Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) Read online

  “I bet.” His eyes glowed. “Surfing during a hurricane. That must be fun.”

  Maybe, if you thought you were immortal. Ty was a daredevil. He’d probably love tackling the huge rollers that crashed into shore when a storm tore up the coast. Monica had never even attempted to surf. She’d always thought it seemed too dangerous.

  Ty stopped and bent over to pluck an object out of the sand. Straightening, he handed it to her—a smooth brown oval of beach glass. She loved beach glass. How had he known? And how had he spotted the polished chip of glass in the waning light?

  “Thank you,” she said, closing her fingers around the treasure. She wanted to rise up on tiptoe and kiss him, but the presence of the couple and their giggling young daughter inhibited her. Unlike Ty, Monica wasn’t fearless. Public displays of affection—even on a private beach—made her uncomfortable. She’d need a bit more wildness to shed her innate modesty

  “So,” he said, his fingers laced through hers, his gaze focused on the horizon, a growing a little less visible as the evening light continued to wane. “Why did your parents invite me for dinner?”

  A blunt question, and it deserved an honest answer. “My father saw me on the back of your motorcycle. My mother heard I’d broken up with my old boyfriend. Clearly they thought further research was warranted.”

  He smiled at her wry remark, then glanced down at her. “Did I have anything to do with breaking you and your boyfriend up? Because, I mean—if a woman is with another guy, I keep my distance.”

  “No. We had already broken up when I met you.” Just a day earlier, but Ty didn’t have to know that. The break-up had had nothing to do with him. “How about you? Do you have a girlfriend in Florida?” Or, God forbid, a wife?

  She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he said, “Nope. Same rule for me. I don’t want to be on either end of a cheat.”

  Her lungs emptied with a sigh of relief. Ty might be wild, he might be footloose, he might be reckless and rootless and too sexy for her sanity. He might even be a criminal. Yet she sensed a moral core to him. Drugs or no drugs, he would not cheat on a woman.

  A cold drop of water tapped her nose. They weren’t that close to the ocean’s edge, and the breeze wasn’t strong enough to have carried sea spray across the sand onto them. She glanced up and realized that the encroaching darkness was only partly due to the sunset. Those purple clouds had expanded, rolling up the coast.

  Another drop struck her cheek. From a few yards away, the voice of the woman drifted toward her and Ty: “Uh-oh! It’s starting to drizzle.”

  “Uh-oh!” the little girl echoed, then giggled. “Uh-oh!” The man scooped up the child, who let out a bubbly laugh as he hoisted her onto his shoulders. “Uh-oh!” she bellowed. “Uh-oh!”

  Monica considered rushing back to the stairs, but her feet seemed pinned to the sand. Or else she was pinned by Ty’s gentle clasp of her hand. He seemed in no hurry to escape from the rain.

  The couple and their daughter grinned at Monica and Ty as they jogged past, heading straight for the stairs. Another raindrop struck Monica, and another, and still she couldn’t imagine seeking protection. Running indoors would be the safe, sane thing to do. She might not be daring enough to surf through a hurricane, but surely she could stand in the rain.

  Ty gazed toward the stairs, watching the family escape from the beach. Then he turned back to Monica, lifted his hands to her cheeks, and cupped her face. The kiss she’d yearned for outside her parents’ apartment—and inside it, and every moment since Ty had kissed her at Rose Cottage—arrived, and she welcomed it eagerly.

  The fragrance of the gentle spring shower mingled with the ocean’s briny perfume and with Ty’s scent, clean and spicy and powerfully male. They kissed as the raindrops peppered them, kissed as the waves hissed and whooshed against the sand, kissed as their clothing grew damp and clung to their skin. Kissed as Ty lifted his hands to her hair and threaded his fingers through the damp locks. Kissed as he rocked his hips to hers, as she felt his hardness. Kissed as she wrapped her hands around his waist and chased his tongue with hers, and felt herself becoming wet in places the rain couldn’t reach.

  “You make me crazy,” he whispered, tilting her head back and grazing the skin beneath her jaw.

