The Trouble With Paradise Read online

He’d be telling it to a judge soon enough, Christian knew.

  Then the helicopter was ready to leave. Cadence had decided to go home with only what she wore on her back. She didn’t want her bag, didn’t want anything from the island. “Going home to make a fresh start,” she said, and hugged everyone, even Dorie, though they were traveling together. “Friends forever,” she whispered fiercely, smiling when Dorie repeated it back to her with tears in her voice.

  Christian watched them, not surprised at the deep bond that had formed between them. They’d been through a lot in five days.

  Andy lifted his bag. “I’m not leaving anything behind. I want to remember.” He hugged everyone, too, and like Cadence, held on to Dorie for just a little bit longer than the rest.

  Christian resisted the urge to step in, reminding himself of what he’d always known, that there was just something about Dorie, something different. Special. She pulled back, smiled, and watched Andy get onto the helicopter. Then she looked at Christian.

  He was staying to watch over a stubborn Michael for the night, since he refused to go to the hospital.

  Which made it good-bye.

  “My turn,” Dorie said with false cheer. She hugged Brandy, then carefully did the same for Michael, then turned to join Cadence and Andy on the helicopter.

  Christian stood there, poleaxed by a swamping rush of emotions. She was going to walk right out of his life. And since that’s what he’d wanted, there was nothing he could say.

  Dorie reached for the hand of the man squatting just inside the helicopter. He wore a headset and was talking into it, but all she could hear was the roar of her heart.

  She was leaving.

  Then someone tapped her on the shoulder. “What about me?” Christian asked. “No good-bye for me?”

  At least that’s what she thought he said. She couldn’t hear him over the chopper, or her own heart. She certainly couldn’t talk. Didn’t he know how hard this was for her? Couldn’t he just let her go, without making her lose it entirely? “Christian—”

  “We need a minute,” he said to the pilot, then pulled her aside.

  “Listen, I’m really sorry about earlier,” she broke in. She had to say this. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out. I think it was just a remnant from all that adrenaline, from the shipwreck, from being back in a boat, from the gun—”

  “When I heard the gun go off,” he started, then closed his mouth. His eyes were shiny with some fierce emotion when he finished. “I didn’t breathe again until I saw you.”

  God. The look in his eyes. She really wished he wouldn’t look at her like that, like maybe it would have killed him if it’d been her to get shot.

  “It was the longest minute of my fucking life, and then you wouldn’t get on the goddamn radio—”

  “I wasn’t pushing the button down—”

  “I love you back.”

  She just stared at him. “I’m sorry. I think my brain just hiccupped. Could you repeat?”

  He let out a rough sound and rubbed his eyes. “Okay, but you’re risking my organ failure, and I don’t think you know CPR—”

  “Look, I think I heard you correctly, but I’ve been really wrong about this stuff before, so—”

  “I love you.”

  She swallowed, her eyes locked on his. “Just to clarify, this has nothing to do with us not using a condom in the shower, right?”

  “What?” Brandy shifted closer, sticking her head between them. “Sex without a condom? Are you kids crazy?”

  Dorie closed her eyes. “Crazy. That would explain everything.”

  Cadence hopped out of the helicopter. “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, they had sex without a condom, for starters,” Brandy said.

  “Just the once,” Dorie said weakly.

  Andy hopped out of the helicopter, too. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hey!” The pilot yelled out to them. “We’re on the clock here!”

  “Just one minute.” Dorie hadn’t taken her eyes off Christian. She couldn’t.

  “I’ve never felt like this before,” he told her in front of everyone. “This can’t-eat-can’t-sleep sort of thing.”

  “It could just be indigestion,” Andy said ever so helpfully.

  Dorie twisted around and glared at him.

  “Just saying,” he muttered.

  Christian took Dorie’s hand and stared down at her fingers for a moment, before lifting his head. “I thought I wanted to go back to France, because that’s the last real home I remember. I wanted to go there, work in an urgent care clinic, or the ER, because I figured that’s what would make me happy.”

