Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (35 page)

Where were his usual sleeveless tee and baggy Hawaiian print shorts? Where were the running shoes with holes in the toes?

“I have an idea,” Lee said, a twinkle springing into those remarkable gray eyes, “that I belong here more than you do.”

He belonged here? Since when? Caught off balance, she could only
say stupidly, “What?”

“I live on the
Samoa.
”

“But—” Words failed her. She fought for composure. “You’re going to have to help me out here. I came here to see Leonardo Santori.”

“Looks like you’ve found him,” Lee said. He commenced to look her up and down, adding irrelevantly, “You should have called for the launch.”

“You’re—? No, it’s not possible. It couldn’t be.” She tossed her sodden briefcase down on one of the deck chairs, and, still dripping copiously, eyed him with trepidation. “Why do I feel that I’m Alice fallen down a rabbit hole or something? This isn’t real.”

“It
is
real. I want to tell you all about it.” He sounded worried.

“About—this?” She waved a hand at their opulent surroundings, at the shiny brass railings, the deck chairs, the table set up nearby and stacked with plates of fruit, roast beef and lobster tails.

“About me. Sit down, Azure. Please.”

Her knees, which were feeling distinctly wobbly with the shock of all this, refused to support her any longer. She sat. Lee pulled his chair closer to hers and took her hands in his.

“I
am
Leonardo Santori, Azure. Will it make a difference?”

She snatched her hands away and, furious, said the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll say. You can buy your own lottery tickets from now on.”

He looked as if he might laugh. “I meant in the way you feel about me.”

Her anger abated when she looked deep into his eyes. “Why, I don’t know. I’m not sure I believe what
you’re saying.”

The man she had thought was Santori emerged breathlessly from a hatch behind them. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw them. “Oh! I’ve been looking for you, Lee.” He stared at Azure and ran a hand through his wild-looking hair. “I might as well explain that Miguel and I wouldn’t have let her come aboard, but I decided that if you love her, you’d want to see her.”

“You love me?” Azure said to Lee in shock, not quite believing that she was asking.

“Yes, and now that I’ve found you, I’m never going to lose you,” Lee said, his eyes never leaving hers.

“But if you’re Santori, who is
he?
” Azure asked, staring at Fleck.

“Azure, meet Fleck. He’s my first new employee at Grassy Creek.”

“Nice to meet you,” Fleck said. “I think I’d better go. Maybe I’ll stop by the Grassy Creek store and take a look at it.” He went, dragging the flustered Miguel along with him.

“You already have a Grassy Creek store?” Azure’s mind was spinning with all this new information

“We painted some of it, remember?”

“Omigosh.”

“And it took quite a bribe to buy the silence of Jake Gruber, who was going to report us to the contractor and possibly the police.”

“Your first Grassy Creek store is going to be in Miami,” Azure said. “Harry Wixler didn’t mention that.”

“He doesn’t know. I didn’t think it was important to tell him. I asked him for help in starting up my franchise operation because if the Grassy Creek store is as big a success as I intend for it to be, I’ll have outlets all
over the country. All over the world, maybe.”

She pulled her hands away from his. “But why did you pretend to be a beach bum?”

He laughed and recaptured her hands. “You’re the one who took me for a beach bum, dear. I let you go on thinking that because I never get a simple reaction to the real me when women know I’m Leonardo Santori. I like to call myself Lee Sanders when I first meet people. That way I know they like me for myself, not for my money.”

“I see,” Azure said, though she didn’t really. She had little experience with billionaires, and none with billionaires who traveled incognito.

“Stop trying to take your hands away. I’ll need to study them carefully so I’ll know your finger size when I buy the ring.”

“Ring?” she said. He wanted to buy her a ring? When only a few days ago she’d been doubtful that he could afford a one-dollar lottery ticket?

“Ring,” he affirmed. “And soon.”

“Soon?” The man had reduced her to a gibbering idiot.

“Today, maybe. I want to marry you, Azure.”

He wanted to marry her. He wanted to marry
her?

She closed her eyes and opened them. Much to her surprise, Lee was still there. She had thought that maybe he would disappear
—abracadabra!—
and she would wake up back in Paulette’s bed with her hangover as fresh as ever.

“By the way, do you always put the cap back on the toothpaste? It drives me crazy when people don’t.” Lee regarded her with barely concealed amusement.

“Always,” Azure assured him. “But you’ll have to start wearing socks with your shoes. I hate it when guys wear shoes with no socks.” She’d blurted this out
without thinking.

