Chapter Four
As soon as the sunlight streamed in the window and hit the bed, Tate was awake. He had trained himself to get up early over the years. As a construction worker, he didn’t want to waste any daylight. As a man, he didn’t want to waste a moment of his freedom while he still had it.
At first he thought he was in his trailer down by the beach, but then a soft, feminine groan reminded him of last night.
Zoe. He turned to face the incredible woman beside him and smiled as her long, blond hair fanned out over the pillow. Last night had been amazing. Zoe had an enthusiasm and sense of adventure that seemed to match his own. She didn’t want to just lay back and enjoy life, she wanted to be an active participant, and that excitement and energy had carried over into the bedroom.
He still remembered watching her firm, round ass as she wiggled in through the window of the hut. She had been so spontaneous, so incredibly hot. If he hadn’t touched her, he would have sworn that she had stepped out of one of his torrid fantasies.
It was hard not to imagine himself dating a woman like her. He could see them jumping into his family’s private jet, or sailing off in one of their yachts, searching for some big adventure. Such things weren’t meant to be, however. As soon as Zoe found out that he was the owner of Carrington Construction, the fun would be over. Forget about sex, he’d be lucky if she’d even smile at him.
Which reminded him, he had to get back to the site. If he could provide Zoe with a viable alternative to that exotic wood, they still had a chance of getting the chapel done on time.
He fought the urge to kiss her awake and go for another round of amazing sex. Instead, he carefully rolled out of bed and got dressed. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had some phone calls to make before she realized his true identity.
Speaking of phone calls… Tate slid his cell out of his jeans pocket and checked his messages, hoping that the distributor he had been calling all week had been able to speed things up on his end. Instead of finding a message about work, he found one from his dad. Immediately, all of the anger and resentment he had after their argument returned.
I’m not coming home, Dad. Tate deleted the message without listening to it. His father had his chance to make amends, but it was clear that the family legacy was more important than his son.
After college, Tate had returned home to run the family oil company, just like his father wanted. During that summer, he discovered that his father had much bigger plans than passing on his business to his son. All of the lessons in Texas culture Tate had learned as a teen came back tenfold after college. Instructions on what to say and how to act were dished out almost daily, and his interaction with others became limited to only people his father approved of. His father had never liked motorcycles—such things tended to intimidate people rather than bring them closer—and most of his friends from college didn’t meet his father’s high standards. Gavin had long since left to study culinary arts, and his infrequent emails had made Tate feel even more alone.
Then his father put him in charge of overseeing the construction of a corporate headquarters and everything changed. Tate found he had a talent for creating building plans and a passion for creating beautiful things. He threw himself into his work, using it as an escape from his father’s expectations. When it was over, everyone in the area agreed that the new site was not only highly functional, but visually appealing as well.
With the project over, Tate had felt adrift. Now, more than ever, he knew that he didn’t want to run an oil company. His father wasn’t exactly the most approachable person, however, and Tate didn’t want to hurt the old man’s feelings. Unfortunately, making his father happy was making him miserable.
Everything he did had to be deliberate—from the sports they chose to play, to the food they ordered in restaurants. They were either schmoozing with cattle owners over steaks so they could expand their drilling into their fields, or losing a game of golf to other corporate executives so they could form important alliances. It was on one of these golf outings where Tate had finally had enough.
His father had informed him that it was time for him to get married, and lucky for Tate, he had found the perfect match.
Tate stood in shock as his father told him that he was to marry Gavin’s older sister, strengthening the bond between two of the most powerful families in eastern Texas. The political clout would be enormous, and the new ships they would get from Gavin’s family would help sell more of their oil overseas.
Tate couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His father wanted him to marry someone he didn’t love as part of a business deal. The man was clearly insane. While Tate was willing to make some sacrifices to run the family oil company, he wasn’t going to compromise in other areas of his life, not anymore.
He had an emotional explosion, which resulted in a heated argument, and then a deal. His father would give him five years to get his act together. Five years to see if he could make something out of his newfound love of construction and chart his own course in life. At the end of five years, he would return home. If his company was in the black, if he was living a successful life, then he would continue with his construction business with his father’s blessing. If his venture was struggling, however, and he had to dip into the family bank account in order to make the company solvent, then he would return to his rightful place at his father’s side. Which meant he’d have to do all of the things his father wanted him to do, including marry Gavin’s sister.
