Bird of Paradise

  She watched Jesus chomping on the sock mouse's head. “You put whiskers on it?”

  “Well, it is a mouse. They have whiskers, you know. I wouldn't want to cheat him out of a proper mouse.”

  She looked at him as if he was the one with mouse whiskers; then suddenly her eyes warmed up and her enticing lips curved into a smile. It lit up her whole face and, more amazingly, seemed to light him up inside, as well. “You really are a very nice man despite everything.”

  Despite everything? The warm glow her smile had started suddenly froze into a leaden lump of embarrassment. The women. She must have seen those blasted women hanging off him. Hell.

  “I can't think of anyone else who would go to such trouble for a pet.”

  His heart started beating a bit faster at her praise. “He's not your average garden variety of pet, as you can see. He's had a hard life. A few toys are the least I can do to make up for what he's been through.”

  She looked like she was going to say something else, but the woman on the other side of him shushed them and pointed toward the stage. Asterisk had been replaced by a tall man with slicked-back blonde hair who was explaining the basic rules of the contest.

  “Now, as you all know, the show is divided into two-week sections. The first two weeks feature a variety of events and are intended to give you all a chance to find out how compatible you are with the contestants of the opposite sex. Each day of the first week you will have three dates: two during the day, and the third a group date at night. At the end of every day you will be required to go into the special video booths set up in the lobby. We call them the confession boxes.” The man waited for the polite laughter to die down. “The confession box is where points are awarded; if your date indicates he or she had a good time with you, and you say likewise, you both receive points for compatibility. If one of you states he or she did not enjoy the date…well, sorry, no points there. The second week you'll be paired off with those dates whom you've scored with—that's scored points, gentlemen. Anything else is up to you.” The man held up his hands as if absolving himself from any wrongdoing as the audience hooted and whistled at his double entendre. Adam rolled his eyes. If the women who had hounded him at the airport were anything to go by, there wasn't anyone here he would have even the slightest romantic interest in…except perhaps the goddess sitting next to him. He slid his gaze toward Hero as the president continued.

  “Couples rated compatible will be paired off, and judged on how well they work together. They'll be faced with a variety of challenges, all geared to give them a better understanding of what the other is really like. Successful couples will be awarded points while those of you not meant to be together will have the opportunity to pair up with someone else of your choice. At the end of the second week, the participants who have earned the most points will advance to the next round, leaving us to start the third week with only fifty bachelors and fifty bachelorettes. By the end of the sixth week, only one couple will be left to enjoy the grand prize of—say it with me—one million dollars and an around-the-world-trip for two. As you can tell from the number of your fellow contestants, the competition will be tough, but remember! The goal of the show is to find that special someone, not to rack up points, so be honest in the confession booth. We've all had enough bad dates not to want to repeat them just to accrue a few points, right?”

  The audience groaned their agreement. Jesus tugged on his leash, standing with his front legs on the back of the chair, giving the cameraman who was filming him one of his silent meows. The cameraman grinned in delight, tightening the focus of his shot as the cat squinted his eye at the light atop the camera, batting at it with one massive paw.

  “Show off,” Adam grumbled, glancing up to see if Hero was watching. She was, but the smile that had started such a warm glow within him had faded. She looked worried now, pensive, tapping a finger against lush lips as if she was considering his fitness for some role. A surge of lust slashed through him, whispering to him exactly what role he'd like to perform with her.

  “One final word and then I'll let you go all freshen up before dinner. You'll notice around you the cameramen and soundmen. They are here to capture your responses to your dates, as well as to film any interviews you might be requested to do with the illustrious Asterisk. Please do your best to pretend the camera crew is not present. We want your reactions to be as realistic and unstudied as possible. Be honest, be yourself, and above all, have fun here in our own little Eden!”

