Man Trouble (7 page)
“No,” Molly said. “It definitely didn't. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed.”
“Your worst fear seemed to come true,” Elaine continued dramatically. “You thought that this
proved
that you weren't attractive to men,
even when you tried
”
Molly gritted her teeth. “I'm feeling very jet-lagged,” she said. “Good night.”
“My dear,” Elaine said loftily, “I cannot help you if you refuse to listen. I am trying to tell you something very important. All of this”—she gestured at the shreds of Sandra—“means nothing. You haven't tried yet. Trying means putting your heart into the attempt. You have not been brave enough to try
at all,
and so you have no basis whatsoever for judging yourself a failure.”
Molly scowled at her. If Carter's sister thought that it didn't take effort and bravery to put on the Sandra outfit and face the world, then she could go to hell. “I did my best,” she said coldly. “When Carter comes back, tell him that I'll give his plan one more chance. One. That's all. And if tomorrow turns out to be another disaster, then I officially quit.”
J
ake knelt to clamp the mast onto his windsurfing board. It was quarter to ten in the morning, and he had spent the past hour on the phone, having a heated “discussion” with the two most senior Berenger Corporation board members: Walter Cronin and Stanley “Skip” Leavenworth, both stuffy white-haired fogies, one the retired CEO of a major development corporation, the other a retired CFO of a major bank. Walter had called in a huff, with Skip conferenced in, to read Jake selected passages from that morning's
Wall Street Journal,
which had featured an article headlined, “Wall Street Questions Value of Berenger Bonds.” In it, a prominent analyst was quoted as saying, “Berenger Corporation has borrowed a great deal of money by issuing corporate bonds over the past few years, but Jake Berenger seems more interested in playing with Hollywood blondes than in paying interest on his bonds.”
“Jake,” Walter had said officiously, “you do understand what this means…?”
“That it was a slow news day?” Jake asked. He took exception to Walter's tone. He was not a misbehaving trust-fund grandson, and did not appreciate being lectured like one.
“This is becoming a serious image problem, Jake,” Walter said. “We can't afford to lose more investor confidence. We'll be discussing this at the next board meeting.”
He let the mast fall to the sand, straightened up, and ran a hand over his forehead, exhaling hard. Walter's pompous tone still echoed in his ears.
A serious image problem, Jake.
Yeah,
Jake thought.
No kidding, Walter. Thanks.
Apparently, he had misjudged the severity of the situation. Cora had been right to worry.
Always listen to your mother,
he thought.
Wear a warm sweater, eat your vegetables, and don't underestimate the subversive power of the fucking tabloid press.
Titillating articles in the
Daily News
were one thing, but when the sniping reached the level of the
Wall Street Journal,
it meant that his bad press was going mainstream.
The glare from the sand was making his head ache, and he realized that he had left his sunglasses at the villa. He had bolted out of there after the phone call, trying to avoid Amanda, who had been pointedly and repeatedly mentioning her intense desire to learn to scuba dive. He dragged his board higher on the sand, getting it away from the surf. There were usually a couple of extra pairs of glasses in the boathouse, and he could borrow one from Rico for the next hour.
“Where did you find a pink wet suit?” Molly asked Carter. Her cheeks were burning, and she was glad for Elaine's silver sunglasses, because they allowed her to pretend not to see the stunned stares that followed her as they walked across the pool terrace and down the wide steps toward the beach. One man actually dropped his newspaper as she passed his chair. His wife, in the next chair, picked it up and whacked him with it.
“I know a girl who works for Mary Kay,” Carter said. “They gave them away as prizes last year. She said that I could have hers. She's more of a dry-land kind of person.”
“So am I,” Molly said. “How am I supposed to take a windsurfing lesson dressed like this? The wig? The shoes? The chest? What if my stuffing comes loose? If I move too much, one of these pads is going to slip. I don't think this is going to work.”
“You're right,” Carter said reluctantly. “Okay. I'll figure something out.”
“Aren't you supposed to have this figured out already?” Molly asked. “Isn't this supposed to be
scientific?”
They passed the pool bar, where a busboy was clearing empty glasses from the tables. He looked up, saw Molly, and clutched his heart. She lifted her fingers in a tentative wave, and he waved back, smiling beatifically at her.
