Get You Back : Part Two: Reunion Read online

  Did I deserve to be?

  13

  Rye

  As I headed up the path to our bungalow, the constant drums gave the night a primitive feel that filtered into my blood. I felt wild and drunk on nothing but Lauren and tropical air.

  I was in such a hurry, I nearly missed the signs of trouble inside the bungalow. I tripped over an object in the dark. I flipped on the light and saw it was Lauren's scented candle. I figured we must have knocked it over that morning and not noticed. It wasn't until I saw my jacket that I knew—someone had been in our bungalow. They'd searched through my old, beat-up ranch jacket and put it back where they’d found it, on top of my duffel bag. But they'd left the collar turned up. I never turned up the collar.

  I did a quick search and saw that Lauren's suitcase looked messier than it usually did. The thought of someone pawing through her things made me ill. It scared the hell out of me, too. Someone was after her—who? Why? Was she in danger?

  I grabbed something for her to wear—I barely knew what—and ran out of the bungalow. In that moment, with stark fear coursing through me, I knew I didn't ever want to feel that way again. Lauren was mine, and I'd protect her with everything in me.

  When I got to the beach, I saw her in the water, stroking toward me, her pale arms flashing in the moonlight. The sense of relief was tremendous—she was still here, with me, still alive. I came to the edge and held open my arms for her, shielding her from the view of the stragglers still in the restaurant. She stumbled out of the water toward me and fell into my arms.

  Was she sobbing?

  "What's wrong, Lauren? What happened?"

  She shook her head, burying it in my chest. "Cold," I heard her say. I wrapped my arms around her. She was shaking, trembling. I rubbed my hands up and down her back to warm her. Something terrible must have happened.

  "Come on, sweetheart. Let's get you back to the bungalow." I planned to block the door with whatever I could, maybe stay up all night to keep guard. Tomorrow, we'd switch to another bungalow, or maybe a different island.

  I needed to tell Lauren that someone had gone through our stuff, but I wanted to wait until she'd calmed down a bit.

  After a few moments, she drew away and took the dress from me. It settled over her body just as the full moon came from behind a fast-moving cloud. With her face lit up with moonlight, I could see that she looked … devastated.

  "Lauren. Tell me. What happened out there?"

  "Bliss."

  I let out a strangled groan. Of course it had to be Bliss. That woman had plans upon plans upon hidden agendas.

  “It’s not all bad,” Lauren continued. “She told me that your family trust is intact. You’re the prime beneficiary, but you have come forward in order to claim it.”

  “What?”

  Lauren spilled out everything Bliss had told her. Listening in amazement, I held her tight against my side as we made our way up the beach. The sand was striped with moonlight sneaking from behind skittering clouds. Far away, I heard the faint echo of drums.

  With all the Full Moon Party madness, Bliss had picked her moment perfectly—as had the mysterious intruder in the bungalow. I had to wonder if the two were connected.

  "Anyway, somehow she got a look at your father's will—she won't say how, of course. But you're the main beneficiary, and Elijah and Annabelle are both named as well. Bliss gets some money, and that's why she wants you to go back."

  "It's always about money with her, isn't it?"

  "No surprise there. She didn't tell me this, but I think she was paid to marry your father and, I don't know, help transfer funds or do something to the will. I’m not sure what. I got the impression that someone else was in charge. She said whoever it was thought she was just a bimbo."

  "It never pays to underestimate Bliss Blakewell."

  "No." A flush of pink stained her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Rye. I honestly didn't think she was involved because we were still taking every job we could after we left Chicago. But there's a lot more going on here, I think."

  That was for damn sure. I had no idea what, though. "What else did she say?"

  Her eyelids flickered and she looked away. "She also told me someone on the island is watching me."

  “This person isn’t with her?”

  “No, it’s someone else.”

  “Shit.” I told her about what I'd found in the bungalow.

  "Oh God! What if you'd been in there?"

  "I can handle myself, sweetheart. That's not my worry. My worry is you. There's way too much sketchy shit going on."