  Dara the executive producer had returned to the microphone with a few last minute announcements. “Dinner tonight is the first of this week's group dates. Each table will be playing a few icebreaker games to allow you to get to know each other. Points will be awarded to tables whose members complete the events. There will be a cocktail get-to-know-you hour before in the south patio. The orientation packets handed to you as you came in include your room key and a map to the resort, as well as a list of amenities, Eden rules, et cetera. If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of the show's handlers. They're the ones with the blue buttons and the wild looks in their eyes.”

  The crowd laughed and applauded the producer, chatting among themselves as they started filing out of the ballroom. Adam pulled Jesus back from where he was trying to climb onto Hero's lap.

  “Sorry,” he said. “He really likes you. You ought to take that as a compliment—he doesn't like too many women. My vet thinks it was a woman who abused him as a kitten.”

  “Abused him? How terrible. Poor Puss,” Hero said, stroking the cat's large head. Jesus made that peculiar rumbling deep in his chest that passed for purring, giving Adam a sly look out of his good eye. Adam looked over Hero's head.

  “Er…Sally, if I could speak to you for just a moment…”

  “You do, and I'll tell that producer the truth about you,” Sally snarled as she gathered up her things and stalked off.

  Adam was torn between going after her to beg her to not turn him in, and staying to talk to Hero. He sighed. There were Jesus's testicles to consider; duty had to win out. Feeling more a martyr than ever, he scooped up the cat from where he was making himself at home on Hero's lap. “I'm sorry about that; he really is a mooch when it comes to attention. I'll just take him off to my room and let him stretch his legs.”

  “I see.” She didn't look like she saw anything she understood; she looked confused. Delightfully confused, he amended, gnawing on a delectable lower lip as she eyed him speculatively.

  He glanced out the glass doors to the long palm-lined walk that ran the length of the resort, knowing he should leave, but wanting to stay. Large clusters of people were still visible, including the retreating form of Sally. He really needed to talk to her, to make her understand that he didn't pose any threat to her whatsoever, and to get her to agree not to expose him. But Hero was an irresistible lure—especially since her hesitant expression told him she wanted to say something, but hadn't yet mustered up the nerve.

  He sighed again and gave in. He could find Sally later. Just once he wanted to do something for himself.

  “Erm…Mr. Marsh—”

  “Call me Adam,” he said, uncomfortably aware once again that she believed him to be someone he wasn't. He pushed that thought aside. There was nothing he could do about that now. Perhaps later…if he was allowed to have a later, that is.

  “Adam, would it be possible to have a word in your ear? Privately?”

  She wanted to talk to him privately. How fitting that he should be right there, willing to be talked to. Privately.

  “Certainly. Er…let's see…” he juggled Jesus and his orientation packet for a moment, then set the cat down and rustled through the papers until he found a small brass key. “I'm in cabana seventeen. According to the map, that's just beyond the fitness center. Where are you?”

  She held out a key. “Cabana one-twenty-two, next to the croquet court.”

  “You're closer. If you don't mind stopping to let Jesus do his business, I'll walk
you there.”

  “I don't mind in the least,” Hero said as they exited the ballroom. Long walkways lined with shrubs, small palms, and lots of flowers crisscrossed the main resort compound. Discreet signs pointed visitors to the various amenities. Adam and Hero turned right and headed toward the west side of the resort.

  “To tell you the truth,” she admitted with a shy smile that tugged on his heart, “I'm a bit overwhelmed by the resort. It's lovelier than anyplace I've seen. The flowers alone are breathtaking, and the scenery…it really is just as I imagine the Garden of Eden to have been.”

  Adam paused and discreetly turned his back when Jesus disappeared under a low-growing shrub.

  “It's a big muggy, but I expect we'll get used to that in time.” Dirt scattered on the paving stones before Adam's feet, kicked out from under the shrub. He shifted uncomfortably. Hero was dreamily looking off in the distance, past a line of coconut palms to where the roar and crash of the surf could be heard pounding onto a rocky outcropping. More dirt splatted on the pathway. He brushed it aside with his foot, wondering what Hero wanted to talk to him about. A small pink and white orchid, roots still attached, was flung out from under the shrub onto the tops of his shoes. He tugged on the leash, smiling wolfishly at Hero as she turned to look at him.

