Zero Control Page 5
“Oh, believe me,” Jess said, “this is not about romance. This is about nothing but hot, hot sex.”
The self-satisfied note in Jess’s voice plucked a twinge of envy inside Roxie. In all honesty, she’d never been overly impressed with sex. Maybe she’d just never done it correctly.
“You’ve never had a casual fling?” Jess asked.
Roxie shook her head.
“Seriously, woman. It’s the most liberating thing in the world. Discovering your sexual power, knowing it doesn’t have to lead to anything more than it is. Glorious. Freeing.”
“Really?”
“As long as you keep your heart out of the fray, and you’re with the right guy, it can be mind-blowing.”
“How do you keep your heart out of the fray?”
“That is a good question and it’s important to prepare for it.”
“I’m listening.”
“First off, don’t swap too many personal details about each other. No sharing intimate secrets. If you learn a lot of little details about each other, the next thing you know you start caring about them. That’s not so good for a healthy casual fling,” Jess advised.
“Thanks for the advice.”
Sam reached over to touch Roxie on the shoulder. “Hey, since you’re all by yourself would you like to hang out with Jess and me? We’d love to have you.”
The invitation shouldn’t have pleased her as much as it did, and she should have thought of a graceful way to bow out. She didn’t need to pal around with anyone on the tour. The more inconspicuous she made herself, the better. But she was flattered. More than that, she wanted to hang out with Jess and Sam. They seemed like a lot of fun.
“We understand if you say no,” Jess hurried to add. “Since you’ve caught the attention of our tour guide. He hasn’t stopped looking at you this entire ride. You might want to spend your time hanging out with him.”
Roxie didn’t dare turn her head to meet his stare. “I’m not interested in a romance.”
“Who said anything about a romance?” Jess made a purring noise. “I’d just love to have a fling with him. If you’re really not interested that is.”
Roxie couldn’t bring herself to say that she wasn’t interested. There was that damned jealousy again. Illogical and annoying.
“Anyway,” Sam said, “we’ll save a place for you at dinner, unless Mr. Handsome Man over there sweeps you off your feet.”
All in all, Roxie didn’t have many friends. Of course Stacy was her best friend. There was Magda at work, and Mrs. Kingsly who lived across the street, and Susan, the checker at the supermarket. But they were all over thirty-five and married with children. She didn’t really have anyone her own age she could relate to.
You can’t hang out with them. You’re here under false pretenses. Tell them you appreciate the offer, but you have other plans. Tell them you’re hoping for a romance and you’re worried guys will be less likely to approach women in a group than on their own.
Tell them…
She opened her mouth to use one of her excuses, but instead she spoke from her heart. “Sure, I’d love to hang out with you guys. Thanks for asking.”
4
THE EROS RESORT WAS a hedonist’s wet dream.
From the outside the place was picturesque. The main building was a replica of a sixteenth-century castle perched on a sloping green hill overlooking the river Avon, complete with its own moat. Inside the castle grounds, snug little thatch cottages were lumped like gray-green turtles along a unifying cobblestone path. The moment Roxie stepped off the bus in the thickening drizzle, she was hit with the acute sensation that her world had just cracked wide-open and she’d stepped into a fairy tale.
She tried not to stare openmouthed, but it was a bit difficult when they were met at the door by a cadre of bellmen all dressed in the same romantic sixteenth-century style as Dougal and speaking in the tongue of that time. They flirted and winked. Clearly it was their intention to make the guests feel both lusty and welcome.
“Let me take that for you, milady.” A dashing bellboy, looking for all the world like Romeo Montague from Shakespeare’s most famous play, bowed and relieved Roxie of her suitcase.
Jess and Sam tittered as similarly outfitted bellmen took their luggage.
The five-star rated resort’s lobby was a sight to behold. It looked both old world and elegant and deadly romantic with huge vases of fresh-cut roses, Stargazer lilies and gladiola resting on highly polished antique tables. The air was scented with their sweet fragrance. The sofas and chairs placed strategically throughout the cavernous lobby were upholstered in rich matching fabrics of cranberry and gold. In the middle of the lobby was a grand fireplace made of gray lintels carved with quatrefoils and spanned by a four-centered arch with molded decorations and a frieze topping the lintels. Over the mantel hung a stately coat of arms.
