When I got back to my villa, there was already breakfast waiting for me. A plate of fresh tropical fruit, toast, poached eggs and fresh coffee. I didn’t even remember ordering room service, but then perhaps it just came with the villa, much like my all-access pass to the grounds. Or maybe Tate had ordered for me, I honestly didn’t know. But either way I dove right in, as I was famished from swimming . . . and other rigorous activities.

I was still getting over the jet lag and time difference, so at Tate’s suggestion I was going to spend the morning at the spa, getting pampered and massaged into butter, then wander around the grounds during the afternoon interviewing staff and checking things out. Followed, of course, by the remainder of the day spent lounging by the pool or on the beach working on my tan. Just because I was technically working didn’t mean I couldn’t indulge in the hot sun and the flattering bikinis I’d packed.

I was just coming out of the spa, feeling like a new me, with pink paint on my toes, a fresh face and limber limbs when I was snatched by the wrist and hauled across the hallway, a hand firmly held in front of my mouth. I wanted to scream but couldn’t. I tried to catch a glimpse of my captor, but he had me in such a tight grip I was locked solid staring straight ahead.

A door was opened, and I was ushered into complete darkness. Holy crap, I was being kidnapped! I kicked and punched at my assailant but kept getting air and no contact.

Oh my God, I was going to die.

I could see the headline now: Xavier Rollins’ Ex Found Dead on Tropical Beach. No name. No details. Because in the end, I didn’t matter. I was just Xavier’s ex. That was all. Would anyone even miss me? But then the panic inside my veins ramped up. I was at a resort for the elite; no way in hell would Tate let my murder or death get out. I’d be tossed out into the middle of the ocean to cover up the scandal. Fish food. Shark bait. Would anyone come looking for me? Would my mother start to wonder and ask questions? I really didn’t call her that often; it might be months before she started to worry. My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest, and I thought I might pass out from how heavy I was breathing. This was it. I was going to die. At least if they did find my body, they’d find it with perfectly pedicured toes and freshly exfoliated skin . . . that is, if the fish didn’t eat my flesh first. A very inappropriate giggle bubbled in my chest. Jeez, Parker. This is NOT the time to laugh.

Suddenly the hand on my mouth left only to be immediately replaced by lips. Sensuous lips, sexy lips, lips I was coming to know very well.

My body instantly began to relax as curious hands roamed across my freshly scrubbed skin. They pushed the slit of my robe wider, and fingers delved into my core. Among other things, like a pedicure, body scrub and facial, I’d also allowed the esthetician at the spa to give me a waxing. It’d been a while, and things were getting a tad “overgrown.” I heard him inhale when he found me hairless, followed by a growl of approval.

It was wild. Our bodies raged at each other in the darkness, hands and mouths exploring and caressing while his beard chafed my cheeks and his teeth nipped at my lips until I was sure they were bruised.

“You’re insatiable,” I whispered as he slid two fingers inside me. “Twice in the sauna . . . and now.”

“I’m under your spell, Miss Ryan.” He hauled me away from the wall a few steps, turned me around and pushed my head down until I was bent in a ninety-degree angle, my hands braced on something hard like a bench or wooden chest. I heard the quick zip of his zipper and the swish of pants dropping to the ground followed by the tear of a condom wrapper. We hadn’t used one in the sauna, but I could understand his need to not want to make a mess in here… wherever we were.

Two fingers trailed through my slit, drawing my wetness up and around my lips. He plunged those fingers inside me, scissoring back and forth while continuing to pump. I squeezed my muscles around him and rode his hand, loving the way he felt, but wanting more. He read me like a book, and soon the fingers from his other hand were alternating between rough circles and dirty pinches on my swelling clit. I moaned from how good it felt, how good being with Tate felt. The excitement of him whisking me off to have sex, pretending to kidnap me only to then worship my body a few seconds later, making it hum and cry out for more—it was intoxicating. No man had ever treated me like this. No man had ever desired me this way. Made me feel craved and needed. He was a master at seduction, and for the next ten days I was going to let him seduce the bejesus out of me.

“Fuck me,” I panted, my breasts jiggling beneath me as I swayed in his hands, lightheaded from how incredible it all was. My orgasm right around the corner. “Now!”

Slowly he withdrew his fingers, and although I knew what was coming next, I couldn’t help the whimper that passed my lips when I was suddenly devoid of his touch. Firm and nimble fingers gripped my hips, kneading and massaging. I pressed into his hands, breathless and desperate for him to take me.

“PLEASE!”

“Oh, God!” He grabbed his cock, angled it at my cleft and then sheathed himself to the hilt in one solid thrust. “Oh fuuuuck,” he sighed.

