A Widow in Paradise & Suburban Secrets Read online

  What would it be like to be with a man other than Roger? The thought was both exhilarating and frightening.

  By the time they got to El Pelícano, Dannie was hot and cranky and completely turned on.

  At the desk Guy presented the certificate they’d received from the dance contest. “I called a few days ago and made reservations.”

  “Ah, sí! Our dirty dancers!” The woman behind the desk tapped on a keyboard. “Welcome back. I hope the weather is much better for you this time.”

  “Yes, let’s hope so,” Guy said, flashing his sexy little dimple.

  “Okay. Everything is ready.” The desk clerk pushed two keys across the counter. “Fourth floor.”

  Guy handed one of the keys to Dannie as they made their way to the elevator.

  “What do you think we should do first?” Dannie asked.

  “Let’s get settled into our rooms, and then we can meet by the pool to hammer out a game plan.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They exited the elevator, and both headed in the same direction. Dannie checked her key. Room 403. Guy’s room was probably right next to hers.

  Great.

  There would be no way to avoid him. She would probably be able to hear him breathing right through the thin walls. How was she going to keep her promise to herself of no hanky-panky when she could hear him breathing through the walls?

  “Well, this is me,” Guy said, stopping at a door.

  Dannie looked at the number—403.

  “This is my room,” she said. “Let me see your key.”

  Guy handed it over—403.

  “There must be some sort of mistake,” Guy said. “They gave us keys to the same room.”

  “Gimme that.” Dannie grabbed Guy’s key and dropped her suitcase. “I’ll be right back.”

  In the lobby she waited in line for twenty minutes behind a crowd consisting mostly of fat, balding men, all wearing blue T-shirts that said “Fishermen Have Bigger Rods.” Dannie shuddered at the image.

  They were a noisy group, telling jokes and punching one another on the arms. By the time Dannie reached the desk, she had a splitting headache.

  She slid the two keys across the counter. “We have a little problem. You seem to have given my friend and me keys to the same room.”

  The clerk tapped the keyboard. “The dirty dancers, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is your room, miss—403.”

  “Our room?”

  “Sí. Your room.”

  “You mean we only get one?”

  “Of course. You won only one contest, no?”

  “Yes. But we’re not a couple. We can’t share a room.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing? Your friend is, how do you say, muy guapo, no?” The clerk grinned.

  “Muy guapo?”

  “Very handsome.”

  “Yes, he is very handsome. But he’s not my boyfriend.”

  The clerk winked. “No one will tell on you.”

  Dannie felt her blood pressure rising to critical levels. “Can you please just give me another room? I’ll pay for it.”

  “I wish I could, miss. But the hotel is full.” She swept a hand toward the men in the blue T-shirts. “Fishing competition.”

  “You don’t have one room available?”

  “Not one. Sorry.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?” Dannie asked, realizing she was dangerously close to whining.

  The clerk shrugged and smiled. “Take it easy, amiga!”

  GUY WAS SITTING on his suitcase, leaning back against the door to room 403, when Dannie got back upstairs.

  “Uh-oh. What happened?”

  “Move.” She shoved the key into the lock and opened the door. Guy tumbled backward into the room.

  “Hey!”

  Dannie stepped over him. “Did you bother to read the fine print on that certificate?”

  “What fine print?”

  “The fine print that said we get one room. One.”

  “Oh. I must have missed that.”

  She glared at him. “Isn’t that convenient?”

  “Hey. Wait a minute. Are you suggesting I did this on purpose?”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Guy marched over and pinned her against the wall with his body, pressing his palm against the wall above her head. “Listen, lady. You’re not that hot. I don’t lie. And I don’t have to manipulate women to get them into bed.”

  Dannie’s heart pounded in her chest, as much from Guy’s proximity as from her residual fury.

  “Apologize,” he said.

  “I’m sorry you’re such a dolt.”

  “Very funny. Apologize.”

  “I’m sorry you’re such an ass.”

  “Apologize.”

  “I’m sorry you’re such a—”

  She never got to finish the sentence. Guy captured her last word with a kiss that sent lightning bolts ricocheting through her body. She couldn’t even muster a token resistance. She’d been thinking about this moment since they’d last kissed, that night in her bedroom.

  She and Guy clung to each other in the humid heat of the room, pulling ineffectually at each other’s clothes, which stuck to their bodies as if they were glued there.

  “We need to turn the air-conditioning on,” Dannie said.

  “We need to take our clothes off,” Guy said. He licked her neck, and if he hadn’t been holding her up, she would have melted into a puddle on the floor.

  “Guy…”

  He groaned. “Don’t, Dannie. Don’t even think about it. Just go with it.”

  “Go with it?”

  “Yes. You know how to do that, don’t you? Just put your misgivings aside for a minute. An hour. A day. We want each other, right?”

  “But Roger…”

  “Roger is gone. Lisa is gone. You’re not hurting Roger’s memory by being attracted to another man. Weren’t you ever attracted to anyone else while you were married to him?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you didn’t act on it because it would have been wrong.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what would be wrong with it now?”