“No problem.”

“Do you want to be in the delivery room when our children are born?”

He looked taken aback. “I don’t know. I never thought about it.”

“You’d better.”

Lee became more serious. “So now that we’ve settled most of the important things, will you? Marry me, I mean?”

“I have to go back to Boston,” she said weakly. “I have a job. I have an apartment.”

“You’ll go back as Mrs. Lee Santori unless you feel strongly about keeping your own name.”

“I don’t know. Azure Santori? A. J. Santori? Do you think maybe we could hyphenate?” Over and above all this, she couldn’t imagine Dorrie’s face when she confronted her with a ring and a husband, not to mention a yacht bearing a resemblance to the Taj Mahal.

“You’ve thought long enough about becoming my wife. What do you say, Azure?”

“I think so,” she whispered, still astonished at this whole turn of events.

He drew her to her feet and enfolded her, wet clothes and all, in his arms. “I
know
so,” he said, comfortably close to her ear. “I’ve known it since the moment I saw you. Now that you’ve said you’ll marry me, how about telling me you love me? I believe it’s common practice, though we’ve put the cart before the horse in our case. And if you have any doubts, know that I adore you, Azure O’Connor. I idolize you. I love you with all my heart.”

“I love you, too,” she said. “It’s just that I thought I loved a guy with no serious job, no prospects, no money.”

“I don’t have a serious job, I do have certain
prospects, and I’ve got gobs of money,” he said.

“I’ve kissed a lot of frogs,” she said unbelievingly. “How am I supposed to believe that finally one of them has turned into a prince?”

He laughed and swung her around. “Believe it, my darling. Now,” he said. “I think it’s time that we got you out of those wet clothes and into something more comfortable.”

“Like bed?” she said, her hangover miraculously gone, replaced by a feeling of wonder as well as a desire to be held close and loved.

“You see? We think alike,” he said, and he swept her into his arms.

He didn’t set her down again until they were in a large mahogany-paneled stateroom with wide windows overlooking the ocean beyond the bay. “I’ll find you something to wear,” he said, flinging open a closet.

“Never mind,” she said, demurely divesting herself of damp wool and panty hose. “I won’t be needing clothes for quite some time.”

He came to her then, all strength and warmth. And he was the Lee she had grown to love, not Leonardo Santori the billionaire, but the man whose affection and sense of fun had won her heart. She touched him, ran her hand over the smooth muscles of his back, down to his strong buttocks and around to his tattoo, making him tremble with desire. He smelled of soap and sunshine and of Lee, and when he whispered her name, she captured it in a deep and hungry kiss.

And then, ignoring the painful blisters rising on both her palms,
she took his hand in hers and led him to the bed.

On the
Samoa,
three months later

“I
NOW PRONOUNCE YOU
husband and wife,” said the judge who had been invited to perform the ceremony. “You may kiss your bride, Lee.”

Lee took Azure in his arms, taking care not to rumple her exquisite white gown. It was made of silk organza, cut on the bias, and showed off her figure to perfection.

“My bride,” he said. “My love.” And then he kissed her, properly and thoroughly, taking so long to do it that everyone nearly let out a gasp of relief when he had finished.

Since they were being married in the elegant main salon of the
Samoa
and since their guests were all family and close friends, they dispensed with the receiving line after the ceremony and mingled informally with their guests. Azure thought she had never had a happier day in her life.

“I declare,” Goldy said as she peered over the railing of the
Samoa
toward the ocean. “those tea leaves were right. I
am
attending a ceremonial occasion over water.”

“The tea leaves didn’t say anything about me,” Mandi said with a pout. “Me and Fleck.” She reached
over and pulled Fleck to her, kissing him on the cheek.

“Aw, Mandi,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not the real Lee Santori.”

“
I’m
happy enough with the real Fleck,” Mandi said.

“And my daughter certainly seems delighted with the real Santori,” said Saguaro, Azure’s mother, balancing a glass of champagne with one hand and restraining a rambunctious small boy with the other. “Although I do wish she had let me bake the wedding cake. We’re doing such fun things with wedding cakes these days. Why, I decorated one for a couple in Sedona that left little to the imagination. I ran out of flesh-colored icing, it was so
big.
”

Azure broke away from Lee in order to cut off this direction of the conversation. “Come with me, Mom, Karma wants to talk to you. She says she’s been troubled with morning sickness lately, and I told her you could clue her in to the right herbs to cure it.”