“Yes!”

“Parker . . .”

“Harder.”

He picked up speed and hammered into me, hard measured thrusts, stroking across my entrance and deep into my channel, hitting the right spot inside me, the spot that very few men can reach or even find. The spot that made me feel like I needed to pee and that my eyes were going to roll into the back of my head and never come back. I bowed my back and pushed my ass further up, welcoming him, taking all of him. One of his hands snuck around in front of me, and he wedged his way inside my robe; fingers found a nipple, and he started to pluck and tweak, pulling until they were both hard and aching, my breasts heavy in his palm.

Lifting one hand from where I was braced, I moved it down my body and delivered delightful little smacks to my clit.

“Are you smacking your clit?” he asked, his voice hoarse and strained. I could tell he was close. His cadence was starting to wane.

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Fuck, that’s hot.”

“Harder!”

He did as he was told, and within a matter of seconds, we were both coming, panting and snarling as our releases took hold. He angled himself over my body and his teeth grazed my shoulder, tender bites that hurt just enough to let me know how good he felt, how unhinged he’d become. How wild I made him. I loved it. I wanted every bite, every bruise, every chafe.

He pulled out and moved away. A moment later, the light flicked on. I shut my eyes from the harsh glare. We were back in the same room as before, the soundproof room where he’d taken me yesterday. My hands had been planted on the bench for the baby grand piano; I could still see sweaty prints on the shiny black varnish.

Tying off the condom, he shoved it into his pocket and then did up his pants while I went to work adjusting my robe, tucking my breasts back inside.

“Hello.” I grinned.

“Hi.”

“Kidnapper routine, huh?”

He nodded, his smile making me weak in the knees. “Yeah. Do you have Stockholm Syndrome yet? Do you sympathize with your captor? Do you want to stay?”

I laughed out loud. “If by ‘sympathize’ and ‘stay’ you mean want my ‘captor’ to take me like that every day, then, yes.”

His eyes glowed salaciously as he prowled forward. “That can be arranged, you know.”

My arms drifted up to rest on his shoulder. We were nose to nose. “I’m sure it can. Seeing as you’re the big boss man and I’m in the presidential suite and have an all-access pass.”

His nose rubbed against mine as he pushed my back against the wall again, his knee urging me to spread my legs so he could settle between them. “You have all access, baby. Whatever you want, whenever you want it.”

“Hmmm,” I hummed. “I like the sound of that. A girl could get used to such treatment.”

Something, a shadow perhaps? Sadness? I couldn’t quite put my finger on the emotion that passed across his face, removing that sinister twinkle from his eyes, but it was only for a second. He quickly tossed on another grin and gave me one of those winks he was becoming famous for. The man was a master at many things, I was learning, and one of those was hiding his true feelings. Happy on the outside, and something else on the inside. Who was Tate McAllister? Would I get to know the real him?

His hand roamed down between us, and he flicked my clit. My whole body jerked in his arms, and he laughed.

“Enjoy it, baby. I am here to serve.” Then he drove his tongue into my mouth, and the whole erotic dance started all over again.

* * *

About an hour or so later, after I’d made my way back to my room and picked out a suitable outfit for the day, a Granny Smith apple-green halter top and a white jersey knit skirt that came just below my knees, I knocked on the door of the big glass greenhouse. It was tough to tell if anyone was inside. All I could see were green plants aplenty and a few bags of fertilizer stacked up against the wall.

“Hello?” I called out, wondering if it would be okay for me to walk inside or if I should wait to be invited. I knew I had all access, but I wasn’t comfortable just sauntering into a space where staff might not be aware a guest, let alone a VIP guest, could be lurking. All access or not, I wasn’t about to intrude or catch someone unaware. I turned the knob and was nearly knocked flat on my butt by the gust of warm air from inside. It was hot outside, but it was sweltering inside. I took a step over the threshold, instantly worried that my green halter top was the wrong choice for the afternoon. I was sure I’d have sweat stains by the time I left.

There was a big wooden table to my left, stacked four feet high with empty terracotta pots of various sizes, while a scattering of gardening tools—pruning shears, hand spades, a hoe—took up the remainder of the table. I bunched my knuckles and knocked three times on the worn wood.

“Hello?” I called out again. “Anyone here?”

“Come on in!” hollered a voice from inside the dense jungle. “Be with you in a moment.”

“I can come back later if you’re busy,” I said, not sure who I was talking to or where they were. The entire space looked like a ripe patch of the Amazon. Big leafy plants and trees grew up the rafters, while rows and rows of tables to the left held seedlings in small pots.

