When in Rio (6 page)

Astonishing. I was engaging in mutual public displays of affection with Jack Benedict.

Jack Benedict was treating me like his
girlfriend
.

This was going to take some careful thinking over.

Chapter Five

The monkey that greeted us later in the parking lot more than balanced out the scary snake, at least in my opinion. It was one of the few we had seen close up that day for any length of time, and it seemed disinclined to leave its chosen tree directly adjacent to the slots our guides had parked in. A beautiful, cocky emperor
tamarin
. It jeered at us from an overhanging branch as we flopped back into the Jeeps in exhaustion. It was so clearly unimpressed with us, with our touristy ways and our lack of treats.

Jane, whose feet were indeed in a bad way, cracked us all up by giving the monkey the finger. I made a mental note to buy her a drink when next we all assembled for cocktails. The girl had spunk, I had to give her that, and she hadn’t complained about the shoes during the hike itself, although I knew it must have been miserable for her.

“Paolo’s wrong, you know,” Jack commented when we were on the road back down to the shore. “Mario’s view is actually better, I think. You don’t have the view of the city, just mountains, and the ocean in the distance if it’s clear. And from his place there’s some older rainforest to hike through if you want to, while we’re there.” He had stretched his legs out as far as they would go in front of him and flung his head back against the seat. I’d thought he was asleep until he spoke.

“So I’m definitely going with you then?”

He turned his head and pulled his glasses down his nose a bit, examining my expression from over the top of the frames. An enigmatic smile curved the corners of his mouth and he said nothing, just replaced the glasses and turned his face back up to the sky—portrait of the modern
ecotourist
at rest after a hard day’s hike.

Was it the contrast between Houston and Rio, I wondered, making my head spin like this? The way that working in completely professional accord for two years and then suddenly holding hands like shy teenagers all seemed to make perfect sense, for some reason? Was it inevitable after two years of trying to keep from thinking about him that way? Or was it just too much sun and heat?

After a minute or so Jack really did seem to go to sleep. And by the time we got back to the hotel, I had almost managed to convince myself that the heat really must be to blame.

* * * * *

Swimming again, this time at the beach, actually sounded good after our hike. The lot of us planned to venture out on the town for dinner, but not until after eight o’clock, as dinner any earlier than that simply wasn’t done in Rio. So we had just enough time for a quick sunset swim, a solid forty-five minutes or so with plenty of time to change afterward.

I almost fell asleep in the elevator on the way back up to the suites but once I had changed into swim togs again, the prospect of wearing my bathing suit on the public beach, in the full light that prevailed since the sun was still well above the horizon, quickly woke me right back up.

I nearly chickened out. From the bathing suit, from the flirting that I knew was such a bad idea, from the whole thing. But it was already too seductive to resist, and even putting on the suit again, damp and clingy though it was after last night’s swim, made me slightly turned-on with the keen awareness that Jack would be seeing me in it and clearly enjoying what he saw.

I considered trading it for my safe lime green one-piece, now recovered in my luggage, but it wasn’t a very lengthy consideration. I threw on a gauzy, black knee-length cover-up and flip-flops and was out the door and back down to the lobby with my purloined hotel towel before Jack arrived at the spot where we’d all agreed to rendezvous.

Kendra and Jane were already there, loitering in the rather elegant lobby chairs by the door nearest the beach, Jane wiggling uncomfortably on her seat.

I asked Jane politely about the state of her feet and she answered noncommittally, though since she was also wearing flip-flops, I could see the blisters on her heels and the nearly raw red marks where the leather of her sandals had abused the flesh over the course of the hike. But the way she was shifting in her chair didn’t really look like it had anything to do with her feet. It really looked more like…

Oh. Again,
oh
.

Kendra’s especially smug smile, the way she was studiously avoiding Jane’s glare. Jane’s murderous glances at Kendra each time she shifted her weight from one side to the other—murderous but also tinged with another, just-as-powerful emotion I now recognized as lust. I put two and two together just about the time the next wave of people came down in the elevator, Jack included.

