“What the hell!” Steph snapped, looking from Cedric to
Cheyenne.
“Don’t you dare act like we’re overreacting!” Cheyenne
strutted into the room looking very much like a supermodel on
the catwalk. Steph often wanted to strangle Cheyenne for rolling out of bed looking like she was ready for the cover of Cosmo.
Cedric limped in after her, his blue green eyes shooting around
the room as if he were Sherlock Holmes and would discover a
clue about why his sister was such a pain in his cloistered ass.
“First of all, let me say that I think that it’s total bullshit that you ditched out on the boat ride back. Pardon my language,
Cedric.” Cheyenne’s long hair swirled around her as she spun on
Steph.
“Completely understandable, given the circumstances.”
Cedric assured her. Cheyenne nodded at him, and her dark eyes
flashed disapprovingly when Steph folded her arms and fell back
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on the bed, settling in for what was sure to be a filibuster of a lecture.
“Do you know how far that beach is from this hotel? I
googled it! It’s on the other end of the island!”
“Yeah. I know. I was there.” Steph took a swig from a bot-
tle of water.
“Answer your phone next time, Steph. The guys were ready
to go out looking for you when you weren’t back by dark.”
Cheyenne blurted.
“Ha! I can just see it. Fury: The British Hardy Boys. Solv-
ing mysteries and saving cats from trees everywhere they go!”
Steph clucked.
“What happened at the beach, Steph? Phillip was acting
shifty and pissy all the way back to the marina.” Cheyenne de-
manded.
Steph opened her mouth, then looked at Cedric and paused.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Quit shutting me out, Steph! Ugh! You talk to her. I can’t
anymore, or I’ll strangle her,” Cheyenne instructed Cedric, and
then she walked out onto the balcony. As the door shut behind
her, Steph heard her complain, “Hey! This view is better than
mine. What the hell?”
Cedric poked Steph with his cane, and she slapped it away.
“Luckily Kara came down after changing Liam and said you
were upstairs in bed before they lit out on a hunt for you. I was convinced someone had kidnapped you.”
“Stop being so dramatic, Father What-a-waste. I’m sure The
Victoria’s Secret Angels would have consoled you Thornbirds-
style if anything had happened to me.” Steph smiled wryly when Cedric rolled his eyes at her.
“Phillip and Cheyenne got into it last night. To be truthful, I
had to say a prayer, because I wanted to crack him over the head with my cane.” Cedric sat down and ran a hand through his auburn hair. Steph’s cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have dragged
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Cedric into this fiasco. He didn’t need to be defending her or to be put in all these uncomfortable situations. She was a selfish ass to invite him along, and she knew it. But she was still glad he
was here. Steph braced for what she knew was going to be an
upsetting conversation.
She cleared her throat and took another drink of H2O.
“What’d he do now?”
Cedric paused. “He was very dismissive of you. He said
you were probably ‘just looking for attention’ and Chey-
enne…well…she used many words I’d rather not repeat. I think
she was going to swing on him, but Scot took her away to cool
off. I thought you might want to know.”
Steph blinked slowly and toyed with a loose thread on her
pillow case. “I could have gone my whole life without knowing
that, thanks.”
He looked at her for a long minute then added, “Christopher
called the pousada when he couldn’t reach you on your satellite
phone.”
“Dammit!” Steph flopped back and threw her arms over her
face as if shielding herself from the barrage of unwanted news.
“The concierge gave the call to the first person he saw from
the wedding party. So it was Nathan that talked to Christopher.”
He added, lifting his eyebrows and glancing at the floor. Stephanie winced. Only one person in the wedding party would have
been a worse choice.
“Just stop talking, Cedric.” She moaned, throwing a pillow
at him which he aptly deflected with his cane.
“Tell me what you said to Christopher when he called, Na-
than.” Steph demanded. She and Cheyenne were waiting for
their shuttle to the club for Yara’s evening activity. The devious 104
RAGE
look on Nathan’s face made Cheyenne want to slug him. Saffron
looked bored and lit a cigarette which she then handed to Nathan for a drag. Cheyenne thought about asking for one. She’d quit
smoking when she was pregnant and hadn’t touched one since.
Lately, she’d been biting her nails down to the quick from the
cravings. She’d actually been convincing herself that smoking
had an upside. Maybe she’d drop the last ten pounds of her baby
weight. It was a pathetic rationalization, but every time Chey-
enne saw Kara frolicking in a swimsuit with Liam, the idea
seemed to have more merit.
She knew she should be thankful that she’d come through
pregnancy fairly unscathed. She’d been in Steph’s room getting
ready earlier that night and whined to her about her three stretch marks.
Steph whipped up her dress and pointed to her scar. “This
sucker is bigger than all three of those combined, Cheyenne. So
why don’t you shut the hell up?”
Cheyenne felt like the world’s shittiest friend. She had been
so distracted with her own troubles the day before that she hadn’t noticed anything was up with Steph until she got the phone call
that she wasn’t taking the boat back.
When Cheyenne had come out of the shower the morning of
the boat excursion, Kara was in her bungalow. Scot was on the
bed and Kara was leaning in and whispering fervently in Scot’s
ear. In that moment, her world screeched to a grinding halt. Eve-ry insecurity, from small to major, that she’d ever had about herself reached its zenith.
She’d rushed back into the restroom, and if they noticed
her, they hadn’t let on. Later on the boat, Scot had behaved like nothing was out of the ordinary. He held her close, and knocked
her defenses down with that phenomenal smile of his. If he was
playacting at happiness, he deserved an Oscar.
While Cheyenne was finishing up her make-up in silence,
she saw Steph dialing her sat phone. “Calling Christopher?”
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