Better Off Dead. Meryl Sawyer
Читать онлайн книгу.
of allowing a brief encounter with a stranger to bug him like this made him groan inwardly. Aw, hell, he didn’t know what to think. Since his first sexual experience at fourteen, he’d called the shots in his relationships with women.
Sure, a few had blown him off. It hadn’t bothered him, but Devon had managed to get to him, Chad realized, perplexing emotions coursing through him.
Why her?
SHELBY SOMETHING—an unpronounceable Hawaiian last name that Devon couldn’t say let alone remember—gushed wedding trivia nonstop from the office to the posh residential area near Diamondhead.
“Why do brides wear something blue?” Shelby had asked, then immediately answered her own question. “It symbolizes faithfulness.”
“Who, like, thought of wedding cakes? They began in England in the Middle Ages. People would bring small cakes to weddings. They would, like, pile them up high. Soon people frosted them, like together. Get it? The tiered wedding cake.”
Devon had smiled indulgently. Surely, if Shelby could remember so much trivia, the girl could be a bigger help with the details of wedding planning. No such luck. Shelby was content to be an airhead.
Devon had come in early, prepared to give Chad Langston the brush-off. She’d worked all morning and had made a lot of headway with the three upcoming weddings, thanks to her crash course on the Internet. Chad hadn’t dropped by the office, even though Eddie was in and scheduling party boat cruises in a voice so loud that it was difficult to concentrate.
“Mostly we, like, do fab weddings on Eddie’s yachts,” Shelby explained for the second time, “but occasionally we get a request for a private home. You know, an awesome place with an ocean view like the mansion we’re using Sunday evening.”
Devon nodded, resisting the urge to say anything. Shelby had an overly friendly attitude, like a puppy who wanted its master’s attention. She didn’t want to encourage the girl to become too friendly.
She feigned interest in what was known as the Gold Coast. It ran along the shore east of Diamond Head along Kahala Beach. Most of the elegant homes were behind custom-made gates. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of lushly planted grounds.
Devon hadn’t expected to fall in love with Hawaii, but from the moment she’d stepped off the plane, she was greeted by a sky so blue, so clear it made her heart soar and momentarily forget her problems. Diamond Head stood nobly in the distance, burnished purple by the angle of the sun. The heady scent of plumeria mingled with the loamy smell of the tropics and the bracing scent of the sea.
I’m going to love it here, she’d thought.
Shelby drove her Honda through a set of open stainless gates flanked by towering, stately royal palms. In the center of the enormous circular courtyard was a huge bronze dolphin spouting water into a reflecting pool. The modern home had a curved wall of glass to view Diamondhead and the ocean.
Devon tuned out Shelby as they left the car and rang the doorbell next to towering stainless-steel doors etched with a wave pattern. She noticed how the contemporary lines of the home had been softened by banks of ferns and brilliant pink bougainvillea.
A barefoot, shirtless guy in his early twenties answered the door. His spiked hair was bleached a blinding white by the sun. His skin was as bronze as the dolphin in the courtyard.
“Hi, Rory. Aren’t you, like, surfing today?” gushed Shelby.
From the looks of the home, Devon had expected a house-boy in some sort of outfit. But the rich were different. Apparently this was the owner’s son.
“I surfed already. I was up at the Pipeline before dawn.”
“Getting ready for the contest?” she asked in a breathy voice.
“Right.”
Shelby turned to Devon. “Rory’s surfing in the Rip Curl Cup. The winner, like, gets two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Wow!” Devon hadn’t realized there was so much money in surfing.
Rory pointed in the direction of an infinity pool visible off to the side. “He’s out there.”
Rory disappeared around a corner, and Devon followed Shelby through the dramatic black marble foyer where a dust mote would have had the good sense not to land on the pristine floor. They walked through a living room the size of a hotel lobby. What must be glass doors disappeared into the walls so the room naturally flowed outside.
“Ahoy, there,” Shelby called to the man on a plush chaise lounge with its back to them.
Ahoy? Sheesh, but this girl acted embarrassingly young. Devon wondered how she’d landed the job as the coordinator’s assistant. Obviously she wasn’t capable of taking over the coordinator position or Eddie would have promoted her.
“Ahoy? Shelby, you need to learn to be more professional,” called the man.
Oh, my God! Chad Langston. What was he doing here? Sunning himself obviously and toying with a handheld video game or perhaps a GPS.
Could this be his home? The Crockett Building was a modest office complex. It didn’t seem to be the type of place where a person who owned this mansion would have an office.
“I’m more professional, like, every day. Right now, I’m showing the new wedding coordinator around. Have you met Dev—”
“We met yesterday.” Chad deliberately glanced at her for only a split second, then turned his attention to Shelby.
He told Shelby, “Get Devon up to speed so the wedding on Saturday goes smoothly. I’m here if you need me.”
He settled back in his chair, pretending to be more interested in the gadget than her. No way was he going to hit on Devon. Let her come to him, he’d decided after his talk with Keke.
Devon told herself she wanted Chad to leave her alone, but a twinge of disappointment rippled through her. She tamped down the feeling, upset with the sensations he aroused in her.
Shelby led her across a broad sweep of diachondra that gradually dropped down to the water where a group of chaise lounges had been placed along the shore. Like holiday bunting, garlands of seaweed decorated the beach, a gift of the retreating tide. At the far end of the grounds was a lagoon where a black swan was swimming, barely rippling the water.
Now they were far enough away from Chad for Devon to question Shelby. “Is this Chad’s place?”
Shelby nodded and her dark hair fluttered across her shoulders. “Totally awesome, isn’t it?”
“Totally. What does Chad do?” She perched her sunglasses on top of her head.
“He owns lots of scuba diving shops and dive boats on, like, all the islands.” Shelby stepped closer and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “I’ve heard Eddie say Chad’s real money comes from underwater spying.”
“Spying? On whom?” Devon pretended to be consulting her notes in case Chad was watching.
“Like dead people. He goes underwater and looks for evidence. The family hired him in the Laci Peterson case.”
“Not spying. That’s underwater forensics.”
“Whatever.”
Fascinating, she thought. He would be an interesting man to get to know, but she didn’t dare.
From the chaise, Chad watched Devon, his eyes scanning each feature of her face. None was particularly remarkable but together, they were a stunning combination. She was pretty in an exotic cat-eyed way. Okay, he’d dated more beautiful women, but there was something about Devon, something elusive that called to him. He wanted her, plain and simple.
Be a hyena. Keke’s advice reverberated in his head. Be a friend first. See where that goes. Could be, if he came to know Devon, he wouldn’t like her.
Fat chance.