Stenciled on the walls in gilded script lettering outlined in black were famous quotes about love. Her gaze traveled around the room as she read the slogans.
Naughty, naughty. Roxie pressed her fingers against her mouth, suppressing a grin. Just then a pretty female assistant dressed in a gauzy floor-length gown and a crown of braided flowers wandered over to distribute small flutes of complimentary ice wine to the thirsty travelers queuing up at the registration desk.
Roxie sipped her drink. She was delighted to discover it tasted like golden honey, sweet and thick and pure. She didn’t imbibe often, and just a couple of swallows produced a warm glow that drew her deeper into the magical atmosphere. Porter Langley had no idea what he was getting into if he set his cap at competing with Taylor Corben’s lavish destination resorts.
While they were waiting their turn to check in, an older woman, dressed in the same Tudor style as the young assistant, passed out a form printed on white card stock. “Hi, my name is Lucy Kenyon and I’m the entertainment director. To help tailor this experience to meet your needs, I’d appreciate it if you’d fill out this questionnaire and leave it with me.”
Roxie took the form and read through the short list of questions. Most of them were centered on her personal likes and dislikes. She answered as best she could, but paused when she got to the end.
“What are your hobbies, special skills or talents that you still love but haven’t had time for lately?” Jess read the last line on her card out loud just as Roxie poised her pen to answer it.
The question hit home. It had been so long since she’d gotten to do the things she’d given up after her parents’ tragic car accident. Becoming a surrogate parent at eighteen had caused her to grow up quickly. She felt a tug of emotion in her belly, a sadness mixed with yearning for everything she’d lost. She didn’t regret giving up leisurely pursuits for Stacy, but she did miss them, and she hadn’t really realized it until now.
“Oh gosh,” Sam said. “I guess we’re spoiled. We pretty much do everything we love.”
“What about you, Roxie?” Jess asked. “What are you putting down?”
Roxie doodled on the edge of the form, remembering how she used to enjoy acting. She’d even toyed with the idea of majoring in drama when she went to college.
Except she’d never gotten to college.
“I used to enjoying acting,” she admitted.
Sam nudged Jess. “You used to be able to whistle ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ That’s a special skill.”
Jess rolled her eyes. “It’s not one I want to revisit. Anything else you used to like to do, but don’t get to do now, Roxie?”
“Fencing.”
Sam blinked. “You like putting up fences?”
“No, dork,” Jess told her twin. “You know, en garde.” She illustrated with a badly executed fencing pose. “Like Zorro.”
“Ah, that kind of fencing.” Sam nodded.
“My father qualified for the Olympic fencing team when he was twenty,” Roxie shared with her new friends. “But my mother had just found out she was pregnant with me and he chose not to go.”
“Fencing was one activity we did together, just he and I.” And she hadn’t picked up a foil since his death. Roxie blinked, swallowed past the lump in her throat and wrote down acting and fencing in answer to the final question.
“Oh, I know,” Jess said. “We used to go with Dad on stakeouts. Let’s put down sleuthing.”
“Your father was a cop?” Roxie asked.
“P.I.,” Sam explained and frowned at her twin. “Sleuthing isn’t going to come in handy around here.”
“How do you know they’re not going to have one of those mystery theater events? We’d kick ass.”
“I’ll take those, thanks.” Lucy Kenyon smiled and plucked the forms from Roxie, Jess and Sam. “And when you’re finished with registration, please feel free to visit the costume room. Many of our guests enjoy dressing up for the events.”
“You have a costume room?” Roxie asked. She loved role-playing.
“We do.” Lucy indicated an area at the back of the lobby before she turned to greet new arrivals.
“Wow.” Jess craned her neck upward. “Get a load of that ceiling.”
