Aria held out the bag and Gail took it and rummaged inside.
“Not a bad apology, J.T.,” Gail said. “You might make a good husband yet. Well?” she said, looking at Aria.
Aria realized Gail was expecting something from her but she didn’t know what.
“When a husband apologizes, you kiss him and make up. Now get to it. I’ll give you two minutes, then it’s upstairs to change and we go to the beach. I’m hungry.” She left them alone in the room.
“I…ah, I guess it is a peace offering,” J.T. began. “I guess I shouldn’t have said what I did. It was just such a shock seeing you look so different.”
“I guess so,” Aria said. “I wanted to look American and the long hair was so old-fashioned.”
“I liked it.”
“Did you?” she asked, surprised. “I never knew. I mean, you never said one way or the other.”
He took a step closer to her. “Well, I did like it. It suited you.”
“This feels so nice,” she said, touching her hair.
“Does it?” He put his hand up and wrapped a fat curl around his fingers. “It does at that.”
“I meant—”
“Time’s up,” Gail called. “Let’s go.”
Confusion showing in her eyes, Aria stepped past him and left the kitchen. Upstairs she forgot about the curious incident when she found that the bedroom was to be a communal dressing room. It was one thing to be nude before your ladies-in-waiting, but before strangers! Besides, it took her forever to get in and out of clothes and this swimsuit had a zipper down the back.
But Dolly didn’t give Aria time to think. She unbuttoned the back of Aria’s sundress and began to help her out of it. “Now me,” she said when Aria was wearing only a borrowed rayon teddy.
Thanks to Dolly, the disrobing was easier than Aria expected, and when she pulled on the boned, stiff swimsuit, she felt as if she had accomplished something grand.
She was smiling when she went downstairs. And there stood two men, the handsome, smiling Mitch and her husband. But this husband was someone she had never seen before. He was lazily leaning against the staircase and laughing at something Bonnie was saying. Now what does he plan? Aria thought. Is this some special American torture he had planned for her?
“Princess?” Mitch said, holding out his arm for her.
Smiling, she took it.
J.T. pushed his way between them. “I think I’ll escort my wife myself.”
“It’s about time,” Mitch muttered, and after one sad look at Aria, he excused himself from the night’s revelries.
They all piled into J.T.’s car, the women sitting on the men’s laps except that J.T. drove and Aria sat beside him. He kept smiling at her, and the more he smiled, the more suspicious she grew. What terrible thing was he planning now?
At the beach the men stepped into the darkness to don swim trunks while the women gathered driftwood for a fire.
Dolly whistled when J.T. came into the light wearing nothing but the black trunks.
He winked at her then turned toward the ocean waves. “Want to swim, Princess?” he called back.
“Not at night in that water,” she answered.
J.T. did what he was supposed to and returned with a dozen lobsters, which the group dispatched in a hurry. After dinner, with the fire nearly out, the couples entangled themselves about each other and began kissing.
Aria looked away in embarrassment.
“J.T.,” Dolly called when she came up for air, “why don’t you introduce your princess to the good old American custom of necking?”
“I think I will,” he answered, then picked up Aria’s hand.