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“Sounds good. Good night, Chad.” Beth walked into her room on legs that felt like wooden pegs. In one evening, her entire world had turned upside down. She had so much to think about she doubted she would sleep at all.
After preparing for bed and snuggling into the bedding with the balcony door cracked open so she could hear the waves, she started replaying the day’s events and then all the moments she could remember since meeting Chad. She asked herself if she could be open to more. If she could imagine feeling that way for Chad. If she could love Chad the same way she had loved her husband, and the answer she kept coming to was… yes. Shehad never thought about it or wanted it, but now that she was potentially being given the option to have it, she realized she did want it.
Now, how to move forward from here? Sally said she needed to make a move, and Chad said to let him know. Did she just open the door tomorrow morning and say, “Yes, Chad, I want it all. I want it all with you. Let’s do this.” She chuckled softly, imagining the look on his face if she just came right out and said all of that. Beth was known for her honesty but not for being blunt. She didn’t need sugar added to any of her medicine, but she was very careful to help all the information she relayed go down smoothly and with the best flavor. Maybe it was from forty-two years of nursing very sick people, but she liked to approach things softly.
Worrying about it wasn’t going to make it any easier, so she would just sleep on it and see what happened tomorrow. She hoped that this new development didn’t put a strain on their trip. It was only day two, but she was having so much fun. Time would tell. She closed her eyes and drifted off, thoughts of Chad on her mind.
Chad was in a similar situation in the room next door. He had been moving in this direction for several months now. His desire for more had prompted him to invite Beth on this trip. He hadn’t planned on things being laid out in the open during the trip and definitely not on the second day, but he had hoped that spending time together on a more personal level, away from work, would help their feelings for each other to become more apparent and develop if needed. If Beth wasn’t on the same page and wasn’t interested, then he would have returned home and started taking steps to start seriously looking for a woman to share the rest of his life with. Beth was the only woman he could imagine in that role, and he hoped that the meddling of a stranger didn’t mess things up.
Like he told Beth, things happen for a reason. Maybe the whole situation tonight had been a divine intervention to move things along because he was taking too long to make it happen. Guess he would find out tomorrow. Sleep came a little harder for Chad that night but when he finally did sleep, he dreamed of Beth, holding her grandchild with a gold band on her finger.
Chapter 11
When Beth opened the door to her room the next morning in answer to Chad’s knock, he was pleased to see a smile on her face. She looked well rested, which hopefully meant she hadn’t been as tortured with the previous evening’s events as he had.
He escorted her down the hall, and they took the stairs down to the lower decks where the gangway was set up for departures. Finally making it past the throng of guests disembarking, they walked at a steady pace towards the end of the pier. “Folks must have gotten over their jet lag and decided today was their day to explore. It is much more crowded today than it was yesterday.” He noted as they wove between groups of people walking slowly or stopping to take pictures of the large ships.
At the end of the pier, they found the excursion director holding a sign for their activity and joined the line of people waiting to board the bus that would whisk them away on their next adventure.
Taking Beth’s hand so they did not get separated by the people pushing around them, Chad boarded the charter bus and led theway to the back, where two seats next to each other stood empty. Allowing Beth to enter the row first and sit next to the window, he claimed the aisle seat. He dodged beach bags and behinds for the next five minutes until all the guests registered for this event finally settled.
As the bus started to move, Beth turned to him and said, “Yes.”
“Yes?” Confusion caused Chad’s eyebrows to furrow.Had he missed the beginning of this conversation in his effort to keep his eyeballs from being gouged out while the others took their seats?
“Yes,” Beth repeated with a meaningful look in her eyes.
Chad scrambled, trying to piece this puzzle together, instinctively knowing that asking whatyesmeant was a bad idea. As his thoughts swirled and started clicking into place, the realization about sent him bolting from his seat. “Yes! Yes, you are open to more? Yes, you are open to me?” He nearly shouted, wanting to confirm he was understanding this correctly to avoid any further misunderstanding.