  We reached the bungalow, which looked just as I'd left it. I kept her behind me as I went in to check it out. All clear.

  She followed me inside. The way she stood there, looking so forlorn and lost, ripped me up inside. "Look, I doubt they'll be back, but just in case, let's block the door."

  She nodded, and we dragged the bed a few feet over. The bungalow immediately felt safer.

  We turned to each other and I ran my hands up and down her bare arms. Goose bumps rose on her skin. She must still be chilled. "Come on, lie down and I'll warm you up."

  "I won't say no to that." With a tired smile, she pulled off her dress and slid under the cover. I wrapped my body around her until her tremors stopped.

  "How about a back rub?" I murmured in her ear.

  "Sounds like heaven."

  I folded the sheet down to her ass so the lovely curve of her spine was exposed. I settled next to her and pressed my thumbs into the muscles between the wings of her shoulder blades. She let out a moan that let me know I'd found the right spot.

  As I found the tight kinks in her back and worked them out, I thought about Bliss's information about the will. Our family trust, in its heyday—before Bliss—amounted to over half a billion dollars. Pop always told us that it was our heritage and our responsibility—especially mine. Not because I was the oldest, but because I was the one with the business mind and the risk-taking temperament.

  "It doesn't matter what I teach you now," he'd told me a few times, "you won't really understand what it's like to be responsible for a heap of cash like this until I'm gone. It's no joyride. But if you keep the family interests foremost in your mind, you'll do fine."

  For almost thirteen years, I’d believed that our family fortune was gone. I assumed Bliss had transferred everything somewhere untraceable. I knew that Uncle Christopher had searched hard. He hated Bliss like poison. If he couldn't track her and the money down, it must be gone for good.

  Since I'd built up my own fortune, I didn't care about the family funds. My hatred for Bliss was based on what she'd done to my father.

  But now, things looked different. That fund belonged to my father. My father, not Bliss or anyone else. I owed it to Ian McAllister to retrieve our legacy. To put our family back where we belonged. Elijah and Annabelle deserved their inheritance. Hell, I did too, if only to honor my father's hard work and legacy. It wasn't right that someone else should gain possession of what was his. What was mine.

  Mine.

  Lauren sighed as I rotated my thumb in a particularly knotty spot at the base of her neck.

  She was mine. I was hers. I loved her.

  Why else had I dropped everything else in my life to jet to Morocco three times chasing false leads? Why else had I been a bear to everyone else during that long six months? Why else did the feel of her tender skin, the sound of her soft sighs, fill me with such a sense of rightness?

  I had her back, my Lauren, and I wouldn't let her slip through my fingers again.

  I lowered my head and pressed kisses down the long, curving slope of her back. I let my lips surf the subtle rises and dips of her spine. I wanted to say something to her, something epic and gargantuan, something that would change both our lives. "Lauren, my love …"

  A soft snore answered me.

  I laughed to myself, silently so as not to wake her. Okay, so maybe this wasn't the best timing in the world. But I was a persistent guy. I'd get m
y chance.

  I rolled away and drew the sheet over her. "I love you, Lauren. This is just a dry run. So sleep tight because tomorrow, I have something to say to you."

  14

  Lauren

  When I woke up, for a moment I forgot everything from the night before and simply felt happy. The filmy netting draped around our bed caught the morning light and made it feel as if we were in a cloud. And Rye was next to me, his long, beautiful, naked body stretched long, his silvery eyes still half-closed.

  "Good morning," he murmured as he kissed my shoulder. "Did you sleep well?"

  And then it all came crashing back. Everything that had happened with Bliss, everything she'd told me.

  Everything I'd decided last night before falling into traumatized, shivering sleep. I sat up, pulling the sheet around me.

  "Rye, we have to leave today. By the jungle trail. Then you have to go back to the States."

  I could see a million questions in his tempestuous eyes. "We’ll both go."

  "No. I can't go with you."

  He sat straight up, every muscle tensing. "Fuck that. Not happening.”