It was a ridiculous deal, but Tate had been so desperate to get away from his father that he took it. Five years had passed all too quickly and while his company was doing okay, it wasn’t exactly flourishing. He still had several startup loans he was trying to pay off. This job at the resort was just the thing he needed to put his company fully in the black. Then, and only then, would he be able to put his father’s outrageous demands behind him.
Give me just one more month, Dad. Tate had no intention of ever going back to that life. His father would just have to find another heir.
Tate glanced up at Zoe as she groaned and turned over, tangling her long, lean limbs in the sheets. He had explored every inch of that body last night. Multiple times. A big part of him wanted to crawl back into bed and revisit some of those places, but he held himself back. He had too much to do this morning before the crew made it to the site.
No, it was time to leave, but he hated walking out on her without at least saying good-bye. Waking her up was out of the question. One look from those bright blue eyes and he’d be back under the covers. Perhaps there was another way to leave without looking like such an ass.
Flexing his fingers, he glanced around the room and spotted a small notepad in the basket on the table. He could leave her a note. While impersonal, it would allow him to explain why he needed to leave and thank her for last night.
He picked up the pen, placed it on the pad of paper, and hesitated. After a long moment, he put down the pen and straightened. What would he say? He couldn’t explain to her that he was the contractor she had been looking for and had to get back to the site and try to fix the mess with his supplier before she arrived later in the day. That would only make her angry, and after last night, he knew he’d rather see a different type of fire in her eyes.
The anger couldn’t be helped, of course. Hell, if he’d found out that his supplies were delayed, he’d be angry, too. Discovering what had happened would surely be a shock, but perhaps he could smooth things over with some new timelines and alternative building plans—simple plans that would only take a fraction of the time.
If he could make things right, maybe they’d be able to recapture some of the fun they had together last night.
Another soft groan rose up from the bed. Tate turned and watched Zoe stretch and roll over, admiring how pale and soft her skin appeared in the sunlight streaming through the room. His cock stirred, and he couldn’t deny that despite what they had agreed, he wanted last night to turn into more than a one-night stand. To accomplish that, he had to put a cap on his rising desire and make some sort of a peace offering.
Turning away, he forced himself to leave the hut and walk down the path to the main building. Once inside, he made his way to the kitchens to find Gavin. As head of all the food at the resort, he’d be there to check up on the morning buffet plans. Tate needed to update his friend about last night and see if he knew anything about Zoe that would help him when she arrived on the site. Then he had to see about that shipment. Glancing at his watch, he noted that he was already an hour behind schedule for the day. There was a lot he had to accomplish, and there wasn’t much time.
…
Zoe groaned as someone jiggled the door.
“Is there someone in there?” The high, feminine voice filtered through the room and tickled the edges of her consciousness. “The housekeeping schedule says that there shouldn’t be any guests until three o’clock.”
Zoe blinked and sat up in bed. Housekeeping? She glanced at the clock and swore under her breath. It was already nine o’clock! She was supposed to show up at the construction site at seven. That was when the Carrington Construction crew would begin working, and she wanted to find the owner so she could give him a piece of her mind. Instead of chewing him out, she had slept half the morning away.
I’m such an idiot. Grabbing her blanket, she wrapped it around herself and hurried to the door.
“I’ll only be a few more minutes,” she said to the surprised Asian woman on the other side. “Oh Gloria, it’s you.”
“Zoe? What are you doing here?”
“I needed a place to crash for the night.” Zoe pushed a strand of hair from her face as heat flooded her cheeks. “Carrie said it was okay, as long as I cleaned up after myself.” It was a lie, but Zoe couldn’t come up with anything else on such short notice. Gloria was a gossip, so telling her that she got drunk and needed a place to hook up with a stranger was out of the question.
Gloria frowned and made a noise of disbelief. “Seems as if everyone is having sex around here but me.”
“What?”
Gloria’s eyes widened. “You didn’t hear what happened?”
Zoe shook her head. “I just got in yesterday.”
Gloria leaned over her housekeeping cart and lowered her voice. “You know that new landscaping company we hired to take care of the gardens?”
“Yeah.”
“Natasha, from accounting, has been having sex with one of the supervisors.”
“Which one?”
“The guy with the washboard abs and the Jamaican accent.”
“Oh my God. Freddie? She did Freddie?”