“Oh, of course. Just think! A baby already!” And Saguaro trotted off with Azure to dispense motherly advice.

“The tarot cards showed all this, you know,” Goldy said to Azure’s father in all seriousness.

Eamon O’Connor raised both bushy eyebrows. “All what?”

“That Lee was powerful and rich. That he had a secret. That he would soon find his soul mate. I
told
Azure. The one thing the cards didn’t tell me was that I would profit from their engagement. They both gave me their lottery tickets, and I won sixty-three dollars and seventy cents.”

Isis came over and took her father’s arm. “Goldy, what was Azure telling me about the chicken?”

“Oh, it’s our new attack chicken at the Blue Moon. I wish I could have brought Fricassee to the wedding, but something tells me that she wouldn’t like the ocean any more than she likes Old Spice.”

Azure, back from making sure her mother found Karma,
grinned. “Fricassee certainly sent Paco packing, didn’t she?”

“Did I mention that Paco has started wearing English Leather since that little incident in the lobby of the Blue Moon? It makes him slightly less charming, in my opinion,” said Dorrie.

“And Tiffany? How about her?”

“Still a 40DD, and she’s moved to Minneapolis.”

“Good riddance.”

Leah, Uncle Nate’s wife, descended upon them. “Azure, this was the most elegant wedding. You O’Connor girls certainly know how to do things right.”

“Stop your kvelling, Lee-Lee,” Uncle Nate said affectionately. “
I’m
the one with bragging rights to these young ladies.”

Karma, looking radiant in a flowing cerise dress, joined them and slid an arm around Azure’s waist. “You’ve got to agree, Uncle Nate, that we O’Connors know how to pick great guys. Even though,” and she nudged Azure in the ribs, “it takes kissing a lot of frogs to find one sometimes.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Paulette. “How about giving Rent-a-Yenta some credit?”

“Sure, Paulette,” chorused Azure and Karma, exchanging a look of extreme patience.

“So what do you do?” an attentive Joe Santori was asking Saguaro over near the stern railing.

“I bake cakes in the shape of body parts,” she said brightly, smiling up at him in her most flirtatious manner.

“How interesting,” he said. “And where do you live?”

“In Arizona.”

He
moved closer. “I’m visiting there next month. Perhaps we could have dinner.”

“Why, what a good idea,” Saguaro said.

Azure pulled Karma into an alcove in the main salon. “Did you see my new father-in-law chatting up Mom? What if—”

“—if
they
get together? It’s fine with me.” Karma smiled broadly.

When Azure found Lee explaining how the
Samoa
’s dining room table in the main salon used a hydraulic system to lower into the floor to become a coffee table, she joined him.

“There are lots of fun things about this boat,” she said to the group of wedding guests. “Like the gold faucets in the shape of swans. Like the complete exercise facilities and the onboard masseuse.”

“An onboard masseuse? No wonder you don’t want to come back to Boston, A.J.,” Harry Wixler said glumly. “No wonder you want to sail around the world on this tub.”

“It’s not all going to be vacation time,” Azure informed him. “Lee and I will be working together to get the Grassy Creek franchises up and running.”

“You lost him as a Wixler Consultants customer,” said Harry. “For that I would have fired you if you hadn’t already quit.”

“Never mind,” Azure said consolingly. “Lee’s dad will be calling you on Monday to consult on one of his overseas businesses. And Dorrie is looking forward to handling the account.”

“Azure, when are you going to throw your bouquet?” It was Dorrie, who nurtured great hopes of catching it.

“In a minute,” Azure told her, and when she positioned herself in front of the bandstand on the aft deck
where a dance floor had been set up, she honestly thought that Dorrie would. To her surprise, it was her mother who caught the bouquet, much to the delight of her daughters.

“Like I said, I’ll be in Arizona next month,” Joe Santori said with a suggestive gleam in his eye, and Saguaro had the good grace to blush.

It was later while they were dancing that Lee said to Azure, “Do you still feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole?”

“More like Cinderella with her prince,” Azure said, and he laughed.

“Who enjoyed pretending to be a frog.”

“I only hope you won’t turn back into one if I kiss you again,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Let’s try it,” he said, and he stopped dancing and took her in his arms.

They kissed, taking their time about it, to the accompaniment of enthusiastic applause from the wedding guests.

“Am I still a prince?” he asked tenderly afterward.

“Yes, and I am overjoyed, my love, to be your frog
princess,” she said, kissing him once more.