Author: Aria Hayden
Summary: Serena Tsukino is a New Yorker through and through, with a New Yorker's disdain for anywhere but the city's bustling streets. When her boss inexplicably sends her to handle a new account in the Florida Everglades, it may as well be another planet for city slicker Serena. But this is no ordinary business meeting: Serena is to join her client on a rustic camping expedition, accompanied by a guide with the larger-than-life attitude, Darien Shields.
Chapter One
Darien Shields stretched his long legs out in the motorboat, resting his calf against one of the crates in the bottom of the boat. He was the remarkably handsome product of generations of remarkably handsome people. His dark hair was mussed in an untidy fashion and fell to rest across his right eye but that did not detract from his good looks: brilliant blue eyes, lips that could be as cold as marble or as soft and sweet as the balmy air surrounding him, and eyelashes that you could rest an egg on.
"It still doesn't make sense to me," Zachary Taylor was saying as he maneuvered the stick on the motor. Zack was a striking contrast to Darien. Although they were both handsome men, whereas Darien had the dark looks, Zack had the angelic look: hair as yellow as spun gold, eyes the same color of emerald, and a good four inches smaller than Darien.
Darien didn't bother answering his friend, but just closed his eyes for a moment and smelled the clean salt air around him. It was heaven to get away from the smell of oil, from the noise of machinery, and away from the responsibility of taking care of others, of answering questions, of—
"If I were you," Zack was saying, "I'd be back home in New York having the time of my life. I can't understand anybody wanting to spend their time in this furnace they like to call Florida, acting out as a tour guide for some city slicker like yourself, and some ancient bull riding cowboy."
Darien opened one eye at Zack then turned and looked out over the ocean at several mangrove islands surrounding the coast of Florida. He couldn't explain what he felt to Zack, who had grown up in a city. Although Darien was currently residing in New York, he had grown up in Maine, away from the noise and confusion of people and their machines. And there had always been the sea. When other boys had bought their first cars at sixteen, Darien had received a sailboat. By eighteen he had been sailing three-day trips alone and camping out in deserted islands he had found on the way. Basic survival skills were something he knew about. It was only luck that he had found out about the need for a tour guide on his stay here in Florida. He had planned to stay in Florida on a much-needed vacation, but due to lack of funds and boredom, he found that he wanted to take on a job. He knew he had money in his bank, but they were all inheritance, not money he had earned on his own. And he planned to make it out on his own. And if he needed to act as a well paid tour guide, then he definitely wasn't going to complain.
"Hey!" Zack was calling. "Don't leave this world yet. Are you sure that's enough provisions? Don't look like much to eat to me. You obviously have two other mouths to feed."
Darien smiled. "It's enough. The rest of the food I'll have to hunt out." He said, and closed his eyes again. City people were never able to look at the sea as one long banquet table. He had brought a net, a fishing pole and hooks, a couple of pots, a small box of vegetables, and his mess kit. He planned to live like a king for the next few days.
Zack snorted. "Your idea of vacation is definitely screwed up, my friend. Now if it were me, I'd lie out in a hammock and have two beautiful—no, three—gorgeous women feeding me mangoes."
"No women," Darien said, his blue eyes darkening. "No women, please."
Zack laughed again. "What happened with that little redhead was your own fault. Anybody could see marriage was in her eyes. And why didn't you marry her? I definitely wouldn't mind being married to a woman who had her package."
"Just pull up right there," Darien said, ignoring Zack's comments about marriage as they reached the coast.
"Beats me how you can tell one island from another, but it's your funeral. One good thing is you'll be so lonely out here you'll be glad to get back to work."
Darien grimaced at that. Peace, he thought, that's all he wanted. Nothing but the sound of the wind and the rain beating down on his tarp. All he had to do was show some city dweller and a Texan around the island, give them some privacy so they could conduct whatever business they wanted to do out here in the wilderness, and get paid a nice sum for it too. Darien almost smiled at the thought of his father finding out that he was roaming around an island, acting as a tour guide, instead of working on their business.