  You make me sane, she thought, but only clung more tightly to him, probing the taut muscles of his lower back through his soggy shirt.

  He dipped his head lower, nibbling a path along her sternum. The sky had grown even darker, clouds obliterating the moon. He pulled his hands from her hair and unfastened a few buttons of her shirt, opening it far enough to expose her bra. He tugged the cups downward, freeing her breasts, and nuzzled them, first one and the other, and then the hollow between them as his thumbs brushed her nipples.

  Her legs trembled, strength draining from them as all her energy centered on where Ty was kissing her, touching her—and where she wanted him touching her. She moaned, and he released her breasts and tucked his hands around her bottom, lifting her off her feet. She wrapped his legs around his waist and he carried her toward the stairs.

  She tried to calculate the distance between the beach and her bed. She tried to collect her wits enough to consider buttoning her blouse, in case she and Ty encountered anyone between here and there.

  Apparently, he thought the distance to her apartment was too great. At the stairs, he turned and settled onto a lower step, holding Monica in his lap, her legs still around him. His mouth remained on hers, hot and hungry.

  “Ty,” she whispered.

  He worked open the fly of her slacks and slid one hand inside, under the elastic of her panties. He found her, soaked and swollen, his thumb playing over her, his fingers plunging.

  She choked out a cry. She was coming, here on the hard wood steps to the beach, on Ty’s lap. She was coming, and he wasn’t with her, and she couldn’t stop writhing against him, couldn’t stop the sensations from crashing through her with more force than the surf during a stage-five hurricane.

  She didn’t need the thrill of surfing. She had this. She had him.

  As the deep, wrenching spasms subsided, she leaned against him, struggling to breathe. He kept his hand where it was, calming, soothing. When her heart finally stopped its galloping pace and her respiration slowed, she murmured, “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his smile.

  The rain fell quietly around them, against them. She rested her head on his shoulder and tried to think of anywhere she’d rather be. She came up blank.

  As if he could read her mind, Ty said, “I like this place. I like the inn. I like the beach.” He brushed a light kiss on her forehead. “I like these stairs.”

  “At the moment, so do I.” At last she pulled back. Her shirt, saturated from the rain, weighed heavily against her skin. Her hair dripped down her back. Ty looked as waterlogged as she felt. “Open your fly.”

  “That’s okay, Monica, I—”

  “Open it.” She tugged at his belt, but her hands were shaking. Her soul was perfectly steady, however. She felt sure of herself. She felt wild.

  Ty must have seen her determination in her expression, because he dutifully unzipped his jeans. She reached inside and he sprang free, warm and steel-hard. She stroked the length of him, then bowed and opened her mouth over him.

  A ragged groan escaped him as she took him in. He was warm, salty, silky. Large, yet he didn’t choke her. She’d never much liked doing this with Jimmy, but he’d loved it and she’d accommodated him. With Ty, though—it felt right. He tasted wonderful. She was driven by the need to make him as delirious with pleasure as he’d made her. The need, the desire, the excitement. Rain beat down on her as she swirled her tongue over his tip and then down the length of him. She tightened her lips. He groaned again.

  It didn’t take long before he was gone, pulsing into her, his fingers fisting in her hair. Feeling his climax and hearing him groan again turned her on as much as his caresses ha
d.

  God, yes, she liked these stairs.

  And she liked being wild.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next day he worked on the wall in Rose Cottage.

  He would have preferred to spend the whole day in bed with Monica. After that crazy, amazing interlude on the beach, they’d raced back to her apartment, as wet as shipwreck victims by the time they’d reached her door at the end of the back hallway. Wet was fine with Ty, though. What else could you do when your clothing was soaked but strip that clothing off? No more than fifteen seconds after Monica had turned the bolt to lock them inside her apartment, they’d been naked, toweling each other off before they tumbled onto the bed and went at it for real.

  He wouldn’t mind being shipwrecked with her. Stranded on a remote island, living on coconuts, bananas, fish, and sex. Yeah, he could enjoy that.

  But he also enjoyed the comfort of her bed, the cozy thickness of the comforter, the plush down pillows. He could imagine spending every night in Monica’s bed and waking up every morning with her in his arms, her velvety skin pressed against his, her silky hair tickling his chin. He could imagine doing this for a long time.

