Free Beach Bar Baby by Heidi Rice

Questions three and four remained a mystery though, as she dressed as soundlessly as she could manage while continuing to scan the hut for any sign of her host.
    She jumped as the banging began again.
    ‘Hey, I can hear you in there. Avoidance won’t do you a damn bit of good.’
    Rats, do you have bionic hearing?
    She waited a few more strained seconds, while debating opening the shutters and escaping onto the deck, but eventually discarded the idea—given the girl’s hearing capabilities.
    The banging continued, and her not entirely settled stomach churned. What if this girl were Cooper’s girlfriend? Or his wife? Was that why he’d disappeared? Because what did she really know about Captain Studly, except that he was gorgeous, knew how to dance the soca and had magic fingers, a very inventive tongue, and a huge and permanently stiff...
    Don’t go there.
    Squaring her shoulders, she swung the door open ready to face the consequences, to be greeted by a stunningly beautiful barefoot young woman of about twenty, wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes, a T-shirt with the message ‘Don’t Mess with a Libran’, tightly braided hair decorated with multicoloured beads, and a stunned expression.
    ‘Hi.’ She craned her neck to search the hut’s interior, having gained her composure a lot faster than Ella. ‘Is Coop around?’
    ‘Um, no, apparently not,’ Ella replied, opting for the only answer she could give with any confidence.
    ‘Uh-huh?’ The girl gave her a thorough once-over that had the heat steaming into Ella’s cheeks. ‘I guess he’s up at the big house.’
    The big house? What big house?
    ‘Sorry to wake you,’ the girl said. ‘Henry didn’t tell me Coop left the Runner with company last night. Just that he headed for his beach hut. Suppose Henry was messing with me. And Coop.’
    And me, thought Ella, annoyed by Henry the barman’s joke, and acutely embarrassed that this girl now knew she was the sort of woman who got picked up in bars.
    What had seemed wildly romantic last night, now felt pretty tacky.
    Ruby had encouraged her to let her inner flirt loose, but there had definitely been no mention of getting tipsy on rum cocktails, then getting nekkid with Captain Studly and jumping him four...no, five...oh, heck, make that at least a half-dozen times during the night.
    ‘You Coop’s new lady?’ The girl interrupted Ella’s panicked reappraisal of her behaviour.
    ‘Um, no, we’re just...’ What? Snorkel mates? Dance partners? Bonk buddies?
    The burning in her cheeks promptly hit maximum voltage as she searched for the appropriate term while recalling in X-rated detail exactly how intimately she and the invisible Coop had got acquainted last night, after very little provocation. ‘Friends,’ she finished lamely.
    With benefits. Gold-standard benefits.
    The phrase hung in the brisk morning air unspoken, but not unfigured out if the girl’s frank appraisal was anything to go by. ‘Do you know when he’s going to be back?’
    Hardly, seeing as I have no clue where he is.
    ‘I’m afraid not.’
    ‘Could you tell him I stopped by? I’m Sonny’s daughter, Josie, and I—’
    ‘Why don’t you come in and wait for him?’ Ella shoved the door wide, determined to make a fast getaway, before this situation got any more awkward. ‘I was just leaving.’
    Josie sent her a doubtful look as she stepped into the room. ‘You sure, I—’
    ‘Absolutely positive,’ Ella replied, grabbing her bag from the hook by the door and slipping past the girl, before she could ask any more unanswerable questions.
    ‘You want me to give Coop a message?’
    Ella paused on the porch, the clutching sensation she’d had as she fell asleep the night before returning. ‘Would you tell him thanks?’ She cleared her throat, the stupid clutching sensation starting to squeeze her ribcage.
    For being a friend when I needed one, she added silently as she jumped off the hut’s porch and her feet sank into the wet