“Hello!” A round and rosy brown face with big straight white teeth popped out from behind a frond. The man’s fingers were caked in dirt, while another smudge ran just above his eyebrow. “Hi, I’m Alejandro.” He went to shake my hand but, when he saw how dirty his hands were, made a regretful face and then tried to wipe them on his pants. “Sorry, I was busy transplanting.”

I shook my head with a smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’m Parker Ryan. I’m with The Decadent Traveler Magazine. I’m here doing a feature piece on Mr. McAllister and The Windward Hibiscus. Mr. McAllister said I could interview some of the staff, and I was hoping I could ask you a few questions?”

His smile was wide and genuine as he nodded. “Sure, but, uh . . .” His eyes fell on his water bottle on the edge of the table. “Not here. Let’s go outside. It’s hot in here.”

I chuckled a grateful thanks as I followed him back out into the fresh air, where the breeze welcomed us with open arms. We found a picnic table under a palm tree and sat down.

“So, how long have you worked here?” I asked, clicking my digital recorder on.

“Since it opened,” he answered before tipping back his water bottle and taking a healthy swig. “Six years.”

“And do you enjoy working here?”

“Lady,” Alejandro started. I leaned forward, thinking he was going to give me something super juicy. “This is the best fucking place to work in the world.”

Well, that wasn’t at all the answer I had been anticipating.

I lifted an eyebrow. “And what makes you say that?”

“I came from nothing. Most of my family is still back in The Philippines, just barely scraping by. Mr. McAllister hired me, then brought my wife, my brother, his wife and all of our children, all four of them over. We have jobs, and the kids go to school in town. We have a place to live. You see those suites up there, all the ones that don’t face the ocean?” I nodded. “That’s staff. A lot of us live here.”

“Do you ever get home to see the rest of your family?”

He nodded. “We get six weeks of paid holiday a year.”

“Wow.”

“And benefits, and a pension. And our kids are guaranteed jobs in the hotel when they turn fourteen.”

I shook my head. “But what if your children don’t want to end up in the hotel industry?”

His grin was so genuine, so excited that I felt myself sharing in his joy and smiled just as wide. “That’s the thing. Mr. McAllister has set up a scholarship fund for all his staff’s children. They can work here if they want to when they finish school, but if not, he’s offering to help with their college as well.”

I’m not sure why, but I found myself looking for questions to ask that would paint Tate in a less saintly hue. The man just sounded too perfect.

“Do you find working in the service industry rewarding?”

His back went poker straight, and he fixed me with an almost steely glare. Oh, fuck, I’d hit a nerve. Foot firmly embedded in mouth.

“Miss Ryan, I am not at all ashamed of what I do. It is an honest job, and I make an honest living and provide for my family. Mr. McAllister is the best boss I could have ever asked for. He takes care of his staff. Hell, I’d clean toilets, wipe the ass of a pompous billionaire if it meant I could work here.”

My eyes fell to my lap. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I apologize.”

“Did you know that we get roughly fifty applications a week to work here? And if more people knew about the resort, we’d probably get more. Did you know that Mr. McAllister makes a point of hiring refugees and people fleeing from their country for safety? He brings their entire family over, gives them jobs, trains them and sets them up with a new life?”

I shook my head.

“There is no shame in working in the service industry. We all need jobs. Just because you don’t fold someone else’s laundry or scrub toilets for a living doesn’t mean you’re better than me or my wife.”

I shook my head again. “I—I never said that. I know I’m not.” This interview had taken a disastrous turn south. “I apologize if that’s how my question came across. That wasn’t at all what I meant.”

It wasn’t, was it? Had being with Xavier, the king of the snobs, turned me into a snob? I’d tried so hard to distance myself from the life I’d grown up in back in Mississippi, where no one ever got out and made a better life for themselves. No one except me. I even hired a speech coach to try to lose my drawl. I’d been that determined to rid myself of my past. But in doing so, had I become a snob? Did I look down on those in the service industry? My mind zoomed back to the moment I’d met Tate. I’d thought he was a manager. I’d considered it slumming when I slept with him. Oh my God, I was a snob. I was no better than Xavier and his minions.

A giant pit of regret and shame started to build in my stomach, while my throat closed up and heat wormed its way up my face. Xavier had turned me into a monster. I’d turned me into a monster.

The scowl on Alejandro’s face softened. “I’m going to tell you something.” His eyes flashed to my digital recorder poised in my hand. “Off the record.”

Nodding, I flipped the “off” switch. “Of course. Off the record.”

“Good,” he said, taking a sip from his water. “Why do you think Mr. McAllister caters to the richest of clients?”

I lifted a shoulder. “Because he understands their desire for privacy and discretion and that people are willing to pay whatever is asked for their secrets to be kept secret?”

