Chapter Seven
Turquoise waves crashed on the white sandy beach.
The scent of coconut sunscreen mixed with the salty ocean air as a warm breeze rolled off the water and floated over the cabana.
Rhys lounged on the chaise behind Jules and Abigail, uncomfortable in his swim trunks and Hawaiian shirt, as he scanned the private beach for problems.
There were none. This was a formality.
He would be useful if they hit up the night scene, but he didn’t think that was likely.
The women had each other, a butler on duty around the clock, and little interest in doing anything other than lying beachside, trying every drink that came with little umbrellas and fruit garnishes, and dining at Michelin-starred restaurants.
And as pretty and easy as the assignment was, Rhys was bored. Babysitting duty paid well, but nothing interesting would happen.
Abigail stretched her arms overhead and stood, tying a wrap around her waist. “I need a nap.”
“No.” Jules twisted toward her sister, pouting. Rum and curacao gave her words the slightest slur. “Don’t go in yet.”
“I couldn’t nap on the plane, and I’m sleepy.” Abigail slipped on her sandals. “Make Rhys sit with you.”
Jules tossed an arm over her shoulder to the cabana directly behind their lounge chairs. “He doesn’t want to sit in the sun.”
“You’re not wrong.” He pushed up his sunglasses.
“See?”
Abigail locked a hand on her hip. “Oh, come on, Rhys.”
“You know I’ll sit wherever’s necessary.”
“The sun is necessary.” Abigail trounced over and tugged his hand. “She’s heartbroken. Don’t make her sit alone.”
“I am absolutely not,” Jules countered. “I thought we’d established that.”
He’d never seen anyone rebound from a relationship faster than Jules had from her ended engagement.
He wasn’t there to analyze her. Except that was all he’d been doing since he’d picked her up that morning.
He hadn’t asked what happened with Mason and his lawyers.
She didn’t volunteer information. This morning, she’d complained about the ungodly hour but looked gorgeous, as always.
Not a puffy eye or why-me wonder in sight.
Abigail shifted her sunglasses into her hair, leveled him with a glare, and mouthed, “Sit with her.”
Jules popped off her lounger, mai tai in hand, and moved under the shade of the cabana. “I’ll sit with Rhys.” She extended her long legs on the chaise next to his. “Go take a nap, Abs. Rhys and I are going to drink mai tais.”
“Nope.” He lifted his nonboozy drink.
“Be nice to her.” Abigail arched an eyebrow before leaving.
He watched Abigail’s sandals spit sand as she walked toward their bungalows. “Why doesn’t she think I’m nice to you?”
“You’re very business-y.”
“I mean, yeah. That’s why I’m here.”
“Sloane tried to sell me on the idea you could be my rebound guy—”
He snorted. Something else entirely moved through him that he didn’t give a name to.
“I don’t mean in real life. You know what I mean. Leak a salacious story about a tryst with my bodyguard. There have been rumors about us forever. You know Sloane. She wants to fight fire with fire.”
His throat tightened. They didn’t need to jump into Sloane’s ideas. The woman was a master of PR, but Rhys didn’t like her games. “Yeah, I know Sloane. She wants to fight fire with a flamethrower and a hose of gasoline.”
“That sounds like her.”
“And I heard her back at the hotel,” he admitted.
“I would have asked you first.”
“ You might have. Sloane?” He shrugged. “I don’t think she would have.”
“She’s not that bad.”
He snorted again. “You act like I don’t know Sloane Ellis.”
“You should order a mai tai.” Jules settled back against the lounger and pushed her sunglasses into her hair. “I can’t day drink by myself.”
“Can’t you tell?” He gestured to the water and beach and his fruity-looking drink. “I’m working hard here, Jules.”
She twirled the pineapple garnish. “Working on a vacation, Rhys .”
“ You’re on vacation. I’m working.”
She slipped the sunglasses back onto her nose and stared at him over the fruit. “Whatever happened to whatever the client wants?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She sipped her drink again. “I could have sworn you said that to me before.”
“Whatever the client wants?” His lips pulled down. Maybe she was tipsier than he realized, because they’d had one huge disagreement in their past that would forever haunt them. “That doesn’t sound like me. Must be another one of your bodyguards Sloane wants to set you up with.”
“You’re the only one for me,” she said, lips wrapped around a straw.
Jesus Christ, he needed something else to look at.
Rhys scanned the private beach. There wasn’t a tourist in sight.
