Julie’s Hawaiian Vacay Itinerary!

You and your “work husband” have just won an all-expenses-paid vacation in Oahu. Now the fun begins...

1 Get lei’d. (With flowers, obvi.)

2 Settle into your gorgeous ocean-side cabin. Contemplate living in Hawaii forever.

3 Become overwhelmed with hideous unexplained jealousy when your bestie decides to make sexy moves on your work husband, Alan.

4 Dismiss jealousy. After all, you’re not interested in Alan “that” way...are you?

5 Avoid joyous dancing when bestie’s ex arrives and sweeps her off her feet—leaving Alan completely and totally available.

6 Now you’re alone with Alan. Alone. In paradise. Take a deep breath, have a mai tai—or two—and (gulp!) make your move. Be classy.

7 “Accidentally” let Alan peek under your grass skirt.

8 Take off grass skirt.

9 Do Incredibly Naughty and Sexy Things everywhere.

10 And do not think about what happens when you and your work husband go back to reality....

Dear Reader,

You know when they draw the name for the really big door prize, the one you can’t believe somebody actually donated? We all finger our little ticket stubs, pretending not to care, because we know we won’t win. It’s too much, too lucky, too outrageous.

But somebody wins. And this is the story of two such somebodies, whose amazing luck seems to follow them from the Silicon Valley all the way to the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Julie and Alan are “work spouses” and good friends, but the unexpected dream vacation they find themselves on is charmed in all sorts of ways. The tropical setting. The exotic wildlife. The fruity drinks with umbrellas and tiny plastic swords. And that’s all before they even get to the wild night of dancing by the light of the tiki torches.

They’ve done this once before...accidentally falling on each other’s faces. This time, it goes way beyond faces. And this time, they can’t blame it on champagne and mistletoe. They have to face the morning after, and decide what to do about all the mornings after that. And they only have four days to figure it out.

I hope you enjoy their delicious dilemma!

I love to hear from readers. You can find me online at www.delphinedryden.com, or on Twitter @deldryden.

Aloha!

Delphine Dryden

Mai Tai for Two

Delphine Dryden

Contemporary, sexy stories for sassy women.

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Mills & Boon

www.millsandboon.co.uk/cosmo

About the Author

Delphine Dryden majored in English at the University of Texas at Austin, and probably should have gone ahead for that MFA and PhD to become an English professor like she planned. Instead, she took a detour through law school, practiced law for a woefully brief time, and wound up working in special education for the next fifteen or so years (first as a teacher, then as an educational diagnostician). Somewhere in there, she also obtained a master’s in educational psychology/special education.

Delphine writes contemporary erotic romance for Carina Press, and mainstream steampunk romance for Berkley. She has also published with Ellora’s Cave and Cleis Press. Her writing has earned an Award of Excellence and Reviewers’ Choice Award from RT Book Reviews, an EPIC Award and a Colorado Romance Writers’ Award of Excellence.

A few years ago, Delphine gave up the day job to write full-time. Now she balances that with parenting two kids and two dogs, and occasionally designing web sites or making trailer videos. She and her family are all Texas natives, and reside in unapologetic suburban bliss near Houston.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

“But I never win anything!”

Julie kept saying it long after she should have stopped, probably annoying her coworkers no end. It wasn’t true, of course. She’d won stuff—everybody won stuff. Little things, like a spelling bee, or a round of rock, paper, scissors. Once, she won an office pool on when the receptionist’s baby would be born (three in the afternoon, on a lovely Tuesday in May).

This was different. The little stuff barely counted as wins next to something this spectacular.

She leaned over, raising her voice over the steadily increasing after-work crowd noise in the bar, and asked Alan Cortese to pinch her.

He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure pinching you would be harassment.”

“Not if it’s on the arm. Besides, we’re not in the office right now. Ouch!” His fingers left significant heat behind on her shoulder. “I take it back. It’s harassment if you do it that hard.”

“You’re awake, okay?” He used his cheesy emcee voice, rolling his prize certificate up and using it as a microphone. His dark eyebrows waggled over bright brown eyes alight with mischief. “Julie Perfetto, you’ve just won a vacation for two to a fabulous tropical resort in beautiful Hawaii! What are you going to do now?”

“Never complain about a company motivational event again.”

“That’s a given. Me, either. I can’t believe either of us won this fucking thing. What are the odds? What else are you gonna do?”

“Yikes. Call Amanda, I guess, once she’s done at work. How about you? Who are you gonna bring on the trip?” She knew he wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, but maybe he had a sleeper candidate.

“No clue. I don’t know, I’ll probably end up giving the tickets to my parents. Sitting on the beach isn’t really my thing.”

Ugh.

Not for the first time, Julie considered what a dutiful son Alan was. He really did put her to shame. Parents. She should have at least thought about calling her parents. It was really big news. She told herself she would totally call them. Right after she called Amanda.

