Orchid Club Page 17

  “Yep.” The way Vivienne had phrased it was perfect. Ruby Dawson was the founder, president, and CEO of RedBall, a Silicon Valley tech giant. “I’m the red ball. I mean it was my red toy ball, and whatever I was doing with it, that inspired her to write DataPrized.” DataPrized was a piece of security software that now existed on almost every telecom server in the world.

  Vivienne opened her mouth, then closed it. “But I googled you! And your last name isn’t Dawson.”

  “Carter is my father’s last name, and hello, my mother is a tech genius. She regularly scrubs all my information. She was worried someone would kidnap me for ransom when I was younger.”

  Vivienne’s shock was evident. Solomon sighed. It was trite, the whole I-want-people-to-want-me-not-my-money thing. But being trite didn’t make it any less true.

  “But…I thought you were normal,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, well.” Solomon adjusted his backpack strap. “Anyway, when I decided to come to Paris for grad school, TelConiste loaned me the apartment for the year. Made my mom happy because it keeps my name off any lease documents that reporters could find.”

  Vivienne stayed silent, just looking at him with the oddest expression.

  “How did you know who this apartment belonged to anyway?” he asked.

  “My family owns the building.”

  “Oh.” That certainly made sense as to how she could afford to be here. And if her family owned property in central Paris, they were probably loaded. He relaxed a little. “So your family is in real estate?”

  “On my father’s side. Real estate and wine. Well, really it’s more about the wine. The real estate is just a byproduct.”

  “Way to bury the lede,” he teased.

  “Pardon?”

  “You have wine connections. I’ll buy if you figure out what we should get. I’ve always wanted to try one of those crazy expensive bottles.”

  “If you, we, want wine, there is no need to buy—”

  “No, seriously, I’ll buy.”

  “—because I could have several cases of rare, expensive wine here within the hour.”

  Now it was his turn to be taken aback. “Oh, so your family is really into wine, and…”

  He trailed off because Vivienne had raised a single brow while looking at him expectantly. He was missing something.

  “Deschamps,” she prompted. “My last name is Deschamps.”

  He had a lightbulb moment.

  “What. Hold up, hold up. You’re a Deschamps, like Château Rossolina Deschamps?”

  Her smile grew into a grin. “One of Europe’s first families of wine. Oh, and my father’s mother? A Beauvalot.”

  “Holy shit. Like the fashion people?”

  “Yes.” She patted her bag.

  The bag wasn’t a fake; she just treated it like any other bag, because for her it probably was. He knew how much high-end bags cost since they’d been his go-to present for his mom once macaroni art was no longer acceptable.

  Solomon leaned against the doorjamb. “So I’m the son of a tech billionaire. You’re an heiress to French fashion and wine…why aren’t we on a yacht, taking pictures of ourselves for Facebook?”

  “Because I have reading and a lab report due on Friday. You have a paper to write.”

  Solomon threw his head back and roared with laughter. It was both wonderful and absurd that they’d kept the information about their families hidden for as long as they had. He liked it this way.

  “Later, if you want to pose for a profile pic, I will print out a picture of a boat and hold it up behind you,” Vivienne said saucily.

  Solomon doubled over, unable to stop laughing.

  This girl was so fucking perfect. He was going to fall in love with her. Fuck, he might already be in love with her.

  When his amusement died, Solomon pushed himself up and just looked at her. He wanted to memorize this moment. To always remember the night he’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who he was going to love for the rest of his life.

  “I want to kiss you now,” he said.

  Vivienne set her bag on the ground. “I’ve been waiting for you to kiss me.”

  “Come here, baby.”

  Solomon pulled her in, her hips against his, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her.

  Chapter 3

  Luca Cay, the Bahamas—Present Day

  * * *

  Solomon stared out at the ocean. People who said the ocean was peaceful hadn’t spent enough time by the water. The ocean was restless and ever changing. Dangerous. Only a fool turned their back to the water, even in a place like Luca Cay, where the waves were small, the slope mild, and the water warm.

  He’d bought the island back when he’d been one of the morons who thought being near the water would bring him peace. He’d bought the island in the aftermath of his breakup with Vivienne. No one—except his no-bullshit, outspoken mother—had dared say the real reason he’d isolated himself on Luca Cay was to hide.

  It sounded very dramatic—living alone on an island in the middle of the sea—but he’d never really been alone, or isolated. The main house had been vacant and nearly uninhabitable when he’d bought Luca Cay, but there had been a few Bahamian fisher families living on the island. They had small houses on the high ground at the center of the island and small docks on the east side.

  He’d left them alone except to arrange a daily purchase from each family, an arrangement that worked well for all of them since it ensured his cook was never short on fresh fish. There were more houses now, as the building teams had—at Solomon’s expense—built a few simple houses to live in during the several years of construction. Those homes were now occupied by some of the people who worked for him, who had elected to move to the island rather than commute via boat from one of the larger neighboring islands.

  When he remodeled the main house, he’d also had it expanded, and then added several other buildings that served as accommodation for the people who attended his parties.