Roxie glanced up and gulped. While the lobby was pure class, the ceiling was pure erotica, albeit tastefully executed. Near-naked men and women frolicked overhead in what could be best described as an orgy about to happen. Lots of succulent fruit was involved in the suggestive tableau—hard yellow-green bananas, plump plums, curvy pears, ripe red strawberries, brilliantly orange kumquats. She could almost taste the sinful fruit salad.
Embarrassed, she jerked her gaze away from the sight and stepped back only to crash into someone behind her.
A masculine hand went to her elbow. “Steady.”
She spun around, found herself face-to-face with Dougal, her cheeks scalding hot. “Um…I…er…”
Immediately her gaze was drawn to his enigmatic eyes. Did the man have any idea how compellingly sexy he looked in the white loose-sleeved silk shirt that floated over his broad masculine shoulders and those snug-fitting leather breeches that enhanced even more fascinating parts of his anatomy? Roxie shook her head, determined to empty her mind of such inappropriate thoughts.
He took a step closer and she caught a whiff of his scent—leather, sandalwood soap and man. She couldn’t help noticing the softness of his windblown hair. She suppressed the disconcerting urge to reach out and tame the unruly strands with her fingers just to see if it was as soft as it looked.
“It is a bit overwhelming at first glance.” His eyes twinkled.
“Huh?”
“The castle, the lobby, the ceiling.”
“Um, yeah,” she mumbled, not knowing what else to say, not sure she could or should say anything more. For one vivid flash of her imagination she’d pictured herself and Dougal joining the madcap couples on the ceiling, and that thought escalated the blistering of her cheeks. The fantasy overloaded her senses. Her muscles tensed. Her heart beat faster. It was in that moment she realized the stereo system was very quietly, almost subliminally, playing a seductive sound track of twin heartbeats beneath the lyrical flute music.
Looking into Dougal’s eyes, hearing the steady strum-strum-strumming sound, smelling flowers, tasting fruit and ice wine, feeling his fingers at her elbow sent her emotions into tumult.
The primal music became an exclamation mark, underscoring her befuddlement, igniting her feminine passion. Her desire tasted of hot musk. The drumming altered with the changes inside her, growing deeper, more intricate and multifaceted. She felt this sudden and unexpected need everywhere—in her toes, in the pads of her fingertips, in the muscles of her buttocks. She’d never experienced anything like it and the air left her lungs on one expanded sigh.
He was standing way too near her, but she didn’t know how to tell him to back off. If he were to dip his head down to say something to her, his lips would be kissably close. She retreated a step, her thoughts a chaotic tumble of craziness.
“Next,” called the clerk behind the check-in desk.
“You’re up.”
Dazed, Roxie blinked at him. “What?”
Dougal nodded toward the desk. “You’re next.”
“Oh, right.”
The spell was shattered. Dougal smiled and then turned and walked away.
AN HOUR LATER, DOUGAL entered the ballroom for the eight o’clock dinner seating. It bothered him that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Roxie. What was it about her that had so slipped underneath his skin? He thought about her scent, delicate and sweet. Some kind of flower. Honeysuckle? Or maybe those white flowers that grew on those thick waxy-leaved trees in the South.
The way she looked at him in the lobby, wide-eyed and blushing, caused his gut to clench and his cock to harden. This was crazy. He was crazy. He was on assignment. He had to get his head in the game.
You’re just falling victim to the Eros experience—the subliminal music, the suggestive paintings, the flowers, the candlelit sconces lining the hallways. Snap out of it.
As a tour guide, Dougal was expected to mingle with the guests, and he found himself seated at a table with two busty women who sat on either side of him and kept stroking his forearms. He felt like a piece of hamburger, but he endured it for the job, his gaze going around the room, looking for anything or anyone suspicious.
And then his eyes lighted on Roxie. She was seated at a table with the twin sisters she’d sat next to on the bus, looking up at one of the waiters, a man dressed in a troubadour costume. She was asking questions about the menu. The man leaned over, his shoulder brushing against Roxie’s, his stare traveling straight down the cleavage of her dress.