  “I know.” And it would be okay. Somehow, it would be okay. If only she could keep breathing, but she couldn’t seem to do that.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the headset guy tap his watch. She refused to acknowledge him.

  “But I realized something,” Christian said. “Home isn’t a place. It’s a who.”

  “Aw,” Cadence murmured. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “A who?” Dorie repeated.

  “You.” Christian cupped her face. “I never thought I’d feel this way, never wanted to, but I want you with me, Dorie. Smiling that smile, the one that snags my heart every single time. I don’t care if we’re in France, or at the damn Los Angeles Shop-Mart, or this island. The where doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Not a damn bit. Not as long as I’m with you.”

  They heard a sniff. Cadence was smiling with tears on her cheeks. “That’s beautiful,” she said, and sighed.

  “Romantic, too.” This from Brandy. “Especially with that French accent.”

  With an apologetic smile, Michael tugged both Cadence and Brandy away, and even though they were still surrounded by people and the damn helicopter, Dorie felt like they were the only two people on earth. “I can design clothes from anywhere,” she said.

  “I like the sound of that.” Christian stepped close and hauled her up against him, smiling at the cheers around them but not letting her go. She hoped not ever letting her go . . .

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later,

  with all the French chocolate one can eat . . .

  The night sky was city, not island, and therefore the stars weren’t quite as bright as they’d been in the South Pacific, but Dorie didn’t care. Her view from the twentieth-floor balcony—which if she leaned out just right included the Eiffel Tower—was gorgeous.

  Next to her, Christian was flipping through the day’s mail, and came across her Vogue. “Mrs. Dorie Anderson Montague.” He lowered the magazine. “I didn’t realize you were going to add my name to yours.”

  “That’s what American wives do, take their husband’s name.” She grinned and admitted the rest. “Plus, I married a doctor. My mother would never have forgiven me if I didn’t take your name.”

  “So glad to oblige.” His slow, warm, sexy smile was never ever going to stop making her want to jump him. She’d been doing plenty of that this past week, on their honeymoon, which was not on an island, thank you very much, or a boat.

  Nope, after a small, intimate wedding with only her family, Cadence, Brandy, Andy, and Michael in attendance, they’d honeymooned right here in Paris, where they were going to buy a place and live, where Christian would do what he’d wanted to do forever, work in an ER, where she could be in the fashion center of the world.

  She loved this world, Christian’s, hers . . . theirs. So much that she had been attempting to learn French—attempting being the key word here.

  Tossing the paper aside, Christian leaned back in his chair. He looked so good, all long and toughly muscled, sprawled out without a care.

  With a smile, she stood and slipped out of her sweater. Beneath, she wore only a pale lace bra.

  “Too warm?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.” She began to work the long line of buttons down the front of her skirt.

&nbs
p; His brow shot up. “You going to take a bath then?”

  “No.” Any second now he was going to realize she was currently commando. “There’s a matter between us, something that was never settled. I don’t like to leave things like that.”

  “Is that right?”

  She let her skirt slip to the floor before she went still. “Damn, I forgot the music.” Maybe he wouldn’t mind.

  His breathing was satisfactorily uneven now, more so when she reached for the hook of her bra, and she thought maybe he didn’t mind at all.

  “What do we need music for?”

  “The dancing.” She sighed. “I was going to dance for you. Naked.” She pointed to the balcony. “Beneath the stars.”

  “Ah, the bet.” With a thrilled grin, he stood up and kicked his chair aside. He was out of his clothes so fast her head spun. “Don’t worry, I don’t need music.” And then he snatched her close, up against that body she knew she’d never get enough of. “All I need is you.”

  He looked so damn sexy. And happy. She made him happy. The thought made her heart soar. “Then you’re in luck,” she whispered, holding him fiercely, “because you have me, all of me...”

