Four of Hearts (14 page)

“That’s different.”

“Not so much.”

“Much,” Ryan insisted. “Not happening, Babe. Come here and give me a kiss. Richard wants to drag me back to the ship in a few minutes. I think he plans to chain me to my desk until I get the reviews done.”

“Mmm. . . chains. . . desk. . . I’d like to see that,” Candace purred as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Sweetheart, you can chain me to anything you want, anytime you want.”

* * * * *

“Can’t you stay longer?” Fallon asked.

“I wish, but I have to get Ryan to the ship before he flakes out on me again. I am not, repeat
not
, going to do the Employee Performance Reviews. I hate that shit.”

“Candace and Ryan are holed up in their bedroom. They could be hours.”

“Thanks to your little tryst with Candace, I don’t think so. By the way, I owe you a spanking. Why don’t you come back to the ship with me?”

“I promised Candy I’d help her decide on the décor, and I need to spend some time working on the class descriptions and making sure we have everything the instructors will need. I could use this time without any distractions.”

“Candace isn’t going to be a distraction?”

“Not like you are. Go back to the ship, and take Ryan with you. You’ll both be so busy you won’t miss us. The week will fly by, and when you return next Friday I’ll be ready to jump your bones, I promise.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay here?”

“Candy and Ryan live here all the time. If they can do it, Candy and I can. We’ll be fine. We have the satellite connection. You can check in with us anytime you want.”

“Promise you’ll check in every day, and if you need anything, contact Sean or Celeste.”

“I promise.” Fallon wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest. “I love you. I’m going to miss you.”

* * * * *

The island grew smaller as the tender made its way back to the ship. Something nagged at Richard’s consciousness, making him more and more anxious as the distance between him and Fallon increased. For the last few weeks, he’d had an uneasy feeling. He knew Fallon thought it was his inner caveman reacting to a rival eyeing his woman, but it wasn’t that. He wished to hell he knew what it really was.

“Are you sure they’ll be okay?” he asked.

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. They have everything they need.”

Richard forced himself to turn away from the island. “I have this creepy feeling, like something. . . I don’t know. . . it’s just an uneasy feeling.”

“I know what you mean. Ever since you told me the FBI lost track of that Cannon guy, I’ve been uneasy, but his beef is with us, and the fact that we won’t sell the
Lothario
to him. The girls will be fine on the island. Besides, no one could possibly know they’re there alone.”

“You’re right. It’s probably just my body adjusting to the no sex for a week thing. Fallon and I haven’t been apart for more than a few hours since the wedding. This is going to be a real test for me.”

“You aren’t thinking about. . . .”

“Oh, hell no! There isn’t anyone else for me, except maybe your wife, and God knows she’s off limits, and as unavailable as Fallon for the next week.”

“Look, Dickhead, Candace is always unavailable as far as you’re concerned. I know she and Fallon have some kind of crazy idea that we could have some kind of. . . what was the word?”

“Polyamorous,” Richard supplied.

“Yeah, that was it, polyamorous relationship, but they’re both cracked in the head. One wife is my limit.”

“I agree. I don’t have a problem with being friends, close friends, if you get my meaning, but anything more than that is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, Candace is special, and I love her, but I’ve got a wife. Don’t need another one.”

“Do you hear us? We’re throwing the W word around like two old married men.” He shook his head. “Didn’t think I’d ever see the day.”

“Me, either, but I can’t imagine my life without Fallon. And if marrying her was the best way to keep her, and it was, then I went willingly into the state of holy matrimony.”

“I hear you. Marrying Candace was the best decision I ever made.”

“This week is going to be hell.”

Ryan thought truer words were never spoken as the hours onboard the
Lothario
dragged on. He had plenty to do to keep busy, but Candace wasn’t far from his thoughts. Once again, he found himself holed up in his suite, conducting his business in the same monkish style he had before he met Candace. Even though she kept him up to date with e-mails, it wasn’t the same as hearing her voice. He lived for the few minutes each day he spoke with her via their satellite link.

He worked his way through the list of employees who answered directly to either him or Richard. Early on, the partners established an open door policy with their employees, and these reviews were as much for the employees as they were for Richard and Ryan. And where Richard hated the reviews, Ryan enjoyed them. At least he did when he wasn’t constantly wondering what Candace was doing every minute of the day.

Sunday, when the ship docked in Miami, was no time to pull anyone away from their assigned duties for a chat. The task of disembarking twenty-five hundred guests, prepping the ship for the next voyage and welcoming that many new passengers onboard, took everyone’s full attention, so Ryan and Richard spent Sunday in Miami meeting with their attorneys instead. They returned to the dock as the last of the passengers made their way up the gangway.

“Sometimes I still can’t believe we did it,” Ryan said as they stood on the dock looking up at the massive white ship.

“Me, either. It was a crazy-assed idea, one I was sure would sink us financially, but what you see in front of you my friend, is a floating gold mine.”

Ryan laughed. “Who would have thought it?”

“Nobody,” Richard said. “I’m just damned glad we did. I never would have met Fallon if it hadn’t been for the
Lothario
.”

“Let’s not forget the lovely Candace Callahan,” Ryan added.

