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She was staring.
Shoot.
“I saw boats.” She pointed to the lagoon over his shoulder. “Two of those black inflatable dinghy things.”
He turned around, crossing his arms over his broad chest. That move pulled the shirt tight. Since she was an equal-opportunity kind of gal, she checked out his ass, too. Which was tight and firm, unlike hers. She definitely needed to take up paintball.
He shrugged and pointed to the dinghy-less, bad-guy-less lagoon. “There’s no one there now.”
“But there was.” She hated mysteries.
“It could be the Belizean police doing a routine drug check. They patrol up and down the coastline, and we’re only a few miles offshore.”
That sounded feasible. On her last visit to Cancun, back when she’d had vacation time, benefits and a nine-to-five job, she’d spotted AK-47–toting Mexican police patrolling the beaches. The hotel had assured her that was standard operating procedure, although she’d almost choked on her margarita the first time she’d spotted the patrols. She stared at the camera in her hands.
“I have photos,” she said.
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,” he pointed out. “But I’m happy to look at anything you want to show me.”
That almost sounded like a double entendre, but he said the words with a straight face, making it impossible to be sure. Instead, she focused on her camera and—damn it—its trip to the ground hadn’t done it any favors.
“The memory card’s gone. It must have popped out when I dropped the camera.”
And flown over the edge, she decided a few minutes later, on its way down, down, down for a tropical swim. Mason helped her look, but the card was nowhere to be found. Of course, since she was searching for a teeny piece of plastic in the great outdoors, her odds hadn’t been high to start with.
“I’m thinking I owe you more than a short stack,” he said with a grimace. “Now you’ve lost your pictures, too.”
This was where being prepared came in handy. “Not really. I had the camera set up to do time-lapse, and all the shots should have been transferred to my laptop if the Wi-Fi isn’t moving on island time.”
“Good to know,” he muttered, his eyes on the camera in her hands. “What were you shooting?”
“Not what you were shooting.” When he gave her a lopsided grin, she told him the truth. “Sunrise pictures. Romantic stuff for my wedding blog. Brides will love having their pictures taken up here. I’m shadowing a wedding later this week, and the bride already picked out this spot for her photos. They’re a gorgeous couple.”
She whipped open her planner and flipped to the section where she’d jotted down her notes for the beach wedding. There were certain shots she definitely wanted to make sure she captured, and she did better with a list.
“This is my bride and groom. He’s a hottie. My blog readers will love him.”
Mason took the groom’s picture from her. “This is your guy?”
“Uh-huh.” She’d been in correspondence with Julieta, the bride, more than once before she’d arrived. The Mrs. Guzman-to-be was a pretty blonde, while her groom had the Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome part down. He rocked a white linen suit in the photo Julieta had sent to give Maddie an idea of what they’d be wearing and, if he showed up looking like that, her photos would be outstanding. “What do you think?”
Mason snorted. “Not my type, sweetheart.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Well, Mr. Guzman clearly appeals to the future Mrs. Guzman, and that’s all that counts.”
“They here on the island already?” He returned the photo and she stuck it back in her planner.
“Not yet.” Which was both surprising and not. “Julieta’s dress is here—that’s the bride-to-be—but I haven’t actually seen them check in yet. Mr. Guzman runs some kind of import-export business and has stuff come up at the last minute all the time. Maybe he had a business thing. It must be nice to have a private plane and go where you want, when you want.”
“Maybe.” Mason gestured at her tripod. “You done here? Want a hand bringing this back to your villa?”
“A hand down the hill would be great,” she said, still thinking about her missing bride and groom. She’d been counting on shooting their wedding for her blog; if they were no-shows, she’d need to make alternative arrangements. “Maybe I’ll see if his brother has arrived yet. Ask him if Mr. Guzman’s plans have changed.”
Mason started breaking down her tripod. “He’s bringing family to his wedding?”
She shrugged. “Just his brother, Santiago, according to Julieta. He was planning to get to the island a few days before her, so she was hoping to pawn some of the prewedding tasks off on him. He should have arrived yesterday or today.”
She let him help her fold up the tripod, and then they headed toward the path that led back to the resort. Since the sun had risen, the lighting was no longer ideal, and she now had a date with her bed. A date that would be even better if Mason followed her home. No. He wasn’t a stray puppy. She didn’t get to bring him home.
