"Is your memory clouded by drink and drugs?"
"Now who's being smart? I don't remember the name of the place. What difference does it make? It had a thatched roof, I think." She searched her memory for the name of a club she had passed on the outskirts of the tourist town. "Shack something, I think."
"The Sugar Shack! You went into the Sugar Shack by yourself?"
"Same song, second verse."
"That's the main pickup joint on the island. You can get everything from cocaine to venereal disease in that place."
"Is this the voice of experience speaking?"
His eyes shot daggers at her through the darkness. "But you would fit right into that crowd, wouldn't you? You even dressed the part of a pickup. You blended right into the dare-anything, do-everything, what-the-hell crowd."
She tilted her head to one side and said cockily, "Let's put it this way, Daddy. I had some kicks, but I didn't meet anybody I could have a lasting relationship with."
"Did you get laid?"
Lilah went hot all over, first with embarrassment, then with rage. She was too angry to speak, so Adam used the opportunity to rub salt into the wound he'd just inflicted.
"That's what you went out for, isn't it?" He reached up and flattened his hand against her lower body. "To let some other guy put out the hot fire I stoked here last night?"
Glaring down at him, she stepped out of his reach. She removed the lei and threw it into his lap. Only then did she notice the highball glass in his hand. "You're drunk. Therefore, I'm going to ignore your cross-examination and your insults. But just for the record book, if I had gone out to get laid, as you so coarsely put it, that would be no concern of yours." She took one final dig at him from the top of the stairs. "Lord have mercy on you tomorrow if you've got a hangover."
The Lord had no mercy.
The following morning when Lilah entered Adams room, he was propped up against the pillows of his bed wearing a green cast to his skin and a death-wish facial expression.
"No basketball this morning?" she asked in a high, piping voice. "No Whitney Houston?" Adam gave her a dangerous look from beneath his shelf of dark brows. She executed an awkward but enthusiastic pirouette and said, "I feel great! It's a positively beautiful morning. Did you have Pete's special omelet cooked in ham drippings?" Adam groaned. "It was delicious. Very cheesy. It fairly oozed when I — "
"Shut up, Lilah," he threatened between his teeth.
"Oh, what's wrong?" She pooched out her lips. "Does Adam have a tummy ache?"
"Get the hell out of here and leave me alone."
Laughing, she said, "I warned you. Don't blame me for your condition. What was it, gin? Vodka? Scotch? Brandy?" He moaned in misery and clutched his stomach. "The brandy, huh? Pretty expensive drinking binge. But then you can afford it, can't you, King Midas?"
"I'm going to murder you."
"You've got to catch me first, Cavanaugh. And you'll never do that by lying on your butt. Come on, get up, let's get started." She took his hand and tried to pull him up. He stayed glued to the pillow. "Come on, all joking aside. It's time to get started."
"I'm not moving from this spot."
Placing her hands on her hips, she gazed down at him in disgust. "Would an aspirin or two help?"
"No. Dying might."
"As far as I know, nobody has ever died of a hangover, though there have been millions of prayers to that effect I'm sure." Her voice was still brimming with good cheer. "You say another one while I get the aspirin … just in case God turns a deaf ear and lets you live."
She went into the bathroom and returned in under a minute carrying three aspirin tablets in one hand and a glass of water in the other. "Here you go."
"I don't want any damn aspirin."
"You'll feel much better during your workout if you take them."
"I'm not doing any exercises this morning either. I feel like crap."
"And whose fault is that?" Her patience had run out. By this time her voice had developed a serrated cutting edge. "Now stop behaving like a baby and take the aspirin."
She opened his hand and dropped the tablets into his palm. He hurled them across the room. They landed on the floor with tiny pings that might just as well have been bombs landing and exploding. Lilah's temper snapped. She tossed the full glass of cold water into his lap.
That got him off the pillow. He bounced up, gasping in surprise, cursing lividly, and staring down incredulously at the puddle of water forming in the V of his thighs. Before he could overcome his astonishment and fury the doorbell pealed through the house.
Pete had gone into the nearest town to do the marketing, so Lilah had to answer the door. Giving Adam one last glare, she left the room and jogged down the stairs. She pulled the wide doors open. It would have been difficult to say which woman was more surprised to see the other.
The caller regained her voice first and asked Lilah, "Who are you?"
"We don't want any."
"Any what?"
"Whatever it is you're peddling, lady."
The brunette drew herself up to her full height. The skin over her face's classic bone structure smoothed out until there wasn't a single line or wrinkle in evidence. Icily she said, "I asked you a question, young woman."
"Now I'm asking. Who are you?"
But Lilah already knew. The pieces of luggage surrounding the woman cost more than Lilah's compact car. Her clothes didn't need visible tags to label them expensive. She had milky white skin, china blue eyes, ebony black hair, and ruby red lips.
"It's freaking Snow White," Lilah muttered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing. Come on in."
Lilah stood aside and let the woman step into the foyer. She was careful not to let her skirt brush against Lilah's bare legs, a snub that Lilah found amusing.
"Where's Pete?" she asked.
So she'd been here before. "Grocery shopping."
"Where's Adam?"
"Upstairs in his room."
"And for the final time, who are you?"
"Lilah Mason."
"Lucretia von Elsinghauer." Lilah failed to respond. Obviously she was expected to drop to her knees and genuflect. She only stared back at the woman, unimpressed and giving no ground. "What are you doing here, Miss Mason?"
Lilah lowered her eyelid in a slow, suggestive wink. "Wouldn't you just love to know?" She took a perverse pleasure in watching those facial muscles tighten up again. "Relax, Lucretia. I'm Adam's physical therapist."
The woman's chilly blue eyes moved over Lilah, taking in her bare feet, skimpy gym shorts, sleeveless T-shirt — which promoted a rock radio station — and large mismatched earrings. "I want to see Adam. Immediately," she stressed.
"Shall I lead the way?" Lilah asked sweetly.
"I know the way."
"I figured as much." She swept her arm wide to indicate the staircase.
Lucretia shouldered her Louis Vuitton handbag and started up the stairs. Just as she reached the top, Lilah called up to her from below, "Oh, maybe I should warn you. He just had an accident in his bed." She shrugged, bringing her shoulders up level with her earlobes. "Hey, it happens."
"Not good for boss," Pete pronounced philosophically, shaking his head. "She say, 'Crean up this.' Wadder all over boss. I crean. Change bed. She say, 'Now wreave.' I go. Not good for boss."
"Will you stop carrying on?" Lilah plucked a snow pea out of the salad he was making and munched on it. "You don't have to expound on Miss von Elsinghauer's personality flaws to me. She must be a descendant of Hitler's." Pete went into his knee-slapping routine that meant he found something hysterically funny. "It wasn't intended as a joke. I'm dead serious."
Lilah had known the instant she opened the door to Lucretia that her arrival boded ill for all of them. Maybe she was being unfair in her judgment, but she didn't think so. The woman had been under the roof only a few hours and had already caused discord.