  Turn the page for a preview of

  the first book in Jill Shalvis’s sexy romance series

  starring gorgeous baseball heroes . . .

  DOUBLE PLAY

  Now Available from Berkley Sensation!

  And look for the next book in this series, Slow Heat,

  now available from Berkley Sensation

  A guy’s definition of baseball: you don’t have to buy the other team dinner to get game.

  If Pace Martin had the choice between sex and a nap, he’d actually take the nap, and wasn’t that just pathetic enough to depress him. But his shoulder hurt like a mother and so did his damn pride.

  Go home and rest, Pace.

  That had been his physical therapist’s advice, but Pace could rest when he was old and far closer to dead than thirty-one. In the locker room, he bent down to untie his cleats and nearly whimpered like a baby.

  This after only thirty minutes of pitching in the bullpen. Thirty minutes doing what he’d been born to do, playing the game that had been his entire life for so long he couldn’t remember anything before it, and the simple art of stripping out of his sweats had him sweating buckets. When he peeled off his T-shirt, spots swam in his eyes. An ace pitcher in the only four-man starting rotation in the majors, and he could hardly move.

  Pushing away from the locker, he made it through the Santa Barbara Pacific Heat’s luxurious clubhouse—thank you, Santa Barbara taxpayers—and into the shower room, grabbing a can of Dr Pepper on his way. Lifting his good hand, he probed at his shoulder and hissed out a breath.

  Sit out tomorrow’s game.

  That had been his private doctor’s orders. Pace had managed to escape the team doc all in the name of not being put on the disabled list. Being DL’d would give him a required minimum fifteen-day stay out of action.

  No, thank you.

  Not when they were nearing the halfway mark of their third season, and as a newbie expansion team, they had everything to prove. Three seasons in and anything could happen, even the World Series, especially the World Series, and management was all over that.

  Hell, the players were all over that.

  They wanted it so bad they could taste it. But to even get to any postseason play, Pace had to pull a miracle, because as everyone from ESPN to Sports Illustrated loved to obsess over, he was the Heat’s ticket there. Sure the team had ten other pitchers in various degrees of readiness, but none were putting out stats comparable to his. Which meant that everyone was counting on him. He was it, baby, the fruition of their hopes and dreams.

  No pressure or anything.

  Reminding himself that he hated whiners, he stepped into the shower. Under the hot spray, he rolled his shoulder, then nearly passed out at the white-hot stab of pain. Holy shit, could he use a distraction.

  Wild monkey sex.

  That had been Wade’s suggestion. Not surprising, really, given the source. And maybe the Heat’s top catcher and Pace’s best friend was onto something. Too bad Pace didn’t want sex, wild monkey or otherwise.

  And wasn’t that just the bitch of it. All he wanted was the game that had been his entire life. He wanted his shot at the World Series before being forced by bad genetics and a strained rotator cuff to quit the only thing that had ever mattered to him.

  He didn’t have to call his father to find out what the old man would suggest. The marine drill instructor, the one who routinely terrified soldiers, whose motto was “Have clear objectives at all times,” would tell his only son to get the hell over himself and get the hell back in the game before he kicked the hell out of Pace’s sorry ass himself for even thinking about slacking off.

  And wouldn’t that just help.

  Tired of the pity party for one, Pace ducked his head and let the hot water pound his abused body until he felt slightly better, because apparently he’d gotten something from his father after all. He had fourteen wins already this season, dammit. He’d thrown twenty-four straight scoreless innings. He was having his best season to date; he was on top of his game. Lifting his head and shaking off the water, he opened his eyes and found Red standing there.

  The Heat’s pitching coach was tall, reed thin, and sported a shock of hair that was the color of his nickname, though it was also streaked with grey that came from four decades in the business. He had a craggy face from years of sun, stress, and the emphysema he suffered from because he refused to give up either his beloved cigarettes or standing beside the bullpen surrounded by the constant dirt and thick dust.