“Yes,” Beth said once more, a smile gleaming on her beautiful face and lighting her eyes.
“Oh, Beth, you don’t know what this means to me.” He reached over and grasped her hand in his. What he wanted to do was hug her, but that would have been awkward given their current setting. “I am going to warn you, I have wanted this deep down for a very long time and only just recently allowed myself to acknowledge it. I will do my best to take things slow, but we have already given ten years to this friendship, and I am not willing to give it much more. I want you in my life in a much bigger way, but we can take as much time as you need to feel comfortable with the next phase.” He peered into her gorgeous blue eyes and held tightly onto his desire to kiss her. Zero to one hundred was not Beth’s style; the surest way to mess this up would be to make her feel rushed.
She nodded her head and squeezed his fingers, “I agree we have been friends a long time, and that phase doesn’t need any more time. However, I am an old-fashioned girl, and I am not going to be jumping in your bed tonight or accepting your ring tomorrow. I am agreeing to moving forward, but we are several laps away from the finish line.”
“I understand. We will take our time and enjoy the journey. So, do I get to introduce you as my girlfriend now?” The grin on his face showed he was teasing, but it was something to consider.
“That makes me sound like I am twenty, not sixty-two. Can we just skip the labels for now?”
“Certainly, but if the conversation arises where labels are warranted, I’ll just call you my woman.”
He chuckled as Beth reached over and gently pinched the skin over his ribs.
Upon arriving at the beach and receiving their snorkeling gear, they moved over to their rented cabana and prepared themselves for a day enjoying the sun, surf, and sand. Beth removed her coverup and started applying a second layer of sunscreen, having applied the first layer in her stateroom so it had time to soak in and be more effective. Chad, having never seen her without all of her outer clothing on, was left breathless, blown away by how beautiful she was. The bathing suit she wore highlighted her womanly curves and toned legs, which he had seen in shorts but, he now had a full view of her muscled thighs, and they were gorgeous. He shook his head as he took the tube of sunscreen she offered him. He was a doctor and had seen bodies of all shapes and sizes and had never been so affected by one as he was now seeing Beth for the first time.
She turned her back to him, silently asking him to apply it to her back. As his fingertips skimmed over the softness of her skin, he worried he was on sensory overload. He had just promised to take things slow, and all he wanted to do was wrap her inhis arms and kiss her- right before carting her off to the nearest ship’s captain and demanding he marry them. How in the world he had kept his desires and attraction to her dormant for so long, he had no idea. He felt like he had been blind and numb for the last ten years to not see her for the stunning woman that she was.
Finishing the sunscreen application on her back, Chad lifted his t-shirt over his head and turned his back to her so she could return the favor. Her hesitant touch and feather-light strokes made him wonder if she was experiencing the same flooding of sensation as he had. Beth had been a nurse as long as he had been a doctor and had the same approach to bodies as he did. She had a sure and steady touch when handling patients, yet what he was feeling from her was something entirely different. Had she touched a man since her husband had died some twenty-five years before? They would need to have that discussion, but not right now. Turning and thanking her, he finished applying lotion to his chest before scooping up their gear and jogging to the beach. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” he called over his shoulder.
He heard her chuckle but also knew that she was not going to race him to the beach. He dove into the water as soon as it reached his knees and came up a short distance away. Beth had reached the shoreline and was wading in to meet him. They adjusted their masks and snorkel tubes, then spent the next two hours exploring the reef and pointing to all the underwater creatures they came across.
“I am going to burn; I am heading in to rest, hydrate, and reapply sunscreen,” Beth announced the next time they lifted their heads from the water to clear their air tubes.
“I will come with you. I need to do the same. This has been amazing, though. I can’t believe all the colors down there, and that sea turtle was so big!”
Within five minutes of settling in the double lounger in their small cabana, the drinks and snacks they had ordered arrived. Beth’s came in a green coconut that had been chopped open with a machete.
“This drink does not have alcohol in it, correct?” she asked the young man who delivered the drinks.
