Swept Away (3 page)

Even so, the sight of a pirate ship on the horizon right now would have been just the pick-me-
up she needed.

She probably should have gone to Vegas, kicked up her heels one last time. But as the trip had
approached, it had stopped sounding fun. Mentally preparing for her future had seemed
smarter. And the secluded island really had sounded relaxing after all the craziness of planning
a huge wedding. She’d just had the overwhelming urge to get away, from everyone and
everything, and just be.

Which was why her whereabouts were top secret. Naples was only fifteen short miles away,
and relaxing would be impossible if her mother and father and Ian could all hop in a speedboat
and head out here whenever they felt like it.

Now she realized she’d just cashed in her last chance to cut loose and party. And she wouldn’t have done anything too heinous—she wouldn’t really have slept with a pirate or ridden a Chippendale or vice versa—because if there was one thing Kat took seriously, it was marriage. She wanted a marriage like her parents had—stable and lasting and loving—and she wouldn’t
have sullied that notion by doing anything with another guy. But she still might have found
some way to have a little fun, get a little wild, one last time.

Next week you’ll be married. Next week, you’ll be traveling down the road to sedate pastels
and fanned napkins and motherhood.

It suddenly hit her that this, today, right now, was it, the last time she’d be her, herself, a single entity responsible to no one else—and that she had to do something totally for her, totally about
her; she had to do something very Crazy-Kat-like that would make Nina hoot with laughter if she were here.

So—given that her options for wildness were limited under the circumstances—she did the only thing she could think of. She sat up in her lounge chair, reached behind her neck, and untied her bikini top. A moment later, she tossed it haphazardly into the sand, freeing her
breasts to the world.

Of course, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear, does it make a sound?

And if you sunbathe topless in the middle of nowhere, are you really a girl gone wild?
She shrugged. Didn’t matter. It was all she had right now.

And already it felt a bit forbidden. And freeing.

Which was just what she needed.

Although shedding the top whisked her unexpectedly back to the past, for just the flash of a second, to the only other instance when she’d bared her breasts outdoors—that time for a guy, that loser Brock Denton. But she pushed the thought away quickly—it was among the most
humiliating and debilitating of her existence and it had taken a long time to get over it.

Lying back in her lounge chair, she stretched her arms sensually overhead, soaking up the sun with freshly bared skin. Serene and tranquil in a decidedly much sexier way, and if this was her
last hurrah, so be it.

Yet she couldn’t resist opening one closed eye for just a peek, to make sure no pirate ships
loomed on the horizon.

Damn—nothing.

Brock slid one arm around the hot blonde on his left, then slipped the other around the pretty brunette on his right. As the waters of the hot tub bubbled around them, he pulled both women closer, their bikini-clad breasts nestling against him. He briefly tried to recall their names but
failed. Ah well, didn’t matter. “When Carlos invited me along on the yacht today,” he said,
shifting his grin between them, “I didn’t realize this was gonna be so much fun.”

The blonde giggled. “We love when Carlos and Francisco bring friends on our little boat
rides.” She lifted one palm to his chest for a sensual caress, the touch tightening his groin just
slightly.

“Especially hot ones like you, Jimmy,” the brunette said, a mischievous spark in her gaze as
she slipped her hand beneath the leg of his trunks to squeeze high on his thigh.

He flinched as the unexpected sensation shot upward, then flashed her a chiding look. Answering to the fake name didn’t throw him at all, but the fondle did. “Whoa there,
sweetheart. Let’s save the real party for after the job, huh?” he said on a light laugh. Then he added a wink and spoke quietly, even though the other two men on the yacht were currently
belowdecks. “Francisco can be a hard-ass about that kind of thing.”

The brunette wrinkled her nose. “He’s just jealous.”

Brock shrugged. “But he’s the boss.” Lowering his voice again, he said, “Don’t worry, though —there’ll be plenty of me to go around later.”

Both girls giggled, and Brock rewarded them each with a kiss on the cheek.

He couldn’t deny it—The Morales brothers had a good thing going here. Easy money, hot
chicks, and life on a yacht sailing the clear Gulf waters, peppered with the occasional trip south
through the Caribbean to their homeland of Guatemala. The only possible thing they were
missing were servants and a crew, but given that it was a smallish yacht, the boys didn’t seem
to mind steering and serving themselves.

Yep, they had a good thing going, but they’d messed up by inviting him along. And not just because their girls wanted him now instead of them. In fact, part of him almost felt sorry for Carlos, who’d befriended him in a much tighter way than Francisco had. Never should have
trusted me, buddy, he thought as Carlos ascended the spiral staircase from below. Never

should have let me in. But it’s too late now. By the end of the day, the Morales brothers’ easy
life would be nearing its demise.