He strode ahead of her, so she followed along, admiring the way his cargo pants bunched over his butt as he walked. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him—and she’d definitely take a rain check on those pancakes.
2
WHEN THEY REACHED the base of the hill, Mason called squad halt on the operation. Maddie had given him permission to lead her down the hill, and down the hill only, so he handed over the tripod and flashed her a quick salute.
She blinked at him, taking the tripod automatically. “Uh. Thanks.” Her gaze dipped to the coffee stain on his shirt, her face radiating embarrassment. “Sorry about that. And about scalding you.”
She turned pink as if he were actually bothered by a few ounces of hot coffee. He’d been shot at, pinned down and ambushed more times than he could count. Coffee was the least of his worries, although her blush was cute.
“No worries, sweetheart. See you around?”
“Pancakes,” she answered, sounding slightly breathless, and he couldn’t hold back his grin. God, she was fun. When she went left, he hung back. Partly just to watch her go because, hell yeah, he enjoyed the sassy swing of her hips. Maybe she was trying to drive him crazy. It was a possibility.
Mr. Guzman, his ass.
The groom-to-be in Maddie’s photo was Diego Marcos and he would be arriving precisely never. His reservation had been canceled, courtesy of SEAL Team Sigma. The possibility of Marcos’s brother showing up on Fantasy Island, however, was an unpleasant wrinkle that he’d need to alert the rest of the SEAL team to. If they didn’t have intel on where the brother was, they needed to get it stat.
And added bonus... If Maddie ever found out what Mason had done, he’d be on her shit list for more reasons than scaring the bejesus out of her.
He opened his hand and looked down. He’d taken advantage of her panic to pop the memory card out of her very expensive camera. He’d always used an inexpensive point-and-shoot himself, but then his usual model was a dead enemy target that needed documenting. Sunrises clearly required better technology.
Unfortunately, boosting her memory card might not have been enough. If she’d transferred pictures via the resort’s Wi-Fi, he had a bigger problem than the square of plastic in his hand.
By the time he’d made it back to their base camp, the prisoners were long gone on the Zodiacs, and the rest of the SEAL team was waiting for him. He’d take camping over five-star luxury resorts any day. The entire team, minus Remy, who was now somewhere between here and Belize, was present.
Gray nodded acknowledgment when Mason stepped into the campsite. Gray was one of the biggest SEALs Mason had ever met. The team’s standing joke was that Gray didn’t parachute out of the plane so much as he plummeted. Like a rock. Although he sprawled at ease on a pile of backpacks, there was nothing casual about the glance he raked over Mason. Blood stained his camo. He’d stayed with the injured Remy until the medevac lifted off.
Mason was last to arrive at the debriefing about to start. It was standard operating protocol to review every mission, identifying areas of concern where they could improve next time. The team sat in a semicircle, their attention focused on Gray. As soon as Mason dropped to the ground next to Levi, Gray reviewed the mission that they had just completed, beginning with their target’s arrival on Fantasy Island and ending with Remy’s medevac to Belize for emergency surgery. Since Gray’s maybe-girlfriend Laney Parker was a surgeon and she’d accompanied Remy on the flight, Mason figured his teammate had a fighting chance.
When Gray finished the medical update and Levi had confirmed Marcos’s handoff to the US Navy, Gray dropped a new bombshell. “We’re not done here,” he said.
“We get to vacation for real? Hooyah.” Levi leaned forward. “I’m borrowing your black AmEx, Mason.”
“Dumbass,” Sam said. Their field medic was a laidback Alabama boy, but his lean build and easy smile were deceptively mellow. He could kick butt with the best of them, and no one on the team swam faster or blew more stuff up. “He means you get to work overtime.”
Gray shook his head. “Real mature, Sam. And accurate. Our mission parameters have changed. We were charged with bringing in Diego Marcos, but now we’ve got a second target. Marcos has a brother, who operates as his right-hand man.”
“Would that be Santiago Marcos?” Maybe Maddie had it wrong. Maybe she wasn’t planning to shoot the wedding of a notorious drug dealer who, according to her, had invited his equally notorious younger brother to the celebration.
Gray eyed him. “Are you psychic? Or is there something else we need to know about? Levi already mentioned that you hit a snag earlier today.”