  All these questions. Too many questions. And no answers. All she knew was that it didn’t feel wrong to be here with Guy. It felt right. Very right.

  He sensed her hesitation and kissed her—a long, soulful kiss filled with expectation and need. A kiss that held its breath.

  She sighed, and it was as if Guy had been released. He took her hands, entwining his fingers into hers. He had great hands. It was something she always noticed on men.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked softly. Hopefully.

  She nodded, and without a word he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

  “WOW.” GUY FLOPPED onto his back. “That was…”

  “Yeah,” Dannie said, trying to catch her breath.

  “Do you think we could slow it down a little this time?” Guy asked.

  “What? You’re ready to go again? So soon?”

  He rolled over and slung a leg over hers. “Visiting the temple isn’t so bad, is it? The amusement park might give you a quick thrill, but nothing beats a religious experience.”

  She smiled and kissed his chin. “Teach me, O Master of Love.”

  Three hours later Dannie lay exhausted on the floor beside the bed, wrapped in a sheet. Guy nibbled her earlobe.

  “Please. No more. My heart can’t take it.”

  Guy lay back and stretched his legs. “If you’d eat better and get a little exercise, we could do this forever.”

  “You mean we didn’t just do that?”

  “Not by a long shot. Did you ever hear Sting talk about Tantric sex?”

  “Please. Who hasn’t?”

  “Well…”

  Dannie struggled to her feet and crawled onto the bed. “Call me conventional, but four hours is enough for me. I have to ease ba
ck into this, you know.”

  “Hey, so do I.” Guy climbed up onto the bed beside her.

  “You mean to tell me with all the flirting you do, you haven’t slept with anyone else since Lisa left you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “No, I really haven’t. And Lisa was only the third woman I was ever with.”

  “In your life? You’re kidding me.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t take relationships lightly.”

  “So I’m number four?”

  “That’s right. What number am I for you?”

  “Uh. About that.” Dannie exhaled. “I don’t get you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re this gorgeous, sexy, smart, funny, completely strange guy.”

  “How am I strange?”

  Dannie looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Okay. So I’m strange. But I’m a pretty good guy when you get to know me. And I like you, Dannie. A lot.”

  “I like you, too. But you’re married. Just because your wife is missing, you still have one. And I recently lost my husband. I don’t even have a death certificate yet, so I’m not even officially a widow. I’m just…I guess I’m almost a widow.”

  “None of that matters. We can’t plan who we fall in love with.”

  “Whoa, there. Hold on. Who said anything about love?”

  “All right, don’t panic. What I meant to say is that we can’t help who we’re attracted to, and when. Neither of us has any real attachments. Why shouldn’t we see where all this goes?”

  “Because it’s distracting us from finding Lisa, and finding out what happened to Roger.”

  “It’s not distracting us.” He stroked her cheek.

  She pushed his hand gently away. “Yes, it is. We spent the last four hours…you know…when we should have been talking about what we’re going to do next.”

  Guy sat up. “I refuse to feel guilty for spending an afternoon doing something I’ve wanted to do since I met you.”

  “You have? I mean, you did?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Dannie allowed herself a moment to feel flattered, but then the practical side of her reared its head.

  “It was nice,” she said. “Very nice.”

  “Yeah? Like vanilla ice cream nice?”

  “Like New York Super Fudge Chunk nice. But we have to get going if we’re going to get anything accomplished today.”

  Guy sighed. “All right, already. I can take a hint. But I’m warning you, once you get religion, the lure of the temple is hard to resist.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A VEIL OF CLOUDS had drifted over the sun by the time the ferry reached the other side of the island, but the humidity hadn’t abated any. In fact, it seemed worse than it had that morning, which Dannie hadn’t thought possible. Could you have a hundred and ten percent humidity?

  Guy’s shirt was sticking to his back, but his hair was, as usual, perfect.

  “What kind of product do you use in that hair?” Dannie said with envy.

  “It’s my own creation. All natural,” he said. “I’ll let you use it when we get back to the hotel.”

  Great. Until then she was going to look like a bush woman.

  They disembarked the ferry at a wide whitewashed dock in the middle of nowhere. No taxis, no buses. Just a beat-up moped leaning against the ferry terminal. The sign above it read “M p ds for Re t.$15.”

  They stepped into the dim building. A big fan spun lazily on the ceiling, pushing the humid air from one side of the room to the other. Behind a counter someone was just closing a shade over the ticket window.

  Guy ran over and knocked on the glass. A young woman who could have been on the cover of Vogue opened the shade. Was everyone in this country good-looking?

  She flipped her long dark hair over one shoulder and smiled at Guy. “Sí?”

  He spoke to her in Spanish, but Dannie recognized the words taxi and bus. The woman shook her head. She pointed outside and said, “Moped.”

  Guy walked over to where Dannie sat. “It’s siesta time. If we don’t want to sit here for the next hour, we’ve got to take the moped.”

  The woman with the hair came out of a door next to the ticket window. “Moped?”