  That wasn’t like him. He never did anything for a long time. He’d known women—known them longer than he’d known Monica—and had fun with them, and then parted ways with them, always amicably, always with good wishes and pleasant memories. The women he’d been with always knew going in that he wasn’t a forever kind of guy, or even a long-time kind of guy. The women he’d been with didn’t have parents who’d invited him for dinner.

  That was another weird thing. He’d liked Monica’s parents. He’d liked having dinner with them.

  Imagine growing up in a spacious, elegant apartment in the resort where your family worked. Imagine returning to that resort as an adult and living in another, smaller apartment in the same building. Imagine having roots as deep as a pine tree’s, anchoring you to a place you loved. And knowing your parents were there, eager to meet your friends, to make sure those friends were good enough for their daughter.

  A gut-deep pang of longing seized Ty. He’d known something like that as a child, known his parents adored him, known a feeling of permanence, a sense of home. But it had all been snatched away from him. He’d eventually come to believe that surviving the accident was all the compensation he was going to get in exchange for having lost his parents—and since it was all he was going to get, he made sure it was all he needed.

  But a home, a real home, a soul-deep knowledge that you belonged somewhere… Man, that would be sweet.

  He gave his head a shake to clear it and surveyed the equipment he’d gathered from the maintenance building on the premises. Monica had brought him there and told him to help himself. Surveying the shelves, he’d felt like a kid in a toy store. So much gear, so many tools, all of them well maintained and neatly stored.

  Back in Florida, he’d strap his tool box to the back of his Rebel and motor over to a job, and hope that everything he’d ordered for the job showed up by the time he needed it. At the Ocean Bluff Inn, everything was already at hand: sacks of plaster; trowels; a bucket to stir the mud, as construction guys called wet plaster; a ladder; a drop cloth; paint; brushes; rollers; stirrers.

  Imagine living in a place that had everything you needed—and everyone you needed. Imagine knowing that place was your place, feeling it in your marrow. Never wanting to leave.

  Another sharp shake of his head, and he set about to work, unfolding the drop cloth to protect the hardwood floor beneath the hole the plumbers had cut into the wall. They’d finally located and repaired the leak in a pipe that extended from the second-floor bathroom sink down to the cellar of the cottage. It had warped the bathroom floor slightly upstairs, but Ty assumed the floor would settle back down once it had dried thoroughly, and the vanity would cover any water stains left behind.

  The plumbers had done a neat job when they’d opened up the parlor wall, cleanly slicing the drywall and setting the piece they removed aside to be reused. He’d be able to cheat a bit, smoothing the mud into the drywall so he wouldn’t have to extend the patch too far beyond the perimeter of the cut. He’d need to paint the entire wall, though. Possibly the entire room. He’d have to see how the paint dried, whether it matched up with the other three walls, how many coats it would take to cover the patch.

  Monica had told him not to knock himself out. She had a maintenance staff who could do the painting. But they were busy overseeing other tasks in the run-up to the resort’s big summer season. Besides, Ty wanted to do this—not just for her, but because… Because this was her home, and he wanted to leave his mark on it.

  Before patching the hole, he reached inside and smoothed out the insulation, which had been shoved aside when the plumbers had been searching for the leak. The fleecy strips of pink fiber felt dry to him, and they settled back into place around the pipes. He used the flashlight app on his phone to inspect the floor in the space between the inner and outer walls, to make sure no one had dropped anything there. Workmen sometimes left tools behind, or pocket change, or rags. Once the wall was sealed, any junk left behind would be trapped inside the wall forever—or until the next leak, when the wall got cut open again.

  No junk. No treasures, either. No wads of cash, no jewelry, no stolen artwork.

  No drugs.

