Private 02 - Private Paradise

her on how she handled the aftermath, and when business rebounded and the numbers went back up, Carla had hoped to put the whole mess behind her.
    Now she was afraid that one hiccup―okay, it was more like a heart attack―was going to ruin her chance to keep the job she'd worked so hard to earn.
    “ What do you think?” she asked, raising her chin in challenge. “I know you have to answer to the investors, but you still have a lot of pull. Do you think I'm up to it?”
    “ Of course,” Chris replied, and Carla felt the tension drain out of his shoulders at his lack of hesitation. “But the lack of a competent security manager makes them nervous, and the more nervous they are, the more I get bitched at.” He lifted a big hand to stifle a yawn. “And between Julie and Mathilda and twenty families at a time to keep happy, I don't need to hear it. I ran Sam's resume by them and they loved that he's former special forces and worked for Argus Securities.”
    Carla rolled her eyes. “I don't know a single person who would choose where to stay based on who was running security.”
    “ Me neither, but that's not the point. It's your ass if we don't hire someone. Sam practically fell into our laps, and I can't understand why you're not as happy about this as I am.”
    She knew she was screwed, but she couldn't keep from lobbing one final protest. “He's practically been a mercenary for the past five years. That's not exactly a great foundation for working in the hospitality business.”
    Chris cocked a dark eyebrow and gave her an irritated look.
    Carla slumped in defeat. In trying to avert professional disaster on her behalf, he had no idea he'd brought an even larger one down on her shoulders. And there was no way she could tell him, not without completely humiliating herself.
    Even if she did fess up that a long time ago, in a Nevada desert far, far away she'd fallen for the one boy-man she'd known damn well to stay away from, what did it say about her that after more than a decade she was still so hung up on him she could barely stand to be in the same room?
    Chris, though her cousin and one of her best friends, was also her boss. She was on thin ice professionally, and she couldn't let a personal incident from the past affect her professional present.
    As she had reminded herself out on the deck, she was no longer an idealistic eighteen-year-old with stars in her eyes and hormones raging through her body. Time to pull up her big girl panties and face this situation like a grown up.

Chapter Two

    There was no mistaking the tension in Carla's posture as she stalked across the patio, Chris hot at her heels.
    Irritated or no, Sam couldn't keep his eyes off the way her ass swished back and forth and the way muscles of her calves shifted beneath smooth, tanned skin under the flowy fabric of her dress. He hadn't been bullshitting her when he said she looked even better than she had the last time he saw her. At eighteen, she'd been all wide, dark eyes and wild curls to match.
    Short―she'd barely come up to the middle of his chest―but lushly curved enough to stop traffic, Carla DeLuca had been a sweet little armful, one he'd been itching to get his hands on practically from the first time he laid eyes on her. But Chris knew Sam all too well and had made it clear he'd kick Sam's ass all the way to Los Angeles if he so much as looked at his three-years-younger and infinitely less experienced cousin.
    Though Chris had been a match for his size and played football and water polo, Sam didn't have much concern about Chris being able to kick his ass. But Chris was one of Sam's best friends, and Sam tried hard not to ever let his hookups interfere with his friendships. Plus, he knew Chris was right―Carla was a good girl, nothing like the girls Sam usually ran with.
    So though he'd run into her every so often through high school and after, he'd tried his damndest to keep his hands to himself.
    “ Tried” being the operative word. Then, the summer after Carla's senior year, Carla had shown up for employee orientation at the resort outside Vegas where Sam had worked on and off for a couple of years.
    It had taken less than a week of Carla and Sam working at the isolated desert oasis, well out of Chris's sight and influence, for Sam's restraint to break down and for him to do a full court press on Carla.
    Not that she'd been easy. Though she'd trailed him by three years in high school, she'd been well aware of his