“No, let’s not forget her.” Richard slapped Ryan on the back. “Well, let’s get aboard and get this show on the road. The sooner we set sail, the sooner we get back to our wives.”

“Lead the way,” Ryan said.

* * * * *

Monday morning, Richard opened his e-mail server, hoping for a private message from Fallon. She’d hinted about sending him some photos he thought might either be married guy porn, or businessman boredom. It could go either way. He was hoping it would be photos of certain parts of his wife he missed with an ache he hadn’t thought possible. Certainly, he missed her physical presence. There was a certain comfort in being able to touch her anytime he wanted, in any way he wanted, but it was more than that. It was more than the lack of sex. In fact, he was finding it surprisingly easy to do without. All he had to do was think about how great it felt to sink into his wife, and he was counting the days until he could, and he knew he would wait forever if he had to. He missed talking to Fallon. He missed her quick wit and sharp mind. He missed the long stretches of silence when they were together but didn’t feel the need to fill the empty air with chatter. It was enough to just be in the same room, breathing the same air.

He opened the e-mail sent from Fallon’s personal and private account with a sense of anticipation. What had his lovely wife sent him, he wondered?

* * * * *

Ryan looked over his agenda for the day. He’d spent nearly an hour on the phone with Candace the night before, talking like a couple of teenagers, so he was surprised to see the e-mail from her on Monday morning. According to the time stamp, it had been sent not long after they’d spoken. He went over their conversation in his mind. Had they talked about anything she would have felt compelled to e-mail him about so quickly? He couldn’t think of a thing as he clicked on the e-mail.

His first thought was it was some kind of joke—that Candace and Fallon were getting back at him and Richard for their constant preoccupation with their safety. Then he looked closer. His blood chilled, and his stomach heaved. Dear God! There was nothing humorous about the masked men holding guns to the women’s heads.

He forced himself to examine the photo closer. It was no fucking joke. The pleading look in Candace’s eyes, the fear in Fallon’s was real. His heart slammed against his chest and his blood turned to ice in his veins.

The door to his suite burst open, and Richard yelled out his name.

“Over here.” Richard crossed the distance between the door and where Ryan sat at his desk. The look on his friend’s face confirmed his suspicions, but he asked anyway. “You got one, too?”

“What the fuck, Ryan? Who are they? Who the hell are these people, and what do they want?”

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” He searched his inbox for anything he might have missed. “I don’t see a demand. Did you?”

“No. I don’t know. I didn’t look. I—”

“I know. What’s your password? I’ll pull up your e-mail and check.”

Richard gave him the password and paced the room while Ryan accessed the other account. It took a few seconds, but there wasn’t anything there, either. “Nothing. What the fuck?”

“What are we going to do?”

“What can we do? We have no idea who these people are, or what they want.”

Richard stopped pacing long enough to shout, “We’ve got to do something!”

It was a nightmare, one Ryan blamed himself for. Sean had told him to install a security system, but Candace hadn’t wanted one. She’d argued that virtually no one knew how to find them, so what was the point? It would make them prisoners in their own home. He’d caved to her wishes, and now look where that had gotten them. She and Fallon were being held prisoner, at gunpoint, in their own home.

“Call the house,” Richard said. “They’ve got to want something, otherwise they would have just. . . .”

Ryan picked up the phone and placed the satellite call to Candace’s phone. The seconds it took for the signal to bounce into outer space and back again allowed him too much time to contemplate the words Richard left unsaid. “Killed them,” hung in the air like a big neon sign, flashing its garish red words in accusation.

A man answered. His single menacing word robbed Ryan of any lingering doubt. This was no joke, no macabre act to exact payback for his and Richard’s worry. This was real.

“Talk,” the man commanded. Ryan waved his hand for Richard to come closer. Richard flattened his palms on the desk and leaned in as Ryan sent the call to speakerphone.

“This is Ryan Callahan. Richard Wolfe is with me. Let me talk to my wife.”

“In due time.”

“What do you want?” Richard demanded.

“I think the important question is, what do you want? Do you want your lovely wives back in one piece? Do you want them back alive?”

“Tell us what you want, and it’s yours.”

“The ship. Bring the ship to the island. Take a tender to the island, just the two of you. The papers transferring ownership have been drawn up. Once the papers are signed, we’ll release the women.”

“If you harm them, the deal is off,” Ryan warned.

“No harm will come to them as long as you do everything you’re told.”

“I want to talk to my wife,” Richard insisted. A moment later Fallon’s voice came over the line.

“Richard! We’re fine.” Ryan’s gut twisted and he glanced up at his friend. Richard’s face was pasty white and his lips were nothing more than a thin slash across his face.

“Ryan!” Candace’s voice floated over the airwaves. “Do what they say, please.”

Ryan clenched his fists against the rage building like a bonfire inside him. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. I. . . .”

The bastard cut him off before he could tell Candace he loved her. “Good day, Mr. Callahan, Mr. Wolfe.”

The line went dead, and Ryan wasn’t at all sure the block of ice in his chest that had been his heart, was still beating. Richard stood bent over the desk like a marble statue of Atlas collapsing under the weight of the world. Neither spoke for long minutes as they absorbed the enormity of their situation. Finally, Ryan found his voice.

“What are we going to do?”