  The main house additions were single-story wings on each side of the original structure, one of which was outfitted like a small hotel with a large laundry facility, commercial kitchen, and even a workshop with equipment for both woodworking and welding, since they tried to be self-sufficient.

  The other wing was the dungeon.

  Solomon bent, resting his forearms on the second floor railing. Tonight the dungeon was locked and quiet. His next party wasn’t for a week, and he’d planned to keep it small and intimate. After Paris he’d changed his mind and had already sent out a slew of additional invitations. He needed to lose himself, and hosting a party was a good way to do that. When his dungeon was full, he was not only responsible for his own play partner, but for every sub in residence. That kind of responsibility took a hyper focus that forced him to live in the moment.

  Solomon took a breath, smelling the salt air. It smelled and tasted like home. The air felt wonderfully humid, the breeze constant and soothing, less restless than the waves.

  But he couldn’t shake Paris, even after three full days at home. Not just what had happened there—he’d known it would take time for his anger and self-loathing to fade—but the feeling of the city. It was as if he’d left part of himself there, akin to the feeling he got when he read a good book, and even after he’d finished the last word, part of him lingered in the story.

  Solomon slid through hanging mosquito netting that functioned as a screen, and into his living room. The entire upper floor of the main house was his private residence. The west-facing wall had been replaced by tempered and treated glass so he could see the water from anywhere in his home.

  There was a bar downstairs in the dungeon, and another one in the den, but he also had a wet bar set up in one corner of the open-concept living area up here. Solomon poured himself a drink—gin and tonic, since it would be a hell of a long time before he touched wine or whiskey again—then went back out to the balcony. He liked to watch the sun sink into the horizon. Some pe
ople liked to watch it rise from the water, but he was a California boy, so for him watching the sun set over the water felt right.

  He took a sip, making a face at the taste of the quinine in the tonic water. He’d gone too light on the gin. The lower rim of the sun touched the horizon, and a path of golden fire lit the surface of the ocean.

  Solomon took another sip, not wanting to walk away from the view, even for more gin.

  A dark splotch cut through the sun’s trail. A boat. Not uncommon, though this one was a speedboat, not a sailboat, which was a bit unusual. It was going to be dark soon, so it wasn’t the smartest time for the boat captain to be far away from his berth.

  Hopefully it wasn’t some idiot tourist. More than once, people from Luca Cay had taken one of their small fleet of boats out to rescue visitors who’d run out of gas, or done the ultimate sailor’s no-no and panicked, tangling lines or worse, capsizing, as their primal fear of the ocean kicked in.

  The boat he’d seen a moment ago swung in an arch, crossing back into the path of the sun, and then turning so it was actually following the path of the light.

  Headed straight toward Luca Cay.

  Solomon squinted, one hand over his eyes, as he tried to figure out what they were doing. Were the idiots lost and thought this was their origin point?

  “Fucking tourists.” Solomon slid back into his living room, setting down his glass on a table as he passed. Within minutes he was jogging down the steps, then striding across the foyer toward the doors.

  Jalen came out of the wing that housed his workshop, wiping his hands on a rag. “You saw the boat?” Jalen was Solomon’s house manager, blacksmith, woodworker, effectively the head of Human Resources as he handled all staffing, and the default mayor of the tiny village in the center of the island. He’d been with Solomon for years and knew everything that happened on the island, and probably more than he should about what happened in the house.

  Solomon nodded. “Stupid tourist.”

  “You think?” Jalen pursed his lips and shook his head, a deep line appearing between his brows. Jalen was Black, originally from Haiti, though he’d spent most of his life in the Bahamas. Besides the deepening of the wrinkles on his face, Jalen looked much the same as he had when Solomon hired both him and his wife, Angelique. Their daughter, who’d been twelve when they moved to Luca Cay, now worked here too, usually ferrying visitors from the helipad at the tip of the island to the house via the horses and carriages that were the island’s main form of transportation.

  Solomon and Jalen strode out the heavy wooden double front doors. Across the circular drive was a stone path cut into the verdant foliage. Soon tropical greenery and short palms—bowed inland by the ever-present winds—gave way to sand.

  Solomon stepped out of his sandals with the ease of practice. The boat was closer now, but still heavily backlit, so all he could see was the dark outline of what was definitely a very expensive speedboat. It slowed as it approached the island and the long dock that jutted out into the ocean. The idiots probably thought they could pull up there, but they were in for a surprise. The dock was more decorative than anything, ending in a large hexagon-shaped platform. He’d designed it so you could sit on the edge of the pier, dangle your feet above or in the water depending on the tide, and see nothing but ocean.

  The water around the platform was less than six feet deep.

  “Gonna stick in the sand,” Jalen said.

  Solomon grunted his agreement and waved one arm, hoping to catch the driver’s attention.

  The boat slowed even more, the nose dipping down with the reduced speed.

  Solomon and Jalen hopped up onto the pier, walking faster now that they weren’t on the sand. The boat pulled up alongside the hexagonal platform.

  “The water’s shallow here,” Solomon yelled.

  The driver raised one hand and waved.

  “Idiot,” he muttered.

