Smooth Sailing. Lori Wilde
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pitched forward. “You’re not drinking your drink.”
“It tastes a little weird.”
“Do you want me to get you something else?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Rick held up his beer mug. “A toast?”
“To what?”
“To seeing people in a different light.”
Why not? “To seeing people in a different light,” she repeated.
They clinked glasses. Feeling obligated, Haley took another swallow. What was that weird aftertaste? It was just supposed to be grapefruit juice, vodka and salt.
“And to a beautiful night.” Rick raised his mug again.
“To a beautiful night.” This time, she barely sipped the drink. Okay, she was definitely going to have to pour it overboard when Rick wasn’t looking.
She meandered toward the edge, but before she could get there, a woozy sensation hit her and she wobbled on her heels. Whoa, those salty dogs sneaked up on you.
“Are you all right?” Rick loomed over her.
Back off, dude. “I’m fine.” She didn’t want him to know she was feeling tipsy. “I just need to, um…go powder my nose.” And get away from you.
It occurred to her that she was spending the night running away from men. She knew that most women would love to have two guys vying over them, but Haley found it annoying more than anything else.
“Could you excuse me?” she asked, pushing her drink at him.
He curled his hand around the glass. “Sure, I’ll be waiting right here.”
Making sure to take careful steps, she maneuvered through the crowd. She longed to go home, but she couldn’t drive like this. Not with her head swirling. She’d go to the restroom, splash some cool water on her face and then go find Ahmaya and see if she was in any shape to drive them home.
Seriously, she was such a lightweight. A few sips of wine and a quarter of a salty dog and her knees were buckling.
Carefully, she made her way from the bridge to the main deck. The party was in full swing. People were dancing all over the place to The Red Hot Chili Peppers singing “Under the Bridge.” How appropriate. She realized that Jeb must have handpicked songs for the evening. Slick. What else would she expect from him?
“Bathroom?” she asked a woman she knew from the hospital.
“The one on this level is occupied, but I heard there’s an en suite in Jeb’s cabin on the lower deck.”
“Thanks,” Haley said. Wow, was she actually slurring her words? This was why she didn’t drink. She could not hold her liquor.
As she clung to the stair railing that led to the lowest deck, her head spun so wildly that she had to stop several times and take a deep breath. Finally, after what felt like a hundred years, she stumbled into the bedroom.
Jeb’s bedroom.
A strange feeling passed through her as she stared at the bed and vividly imagined herself in it with Jeb. Oh, knock it off. She had to get into that bathroom and put some cold water on her face.
She sank against the door, clicked it locked in case anyone else wandered this way. She needed privacy until the dizziness passed. After a minute, she lurched toward the bathroom door. Heat swamped her body. Her mouth was like a desert. And those damn stilettos were anchors on her feet.
This didn’t feel right. Sure, she was a lightweight drinker, but this…this was more than being tipsy. This felt wrong.
Her vision blurred. She couldn’t think. Help!
She heard a knock on the door.
“Haley?” It was Rick.
He was the last person she wanted to see.
The door handle rattled. “Haley, are you in there?”
She might not want to see him, but she was feeling very weird and maybe he could help her. She opened her mouth to answer, but belatedly, it occurred to her that Rick might have put something in her drink. The salty dog had a funky aftertaste and he’d stirred it before he’d passed it to her.
Had she been drugged? How naive was she to have trusted him?
Her heart thundered in her chest as the truth of it hit her. Rick was a predator prowling outside, waiting to pounce. Thankfully, she’d had the presence of mind to lock the bedroom door.
The bathroom was so close and yet seemed a hundred miles away. Screw it. She was going to lie right down here on Jeb’s bed for a couple of minutes, just until the dizziness passed and Rick went away, and then she’d go find Jeb and tell him what she suspected had happened to her.
Jeb would know how to handle that lowlife Rick. A charming playboy Jeb might be, but oddly enough she trusted him. Beneath that party-hearty attitude, he was a good guy. She had to admit that.
Satisfied with her plan, Haley flopped headfirst onto the mattress and that was the last thing she remembered.
THE LAST GUEST LEFT at 3:00 a.m., as the cleaning crew Jeb had hired swept down the deck. By the time he paid the cleaners, the caterers and the parking-lot attendants, he was so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open. The party had been a resounding success, but even in the midst of that knowledge, he was disappointed, because at some point during the night, Haley had slipped away without saying goodbye.
He’d been on the lookout for her, but hadn’t managed to see her again after she’d gone off with Mustache Rick. He’d found Rick, who was frantically searching for Haley, so he figured she’d given the smarmy respiratory therapist the slip, not him. Still, he would have liked one last conversation with her.
Never mind. He had other things to think about. Like getting home to Miami to see Jackie. He couldn’t believe it had been a year since they’d spoken, and he was eager to see her again and show her how much he’d changed.
He thought about his last conversation with Jackie, when she’d broken up with him. It had come as a shocker—because no woman had ever broken up with him. Jackie had been on her father’s research ship, the Sea Anemone, and he’d sailed up and tried to get her to blow off work and go sailing with him.
“Some of us work for a living, Jeb,” Jackie had said, clearly irritated with him.
“I work for a living,” he’d protested, giving her his biggest smile and an endearing wink.
“When was the last time you built something?”
Hmm, well, it had been over a year since he’d completed the Miami Beach condos, but everyone knew the Florida real-estate market was in the toilet. His strategy was simply to wait it out and have a good time while doing it. “I’ll be ready when the market turns around.”
“You have the luxury of waiting. Most people don’t, Jeb. You squander your time.”
“I don’t see things that way.”
“I do and I just don’t think this relationship is working. We’re too different.”
That comment had smacked him upside the head. “I can change.”
“Seriously? You come from money. It’s all you’ve ever known. You don’t really have to work. You’re a playboy at heart. I mean, c’mon, just look at the name of your yacht. Feelin’ Nauti. You summed yourself up quite neatly.”
“But don’t we have a lot of fun together?” he’d wheedled.
“Yes, that’s precisely the problem. All we do is have fun together.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he’d asked, puzzled.