Julie plucked the tour brochures they’d been ogling from the slightly sticky bar and fanned them in front of Alan’s face. “Did you even read these? You don’t ever have to go near the beach. There’s horseback riding, hiking, kayaking. You can take a helicopter ride. Or skip the beach itself and go straight into the ocean for snorkeling. Surfing, even.”

“Are you two going to do all that stuff?”

She wasn’t about to tell Alan her actual plan for the trip, conceived about five minutes after the initial shock had worn off. Find a good-looking guy, take reasonable precautions and then—for once in her life—have no-strings-attached sex. A story for her pervy mental scrapbook, which was woefully thin as yet.

“Oh, hell no. I mean, I probably will do some adventure sports, but Amanda...” She flipped through the themed brochures until she found the one labeled Spa Retreat. “This is how I’ll entice her away from her desk. Massages. Full day spa. Yoga classes. World-class cuisine. And fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.”

“That last one isn’t on the list.”

“I’m making an educated guess. Wow. I have to call her. She’s going to flip out.”

Alan snorted and shook his head. “I can’t see her going that far from her office for a vacation. Even a free one.”

“You just don’t like her because she dumped you.” Julie had fixed them up shortly after she started working with Alan, but the chemistry simply wasn’t there.

“There was no dumping. We only went out three times. Besides, it’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like me.”

It was sort of true. Amanda had liked Alan okay, but she had never like liked him. Julie thought she was nuts for that, but there was no accounting for taste. Then Amanda had met Jeremy, so the point became moot.

Julie herself had friend-zoned Alan right away, because of the coworker thing. Over the past three years he’d also become her generally acknowledged “work husband,” and with that title came the acceptance that he was off-limits...because having a crush on your work husband was pathetic. No matter how much he brightened your day by walking into your cubicle, and regardless of what his ass looked like when he walked back out. Never mind that one ill-advised Christmas-party mistletoe kiss.

Julie could admire a man objectively and enjoy the view, but that didn’t mean she had to start acting a fool. She had her own plans for her life, very specific things she wanted to accomplish in the next few years, and she’d started to feel that boyfriends simply weren’t worth the distraction from her goals. Not that Alan had ever been a boyfriend.

Still, going on a romantic vacation with him might have been interesting. Nice, rather than romantic. Julie told herself it would have been...pleasant. Because of how trustworthy and affable he was. Always good to have another buddy along. It was in character for him to give the trip away, though. Typical good-guy move.

Julie revised her initial reaction. He was too nice, really, Alan was. And Mr. Dependable was maybe not the best person to share a wild tropical vacation with. Her life was already safe and well-regulated enough; the point of a vacation was to get away from that for a little while, but not to gather more emotional clutter in the process. Thus, the no-strings-sex idea.

“Then it’s a good thing you’re giving the trip to your parents, like the good son you are. So sweet. A mother’s angel.” She pinched his cheek like an overbearing aunt at a family reunion. “You know I’ll be out parasailing from horseback while simultaneously kayaking or something, while you’d have probably hung out at the poolside bar drinking beers. So you would have been more likely to see Amanda than me.” This wasn’t true. Alan would’ve been the one on the horse, pulling her along.

He lifted his beer, saluting her with it. “I’ll be sure to tell Mom and Dad to wave to you from the beach as you fly by.”

Chapter Two

Alan recognized the lei flowers from the plumeria trees his mom grew back home. The clean spicy-citrus scent felt right for this place, practically crooning out “Welcome to Oahu.” He watched Julie savoring it, burying her nose in the pink-and-yellow blossoms and inhaling with a beatific smile. Alan reached for his phone to snap a picture, but Julie straightened up and ducked into the car too fast for him to capture the moment. Just as well.

Amanda was close behind her, but Alan lingered outside a few seconds longer while the limo driver bedecked him with a lei of his own. It was less girly than the others, with some sort of small white flowers intertwined with shells, leaves and what appeared to be nuts. He clamped down on the urge to make a nut joke to the guy, figuring he’d probably heard all of those about a million times before.

When he joined the girls in the spacious vehicle, though, he had to lead with, “Yeah, I hung back so the driver could sling his nuts on me.”

Julie snorted. Amanda rolled her eyes, though he caught a hint of a smile. She was sitting directly opposite Julie, and Alan had to make a split-second decision on who to sit next to. The platonic work wife, who reliably laughed at his jokes, or the cute single girl who always seemed reluctant to admit she found them funny? He defaulted to his comfort zone, sliding in next to Julie.

Amanda gestured at the lush leather-clad interior, which looked and smelled expensive. “Pinch me.”

“I know, right?” Julie held her lei up, taking another quick sniff. “I’ve felt that way ever since they called my name at that meeting. I mean, I knew it was a luxury vacation, but I guess my experience to date was way too limited to let me imagine what this would really be like.”

