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“I ordered you a coffee, a water, and a mimosa. I wasn’t sure what you’d want.”
She smiles and I resist the powerful urge to kiss her. “That’s perfect, thank you.” When she looks at Dom and Rowan, she doesn’t react to Dom’s vagrant-looking appearance, instead asking, “How was your first night in paradise?”
“It was great,” Rowan says. “How was the luau?”
“It turned out to be a lot more fun than we were expecting.”
As we make small talk and eat breakfast, I can feel Dom sizing Stella up. He’s always got the jokes and takes life one day at a time, but Dom is much smarter than he lets on. He’s a quick study and his ability to sniff out bullshit is uncanny. So I’m not surprised when I get a text from him after we say our goodbyes, as Stella and I are walking to the hotel pool.
Dom: When you decide to tell me what’s really going on, I’ve got your back.
“Everything okay?” Stella asks when she sees my expression.
I tuck my phone into my pocket and smile. “Everything’s great. Let’s get some of those pineapple drinks you like so much.”
“What is your partner’s favorite weekend activity?”
Stella and I give each other a resigned look before writing answers down on the white dry erase boards in front of us.
So far trivia has been an absolute bust. Marco sat one partner from each couple at a long table, and the other at another table facing that one. He reads questions about everyone’s partner, we write down the answers, and each couple gets a point when they’re right.
Stella and I are the only couple with no points.
“Sleeping?” Tanisha cries when she sees Tre’s answer. “Why would you say sleeping? It’s brunch at Hopper’s. You know this, baby.”
He shrugs. “Sorry.”
“At least I know yours is watching football,” she says, shaking her head.
“Okay,” Marco says, checking his notebook. “Looks like Owen guessed that Stella’s favorite weekend activity is shopping, and her answer was actually...taking nature photos.”
My shoulders sink.
“It’s okay.” Stella waves a hand. “I like shopping, too.”
“Stella, let’s see what you wrote down for your hubby,” Marco says.
She turns over the whiteboard, which she wrote watching sports on.
“Owen’s answer was actually smoking meat.”
“You can smoke my meat anytime, baby,” Sean says from beside Ben, making everyone laugh.
“Next question,” Marco says, moving on. “Where were the two of you when one of you said I love you for the first time?”
Hell. I don’t have a chance of getting this right. Owen probably told Stella that in high school, but where would they have been? I take a wild guess and write my basement, which is where the two of them hung out a lot back then.
When Stella turns around the whiteboard and I see school bus, envy stabs me straight in the gut. I was probably on that same bus, oblivious to my brother charming the girl I was crazy about.
“Are you sure you guys know each other?” Tre cracks, leaning forward to look at me.
“You’ve got no room to talk, baby,” Tanisha said. “You thought I liked frappes.”
“You used to!”
“I had one frappe, eight years ago.”
Stella and I get last place when the trivia event mercifully ends. The winning couple, Sean and Braden, will have champagne and dessert delivered to their room tonight. I can tell Stella is as relieved as I am when it’s time to move on to the lunch buffet.
“At least the massages will be easy,” she says. “I hope I can take a nap during mine.”
“That sounds good.”
“Are you ready to go to the spa?”
I finish the last sip of my drink and say, “Let’s do it.”
Forty-five minutes later, Stella and I are sitting across from each other in two chairs inside a massage suite, and I’m one hundred percent sure there won’t be any napping in the next hour and a half.
“We’re massaging each other?” she asks, her eyes wide.
“Yes, love,” our massage therapist Alana says. “This is guided sensual couples’ massage. Just relax. I’ll be standing behind the curtain as I guide you, but I see people naked every day, so don’t feel self-conscious.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m already hard, just from the thought of giving Stella a massage. We’re both wearing the white robes we were told to change into when we arrived, so she can’t tell, but once the robe’s off, she’ll see that I look like a teenage boy gawking at a nudie mag.
“Mrs. Hogan, please disrobe and lie on the table,” Alana says.
As she dims the lights, a new age instrumental song starts playing on low volume. Stella and I just stare at each other for a second before I mouth, ‘We don’t have to do this.’
“Don’t be shy,” Alana says encouragingly. “This is your husband, Stella. He’s very much in love with your body.”
