Lola Carlyle Reveals All

“No.”

“You’re no fun, Lolita,” he said, using the Spanish form of her name.

Baby jumped up on the seat next to her, and she took his soaked collar from around his neck.

“What’s the name of this website?”

“Why, are you going to pay twenty-five bucks to see those pictures?”

“You’ve got me curious about the Tootsie Roll.” He shrugged. “Would it bother you if I did?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t believe he was asking such an obvious question. “Well, duh. I’m naked.”

“You’ve posed naked before.”

“Not completely.” The closest she’d come was during her days working for a major line of cosmetics. She’d been hired to endorse their skin-care products. In the straight-on shot, she’d worn nothing but scented body oil. She’d posed against a red background, her ankles crossed and her knees raised just enough to hide her pubic area. From behind, a pair of male hands covered her breasts. She’d starved herself for a week before that shoot. When it had wrapped, she’d hit the Wendy’s drive-through window and ordered a number two Biggie-sized.

“I’d say getting photographed in lacy bras and panties is pretty damn close.”

It wasn’t the same thing, and she didn’t know why she should explain it to him, but she tried anyway. “Whenever I agreed to do any shoot, I had control of my image. It was always my choice. Lolarevealed.com was not my choice. It is a violation not only of my body, but of my trust. I never would have chosen to have those pictures published anywhere, especially on a porno site on the Internet. My parents were mortified.” And she never would have chosen to see her image at the height of her sickness. When she’d been out of control, and every single waking and sleeping moment had been consumed with thoughts of food and guilt. Of obsessively clipping recipes she never tried and buying cookbooks she never used. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

He grasped his side, took a deep breath, and stood. “I understand a little about having no control.” He grabbed the fishing pole he’d used yesterday. “No control over what happens in your life or how others see you. And I also know a bit about broken trust and getting screwed.”

“By who?” Perhaps he did understand, but it was hard to see the overpowering man standing at such ease in front of her in his boxer briefs upset by anything. Looking at him, with his big neck and broad shoulders, she couldn’t imagine anyone brave enough to cross him. “Who, Max?” she prompted.

“Not a who.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, then returned his gaze to the tangled line in his hands. “A what.”

She could have told him he had the wrong kind of tackle for drift fishing, but at the moment she was more interested in what he had to say than in what he was doing. When he didn’t provide anything further, she asked, “Then what?” When he still didn’t expand, she sighed. “Come on, Max. I told you about the Tootsie Roll incident.”

He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to his lure. “Several years ago I was ‘retired’ from the Navy,” he began as he untangled line from the barbed hooks. “During my career, I’d pissed off a few high-ranking officials, and when one of them was appointed secretary of the Navy, he wanted me gone. So it was sayonara, Max.”

“What did you do?”

He shrugged his bare shoulders. “I didn’t always play by the rules,” he said, which told her nothing. “I did what it took to complete a mission, and for that I had a choice of retirement or federal prison.”

Okay, not exactly nothing. “Prison? What was the charge?”

“Conspiracy. At that time, I was part of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group.” He paused and looked at her as if she might have a clue what that meant, she didn’t. “DEVGRU is a counterterrorism, intelligence, and national security unit. We also created and tested weapons, and it seems I conspired with a private contractor to defraud the United States government out of thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“How?”

“By charging them for bogus assault weapons.”

Since she was dying to know, she decided there was no harm in asking, “Did you do it?”

“Right,” he snorted, and dropped the lure in his hands. “If I wanted to hang my ass out there for the government to chew on, I’d make sure it was for a hell of a lot more money than thirty-five grand.” He moved to the side of the yacht, brought the tip of the pole behind him, and snapped it forward. He cast so far out, Lola lost sight of the lure before it dropped into the Atlantic. “All thirty-five grand will get you these days is a decent car, and a decent car isn’t worth prison time.”

“What would be worth prison time? A Ferrari?”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah.”

She smiled. “What took you so long to answer?”

“A Ferrari deserves some serious consideration.”

“That’s true,” she laughed. “Did you get a lawyer and fight it?”

“Yes, but when the evidence the government has against you is classified and you and your lawyer don’t have the proper clearance to view the material, you’re screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

Standing with his profile to her, his eyelids lowered against the bright Caribbean sunlight, the carved line of his jaw and chin softened with black stubble, he almost seemed like a real person with real problems. And it almost felt as if they were having a real conversation, too, and since they seemed to be communicating with each other like real people, she figured he’d want to know he was fishing with the wrong lure. “You’re not going to catch anything with that tackle,” she told him.

He glanced across his shoulder at her, the breeze drying the ends of his hair. “I think I will.”

The blanket itched the backs of her thighs and she stood. “Whoever used that pole before you rigged it with a spinner. You’ll need a jig. Something that will attract deepwater fish. You might get lucky, but I don’t think you will.”

He stared at her for several seconds before he said, “Is that right?”

Okay, maybe he didn’t want to know. Or perhaps he was like a lot of men when it came to taking any sort of advice from a woman. “Yes.”

His black brows lowered over his eyes and he shoved the end of the pole into the holder on the arm of the chair. “Maybe you should stick to what you know. Modeling undies.”

Yep, he was like a lot of men. So much for conversing like real people. “You’d be surprised at all the things I know. Before my grandfather died, he owned a fishing charter business in Charleston, and when I went to see him in the summers, I’d go out with him sometimes.” She tossed the blanket onto the seat. “And I don’t model anymore. I design lingerie. Have you ever heard of Lola Wear, Inc.?”

“Nope,” he said as he sat.

“It’s my company,” she informed him with no small measure of pride. His gaze was perfectly bland and so she elaborated a bit. “I started it with a few bras I designed myself, and now I employ hundreds of people.”

“So now you make undies instead of modeling them?”

“That’s right. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of my business.”

He laced his hands behind his head and yawned. The muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched, and dark hair shadowed his armpits. “You make anything edible?”

“No!”

“Then it’s not so surprising,” he said. “I wouldn’t know a designer label unless I choked on it.”

Chapter 5

Max let his gaze wander up the backs of Lola’s calves to the red shawl she’d once again pinned around her waist. She’d changed out of the wet dress and into the white blouse again. Her damp bra made two very distinct marks on the front of the shirt and created a stripe across the back. Max wondered if she’d hung her panties in the bathroom like she had the day before.