She and Amanda both paused to snuffle at their leis again, happy-sighing in tandem.

“I’ll pinch you,” Alan offered. “Either of you.” He flopped closer to Julie, his shoulder brushing hers as he arranged himself. At the unexpected contact, both of them automatically shifted a few inches away, maintaining a buffering distance like magnets with the same polarity.

Amanda shot him a smirk. “I’ll pass on the pinch, thanks. Gosh, it was so great on the plane, Alan, while you were sleeping and quietly watching violent guy movies on your iPad and not giving anyone grief.”

He’d definitely picked the safer side to sit on.

“Don’t make me separate you two,” Julie warned.

“Julie was watching the movie, too,” Alan pointed out. “Don’t lie, Jules. I saw you do that fist-pump during the big shoot-out scene.”

She gave his shoulder a friendly shove, breaking the magical buffer zone again, and he laughed to cover up his startled reaction when she let her hand linger for a second, shaping itself around his upper arm. He thought of the days ahead, the beach and the likelihood of her touching his arm again when he was shirtless. Then he put that thought carefully away, in the same deep cupboard of his brain where he stored all the photos of Julie he hadn’t taken, the smiles she gave him first thing in the morning over the coffee machine in the break room, and the feeling of her lips under his the one and only time he’d let his impulses overcome his good sense.

The cupboard was locked and had to stay that way, because Julie liked him like a brother. She’d told him so, always said he was the dorky brother she’d never had, even though she had three perfectly good actual brothers. He knew two of them through work, and they seemed like nice enough guys. They seemed a whole lot like him, though, which might have been Julie’s deeper point. He reminded her too much of them for her to ever consider him in a romantic light. Even after that single tipsy kiss over a year ago—that kiss, God, all hot mulled wine and mistletoe and wild promise—she’d never seemed to go through the revelation Alan had felt. His whole world had shifted, things falling into place so hard he had to brace himself against the shock. No such bracing was needed on Julie’s part, because to her it had obviously been no big deal. He’d heard her laugh the incident off to a coworker who’d asked if they were together, describing it as a case of tripping and accidentally falling into each other’s faces. A one-time oopsie.

You have to get over any girl who calls you an oopsie, dude.

Instead of getting over it, he glanced at Julie from the corner of his eye and wondered what she’d look like in her bathing suit. Then he tried to correct himself, picturing Amanda in her bathing suit, as though he was simply picturing all the girls that way instead of one in particular. Hot as she was, though, Amanda did nothing for him. Julie crept back into his thoughts, like always.

If he’d had a girlfriend at the moment, it would have been easier not to dwell. He hadn’t wanted to come at all without a romantic plus-one. Unlike Julie, he didn’t have a single friend he especially wanted to spend four days and three nights with in a tropical paradise. Nobody other than Julie, at least, who was technically a platonic friend. But when his parents had refused his offer, he’d decided to suck it up and make the trip alone. He’d spent a few hours by phone and email convincing the resort to make up the difference in the prize amount with credits toward all the kayaking, helicopter tours and other adventurous stuff he hoped to do.

And hopefully, all that distraction would be enough to keep him from tripping and falling on Julie’s face again.

* * *

Julie felt like pressing her nose up against the glass, the better to take in the absurdly lush tropical foliage and iconic views. The drive from the airport to the resort took them most of the way across the island, and every random glance out the windows presented postcard-worthy scenery while the warm, spicy scent of the lei flowers filled the limo and charmed the very air she breathed. Hawaii. Oahu. Surely she would wake up at any moment.

She was accustomed to enjoying things after working for them, and the windfall nature of the trip had an illicit and slightly guilty charm. She’d overprepared, researching and packing for all possibilities, determined to plan it all out and wring every drop of perfection from this once-in-a-lifetime event. Now she worried that she’d set herself up for disappointment, because it was only a hotel, after all, no matter how many stars it ranked on the travel guides. Only Hawaii, and only four days and three nights. If she did pick somebody up to spend time with, he would most likely fall closer to Lothario than to Prince Charming on the spectrum. But the place felt magical, anyway. Like anything could happen.

The hotel grounds did nothing to debunk those fairy-tale delusions. More magic, more fresh tropical flowers, actual parrots on perches. The trips were her company’s big employee-appreciation door prizes for an unexpectedly fruitful year, and they hadn’t skimped. The hotel deserved all those stars it had earned and then some. The staff clearly knew how to do celebrity treatment, and they whisked the threesome in and out of the lobby in a twinkling, no lingering among the hoi polloi—not that there were any hoi polloi there, but if there had been, Julie and her two friends wouldn’t have had to wait with them for a bellhop.

