The Last Cocktail In Paradise

Victoria did not look at him.

She did, however, notice the expensive watch he removed before settling his forearms on the bar.

“Is that drink any good?” he asked.

“It depends,” she said. “Are you asking about the drink or hoping I’ll offer you a taste?”

His mouth curved. “I was hoping you’d insult me before I had to introduce myself.”

“Then you’ve had an excellent beginning.”

The bartender placed a bourbon in front of him. He lifted it, not drinking, and studied her reflection in the mirrored bottles behind the bar.

Victoria turned her head just enough to catch him doing it.

“Careful,” she said. “That habit has ended marriages.”

“Four?”

She smiled without warmth. “You’ve been asking questions.”

“Only the obvious ones.”

“Then ask something interesting.”

He looked directly at her. His eyes were a clear, unsettling gray, the kind of eyes that made a woman wonder what he had noticed before he began speaking.

“Do you always come here alone?”

“Only when I want to be alone.”

“And when you don’t?”

“I hire a table full of people to pretend they enjoy me.”

His laugh was low and genuine. It moved through her more pleasantly than it should have.

“Are you always this difficult?”

“Only with men who think a linen shirt counts as a personality.”

He glanced down at himself. “It’s a very good shirt.”

“It’s trying too hard.”

For a few minutes, the exchange pleased her. He did not crowd her or paw at her attention. He listened when she spoke, which was rarer than beauty and far more dangerous. Around them, resort guests drifted through the turquoise water, their voices rising and falling beneath the music. A woman at the far end of the bar glanced toward Victoria’s waist-length platinum-blonde hair, then whispered to her companion.

Victoria was accustomed to being looked at. She had made an art of giving people something worth seeing.

The stranger turned his bourbon glass between his fingers.

“May I ask your name?”

“You may.”

He waited.

Victoria took another sip. “That was the answer.”

“Victoria,” he said.

The ice shifted in her glass.

She set it down carefully. “Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve been asking more than obvious questions.”

“Victoria Sterling.”

The name seemed to alter the air between them. Not dramatically. No one stopped talking. The band continued its bright, metallic rhythm. But Victoria felt the exact instant the afternoon changed direction.

She removed her sunglasses.

The man’s gaze moved over her face with a concentration that was no longer flirtatious. It was searching. Measuring. Almost reverent.

“My name is Daniel,” he said.

“Daniel what?”

“Daniel Mercer.”

She knew the name. Everyone who moved through the world of serious money knew it. Mercer Holdings owned shipping interests, hotels, private aviation, and enough discreet land to make governments polite. Daniel Mercer was forty-eight, unmarried, and reputedly impossible to impress.

Victoria had not expected him to be handsome.

She had certainly not expected him to be looking at her as though she had risen from the dead.

“What do you want, Daniel?”

His fingers tightened around the bourbon.

“You look exactly like a woman I knew.”

Victoria’s hand remained on the bar. “How flattering.”

“She disappeared twenty-five years ago.”

The words reached her through the heat, the music, and the bright smell of pineapple.

Victoria saw a different night.

Rain striking black water. A white dress folded over a chair. A shovel sinking into wet earth while someone behind her whispered that powerful families survived by keeping their mouths shut.

She blinked, and the swim-up bar returned.

Daniel was watching her too closely.

“What was her name?” Victoria asked.

He leaned nearer, his voice lowered beneath the clatter of ice and glass. “Evelyn Vale.”

The name did not move her face. She had spent twenty-five years teaching it not to.

Inside, something old and buried opened its eyes.

“Many women have platinum hair,” she said. “You should get out more.”

“She had your mouth.”

“I’m sure she was devastated.”

“She had a small scar here.” He touched the corner of his own lower lip. “You have one too.”

Victoria’s fingers rose before she could stop them. The faint white mark had been nearly invisible for years. A champagne flute broken against her mouth at a party in Palm Beach, she had always said. A careless lie, delivered so often it had acquired the smoothness of truth.

Daniel’s gaze fell to her hand.

“You’ve been watching me,” she said.

“I’ve been trying to decide whether I was imagining it.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m certain.”

She slid from the stool. Water streamed from her hips and darkened the white wrap knotted at her waist. The movement drew attention from the nearest guests. Victoria felt their eyes turn toward her, felt the resort’s carefully curated privacy close around her like a net.

Daniel stood as well.

“Sit down,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted.

“That wasn’t an invitation to follow me.”

“I wasn’t following you.”

“You were standing.”

“I’m very good at it.”

She should have laughed. Instead, she noticed how close he was. The clean scent of cedar and salt clung to his skin. His shoulder nearly brushed hers, but he left enough space for her to choose whether to close it.

That restraint unsettled her more than pursuit would have.

“Evelyn Vale is dead,” Victoria said.

Daniel’s expression shifted. “Her body was never found.”

“After twenty-five years, people stop waiting for a body.”

“They stop asking questions.”

“Perhaps the questions were boring.”

“No.” His voice lost its amusement. “They were expensive.”

A server passed behind them carrying a tray of champagne. Victoria stepped aside, and Daniel’s hand came to her waist - not gripping, merely guiding her clear of the tray. His palm was warm through the damp fabric.

She looked down at it.

He withdrew immediately. “Sorry.”

The apology was quiet and unperformed.

Victoria hated that she noticed.

“Don’t touch me unless I ask,” she said.

“Understood.”

“And don’t use that woman to make conversation with me.”

“I didn’t come here for conversation.”

“Then you have chosen an unfortunate location.”

