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“Celine?”
He sighed. He didn’t want to be responsible for burning America’s newest sweetheart to a crisp. But he didn’t want to wake a sleeping lionness, either. She’d been angry since his rejection in the cab.
Now she looked like a little kid, her mouth slightly open, her smooth, unlined face even more youthful in repose. She was definitely a wakeup call to him. Even though she was just five years younger than he and Elisa, she came across as far more naive.
He’d discovered there was a limit to how far even he would go, and picking up a twenty-two-year-old newbie TV star in a drugstore and following her to the Caribbean had showed him a set of lines he no longer wanted to cross. He’d had to ignore warning sirens in his brain to get himself here, and he wouldn’t do that again. So the scenery might be lovely at this swimming pool, but until further notice, his policy was look but don’t touch.
He was staring at one of the sunbathers when he discovered that she was Elisa. He hadn’t done it with any kind of conscious thought; he’d just let his eyes drift until his attention had been snagged by a woman’s golden limbs and reddish hair. It was always long legs and auburn hair that felled him. He would daydream, notice a woman and then realize he’d been half hoping it was Elisa. Only in this case it was, and instead of his heart sinking with disappointment, he felt a small hopeful glow in the center of his chest. She looked up just then, caught his eye and waved.
Damn it, he didn’t like to be found staring. Men should avoid that at all costs. There was a fine art to scoping. You never let a woman see the top of your head or wonder where your eyes had been. A close outside observer might be able to read your mind, but the recipient of the gaze should never discover that it was directed at her unless you wanted her to. And he didn’t want Elisa to know. Not by a long shot.
She’d gotten up from the lounger and was headed in his direction. Her long strides ate up the pebbled surface of the pool deck.
“Hey,” she said.
She wore what should have probably been the dullest, drabbest bathing suit on earth. It was chocolate brown, with wide straps and a high heart-shaped neckline that curved over the tops of her breasts, and it was almost straight across the bottom, like high-cut shorts instead of a bathing suit triangle. But it wasn’t drab on Elisa. The brown set off her eyes, and made the strands of red and gold in her hair stand out, and the cut of the suit—whatever the girly fashion name for it would be— reminded him of a ’40s movie star and was somehow sexier for not trying to be flashy.
It looked like it would be a bitch to get her out of, but the finest pleasure, too. Like peeling fruit, exposing bare, round, luscious bits of her.
Now his mouth was really dry. “Hey.”
She looked uncomfortable, her eyes not meeting his. “Is she—?”
“She’s asleep.”
Elisa knelt at the side of Celine’s chaise, then nodded to confirm Brett’s diagnosis. He made a superhuman effort not to stare at the neckline of Elisa’s suit and the mouthwatering body it outlined. He tried to forget he knew the exact curve and weight of her, the way her lips parted when he touched her just right. Those sounds she made.
Instead he asked, “How long do we perpetuate this pretend romance?”
She stood up. “I just got off the phone with Celine’s publicist. I needed another opinion.”
“And did you get one?”
“She’s good with the plan.”
“Which is?”
“A couple of hours lounging at the pool together and a few drinks in the bar afterward. And then Celine moves on, and you’re free to go.” She surveyed the landscape of human flesh. “If you can drag yourself away.” She chuckled.
He ignored that last line. “Will she cooperate?” He gestured at Celine. Awake, she’d been sullen and hostile, snapping at his attempts to make conversation and refusing his help to drag an empty chaise out of the shade.
“I’ll tell her she has to. And Haven will tell her she has to. And it’s just a few drinks. How much trouble can she cause?”
He shrugged. It made him uncomfortable to have Elisa towering over him, so he got to his feet. He’d forgotten how tall she was, only a couple of inches shorter than him. He liked tall women because he didn’t have to stoop to kiss them.
He had to stop fantasizing about kissing her, about stripping her out of her clothes, about laying her on a chaise and sliding his body up the length of hers. He’d made the decision on the plane that, if he wanted to be her friend, he couldn’t afford to remind her of what she hated about him. He couldn’t be the man she’d built her whole career around outwitting. He’d shut that part of himself down.
