The food smelled so good Maddie feared she might start salivating. He took their chocolate shakes from the cashier and slipped them into the console cup holders.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re the type of woman who does what’s good for her whether she likes it or not. You toe the line so you can take care of everyone else. But secretly, you’re just waiting for an excuse to let down your guard and do something wild like your adventurous sister.”
“Ooooh, you’ve got my number, all right.” She waved both hands in the air. “I’ve just been dreaming of a man who would come along and force-feed me junk food. Yeah, buddy, it doesn’t get any wilder than that.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
He chuckled and the deep sound wrapped around her like a comfortable hug. He was teasing her and damn, if she wasn’t enjoying it. Why did she feel charmed by him? She should be irritated, aggravated, annoyed. Instead her insides went all whooshy.
This wouldn’t do. Not at all.
“What’s that crack supposed to mean?” she asked in a quarrelsome tone. She would pick a fight with him if she had to. Anything to eradicate this warm, soft fuzzy sensation arrowing through her heart every time he glanced her way.
“You gotta start small.”
“I get it. Today it’s hamburgers, tomorrow the world.”
“Something like that.”
“You’re so full of bullshit. Obviously, you’ve confused me with my sister if you’re thinking I’m just waiting for some big strong man to come along and tell me what to do.”
“Now, now. Don’t disparage your sister. She might be in trouble, but she’s a good woman. She just falls for the wrong kind of guys. You’re lucky you have a sibling.”
He smiled and his teeth flashed white in the illumination of the neon lights. The lighting softened his rugged features and the tender look in his eyes took her by surprise. Maybe he wasn’t such a hard-ass after all. Could this tough guy be like the delightfully delicious sabras cactus? Prickly on the outside but sweet and soft on the inside. Her pulse skittered off kilter.
So why the armor-plated exterior? What was he so afraid of? He gestured toward the sack. “Pass me one of the burgers, will you?”
She moved the sack out of his reach, tucking it against the right side of her body. “Nope.”
“No?”
“I’ve got your number too, mister.”
His grin widened. “Let’s hear it.”
“You’re one of those guys who’s so focused on winning that you try to shut down your tender feelings by channeling your energy into blasting your way through any given situation.”
“Now why would I do that?”
“Because if you’re winning that means you’re in control. Because if—horrors—you’re not busy telling other people what to do, that means someone could be taking advantage of you. You view soft emotions as a weakness and nothing terrifies you more than being seen as weak.”
“You think?” David asked lightly, but Maddie noticed he’d lost his teasing smile. Ah-ha! Apparently it was quite a different story when the pop psychology was on the other ego.
“I think.”
“Well, I think you’re one of those women who doesn’t appreciate having their shortcomings pointed out to them, so in order not to have to face said shortcomings, they grasp at very thin straws and lash out at the person who observed their flaw in the first place.”
“You think that was lashing out?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Buddy, you don’t wanna see me lashing out.”
“I guess it would depend on what kind of lashing we’re talking about. A physical tongue lashing is quite a different animal from a verbal tongue lashing.”
“There you go with the sexual innuendo again.”
“But you’re so fun to tease.”
“Maybe we should examine the reason you feel compelled to tease me, if indeed it is, as you claim, teasing.”
“Maybe we should leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals,” he said.
“I’ll go for that.”
“Could I have my supper now, please?”
She relented. He had asked nicely. She unwrapped his burger and handed it over.
The next few minutes passed quietly as they concentrated on fueling their bodies. The farther north they traveled, the more rugged the terrain grew. Smooth sandy beaches gave way to dense scrub, rocky thickets and sedge swamps. Just when Maddie was beginning to think that David had no earthly idea where he was going, the beaches reappeared.
After finishing her food, Maddie wiped her hands on a napkin and stuffed it, along with the greasy wrapper, back into the paper bag.
Well-kept bungalows graduated to pricier digs until they found themselves in Cayman Kai where the manor houses were lavish and the condos exclusive. David followed a string of cars down the road to Dead Man’s Cove.
