In fact, the last time he'd felt it, it had been when he knew he needed to drive her away before she wasted her life on a loser like him.
But when Chris told him about the position, and how Carla was on the verge of losing her job because of the previous security breach, Sam had been overwhelmed by the need to help her. Any flashes of common sense that tried to warn him this was a terrible idea were immediately drowned out by the urge to come to her rescue, as though somehow that could make up for the way he'd treated her before.
As Chris crossed to him, Sam rose from his chair and studied his face, looking for signs of anger. Though he looked frustrated, Chris didn't look pissed. Sam let down his guard now that he was reasonably sure he didn't need to brace himself to take a punch.
Check that, he thought as his gaze shifted back to Carla, who looked ready to skip the punch and go straight for a kick in the nuts.
“So, looks like you're our new head of security,” she said. He thought the expression on her face was supposed to be a smile but it looked more like a baring of teeth. And if looks could kill, he'd be nothing more than a pile of ash on the flagstone patio slabs. “Since Chris hired you, I'll have him show you to your office and get you set up―“
“I'm going to have to head out,” Chris interrupted. “We've got a wedding for five hundred tomorrow so I need to relieve the nanny.” He gave Sam a wink and slapped him on the shoulder. “Seriously, nothing but non-stop action here in the tropics. We'll have you over to our place to catch up soon.” Chris took his leave, and Sam turned his attention back to Carla.
“Did you know when you took this job you'd be working for me?” she asked him point blank as soon as Chris was out of earshot.
Sam nodded.
“Why? In what universe did you think this would be a good idea?”
Without waiting for an answer she turned and started marching back inside, leaving Sam no choice but to follow. “I knew you wouldn't be overjoyed to see me―“
“You think?” she said over her shoulder as she cut through the restaurant, back outside, and through the breezeway that connected the restaurant with the resort's main building. He followed her past the reception counter and down a hall that led to a large windowed office. “This is my office,” she said, indicating a room with picture windows that offered views of turquoise blue water and white sand beach. Off in the distance Sam saw a two-mast sailboat making its lazy way across the horizon. “Bryce, our sales and events director, sits in here with me. You'll meet him later.”
She continued further down the hall and opened a door on the left. “And this is where you'll be.” It was smaller than hers, no more than fifteen by fifteen or so, but like hers it offered a view of the sea that Sam could happily stare at for hours. “You didn't answer my question. Why?”
“Like Chris said, I needed a change of pace. I've been to some nasty places over the years.” That was putting it lightly. His stint in the Rangers had sent him to Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the five years he'd worked for Argus he'd seen more suffering and death than he ever had in the military. “I got tired of getting paid to help multi-billion dollar corporations screw the locals in the most fucked up places on the planet, so when Chris offered up a job in paradise, how could I not jump at it?”
And when Chris had said Holley Cay was paradise, he hadn't been exaggerating. When he was a kid he'd looked at pictures in magazines, watched commercials for places like Club Med and wondered what it would be like to be able to go to a place like that. Holley Cay was about a hundred notches above Club Med in luxury, but it wasn't just the five star quality of the place that caught Sam's attention.
From the second Sam had stepped off the water taxi that had transferred from nearby St. Thomas, he'd felt a sort of calm seep into his bones. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced. He'd grown up on the outskirts of Vegas, away from the glamour of the strip where the neon lights and wads of cash gave way to desperation. He'd never seen a place so beautiful and pristine.
The sheer beauty, combined with the warm, salt-scented breeze, the lazy slap of waves lapping up onto the beach, gave Holley Cay a calming vibe that made a person feel like nothing could ever go wrong.
“I'd think working for me would be a pretty damn big deterrent,” Carla snapped, distracting him from the view out the window. Contrary to his thoughts, the look on her face proved that some days things went very wrong for some people.
He couldn't stop his lips from curving into a smile. “Actually, it was kind of a selling point.”
Her face went pale underneath the tan.
“What, you didn't have enough fun ripping me apart and humiliating me the first time? You thought you'd take Chris up on his offer and come back for another round?”