One True Love?

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She was right.

He could always tell her how he felt about her. But after her speech about needing to open up to people, he had the sneaking suspicion that she had reduced his feelings for her to a minor crush, one rooted in the fact that she had been there for him. If he declared his love now, she might mistake it for misguided gratitude.

No, in this case, honesty was not going to be the best policy. Lousy poker face or not, he was going to have to give it his all to try and hide his true feelings for her. At least until he was sure that she could accept them for what they were.

There was always the friendship angle, but he’d played that card since the day he met her and all it had gotten him so far was her, well…continuing friendship.

Maybe he should tell her about Brendan and what a scoundrel he was and how Marjorie from human resources wasn’t the first woman to make his eyes wander. No, any attack on Golden Boy would only lead to her leaping to his defense. Matthew wasn’t up for another round of the poor-misguided-insecure-Brendan soliloquy.

So what was left to him?

Matthew flipped onto his back and began to back stroke. The sky was a shade of blue that he couldn’t quite label, but knew that when he got back to his condo in New Jersey, he would try to replicate it with his paints. He had no doubt he would fail. It wasn’t that he was a pessimist. Just bad with colors. Not to mention he wasn’t a very good painter. It was simply the process and its contrast to working with numbers all day that pleased him.

Then it clicked. The process. That was his course of action. He had to stop thinking about the end result and concentrate on the process. The end result was love and happily ever after. It was the ending that most people hoped for any time they began a relationship. But the process was the wooing. The dating. The flowers. The dinners. And the sex.

If Matthew couldn’t get Rinny to fall in love with him, maybe he could get her to have an affair with him. Technically, she had broken up with Golden Boy, so she couldn’t cry infidelity as an excuse. Then there was the added element of them being outside their normal realms on this island. Away from the office, their friends, anyone who knew them, they could be anybody they wanted to be.

It would be tricky. He would have to convince her that it would strictly be a two-week gig. No regrets or recriminations when it was over and they were back in the office. Of course, if he had his way there would be no “over.”

Instead, there would be happily ever after and a nice house and babies and…Rinny.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Pulling this off meant that he would have to be sneaky and manipulative. Two things he utterly failed at. But this particular poker game was for the jackpot. And he didn’t plan on losing.

A vacation fling. It just might work.

3

TO TIE OR not to tie. That was the real question. Matthew was dressed in a pair of gray slacks to which he dared to add a soft-blue oxford shirt with a white collar. It wasn’t his normal style. He preferred plain white. What with his lack of talent for color, it made it much easier to match his ties with his shirts.

However, fashion seemed to be important to Rinny. Or maybe not fashion so much as style. She was forever commenting on his absence of it. She’d given him this shirt as a Christmas gift last year so he had to assume it would meet with her approval. And there was the added fact that he simply wanted to wear it for her.

Besides, these were the islands. It was time to cut loose and live on the wild side.

He had gone so far as to roll the sleeves up to his elbows as a bow to the heat, but leaving it unbuttoned at the neck just didn’t feel right to him. Again, he held the tie up against his chest. It was red. No doubt Corinne would have assigned some fancy name to the color, like vermilion or some such nonsense, but to Matthew it was just red. And red went with blue, didn’t it? Oh well, it couldn’t be that bad. Lifting his collar up, he secured the tie about his throat and tightened it. Then he tugged at it a bit, pulling it away from his neck ever so slightly.

Already, he felt a little wilder.

DECISIONS, decisions. Corinne stared at the five dresses she had laid out on the bed and contemplated each one as her potential dinner ensemble. One was too sexy, the other too loud. One was too girly and the other too prim. Number five it was. Really it was a combination of the four other problems, but to a lesser degree, so she figured she was safe. Slipping on a pair of panties, she stepped into the island dress.

It was a mesh of bright reds, yellows, whites and greens with huge blooming flowers all over it. As soon as she’d spotted it in the gift shop she’d known she had to have it. It tied about her neck leaving her shoulders bare. The flimsy island material overlapped, concealing her shape for the most part, but when she walked the material separated granting anyone watching the pleasure of a quick glimpse of thigh. A pair of three-inch strappy heels to give the effect of height, if not the reality of it, and she was ready for her date.

Evening, Corinne corrected. This was not a date.

Because it wasn’t a date, she had no reason to want to impress Matthew with her new ensemble. Not at all. On the contrary she was going to have to be very careful not to flirt with him or smile too much. There was no reason to encourage his current crush regardless of its seemingly harmless origin.

But Corinne never went anywhere not properly dressed, and this evening would be no exception. She snapped up her matching red clutch purse and winced. The dress had been an indulgence, but the purse had been gluttony. She could almost feel the little pang of shock she was going to receive when she opened her credit card bill next month.

It always amused her when people assumed she was rich just because of her last name. Corinne would proudly point out that she had never taken a penny from her family. Instead she worked hard and invested well so that she was able to indulge herself every once in a while. Hell, if it weren’t for her investments her family would be in debt up to their eyebrows.

Weatherbys know acting; Weatherbys don’t know money, her mother would often quote. So it was left to Corinne to keep her family’s fortune growing. Left to their own devices they would either squander their millions away or have it stolen by a corrupt accountant.

Not that they would care, Corinne thought sentimentally. Her family wasn’t in show biz for the wealth. It was the attention they craved. The adoring fans, the boisterous crowds and the heat of the camera lights. The money was nothing more than a pleasant perk.

Not so for Corinne. Like everyone else who worked full-time, she needed money to live. She glanced at the perfect handbag that matched absolutely the vibrant red of her sandals. The purse was going to hurt. But the pain was worth it. And this was a vacation.

Tossing a scarf about her neck—a scarf she refused to acknowledge because it made the cost of the purse seem inconsequential—she left her room and headed downstairs to greet her nondate.