“Looks like someone is having one heck of a chichi party,” she said, impressed with the assortment of Jaguars, Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes.
The line of cars slowed as they turned into the private drive of a very swanky plantation-style house surrounded by coconut groves. The cars were stopping at a checkpoint manned by a uniformed security guard.
David backed the car up and narrowly missed running into a Viper. He slipped their outclassed rental into drive and eased past the party house.
“What’s going on?” Maddie asked.
“Change in plans.”
“You mean we’re not just going to walk up to the front door, ring the bell and say, Hey dude, you fencing Shriver’s stolen Cézanne?”
“That was never my plan.” He sounded irritated.
“What was your plan?”
“I agreed to bring you along, basically to keep you from screwing up my investigation. I did not agree to play twenty questions. Now hush,” he said, scanning the waterfront.
“What are you looking for?”
“What did I just say about asking nosy questions? Weren’t you listening? Or are you just bad at taking instructions?”
“That last part. Now what is it that you’re looking for?”
“A secluded place to stash the car. Satisfied?”
“See? How hard was that.”
“Woman, you try a man’s patience,” he growled under his breath and ran his fingers through his hair, as agitated as an air traffic controller on the heaviest travel day of the year.
She realized then that he saw her as nothing more than an annoyance he’d been forced to tolerate. She felt at once snubbed and defiant.
Who cares what he thinks about you? The only thing that matters is finding Cassie and bringing her home in one piece.
David switched off the headlights and edged down a narrow dirt lane leading to a public beach not far from Philpot’s house. He pulled the car off the road and cut the engine.
“Stay put,” he said, and got out of the car.
“No way. I’m coming with you.”
She popped from the passenger seat and found herself ankle deep in fine white sand. It sucked at her high-heeled sandals, dragging her down with each step. The damned shoes were ridiculously useless. How did Cassie walk in the things?
“Why am I not the least bit surprised,” he muttered.
Maddie slipped off the shoes, looped the straps over her fingers and hurried after him. They trudged through the sand, headed toward Philpot’s mansion. Music filtered through the air. She identified it as some schmaltzy tune by The Carpenters frequently played at weddings.
“Not much of a party song,” she commented.
But David wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was like a bloodhound tracking a raccoon. His eyes were narrowed, his posture tense, his attention focused on Philpot’s place. They couldn’t see much of that section of the beach from where they walked, cloaked as it was by the coconut grove.
But as they crept nearer, Maddie spotted a makeshift altar set up on the beach, along with dozens of folding chairs and flaming tiki torches.
“I think it’s a wedding,” Maddie whispered.
“We’re in luck,” David said. “They’ll be so busy with the wedding, no one will notice us. Now if fate is really smiling, Peyton Shriver will be among the guests.”
“And Cassie,” Maddie supplied, anxious for this single-minded FBI agent not to forget her sister.
“Get down,” David said roughly and dropped to a crouch. He tugged on the hem of her skirt.
The brush of his knuckles against her thigh was slight, but it was enough contact to send her pulse staggering against her throat. Deliberately struggling to ignore the sizzle of awareness he’d generated, she squatted beside him in the sand.
“Now what?” she asked.
Through the trunks of the trees they could see a robed minister standing at the altar and two other guys, presumably the groom and the best man, positioned in front of him, but from this distance, Maddie couldn’t make out their features.
“We go closer.”
“Through the coconut grove?” Anxiously, she glanced up at the trees with their thick, heavy fruit looming above them in the deepening twilight.
“Sure, why not.” David moved forward.
“Wait, wait.” She grabbed on to his belt loop.
“What is it?” He turned and glared at her.
“Are you always this testy?”
“Only when being pestered by some pesky female. What is it?” he repeated.
“I read a guidebook about Grand Cayman on the flight over.”
“And . . . ?”
“The article warned to watch out for falling coconuts.”
“For crying out loud. What are the odds of getting beaned by a coconut in the next five minutes?”
“Good enough that they bothered to mention it in a guidebook.”
“Well, I guarantee you’ll get beaned if you keep visualizing it. Fret about something enough and it’ll eventually happen.”