He shook his head. “He caters to those people because they’re willing to pay what he charges, and he has to charge what he does to bring in enough money to do what really wants to do, and that’s help people. He’s sponsored so many families and their visas. He’s paid for surgeries, flights home. He’s kept families together that under any other circumstance would have been torn apart. He is a good man. Did you know that aside from being a hotel for the elite, it’s also an eco-resort?”

I nodded. Tate had said that they had solar panels on the roofs, collected rainwater during the rainy season and recycled more than any other resort in Tahiti. He also said that when he bought the property, he’d signed on with a contractor who primarily did restoration using repurposed or eco-friendly materials. No endangered rainforests had been pillaged to build his plutocratic paradise.

Alejandro nodded. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for, lady, but there isn’t a thing wrong with Mr. McAllister or this place. Everyone who works here is happy, and everyone who comes here is happy.”

His face faltered for half a second, but the journalist in me caught it.

I had to tread lightly here if I wanted to explore that drop of the mask any further. “I’d like to apologize again, Alejandro, if anything I’ve said has offended you. That was never my intention. I don’t judge those who work in the service industry. What you and your wife do here is invaluable and noble. And I’m so happy you and your family are healthy and thriving and enjoying life. I’m very sorry if my words were construed any other way. It’s just, well, no one in the world knows anything about Mr. McAllister. And very few are privy to having stayed and experienced the beauty that is The Windward Hibiscus, so I’m just trying to ask the right questions and learn as much as I can. Paint an overall picture of the resort.”

“Not everyone here is happy, you know?” he finally said after having pursed his lips in thought for a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think Mr. McAllister is very happy.”

“What makes you say that?”

His slightly chapped lips twisted in thought for a second. “I think he’s lonely.”

He had more than three hundred guests here at any time and close to four hundred staff. How on earth was the man lonely?

“Why do you think he’s lonely?”

“When he smiles, it doesn’t reach his eyes. At least that’s what my wife says. She says when you’re genuinely happy, you don’t smile with your mouth, you smile with your eyes. And he doesn’t have anyone. No friends, no family. His friend Malakai, he used to run the surf shop, he moved back to Samoa last year when his mother died. So now Mr. McAllister has nobody. He’s too busy taking care of everyone else here, making sure we’re all happy, our families are happy, that his happiness suffers.”

In my head I was snorting and thinking of a thousand cynical things to say. But instead I kept my face neutral and remained as professional as I could. “I’m sure he’s had girlfriends over the years.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “He keeps to himself a lot, though. As friendly as he is, I would never sit and have a beer with the guy. He’s the boss. The big boss.”

I couldn’t stop myself; I had to ask. “And is that a line that he’s drawn?”

Alejandro’s eyes turned fierce again. They were such a deep, dark brown I had a hard time deciphering pupil from iris. “Stop looking for things that aren’t there, lady. The line is there because we put it there. The staff. We don’t want to ever make him feel like he can’t reprimand us or take the actions he needs to take. If things got too friendly, it would blur the line between employer and staff, and the last thing we want to do is take advantage of him. If an employee turns out to be shit, half the time Mr. McAllister doesn’t even find out about it. We get rid of the dud ourselves, or management does.”

Get rid of as in kill? Oh shit, now my mind was going all over the damn place. First the “kidnapping” and now this. I really shouldn’t have watched that mafia movie on the plane.

“We’ve all been given a chance here at a better life, and like hell are we going to screw it up.” He checked at his watch. “I should probably get back to work, though.” He stood up with a light groan. His knees made a soft popping sound and he gave his neck a quick side-to-side tilt to work out the kinks. All the while his eyes remained fixed on me. They weren’t threatening, but they certainly held a warning. “Mr. McAllister doesn’t want the world to know what he’s doing because the world doesn’t need to know. He’s not after the success for the fame. But he also doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, and the world is full of scammers.”

I stood up as well and followed him back toward the door to the greenhouse. The world is definitely full of scammers . . . and slimeballs and assholes. I’d been in love with an asshole.

“I won’t print any of this, I promise. And I plan to give Mr. McAllister my write-up before I submit it to my editor so he can take out what he doesn’t want printed.”

That explanation seemed to suffice, and he gave me a curt but friendly nod. “All right, then.”

I offered him my hand. He shook his head, as his hands were still dirty, but I reached for his palm anyway. “It’s just a little dirt.” I smiled. “Thank you, Alejandro. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.”

He glanced down at his mud-caked shoes before lifting his head and focusing back on my eyes. “You’re welcome, Miss Ryan.” Then, with another solitary head bob and a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he ducked back into the greenhouse.