"Cut your motor," he half shouted at Zack. "You're going to hit the beach."
Zack obeyed and eased the motorboat onto the narrow white sand beach.
Darien untangled his six-foot-long body and stepped out of the boat and into the shallow water. His heavy boots felt awkward on the slippery bottom.
"Last chance," Zack said, handing Darien the first crate. "You can still change your mind. If I had the luxury of having your financial lifestyle, I wouldn't work at all and just get drunk and stay that way until I had to sober up."
Darien grinned, showing even white teeth and a slight dimple on his left cheek. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass this time," he said as he took the second crate ashore.
"Well, I hope you know what you're doing. I'll have twenty pretty girls lined up to meet you when you come to your senses and come back to civilization."
"I'll be ready for them by then. You'd better go; it looks like it might rain." Darien couldn't keep the eagerness out of his voice.
"I can take a hint, you want me gone. This camping thing is only three days right? So I guess I'll be picking you up on Sunday."
"Sunday night," Darien said.
"All right, Sunday night." Zack revved the engine and backed off the narrow beach with Darien's help.
Darien stood at the edge of the water and watched his friend until Zack rounded another island and was lost to sight, then Darien opened his arms and breathed deeply. The smell of decaying sea matter, the salt air, the wind on the mangrove trees behind him made him feel almost at home. And the best part of all was there were no females within a 25 mile radius. Just him, some big shot New Yorker, a Texas cowboy, and three days with no worries. Nothing could go wrong.
Fifteen minutes after Serena landed in Florida, her wallet was stolen. She refused to dwell upon the irony of it all, as she had lived in New York all her life, a city that was supposed to be notorious for their pick-pocket thieves, and not once had she had her wallet stolen. Now, here she was in Florida and she had already lost one MasterCard, one American Express card, two Visa's, as well as most of her money. At least she had sense enough to put a hundred and fifty dollars in her carryon, so she wasn't so destitute.
After she had discovered the theft, she had the brand-new learning experience of canceling her credit cards. To Serena everything that had happened was traumatic: coming to this humid, life-size oven of a state for the first time, being welcomed by a pickpocket, and having to cancel her charge cards. To the bored young woman behind the claims counter, these were all things that happened fifty times a day. Handing Serena forms to fill out, she pointed to a wall chart with the credit card companies' telephone numbers on them and told her to call them. While Serena was on the telephone, the woman managed to crack her gum, polish her nails, talk to her boyfriend on the phone, and tell her colleague what she wanted for lunch, all at the same time. Serena tried to tell the woman about her lost wallet, tried to tell her that the wallet brand was Prada which had cost her a good arm and a leg to pay for. But the woman gave Serena a blank look and said, "Yeah, sure." If the woman hadn't just demonstrated that she had enough intelligence to do several tasks at the same time, Serena would have thought from the blank expression in her eyes that she was terminally stupid.
By the time Serena got away from the lost articles department, her Prada suitcase had been locked into a glass-fronted room and she had to find a guard to open it—no mean feat, because no one she spoke to knew who had the key to the room. In fact, no one seemed to know the locked room even existed.
By the time she got her suitcase, pulling it along behind her on a wheeled cart, her carryon slung over her shoulder, she was shaking with exhaustion and frustration.
Now all she had to do was get on some motorboat, the first boat she had ridden in her life, and get onto that blasted island.
Thirty minutes later, she was sitting atop the dirtiest boat she had ever seen. It stunk of fish so strongly she thought she might be sick. Add to the fact that she had the worst hangover in her life due to the crazy night she had with the girls the other night didn't help. She and the girls had stayed out until two A.M., laughing riotously over everything in their lives, but most especially over Serena's having to go on a camping trip.
"You?" Lita had said. "I can't imagine you more than two miles from a manicurist." Lita was a florist and her hands always looked scraped and worn. But all four of the women knew that Lita didn't need to do anything to make a living, she had a trust fund.