  I steeled myself to continue. This was how it had to be. "You said you'd do whatever I want. This is what I want. We need to leave right away. All the longboats are going to be busy with hungover Full Moon partiers. I think we should take the trail through the jungle. I don't have that much stuff and I can leave most of it behind. I'm used to leaving my stuff behind. Once we reach the mainland, we can go our separate ways."

  I slid out of bed and grabbed a pair of panties from my suitcase. He watched me in silence as I wriggled into them. Adrenaline shot through me when I noticed things out of place. Feeling nauseous and violated, I remembered that someone had searched my things. "We can't stay here, Rye. Come on. Let's get packed and get the hell out." I found my bra and fastened it, trying not to think about a stranger's hands on it.

  "I'm not going without you. Not an option." I heard the familiar McAllister stubbornness harden his voice.

  "I'll go with you to the mainland, but I can't go back to the States. It's complicated, and I don't want to explain it all right now, but—"

  "I love you, Lauren."

  In my frenzy to get dressed and packed, it took a moment for those words to sink in. I spun around and stared at him. He'd swung his legs over the edge of the bed and propped his elbows on his knees. He met my eyes with a stone-gray seriousness I'd never seen in him before. "Wha … what?"

  "I love you, and there's no way I'm leaving without you."

  "Rye. We can't do this. I was starting to think we could, and this has been by far the best time of my life." A sob caught me right in the chest, but I forged past it. "But there's too much you don't know about me. There's too much I don't know." I turned away from him and pulled on a thin turquoise top with an OM symbol—the kind of thing half the girls here on the island would wear. I'd blend right in with the returning Full Moon Party crowd.

  "You mean that Bliss is your aunt, not your mother? I don't care about that."

  Another shot of adrenaline jolted through me. Hands shaking, I fumbled for some pants. So Bliss had spilled that secret to Rye … was it the only one?

  "What else did she tell you?"

  "She also told me her … condition."

  "You mean that she has some kind of psychosis? That she's in an institution?"

  "Yes. She told me all that. But, Lauren, this is Bliss we're talking about. Who knows how much of what she says is true?"

  Rye had a good point. Bliss was truth-challenged and always twisted things in whatever way suited her. What game was Bliss playing now? And what should my next move be?

  "Lauren. None of that matters to me. I love you."

  I didn't answer. I couldn't deal with that right now. I had to find out about my mother. I'd come up with a plan while wading out of the Andaman Sea onto the beach. I was going to find a place on the main island with Internet and do some online searching for Whispering Pines. I was going to enlist Courtney to hack into their records and get the complete story.

  In the meantime, it was urgent that Rye get to Chicago. If he didn't get Bliss's money freed up, she'd get my mother kicked out of her private institution. Even though I didn't know my real mother, I'd never let that happen.

  I found a pair of loose cotton pants that would keep off the jungle mosquitoes and set them aside. I tossed the rest of my stuff haphazardly into my suitcase.

  "Please get packed," I told Rye, fighting to keep the emotion out of my voice. Of all times for him to tell me the words I'd longed to hear for so many years. Why now? Why when everything was exploding and falling apart, realigning and dissolving? "You're wasting time. You have lawyers to find and an inheritance to claim."

  "No." He drilled me with a stern look. "I love you and we're staying together."

  "Rye, stop this—"

  "Marry me."

  15

  Rye

  "What?" She scrambled to her feet and took a wild step backwards. The flat-out dismay on her face shocked me.

  "I love you. You love me. I know you wanted time to figure out what's real and to experience your freedom. But everything's changed now. Your best protection from Bliss is with me. I want to be with you. For the rest of my life. I want to protect you and support you and make love to you and …" I trailed off because she was shaking her head wildly back and forth. Not generally the reaction a guy wants to see when he proposes marriage.

  "Stop, Rye. Just stop. We'll pretend you never said any of this. We'll stick to the plan, walk that trail through the jungle and say goodbye. Just, don't—" She burst into tears.