The luggage was whisked away on a golf cart, while the trio opted to walk from the main hotel building to the beachfront “cottage” accommodations. Not really cottages, but isolated clusters of half a dozen luxury suites each, dotting the shoreline of the small bay on which the hotel sat. All had glass doors facing the beach and ocean, and were screened from the main hotel by trees and hibiscus bushes for an illusion of privacy. The short stroll to get there was a treat in itself, a mini-tour of some of the resort’s amazing amenities and breathtaking views. All the views were breathtaking. There were no mediocre angles to the place. Julie kept thinking of descriptors, then realized she was quoting the brochures to herself. Truth in advertising, to be sure.

Amanda kept saying, “Oh my God!” and whacking Julie on the arm as she pointed to one wonder after another: the lushly landscaped rock waterfall tumbling into the pool, the surreal turquoise water of the ocean lagoon, the clearly recognizable movie starlet lounging by the tiki hut bar.

She even heard Alan whisper, “Holy crap,” at one point, and he was usually pretty hard to impress. He wasn’t even looking at the starlet at the time. Possibly at the poolside tiki bar’s beer selection. She suspected he’d spend some time becoming more familiar with that very soon.

One of the bellhops peeled off with Alan to a room on the end of one cottage row. Julie and Amanda were at the opposite end of the row, and they said, “Ooooh,” in tandem when they saw where they’d be staying.

“We can be totally uncool about this now, yes?” Amanda pleaded.

“Yes!” Oh dear God, yes yes yes! If you couldn’t be uncool about something this awesome, there was no hope for you.

They jumped and squealed at each other, amusing the bellhop. “I hope you ladies continue to enjoy your stay this much.”

“I’m sure we will,” Julie assured him, bounding across the room to hand him a tip. “Thank you!”

“Mahalo!”

Eeee!

When he closed the door behind them they burst into squeals again, clapping in delight like little kids.

The room was like something from a movie, all hardwood floors and gorgeous modern furniture. A bathroom three times bigger and about fifty times cooler than her standard-issue apartment bath. The fresh flowers throughout the suite were the giant red phallic-looking ones and tiger lilies, floral enticements to debauchery. Julie hadn’t needed enticing. She’d arrived in Hawaii hoping to accomplish some debauchery, but the flowers definitely helped set the mood.

“Jules, it looks like your condo!”

“Not my condo yet. Not for another three years.” Julie had some saving still to do before she could afford the home of her dreams, a stylish place off Santana Row in the city. But she would get there. As long as she stayed on her current trajectory, by the time she was thirty she would be waking up in a sleek, modern, sophisticated space straight out of Architectural Digest. Walking down to the Row for coffee on weekend mornings, where she could sit outside on the plaza and read and watch the people. Strolling over to the indie movie theater to catch an art film if the whim struck her, or inviting people over to go to the wine bar in the middle of the square without the need to drive home afterward. She could even ride her bicycle to work from there, a bonus she’d never anticipated when she first concocted her plan at age twenty.

And Amanda was absolutely right. This bore a marked resemblance to the place she had her eye on. Further inspiration to keep her nose to the grindstone.

“Movie stars stay here,” Amanda reminded her as they pored through the fruit basket.

Julie nodded as soberly as she could manage. “They don’t appreciate it like we do, though.”

Another round of Eeeeee! followed, because they simply couldn’t help themselves. It was that kind of place.

They explored the whole suite, then headed back out the glass doors to sit on the private lanai, with its prime view of the beach and the pristine turquoise water.

And an even better rear view of a passing jogger.

All high-pitched squealing stopped as the friends watched the guy lope away from them on the far edge of the lawn that ran between their room and the beach proper. He disappeared beyond the bushes that separated their cluster of rooms from the next, and Julie finally exhaled.

“Whoa.”

Amanda wasn’t usually an ogler, but she clearly hadn’t been able to help herself. Julie couldn’t blame her. The jogging man had looked so...dangerously fit. A whole new realm of potential vacation activities suddenly opened up in her mind. Debauchery plus.

“Is it just me,” Amanda asked, “or did he look familiar?”

“Not just you. I didn’t see his face, but he still looked like James Bond. One of the awesome Bonds, too. He totally looked capable of kicking someone’s ass while making a tux look good. I wonder how long he’s staying? I didn’t see a wedding ring....”

“You took the time to look at his finger? Wow. I didn’t even think of that. I was mesmerized by the ass and his ability to carry off a crew cut. For me, a guy like that is completely theoretical, anyway, so why worry about whether he’s actually with someone? It could only hinder the fantasizing.”

Julie shrugged, looking out at the ocean again. The water was too blue to believe, and its constant, gentle roar soothed her, even as she tensed at the idea of relying on fantasizing about guys who could only ever be theoretical. She was trying to get away from that reality. Instead, she might very well be doomed to spend four days getting a crash course in exactly why it was such a bad idea, if Alan found a vacation hookup and she didn’t.