He glanced toward the crowded bar. “You’re exposed here.”

The words struck harder than they should have. Around them, the resort glittered with wealth and leisure. But there were too many faces, too many cameras tucked into expensive phones, too many people who would remember a beautiful woman being confronted by a stranger.

Victoria gathered her wrap tighter.

“You’re the one making a scene.”

“I’m offering you a way out.”

“I don’t need rescuing.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

His calm irritated her. So did the fact that he was right. She wanted to leave, but walking away too quickly would confirm that he had found something. Staying would give him more time to study her.

“I’ll give you five minutes,” she said. “At a table where no one can hear us. Then you will leave me alone.”

Daniel nodded toward the shaded terrace beyond the pool. “After you.”

The path was slick beneath her sandals. She moved carefully, refusing his offered arm. At the terrace, a waiter led them to a secluded table screened by palms and flowering vines. The air smelled of wet stone and jasmine. From there, Victoria could still see the swim-up bar, the place where she had been anonymous only minutes before.

Daniel sat opposite her.

She remained standing. “Five minutes.”

He reached inside the leather case resting beside his chair and removed an envelope.

Victoria’s pulse gave one hard, disloyal beat.

“Put that away.”

“You haven’t seen it.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You do.”

He placed a photograph on the table.

It showed a younger woman standing beside a black Mercedes beneath a rain-dark sky. Her hair was pale and long. Her face was turned three-quarters toward the camera.

Victoria knew the coat. She knew the car. She knew the broken stone wall behind the woman, where moss grew thick over the place that had swallowed a body.

For one terrible second, she was back in the rain.

Daniel watched her lose color.

“You recognize her,” he said.

Victoria forced her gaze from the photograph. “I recognize a resemblance.”

“That’s not what your face said.”

“My face has always been dramatic.”

“Who was she?”

Victoria looked toward the pool. A child shrieked with laughter. Someone ordered another round of drinks. The ordinary sounds made the past feel even more obscene.

“She was a woman who trusted the wrong people.”

“Did you know her?”

“Yes.”

The admission escaped before caution could stop it.

Daniel leaned forward, but he did not touch the photograph. “How well?”

“Well enough to know she didn’t disappear voluntarily.”

“Then you know where she is.”

Victoria’s mouth went dry.

The $40 million secret had brought her to this island, but Evelyn Vale was the reason she had stayed alive long enough to spend it. Twenty-five years ago, Victoria had helped bury more than a body. She had buried the truth that could destroy several powerful families, including the family whose name Daniel carried.

She had told herself she had survived by being smarter than everyone else.

Now, across a table scented with jasmine, Daniel Mercer was proving that survival was not the same as escape.

“You should leave,” she said.

“Tell me where she is.”

“You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“I understand that my mother spent years believing Evelyn was alive.”

Victoria stared at him.

Daniel’s jaw tightened. “She died without knowing the truth.”

There it was - the wound beneath the wealth, the reason his charm had felt practiced and his attention so relentless. He was not merely hunting a scandal. He was carrying grief that had never been given a name.

Victoria softened despite herself.

That was the danger.

“I know where Evelyn’s body was buried,” she said.

Daniel went still.

Victoria heard her own words as though someone else had spoken them. The secret had lived inside her for so long that saying it aloud felt less like confession than the opening of a door.

“Where?” he asked.

“Not here.”

“Then where?”

“Somewhere you cannot reach by buying a plane ticket.”

A muscle moved in his cheek. “You’re afraid of me.”

“I’m afraid of what follows you.”

“Who follows me?”

“The people who made sure Evelyn stayed missing.”

For the first time, his composure cracked. His hand flattened on the table. “Are they watching you now?”

Victoria looked past him toward the terrace entrance.

A waiter stood beside the palms, holding a silver tray. He was facing away, but his reflection showed clearly in the glass doors behind him. In his hand was a phone, its camera pointed toward the table.

Before Victoria could speak, Daniel turned.

The waiter lowered the phone and disappeared into the resort.

Daniel rose.

“Stay here,” he said.

She caught his wrist. His skin was warm, his pulse steady beneath her fingers.

“I said no touching.”

“You touched me.”

“I’m revising the rule.”

His gaze dropped to her hand, then returned to her face. The heat between them was sudden and unwelcome, sharpened by fear.

“You don’t get to protect me,” she said.

“I’m not protecting you.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Trying to keep the only person who knows where Evelyn Vale is buried from becoming another disappearance.”

The answer left no room for flirtation. It also left her with the terrible awareness that she wanted to believe him.

Daniel reached into the case again and removed a second photograph.

This one was smaller, older, its edges curled.

He set it beside the first.

Victoria looked down.

It showed her.

Not as Victoria Sterling in diamonds and white linen, but as she had been twenty-five years earlier, standing beside the same black Mercedes, one hand pressed against the rain-soaked door. Her face was turned toward the camera.

There was no mistaking her.

The image had captured the moment before she walked away from Evelyn’s grave.

Daniel’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I have the negative too.”

Victoria released his wrist.

He gathered the photographs, but not before she saw the decision forming in his eyes.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you’re going to tell me where she was buried.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then someone else will decide what to do with the photograph.”

He left her beneath the jasmine, with the music drifting from the pool and the taste of coconut still on her tongue.

Victoria watched him cross the terrace without looking back.

For the first time since arriving in paradise, she understood that anonymity had never been protection. It had only been a delay.

She reached for her untouched drink, but her hand was no longer steady.

End of chapter one. 11 more chapters in the full book.