Shelter In The Tropics. Cara Lockwood

bag.

      “Can I help?” he asked, and watched her jump nearly a mile.

      “God, you scared me,” she said, pushing her oversize sunglasses up on her nose and flattening the other hand against her chest. “Where did you come from?”

      “Iowa,” he joked. “At least, that’s where I was born and raised, before I moved to Seattle.” She sent him a wry smile as she went back to her work with the cooler.

      “Here, let me.” He easily lifted the cooler, packed with ice and drinks, and she stepped back, a little surprised.

      “Uh...thanks,” she said, and he noticed she kept her attention focused on him. Good, that’s where it needed to be. “Just put it there.” She pointed to the stern, where a carved out little indention fit the cooler perfectly. He set it in. She hopped in after him and fastened straps around the cooler to make sure it didn’t fall overboard.

      “I’ve got snorkel gear if you need it...” she began, turning to one of the seats of the boat. She flipped up the cushioned top to reveal mounds of flippers, snorkels and diving masks.

      “I came prepared,” he said, nodding back to the dock. He hopped off the boat and grabbed his gear.

      “Oh, I see.” She glanced anxiously about, looking unnerved and clearly distracted, or she would’ve noticed he already had gear. She glanced at the sports watch on her wrist and then back at the hotel, as she kept one foot on the dock and one resting on the stern of the boat.

      “Where is everyone?” Tack asked, glancing around the empty boat.

      “We were supposed to have at least one more couple join us today,” she explained. “The others have already dropped out, which is unusual, but...it happens. Did you see anyone else in the lobby on your way out?”

      He shook his head. “No one in the lobby.”

      “We can give them a few more minutes,” she said, biting her lip. Then her phone dinged with an incoming message and she pulled it out of the back pocket of her shorts. “Dammit,” she murmured, and then she glanced up apologetically. “Sorry. I...uh...” She peered at the screen of her phone. “Just one minute.”

      She tapped her screen and then put the phone against her ear as she made a phone call. “Carol! It’s Cate. Are you sure they canceled?” She stood and anxiously paced the boat, putting a hand on her head and looking unnerved. “You’re sure that they canceled?”

      The intonation wasn’t lost on Tack.

      “Carol...if...” She stopped, listening. “Yes, but...maybe we should just reschedule the trip?” Tack, on high alert, listened in. She let out a long, defeated-sounding sigh. “All right then. Fine.” She hung up and angrily tucked the phone back in her pocket. Then she grinned at him sheepishly. “Looks like it’s just us.”

      “Don’t sound so disappointed.” Tack grinned, and Cate barked an uneasy laugh. He slung his mesh diver’s bag onto the floor of the boat and as he did so, brushed her arm ever so slightly. She jumped back and almost toppled onto the bench. He reached out a hand to steady her, and he could just make out her wide-eyed surprise behind her tinted lenses. Oh, yes, this would be an interesting morning, of that he had no doubt.

      “Uh...thanks.” She withdrew her arm and rubbed it, now looking anywhere but at him.

      “Can you get that rope, please?” She tried to be all business, but he could tell she was rattled. He hopped off the boat and easily untied the line holding them to the dock. He stepped back on board and gave the boat a shove with his foot as Cate kicked on the motor and took the boat out to sea. She handled the controls with confidence. The waves slapped against the bow as the ship moved across the green water, sparkling in the sun.

      “Where did you learn how to pilot a boat?” he called over the roar of the engine. Of course, he already knew the answer. He’d done his homework on Cate long before now. He already knew she’d grown up in a small town in Louisiana, near Cado Lake, known for cypress trees and a few alligators. While trying to track her down, he’d damn near interviewed every one of her relatives and nearly anybody else who’d ever known her.

      Her dad scraped by repairing boats, and probably took her out on the lake more than once. Her mother worked various waitressing jobs. She came from no money. Hers was a typical Cinderella story, if Cinderella tried to murder Prince Charming.

      Cate kept her attention on the water. “My dad,” she said. “Dad loved to fish. He taught me how to do both.”

      Tack already knew that. He’d interviewed the man, a tattooed sixty-four-year-old who drank beer for breakfast, cursed worse than a sailor and still ran a tiny little bait shop off the small, dirt turnoff for the lake. It had been a shock to his system trying to imagine the spoiled, greedy socialite living in the bayou. Her father, and everybody else he interviewed from her childhood, praised her as having a heart the size of Texas. Tack never could make sense of how she’d gone bad, except that money did funny things to people. Even nice people.

      Rick Allen had told him that she plotted to kill him because a prenup meant she’d get nothing if they divorced. His death was the only way she’d get out of the marriage with a single cent.

      Cate’s father had told him in no uncertain terms that he had no idea where she’d gone. Hadn’t heard from her since she’d disappeared and hoped she was doing well, wherever she was.

      Tack had assumed, given how drunk the man was by the end of the interview, that her daddy issues ran deep. Probably what made her so focused on squeezing her husband dry.

      “Your dad taught you?” Tack still couldn’t see how the old man managed it. Unless he wasn’t drinking so much then. “That must’ve been nice.”

      “Well, sure, but Dad always got so drunk he’d pass out, and I’d have to steer the boat back to the dock. What I really learned was how to handle a boat,” she said, without a trace of self-pity, which Tack found remarkable. Tack grew up on a farm in Iowa where self-pity was about the worst sin you could manage. Despite his better judgment, he found himself admiring Cate’s no-nonsense approach to her clearly less-than-stellar childhood.

      “You don’t sound mad about it.”

      Cate shrugged. “Just the way things were. Like my gran said, ‘You can cry about it, or you can get over it.’ And I never much liked crying.” Right then, Tack heard just the faintest trace of Louisiana in her accent, which in other times she so carefully tamped down. Before now, he never could imagine Cate fitting in down in the bayou, no matter the old picture her father had shown him of her in cutoff jeans and bare feet.

      Of course, this Cate before him, the one who kicked off her flip-flips now and stood barefoot in her boat, maybe this Cate could’ve come from the bayou. He could imagine her, maybe, walking barefoot down by the muddy lakeshore.

      This Cate reminded him of the girls back home in Iowa. Unassuming, no makeup, living on the family farm. It was the kind of girl he’d had a weak spot for since eighth grade.

      He saw her shift her weight, the deliciously firm muscles in her calves rippling ever so slightly. He imagined what they’d feel like wrapped tightly around his waist, and felt himself becoming aroused. This woman was a walking visa to the United States for a brave man and his family, and he couldn’t forget it.

      He rummaged around in his bag and dug out the waterproof camera and began clicking pictures of the resort. His mission today was to get as many of Cate as he could. He’d need some to send to his employer, to see if he thought the resemblance was as strong as he did. Granted, Mr. Allen had asked for a DNA sample, which Tack had yet to get, but in the meantime, pictures would be a start. He turned the camera toward Cate, and instantly she held up her hand in front of her face.

      “Not me! You don’t want me in there ruining your shots.” She laughed, but there was a hard edge to her voice, a warning.

      “But you’re the prettiest thing out here,” he said, and for a second she hesitated.