Gloria grinned and nodded. “He was a hottie, wasn’t he? Rumor has it that they have been fooling around for weeks.”
“You’re kidding.”
Gloria shook her head. “It gets better.” She glanced around to make sure they were alone before continuing. “I guess one of their favorite places to do the deed was in the pool shed, the one with all of those inflatable toys for the kids.”
Zoe snorted. “Not the most romantic spot.”
“I guess romance didn’t matter to them. Anyway, one of the guests went to the shed with her preschooler to get a toy and got an eyeful.”
Zoe put her fingers to her lips. “Oh my God.”
Gloria picked up her feather duster and waved it in the air. “Needless to say, Natasha was fired, and the landscaping company was let go.”
“Just because they had sex?”
“No, because they had sex on resort property and… What did it say in the email? Oh yes, traumatized a preschooler.”
“I’m sure the kid had no idea what was going on.”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the mother wants to sue.”
“That’s crazy. Does she have a case?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that ever since then, Carrie has been on the warpath. She says that shocking customers is bad for business.”
“No kidding.” Especially when those customers threaten to sue.
“Rumor has it that she’s going to be making up some new guidelines on appropriate resort behavior and will force us to follow them within the week.” She glanced at Zoe’s blanket-covered body suggestively. “I’d be careful if I were you.”
Zoe leaned back in shock. “I was just sleeping.”
Gloria held up her hands in mock surrender. “Look, I like a little boom-boom as much as anyone else, but people are extra sensitive about that stuff right now. I wouldn’t want to see you lose your job over some misunderstanding.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” She smiled. “You get dressed, and I’ll come back in an hour to clean, okay?”
“Okay.” Zoe watched Gloria push her cart down the path to the hut next door. God, how embarrassing. As she shut the door and went into the shower, Zoe thought about what had happened last night. She had thrown herself at a stranger, practically begging him to have sex with her. She had come across as loose and desperate, neither of which were attractive. Obviously, she needed to get back into the dating scene before she made an even bigger mess of her life.
While part of her felt hurt that the hot guy from last night had left without saying good-bye, she knew it was for the best. After everything that had happened with Natasha, she didn’t want to take any chances. She couldn’t track him down again, no matter how much she wanted a repeat performance. From now on, she’d be all business. She couldn’t lose this job under any circumstances. There was just too much at stake.
As she showered and dressed, she pushed the warm, sensual memories of last night from her mind and focused on the task at hand. While she hadn’t come across the head of Carrington Construction yesterday, she did find his second-in-command, Alex. She had left a message with him that she’d be back at nine in the morning to talk about the construction. She only hoped that this Tate Carrington would get the message. They had a lot of things to discuss if they were ever going to get this place ready for the big Harris-Potts wedding at the end of the month.
As she dressed, her phone buzzed no less than five times, all with messages from Sadie wanting pictures of the new chapel.
“I hope that it’s big enough,” one of the texts said. “Kaleb just got me a pet ocelot and we want it to be part of the wedding party. We need to make sure there’s enough room for it to run around…”
“An ocelot? Isn’t that a big cat?” Zoe asked the empty room. A quick internet search confirmed that an ocelot was not only a large cat, but a wild one, at that. While some famous people had ocelots as pets in the past, they were now endangered. It was illegal in the States to own one.
This brought up at least a dozen questions, not the least of which was how Kaleb had managed to secure a pet ocelot for his fiancée, and how he’d smuggled it across the US border. Worse, since the island fell under US laws, bringing an ocelot to the wedding would create a nightmare with local law enforcement. In fact, just the thought of Sadie bringing a large, wild cat to the resort was enough to make her temples throb.
Zoe started to type all of this to Sadie but stopped herself before hitting send. Rolling her eyes, she pocketed the phone in her purse. She was going to need a large coffee and a couple of aspirin before she dealt with any of this drama.
It didn’t take her long to finish getting ready. Her suitcase was still in her car, so she just threw on the same clothes from yesterday. Not a lot of people had seen her in it yet, so she felt she could get away with it for another day. She made her way down to the coffee shop in the main building for some caffeine before heading to the construction site. While standing in line, she noticed Gavin walking toward her with a steaming cup in his hand. When he’d initially introduced himself on her first day at work, she had been captivated by his easy smile and sense of humor. They had become fast friends, and while there was no chemistry between them, they often shared a joke or confided in each other about their love lives.