  “He likes flowers.”

  Hero looked at the orchid Adam placed on the edge of the path.

  “He does?” she asked with one eyebrow cocked in disbelief before turning back to gaze out toward the palms.

  Adam fidgeted. He hated having to make chitchat. He never had been any good at it, and now here he was stuck with a woman who stirred his desire more than he'd felt in years, and his cat was evidently excavating to China. “Er…so, is this your first time in the Caribbean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.”

  He tugged a bit more persistently on the leash. The shrub trembled for a moment, a few twigs snapped sharply, and then a low, threatening growl heralded Jesus's arrival. Branches parted to reveal a feline rear end. The cat backed out of the leaves, rumbling softly to himself as he dragged a small piece of sky-blue cloth over to his owner, plopping his butt down on Adam's toes to present him with his find with a look of great satisfaction.

  “What the hell…?” Adam wrestled the cloth from the cat's mouth and claws. “Let go of it, dammit! Whatever it is, it's dirty. I don't want you to have it.”

  Hero watched in silence as he scooted the cat off his feet, squatting next to the animal, prying his mouth open to unhook the cloth from Jesus's sharp teeth.

  Adam looked up. “I think there's a bit of retriever in him,” he joked weakly, mentally moaning to himself. This was just what he needed, for Jesus to act up and make him look like an idiot in front of the one woman he wanted to make a good impression on. “Give it to me, cat! Damn it, I'm not playing with you, give me the blasted thing!”

  Jesus spat out the cloth and turned to Hero, standing on his back legs and patting her knees with his front paws, giving her his piteous silent meow and a look that would do a starving orphan facing eviction into a blizzard proud.

  “Oh, you poor thing!” she crooned, clearly falling for his pathetic act. She bent down to scoop him up, staggering a little when she tried to straighten up with the full weight of him in her arms. She recovered nicely, however, and glared at Adam over the cat's head. “You shouted at him!”

  Adam held up his hand. A torn and dirt-encrusted pair of women's sky blue underwear dangled from his fingers. “Yes, I did. I have a rule that he's not allowed to bring home strange women's panties. I'm silly that way.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “You trained your cat to fetch knickers from women who are not strangers?”

  “No, certainly not! He just likes them.”

  The look of disbelief on her face said it all.

  “I mean, he just likes to find things and retrieve them. It doesn't matter what the object is.”

  She continued to stare at him, making him feel as though he were in fourth grade and caught kissing Betty Sue Seymore behind the jungle gym. “Look, he's a strange cat; I have little control over him. He likes to find things. I can count the number of times he's brought me panties on the fingers of one hand.” He thought for a moment. “Well, all right, two hands, but that's only because my girlfriend was living with me at the time and there were panties everywhere. I couldn't expect him to just ignore them, now could I?”

  She pursed her lips, looked like she was going to argue the point, then shook her head and simply said, “I think, perhaps, we should let this particular subject drop.”

  “I think you're right,” he agreed with no little sense of relief. What was it about this woman that made him feel like he were a gauche young man on his first serious date?

  Hero frowned at the underwear, then down on Jesus's head. The cat's look of smug satisfaction at being held melted into one of innocence and feline sainthood. Adam was not amused. He tossed the underwear into a nearby trash receptacle and retrieved his cat, setting him on the ground. “Behave yourself and I'll let you have a can of sardines later.”

  Jesus gave him a one-eyed, annoyed stare before leading the way down the path.

  “He's limping quite heavily, don't you think you should carry him?” Hero asked as she strolled next to Adam, her eyes on the cat a few feet ahead of her. “His leg must be hurting.”

  “Just ignore it, it's an act. He's fine. When his leg hurts, he lets me know.”

  “How?” she asked, just as he knew she would.

