1. Theo
1
THEO
M ost intruders are all about breaking and entering.
Others, it seems, are all about sleeping and snoring.
“What the…?” I narrowed my eyes at the sleeping woman in my bed. I’m no stranger to having women in my bed—but usually they’re invited.
The woman wasn’t just dozing, she was so far gone that she looked like she was hibernating. She was curled up on her side in the middle of the bed with part of the duvet pulled over her midsection, in jeans with holes on the knees and a black tank top. Her long, blondish-brown hair was fanned out on the bed, so perfect that it looked like someone had styled it to frame her pretty face.
How the hell did she even get here? We were in the premiere bedroom suite on one of my yachts, two full hours away from shore.
I’d taken a prospective business partner and his wife out on the water in a last-ditch attempt to get him to finally sign the damn contract. Negotiations had been hellish, but there was no one who could customize a yacht like Ford Peterson, and I needed him to take my business to the next level.
When we’d talked about the excursion, he’d seemed right on the verge of signing. But nothing had gone at all the way I’d planned, and I’d ducked in here so I could have a moment alone to regroup and strategize in peace.
And instead I’d found her .
If I was Prince Charming and we were in some messed up fairy tale, I'd have left her sleeping.
But I'm not a Prince Charming, and this wasn't a fairytale.
I moved closer, reached for her shoulder, and?—
“Wha—?” The woman bolted up as if raised from the dead. “Who are you?”
First, her eyes went wide.
Then, her hands curled into fists.
“Me?” I frowned. “ I should be the one asking the?—”
“Help!” One of her tiny fists flew in the direction of my nose. “Get away from me, you freak!”
I stepped back, doing my best to avoid getting a bloody nose. This was the last thing I needed. I was minutes away from closing the deal of a lifetime, and now I had the she-devil version of Goldilocks to contend with.
Not content with trying to knock my teeth out, the woman jumped off the bed and started trying to claw at my face, her fingernails turning into knives.
“I’ll scream!” she shouted, flailing like a fucking lunatic. “Swear to God, I’ll?—”
“Fucking hell, lady,” I growled, my hands flying to her wrists. “Will you chill for a damn minute?”
“I will not chill,” she shot back, gritting her teeth as she stared me down. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll warn you, the man who owns this boat should be here any minute and he will?—”
The man who owns this boat?
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling, an exhausted sigh escaping my lips, and let the woman go. Not the smartest of moves—she could have taken the opportunity to go back to trying to stick her thumbs in my eyeballs—but she was so taken aback by my reaction that she only stood there.
“That’s right,” she said, some fake confidence filtering into her voice. “You should get out of here before?—”
“Before what?” I crossed my arms over my chest, right eyebrow cocked. “Theo Barnes—yacht owner and saint patron of trespassers—comes barging in?” I pointed at the cabin’s porthole. Outside, the sun bounced off the crystalline blue of the ocean. “Is he swimming all the way here? Maybe riding on the back of a shark?”
The woman’s jaw dropped.
For a moment, she forgot all about me and turned on her heels. She raced to the porthole and pressed her forehead against the glass, her wide eyes taking in the expanse of the ocean.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. “No, no, no.” She glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Where are we going? They hired me to do a photoshoot here this morning, but I was up all night editing photos from another project. I only sat down for like a second after I’d finished, but I was so tired I guess I just…”
My assistant had mentioned something about hiring a photographer—Max something?—to freshen up our marketing.
Did I need to make some adjustments to the job descriptions we were posting? The right applicant will be able to stay awake after completing the job and get off the fucking boat before it leaves the harbor. Disobedient employees in ripped jeans and tiny tank-tops will be disciplined at the boss’s discretion.
“Do you make a habit of napping on the job?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.
Was I baiting her? Yes. Did I want her to squirm a little? Also yes. I wasn’t about to let the fact that she was absolutely breathtaking cancel out that she’d committed a major faux pas on my time and my boat. The last thing I needed when I was fighting to land the deal with Ford was a gorgeous photographer messing up my afternoon even more.
“That’s none of your business,” Max snapped. “Now for the last time, tell me where this ship is going.”
She glared at me, beautiful and furious. She had guts, I’d give her that. Awake, she looked less like a princess and more like a feisty warrior queen hungry for battle. I couldn’t resist having a little fun with her.
“We’re heading to Barbados for the night and we’re already an hour and a half into the trip,” I deadpanned.
“No!” Max looked around the stateroom in a panic, like a caged animal. “I’m so screwed.”
She looked so genuinely horrified that I decided I’d toyed with her long enough. “I’m kidding. This is a four hour in-and-out cruise. We’re turning around now, and we’ll be back in by six.”
Her head turned so fast that I thought I heard something crack in her neck. “Wait, seriously? That line about Barbados was just you screwing with me? Do you have some kind of pathetic pirate fetish? Why would you do that?”
I didn’t actually have a great answer for that, although if she wanted to do pirate roleplay, I’d be more than willing to…
Tie her to my mast.
Plunder that booty.
Find her buried treasure.
I frowned. Okay, clearly my inuendo needed work.
I realized she was still staring at me, waiting for an answer.
So I went with the truth. “Because it was funny?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Toying with people is fun for you?” she shot back.
Toying with you is, I thought. Maybe it wasn’t the most gentlemanly impulse, but on a day like today, when everything I did had to be calculated and moderated for the sake of landing the deal with Ford, it felt like a relief to just give into impulse. And every impulse I had said it would be fun to play with Max.
Max grimaced. “Unbelievable,” she muttered under her breath. “Un-freaking-believable. I can’t believe Theo Barnes would let a jerk like you on his ship.”
I coughed. “About that…”
She held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I hope he throws you overboard.”
Just then, I heard footsteps approaching from down the hall. “Theo, darling? Theo, is that you?” The unmistakable shrill voice of Pam Peterson.
Ford’s wife, Pam, was the reason the deal had nearly fallen apart a dozen times. Why? She kept hitting on me. Openly. Unrelentingly. Without ever taking a single hint that I was definitely not interested. But every time I pretended to ignore another come on, she just got more blatant…and Ford got increasingly jealous, and increasingly less likely to sign the partnership papers—today or ever. I needed a way to convince him there was no way in hell I was a threat to his marriage… without insulting him or his wife in the process. It was rare moments like these when I wished I was a relationship type of person. Shit like this never happened to my friends who were blissfully coupled up.
Sleeping Beauty’s eyes widened in horrified understanding. “Wait. You’re Theo Barnes?”
I smirked. “Guilty.”
Her shoulders slumped. “There’s no coming back from this, is there?”
Pam’s steps were getting closer. Suddenly I had an idea. “I know a way you can make it up to me,” I said in a low voice. “Just follow my lead, okay?”
I stepped closer and draped my arm around Max’s shoulders, just as Pam stepped into the room, looking very inch the angry Florida trophy wife she was.
Pam stumbled to a halt when she saw us. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and Max, obviously displeased. “Well. What’s going on in here ?”