“It matters. He’s a different person if he’s with somebody. And what if you fantasize now, then have to watch him mack on some other girl every night at dinner? Or some guy, or whatever. That shit gets painful. Better to be forewarned. But hey, why should he only be theoretical to you? You’re adorable. If he’s single you should go for it.” After all, there had to be plenty of other likely prospects. It was a huge resort.

She knew this kind of encouragement went right past her five-foot-two pixie-haired friend, but kept saying it in the hopes it would stick one day. Instead, Amanda had seemed even more down on herself since breaking off her engagement the previous year. Julie never understood why Amanda couldn’t see any of her own appeal. Petite, delicate, girly and nothing like her gangly, awkward best friend.

Julie had grown into her tallish athletic figure and added some curves as an adult, but she still felt like that same dorky kid inside. Her hair was thick, brown, curly and unruly, and she had decided at a certain point in high school that she refused to consider it the bane of her existence. That would be letting the hair win, and she couldn’t let that happen. But now she rarely considered it at all, just shoving it into a ponytail or bun and forgetting about it for the rest of the day. No amount of product or appliance could turn it into soft, springy waves as seen on TV, not that she’d really devoted much effort to trying. Her attention was on work, and on completing the ambitious ten-year plan she’d begun back in college. Her only fashion obsession was big earrings, of which she owned far too many.

Amanda, on the other hand, got her hair cut once a month, and always seemed to know which products to use to bend it to her will. She professed to actually enjoy shopping for clothes, and she didn’t still own the same makeup that she’d used in college just because it hadn’t run out yet.

Julie often wondered if they would have ever become best friends if it weren’t for the alphabet. Growing up, they sat together so often in school—Julie Perfetto, Amanda Perry—that it was like the universe was pushing them together. Neither girl had ever regretted it, but they were definitely an odd couple.

Amanda peered after the guy, shaking her head. “I’m a stocky elf. You’re gorgeous, and you’ve seen all the James Bond movies. You’re like Adventure Girl. You should go after him yourself.”

“Are you bailing out on the frisky vacation-hookup high jinks?” They’d planned to be each other’s moral support in this wild scheme.

“No, I’m still one hundred percent on board with that. I need to get laid like whoa,” Amanda clarified. “I’m going insane.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

She shot her friend a look. “It has been ten months, ten days, and I lost track of the hours at daylight savings time, but it’s a lot of hours. It has been a long time. I have run through way too many batteries. Jeremy may have been an asshole, but he’s a tough act to follow.”

Julie flashed back to Amanda’s ex-fiancé. The perfect man, really...except for the part where he’d apparently expected Amanda to give up her own very solid career in San Jose to move with him to Seattle for his start-up. Their breakup had been unexpected, abrupt, and more than a little acrimonious.

Resorting to battery toys alone for that long seemed a little silly, though. With dismay, she realized her own dry spell was actually longer than Amanda’s. Over a year. She hadn’t even dated anybody since The Incident at the Christmas party.

“Definitely time for some vacation naughtiness, then,” she said, when she became aware that Amanda was still waiting for a response.

“I agree. And while the idea of a stranger still freaks me out a little, I’ve come up with a plan. Probably a really bad one, if history tells me anything, but at least it’s something.”

Julie only knew one guy her friend could have already made a plan about that involved history. She started to flat out ask if Amanda was talking about Alan, but something stopped her. Possibly the cold knot of something icky that had begun to form in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t put a name to the ick, which bothered her. It was more a general feeling of wait, now...wait. No. Which was stupid. She had no claim on Alan, and objectively speaking he was a great guy. Why wouldn’t she want Amanda to investigate further? Hell, she’d already tried to fix them up once before. Three years ago. When she hardly knew Alan.

“I have more immediate concerns. They’re about getting my bikini on and finding a fancy umbrella drink before dinner. You in?”

“Julie, honey, I’ve never been so in.”

Chapter Three

For Julie, the whole point of the vacation was to get away from home. She wanted exotic. Debonair strangers, dangerous beach joggers. Instead, she got Alan, not even shirtless, appearing on the lanai right as she and Amanda were heading out. He had exchanged his shorts for swim trunks, but otherwise wore what he had on the flight. And what he usually wore to work, for that matter. An XKCD T-shirt that only geeks would understand, and sports sandals. He’d been ready to go since they left San Jose.

“Oh my God?” he led off.

“Oh my God,” Julie confirmed. “Oh my fucking God, this place!”

“Are we going for drinks?”

She nodded. “Of course we are.”

“You’re, um...” His eyes shifted, flicking down for a second at her bikini-clad form. If she’d blinked, she would have missed it. “You’re going like that?”

That bad? “Yeah, that was the plan. Drinks, maybe a swim, then dinner. Look, Amanda’s in a bikini, too.”