No one paid attention to them, and he guessed that was the point of spending what she had on this resort.
Not even the hotel staff acknowledged that the Jules Lowry was staying in one of their bungalows.
The people who worked here had probably grown immune to the rich and famous, similar to how he was immune to the people he was assigned to protect.
Though none of his clients were like Jules.
The butler assigned to their seaside cabana returned with a tray of fresh drinks, another mai tai for Jules and another mango-pineapple juice for him.
She crunched on the pineapple garnish from the empty mai tai glass and swirled the fresh one, mixing the yellow and orange liquids. “Did you know?”
It only took a second to decipher the abrupt subject change. “No.”
“Do you think I should have?” she asked.
“No.”
She sighed into her drink. The ice clinked as she tipped the glass back and sipped from the sugar-coated rim. “You would have known if you were me. You know everything. You see everything. You figure it out. What’s it like to be able to…” She gestured to the water. “Know everything?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“No, you just remember it. I bet there was something I saw and didn’t put two and two together.”
Was this what Jules and Abigail discussed over mai tais? He wanted no part of rationalizing Mason or Monday-morning quarterbacking the fallout. “I’ll go catch Abigail. Bet she’s not inside yet. Probably looking at the plants and flowers, snapping a thousand pictures along the way.”
“No. Forget it.” She spun the pineapple garnish in the glass. “Did you ever think we’d be someplace like this when you pulled me out of that frozen, falling-down barn?”
A chill skirted down his back, much like the day he’d rescued her.
Every nerve in his body had been on high alert that cold winter afternoon in Montana.
The glaring sun on the beach was just as hard to deal with as the sun’s glare reflected off the acres of ice and snow.
The old wooden barn had shown no signs of life.
No clear path in. No footsteps pressed into the snow-covered ground.
He hadn’t thought they’d find Jules Lowry alive, and when he saw her, curled in a ball, half covered in hay and sawdust, her lips blue, the neural connections in his brain rewired.
Those few seconds were the only ones in his entire life when his brain glitched.
The only time he couldn’t recall with precise, picture-perfect, high-definition detail every single second.
He’d never admitted that to anyone. He didn’t have to.
He knew every moment leading up to finding her and every second after he realized she was alive.
“No.”
“One-word answers don’t make for great conversations,” she said.
He watched the waves. This was the rum and the sun asking questions.
Jules didn’t ever talk about what happened.
“I never thought I’d see you again.” After he’d tracked her down, his job was done.
But the powerful Lowry family had other ideas, and in the end, they led him to a gig where he was on call for one of the most famous women in the world.
“Surprise.” She laughed. “Here we are. On a honeymoon.”
Yup, the sun and the alcohol were catching up with her. He grabbed the menu off the little table between their loungers. “You could use lunch.”
“We had lunch already, and I’m not hungry.”
“Then dinner.” Flying through the time zones to St. Barts had thrown off their day.
“Too early for that,” she countered. “Plus, we have dinner plans.”
“We’ll call it predinner. I’ll eat too.” He blocked her protest with the flip of the menu. “It’s the only way we’re staying out here.”
“Bossy.”
“Not the first time you’ve said that.” He flipped the menu again. Shrimp. Scallops. Sashimi. The closest thing to carbs was the deep-fried tempura and fish tacos.
Jules sighed into her drink. “Maybe I should convince Abs to go to the spa. We could do a couples massage. I bet there’s a honeymoon special—I bet they’ll come to the bungalow. So romantic. Me and Abs.”
He flagged down the butler. “An order of fish tacos. Fries on the side.”
“I’m on my honeymoon,” she told the butler. “Alone.” She gestured to Rhys with her half-empty mai tai. “Sort of. Another mai tai, please?”
Rhys mouthed, “Water that sucker down,” over her head.
“Did you say something?” she asked as the butler left.
“Nope.”
Jules nibbled on the pineapple. “I appreciate what you said in the hotel room.”
He’s not worth your tears. Rhys didn’t know where that advice had come from, but he wasn’t wrong. The idea that someone could be engaged to Jules and not worship the ground she walked on didn’t compute. Hollywood was like an alien planet. Nothing made sense.
“Any other nuggets of wisdom you want to share?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Back to the one-word answers again, huh?” She waited for him to say something else but didn’t hold out long. “Fine.” She slugged back her drink. “Don’t say anything when you’re probably the one person who would tell me the truth.”
“Sloane would tell you the truth.”
Jules snorted into her mai tai. “Not always.”