“Creativity is the eternal flame burning at the heart of science,” Carter said. “Many a scientific breakthrough has been the result of a spontaneous burst of divine inspiration. I am hoping for one of those myself, at the moment.”
“Right,” Molly said. “Keep me posted.” Everyone was still staring at her. Had it been like this last night at the cocktail party? The contact lens fiasco had ensured that she hadn't seen much at all.
“Hurry,” Carter said. “We need to catch Jake before he goes out on the water.”
“I can't hurry in these shoes,” Molly protested, but Carter had seized her by the arm and was pulling her along the path. She clomped after him toward the boathouse.
The path became a low wooden walkway that continued down the sand toward the water. The boathouse was built alongside it, a small building with a thatched roof, it housed racks of scuba gear. On the sand next to the walkway was a collection of brightly colored water toys, from surfboards to kayaks to—Molly saw with trepidation—windsurfing equipment.
Jake was standing by the wooden counter, talking to a young man wearing the white polo shirt and bronze-colored swim trunks of the Gold Bay waterfront staff. Carter released Molly's arm, and she tried to breathe evenly and slow down her pounding heart.
As they drew closer, the young man took off his sunglasses and handed them to Jake. It was obvious from Jake's body language that he was about to leave, and Molly's anxiety increased. She couldn't go out on a windsurfing board. Looking like a fool was bad enough, but she was not a strong swimmer, and encumbered by the too-tight wet suit, the padding, the surgical tape, the wig, and the contacts, she was likely to drown.
“Now what?” she asked Carter in an urgent whisper. “What am I supposed to
do?”
“Go say hello to him,” Carter said.
“Say hello? That's your burst of divine inspiration?”
“No,” Carter said, scrunching up his face. “I'm still waiting for that. Stall him. I'll think of something.”
Molly steeled herself and straightened her spine, lifting her chest and throwing a little hip into her walk as she approached the men. “Well,” she said breathlessly, attempting a sultry voice. “Hello there, Jake. Are you heading out? I was looking for Rico. For my lesson.”
“You found him,” Jake said, indicating the young man. “Sandra St. Claire, this is Rico Martinez, our waterfront director. Rico was the 1997 world windsurfing champion. He's also an Olympic bronze medalist. You'll be in good hands.”
“Lucky me,” Molly said. She hoped Carter was thinking fast. It was a good sign that Jake had remembered her name. He had recalled it instantly, in fact. Surely he didn't remember every guest he met…
“Nice to meet you, Sandra,” Rico said, and shook her hand. “Welcome. You're obviously serious about windsurfing.”
Obviously?
Molly blinked at him, wondering what would make such a thing seem obvious. Was it the wet suit? It certainly wasn't the sandals. She smiled cautiously. “Uh,” she said. “Yes. Of course. How did you know?”
Rico gave her an odd look. “You're signed up for a lesson every morning this week,” he said.
“What?” Molly exclaimed in horror. Rico and Jake both looked surprised, and she cleared her throat. “I mean, is it only mornings? I thought I'd booked an hour in the afternoons, too.”
“I don't think so. And the schedule's already full,” Rico said. “Sorry. I'll let you know if I get any cancellations, but an hour a day should be enough to improve your skill level pretty significantly by Sunday.”
Molly barely heard him. She had just realized that Jake was looking at her. Or, more specifically, that Jake was looking at her in a way that men never looked at the Respectable Professor Shaw. His eyes, slightly narrowed, were moving up her body in a slow assessment that made her skin prickle. It had begun at her feet, slid slowly up her bare legs, moved over the curves of her waist, then lingered on the area of the lowered wet suit zipper and the globulous thrust of her cleavage. His eyebrows quirked suddenly, and Molly tensed, holding her breath. Was this the moment when Carter's magic formula started to work? Maybe Jake really had been distracted last night, and he simply hadn't noticed that she was, in fact, his ideal woman.
See?
she said silently to him.
Blonde! Busty! Pink! You can't resist me. It's scientific.
She glanced over to see if Carter was watching, but he was pretending to be deeply absorbed in examining the various types of kayak paddles.