When Carlos spied Brock between the two girls in the tub, he chuckled in his good-natured
way, his thin, dark mustache curling upward at the corners of his mouth. “Moving in on our
women, yes?” he asked in his thick Latin accent.

Brock returned the grin, then glanced back and forth between the girls. “How am I supposed to resist such beauty?” Actually, getting cozy with the girls hadn’t been part of the plan, but Brock had learned to go with the flow in such situations. And if the flow happened to lead him in
between two wet and willing women, who was he to complain?

Carlos raised his eyebrows. “Room for one more?”

The blonde—Brock couldn’t remember if she belonged to Carlos or Francisco—spread her
arms wide. “There’s always room for you, baby.”

Carlos flashed a lecherous grin and pushed black, slightly curly hair out of his face as he
walked toward the bubbling tub.

But when Francisco appeared behind him—a bigger, broader, badder version of his younger
brother—his grim expression drew Brock’s attention immediately. Something wasn’t right
here, he knew it that fast—a sixth sense that had nothing to do with seeing dead people.

“What’s up, Francisco?” he asked easily. “You don’t look happy.” He could only hope something was amiss with the pickup—that it had been changed, or the mission had been
scrapped for some reason—and that nothing more serious was going on.

“Come on into the water and let me make it all better,” the blonde offered with pouting lips and
inviting eyes. He still didn’t know which guy was hers. Then it dawned on him that maybe
they were interchangeable.

“Nothing like a little hot-tub party,” the brunette said, shimmying her breasts suggestively
within her red bikini top.

“Nice, honey,” Carlos offered, dipping a foot into the water to join them.

“You ever know a man named Reyes?” Francisco asked, and Brock’s eyes flew to his. Talk
about a killjoy. How the hell had he found out Brock had known Reyes?

“Reyes?” Brock repeated, then pretended to be searching his memory for the name of the
Miami drug runner he’d brought down three years ago. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Why? Who is he?”

Francisco’s eyes narrowed. “Friend of a friend,” he said, his words a little too slow and his
tone a little too threatening for Brock’s liking. “He’s dead now. But I happened to see a photo
of him with some other guys taken not long before the FBI nailed him. And there was a guy in
that photo who looked an awful lot like you, Jimmy.”

Brock worked hard to keep a blank face and narrow eyes.

“So I said to my friend,” Francisco went on, “‘that guy—he looks like a guy I know,’ and so
my friend put me in touch with another guy from the picture. And I just got an e-mail from that
guy, and do you know what he said? He said the guy in the picture who looks like you was an undercover FBI agent. So—what do you think about that, Jimmy?”

I think I’m screwed.

But if Brock was well practiced at anything, it was getting out of a jam. And this operation had
gone far too smoothly up to now. So this was just a snag—every job had at least one or two—
and he could get out of it if he played it right.

“I think I’m pretty fucking upset—that’s what I think!” he boomed, pushing to his feet with a bolt of adrenaline disguised as anger. Water sluiced off his body back into the tub. “Who the
hell do you think you are, Morales? Accusing me of being a goddamn fed. I ought to rip your
fucking head off, right here and now.”

The two men squared off against each other, even though Brock remained in the hot tub with
two suddenly cowering girls behind him.

Carlos, who had pulled his foot back out of the water when Francisco had started his diatribe, stepped up to intervene. “Look, guys, calm down. Francisco, I told you, Jimmy couldn’t be the
same guy you saw. Faces look alike. Jimmy is our friend, I’d stake my life on it.” Then he
shifted his gaze to Brock. “You know my brother’s a hothead, always believes the worst. But I
told him that you, an FBI agent—impossible, yes?”

Brock looked to Carlos, then locked a menacing gaze on Francisco. “Yes!” he bit off fiercely, a
little dumbstruck by Carlos’s blind trust in him. Of course, he’d given Carlos an extensive—
even if false—history of his experience in burglary and smuggling. Claimed he’d gotten out of
drug-running because it was too dangerous these days, saying he was willing to make a little
less money for work that held a little less risk. But Carlos’s loyalty, as well as the fact that he
considered “Jimmy” a friend, came as a surprise.

“So this is settled now. Okay?” Carlos asked, directing the question to his brother.

Francisco took a long time answering as he and Brock stared each other down. Brock’s heart
beat like a hammer in his chest—his life depended on making Francisco believe he was just
another smuggler like them. And it was in that still, tense moment that he noticed Francisco no
longer wore around his neck the key that had dangled from a chain there earlier in the day. He
hadn’t asked what the key was for, but he had his suspicions, and its sudden absence was
worth noting.

“Okay,” Francisco finally said. “It’s settled.”

Brock gave a short nod and slowly eased his way back down into the hot tub, although the
girls didn’t fly back into his arms. He couldn’t blame them.