Page 4 of On The Beach

The Reef Harbor Surprise was a Long Island Iced Tea onspeed, the one drink on RiRi's menu that wasnotwatered down.

Yep, Isabelle, the Emotional Bamboozler, was gonna get fucked up and regret the day she came looking for Dr. Nicholas Michael Patrick Augustus, the Third,formerscientist and pharma wunderkind.

CHAPTER 2

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BELLE

I, Dr. Isabelle Maria Volnay, had ninety-nine problems, and two of them were urgent.

One was the mother of all hangovers, and the other was Dr. Nicholas Augustus's mother, who had sent me on a wild goose chase in the fucking Caribbean.

Now, if you have to suffer, a Caribbean island isn't the worst place to be. But I didn't have time to hug a toilet bowl in a hotel bathroom—I needed to find Dr. Augustus,stat, and convince him to release a patent he held so I could conduct a clinical trial that could save lives and, as a side benefit, make my career.

"Jesus, what was in that drink RiRi gave me, and why did I drink three of them?" I moaned, my head spinning.

By the time I'd stumbled into my hotel room at three in the morning, I'd danced in the sand to truly terrible music with Nick, the toothless guy at the bar, some dude named Franco who told me he was the media God of Reef Harbor; and someone called Bubba, who proudly informed me my tits were the best he'd ever seen clothed. He had, apparently, seen some amazing ones bare and wanted me to confirm if minewere as good, which I declined. I'd even slow-danced with a sexy beach bum who called himself Captain Mick right before I threw up for the first time that night—thankfully,noton his flip-flops.

My phone rang, and I blindly groped for it on the bathroom floor, too afraid to open my eyes.

"Hello," I croaked, hoping I'd pressed the right button.

"Belle, where the fuck are you?" my sister Anna asked way too loudly.

"In hell. I'm in hell. Lower your voice, sistah woman."

"Did you find the esteemed Dr. Nicholas Augustus?"

"No," I groaned. "I found the mother of all hangovers."

"Belle? Honey, did you drink?" Anna's voice softened. My stunted alcohol tolerance was legendary.

There was the time I woke up with a tattoo of the oxytocin molecule—commonly known as the love hormone—etched as a tramp stamp. I kind of liked it now. Then, there was the time I ended up on antibiotics because the bartender I brought home gave me pink eye but no orgasm. And let's not forget the time a video of me tunelessly singing; My Heart Will Go On while standing in the bar at the Ritz in New York went viral. Thankfully, I hadn't done a strip tease that time—though I had, once, back in university at a dive bar. Luckily, no video of that disaster existed.Small mercies.

I nodded, then regretted it immediately as the swirling in my head worsened. "I drank something called a Reef Harbor Surprise.Surprise, I've got my head in the toilet."

"Did you do anything fun after you drank?"

I blanched. "I fucking hope not because a lot of the night is blank. I don't feel like I got any tattoos or piercings, somaybeno long-term damage."Fingers crossed!

"When will you be home?"

"I don't know. First, I need to make sure my head doesn'tfall off. Then I'll figure out how to get off this blasted island and continue hunting for Doctor Elusive."

"Do you even know where this guy is? And is it worth it?" Anna, Dr. Annabelle Sophia Volnay, my sister, and a pediatric oncologist at Mass Gen, cut to the chase. She was, according to my family members, the right kind of doctor. I had a PhD; Anna saved lives. Our parents loved that joke. I didn't think it was funny.

It's not like I was some kind of slacker. I had a PhD from UC Berkeley in molecular genetics, twenty peer-reviewed publications, and two pharmaceutical patents to my name. I was a gold-star scientist. But in the Volnay family, if you weren't a surgeon, what the hell was the point? Our mother was an anesthesiologist, and our father was a cardiac surgeon. I was the black sheep of the family—another joke my parents loved. My entire family was a whole other kind of crazy. As much as I loved them all—they weren't remotelynormal. The fact that I was the most sensible person in my family said itall.

"I'm working on it, Anna, but the guy's in hiding. These things take time," I groaned, dropping the phone on the floor when someone knocked on my hotel room door. I fumbled to pick the phone up and yelled into the receiver, "Someone's here! I'll call you back."

Groggily, I opened the door, and there stood…Captain Mick?

"We didn't have sex, did we?" I asked, cringing at the thought. That would really cap it off—sex with a beach bum in the Caribbean and no memory of it. Especially because, with pecs like that, I'd want to remember.

He held up a brown bag. "Babycakes, if you'd had sex with me, you'd still be sore between your legs." He pushed past me into the room.

Despite the pounding in my skull, I raised an eyebrow. "And you're humble, too?"

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