“Was that all just to distract me?”
He picked up a newspaper with an indifferent shrug. “Anything to keep you from vomiting again...”
Chapter 20
The rest of the flight passed surprisingly quickly. I even fell asleep. Marcus and I mostly kept to ourselves, occasionally spouting off a one-liner and grinning over the tops of our respective magazines. The second the plane began to angle lower in the sky, he started up a rousing conversation about pygmy fruit bats, but again, that might have been more for my benefit than his own. Nevertheless, by the time we got to the hotel, I was exhausted. That is...until I saw the hotel.
“Oh my gosh.” I actually paused outside the resort to drink it all in. “This is incredible.”
It was exactly the same kind of “strung-together-bungalows” that I’d seen and envied on the covers of a million travel magazines. T
he kind of place that celebrities went to vacation and I secretly despised them while simultaneously dismissing the notion that it was somewhere I’d ever get to go. The air was moist and thick with the smell of flowers, and each of the huts was nestled alongside sparkling turquoise water in a bed of white sand.
It was stunning! Beyond breathtaking! Paradise!
I took off my shoes immediately and dug in my toes, smiling as a warm breeze swept my hair off my shoulders and sent it dancing toward the sea.
A sudden kiss on my cheek made me jump, but Marcus was already pulling away by the time I looked over. “I’ll go get us checked in.” He hesitated at the slightly confused look on my face. “You’re my girlfriend, remember?”
“And I’m going to play the part perfectly.” I touched his face, gazed into his eyes, and kissed him softly on the lips.
“I don’t think that was convincing enough,” he said.
“Really? Because there’s nobody around but that old couple.”
He glanced over with a sly smirk. “And I could swear one of them had a camera.”
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. “Then we better convince them we’re lovers.”
“I knew I hired the perfect actress for the job.”
I gazed into his eyes. “I think you’re enjoying this far too much.”
“I think I am.”
I flashed him a big smile. “Want to see how well I can play the part?”
“Most definitely.”
An electric shock shot through me as his lips crashed into mine. He kissed me long and hard, devouring every inch of my mouth. I traced my fingers over the curves of his muscular chest.
“I thought sex wasn’t involved with this deal,” I said.
“It’s not. But you never said making out was off the table.”
“Your lawyer found a loophole?”
He kissed me softly on the lips. “Kissing wasn’t part of the deal. But when I’m around you, I just can’t help myself.”
“I can’t either.”
He shot me a beautiful smile, and headed to the hotel desk while I perched on top of a huge boulder in the sand and gazed out at the tranquil water. The ocean was almost too bright to be plausible, I thought as my eyes grew hypnotized by the waves. It was hard to believe such a vibrant color existed naturally anywhere.
My trance was broken by the sudden sound of laughter, and I looked up to see a couple walking hand in hand along the shore. They moved slowly, swaying this way and that, content in their own little bubble. The man was a good deal taller than the woman, constantly bending down to whisper into her ear. But her outrageous laughter made up for her size, echoing coarse and loud across the sand, completely unrestrained. Her laugh would make him laugh, he’d bend down to tell another joke, and on and on again. It was kind of hard not to watch them. They were clearly in the blissed-out stages of love. I wondered if they’d just gotten married.
“Rebecca?”
I looked down to see Marcus biting his lip with a nervous frown. The sight threw me for a second, but I hopped off the rock and skipped up beside him in the sand. “What’s wrong?”