Dougal suppressed an overwhelming urge to vault over the table and snap the man’s neck like a twig. The impulse was so strong that he sucked in a whistle of air. Whoa! What was this all about?
Roxie smiled and handed her menu to the waiter, who went on to the next guest.
Dougal unclenched his jaw, said something to the woman on his right while the woman on his left ran her fingers up his arm. This kind of attention made him uncomfortable. He glanced at Roxie again.
She looked like dessert in that flowing period-piece costume and she had her sleek black hair pinned up off her shoulders, making her look even younger and sweeter. No woman her age could be that innocent. Her ingenuousness heightened his mistrust, at the same time his gut told him, She’s a keeper.
This feeling unnerved him and that was reason enough to raise his guard, but it was more than that. It was the damned sexual attraction that scared him most. There was something so disarmingly appealing about this woman and being disarmed was not a position he ever wanted to be in again.
Their eyes met—wham.
He smiled, nodded.
She smiled back.
They held each other’s gazes for too long, and then they both veered away at the same moment like two back alley drag racers with not enough bravado to see their game of chicken play out to a conclusion.
A fresh surge of blood rushed his groin. Something inside Dougal stirred and it wasn’t just his dick. Something he really didn’t want to identify. He took a swig from the mug of beer in front of him.
A hand on his shoulder caused him to jump. He yanked his head around and saw the recreational events director, Lucy Kenyon, standing beside him. Lucy was a lithe brunette in her early forties. He’d checked her credentials as he had all of Taylor’s employees. She was recently divorced, her kids grown, and she was finally experiencing her lifelong dream of living in England. Like the rest of the staff, she was dressed in a costume representative of the Tudor era. “We’re ready to start the entertainment portion of the evening, Dougal.”
He put down his napkin, scooted back his chair and followed Lucy to the stage, feeling like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. This was the part of the assignment he dreaded. Dougal was loath to admit it, even to himself, but he was nervous. They’d practiced the skit, but this was the f
irst time he’d performed in front of a live audience and his childhood issues with stage fright rumbled to life. Suddenly he was eight years old again, playing an onion in a play about the four food groups.
The ugly memory came rushing back as he climbed the steps of the stage behind the red velvet curtain. Eight years old and he’d barely been able to see through the eyeholes in the rotund, papier-mâché onion. It had smelled like paste and plaster and body odor from the previous kid who’d worn it.
Before the play, Dougal’s mother had given him ginger ale to calm his stomach. The bubbly taste was sparkly sharp on his tongue, but he hadn’t been the least bit calmed. Inside the dank, mushroomlike costume, he could barely hear what the narrator at the microphone had been telling the audience, but he could hear their laughter. His palms had been sweaty, his heart knotted tight in his chest, his knees wobbled as the spotlight had fallen on him and he’d looked out into the sea of faces.
They were all laughing and staring at him, just waiting for him to mess up.
And mess up he had.
When it was his turn to extol the benefits of five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, he’d opened his mouth and puked all over his sneakers. He’d had an aversion to onions ever since.
Ah, good times. Good times.
Why had he agreed to Taylor’s insane plans?
For the money.
Oh yeah, there was that. Starting a private air marshal enterprise took a lot of time and money. A client like Taylor would cinch his reputation. It was time to face the horror of his oniony past and put it to rest once and for all.
“Find one person to focus on,” Lucy whispered, somehow sensing his stage fright. Was he that transparent? “Perform only for that one person and it will calm the butterflies.”
Right. Gotcha. He’d give it a try.
The sketch they were set to perform was a riff on the legend that Shakespeare left his second-best bed to his wife, Anne Hathaway. Anne had been eight years older than her famous husband. For entertainment purposes, Lucy was laughingly playing Anne as a sixteenth-century cougar. Dougal had the part of the Bard. The skit wasn’t remotely historically correct, but rather it was designed as a bit of raunchy humor to kick off the Romance of Britannia two-week tour and set the tone for the adventure the guests were embarking upon.