“Do you have eyes, Sandra St. Claire?” Jake asked suddenly, and to Molly's shock, he reached out and lifted off her sunglasses. Her startled gaze met his, and in the sunlight, she could see that his dark irises had flecks of gold in them.
“Yes,” she said nervously, blinking at him.
He nodded, and handed the glasses back to her. “I wondered. Here. Don't take these out on the bay, or you'll lose them.”
He turned away.
“Thank…you,” Molly said to his back. He was leaving. What was she supposed to do? It had all looked so promising just a moment ago, but now he was about to disappear, and her only method of pursuing him was liable to kill her. Helplessly, she turned to look at Carter, who was widening his eyes in a meaningful way and jerking his head spastically toward Jake's retreating form. Molly took this to mean that she should follow him.
“One minute,” she said to Rico, and clunked quickly down the boardwalk after Jake, hoping that Carter's urgency meant that divine inspiration had finally arrived.
“Jake,” she called, “wait.”
At that moment, something very strange happened. As Molly hurried forward, she suddenly felt a large, flat object thrust between her knees. Surprised, she stumbled against it, then lost her balance on the platform shoes. She toppled forward, letting out an involuntary shriek of panic.
Jake, only steps ahead of her, turned to see what had happened. As if she were watching the scene in slow motion, Molly saw his face register surprise, and then alarm as she pitched, flailing frantically, toward him.
He caught her against his chest, stumbled backward with the force of her momentum, and then sat down hard on the boardwalk with Molly sprawled over him.
“O
h, my God,” said Sandra St. Claire in a tone of absolute mortification.
She smelled good, Jake thought, slightly disoriented. The scent of suntan cream and warm female skin surrounded him, heady as an opiate. She felt good, too. One of her hands was clutching his thigh, and the other was clamped onto his shoulder. She was lying across his lap and between his legs, and aside from a sharp pain in his tailbone, he found the position very agreeable. He wasn't sure how they had ended up like this. It had happened very fast, and he had only a flash of memory of turning and seeing Sandra careening toward him, her mouth and eyes round with shock. He recalled her slight stumble at the cocktail party last night. She was not a very good candidate for the high heels that she seemed to favor.
“Oh, my God,” Sandra said again, pushing against him as she struggled to disengage herself and sit up.
“You've lost your shoes,” he said. She had fallen entirely out of them, and they were lying several feet away on the boardwalk.
“Good,” she said under her breath, and then gasped, and quickly raised a hand to her hair. She touched it tentatively, as if afraid that something terrible had happened to it on the way down.
“Still there,” Jake remarked dryly. Every gleaming blond strand had somehow remained perfectly in place.
“What?” She looked alarmed, and then anxious. “What do you mean? Why wouldn't it still be there?”
Strange woman,
Jake thought. Sexy, in a klutzy and neurotic sort of way, but she had “trouble” written all over her. And she took her hair a bit too seriously for his taste. “A joke,” he said, getting to his feet. He offered her his hand. “Never mind. Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I think so. I—”
“Sandra! Sandra, are you hurt? I saw what happened.”
It was her friend, the little man in the bad suit who had accompanied her to the party last night. He had appeared out of nowhere, and was now hovering over her like a worried hen. For some reason, he was holding a kayak paddle. Sandra looked at him, and for just a moment, Jake thought that he saw fury on her face.
She ignored the man, took Jake's outstretched hand, and began to stand up.
“Are you
hurt?”
the man repeated.
She shook her head. “No, I—”
“Are you
sure?
Because that fall might have done something terrible to your
weak ankle.”
With startling suddenness, Sandra collapsed back onto the ground. “Oh, dear,” she said woodenly. “Yes. I think I may have sprained my ankle.”
“I was afraid of that,” her friend said.
“Which ankle?” Jake asked, frowning. They both looked fine to him, although the expression on Sandra's face suggested that she was in pain. She pointed to her right foot, and he knelt to examine it. There was no sign of bruising or swelling, but it was possible that she had pulled a tendon when she flew out of her shoes. It was also possible that something very strange was going on. Was this some kind of setup for a lawsuit? The scene had taken on a theatrical quality, and it made him suspicious.