The look he gave Amanda was more open and, if Julie didn’t mistake his expression, more appreciative. Why that struck her with a sudden pang, she wasn’t sure. She knew she shouldn’t care. She spent a great deal of time reminding herself she didn’t think of Alan that way, after all. If Amanda was ready to try Alan on for size again, Julie should be happy to see that the interest was reciprocated. Because they were her friends.

“So she is. I feel overdressed.”

“We’ll put pareos on,” Amanda volunteered. “I feel too exposed to relax and enjoy a drink like this. My butt’s hanging out.”

Her butt was too tiny to hang anywhere—if Amanda was stocky, Julie thought, she was the Easter Bunny—but she wasn’t going to argue if Alan’s dismissive glance at her own bikini body was any indication of the reception she’d receive out in the world.

Amanda had to show her how to tie the pareo around her hips, while Alan tapped his foot and sighed extravagantly. “You’re wearing next to nothing and it still takes you forever to get ready.”

“I’ll remind you that I am typically ready before you.” It was true, because unlike Julie, Alan did wear hair care products, and sometimes he even ironed his clothes.

“An aspect of our friendship that I genuinely appreciate.”

“There. You’re a beach goddess now.” Amanda stood back to admire her handiwork, and Julie had to admit she liked the way the soft fabric of the pareo clung to her hips and created the impression of a smaller waist.

Then she caught it—the peek. Amanda’s momentary sideways gaze at Alan, right before she blushed. Julie’s stomach lurched again.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! Why should that be full of fuck, though? She wasn’t supposed to care about Alan that way. Was. Not. Supposed. To.

“So, Alan,” Amanda ventured, while Julie tried to quell her growing distress, “I think you’re still overdressed. You don’t look like you’re in the spirit of things.”

“Nope. You need to lose the shirt.”

“And blind everybody with my pasty chest? I don’t think so.”

Julie thought, Go ahead, blind me. And then she identified the horrible clenching grip on her stomach. It was the hand of jealousy, clutching tight. Which was ridiculous, because the last thing she needed was a nerdy, straight-arrow guy from a big, clingy suburban family like her own, who worked with her every day. Besides, Alan was like a brother to her. A brother. She told herself that all the time, so it must be true, right? There were work spouses and there were real-life love interests, and never the twain should meet.

“Lay off, Amanda. If he’s not comfortable he should keep it on. Maybe you can reconsider it after a couple drinks,” Julie suggested to Alan. “When it’s dark out.”

Pretending not to see the puzzled glare Amanda turned her way, she headed for the door.

* * *

They never made it into the water. Drinks led directly into dinner. Night fell as they finished dessert and a last round, so they took themselves down to the beach, where a respectable bonfire and innumerable tiki torches illuminated the partiers’ faces with glowing, hellish intensity. A temporary grass-roofed bar was set up nearby. Beachy music thumped through the crowd, tempting everyone to dance, but the trio skirted the gyrating crush and continued past the fire to the water’s edge. Three in a row, arm in arm, flip-flops kicking up warm sand with every step. Alan was the monkey in the middle, and he’d already made several threesome cracks. He couldn’t resist, sandwiched between two undeniably hot women as he was, but damn was there an uncomfortable undercurrent.

Amanda laughed too loud at the jokes, and Julie could barely muster a smile, so the normal order of things felt entirely subverted. It hadn’t been bad at first, but the more relaxed they all got, the more obvious Amanda’s flirting became. The penny had finally dropped about halfway through dinner. She’s actually coming on to me. And Julie looked like she was about to cry—or possibly throw up, although she hadn’t had that much to drink. She was also doing an extreme version of the aggressive, outgoing good cheer that signaled she would rather be alone. Wearing her extrovert armor to protect her soft, chewy, introverted center, which usually only happened when she was stressed or upset about something. He wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Alan’s nerves rose, making him talk too much and say stupid, obvious stuff that nobody really ought to be laughing at. He couldn’t seem to make himself stop, though.

Underneath the nerves, however, there was a flicker of resentment he hated to acknowledge. Where did Julie get off pouting when she’d fixed him up with Amanda in the first place for their previous mildly disastrous attempts at dating? What was it to her if they hooked up for a vacation fling? Since that was obviously what Amanda had in mind, with the broad hints she’d been dropping. Now that he thought about it...it hadn’t been all that disastrous between them. More lacking in instant chemistry than anything else. Awkward moments, too many lulls in conversation. They had trouble agreeing on where to eat for their first date, because they had wildly different preferences in food. On their second try they’d gone to a movie, and hadn’t laughed in exactly the same places. Effort number three had been the “let’s meet for coffee and talk” outing, the end of the experiment.

But no animosity. And their brief make-out session on date two had probably been the highlight of the whole non-relationship. He could see them having a no-strings fling. Except for one thing, the part of their dates he thought wouldn’t translate well to meaningless sexytimes. The part where both of them kept talking about Julie. She was their best topic, the main thing they had in common. His favorite coworker, Amanda’s best friend. And that had been three years ago. These days, Julie was probably Alan’s best friend, as well.