Shut it down. Just like that.
Except he was still thinking about kissing Elisa. With a slight incline of his head, he could have those soft lips against his. And coax her tongue—
He knew exactly how it would feel against his. Like that night, when he’d wanted it to extinguish the craving, and instead it had fed the fire.
What was wrong with him, that he couldn’t put sex out of his head for ten minutes?
She shifted from one foot to the other, hands on hips, which only made her waist look narrower. “So do you have a return flight?”
She’d lowered her voice, and, as if by agreement, they took a few steps away from where Celine lay.
“Haven’t booked one yet. Have you tried to do anything online? Someone said it was insanely expensive to call out if you don’t have an international plan, so I was trying to book through the website, but I couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the hotel wireless—”
Elisa frowned and scraped a toe over the glossy surface of the pool deck. “You should get on that. I can do it on my phone if you can’t get online.”
“First you tell me I can’t leave, and now you’re trying to boot me off the island.”
“I’m just—”
“You want me when you want me, and then you’re done, and you kick me to the curb like I’m garbage—”
“I’m—” But then she got that he was messing with her and smiled. It made him miss the good old days with a vengeance. When they’d smiled at each other all the time, joked and laughed and flirted and—
For a long moment her eyes stayed on his face, as if she were thinking it, too, but just when he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold her gaze, it flickered to something behind him. He turned to look. All he saw was the spiky greenery at the side of the pool. Then his vision resolved a blur of floral color into a Hawaiian shirt on someone holding a long-lensed camera.
“Is that your guy?”
“No. Crap. It’s the guy from the plane.”
“Great. How long has he been standing there?”
“I don’t know. He might have just showed up.”
From where they were standing, they couldn’t hear the whir of the digital shutter, but Brett knew he had to be shooting. It was too good an opportunity. The two of them, conspiring over the prone body of the sleeping TV star. “Do you think he heard any of our conversation?”
She eyed the distance between them and the burst of color in the foliage. “Probably not.”
“So it’s all visual. Stick out your hand. Like you’re shaking mine. Look businesslike.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?”
“Probably. But we can at least not give him any more raw material for scandal, right?”
She stuck her hand out, and he took it. Her hand was small, slim and surprisingly soft. She was angular and regal, but she still had that ultrafeminine, satiny feel to her skin. He wanted to rub his thumb over the back of her hand, over her wrist and up the inside of her arm. He wanted to see if the rest of her was as ridiculously soft and sweet. As her cheek. As her mouth.
Man, he was despicable. She was right about him. She’d always been right about him. And she’d been altogether right to get herself out of his life, because if she’d stuck around, he would have found a way to get in her pants. And there was no reason to think he’d have treated her any differently than the other women he’d discarded.
He’d proved it by running out on her that night and again two weeks later with her sister. God, he didn’t like to think about that.
He was still holding her hand. She took it back and said, all business, “Good luck with drinks.”
“Thanks.”
“If you’re lucky, you won’t see me again, except maybe the back of my royal blue bathing cap as I do lengths of the pool.” She waved, then turned.
“Okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She pivoted to walk away in earnest, and he checked out the bathing suit from the rear angle, that admirable contrast between the curve of her ass and the narrowest point of her waist, and hoped his bathing trunks weren’t obviously broadcasting his admiration.
He hadn’t actually said he’d leave after he ended his “relationship” with Celine. He hadn’t looked up earlier flights home, and he didn’t want to. It would be the gallant thing to do, of course. He should walk away and let Celine turn the weekend into a triumph. And it would be the prudent thing to do. The network was already going to be ticked at him for getting himself in the spotlight and not in a “family man” way.
But as he cursed that stupid, old-fashioned bathing suit, and its unexpected effect on his brain and cock, he knew one thing for sure. He wasn’t ready to have Elisa Henderson walk away from him for good, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to walk away from her.
6
SHE LAY ON the bed in her room. Decompressing. She had slipped into her nightgown to get out of her travel-worn clothing, and because the cool breeziness of the fabric felt good against her hot skin.