In fact, I was glad for the distraction that Jack’s arrival provided, because I was a bit embarrassed to be alone with Kendra and Jane after my epiphany about what seemed to have transpired between them in their shared suite. Although I was strongly considering a word with Jane, if I could get her by herself…

“Hang on,” I said to Jack finally, when we were all trooping out the door. Lagging back a bit in the crowd, I let Jane catch up to me, seeing that Kendra had walked on ahead. Hoping she wouldn’t be offended, I leaned close and mentioned that I had some Tiger Balm in my bag upstairs if she needed it later to help make it through a sit-down dinner.

“For…for my feet?” she asked in confusion. “Oh no, honey, I don’t think—”

“I didn’t mean for your
feet
, honey,” I replied coyly, putting much more Texan into my voice than usual, matching Jane’s own drawn-out vowels.

Jane was silent for a few seconds and then nodded, looking only a little bit embarrassed. Tiger Balm was almost a code word. The lethally fiery balm was well known among those of us who tended to be on the receiving end of things when it came to our chosen expression of love. That is, as long as the skin is only bruised, not broken. On broken or abraded skin, Tiger Balm is a punishment—one I’d only experienced once and hoped never to go through again.

“Toss it to me in the hall when we come back up, but
puh
-
lease
try not to let Kendra see or she’ll shit a brick.” A few seconds later she paled and asked, “Did she
tell
you?” Her steel magnolia façade was near crumbling, and I rushed to reassure her.

“No, no, she didn’t have to. I figured it out on my own. I mean, I figured out the two of you were…together…earlier. And figured out some other things. You know. And the way you were moving around on your seat earlier…well, I’ve been there enough times that I recognized that wiggle. The balm will burn like hell at first but—”

“She did tell me again and again to pack those stupid, ugly fucking hiking boots,” Jane admitted, “but I threw them out at the last minute when I was making room for a new dress. She hasn’t even seen it on me yet. Damn, this hurts!”

“We’ll do a sneaky ointment handoff later. You can keep it. It’s not like I’m going to need Tiger Balm this trip for anything but a pulled muscle if we go hiking again.”

“You’re not?” Jane said, her initial confusion replaced by a dawning awareness. “Oh honey, that’s just sad. But maybe y’all will make up. Rio’s pretty romantic, after all.” And breaking into a painful little jog, she left my side and rejoined Kendra, leaving me a bit puzzled and slightly concerned.

Just what impression
had
Jack and I been giving everyone?

The question was driven from my mind instantly when I felt a grip like a vise clamp around my wrist—and Jack’s very quiet voice not asking, but telling, “Later on you
will
be explaining some things, little Katie.”

Oops.

Jack clearly deduced part of his explanation for himself at the beach. Jane tore her shorts and t-shirt off and dashed into the water with no regard for the effects of the hot sand or saltwater on her feet, but I could see his eyes widen as he spotted the patches of pink still clearly visible on either side of her butt where her bikini bottom wasn’t quite covering all the evidence. And without realizing it, Kendra gave an even clearer sign, watching Jane’s little dance across the sand with a very satisfied smirk and unconsciously shaking her hand from the wrist. Well, it made sense her hand was probably a little sore too, if she’d done that much damage in that short of time.

Jack turned away from this scene with a little “huh” and a look on his face that was comical enough to force a nervous giggle from me. He looked my way, puzzled, and helped me spread out the towels while mulling things over.

“So I guess I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was going to say you should see if Jane will do the sunscreen on your back, but apparently that would be pretty inappropriate. And obviously I’m not going to suggest you ask Kendra to go anywhere
near
your back.”

After a second of trying not to laugh, I couldn’t keep it in. And to my relief, Jack joined in as we sat down, puzzling all those around us as we purposefully didn’t share the joke.

“I don’t need help with sunscreen, I can reach everything back there,” I said, opening the tube and demonstrating. Only the spots just below my shoulder blades were tough to rub in, but I managed. Even the last few sunbeams of the day were more than capable of frying my skin if I wasn’t slathered with the stuff.

