Chapter One
The incredible heat surprised Olivia as she stepped off the plane and walked down the steps to the tarmac. It was just like being slapped in the face with a hot, wet towel. She broke out in a sweat almost instantly and considered pausing to take off the jacket to her pantsuit, but the terminal was just a few steps away and the promise of air conditioning beckoned. Shouldering her laptop bag, she made rapidly for the doors.
Since she'd come in on a domestic flight from Sydney, she didn’t have to clear international customs. After collecting her suitcase, she made her way to the greeting area and looked hopefully around.
Almost everyone who'd been on the flight with her were tourists, and they were making their way to several tour group and resort signs being held up around the area. Olivia bit her lip, wondering if she should head for the brightly colored sign proclaiming the legend SUNFISH ISLAND RESORT with the tourists going in that direction, or if there was a different protocol for newly arrived staff.
Not seeing anyone holding up a sign with her name, she shrugged mentally and headed on over. A pretty Chinese girl holding the sign and a clipboard smiled at her, though the smile turned quizzical as she took in Olivia's designer pantsuit and high-heeled pumps, a far cry from the comfortable holiday wear the tourists sported.
"Hi, I'm Jill! Your name, please?"
"Olivia Stratten."
Jill glanced down automatically at her clipboard before her head snapped back up. "Wait, you're the new marketing manager!"
"I am." Olivia smiled.
"Welcome, it's lovely to meet you!" Jill shoved her clipboard under her arm to pump Olivia's hand enthusiastically. "Sorry we didn't have a specific sign for you—well, we did, actually. Rosie was gonna hold it but it turns out that her boyfriend was the co-pilot on your flight and it's turning around and going back to Sydney in an hour so she went to try and see him for a few minutes."
Olivia blinked at the sudden gush of information delivered in a broad Australian accent. She'd only been in the country for a week and still struggled to pick up all the words when the locals talked quickly. She was pretty sure she'd gotten the gist, though, and nodded.
"That's alright. I hope she got some time with him."
Jill rolled her eyes. "Guy's a prick with a girl in every town. I keep trying to tell Rosie, but she's blinded by the whole airline-pilot-glamor thing."
"That's still a thing?"
"Considering how much pilots get paid, yeah," Jill said with a wry twist of her lips. "Here she is now."
Olivia turned to see another young woman hurrying toward them. She was a little taller than Jill and about Olivia's height, brown-haired, and very tanned. Her white teeth flashed in her brown face as she smiled.
"Hi, you must be Olivia! I'm Rosie, the staff manager at the resort. It's lovely to meet you!"
Charmed by the friendly, unaffected greetings from two women Olivia guessed were both around her own age of twenty-nine, Olivia smiled back at them. "It's lovely to be here. So different from New York." She'd left home in chilly, dark October, when the city seemed shrouded in gloom as winter approached. Sydney had been quite a shock to the system, warm and bright, green with spring growth. North Queensland was hot and far more humid. When she’d looked out of the plane window as it came into land, the view had been all turquoise water and sand-rimmed tropical islands.
"I reckon," Jill said with a laugh in her voice, giving Rosie a glance Olivia couldn't interpret before she turned away to see to the tourists awaiting her attention.
"Jill's our guest relations manager," Rosie said, gesturing for Olivia to follow her. Grasping her suitcase handle, Olivia obeyed, and Rosie led her out of the terminal to a golf cart parked outside and helped her hoist her case into the back.
"We'd go on the bus with the others, but it's full. We've got a lot coming in off this flight." Rosie hopped into the driver's seat. "So I borrowed this off a friend at the marina."
"Is that far from here?" Olivia hung onto the side of the golf cart as Rosie mashed the accelerator pedal flat to the floor and they took off at a surprisingly high speed.
"Not at all! Only a couple of minutes!" Rosie zoomed past another golf cart, narrowly missing an oncoming minibus. Olivia gave up and shut her eyes.
"Oh come on, you're used to New York traffic. My driving can't terrify you that much!" Rosie snickered.
"You'd make a very good cab driver," Olivia agreed, cracking an eye open as they slowed. Seeing boat masts in front of them, she relaxed, realizing they must be at the marina. "Which is all I ever took in New York. Generally, the subway is much faster anyway, so I mostly rode that."
"I think I'll take that as a backhanded compliment," Rosie snickered. "Well, you can drive next time, if I'm scaring you that much. Jill never lets me drive…."
"I can see why, but I don't have a lot of choice. I've never learned to drive."
"Really?" Rosie looked startled at that before casting her a cheeky grin. "Well. Technically you don't need a license to drive one of the resort golf carts. I won't tell if you don't."
Olivia had to laugh at that, getting out of the cart. "Is this the boat?" She looked at the catamaran yacht they'd parked behind.
