371Chapter 1
Sing it With Me Now, "A Three Hour Tour..."
Rose Mary tilted her head back and soaked in the tropical rays, the UVs warming her skin slathered in SPF 60. She wouldn't get much of a tan but that wasn't going to stop her from enjoying the sun and water. It was about the experience of the islands, the atmosphere of relaxation and luxury, the showing off for the majorly hot guy acting as first mate to the captain of this pleasure cruise. Ah yes, vanity and hormones are a bad combination in a bikini.
"Is he looking?" Rose Mary asked out of the side of her mouth to her best friend lounging beside her on the deck of the sail boat near the prow. They had confiscated for their use a cushioned bench seat that probably could have sat four people if they hadn't been sprawling out territorially. Tana flipped her long dark hair with a shake of her head.
"Of course he's looking, Rose. Who wouldn't look at us?" she snorted, making a perfectly valid point. The two girls were no trial to stare at; a perfect study of contrasts. Where Tana was tall and dark, her Native American heritage apparent in every perfectly tanned feature, Rose Mary was petite and blond and the ultimate in pale, peaches and cream complexion. Rose Mary opened her eyes to the barest slits and tried to watch the cute sailor dude. He caught her looking and grinned.
"We're pathetic, aren't we?" Rose Mary murmured to her friend. The first mate was out of her line of sight again, attending to some necessary rigging.
"You know it," Tana responded, deadpan. Which lasted about two seconds before they both burst into giggles over to silliness of their conversation.
"Shh!" Rose Mary hissed, "We sound like thirteen year old idiots."
"Oh right," Tana agreed, sitting up and spreading her fingers out in front of her in a mood dampening gesture, "Be cool. Be cool." This only sent Rose Mary into a fresh bout of giggles.
"Act your twenty-one years woman!" Tana instructed then promptly crumbled into her own set of sniggers.
"Sorry," said Rose Mary, sitting up and leaning over to whisper to Tana, "it's just that-"
"Drinks, ladies?" interrupted the first mate, who had almost magically snuck up behind them toting ice cold soft drinks. It wouldn't have been quite so startling to the girls if he hadn't used the opportunity of their preoccupation to touch a freezing cold can to each one's neck.
"Wah!" they shrieked in unison.
"Didn't mean to startle you," he lied, impish lopsided grin playing across a set of lips so full he looked like he may have been stung by a swarm of bees. His warm brown eyes twinkled mischievously as he dropped himself into the seat between the two friends. He couldn't have been much older than them, maybe only twenty-two. A lock of light brown hair streaked blond by the sun and salt air fell free from his short ponytail and over one eye. The wavy hair, barely reaching to his lean corded shoulders in length, looked lazily wind-whipped and the effect was nothing short of sexy.
"Uh-huh," Tana mused dubiously, "Whatever." He smiled at her and was rewarded with a self-deprecating snicker.
"Thank you," Rose Mary said, taking her soda from him. He turned his smile from Tana and to her. He looked a little too pleased to have the girls on his boat, and mostly to himself, for the afternoon trip they'd paid for. All the other passengers sharing the boat for the afternoon were couples in their mid-forties.
"You're most welcome," he winked, "So what brings such fine ladies to the Polynesian islands?"
"Uh… the beaches?" ventured Tana as though she'd just been asked a trick question. Sailor-boy blushed at being called out on such an obvious pick-up line. The combination of his rising color and handsome tan caused Rose Mary to take pity on him.
"We're here on vacation," she said, stating what any idiot could observe, "We decided to spend the final week of summer break basking in the glorious warmth of the islands before returning to the stresses of university life. And yourself?" He smiled appreciatively both at her effort to carry on a conversation no matter how droll, and the revealing nature of her bathing suit top. It didn't matter much to him that Rose Mary's cleavage was far less impressive than Tana's: cleavage was cleavage and as a man he felt obligated to stare at it.
"Well, I work here," he teased. Rose Mary rolled her eyes. So like a man to tease her for the very conversational fault she'd just graciously overlooked in him.
"Yes," Tana interjected smoothly, not missing her best friend's eye-rollage, "But what are you, an American, doing working on a boat here?" He turned his head and smiled at Tana's ample breasts. To give him some credit, he was at least trying to be subtle about it.
"Oh, well," he explained, all too happy to be talking about himself and have the chance to impress the ladies, so to speak, "I came down here last summer with some buddies of mine and-"
"Kevin!" the captain barked at his first mate. The flirtatious sailor jumped to his feet at his boss's bidding.
"Sorry," he apologized over his shoulder, "I'll finish telling you later." The girls smiled sympathetically at his retreating form.
"That was interesting," Tana commented as she popped open her can of pop and took a long swig, her thick, well-shaped eyebrows drawing slightly downward. Rose Mary knew her friend was talking about the offensive staring at the boobage problem Kevin seemed to have.
"You know," she considered, "I suppose it's fair turnaround considering that I'm totally scoping out his fine, tight little butt right now." Tana glanced at Rose, the storm clearing from her high cheek-boned face.