The sun was beating down on Serena, and the rocking of the boat as it ran head on into the strong waves was making her sick. She fumbled into her purse for her Gucci sunglasses, and after putting them on, was quickly disappointed to find out that the glare from the sun made them seem like clear glass. In New York they'd seemed so dark she could hardly see through them. 'Of course, Florida had to find another way to spite me.' she thought.
As she rested her head over the water, trying to will the contents in her stomach to stay in her stomach, her head ached with nothing but bad thoughts. How was she going to survive the next three days? Would this man require her to clean the fish? Why was she even here and what did this man William McIntyre want with her? And why Florida? Why not some air-conditioned, office building with proper plumbing?
"We're here," the man who was steering slowly toward the shore was saying. Serena could only nod her head, her face slightly green from seasickness, as she looked toward the coastline.
"But it's still a bit far. Couldn't you at least inch up a bit closer?" she asked, standing up and slinging her carryon over her shoulder and holding onto her suitcase.
The man seemed to find her amusing as he all out laughed at her. "Lady, if I were to get any closer to the shore, my boat here would get stuck. Besides, the water isn't too deep. You just swing your body up off the boat, and walk the rest of the way."
Serena could only gape at the man. Was he insane? He expected her to just "hop off the boat" and walk to shore. She looked down at her attire and winced. She was wearing her black Fendi shoes that were definitely not cheap. Her skirt and her white blouse were also definitely not cheap. All in all, her whole damn ensemble was definitely not cheap. And this crazy man expected her to trudge in the water with these clothes? He had to be out of his mind.
Serena counted to ten, trying to control her temper as she looked down at the man, whose arms were crossed across his chest and was watching her with a smirk as if this whole thing amused him. Perhaps if she reasoned with the man, she could make him see just how ludicrous his idea was.
"I'm sure that, given the circumstances, you can see just how crazy that idea is. Now, I'm sure that you can inch a bit closer to shore. At least close enough so that when I do jump, my feet will actually touch dry land." She said, giving him her sweetest smile.
At that he laughed, as he leaned forward and took her Prada suitcase and, to her horror, was about to throw it into the water. "What do you think you're—" she began lunging toward him, but instead losing her footing and falling overboard. Coming back up, gasping for air, one of her shoes floating in front of her and her underwear slowly filling up with sand as she sat there in a stupor, it took her a while to hear the man laughing at her.
"See, now that wasn't hard, now was it Princess?" Still laughing, he started his motorboat and began to speed off.
"Of all the—" Serena yelled, but was cut off as a wave lashed at her and had her rolling back into the water. Standing up, grabbing her shoe and her suitcase, she looked at the shrinking motorboat. She was seething. Of course. What had she expected? She already had her wallet stolen. She had to ride on some fish-smelling boat, and now, turning around to look at the island, she saw no trace of human life. Not to mention that her shoes were now beyond repair, her clothes were clinging to her body, and the fact that she didn't have anything to eat since she stepped off the blasted plane, nothing else could possibly go wrong since it seemed everything that could've possibly gone wrong, had already happened to her.
Making her way towards the shore, her carryon and her luggage flapping behind her, she sighed. Now what? She had no idea where the hell she was supposed to go from there. She had expected to find the two men at least waiting for her on the shore once she arrived, but with the way her luck was going, she had no idea why she expected so much. What did it matter to them that she wanted a shower and to sit down on something that wasn't moving?
As she sat on her suitcase waiting for William and the tour guide, wondering if they were going to show up at all, she speculated about what she would do on this blasted island. Her only means of transportation just left her behind. Looking into her purse, she found that her cell phone wasn't working due to its contact with the brutal ocean, and looking around, she knew that she wasn't going to find a telephone nearby. She felt like the main character in Swiss Family Robinson and was almost expecting to find an ostrich somewhere that she could ride around on.
