“I’m actually impressed,” Isla said. And she did look impressed. “Do you think she does yoga? She looks like she does yoga.”
“Definitely,” Safiya said.
Valerie didn’t care if Adrienne had a daily vinyasa routine—though she suspected Adrienne probably had an army of personal trainers at her disposal—she was too busy holding her breath. With her eyes locked on Adrienne, she sank onto the stones next to Sienna.
But her butt barely touched the sand before Hallie toppled backward and hit the water. Which meant Adrienne had done it. She’d won!
“Congratulations, Adrienne and Valerie!” Vivian said once they all stood back onto the canvas stretched out over the pebbled sand. “You’re the winners of the Overlook Spa reward.”
Adrienne was absolutely beaming. Her smile couldn’t get any wider and Valerie had to admit that when Adrienne looked genuinely happy, she was utterly breathtaking.
“But that’s not all,” Vivian continued, a glint in her eye. “Because this isOutlast Her, you two aren’t going alone. You get to invite one other pair to join you for the afternoon.”
Valerie had expected as much. She turned toward Adrienne. Sienna and Tamera would probably be a good choice to win over for an alliance, or maybe even Hallie and Stevie. Before she could even open her mouth, Adrienne blurted, “Niko and Amy.”
Chapter Twelve
Adrienne hadn’t felt this exhilarated in her life and that was saying something. Her life was the definition of exhilarating. Most people spent months planning the kinds of experiences Adrienne stumbled into between brunch and dinner. Like waking up to the gentle rocking of an over-water bungalow in Bora Bora while bioluminescent plankton turned the lagoon below into a swirling galaxy of neon blue, and then going to sleep with the low hum of traffic outside a penthouse in Tokyo’s Roppongi district. Once, she’d flown all the way to Istanbul on a forty-eight-hour whim just to eat a slice of the viral San Sebastian cheesecake before racing back across the Atlantic in time for the opening runway show at New York Fashion Week.
She couldn’t remember when she’d last experienced true boredom because she was always too busy doing exactly whatever her heart desired at any given moment.
But this somehow... well, this hit blood deep. Outlasting the others on those maddeningly narrow pegs while the swell tried to buck her off had injected something wild and entirely unpurchasable into her veins. So had the fact that she’d chosen Niko and Amy to join them on the reward without first discussing it with Valerie. Was that a big move? Possibly.
Adrienne took a slow, indulgent bite of grilled lobster tail. The meat was perfectly tender and dripping with garlic-infused butter. She leaned back against the plush lounge chair with her hair twisted into a thick, fluffy white towel and closed her eyes just for a second, savoring the moment. Her skin was completelyscrubbed free of saltwater and smelled delicious from the heady mix of frangipani body oil, crushed lemongrass, and a rich Moroccan argan cream the massage therapist had slathered on immediately after her steaming-hot rain shower. Her bikini and shorts had been washed and were currently drying over the shower railing.
“Nothing, and I mean nothing, can get better than this,” Niko said, making a sound that bordered on the deeply inappropriate.
And Adrienne couldn’t agree more.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,” Amy said, sounding equally indulgent. “Not even when my book won the Sapphire Quill award last year.”
“Seriously?” Valerie asked in between mouthfuls of truffle-feta watermelon salad. Earlier Adrienne had watched her swallow down three Hasselback potatoes without chewing. “You won an actual, literal award for writing smutty romance?”
Adrienne flicked her eyes open in time to spot Amy nodding proudly. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. I got the call in the morning while I was barcode scanning returned paperbacks, and I thought it was a practical joke. But it wasn’t. They wanted me to go to New York City the following week. I got a glass trophy shaped like a fountain pen.”
“What book did you win the award for?” Valerie asked.
“Spurred and Spanked,”Amy replied, stabbing a juicy slice of watermelon with her fork. “It’s about a broody champion rodeo rider and a sharp-tongued attorney who are forced to share a failing ranch in Montana after they both inherit it. But it’s not even my bestseller. I’ve gotten over a thousand five-star reviews forYou’re My Problemon Goodreads.”
Adrienne choked out a cough. The last thing she’d expected was the frumpy-looking librarian with her gold-rimmed glasses and khakis to write a book smutty enough to be calledSpurred and Spanked. “Are you working on anything new?” Adrienneasked, surprising even herself. Books were boring, and she preferred scrolling on her phone. But for a book like that, she might just make an exception.
Amy glanced up at Adrienne and looked somewhat shocked at the interest. Not surprising since Adrienne had barely talked to Amy since the game started. But Adrienne was turning over a new leaf, so to speak, and she was desperate to survive the next vote. This meant she needed to start building real connections and helping out at camp. One step at a time.
She flipped her legs over the side of the lounge chair and faced Amy. “I’ve got over ten million followers on my Instagram, and if I like the book, I’ll be happy to recommend it. A lot of my followers are part of the LGBT+ community, and trust me, they’re absolutely starved for a good sapphic romance.”
Amy looked bewildered. “You’d really do that?”
Would Adrienne do that? Promoting a book about cowgirl spankings wasn’t exactly her brand. Her fans adored her close-up shots of her Cartier Love bracelets glinting on her wrist with a Bora Bora villa in the background. Or the Bottega Veneta woven totes she had draped on the chair at a buffet breakfast in Capri. They’d think she’d gone mad if she spoke about a smutty book.
But then Adrienne caught Valerie’s eye. The engineer was smiling, or at least her eyes were smiling. She had a tumbler glass of lime cooler pressed to her lips, and she watched Adrienne with an interest that made her legs quake. Did Valerie approve? The small, almost unnoticeable nod she gave said yes; this was exactly the type of plaster Adrienne needed to fix the hole in her game.
“Of course I will,” Adrienne replied and smiled as sweetly as possible. The only thing she could hope for was that Amy would drink a whole lot more Limoncello spritz and forget all about this conversation.
Niko wiped a smear of butter off her chin and, with that cocky air that was beginning to grate on Adrienne, said, “Or maybe you’ll winOutlast Her,and you won’t need Adrienne’s social media to promote your book.”
Adrienne replied with a smile that looked sweet, but underneath was entirely venomous.Niko is just jealous,Adrienne thought.
Amy leaned back on the lounger and wiggled her toes. “Maybe,” she said dreamily, as if she were picturing herself at that final Sending under a haze of confetti. “What will you do if you win the million dollars?”