Maddie was definitely a complication. A beautiful, very alluring complication.
“We had a resort guest up on the hillside lookout spot.” The place had some froufrou name like Lovers Lookout. He didn’t think Gray needed to know that, or that the spot apparently starred front and center in Maddie’s bridal portfolio. “She had a camera.”
Gray scrubbed a hand over his head. “How long was she up there? Did she shoot the Zodiacs coming in?”
Yeah, but that was only the first problem in a long list. “The guest is Madeline Holmes. She’s a blogger, one of those girls who hangs with Ashley.”
Ashley waved a hand. “Maddie runs Kiss and Tulle. She covers destination weddings, wedding favors, wedding cakes, wedding dresses. Last month her blog had over two hundred thousand unique visitors.”
“In other words, any noun that can be modified by the adjective wedding,” Levi interrupted. Mason was willing to bet that Levi wouldn’t recognize a wedding blog—or a wedding anything—if it bit him on the ass.
Ashley made a face. “Pretty much.”
“Well, today she was covering sunrises.” He had no idea why a bride would want to hike up a hill at dawn in her dress for a few photos, but far be it from him to judge. “And she set up her camera yesterday to do time-lapse photography.”
“She likes to vlog,” Ashley said with a sigh. “And live post.”
Whatever vlogging was, he’d bet it was a security risk because Ashley made another face.
Gray cursed. “Give me options.”
“I snagged her media card, but she claimed she’d already transferred her pictures over the resort’s Wi-Fi.”
Ashley leaned forward. “I’ve been monitoring traffic in and out, but she’ll likely keep copies on her laptop. Unfortunately, our resident wedding blogger has been experimenting with time-lapse photography. Even more unfortunately for us, her photos got picked up by a national travel site.”
Ashley flipped her tablet around, exhibiting a series of sunrise photographs shot over the pier. The first half dozen shots were harmless unless you had a thing against waves and pretty colors. The next-to-last picture, however, was a problem. It showed a Zodiac shooting through the opening in the reef and heading toward the dock. Mason had a bad feeling that if he zoomed in, he’d see Marcos’s bodyguards bouncing over the water in that Zodiac. Worse, there was no sign of the Zodiac tied up to the dock in the next and final frame. The boat had disappeared in the thirty minutes between shots.
Gray nodded slowly. “We need to see what else she got.”
“There’s more,” Mason said. “Maddie mentioned she was planning on shooting a wedding later this week and the bride’s and groom’s pictures are a match for Diego Marcos and Julieta Ortiz. She’s been emailing Julieta and she expected them to show up yesterday. She doesn’t know their real names, but she knows their faces.”
Gray pointed to Ashley. “Have the resort notify Maddie that the wedding has been canceled.”
Ashley nodded. “Got it.”
“She also mentioned Santiago,” Mason divulged. He relayed what she’d told him about Santiago coming to the island to attend his brother’s wedding. “What do we know about him, and do we have confirmation on his current whereabouts?”
“He could have been part of the advance team we took out. I’ll reach out to command and see what they’ve got for us. In the meantime, no one breaks cover until we’ve got a bead on where Santiago is currently. Mason, you stick by Maddie’s side. Use the time to find out exactly what she has—or doesn’t have—on her laptop and to re-verify the identities of the other guests on the island. Make sure no one slipped past us, because if Santiago is here, he knows that Diego isn’t and that’s a problem.”
“Smash and grab on the laptop?” Levi stepped up like he was ready to volunteer.
“Do I need to define undercover for you?” Gray crossed his arms over his chest. “You steal or break her laptop, and she’s got a problem that becomes our problem. How much crime do you think there is on a luxury private island? The first people she’s going to point a finger at will be staff.”
“We could bring her in,” Mason suggested reluctantly. “Interview her. Or ask US Customs to intercept her on her return trip.”
If Maddie had had her camera trained on the lagoon overnight, there was a very good chance she’d captured faces. Given what even amateur photo-editing software could do these days, leaving any images in Maddie’s hands was a security risk. Put it together with the rest of her vlogging and... Diego’s brother could connect the dots. Plus, if Santiago was here, Maddie could ID him, and he’d bet Santiago had come undercover if he’d come at all.
Gray nodded, apparently coming to the same conclusion. “Worst-case scenario, that works. The customs boys can seize her laptop and go over it, although she’ll be asking questions.”