Correction, Gavin confided in her about his love life. The man went through women faster than someone with allergies went through tissues. Zoe liked to live vicariously through his sexual adventures.
Well, until last night. What Zoe had done seemed rather reckless and wild, even for Gavin. She couldn’t wait to tell him that her dry spell was officially over. Unfortunately, it seemed that her friend had other things on his mind.
“Did you get the memo?” he asked after they hugged their greeting.
“No.”
He nodded to her purse. “Check your emails.” He took a sip of his coffee and stepped aside so Zoe could order.
“What’s it about?” she asked after telling the barista what she wanted.
“There’s going to be a resort-wide meeting at the end of the week. Something about a global policy change from legal.”
“Does this have to do with Natasha and Freddie?”
“Who told you about that?”
“Gloria.”
He chuckled. “She beat me to it. I honestly have no idea if it’s about them. It could just be an announcement about needing new inflatable animals for the kiddie pool.”
Zoe smirked. “You thought about that, too, eh? God, I hope Natasha and Freddie weren’t using any of the toys when they got caught in that shed.”
“Yeah, I could imagine that it would be rather traumatic for that poor kid.” Gavin shuddered. “What’s that duck doing, Mommy?”
“Oh God—stop. That’s awful.” She giggled and slapped Gavin’s arm playfully as he pulled out his cell phone. “The poor child is going to be in therapy for weeks.”
“Years.” As Gavin swiped the screen, his smile disappeared. “Damn.”
“What is it?”
“I have to go. Evidently there is a crisis at the restaurant.” He frowned. “They ran out of eggs for the morning breakfast.”
“We still have to talk about the wedding dinner,” she reminded him.
He nodded and tapped his phone screen as he turned away. “Don’t forget to check your emails.”
“Yeah, I will.” After paying for her coffee, Zoe glanced at her watch and frowned. She had wanted to be at the construction site fifteen minutes ago. Unfortunately, emails were going to have to wait. There were more important things to attend to, such as giving that head contractor a piece of her mind. Luckily, she didn’t have far to go.
In minutes, she arrived at the construction site at the other end of the main building. Stopping at the edge of the huge mess, she looked around.
“Hello?” She tiptoed around the rubble and equipment as she scanned the large area for signs of life. “Is anybody here?” Despite the threats she had given some of the crew yesterday, no one was working. In fact, no one was even on the site.
“This is madness,” she said as she kicked a large rock with her toe. “What the hell have they been doing all month?”
“We’ve been waiting,” a familiar, masculine voice said from behind her.
Carrington. Anger bubbled up inside of Zoe as she turned to face the man who had threatened to tear apart her reputation with his laziness. “Waiting? For what?”
It was then that she saw him. The man standing behind her wasn’t the construction company’s owner, but the handsome devil she had slept with last night.
“The wood you requested isn’t native to the island. I had to have it imported.”
She opened her mouth to answer, then shut it once more.
The man in question held out his hand. “Tate Carrington, head of Carrington Construction.”
Zoe stared down at his hand. This was the construction company owner she had been looking for all day yesterday? She thought back to everything she had said last night, how she had blamed him for all of her problems. At first she felt embarrassed, then she felt angry. Not once last night did this guy tell her his name, not even after she said she was looking for him. Instead, he let her run off her mouth and took her to bed where he ravaged her until the early hours of the morning.
And oh, did he ravage her. Images of his hands on her body, of tangled sheets and sweaty limbs, filled her mind. The sex was incredible, but that didn’t make up for the fact that this man had purposefully kept his name secret so she’d sleep with him. What a jerk. Now she was going to have to think of something to say to undo this mess she had gotten herself into.
One thing was for certain: she couldn’t let what happened between them affect their conversation now. She couldn’t be soft, not for one second. There was too much at stake. If she was ever going to save her reputation, then this wedding needed to happen on time and per Sadie’s expectations—no matter what the cost.
Pushing aside the tingles of sexual awareness that had sprung up at the sound of his voice, she lifted her chin at the man before her. If this guy thought that sleeping with her would gain him some reprieve on the building of this chapel, then he’d better think again. Zoe needed this job too much to let things fall apart with Sadie and Kaleb. She’d do whatever it took to get this wedding perfect—even if it meant playing Tate Carrington’s games.