It ended up not mattering whether he was receptive to the idea of hooking up or not. Instead of Amanda continuing to work up her nerve with him, she stopped in her tracks and pointed, gaping, at a guy standing near the water’s edge. And when the guy turned around to walk back toward the hotel, he spotted Amanda and friends. The mutual recognition struck like a lightning bolt, shocking the three friends into a cartoonish freeze pose that would probably have been comical to onlookers. Except the only onlooker wasn’t laughing.

“Oh my god!” Julie blurted. “He’s the mystery jogger!”

It was Jeremy.

“Whoa. This can’t be a coincidence,” Alan said.

Amanda dropped her arm from his, taking a step away. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Okay, maybe there was a little animosity.

Jeremy lifted a hand, not quite waving. Alan had only met him a few times before the breakup, but he remembered him well enough to see he’d clearly made a lot of changes in the last year or so. The buzz cut, for one thing. And he had obviously been working out. Holy crap, had he ever been working out.

“So...are you gonna go talk to him?” Julie asked Amanda. “Or do we all just stand here looking at each other across the sand? Awkwardly? Like we’re doing right now....”

“Fuck. All I wanted was a damn vacation. And maybe some action. Was that really too much to ask? Really?”

“Oh, he’s coming over here. Please go talk to him. But, you know...report back. Because what the fuck?”

Sensing Amanda’s worsening mood, Alan tugged at Julie’s hand in a “cut it out” way, but she ignored him. Kept her hand in his, though. He liked that.

“Fuck,” Amanda repeated. But to Alan’s vast relief, she went. He and Julie watched for a minute as she met Jeremy and they started conversing. Over the party and the surf, they couldn’t hear the words, but it didn’t look pretty.

“We should probably go,” Alan finally suggested, though his feet stayed put. Amanda was starting to gesture, her hands flying wider, Jeremy leaning away in an automatic retreat. It was like reality TV with the sound down.

“It’s a train wreck.” Julie echoed his thoughts. “I don’t even want to watch, but it’s like I can’t drag my eyes away.”

“I know. We have to, but...I know. What were you planning to do tonight, anyway? After this, I mean?”

“Um...what? Oh. I thought I’d go back to the dancing over there and see if I can pull anything interesting out of the crowd.” She turned and gestured toward the party, eyeing it with not-that-eager speculation. Watching Amanda and Jeremy’s tense reunion had sucked the fun out of the evening for both of them, apparently.

“No, seriously.”

“I am serious. To the extent I had a plan, that was it.”

Pull someone interesting, she meant. He got that, but his brain pushed the idea out forcefully. No. He started toward the lights and noise, pulling her along. “Better the dance floor than the train wreck.”

“But what are you gonna do?”

He looked at her, puzzled. “The Hokey-Pokey? The Electric Slide? I don’t know, whatever sort of dancing is going on.”

“Yeah, but—” She looked like she was choosing between bad options for what to say. Finally, she settled on, “But you can’t dance.”

“I can totally dance!”

“I have never seen you dance. Not once in... How many years have we known each other?”

“Four? Maybe?” He had no idea, because it felt like he’d always known her. Not so much the first few months after she started working for the company, but definitely the first time they worked a project together. And after she moved to his floor of the office, he’d recognized a kindred spirit. “I’m sure you’ve seen me dance, Jules. I can absolutely dance. And more to the point, there’s no way I’m gonna let you wander off alone into a torch-lit crowd of drunken strangers. You were planning to do this with Amanda, so you can do it with me instead. Dance, I mean. Not... Jesus. You know what I mean.”

“Let me? You’re not going to let me? What is this, Victorian England all of a sudden?”

She didn’t seem all that insulted, probably because she thought he’d meant it in a “friends don’t let friends pick up drunk strangers” way, not a patriarchal bullshit way. But he didn’t want to take the chance that she might actually think that of him. Especially since he absolutely meant he didn’t want to allow her to go off with somebody else. “No! I didn’t mean you couldn’t do—I just didn’t want to go off if you needed—you know. You’re twenty-seven. You can do whatever—”

“Alan.”

“I just thought we could dance together, I didn’t—”

“Alan! It’s okay. I was just giving you a hard time.”

“Oh. Oh, good.” Lies, all lies. But she seemed to have bought it. He wasn’t sure if he was right on track, or utterly screwed. “Okay. So...are we going to dance, then?”

* * *

Bye-bye, unknown holiday lover. We could have had something magical. I know it in my heart.

Julie told herself she was relieved. She had never been the type to pick up strangers, and the prospect had been more daunting than thrilling. Really. Better she should take the first evening to size up the situation before doing anything rash. “Yes. Of course we’re going to dance. Dork.”

