for him to come. “Of course, it’ll be kind of adult discussion, so if you’ll be bored…”

“I won’t,” Kyle said instantly, as Rider had thought he might.

And so he had company when he walked into what would be the main restaurant at the resort. Rudy had only been expecting the two of them, but a single extra body, even with a teenage boy’s appetite, was but a minor obstacle for someone with Rudy’s experience.

Paige was already seated at the table when they arrived. She was toying with her silverware, as if too nervous to simply sit still. Rider noticed she had a stack of folders on the seat beside her. They looked like the same ones she’d had at the meeting the day he’d arrived.

“I invited a friend,” he said as they got to the table. She looked up quickly, apparently so intent on the fork that she hadn’t realized they were there. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not…”

Her voice trailed away and her eyes widened when she saw her son beside him. “Kyle?”

“He invited me,” he said almost angrily, his chin jutting out slightly.

Rider wondered if Kyle remembered that they hadn’t really settled the question of whether he would tell Paige he’d caught her son sneaking a smoke. If he did, it didn’t show in his attitude, and Rider suddenly wondered why on earth he’d done this, invited the kid. He was clearly furious with his mother, and Rider doubted he himself would be able to stay out of it if Kyle continued to talk to her in that tone.

“Then sit down,” was all Paige said.

Kyle did, glancing at the folders on the chair. He rolled his eyes. “You even brought school stuff here?”

To Rider’s surprise, Paige blushed. “I thought Mr. Rider might want to see how things are going.”

Rider was puzzled as he took a seat across from her, and then it struck him. The school papers were protection, so she could make this seem like a business dinner, not a personal one. He felt oddly disappointed by the realization.

It wasn’t until Rudy arrived and muttered something in his ear about bringing your own buffer, that he realized he’d done the same thing. Inviting Kyle hadn’t been for the boy’s sake, it had been for his. Nothing could get too personal with Paige’s fifteen-year-old son at the table with them.

He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, both of them so busy protecting themselves from the possibilities.

He wondered if that meant she was as tempted by them as he was.

Paige got over her nervousness rather quickly, if only because she was wondering who this kid was sitting at the table. The sullen, snippy teenager she’d almost grown used to was nowhere in sight. This Kyle wasn’t the outgoing, friendly boy he’d once been, but he was considerably more civil and sociable than he’d been with her for longer than she cared to remember.

He seemed more than willing to talk to Noah, and listened to what he said with every appearance of rapt interest. When their food came, he even ate like a normal person, instead of shoveling it in as fast as he could in order to escape. And when Rudy sat down for a few minutes, to get their reviews of his experiment—fresh mahi grilled with his personal choice of spices that had given it a wild combination of flavors that somehow worked—Kyle was downright friendly to him, as well.

Paige was aware she wasn’t sharing in the conversation very much, but it had been so long since she’d seen her son act like a human being she didn’t want to waste it. Even though she realized that to Noah he probably seemed like a normal, even likable kid.

Eventually Kyle asked Noah what time it was, and when he said nearly eight, the boy stood up.

“I gotta go. Thanks, Mr. Rider.”

More courtesy than I get, Paige thought. She was curious about where he was going, but knew if she asked she would only get that pained look he did so well, accusing her of treating him like a child.

“Be home by ten. School tomorrow.”

He glared at her. “This isn’t—” He stopped himself, as if aware that what he was going to say—This isn’t my home—might insult his new friend. “Later,” he muttered, and left.

Paige smothered a sigh.

“How long has the attitude been going on?”

Paige looked at him in surprise. “I thought he was perfectly nice to you.”

“He was. It was you he was treating like a pariah. When he bothered to acknowledge you exist at all.”

She was surprised again—this time that he’d noticed and had bothered to mention it.

She tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter. It did. And she knew there would come a time when she was going to have to start demanding respect from Kyle. But tonight had made it clear that that time was here and now. She didn’t like being humiliated ever, but in front of this man it was unbearable.

“He’s still hurting,” she said. “I know it’s been five years, but they’re very tough years for a boy.”

For a long moment the silence spun out. Noah seemed about to speak twice, but stopped. Then finally, slowly, words began to come.

“After my mom was killed in a car accident when I was Kyle’s age, my dad came down on me hard. He was tough on my sister, Michelle, too, but he really caged me. Stopped me from doing everything except going to school.”

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