  Red’s doctors had been after him to retire, but like Pace, the guy lived and breathed baseball. He also lived and breathed Pace, going back to their days together at San Diego State. Wherever Pace had gone, Red had followed. Red always followed. Truth was, he’d been far more than a coach to Pace.

  All the guy wanted was to see Pace get a piece of the World Series. That was it, the culmination of a life’s dream, so Pace’s arm would have to be literally falling off before he’d admit that he couldn’t play.

  “What are you doing here?” Red asked, taking Pace’s Dr Pepper from the tile wall and tossing it to the trash before replacing it with a vitamin infused water, the same brand the whole team drank so much of that they’d been given their own label. “Usually you guys are all over a day off.”

  “I was drinking that.”

  “Soda makes you sluggish.”

  No, his bum shoulder made him sluggish.

  “Why are you here?” Red pressed.

  They didn’t get many days off. Pace pitched every fourth game, and in between he had a strict practice and workout schedule. “Maybe I just like the shower here better than my own.”

  “The hell you do. You throw?”

  “A little.”

  Red’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “And I’m great.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, son. You were favoring the shoulder yesterday in the pen.”

  “You need glasses. My ERA’s 2.90 right now. Top of the league.”

  “Uh-uh, 3.00.” Red peered into the shower, all geriatric stealth, trying to get a good look at his shoulder, but Pace had cranked the water up to torch-his-ass hot so that the steam made it difficult to see clearly.

  “It’s fine.” Pace didn’t have to fake the irritation. “I’m fine, everything’s fine.”

  “Uh-huh.” Red pulled out his phone, no doubt to call in the troops—management—to have the multimillion-dollar arm assessed.

  It was one of the few cons to hitting the big time: from April to October, Pace’s time wasn’t his own, and neither was his body. Reaching out, water flying, he shut Red’s phone. “Relax.”

  “Relax?” Red shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no relaxing in baseball!”

  Okay, so he had a point. The Heat had been gaining momentum with shocking speed
, gathering huge public interest. With that interest came pressure. They were hot, baby, hot, but if they didn’t perform, there would be trades and changes. That was the nature of the game, and not just for players.

  Red was getting up there and not exactly in the best health. Pace didn’t know what would happen if management decided to send the old guy back down to the minors instead of letting him walk out with his dignity intact and retire on his own terms. Well, actually, Pace did know. It would kill Red. “Just taking a shower, Red. No hidden agenda.”

  “Good then.” Red coughed, wobbling on his feet at the violence of it, glaring at Pace when he made a move to help. When Red managed to stop hacking up a lung, he lay Pace’s towel over the tile wall. “You’ve had enough hot water. You’re shriveling.”

  When Pace looked down at himself, Red snorted. “Get out of that hot water, boy.”

  Boy.

  He hadn’t been a boy in a damn long time, but he supposed to Red he’d always be a kid. Waiting until Red shuffled away, Pace turned the water off and touched his shoulder. Better, he told himself, and carefully stretched. Good enough.

  It had to be.

  Red had a lot at stake. The Heat had a lot at stake.

  And knowing it, Pace had everything at stake.

  Reporter Holly Hutchins prided herself on her instincts, which hadn’t failed her yet. Okay, so maybe they routinely failed her when it came to men, but as it pertained to work, she was razor-sharp. And given that work was all she had at the moment, she really needed this to go down correctly. She was waiting to interview Pace Martin, the celebrated, beloved badass ace starting pitcher she’d just watched in the bullpen.

  He probably hadn’t been aware of her observing his practice. There’d not been a manager or another player in sight, certainly no outsiders, including reporters or writers—of which she happened to be both. She’d sat on the grassy hill high above the Heat’s stadium, surrounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by the steep, rugged Santa Ynez Mountains, and studied Pace from the shadow of an oak tree.