“See there, you prove my point. That’s a perfectly good reason to keep out.”
“It’s a perfectly good reason not to visualize falling coconuts.”
“I can’t help but visualize them.” She worried her necklace with her fingers.
“Fine, stay here if you want.” David dived into the grove, wasting no time in ditching her.
Maddie hesitated, alternating between eyeing the coconuts dangling above and the FBI agent sneaking through the trees. Her innate sense of caution warred with her allegiance to her sister.
Stay or go?
Hang back and wait? Or take your chances and plunge ahead?
Risk your noggin or Cassie’s life?
Tick-tock.
David was halfway through the grove when she realized loyalty trumped safety.
“Okay, all right, wait up, I’m coming,” she whispered loudly.
“Shhh. I think I hear the wedding march.” He stopped and cocked his head to listen.
She clamped her lips shut and nervously duck-walked behind him as quickly as she could. It wasn’t easy, navigating the moist sand and the coconut trees in that position.
When Maddie heard the deadly whoosh-thunk of a descending coconut to the left of her, she almost peed in her pants.
Yikes!
The second whoosh-thunk, closer even than the first sent her stomach into spasms and her heart rate into hyperdrive. She felt like she was in the video game Frogger she and Cassie used to play as kids.
She scuttled faster and by the time she reached David, she felt edgy, overheated and even a bit faint. She cowered beside him, arms wrapped over her head, eyes squeezed closed. Her pulse stepped up its shallow, flighty beat.
David reached out and laid a hand across her shoulder. “I want you to prepare yourself,” he murmured.
“Prepare myself to die by coconut?” Maddie asked, peering over her shoulder and praying she wouldn’t see any angry island gods hurling ripe fruit at her.
He took her chin between his fingers and thumb and turned her head toward the beach. “Look at the bride.”
“Yeah, okay, I see her.”
She squinted at the woman in white walking rather stiffly down the green Astroturf laid out as an aisle. Maddie was a tad nearsighted, but glasses got in the way of sports and she’d never gotten the hang of poking plastic contact lenses into her eyes.
“You don’t recognize her?”
“Should I?”
“It’s your twin sister and unless I’m mistaken the groom is Peyton Shriver.”
Before she could shriek, “What?” David clamped one hand over her mouth and snaked his other hand around her waist, pulling her down flush against his warm body.
“I told you she ran off with him voluntarily,” he whispered.
Maddie tensed and she struggled to break free from his overbearing grasp. She had to get to Cassie and stop that wedding now, but David wasn’t about to turn her loose. She aimed an elbow at his ribs and jabbed hard.
“Ouch, that hurt. Stop fighting me.”
“Turn me loose,” she mumbled around the salty taste of his skin.
“Only if you promise not to go ballistic.”
Yeah okay, she would promise anything in order to get David to let her go, but that didn’t mean she would sit here idly by and allow her sister to marry that sleazebag art thief.
Slowly he released her and then slipped his gun from its shoulder holster.
“Stay well behind me, or I’ll handcuff you to a tree,” he threatened.
“I think you’re bluffing.”
“Just try me.”
Something in his tone of voice, told her he meant every word. The last thing she wanted was to be handcuffed to one of those coconut trees.
They both looked toward the beach. Her sister—if indeed the bride was Cassie—reached the altar and the music stopped.
“Dearly beloved,” she heard the minister say.
She couldn’t heed David’s warning; she had to speak out. She didn’t care if he got mad and handcuffed her to a coconut tree, she’d take her chances. She had to stop her twin from making a horrible mistake.
“Cassie, no!” she screamed. “Don’t do it!”
David was on his feet, staying low, gun held at his side. Maddie was on his heels. They were at the edge of the grove when she glanced up and saw it, a coconut dangling precariously from the tree right above them.
Don’t visualize it falling.
But she couldn’t help herself. She was a worst-case scenario gal ever since that ill-fated Christmas day eighteen years ago. The harder she tried not to see the coconut cracking into David’s skull, the more vividly she pictured it.
The coconut was going to fall.