  As he troweled the mud onto the wall, smearing and smoothing, smearing and smoothing, his mind revved into high gear. If someone wanted to stash heroin somewhere, they could do worse than to hide it in the hollow behind a wallboard. If someone wanted to stash heroin on a boat, to have the drugs transported north without the boat’s captain-crew-passenger knowing it was there…

  The Freedom didn’t have a lot of empty space behind its walls. Its design was streamlined and efficient. Every cubic inch that wasn’t filled with gear was accessible for storage. The outer seats lifted up on hinges, and beneath them were storage bins. The space under the sleeping bench in the cabin provided more storage space. The galley was equipped with a mini-fridge and a microwave running off a small generator, and a few cramped cabinets in which Ty had stored utensils and food. The only area that didn’t open up for storage, as far as Ty knew, was the panel behind the toilet in the head. The only purpose of that panel was to allow a plumber access if something went wrong with the pipes.

  No one would be stupid enough to secrete a shipment of drugs where there were pipes, right? As Monica had learned the hard way, pipes developed leaks. A leak could destroy that illicit cargo, unless the drugs were wrapped up really well, in waterproof layers of plastic or canvas.

  Last he’d heard, the cops hadn’t discovered any heroin on the Freedom. Some clown had sworn to them that heroin had been carried to Brogan’s Point on the boat, but as far as Ty knew, Nolan and his fellow officers of the law hadn’t found it. If they had, Ty wouldn’t be plastering a wall right now, and he wouldn’t have spent last night doing sweaty, X-rated things in bed with Monica. He’d be behind bars, charged with drug smuggling.

  But what if there was heroin? It might be behind the toilet, in the one region of the boat Ty hadn’t become intimately acquainted with during his week-long sail, the one place no one would think to look. The one place no one could look if he didn’t pry the panel off.

  Ty finished spreading the mud on the wall, then stepped back and inspected his work from several angles to make sure it was perfectly smooth. Fortunately, last night’s rain had ended and the air was dry. The plaster would dry in less than a half hour.

  He wiped his hands on a rag, then carried his tools into the kitchenette off the parlor, washed and dried them. Returning to the parlor, he studied his work, and imagined the space behind the wall. He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his old jeans and punched in the number of Caleb Solomon’s law office.

  The receptionist put him through. “No news,” Solomon informed him, then contradicted himself. “I take that back. Detective Nolan told me the police down in Key Biscayne
have been monitoring your buddy, Wayne MacArthur. He’s bought a plane ticket to Boston, arriving Saturday afternoon.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Ty asked.

  “Good. He’s coming up here. Nolan can turn his attention to him. Maybe he’ll retrieve his heroin, assuming it even exists, and the police will catch him red-handed, and he’ll confess. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Sure, it would be nice. It wasn’t going to happen, though. “I had this thought,” Ty said, then hesitated. Was he nuts even to mention it? “If there’s heroin on the boat, I think I know where it might be hidden.”

  Solomon didn’t say anything for a moment. “All right. This could go one of two ways. One way, the police decide you’re so helpful and cooperative, they stop suspecting you. The other way, the police say, ‘Of course you know where the heroin is hidden. You transported it here.’”

  “The thing is, I never saw drugs on the boat. I never had a clue there were drugs on the boat. But if Wayne was moving them up to Brogan’s Point, he wouldn’t have had to tell me about them. All he needed me to do was sail the boat—and hide them someplace where I wouldn’t find them. I think I’ve figured out where that place might be.”

  “Okay.” Solomon thought some more. “Don’t do anything. Let me talk to Nolan and get back to you.”

  Ty thanked the lawyer, then thumbed the disconnect icon and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. Restless, he stepped outside the cottage. From its front porch spread a vista of soft, green grass, well-tended flower beds bright with azaleas, tulips and crocuses, and trees lush with new spring leaves. The swimming pool spread across the flagstone patio, its bright blue practically a mirror of the cloudless sky. Comfortable-looking lounge chairs and tables furnished the patio, and beyond that the inn’s main building sprawled like a New England palace—white clapboard, black shutters, sloping slate roof.

  Squinting, he could guess which window belonged to Monica’s apartment. His own apartment down in Florida wasn’t much bigger, but he didn’t spend that much time in it, anyway. There were always parties, bars, people hanging out on the beach, women issuing invitations. That apartment didn’t feel like home. He’d never expected it to.