  Guy looked at Dannie, and she nodded.

  “Sí,” he said. “Moped.”

  They all walked back out to the side of the building, where the motorized bicycle stood. Or rather, leaned.

  “I don’t know,” Dannie said. “Have you seen how crazy the traffic is on these roads?”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Guy said. “Unless you want to take a long nap on one of those wooden benches in there.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “You sure?”

  Dannie nodded.

  Guy paid the woman fifteen dollars and swung a leg over the seat. He looked at Dannie.

  She made the sign of the cross and climbed onto the moped behind Guy. “Don’t orphan my children.”

  Guy puttered up the dirt drive from the ferry station to the island’s main road, into the flow of traffic.

  Their rear wheel shimmied as they picked up speed. The moped was missing a foot peg, so Dannie had to hold her left foot up. The bike also refused to go over thirteen miles per hour. Cars and trucks whizzed past them, honking.

  Didn’t these people know it was siesta time?

  Dannie wrapped her arms around Guy’s waist, burying her face in his back. If she was going to die, she didn’t want to have to witness it.

  “What town are we looking for again?” Guy asked.

  “El Cuello.”

  “The neck.”

  “The what?” she yelled into the wind.

  “Neck. That’s what El Cuello means.”

  Well, that made sense. When she and Lyle had been there last time, they’d been able to see the ocean on both sides from the middle of town. El Cuello sat on a very narrow stretch of land.

  They watched for road signs, but it was at least ten minutes before they found one. It was barely legible. El Cuello was either two kilometers ahead or twenty.

  Considering how her butt felt on the tiny seat as they bumped over the road, Dannie sincerely hoped it was two.

  A few minutes later the four-lane road narrowed to two lanes, and the traffic slowed. Dannie recognized the tiny police station on the right, at the edge of town.

  “Pull in there,” she told Guy. “That yellow shack.”

  He swung the moped into the dirt parking lot. “What’s this?”

  “The police station.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.” Dannie eased off the bike. Her left leg was numb from having to hold it up the whole time. She limped toward the building.

  “Don’t sneeze,” Guy said. “You might knock it down.”

  The screen door squeaked as they entered.

  A uniform-clad officer watched an American soap opera dubbed in Spanish on a small TV as he ate something out of a plastic container. The back of his wooden chair leaned against a wall. His feet were propped on his desk.

  He didn’t even look up when they walked in.

  “Excuse me,” Dannie said. “May I speak to Officer Palmas?”

  The police officer held up one finger, his gaze glued to the TV. A couple was arguing. They glared at each other as the background music climbed to a crescendo. When a commercial came on, the officer turned off the TV, shaking his head.

  “Bronson’s wife is pregnant, but it is not his baby,” he explained, throwing the plastic container into a trash can beside the desk.

  “It’s probably Slate’s,” Guy said. “They hooked up after Nikki’s party last month.”

  Dannie looked at him with her mouth open. “How do you know these things?”

  Guy shrugged.

  “I think it is Peter’s,” the cop said. “Alyssa has been secretly in love with him for two years.”

  “Yeah, but he had a vasectomy,” Guy said. �
�Remember? Last year he couldn’t make it to the town picnic because he was on bed rest.”

  “Oh! Sí! I forgot.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Dannie said. “But I’m actually trying to get some information about Roger Treat?”

  “Who is he?” the officer said. “Was he married to Nikki?”

  “No,” Dannie said, trying not to get hysterical. “He was married to me. He was…He drowned here in February.”

  “Ah!” The cop turned a dark shade of red. “Sorry.”

  “Is Officer Palmas here? I spoke with him on the phone several times.”

  “Wait one minute, please. I will see if I can get him on the radio.”

  He fiddled with a desktop unit that sat on a credenza, speaking into the microphone in rapid Spanish.

  Guy looked over at Dannie, his expression grim. He shook his head.

  The young police officer returned to the desk. “I am sorry, but I was not able to find Officer Palmas. If you wish to leave your name here, and the hotel where you are staying, I will have him contact you.” He pushed a blank pad of paper and a pen toward Dannie, giving her an apologetic smile.

  Dannie wrote down her information and thanked him before she and Guy went back out to the parking lot.

  “He was lying,” Guy said quietly when they reached the moped. “That was Palmas he was talking to on the radio.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dannie said. “We could have called him on it.”

  Guy shook his head. “I thought it would be better if they didn’t know I speak Spanish. We might learn more that way. Palmas will be back here in an hour, so we’ll come back then. In the meantime, I think we should do a little investigating of our own.”

  They hopped onto the moped and puttered another quarter of a mile, to the docks where Pedro the waiter had dropped her and Lyle off last time. Unlike the day after the hurricane, today the docks bustled with activity.

  Fishing boats motored in and out of slips, picking up bait and charters and dropping off catch packed in huge ice chests. The humid air reeked of fish.

  Guy parked the moped in a gravel parking lot above a small stretch of sand. They walked down a set of wooden stairs to a path that led to the docks.

  “Do you know who you’re looking for?” Guy asked.