Page 3 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

“I do not know who that is, but it sounds smart, so I’ll pretend I have.”

“Well, you might be right,” I sighed, pushing away from the couch. “But either way, even if Shane was thinking of cheating on me, I don’t think getting him to propose to me would fix that.”

“Careful. Don’t say that where Stella might hear, you’ll shatter her worldview.”

“I think she’ll be okay. I’m going to get to my suite, but I’ll see you for dinner.”

“Yeah, go get your man and control his wandering eyes,” he said, and I rolled my eyes with a dry smile to myself as I strolled across the lobby.

Once I’d gotten to Shane and led him to our suite, he unlocked the door to suite 36 and led me inside, a ground-floor room with a kitchenette and a back patio that led out towards the beach. The back door was cracked to let in the breeze coming in off the water—the view of the ocean was mostly blocked by the resort cafeteria, but the strip of it we could see glimmered in the sunlight, the long strand of the beach still only sparsely crowded right now. Shane stripped his shoes off by the door and dropped down on the foot of the bed, making a face.

“Cheaped out on the mattress,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow at him, sinking onto it next to him. I saw what he meant—it was clearly a nice mattress topper on an average mattress, but this was a full king-size bed. Wouldn’t really call it cheaping out.

“Doesn’t feel half-bad to me,” I said, and he chuckled.

“Always the optimist.” He slipped an arm around my back, grinning at me. He had that roguish kind of charm about him, a rugged dash of dark stubble and a strong jawline, and it was clear when he was really having a good time—the gleam in his eyes said it all. “Nice being back around the family?”

“It’s… fine,” I said, looking back at the sliding glass doors. “It’s felt weird ever since the whole blowup over my career.”

“They’re all really nice. I think it’s great to see them all again.”

“They are nice. Sometimes being nice is just a… a cover, I guess.” I laughed. “Listen to me. I’m being bitter.”

“They just want what’s best for you.”

“I guess.”

“Well, I’m gonna take a shower and look around the resort a little before we go for dinner. Get to know the area.” He kissed the side of my head before standing up. “You’ve been exhausted all day. You should get in some rest, take a nap.”

“I’m really all right,” I protested. “I can come with.”

“You’ll be dead on your feet at dinner. Relax. Look after yourself. It’s a vacation, dammit,” he laughed. I hunched my shoulders, but I relented. He wasn’t wrong… I’d been running around with my hair on fire all morning and I was exhausted.

“I guess… I was kind of in the middle of an article, so I want to finish writing that. And I’ve got reading material to catch up on too.”

“The part about it being a vacation didn’t really come through, did it? Ah, well.” He shrugged. “You know what you need, baby girl. I’m taking that shower now. Unless you wanna come with…” He pushed the band of his pants down a little with a suggestive eyebrow waggle, and I snorted.

“So I’m too tired to read but not too tired for that?”

“Suit yourself,” he laughed, but I swear there was a note of something off there in his voice as he turned back to his bag, grabbing a change of clothes.

We hadn’t had sex in a while, so I guess I could see him being frustrated, but we just didn’t have a lot of sex in general. Every couple of months was just fine for both of us—we were both busy, and we’d moved out of the new-couple phase a while ago. Was he hoping we’d catch up with some kind of vacation marathon starting the second we got to the suite?

Or, more likely, I was tired and imagining things. Or most likely of all, he had a million other things on his mind, like everybody else in the world, and it was something completely unrelated.

Still, we probably were supposed to have sex at some point over this vacation. It hadn’t really occurred to me… it wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy sex with him, but I’d gotten comfortable with the pace we had. And having some kind of arbitrary timeframe placed on our sex life made it awkward and uncomfortable.

Whatever. We’d cross that bridge when we came to it. For now, he had a shower to take, and I had an article to finish.

Chapter 2

Brooklyn

Allison slid into the barstool across from me, and I leaned over the bar top, folding my arms and giving her a studying look.

“Can I see your ID, ma’am?”

“Ha, ha, ha, you’re so funny. A strawberry daiquiri, please. Virgin.”

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