“So what else do I need to explain, Sir?” I asked saucily as I worked, forgetting my caution for just a moment. The others, four other mid-to-upper-management types, had already spread their towels and headed for the water. Kendra was sitting a little too far away to hear us over the noise of the crowded beach, and seemed already lost in the book she’d brought with her. She’d kindly offered to watch everyone else’s stuff while they swam. “Do I need to explain about the Tiger Balm?”

“No. I know what that’s for. It works for the normal kinds of sore muscles too, you know.”

“True, it isn’t
just
for us perverts,” I said, moving to stretch luxuriously in the sun’s lingering heat and then stopping short with a horrified gasp, realizing what I’d just said and to whom. “Oh my god, Sir, I am
so
sorry! I didn’t, I can’t
believe
I just said—”

“Kate.”

“It was totally inappropriate, I must be just…it’s the sun or something, it’s—”

“
Kate
. Stop talking.”

“Yes Sir. Oh. I mean—”

“
Shhh
.
Stop
.”

I just nodded this time, too terrified to go on. Flirting was one thing, brief hiking-related handholding was one thing, but
this
? Were there any odds I was
not
about to receive the firing of a lifetime?

“So,” said Jack. “So. Our shy, reserved little Katie not only knows all the signs and symptoms of a lesbian bottom having had her butt thoroughly smacked—it was about the shoes, did I hear that right?—she also has the nerve to sneak her new friend some Tiger Balm, plotting right under the top’s nose, to help her with her boo-boo. What do you think Kendra is going to do to Jane when she finds out, little Katie? She may not see it but you know she’ll smell it, that stuff’s impossible to miss.”

I couldn’t answer right away, because my entire worldview had just been given a forcible quarter turn and I was still trying to regain my footing in this new, strange universe in which Jack asked me questions about the relationship between a Dominant and a submissive, and was expecting me to answer.

And was looking at me as though I’d better answer right.

And,
oh my God
, I wanted him.

My brain kicked into overdrive and I experienced a moment of deep empathy for what animals must feel like when they’re caught in oncoming headlights.
I do not have office romances. Never, never, never. And especially not with the boss. I can’t. Can’t. There could not possibly be a worse idea. Never in history has that ever worked out well for anyone. At least nobody that I can think of right now. But…he’s not just a coworker or a boss, he’s…Jack.

“I didn’t think about that, Sir,” I admitted at last, my mouth dry and my pulse racing as I fell into a form of address that was all too familiar, but not one I thought I’d ever be using deliberately with this man. I was looking down studiously at my towel, at the hotel crest on the corner where sand was already infiltrating the gold embroidery.

So I heard, rather than saw, Jack’s frustrated sigh at my answer, and his next few words which he seemed to be whispering to himself as much as to me.

“I didn’t come here
planning
to do this,” he said, repeating what he’d said the previous day. “I should have known this was a bad idea, Kate. It’s Rio. I mean, I know that. But I thought I’d be fine with it, even here, and there was no way you hadn’t earned this trip. Nobody else was remotely qualified. I couldn’t rationalize a way
not
to pick you that didn’t just reek of discrimination. But getting here and finding out that you’re actually…
damn
. I mean, it’s just too much. I’m only human.”

“I…I don’t…” I couldn’t finish it, wasn’t even sure I knew what I’d intended to say.

“Yes, you
do
. That’s the problem. When I could tell myself that you didn’t, that there was no way I was right…little Katie Snow who always blushed if anyone said anything remotely out of line. I won’t pretend I hadn’t figured you out on some level, Kate, but I could at least pretend it was only in my mind. That it had to be wishful thinking. But now this? I mean…
damn
!” he said again, punching a fist into the forgiving white sand beside his hip. He sat with one arm around his knees, staring out over the water, his eyes far bluer than the ocean. I noticed, because I had peeked up at him now and found I couldn’t look away.

This was unfortunate. It meant that when he finally turned his gaze on me I was caught out, completely open, the longing in my eyes as transparent as it had ever been. The only way out was straight through, and I only knew I couldn’t keep sitting on that beach next to him, feeling like an idiot and not saying anything. I had to take some sort of action, contrary to my nature as it might be, to get myself away from the situation before I did something even more stupid.