There was still a little light in the sky, and she could see the ocean through her open sliding glass doors. She’d consumed most of the room’s gift basket, passion fruits and kiwis, in a frenzy of stress-eating that she’d had to follow up by drinking the orange juice from the minibar.
She’d tucked herself under the bed’s lightweight white quilt and plumped herself up on a stack of feather pillows. So this was how the other half lived. She’d grown up in a small ranch house and shared a bedroom with her sister, their mother running her accounting business out of the other bedroom. Her mom had worn sweats 80 percent of the time, changing only when clients came to the house and did business at the kitchen table. Elisa had never learned to tell a salad fork from a shrimp fork, much less slept under Egyptian cotton sheets. She was hardly the poster child for someone who should be trafficking in image, celebrity or luxury.
But she kind of liked it—the horizon pool, the overeager staff, the flowers and tropical fruit, and white-tiled hotel room floor. She could get used to this, provided Brett behaved and the rest of the weekend went as planned.
She used her smartphone to clean out her email in-box and listen to her voice mail. There was a message from one of her clients, a third-grade teacher. Elisa grinned as she heard Savannah’s giddy voice. “Oh, my God, it was such a good date. I really, really like him, and he kissed me, and seriously you are my fairy godmother. I can’t wait to see you on Tuesday and tell you the whole story. I’m totally not telling it now, because I will clog up your voice mail, but we had such a good time and you were totally right. A jazz club was a way better choice than a movie. We could talk, and he kept leaning close to tell me funny things! Thank you, thank you! See you Tuesday!”
That was what she loved. The joy in Savannah’s voice. The rib-crushing hug Savannah would undoubtedly give her at her next appointment. The details Savannah would dish over tea and shortbread cookies. And good first dates often led to good second dates and on down the line. Elisa couldn’t start writing Savannah’s wedding toast yet, but she’d been to nearly thirty client weddings now, and almost all of those couples had had great first dates. Elisa liked to save the voice mails to replay for her clients when they came in to display their engagement rings. She saved the message, then switched over to read an email that popped up.
It was another Facebook friend request from Brett. She’d refused at least five of his in the past two years. Each one had been an unpleasant tweaking reminder that he still existed. Somehow, despite her refusals, he remained stubbornly optimistic that she’d want to be “friends.”
She deleted the request. She was softening toward him despite herself, and the last thing she needed was to see his face and his news every day.
She texted her sister, Julie. You won’t believe this. Guess who Celine picked up en route and brought to the Caribbean?
george clooney?
Hint: The one topic we never discuss.
Long pause, then, brett???????????
Elisa’s phone rang.
“How does that even happen?” Julie demanded. Her sister’s voice, warm and familiar, was a welcome comfort. It was a miracle that what had happened with Brett and Julie had not poisoned the sisters’ relationship. Elisa thanked God for it all the time. And she thanked God she’d told her sister, that night before Julie had gone out with Brett, “Whatever happens, I don’t want to hear about it. Not a word.” Because she knew there was no way in hell she could stand it. It was only the not-knowing that had made it possible for her and Julie to go on as if nothing had happened.
“I think I’m being punished,” Elisa told Julie.
She explained the whole situation, from the long moments of worrying that Celine hadn’t made the flight, to the drinks date going on in the resort bar at this very moment.
“Does he know how important this is to you?”
“I think so.”
“Tell him if he screws this up for you or Celine, I will kill him.”
Elisa loved her sister’s ferocious protectiveness and wished for the ten-millionth time that Julie lived in New York with her and not on the other side of the country in Seattle. “I’m not worried. Brett’s on board. He’ll finish up with her, and then I’m going to take over, and we’re going to have so much fun she’s going to be too busy to get into trouble.” She knew she sounded like she was trying to convince herself—she was trying to convince herself—but she had to stay positive.
“If anyone can do this, you can. I wish you’d been a dating coach when I was a teenager.”
