burgundy, and purple, as if Gauguin had created the scene. When Anthony greeted two uniformed women and they replied in incomprehensible patois, Els felt an old stab of otherness.
“Welcome to Hibiscus Villa,” Anthony said, and waved her inside. She eyed the romantic mahogany plantation bed and thought what a narrow, solitary dent she would make.
“What’s this, the honeymoon suite?” she said. She felt as spiky as the arrangement of protea on the coffee table.
“Sometimes,” he said.
She pressed a tip into Anthony’s hand hoping to curtail his narration of the suite’s amenities. He instructed her to enjoy her stay and backed out the door.
Alone with only the whir of the ceiling fan and pulse of the surf, she was rooted in the middle of the floor, unaware of how long she’d stood there when a discreet knock brought her back to the present. The young woman at the door with the name tag “Alaneesha” wheeled in a cart bearing a bottle of champagne in a sweating ice bucket and a frangipani blossom floating in a small bowl.
“Compliments of the management?” Els asked.
Alaneesha handed her a card that read, “Find someone to share this with. Loosen up and come back a new woman.” It was signed “Coxe.” Els wondered if “this” meant the champagne, the bed, or both. It was just like Coxe to assume anything could be righted by a good fuck, preferably while drunk. Fury sent a flush to her face, and she fanned herself with the card.
Alaneesha peered at her. “Ma’am, you okay?”
“Jet lag,” Els said.
After Alaneesha slipped out the door, Els flung the card at the champagne and watched it sink into the ice bath. The frangipani’s aggressive scent filled the room.
Mind what you wish for, Els chided herself. Festive champagne was hardly the cold drink she’d had in mind, and a hot bath, at the moment, might make her explode. She peeled off her sweat-dampened clothing, stepped into the shower, and stood under a cool stream until she felt rinsed if not cleansed. Wrapped in a huge towel, she went out to her terrace and shielded her eyes against the low sun, which made a couple strolling the beach hand in hand look dipped in toffee.
Over the past year, icy anger had frozen her grief into her bones, but recently the marrow seemed overwhelmed by the effort of this compression and had begun emitting a kind of fog, like dry ice vapors, that displaced the air in her lungs and slowed her brain. It was as if those noxious vapors were wreathing her words, further sharpening her already lacerating tongue. She’d begun messing up at work enough to give the ever-circling hyenas in her department a whiff of vulnerability.
Coxe had flashed his fake-compassion smile when he’d said, “I strongly recommend you take this opportunity to just get over, well, whatever it is.” She’d imagined driving the Montblanc fountain pen he so fancied straight into his jugular. As if a few days of Caribbean frolic could erase all that had brought her to this point.
CHAPTER 2
Though she packed instinctively for business travel, she’d puzzled over what to bring on this junket, feeling naked without the armor of her suits. She pulled on a body-hugging coral dress with a low décolletage; the color amped up her copper hair and milky skin. After touching up the circles under her eyes, applying mascara and power lipstick, and dabbing on rose-scented toilet water, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Her gray eyes stared back, defiant.
In the bar, name-tagged surgeons attempted the limbo to recorded music while their colleagues cheered them on. Els took a deep draft of her double Laphroaig, neat, splash of water. The scotch delivered welcome heat to her throat, her belly. When she caught a man farther up the bar ogling her, she locked eyes with him until she saw his flare of recognition. He said something to the bobbed woman next to him and walked over.
“Eleanor Gordon,” he said. “Paul Salustrio. Goldman, New York.”
Els held out her hand.
“Has it been two years already?” he said. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself since that ZarCom deal?”
While they shook hands, his eyes, a brown so dark that all expression drowned in them, were fixed on her cleavage.
“Mostly on a plane,” she said.
“I was in London last month. Still trying to close that petro transaction we sparred about back then. Your boss brought a sharp young VP to the meeting. What’s his name, Burgess?” He shook his head. “Watch your