Rub It In. Kira Sinclair
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to plan, wouldn’t ever be again.
SIMON FOUGHT THE URGE to grab the first thing and throw it at the door when a loud knock blasted through his office. The scene he was writing wasn’t working and he couldn’t figure out why. Frustration rode him hard and probably wasn’t helping the situation. Neither was the bustling noise that even here, behind the closed door of his private office, couldn’t be disguised.
The staff was happy at the prospect of having two weeks off. Frankly, he was happy to see them leave, at least for a little while. Having the place virtually to himself was going to be a godsend.
He was months behind on the deadline for his current manuscript. It was so bad that he’d actually unplugged his phone and uninstalled the mail program from his computer to avoid email from his editor and agent. If he didn’t finish this thing in the next two weeks he could probably kiss his career goodbye. Again.
Thanks to Courtney’s betrayal three years ago, the resulting plagiarism scandal and his fruitless attempts to prove the work was really his, his career had already dangled by a thread once. He really didn’t want to go through that again.
Île du Coeur and Escape were supposed to have provided him the space and seclusion to rebuild his career. Instead, they’d both become a huge time-suck.
Buying the place had seemed like a brilliant idea. He had the capital to purchase the island, and the resort would provide the necessary revenue stream for upkeep. A manager should have taken the responsibilities off his shoulders, leaving him free to lock himself inside his office to write.
Should have. Somehow things hadn’t exactly gone the way he’d hoped.
The problem was that not a soul on the island—not even Marcy—knew who he was. And he liked it that way. It protected his work. He wrote under a pseudonym and always had.
He’d wanted a clean break from the life he’d left behind. Wanted to start again and pretend the entire affair had never happened. Unfortunately, it was difficult to forget being betrayed by someone you loved.
That sort of deception tended to color your opinion of people. Always making you wonder who was going to stab you in the back next.
“Simon!” Marcy’s voice exploded through the wood of the door along with the rattling of the knob that he’d locked for just such an occasion.
Knowing from experience that she wouldn’t leave until he listened to her, Simon minimized his documents, brought up a gaming program he used to make everyone think he was just wasting time in here, and walked across the room. Yanking open the door, he lounged inside the jamb, one arm stretched across the gaping area so that she’d either have to stay on her side of the door or duck underneath his arm. She wouldn’t do that. One good thing about Marcy—she avoided coming into contact with him at all costs.
In the beginning he’d been happy. The last thing he had time for was a romantic complication with his manager. She was there to work and make his life easier, and from his experience, mixing business with pleasure rarely made anything easier. But the more she avoided him, the more he became aware of her deliberate distance. A distance that made him want to ruffle her feathers by pushing against the boundaries she’d erected. It was pointless, but he couldn’t help it.
Even now he inched his body closer to hers, crowding into her personal space just to see her spine stiffen. The infinitesimal shuffle backward was rewarding, especially when she stopped it midway, consciously determined not to let him fluster her.
A grin tugged at the corners of his lips but he wouldn’t let it grab hold. Instead, he asked, “What do you need?”
She raised her hand, a sheaf of papers fluttering with the force of the motion. “We need to go over everything before I leave tomorrow. I sent you an appointment by email.”
“I uninstalled the program.”
Her eyes widened before narrowing to glittering slits. He loved it when Marcy got mad. Her blue eyes sparkled with a passion that made the muscles in his stomach tighten. She reminded him of a pixie; in fact, he almost hadn’t hired her because she looked as if a good stiff breeze could knock her on her ass. But beneath that tiny frame was a spine of steel and the heart of a drill sergeant. She was good at what she did, if a little too organized and into unimportant details for his liking.
“Why would you do something stupid like that?”
Simon shrugged, not caring that she’d just called him stupid. It was by far the least offensive term she’d used for him in the past two years.
“Because I’m avoiding someone.”
“Well, you can’t avoid me.”
If that wasn’t the most obvious statement of the year he didn’t know what was. He chose to let the softball setup she’d just given him slide by.
“What do you mean before you leave? Did I know you were going to be gone tomorrow? Isn’t the construction crew supposed to be starting? You can’t leave until you’re sure they know what they’re doing. I don’t have time to deal with them, even for a day.”
Marcy shook her head slowly, the slick blond strands of her ever-present ponytail whipping behind her. He watched the rise and fall of her chest as she took a deep breath, held it and finally let it go. As chests went, hers was … fine. He tended to prefer big-breasted women with a huge handful he could grab hold of. Although it was hard to tell where Marcy was concerned. Despite the fact that they worked in a tropical location and the dress code was fairly relaxed, she insisted on wearing business suits when she was working—which was always.
He’d decided that the slacks, skirts, blouses and tailored jackets that still somehow seemed a little too roomy over her body were her personal armor. He just hadn’t been able to discover what she was hiding from. At first he’d wondered if it was men in general. He worried maybe she’d been attacked. But as he’d watched her dealing, smiling and, hell, almost flirting with their male guests over the years he’d decided that couldn’t possibly be it.
And while she hadn’t taken a lover in the past two years—at least not one that he was aware of, and he knew everything that happened on his island—it wasn’t for lack of offers. If she hadn’t said yes to anyone, it was because she hadn’t wanted to. Marcy McKinney was definitely the captain of her destiny and knew exactly what she wanted at all times.
It exhausted him just to think about that kind of structured existence.
“I’m not leaving for the day.”
“But you just said you were.”
“No, I said I needed to go over this—” she waved the papers again; now that he looked at them, the stack appeared rather large … and the type on them awfully small “—before I leave tomorrow. I’m taking two weeks’ vacation.”
“The hell you say.”
“We talked about this, Simon.” He heard her warning tone, but chose to ignore it.
“I don’t remember you mentioning you were leaving these two weeks.” Although it was possible he hadn’t been paying attention to her. He did have a habit of tuning Marcy out when she spoke. But it was usually because whatever she was saying wasn’t important to him—at least not more important than the other thoughts flowing through his mind.
He’d learned early that pretending to listen and nodding appropriately were usually enough to keep her satisfied. That way, they both walked away with a smile. Win, win.
“I most certainly did. We talked. I sent you reminders. Hell, I even went on your computer and blocked the days out on your calendar.”
“You went on my computer?” A nasty mix of anger, disappointment and betrayal burst through him. It was a knee-jerk reaction, the result of what Courtney had done. Not only had she stolen his work, she’d destroyed every speck of evidence that it had ever existed on his computer. She’d ruined his backup hard drive. She’d left him nothing to fight with.