“Okay, then, let’s go with plan A. I’ll find out what she’s got. If she’s got anything.” For some reason, he wanted to play nice. After all, he’d already scared her once, and she’d almost hyperventilated on the spot. She was a civilian, not collateral damage.
Ashley examined her fingernails. “She’s here for another week.”
Good to know the timeline.
“I’ll make sure she didn’t record anything.” If she had, Mason would wipe whatever device it was.
Gray frowned. “Be discreet, okay? Scrub her media and shadow her in case there’s any blowback from Diego’s people or Santiago.”
Levi whistled as the meeting broke up. “You just scored bodyguard duty. Enjoy.”
Playing bodyguard wasn’t exactly the worst job in the world. He was all for sticking as close as possible to Maddie—up to and including getting naked. No. Wait. Resist that thought, sailor.
Ashley rummaged in her bag. “I’m helping, too.”
“Really?” Levi smirked, and even Mason recognized condescension when it stared at him. “How are you going to do that?”
Ashley pointed to Mason. “Penis angle.” And then she pointed to herself. “Girlfriend angle.”
“You think Maddie’s going to make Mason her new boy toy?”
Mason punched Levi in the shoulder when his teammate snorted. Sure, he was an introvert and no flirt, but he’d dated as recently as this year. He didn’t need Levi’s lousy dating advice. The guy had a different woman for each day of the week, and he seemed perfectly happy that way. But that wasn’t the way Mason planned on living his life.
“Read this.” Ashley shoved a magazine into his hands. The cover was one of those bright pink numbers with a too-perfect model. A brunette with spectacular boobs, her hair flying in an artificial breeze while she gave the camera a come-hither face.
No, thank you. “This is waiting room material.”
Ashley grinned at him. “Maddie has a serious magazine addiction. She loves the quizzes, so think of this as enemy intel. X marks the spot, big guy.”
He paged through the magazine. He’d been on the receiving end of intel more than once and it had never smelled like perfume before, or—he paused—scratch-and-sniff ads for tropical air fresheners. When he hit Ashley’s Post-it note, he stopped reading.
“You think I should take a quiz on how to be the perfect guy?”
Mason had four sisters. Surely that ought to qualify him as something of a girl expert? His jaw tightened. On the other hand, he’d also been married and divorced, so his credentials were rocky.
Ashley slapped his shoulder. “Read it. Then ask questions.”
Since Ashley had to be one of the most tenacious people Mason knew, he read. It was quicker that way. And she was right—it wouldn’t hurt to find out what it took to be a keeper guy. Mason’s sisters loved that crap. So did his cousins. A road map couldn’t hurt. He read the first quiz question.
You kiss her for the first time. After you break your lip-lock, you:
A) Tell her you’ve been fantasizing about kissing her for days—and that the reality is even better than the fantasy.
B) Whisper that she’s the hottest kisser ever—and you’ve got a list of other places you’d like to kiss her.
C) Praise her kissing skills and beg her to do it again just so you can be sure.
Jesus. What had happened to just kissing? “This stuff works?”
Levi ripped the quiz out and tucked it into the pocket of Mason’s pants. “Take notes and have fun, sailor.”
3
This girl might just have the best job in the world! I’m hanging out on a tropical island, the cocktails are free and hotness is a basic job requisite. Because did I mention the good-looking guys are everywhere? Yum. I even ran into a bona fide single guy yesterday and he’s got yours truly thinking that a vacation fling should be part of my plans. Fantasy Fodder—let’s call him FF for short—accidentally bumped into me when I was snapping you some gorgeous photos of the lagoon at sunrise (ladies, you’re totally going to want to do your wedding photos here, although I recommend a less obscene hour than the ass crack of dawn). Then he jumped right into rescue mode and kept yours truly from going over the edge of the cliff. So there I am with my very own white knight and rescue hottie, and he’s not even mad that I may have christened him with a venti white mocha. A guy with a sense of humor and strong, manly hands? Sign me up, ladies!