MATTHEW GLANCED at his watch again. He’d said he would meet her at seven. It was fifteen minutes after, so he figured he had another five minutes to wait. Had this been a business meeting she would have been downstairs at seven on the dot. She was obsessively punctual when it came to business.

Social events, however, were an entirely different matter. The Christmas parties. The office picnics. After-hours get-togethers. It didn’t matter what the social occasion was, Corinne was always late.

Made for a better entrance that way, he knew. The fact that she was currently bordering on twenty minutes late meant two things—she considered this a social event, and her entrance was going to be spectacular. Matthew could barely contain the anticipation that was bubbling up inside his gut.

He checked his watch again. Twenty-one minutes late. Boy, she was going to look pretty.

“Hmm-hmm,” she coughed delicately behind him.

Spinning around, Matthew felt his tongue pop out of his mouth. Probably not a suave move for a guy who was about to propose an affair, which was a very suave thing, he thought. As nonchalantly as he could, he drew his tongue back inside his mouth. A deep breath and he was ready to give her an appropriate compliment on her dress for the evening.

“Wow,” he exhaled.

She smiled brightly, then frowned severely. “Ugh,” she huffed.

Matthew reached up to make sure his stubby clipper-cut brown hairs were behaving themselves on the top of his head. He’d gotten the haircut per Rinny’s suggestion, but the girl at Cuts-R-Us had gone a little overboard with the clippers.

However, it wasn’t his hair that had earned her disapproval. Without hesitation, Corinne marched up to him and began to undo his tie. Although this was exactly how he planned to end the evening, Matthew wasn’t so sure a public bar was the best place to get things started. But if she insisted, who was he to refuse her?

“I think you do this on purpose just to get a rise out of me,” she muttered as she undid the tie and pulled it from around his neck. “This color red does not go with that color blue. Put it in your pocket.”

He took the tie and shoved it in his pocket. He was about to outline his problem with colors in general, which also explained why people usually cringed whenever they saw one of his paintings, but she was still speaking. It wasn’t polite to interrupt.

“I swear when we get back to New Jersey I’m going to take you shopping and show you how to dress. And if I have to show up every morning at your home to put you in clothes that match, that’s just what I’m going to do.”

Yeah, he was thinking along those same lines, her being in his house every morning to dress him. Naturally, it would be a help to have her there every evening to undress him. What with his pajama tops rarely matching his pajama bottoms. Inwardly, he smiled lasciviously.

As casually as if she’d been his wife for years, she reached up, no easy task considering their height disparities, and unfastened his top button. Smoothing the collar a bit, she sighed in resignation.

“I guess that’s the best we can do for now. Remind me, however, that we need to go shopping in the gift shop. This is an island and you have to have at least one tacky island shirt. Why, look around you. Can’t you see what all the other men are wearing?”

He saw flowers. He wasn’t going to wear any flowers.

“At least you wore the blue shirt. It looks good on you,” she decided. “It brings out the blue in your eyes.”

“Okay,” he muttered.

Really blue eyes. Deep, rich, almost vibrant blue eyes. Corinne had known Matthew for years, but she didn’t think she’d ever paid attention to how truly remarkable those eyes were. Always so serious at work, he seemed more relaxed with her tonight. And that seemed to bring out a sparkle in his eyes. That along with the blue shirt and no tie…for the first time Corinne found herself acknowledging that Matthew Relic was quite a handsome man.

“Hello? Corinne?”

Breaking the contact and the sudden spell she had found herself in, Corinne tried to play it cool. “What?”

“You were staring at me,” he said.

“I wasn’t,” she lied, with a little laugh to let him know how ridiculous he was being.

“Yes, you were,” he insisted.

Silently damning him for his inability to let a white lie pass, she gritted her teeth and tried again, “No. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

Finally, Corinne snapped. “Okay fine, I was staring. If you must know I just never really noticed your eyes before. They’re very nice. Very blue. Not traditional fair blue eyes, but a rich deep blue.”

She thought he had nice eyes. The compliment made him almost giddy.

“You can be so stubborn,” she accused, miffed that she was forced to confess something that any other man would have let slide. “Do you know that about yourself?”

“It isn’t so much stubbornness as it is thoroughness,” he tried to explain. “I like to have all the answers.”

“Well, now you have them. Satisfied?”

No, he didn’t think he did have all the answers. Certainly not to all the questions he had about Rinny. And he was a long way from being satisfied. But the fact that she liked his eyes was a nice start, he believed.

Just then the maitre d’ interrupted them to let them know that the table Matthew had requested was ready. The couple followed the man through the bar to their table. The restaurant was one of the more casual dining areas the hotel had to offer. Situated outside, it was actually roofed with colorful sun umbrellas that crowned every table. The area was lit with what appeared to be tiki torches, which Corinne assumed were something a little more technically advanced. And happy loving couples were everywhere. But this time it was okay. This time she was part of a couple…a couple of friends, that is.

Matthew held out a seat for Corinne and gently pushed her closer to the table. “Is this okay?” he asked as he took his own seat. “I thought that this might be more comfortable than the formal dining room.”

“It’s perfect,” she assured him. And much better than having room service sent up to her room. She’d never realized that traveling alone could be so…lonely. With his presence, Matthew held the loneliness at bay. For that alone she was grateful to him.

A waiter came to take their drink order. Corinne began to explain with her hands the type of drink she would like. She moved them wide. “I would like something large, like in one of those bowls.” She moved her hands lengthwise and added, “It has to be fruity and make my head spin.” Finally she waved her hands about in a flourish and finished with, “Oh, and umbrellas. Make sure it has lots of umbrellas.”

It took a minute for the waiter to get all that down, but eventually he turned to Matthew.