Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(48)
Cash
The night before Tilda leaves on her weeklong research trip with Dunk, she and Cash drink a bottle of Granger’s Cristal while skinny-dipping in the pool (Granger and Lauren are gone, off to LA) and then Cash makes love to Tilda on the round sun bed under a crescent moon. Later, when they’re wrapped in the luscious Turkish towels, gazing at the twinkling lights of Tortola, Tilda cries a little. She doesn’t want to go away without him, she says. She’s going to miss him.
“It’s only a week,” Cash says. His casual attitude is an act. He can’t believe this is happening. Tilda is going to Anguilla, St. Lucia, and a tiny private island called Eden, home to a resort so exclusive that you have to be invited to stay there; management curates its guests as though it’s selecting art for a museum. (How did Tilda and Dunk make the cut? Cash wonders. He hopes it was through Granger’s prodigious network and not Dunk’s influence.)
Tilda and Dunk have separate rooms at Midi et Minuit, the resort on Anguilla, and at Emerald Hill on St. Lucia. But of the dozen freestanding villas at Eden, only one is available during Tilda and Dunk’s stay. So they’ll be sharing.
“You’d better behave yourself,” Tilda says, resting her head on Cash’s chest. “No picking up women at the Soggy Dollar.”
“What about you?” Cash asks. “Are you going to behave yourself?”
“Oh, please,” Tilda says. “You never have a thing to worry about with me. But especially not with Dunk.”
The next day, as Cash is aboard Treasure Island heading for Virgin Gorda, a boat cuts in front of them going at least sixty knots—it’s coming from the direction of the East End and heading for St. Thomas. It’s the Olive Branch, of course. Tilda and Dunk are sitting in the stern, laughing. Cash hears the captain yell out and Cash wonders if this will finally be the time James calls the Coast Guard to complain. Or maybe Cash will call the Coast Guard himself. Dunk did this on purpose; is he trying to make a point to Cash? I’m taking off with your girl. Tilda is wearing a black sundress Cash has never seen before; it’s sleek and sophisticated, possibly borrowed from her mother’s closet. She’s also wearing a pair of dark cat’s-eye sunglasses, Tom Ford, that Cash knows she lifted from Lauren.
When Tilda sees Cash, she waves and blows a kiss. She seems older and more glamorous, as though she outgrew him overnight.
“Hold on!” Cash calls to his passengers as the boat slams into the Olive Branch’s wake.
With Tilda away, Cash has the villa in Peter Bay to himself; Virgie, the housekeeper, has been given the week off. Another guy might revel in the freedom, might make a list of all the ways to push the envelope. Cash can borrow liberally from Granger’s wine fridge and make a trip to Starfish Market for thick, marbled steaks and charge them to the house account. He can snoop through the master wing—Granger and Lauren’s bedroom, sitting room, closets, offices, and bathroom—and see what secrets he can dig up. Money? Pills? He can bring Winnie back; he can let Winnie swim in the pool. Of all these ideas, only the last one holds any appeal—although Cash suspects that the villa has cameras placed so strategically that he can’t even find them and block them.
The first night alone, Cash cracks a beer and checks his phone frequently to see if Tilda has texted or called. She and Dunk were taking his boat all the way to San Juan and flying to Anguilla from there. Tilda sent the full itinerary to Cash’s phone and when he looks at it, he sees that she was supposed to land in Anguilla at three o’clock. At seven, he still hasn’t heard from her and so what is he to think but that she has forgotten all about him? She and Dunk landed on the tiny airstrip and were whisked away by a private car—Cash pictures a vintage Peugeot—to the lush tropical entrance of Midi et Minuit. Midi et Minuit, built in the 1920s, was the private beachfront estate of French perfume heiress Helene Simone until the early 1980s, when it was transformed into a resort. In those days, it attracted guests like John and Cristina DeLorean and Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, and it was famous for its midnight disco parties. The owners went bankrupt in the crash of 1987, and Midi et Minuit closed until the year 2000, when it was bought by a businessman from Monte Carlo who poured fifty-five million dollars into the property and turned it into the epitome of “low-key luxury” and “barefoot chic.”
Cash wonders if Tilda and Dunk were greeted with welcome cocktails and chilled towels while the hotel’s most famous resident, Bijou, a Yorkshire terrier, yipped around Tilda’s ankles until she scooped him up and gave him kisses. Were Dunk and Tilda mistaken for a couple? Undoubtedly yes, despite the reservation for separate rooms. Or maybe during their day of travel, Tilda and Dunk had bonded over their excitement about this new venture; maybe they’d had drinks on the plane, and maybe Tilda fell asleep with her head accidentally leaning on Dunk’s shoulder. Maybe by the time they reached the resort, they asked to share a room. But no, not yet, not the first night. Cash has enough faith in Tilda to know that nothing has happened between them yet.
Why hasn’t she called? Or at least texted to let him know she arrived safely?
Cash’s fingers hover over his phone. Should he text her?
No, he won’t. And he’s not going to sit around the villa pining away either. He doesn’t have money to waste on going out to dinner, but, oh, well, he’s doing it anyway. He drives Tilda’s Range Rover into Cruz Bay and sits at the bar at the Banana Deck. He orders the shrimp curry and chats with the bartender, Kim, who immediately says, “You hang out with Tilda Payne, right? I saw you two at Christmas Cove a few weeks ago. Is she working tonight?”