  I leaped to my feet and caught her in my arms. "Lauren, sweetheart, why are you crying? We belong together. You know we do."

  For a moment she nestled against me. I felt the tremors coursing through her body. Then she pulled away, wiping a tear off her cheek. "It's not that simple."

  "Why not? You have feelings for me. You went on national television and said so. And every time I touch you, I know those feelings are still there. We love each other. When people love each other, they marry. It's simple."

  She glanced wildly around the bungalow as if searching for a way out. "Why didn't you tell me that you're a millionaire in your own right?"

  "What?" I shook my head, confused by the change of subject.

  "You said you worked on a ranch. I pictured you shoveling manure to pay the rent for your brother and sister."

  "I've shoveled plenty of shit. That's not a lie."

  "Okay, but you left out the part where you became a millionaire! Bliss told me."

  How did Bliss know that? She seemed to have endless sources of information.

  "I've done well investing, yeah. My father taught me. But I'm also a ranch hand. Mostly, I'm just Rye. The same guy who made love to you last night and the day before that, and who wants to keep on doing it. Why are you so upset about this?"

  "Because, Rye." She stepped toward me and poked me in the chest. "You didn't trust me."

  "No, that's not it. It never came up. How would it? 'Oh, by the way, I'm loaded'?"

  She planted her hands on her hips. I tried not to get distracted by her long bare legs. I got the impression she was working hard to gather her strength, to keep me out. "Don't pretend you couldn't have found a way to tell me. The fact is, you didn't. And there's a reason why you didn't. Lack of trust."

  "Lauren, give me a break. Yeah, maybe I have trouble trusting. Can you blame me?"

  "No, I don't blame you. That's the whole point. You have no reason to trust me, and you don't trust me, and how can a marriage survive without trust? Of course I can't marry you, Rye, and we're both going to forget you ever brought it up."

  As if that answered everything, she kneeled back down to her suitcase. Every line of her body screamed tension and misery. I stared down at her, focusing on her short bleached hair, with their dark roots, and the defensive way she hunched her shoulders. I saw a teardrop land on a bo
ttle of shampoo. I'd made Lauren cry, and that killed me.

  I spoke quietly. "You know what a determined asshole I am. You're it for me, Lauren. I love your bravery and your secrets and your passion." She stilled. "I love your quiet moments and your teasing moments. I love how you always surprise me, and yet you feel like a part of me. I love you, and I'm a McAllister down to the bone. We fall once, we fall hard, and we go after what we want. So this isn't the end."

  Two more tears—drip drip—fell into the depths of her suitcase. She put one more pair of jeans in her knapsack, then zipped up her suitcase. The sound felt so final, like an exclamation point at the end of our relationship.

  I wanted to scoop her up and wrap her in my arms and never let her go. I wanted to toss her on the bed and show her just how much I needed her. But I couldn't pressure her. All I could do was state my case and leave my heart in her hands.

  "I'll pack up my gear," I finally said when she showed no signs of responding to my little speech. Not that I had much to pack, but my wet clothes from last night were hanging on the hammock line, and—

  I was halfway to the door when her arms came around me from behind. "Rye," she said hoarsely. "I …"

  Whatever she was trying to say, she never got it out. I spun around and swooped her off the floor. She wrapped her legs around me, her center pressing against my cock, which immediately got hard again. I gripped her sweet ass, my fingers somehow finding their way under the edge of her panties. Her warm, intimate skin maddened me with lust. I had to have her.

  "I love you," she was murmuring in ear. "You know I do. Don't doubt that, Rye. Please don't doubt that."

  As much as I loved hearing those words, they sounded like a goodbye at the same time. "Lauren, do me a favor, okay?"

  "Hmmm?" She licked my neck in a lascivious way that made my blood sing.

  "Let's make this super-simple. I want you. You want me. I love you. You love me." I worked my fingers toward her sizzling-hot center and moved them rhythmically according to my words. "It's as simple as one-two-three. As simple as A-B-C."