  Jalen grunted his agreement, cupped his hands, around his mouth, and repeated the statement in Haitian Creole, which was the second most popular language in the Bahamas.

  The driver tossed a couple of fenders overboard and then pulled the boat in tight. A second figure rose from the seats at the back, the arch of the cockpit having hidden her from view.

  She stepped gracefully onto the side of the boat, balanced there for a moment, her body silhouetted in light, before she hopped down.

  Solomon’s mind went blank, short-circuited, even as his feet kept moving. Maybe he was asleep and this was a nightmare. Yeah, that had to be it, because the other option was that the woman who’d just arrived on his island was…

  “No, no, Missus,” Jalen said. “You’re at the wrong place. Get back on your boat.”

  The woman reached out, accepting the small valise the driver handed her, and a large hat, which she placed precisely on her head.

  Only then did she turn to look at him, lowering her chin and pulling down the sunglasses just enough that she could look over them.

  Their gazes met, and Solomon stopped moving. This wasn’t a nightmare—well, it was, but it wasn’t the kind he could wake up from.

  “Oh no,” Vivienne said. “I’m precisely where I need to be.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Vivienne tsked. “Careful, Solomon, or you’ll break a tooth if you keep clenching your teeth.”

  The muscle in his jaw twitched. Damn it, that was sexy.

  She turned to the man she’d hired to transport her to Luca Cay and smiled. “Thank you again.”

  “No problem, I love a good adventure.” He winked, but then looked uneasily at Solomon. “You sure you don’t want to come back with me? I’m taking some people out snorkeling tomorrow.”

  “A generous offer, but my friend and I need to talk.”

  “Your friend?” Solomon sounded like he was having a stroke, and Vivienne smiled. So far her arrival was going as planned. He was off-balance, which was just how she wanted him.

  “Boss, do you want me to get rid of her?” The man with Solomon was speaking, but not in English. The language was close enough to French that she understood it, so it was probably Haitian Creole.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she answered in French, causing the man to start. “I will leave when I am ready.”

  “This is my island,” Solomon growled.

  “Really, Solomon?”

  “Yes, really. I bought it.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that. But I’m surprised your argument is so…pedestrian.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Vivienne.”

  Both the other men—her driver and Solomon’s companion—turned on him.

  “That’s no way to speak to a lady,” the driver said.

  “Solomon, language.”

  Vivienne let a little sadness creep into her tone. “Thank you, gentlemen, but his anger toward me is not unexpected.”

  “I’m not liking leaving you here with him,” her driver declared.

  Solomon’s companion was looking back and forth between them, a deep frown on his face.

  “Hello, my name is Vivienne Deschamps.” She held out her hand to the man.

  He reacted immediately, taking her hand in a firm handshake. His palms and fingers were callused. “I am Jalen Mede, manager of Luca Cay.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Vivienne turned back to the driver. “Jalen will make sure Solomon doesn’t feed me to the sharks.”

  “I don’t have any fucking sharks.”

  She ignored Solomon’s comment. “Thank you again for bringing me all this way.”

  “You’re sure?” The driver looked between them, then at the setting sun.

  “Please, don’t let me keep you any longer.”

  “All right, then.”

  Jalen helped the boat cast off. They all watched in silence as he maneuvered out of the shallow water before picking up speed, heading back to a neighboring island.

  As the boat got farther away, some of Vivienne’s visceral satisfactio
n at surprising Solomon, and therefore having the upper hand, diminished. Because she didn’t really have the upper hand. She was now stranded on an island with the only man on the planet who could both make her believe in love and inspire her to hatred and violence.

  Maybe she should have gone for the helicopter option and paid the pilot to camp out for a few days so she’d have a quick getaway option.

  Jalen was the one who broke the thickening silence. “I’ll take your bags, Missus.”

  “Please, call me Vivienne.” She smiled at Jalen, then turned on her heel, fully facing Solomon for the first time since the boat left. “Solomon—”

  He turned and walked away, heavy footsteps ringing on the boards.

  Vivienne started forward, anger burning away her trepidation. She’d run up behind him and knock him into the water. Imagining his big body flying through the air before splashing into the ocean was immensely satisfying.

  No. She forced herself to stop, to let him widen the distance between them. She wouldn’t chase him and shove him into the water because then he’d know exactly how angry he made her.

  He probably knows since you followed him thousands of miles to an island in the middle of nowhere.

  Vivienne ignored that thought and smiled at Jalen. “The island is lovely. Do you live here?”

  “Yes, my wife and I. She’s the gardener.”

  “How wonderful.”

  They chitchatted as they walked up the pier and then onto the sand. Vivienne had to stop and untie the ankle straps of her espadrilles, and carried them in one hand, the other on the crown of her head, holding her hat in place. The sun had fully set now, and the moment it did, the wind had picked up.

  They were almost at the point where sand gave way to vegetation when the lights came on.

  She stopped, watching with childish delight as dozens of lanterns flared to life on the outside of the buildings that perched on the shore. It was as if some lovely, pastel world had magically appeared, beating back the encroaching darkness with a golden glow that made the shadows dramatic rather than frightening.