"You are so bad," she accused enviously. Rose Mary laughed, in part because she rather obviously was not staring at his butt as his butt was not currently within view.
"You love me," she said monotone.
"You know it, girl," Tana replied. This instigated another round of cheerful laughter - restoring their good mood - that was interrupted by the arrival of the final passengers and the promise that in just a few moments they would be sailing out blissfully into the afternoon heat.
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Olivier pretended not to eye the tall dark beauty and her petite blonde friend. Open as his relationship with Brielle supposedly was, he was not quite prepared to deal with her wrath should she suddenly come to the realization that she was not the only woman worthy of his attention in a hundred yard radius. That was part of the game, you see, to call it "open" in order to prove that her hold on him was so strong that he simply had no interest in anyone else. And so that she was free to flirt as she pleased. If he hadn't figured it out before this trip, he'd certainly gotten the message after Brielle had nearly castrated him for collecting the phone numbers of the stewardesses on the plane flight here. He was not keen on the double standard and fully intended to put an end to the charade once they returned to Paris. But until then he was stuck with the woman and didn't want to make things any more unpleasant than they had to be.
Though maybe he could risk a quick glance at the girls as, at this moment, Brielle was ever so slight preoccupied with flirtatiously requiring the first mate's help to embark the elegant sailboat they were all sharing. Technically, he should have been staking his territory against the obviously interested first mate who was currently giving Brielle the once, twice, okay three times over. Not that one could blame the younger man, what with the way Brielle deliberately extended her legs to show off their shapeliness, walked as though her sizable breasts led the way, and in general moved like she'd spent her entire twenty-eight years of life perfecting the use of her body. It made most men drool on themselves. At first. But he'd been dating her for a few months now. In Olivier's opinion, if the first mate wanted her, he could have her. Take her off my hands, I beg of you. Those girls already on the boat though... They looked a little less closely related to harpies.
"Olivier!" cut in a snappish voice. Damn! He'd been caught. It was going to be nasty comments and groveling for the rest of the afternoon. With an exasperated sigh, Olivier hopped onto the deck and followed his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend as she hunted down a spot to roost. If fate had pity on him it would wash Brielle out into the sea in a freak tropical storm. No joke.
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"Please tell me you see him," Rose Mary demanded of her friend. Tana's gaze was so fixated on the newest passengers that her facial expression barely registered that she knew she'd been asked a question.
"Is this a pop quiz?" Tana asked in a reasonable semblance of disinterested monotone, "Because I'm guaranteed to ace it." Rose snickered politely, her attention given over too fully to the undeniably attractive French man who had just boarded the boat after what was obviously his girlfriend. Straight dark hair fell to his chiseled chin and framed grey eyes under thick, defined eyebrows. His shapely lips twisted expressively, making no disguise of his annoyance with his girlfriend for snapping at him shrewishly. Yet, beyond all that was the way the man moved. He strode about with a confidence that bespoke purpose and the ability to overcome any challenge before him. The edges of his open shirt fluttered out from his lean torso as he walked.
"Quickly," Rose Mary demanded, "I need an adjective."
"Hot," Tana obliged.
"Nope," Rose discarded the offered word.
"Sexy."
"More intense than that."
"Mind-blowingly gorgeous," Tana tried again.
"Closer," Rose conceded.
"Super-sexy-fine-delicious-expialadocious?" ventured Tana. Rose Mary considered this one for a moment, wobbling her head from side to side in apparent thought, a faint whine humming in her throat.
"That'll have to do," she finally allowed, a small smile turning up the corner of her mouth.
"Poor Kevin the Creepy Ogling Sailor," bemoaned Tana, "Loved and discarded by us so quickly." Rose Mary giggled.
"Who said anything about discarding Kevin? Or loving him for that matter?"
"Good point," Tana admitted, "I am obviously jumping ahead of myself here. Especially considering that French Lover-Boy appears to be taken and can never be anything more than simple eye candy."
"Ah, but what fabulous eye candy he is," Rose Mary sighed dramatically.
"Can't argue with that," agreed Tana. It was at that moment that the girlfriend of said eye candy noticed the two American girls and gave them a death glare like none they'd ever seen before. The twenty-something French woman was everything the stereotype demanded: short, dark, perfectly styled hair and a bikini and chino shorts cut to the height of fashion. Her body language seemed to scream, "don't mess with me because I put you to shame."
"Am I allowed to flip my middle finger at that woman?" Rose Mary mused aloud.
"Only if you use both hands," Tana answered.
"That may not be enough to adequately express my burning hatred," muttered the blonde. Tana would have laughed except that Brielle's death glare prevented her. That glare was colder than the sudden wind coming in off the water.
A/N: Okay, this is kind of an old story of mine that I cooked up, like, ten years ago and so it's kind of cheesy. But I thought, what the heck, let's try to write it anyway. Well, this first chapter isn't all that I hoped it would be, but I'll just have to work extra hard to make sure the rest of it is better. In any case, don't forget to review! As a general rule, whichever story people give me the most reviews on is the one I feel motivated to write the fastest so if you like this and want to see more, leave a review. Yep… I'll shut up now…