She mentally scolded herself. Now was not the time to be joking around. Standing up, she surveyed her surroundings. As far as she could see, there were only trees. Trees there, trees here, trees four miles down. Trees! And no human being whatsoever. She began to wonder if she was on the wrong island. There were, after all, many islands off the coast of Florida, and with her streak of bad luck, she wouldn't have been surprised to find that she had told the man driving the motorboat to take her to the wrong island. She was about to scream in frustration when a missile seemed to whiz past her head. Later on, looking back, she would've realized that it was actually a bullet and that someone was shooting at her, but at the moment, she had no time to think. The bullet had came so close to her ear, that she felt the heat, as she just stood there, eyes open wide, paralyzed with fear and confusion. What the hell was going on? She had no time to think, as a hand closed on over her mouth from behind her, and her world went black as the butt of a pistol came in contact with her head.
Darien awoke with a jolt, sitting upright. Something was wrong, he knew it, but he didn't know what it was. He leaped from the hammock, grabbed his rifle, and left the clearing, wearing his shorts and knife.
When he reached the beach and he still had heard or seen nothing, he began to laugh at himself for being skittish. "It was a dream," he muttered, then started back toward the path.
At that moment, he heard a loud noise that was unmistakably the sound of a gun being fired before he could take another step.
Crouching low, staying at the far edge of the beach, he began to run toward the sound. He had not gotten far when he saw them. Two men were in a motorboat, one sitting by the motor, the other standing, aiming his gun at something in the water.
Darien blinked a few times then saw the dark, round shape in the water dive. It was a human head.
Darien didn't consider what he was doing, as he put his rifle behind a tree, and eased into the water. Darien swam as quietly as he could, trying to watch the men and the head. When the head went down and didn't surface, he dove, swimming under the bottom of the boat and heading downward.
"There!" he heard above him just as he dove down. Moments later bullets came zinging through the water, one of them cutting into his shoulder.
He kept diving down, down, his eyes wide as he searched.
Just when he knew he was going to have to resurface for air, he saw the body, limp, bent over, and floating downward. He kicked harder as he dove deeper.
He caught the body about the waist and started clawing his way upward. He could see mangrove roots to his right and tried to reach them. His lungs were burning, his heart pounding in his ears.
When his head broke the surface, his only concern was air, not the men. Fumbling, he grabbed the hair of the person he held and pulled the head out of the water. As he tried to determine his position, he knew he heard no gasping of air from the body he held. The men had shut off their motor and were now only a few feet from Darien but their backs were to him.
Silently, Darien swam into the tree roots. Involuntarily, he gasped as a razor clam clinging to the roots cut into his side. But he made no more sounds as he backed further into the roots, the clams cutting into his skin. The men used oars to maneuver the boat.
"You got her," one man said. "Let's get out of here."
"I just want to make sure. Wiseman wanted us to be sure she was dead before he left," the man with the gun said.
Her? Darien thought, then turned to look at the face of the head lolling on his shoulder. She was a delicate-featured young woman, quite pretty actually—and she didn't seem to be alive.
For the first time Darien felt anger. He wanted to attack the two men in the boat who would shoot at a woman, but he had no weapon except a small knife, his body was covered with blood from the clam's razor sharp abuse, and he had no idea how deep the bullet wound in his shoulder was.
Impulsively, he pulled the woman closer to him, shielding her slim body from the razor clams, and encountered the curve of a female breast. He suddenly felt even more protective of her, holding her to him in a loving way.
He glared at the backs of the men who searched the water.
"I hear something. It sounds like a motor," the seated one said. "She's dead. Let's get out of here."
The other one put his gun down, sat down, and nodded as the first man started the motor and they sped away.
Darien waited until the boat was out of sight then protected the woman's body as best he could with his own as he made his way out of the jungle of roots and into the open water. He held her with his injured arm while swimming with the other until he reached the beach.
"Don't be dead, sweetie," he kept saying as he carried her to the shore. "Don't be dead."