Alan totally couldn’t dance. He made up for it with infectious enthusiasm, however. His version of fail-dancing was highly entertaining, prompting a few eye rolls but more grins from the gyrating crowd around them. Somehow his flailing always managed to pull short of smacking anybody, and after watching for a while Julie realized he was actually in brilliant control of the whole thing. He could dance. Every so often a moment or two of perfect coordination and rhythm sneaked through. Beats where his hips moved in a way that suggested he really knew how to...move his hips.

“You’re a big liar,” she finally shouted over the cacophony of music and noisy revelers.

He didn’t even look fazed. Julie was pretty sure he knew exactly what she meant.

“How so?”

“You can dance.”

“I told you I could dance!” He raised his arms over his head and executed a brilliant twirl maneuver that involved his body undulating in a miraculous way. It left her speechless, her body responding in a manner that completely overruled her higher brain functions. The dork-face he made over it spoiled the effect, though. Sort of. “My mother made me take ballroom dance for years with my sister Theresa, so she wouldn’t have to dance with strangers. Because God forbid. Yeah...we ended up winning some competitions and shit like that. I lived in fear that some friend would find the sequins all over my closet floor. It was crazy.”

He stepped in and pulled her close, the sudden proximity startling the breath out of her. When he dipped her, smooth and swift as a lover in a fantasy tango, her world spun for a moment. She felt only slightly less disoriented when he swung her back up to standing and fail-danced away in some horrific combination of twerking and moonwalking. Her body was trying to recover from a surge of knee-wobbling hormones, and wanted to fling itself at Alan’s supple torso, while her brain was appalled at the dance-desecration visual it was receiving.

Julie suddenly thought of the conversation they’d once had about college financial aid, how she’d been griping about repaying her loans, and he’d said that he’d “gotten some help” for which he was grateful. She later learned he’d been a National Merit Scholar with a full ride from his school of choice. So when he said he and his sister had won “some competitions,” she could only imagine what he meant by that. State championships? The Olympics? Did they have those for ballroom dancing?

“Humble-bragger.”

He laughed. “Hey, I’m heading to the bar. You want anything to drink?”

“No thanks, I’m good.” If she got any better she’d be a danger to herself and others on the dance floor. Her lips were tingling as it was, her judgment quite possibly impaired.

Which might have explained her reaction when she noticed the guy checking her out from across that crowded dance floor. Beer goggles. The problem with beer goggles was you never realized you were wearing them at the time. Only once it was too late. In fact, that kind of defined how beer goggles worked.

Surfer-blond hair, messy in a deliberate way. A tan, obviously, because practically everybody here had one. And when he grinned at Julie from around his drink straw, he had whiter-than-white teeth, contrasting beautifully with the warm tone of his skin. He was firelit, but still seemed to give off an angelic glow rather than a hellish gleam. All in all, he was her every vacation fantasy come to life, wrapped in a pleasantly fitted T-shirt and sporting some ridiculously fit calves underneath his long board shorts.

Ding ding ding!

Alan was lost in the crowd by the bar, and she was all alone out on the floor. Julie felt stupid, bobbing along to the music with no partner, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. The surfer dude didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

He sauntered closer, nodding. “Hey.”

“Hey there.”

“I’m Todd.”

“Julie.”

“Nice to meet you, Julie.” He extended a hand and she shook it, ignoring the mild clamminess transferred from the cold drink he was holding. There was a sign posted, forbidding glass on the beach, but apparently Todd hadn’t seen it or hadn’t cared enough to relinquish whatever he was nursing along. “I haven’t seen you before. Did you just get here?”

“Earlier today,” she confirmed, starting to move to the music again. “I won the trip as a door prize at work.”

“Wow, awesome! This is my work, pretty much.”

Drinking and dancing? Then she realized what he meant. He worked for the resort, obviously. “Nice. What do you do here?”

She was expecting “surfing instructor,” possibly “tennis pro,” but he came back with, “I lead glass-bottomed-kayak tours.”

He wasn’t dancing, exactly, just moving in time with the music, a subtle shift of his weight and hips back and forth. Cool. Smooth. A faint voice in her head said it wasn’t a good thing that he seemed practiced at what he was doing here. Tropical-flavored liquor gently drowned the voice out, as soft and warm as the nearby surf. The guy was exactly what she’d been looking for. No strings. No clutter. She could do this.

“Kayak tours? That’s so cool.”

Things were definitely getting back on track.

Chapter Four

Who the fuck...?

Alan stopped dead at the edge of the dance floor, a beer in one hand and a cup of ice water in the other. He’d thought Julie might want it. Instead, she seemed to have found something else she wanted.

Or someone.

He noticed the drinks were shaking before he realized his own hands were the problem. They wanted to be pulling Julie away from the overgrown surfer dude in the skintight T-shirt. They wanted to be shoving the dude away from Julie. And then doing things, other things. To Julie.

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