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Do not be funny right now.Please.
I sound suddenly weary when I finally manage to speak again. “You’ve made your point. Now leave.”
“What point is that? I’m just here enjoying the company. Blaze is so ...”
He swirls his wine in his glass with a slow taunt, and I nearly yank it out of his hand so I can dump it over his head. It’s more than a little tempting. The sight of that dark-burgundy cabernet slowly dripping down his forehead would keep me satisfied for months to come.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“. . .endearing.”
I shift so I’m fully facing him.
His gaze falls, and his jaw ticks. I look down and realize I’m nearly falling out of the top of this red dress. I’m a Victoria’s Secret model on a casting call. I refuse to care. In fact, I play it up by leaning even more toward Cole as I respond to his needling in a sultry tone.
“Blazeisn’t endearing. Blaze is just like his name,a raging fire. God, he looks at me and I just get sohot.” I let the word drip from my mouth, and as if it isn’t erotic enough, I bite my lip and run my hand up my thigh like I just need to be touched there.Now.Cole’s impenetrable force field splinters and cracks. His humor has burned away. Now he’sallman. His heady gaze, his shallow breaths. He wants to eat me alive. I should stop, but I’ve never been good at heeding warnings. “Cole, a.k.a.coal, is just a fire that’s gone out. Lukewarm ash ...”
There’s an invisible tug between us, a magnet drawing us together.
My gaze drops to his mouth, stained red from the wine. There’s a little flutter of anticipation; like everything we do, all the teasing and taunting is just one big drawn-out foreplay session. It’s maddening.
Cole looks like he’s prepared to draw blood. Under the table, his hands must be biting into his thighs to keep from touching me. We’re about to lose our heads. He’ll swipe the contents of the table onto the floor and then hoist me up onto the tablecloth. Forget the fillet. He’llhave me for dinner. I can imagine it. I’ve had his mouth on me before. I know how good it feels. How little I’d resist if he ...
Then,plop. Cole’s dinner gets dropped on the other side of the table.
“Here you go, man. I double-checked, and everything’s in there, nice and warm.”
Our moment is reduced to rubble.
Like we’ve been doing nothing beyond idle chitchat, Cole retrieves cash from his wallet and drops it on the table. I fold, then refold, my napkin in my lap, trying to regain my composure. Just before he stands, Cole pauses like he’s mulling something over. I think he might draw us back to the conversation we were having ... all that delicious tension hovering just on the periphery. Instead, he leans in close, his voice like a soft feather lightly touching my skin, and tells me, “Enjoy your date.”
Then he walks out of the restaurant with his dinner.
Bereftdoesn’t cut it. I’m a hollowed-out shell as I watch him leave, wishing, for some inexplicable reason, that he was taking me with him.
Chapter Eleven
PAIGE
I don’t have to wait long to see Cole again. He comes to find me the next morning as I’m manning the excursion desk in the main lobby. Of all my weekly tasks, the excursion desk is not the most exciting, but I don’t mind it. I take pride in my position here, more so than anyone else on my team. Not to throw my friends and coworkers under the bus, but most of them are only here as a means to an end. I plan to be at Siesta Playa for the long haul. I’ve found my home here among people I truly care about, and hopefully one day, if I keep my head down and work hard, I’ll get promoted. My friends, meanwhile, enjoy the perks of working in paradise, but they don’t feel the need to go above and beyond for the sake of the resort. I understand where they’re coming from—“Why care about the corporate machine, it doesn’t care about you,” yada yada—but it just so happens that I’m the one weirdo who actually really loves my job. Even this, manning an information desk, isn’t so bad when I get to chat with guests and encourage them to try something new.
Splayed out in neat rows in front of me are informative pamphlets detailing every excursion we have to offer here at Siesta Playa: kayaking trips, meditation sessions, horseback rides—the list goes on. Guests cancome to the desk and get up-to-date information, ask me questions, and reserve their spot for the week’s activities.
I see Cole approaching out of the corner of my eye, and I make myself busy, straightening each individual pamphlet stack.
If this were a normal relationship, he’d keep it moving while throwing me a nod on his way to his office.
Since we’re as far from normal as you can get without being officially labeled “deranged,” he strolls right over and stops in front of the desk, too tall for his own good. I couldn’t see around him if I tried.
I lay down one stack of pamphlets and grab another. I enjoy the sharp rap of papers as I force them to fall in line.
He drops something on the desk.
Coffee.
And not the burned motor oil they brew from dirt and pencil shavings down in the break room. He’s ordered me something from the fancy resort coffee shop, the one I try to avoid so I don’t get in the habit of spending eight dollars on a latte every morning.
“What’s this?”