—MADDIE, Kiss and Tulle
THERE NEEDED TO be a fourth, hidden option for people who wanted to increase their odds of hooking up because Maddie wasn’t an A, B or C girl. Her generous coating of SPF-100 sunscreen—thanks, Mom, for the redheaded gene—and a blue-and-white-checked retro two-piece definitely didn’t fall into the string-bikini category, although the buttons marching down her hips were a sassy touch she loved. She also appreciated her curves, even if they didn’t always fit into a standard-issue bikini. There was a whole lot of her recently thanks to a post-layoff diet of wedding cake and favors. She needed to plan on buying new clothes or minimizing the sweets.
A mental image of Mason popped into her head. He’d be anything but sweet. Bad girl. Maybe she’d been single long enough to recover from her last disastrous relationship or maybe it was something about Fantasy Island itself, because the resort certainly encouraged her erotic daydreams with their hunky help. She’d posted about her hot man on a hillside early this morning. If she couldn’t get an orgasm from him, she’d at least get a blog post. So far, the yeas outnumbered the nays two to one in her “Would you have hot vacation sex?” poll.
Since it was the low season, Fantasy Island didn’t have many guests at the moment. There had only been two other women on the seaplane that had brought her here. Laney Parker had been using up her honeymoon reservation after her fiancé had ditched her, and Ashley Dixon had won a free getaway in some sort of Facebook contest. The low occupancy was undoubtedly the reason why Fantasy Island’s owners had been willing to fly her here free so she could blog about their awesome resort offerings.
This was her big break. If Fantasy Island bought banner advertising on her blog, she’d be able to keep the lights on in her condo for at least six more months...and having one high-profile client would attract others. Business was like dating. The more popular a girl was, the more guys lined up to buy her drinks and share their contact info. So far, her blog had been a wallflower, but she was determined that those lonely days were over.
And writing about the pool scene was certainly no hardship. The pool itself was all sleek curves. Private cabanas offered guests superb views of the sea, and staff moved discreetly among the loungers, offering fruit kebobs and Evian water spritzes. Ashley waved from a cabana. She wore an electric-pink string bikini and held a paperback that almost outweighed her.
Ashley shoved her sunglasses up on top of her head. “Are you here for the cooking lesson?”
Not intentionally, but it sounded like fun, particularly if it came with a side of Mason. She dropped onto the cushion beside Ashley, taking care not to slosh the mango margarita she’d acquired at the bar.
“I could be,” she agreed. “I like free food.”
Ashley nodded. “We’re making mango-raspberry crepes with honeyed goat cheese.”
Yeah, that sounded pretty good. “I’m in,” she decided.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, Mason strode toward the pool, and he was the cherry on the sundae. He wore black linen plants that clung to his muscular thighs as he moved. Instead of looking silly in the white chef’s jacket and hat, he looked in control. Confident. He’d rolled his sleeves up, revealing powerful forearms. She was almost certain she was holding her breath, damn it. He was just one guy. One really hot, supersexy guy. His dark gaze slid over her, stopped, and he nodded. She had no idea what that meant. Hi? Glad to see you? Wait, there’s the woman I almost knocked over a cliff? The man should come with a secret decoder ring.
Ashley sat up cross-legged and closed her paperback. “Do you think we have to cook in order to eat?”
Maddie would bet the answer to that was yes. Mason wasn’t the kind of guy you took advantage of, and while she hadn’t asked his policy on free lunches when they’d run into each other at the lookout yesterday, she could certainly venture a guess. While she stared, Mason started dicing mango with easy confidence. She was all thumbs when it came to knives. Mason...was not.
“He’s going to make us work for it,” she said with a petulant frown.
Ashley sighed. “You think he’s a hard-ass about everything?”
“Probably.” If she took her friend’s words at face value, she had to admit that the man certainly had an amazing butt.
“Remember the drinks menu,” Ashley said impishly. “You could take him for a test drive.”
The rumored drinks menu, she reminded herself. The menu existed. She’d spent far too much time flipping through the twelve laminated pages of drinks with sexy names like Leather and Lace and Kinky Sex. The question, however, was whether those drink names were really not-so-covert code names for naughty sex acts that could be requested from the staff or other guests. Laney Parker had certainly made a good case for the menu being fact rather than fiction. She’d hooked up with the resort’s super-sexy masseuse and, from her blushes, done some menu exploring with him. It was too bad the other woman had been unexpectedly called home when a new job had opened up for her at a local emergency room, because Maddie had questions. Like, could you really just point and pick? For some reason, the notion felt kind of slimy. “Do you really think Mason’s available for that?”