American Diva Read Free

Jack said with a shrug. And frankly, he didn’t care. He’d had about as much fun in the sun as he could stand this weekend. He couldn’t wait to get off this island.
    Given how lame the entire event was turning out to be, the mystery of Audrey LaRue’s presence at this shindig was growing. The TA guys had wondered more than once how the real estate guys, who were currently splashing around like whales in a lagoon, could have enticed her to come to a private island in Costa Rica.
    “Money,” Eli had hypothesized over beers one night. “What else? That’s why we’re all here.”
    “Yeah, but you guys will do anything for money,” Leah, Michael’s wife, said, oblivious to their startled looks. “They must have offered her a lot of money, like platinum record money, because I cannot imagine what would possess any woman in her right mind to go to Costa Rica and spend an entire weekend with a bunch of drunks.”
    Jack was half tempted to ask Ms. LaRue as she struggled to untangle the lines of the harness she had managed to tangle in the space of two minutes. “Can you fix it?” she asked one of the boys. He responded in Spanish as Audrey pushed a thick curl of blond hair from her eyes. She turned to Jack and Cooper. “Can someone help me?” she demanded.
    The redhead turned her back and snickered.
    Jack hoped Cooper would do it. But when he glanced at Coop, he noticed he wasn’t exactly looking at her harness. Jack couldn’t blame him—with those long tanned legs and green eyes that could light up a stage, this girl was hot .
    Jack didn’t realize just how hot until he stepped up to help her with the harness.
    “How did you get the straps so twisted?” he asked.
    “I don’t know!”
    He grabbed the end of two straps and gave them a good tug, cinching the harness up, and almost yanking Audrey into his chest in the process. She looked up at him with remarkable green eyes and raised one dark gold brow high above the other. “I think it’s tight.”
    Jack smiled a little. “You sure?”
    “ Yes . I’m sure.”
    He let go and stepped back, and gestured for her to precede him to the edge. She carefully inched her way forward to have another look over the end of the rock.
    “You sure you want to do this?” Jack asked her most excellent ass.
    “Like I have a choice,” she said irritably.
    “She means she has to if she wants their fifty thousand dollars,” The redhead said gleefully.
    “ Auuuuud-drey! ” Some numb nuts who stood in the shallow end of the lagoon was shouting up at her, flailing his massively white and flabby arms. “Come on down, baby! I’ll catch you!” A roar of drunken laughter went up from his compatriots.
    Jack glanced at the sots below, then at Audrey. “Like I was saying . . . are you sure you want to do this?”
    She groaned. “Dude, I’ve been here twenty-four hours now. I think I am battle tested, and besides, a few middle-aged men and a few beers don’t scare me.” She paused and looked at the beach below. “I mean, they scare me, but not like that. I can handle them. I just want to get this over with. So can you just back up and give me some space?”
    Jack lifted his hands and did precisely that.
    “Let’s go over a few things,” Cooper said. “Hands on the line,” he said as he hooked her harness to the line. “Legs together and in front of you. Eli and Michael will help you at the end of the death slide.”
    She frowned at Cooper. “That’s a funny name for it. So okay, here I go.” And before Cooper could tell her not to jump, to step off the ridge, she jumped and bounced.
    “ Damn ,” Cooper said, shaking his head. The redhead muscled her way in between them, and the three of them listened to Audrey squeal all the way down, landing on the beach in one huge sprawl. She was immediately swarmed by two or three fat guys, as well as Eli and Michael, who put themselves between her and the others so they could unhook her.
    The redhead suddenly started