As gently as he could, he put her on her back on the beach and began to try to pump the water from her lungs. She was wearing a pinstriped business-looking skirt with a white shirt that was definitely see-through and revealed a white bra underneath. Her golden hair was coiled and pinned about her head and she only wore one shoe. Her skirt and shirt clung to her in a way that allowed him to see that she had a beautiful body: tall, slim-hipped, a waist he could span with his hands, and big breasts that swelled against the white, transparent shirt. Her face was turned to one side, her eyes closed, thick, dark lashes lying against a cheek as pure and pale as porcelain. She looked like some rare, precious flower that had never been exposed to sunlight. How could anyone have tried to kill this delicate beauty, he thought with anger. All his protective instincts rose within him.
"Sweetheart," he said, squeezing on her ribs in a way that was half caress then lifting her arms. "Breathe, baby, breathe for me. Come on, sweetheart."
Blood ran down his shoulder from the bullet wound and more blood flowed from half a dozen cuts from the razor clams, but he didn't notice. His only concern was the life of this beautiful young woman.
He prayed, asking God to spare her.
"Come on, sweetheart, please try," he begged. "You can't give up now. You're safe now. I'll protect you. Please, baby. For me."
After what seemed to be hours, he felt a shudder run through her body. She was alive!
He kissed her fragile-looking cheek, felt the cold skin, them resumed pumping with increased vigor. "That's it, baby, just a little more. Take a big deep breath. Breathe, goddamn you!"
Another shudder passed through her body and she gave a great gagging heave. Darien felt so much empathy for her that his own sides tightened. A huge amount of water came from her mouth and she began to cough as she struggled to pull herself upright.
Darien smiled, feeling a great joy flood through his veins, and thanked God as he pulled her into his lap. "That's it, baby, get it all out." He stroked her damp hair, caressed her small, frail back, and felt as God must have when He created man. Darien didn't know when anything had made him feel as good as saving this girl. He caressed her pretty cheek with the back of his fingers, cradled her like a child, and soothed her more. "You're safe now, sweetheart. Perfectly safe." He held her face against his neck.
"Get—" she coughed.
"Don't talk, honey, just rest. Get all the water out and I'll take you home." He began to rock her.
"Get"—cough, cough—"your" —cough, cough.
"Yes, baby? You can thank me later. Let's get you into dry clothes for right now. How about some hot fish soup?" His voice was deep and loving.
The girl seemed to want desperately to say something so Darien allowed her to move back a few inches so she could look at him.
He pulled her back into his arms, cradling her as if she were the most precious object on earth. "It's all right, baby. No one will try to hurt you again."
She struggled against him and he let her pull away again as he smiled at her indulgently.
Again he was struck with the sheer prettiness of her. Not beautiful in a modern sense but in an old-fashioned way. Her small features and perfectly shaped head made her look as if she had stepped out of an old photograph. She reminded him of the ladies in the fairy-tale books his mother read to him as a child. She was a damsel in distress and he was her rescuer. Warmth flooded him.
He kept his hands lightly at her back in a protective way. "All right, baby, what is it you want to say?" he said caressingly.
Trying to talk made her cough again but he waited patiently, his eyes filled with tenderness while she made the effort to gain control.
"Get your" —cough, cough—"hands" —cough, cough—"off" —cough, cough—"of me."
By the time she finished, her back was ramrod stiff.
It took Darien a moment to comprehend what she had said. He stared at her stupidly.
"I don't know who you think you are" —she looked down her nose at his bare chest—"but you have no right to touch me."
"I'll be damned," Darien breathed, and dropped his hands from her back. Never in his life had he felt such betrayal. He was on his feet in seconds, leaving her sitting. "You ungrateful little—" he began, then stopped. His jaw hardened and his eyes glittered like blue fire as he looked at her before turning away and leaving her where she was. "Find your own breakfast," he muttered, and stalked away from her.
That's it for chapter one. Chapter two will be up soon.