“You’re aware that sleeping with people isn’t exactly the smart way to rocket to the top, right?” Paige observed drily.
“Who cares about rocketing to the top? I want to have some fun.”
“Earning a paycheck is a way to start.”
“Always in such a hurry to grow up and settle down, Paige,” Delaney teased, dangling her legs over the seat ahead of her. “You can rush all you want to. Me, I intend to take my time. They want me to grow up, they’re going to have to drag me kicking and screaming.”
1
Playa del Carmen, Mexico 2007
“YOU WERE RIGHT.” Dominick Gordon looked over the blue waters of the Caribbean that spread around them, the wind of the dive boat’s passage stirring his dark hair.
Stocky blonde Eric Novak blinked. “Excuse me?” He shifted on the bench seat to stare at his best friend.
“You were right about coming down here. This is perfect.” The boat jounced a bit as it skimmed over the waves, motor roaring as they headed to the next reef. The tiny strip of land on the horizon was the Yucatan; ahead of them, larger, lay Cozumel. Paradise, Dom thought.
And for the first time in five years, he felt as if he could almost breathe. A week of swimming, diving, sleeping—after all he’d been through, it felt like an unimaginable extravagance. Almost as much as chartering the private dive boat instead of going with a package, but what was the point of success if he never allowed himself to enjoy any of it?
He’d somehow lost track of that.
“So this stuff about me being right, you want to repeat that for the record?” Eric asked.
Dom adjusted his sunglasses and leaned back. “You lawyers, always worried about the record.”
“Forget about the legal stuff, it’s the Guinness Book I’m talking about. ‘First time ever, tycoon-in-training Dom Gordon admits he was wrong.” ’
“I didn’t go that far. If I was smart, I’d still be at home working on the initial public offering.” At home, where the mantle of responsibility for Gordon’s Auto Centers weighed like an anchor on his shoulders.
“Jeez, will you get the IPO out of your head for five minutes? I keep telling you, all we can do right now is wait. It’s the perfect time for a vacation. If you were back at home, you’d just be gnawing off your fingers for something to do. Here,” Eric continued expansively, “because of my brilliance and foresight, you can take your mind off it by communing with the fishes.”
“Brilliance and foresight?”
Eric inclined his head modestly. “Mother nature has been good to me.”
“That’s not what you said when that dolphin surprised you.”
“Fickleness, thy name is woman. As you’d remember if you’d had a social life in recent memory.” The dive boat slowed, approaching a lighter area of water.
“Not this again.” Time off, Dom could use. Complicating his life with another woman just when he’d gotten untangled from the last one? No way.
The boat stopped and Dom zipped into the top of his wetsuit and strapped on his breathing tank.
Eric reached for his fins. “What I’m saying is, you’re getting awfully damned boring these days. Have been for a while. Don’t know why I hang out with you, now that I think about it.”
“Because you can’t find anyone else to take your money?”
“That was a marked deck you were playing with yesterday,” Eric said darkly. “No way you flopped a royal flush.”
“Face it, I’m one lucky guy.”
“Lucky, my ass. I want to take another look at those cards.”
“It was your deck.” Dom pulled up his hood. “And you went through it at least three times that I saw.”
“I still don’t believe it.”
Dom shook his head. “I can’t hear you at all, buddy. See you with the fishes.”
“You’d better start playing poker straight, or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes,” Eric grumbled.
“You’d better start playing smarter poker, or you’ll be broke,” Dom countered. Moving to the side of the boat, he let himself roll back into the water.
“OKAY, MUCHACHAS, WE’VE got alcohol,” Delaney announced as she and Sabrina walked up to the palm-thatched palapa, each of them carrying a handful of cups pressed together. The other five members of the Sex & Supper Club were flopped out on towels or chaises, somnolent in the sun.
Kelly stirred. “Did someone say alcohol?” she inquired wistfully, and with a bit of effort levered herself upright.
Delaney set her quartet of plastic cups on the little wooden ledge that encircled the center pole of the palapa, one of a collection scattered down the beach like giant drink umbrellas.
Appropriate, now that she thought of it.
“Okay, one virgin margarita for our little newlywed mama-to-be.” She handed it to Kelly, who was still hardly showing in a hot pink tankini. “And here’s one unvirgin margarita for our oldlywed.” Delaney passed a second cup to Cilla, who sat up, chunky gold earrings swinging.
“I’ll have you know I’m younger than you,” she informed Delaney.
“Marriage ages you artificially.”
“Not at all. Regular orgasms have documented health benefits.”
“Do I look like I’m missing regular orgasms?” Delaney asked.
Cilla considered. “Hard to say. It might just be that your new cut looks so good we don’t notice.”
Delaney had had her shoulder-length hair cropped the week before into a pixie, driven by one of her characteristic bouts of impatience. Life was too short to spend twenty minutes blow-drying and styling, she figured. The first time she’d showered and found her hands closing on air at the back of her head had been a shock, but Delaney wasn’t much for regrets.
Life was too short for them, too.
“I love it. It takes five minutes to dry. I’m in the bathroom and out.”
“It makes you look like Tinkerbell, all eyes and cheekbones.”
“Tinkerbell, huh?” Delaney laughed. “Yeah. Drink a few more of those margaritas and you’ll see my wings.” She picked up another cup. “Are you sure you really wanted a beer, Paige? I never once saw you drink it before you took up with that guitar player. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s been a bad influence on you.”
“Oh, I hope so.” Paige sank back on her lounger in the shade. “Zach’s introduced me to the finer things in life.”
“Here, here,” Thea put in, taking a sip of her own beer. “Although I’m not sure you can call this beer. Or fine.”
“You’re prejudiced because you live with a Pacific Northwest brew snob,” Delaney told her, handing a frothy white drink to Trish.
“Brady introduced me to the finer things in life, too,” Thea said.
“Back to that regular orgasm thing, are we?” Delaney studied her friends around her, all of them married or in long term relationships now, absorbed in their lives, moving on or moving away. Not just Paige and Thea, but the rest of them: Sabrina married to her college sweetheart Stef Costas, Kelly married to Stef’s partner Kev, Trish living with Sabrina’s cousin Ty. Even Cilla, who’d played the field about as much as she herself, had tied the knot.
Only Delaney remained resolutely, stubbornly