Julie had spent most of her high school years throwing herself recklessly into relationships with popular older boys and then weeping and sulking through dinner when, inevitably, things didn’t work out for her. Elisa had rarely been able to use the home phone because Julie always tied it up crying to her friends. It was beyond Elisa how Julie could make the same mistake over and over again, but the pattern had continued to the present day.
It was possible, Elisa sometimes thought, that she’d become a dating coach partially to alleviate the frustration of watching helplessly as Julie flung herself against a brick wall, but of course she’d never told her sister.
“You just say the word, Jules. I’ll drop everything and work with you.”
“You’ve got bigger and better things going on.” If there was any hint of sadness in her voice, it was overshadowed by her clear pride in Elisa’s work. “Next week, your phone’ll be ringing off the hook.”
“Your mouth, God’s ear.” She was tempted to knock on wood.
Julie sighed. “I should let you go. You’ve got a long evening ahead of you, huh?”
“Yeah. Glad you called, Jules.”
“Good to hear your voice, Lise.”
“Love you.”
“You, too.”
She set the phone on the night table and collapsed back on her throne of pillows. For the first time today, she was alone and not desperately trying to fix this star-crossed weekend. The lack of imminent disaster felt glorious. Across the resort, Celine and Brett had met for their fake destination date, and that would close the door on all this silliness. Brett would fly home, and she and Celine would do their boot camp weekend, and maybe, just maybe, everything wouldn’t fall apart. This could still become a victory for Rendezvous.
Her business was so new. She had a great start, but her ambitions were even grander. Eighteen months ago, things had been different. She’d been a cog in a wheel, a senior “relationship guru” at a matchmaking franchise. She got a salary, and in exchange, she followed rules. This many matches per week. This many dates per month for each client. This many new clients. Numbers were the point, regardless of whether the matches made sense or the dates were meaningful or the clients were admirable human beings.
She’d followed the rules at first, but after a year, she’d started to see how those regulations made things worse for women who’d been through dating hell. Meaningless dates translated to more rejections. Bad matches led to more breakups. Elisa did better—meaning she made more women happier—when she followed her own guidelines, setting up dates only between people she genuinely believed would like each other and pushing for ongoing contact only for couples she truly thought had a future. The number of solid-looking marriages that came from her work—the only measure that mattered to her—was better than anyone else’s in the company.
Maybe the franchise owner was jealous of Elisa’s success, or maybe she’d just drunk way too much Kool-Aid, but for whatever reason, she cracked down on Elisa with full force, putting her on notice. The owner told her that she had to make her quota in the last ten days of the month. There was no way Elisa could do that without sacrificing her clients’ happiness, and she told her boss so.
Her boss fired her without notice. Elisa left the office with only her contact list—partly because no one had told her that she couldn’t take it with her, but mostly because she would have died before she’d leave her clients hanging. She planned to call every one of them to let them know she’d left and to apologize for having to abandon them while they were still single.
Only it hadn’t worked out that way. Every client she’d called had begged her to take them with her.
At first she’d laughed. It had seemed like a crazy joke. Of course she couldn’t take them with her. She didn’t have a job, and there was no way she was going to start making matches out of her living room.
But that’s what they wanted. They pleaded with her. They told her that they’d meet with her in a coffee shop, the park, their own living rooms, if that was what it took. They said she made them feel good about themselves. She boosted their confidence, offered them control of their destinies.
She convinced them they didn’t have to date jerks.
The outpouring of support made her cry, and then it bolstered her. Why couldn’t she do it? All she needed were clients, a telephone, an office and maybe—down the line—an assistant. That wasn’t so much, really. She’d taken out a loan to get the office space, set up a business and gradually transitioned her title from “matchmaker” to “dating coach,” bringing in new clients and adding services. Evening and weekend workshops and classes. Boot camp outings. Boot camp weekends.
Things were looking good, but she dreamed of offering her services to a wider audience, of evangelizing the notion of hiring a dating coach. If she could grow demand, if she could increase her own reach....
Six months ago she’d been grateful to still have clients. Now she wanted more.