"No, no. This belongs to my friend. Thanks, Matt!" Rosie yelled at the boat before heading around to the back of the cart to heft Olivia's suitcase out again. "We're just going along there."
"Oh." Olivia felt quite foolish. Lovely though the catamaran was, and obviously valuable, it looked minuscule compared to the magnificent motor-yacht at which Rosie had just pointed. "Wow."
"The resort has three of those; we use them for airport transfer, inter-island transfer, and our own dive-and-snorkeling tours," Rosie informed her. "They're brand-new. The new owners bought them after they finished the refurbishment last year."
"Impressive," Olivia said, taking in the boat as they walked closer. "Several million dollars, I'd say."
"No expense spared," Rosie agreed with a nod. "Everything on Sunfish Island is like that. You'll see. But the island was run-down for quite a few years before the new owners bought it and spent a fortune to do it up."
"Which is why you need me." Olivia nodded. She specialized in relaunching refurbished hotels. She'd originally applied for the job assuming she'd be based in New York, but the resort owners insisted she needed to be on-site. They'd hired her on a full-year contract and paid all travel expenses, and accommodation was included. It was the job of a lifetime.
"That's right." Rosie nodded. "Hey! Cory! Get down here and help carry Olivia's suitcase!"
"God, you're so bossy," a deep voice rumbled with a laugh, and Olivia looked up to see a tall figure silhouetted against the sun, standing on the boat's upper deck. She blinked, dazzled by the glare behind him.
"This is Cory Gillette, our activities manager," Rosie said as the man vaulted over the rail. He landed on the lower deck in front of them before walking down the short ramp separating the boat from the dock. "Cory, Olivia Stratten, our new marketing guru."
"Nice ta meetcha," he rumbled before bending and picking up her suitcase as though it weighed nothing.
Olivia could only stare speechlessly as Cory turned and walked back onto the boat. He looked as though he'd just stepped off an advertising billboard; tall, blond, and blue-eyed, he had a deep bronze tan and shoulders so broad they strained the seams of his polo shirt. Her gaze slid down his back involuntarily as he walked back up the ramp with her suitcase.
Cory's ass in tight khaki shorts was so spectacular she barely heard Rosie's "Come on, let's get aboard before the guests arrive."
"Ngh," Olivia said somewhat incoherently, still staring, but Rosie promptly cut off her view as she headed up the ramp in front of Olivia. Still thoroughly distracted and trying to peer around Rosie to get another look at that incredible back view, she followed Rosie up the ramp without watching her footing.
Which turned out to be an epically huge mistake.
The ramp was made of a pierced steel grating, and with Olivia's first full step onto it, her spiked high heel went straight through and jammed. Thrown completely off balance, she teetered, clutched for a nonexistent handrail, lost her balance completely, and toppled head-first into the murky waters of the harbor. The last thing she heard before the surprisingly warm waters of the harbor closed over her head was Rosie's shriek of horror.
She might never have learned to drive, but she had certainly learned to swim. After a brief panicky flail, she righted herself and kicked back up to the surface, clamping her lips tight and holding her breath. Her head broke the surface and she heard....
Not more shrieks of horror, but a deep guffaw of laughter.
Cory was leaning off the boat, extending a tanned hand in her direction, and absolutely laughing his ass off.
Cheeks flaming, utterly humiliated, Olivia accepted the offered hand. It wasn't as though she had much choice, after all. As far as she could see, she had no other way to get up to the boat.
Despite his chortles, Cory pulled her up as easily as he'd carried her suitcase, his other hand hooking around her waist when he’d raised her high enough to lift her aboard and set her on her feet. Her bare feet.
"I think this is yours," he said through his laughter, bending down to pull her shoe out of the ramp and offer it to her.
"Those were Jimmy Choos," Olivia said pathetically, accepting the shoe from his hand even as she mourned the loss of the other one, now no doubt sinking in the silt at the bottom of the harbor.
Cody laughed so hard he had to sit down on the deck.
"You're such an asshole," Rosie was at least trying to suppress her giggles, and making a fair job of it, as she dealt a slap to the back of Cody's head. "Are you alright, Olivia?"
She blew out her cheeks, looking down at her ruined five-hundred-dollar pantsuit, the single shoe nestled in her hand. And then she blinked. "Oh my God. My bag!"
"You had a bag... your laptop bag!" Rosie stared at her in horror.
They both peered down into the murky water.
"How deep is it?" Olivia asked.
"About eight feet." Cory finally managed to suppress his laughter. "And no, I am not diving down to look for it."
Olivia shot him a fulminating glare. "Don't put yourself out. I'll get it myself." Handing Rosie her shoe, stripping off her soaked suit jacket and tossing it aside, she dived neatly off the edge of the boat.