  “He bites me, “ Adam replied, enjoying the tantalizing scent of sun-warmed woman the soft ocean breeze carried his way. He breathed deeply, feeling the familiar prickles of arousal start to stir before he clamped down on the unwelcome sensation. What the hell was he doing? What sort of terrible things did it say about him that he was ready to take advantage of an innocent young woman while pretending to be someone else? What had happened to honor and pride? Had he really sunk so low that he would even contemplate lying—by word or by deed, they were both the same—to someone he wanted to have a relationship with? Had it really come to this?

  Hero's hand brushed his as they walked down the palm tree lined pathway toward a sweeping crescent of small cabanas lining a lush green lawn. Pure desire rippled through him at the contact.

  “Yes, yes it has come to this,” he muttered as he stepped aside for her to open the door to the furthest most cabana.

  “Did you say something?” she asked as she paused before the door.

  “Nothing worth repeating.”

  The small puzzled frown was back between her eyes, but she said nothing as she unlocked the door and entered the cabana. Jesus marched in after her, his whiskers twitching as he surveyed the room, locating the whereabouts of anything that might be of possible interest to him.

  “Don't get too comfortable, this isn't our room,” Adam told him, unsnapping the leash before looking up at Hero. She was examining the room as well.

  “This is quite nice, much nicer than I expected. Oh, I'm sorry, do please sit down. This won't take but a minute.” She pulled a suitcase off a wicker chair and waved him toward it.

  “I don't suppose you asked me here in order to cast yourself into my manly arms and beg me to make you a woman tonight?” he asked with a smile that he sincerely hoped was not tinged with desperation.

  Hero paused in the act of sitting down in the chair opposite his. “What?”

  He tried to make his smile friendly and reassuring, and not in the least bit that of a sex-starved man who finds himself in a room with the living personification of Aphrodite and Venus all rolled into one tempting package. “That was a joke. A very poor one, I realize, but since you seemed to be a bit peeved with me earlier, and as my cat is probably even now sitting on your toilet playing in the water, I figured it might be called for.”

  “I see.”

  “Clearly it wasn't.”

  “Perhaps not,” she agreed, her lovely grey eyes large with worry. She
probably was concerned he'd pounce on her the second she looked away. He heaved a mental sigh. Wasn't this day turning out to be just jim dandy fine? First she caught him in the blatantly illegal act of smuggling his cat through quarantine; then said cat retrieved out a pair of underwear for him like he did that every day of his life, and now that she had invited him into her cozy little cabana for two, he was acting like a sex maniac. Oh, yes, his life was turning out very well, indeed.

  “I have a proposition to make you,” Hero interrupted the contemplation of recent events.

  Adam sat up a bit straighter in his chair and casually crossed his legs so she wouldn't see just what sort of affect her nearness and the word proposition was having on him. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “A proposition? What sort of proposition?”

  Dare he hope it involved their bared flesh and a fresh mango or two?

  “It's like this—I have a reason, which I don't care to reveal just now, to wish to be present at least through the third and fourth weeks of the show, and not eliminated at the end of the second week. It is vitally important to me, you understand. I assume if you've gone to the time and trouble, not to mention the risk of possible imprisonment, of smuggling your cat into the country, you must also wish to see the whole show through as well.”

  There was nothing he'd like more than to go home…assuming she'd like to come with him, but he supposed he shouldn't say that. He tried to look like he was anticipating a grand and glorious time on the island of Mystique, and nodded his head.

  “Excellent. Simply put, I propose— Aaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee! What the bloody hell is that?”

  Hero leaped from a sitting position straight onto the seat of her chair and did a horrified little dance as she pointed a shaking finger toward the bathroom. Framed perfectly in the doorway, Jesus strolled nonchalantly into the room with a small creature perched on his head.

  Adam sighed again, this time aloud. Jesus was going to be the death of him, he really was. Or if not him specifically, at least of his romantic life. “It would appear my cat has found a friend.”