Page 1 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

Chapter 1

Ryan

Mom greeted me with a glassy kind of smile that I didn’t know what to do with, especially when she gave my boyfriend Shane a warmer, more genuine smile, shielding her eyes against the harsh sunlight. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said. “Hi, Shane, it’s so good to see you again! How’s everything been? How’s your family?”

Shane pulled the rolling suitcase up onto the boardwalk with us. The cool breeze was bliss right now, the hot sun on a clear day sweltering, stuffy on my forehead and prickling on the back of my neck. I’d dressed as best I could for the heat, but showing up to the resort in a bikini, which felt like the only way to survive the sunlight, was probably passe. My family was big on appearances.

“Good to see you again, Mrs. Bell,” he said, his voice absolutely glowing as he stepped in for a hug. “It’s been too long, huh? Everything’s good, everything’s good, how’s… how’s life? Better right now than it was a week ago, I guess.”

She laughed, and I felt awkwardly like a third wheel between my own mother and my own boyfriend. “Oh, you’re not wrong, I’ll tell you that. It’s so nice to kick back, relax… have the family all in one place. Well, it’ll be nicer once I’m by the pool with a drink in my hand. Well, you two—let’s get you inside. I’ve been corralling all the arrivals and everybody’s luggage all morning.”

Shane took my luggage, and the feminism left my body, because I did not mind letting someone else drag that big, bulky suitcase around in the hot sun. Thankfully, it was cool inside once we pushed through the cabana-style doors—a little out of place on the sleek, upscale resort—and into the reception area, where a dozen of my family members were squeezed in together with a few other rowdy crowds. We clearly weren’t the only ones exhausting the poor staff, a girl at the concierge desk doing her best with a polite customer-service smile as my grandmother tried to make some kind of point at her, but I could see the dark rings under her eyes. I tapped Shane on the elbow with a whispered word that I’d be with him in a second, and I stepped in out of pity for the poor girl, sidling up next to my grandmother, a stocky woman with a wispy puff of gray hair.

“Grandma—it’s been so long,” I said, and she dropped the sour look at the concierge, smiling warmly at me instead, flipping like a switch at my voice.

“Oh, Ryan, honey, it’s so nice to see you,” she said, giving me a hug. “Did you and Shane have a nice flight? Check his bags for anything special?” she said, with that exaggeratedwink-wink-nudge-nudgekind of voice. Shane and I had been dating for almost two years now, and I guess he could have proposed—this luxe island resort was probably a nice place for it—but as much as I liked him, I kind of hoped he didn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry him, just… not yet.

“I’m not poking through his bags, Grandma. How are things with the house? I’ve only seen you once since you moved…”

“Oh, it’s lovely. Small, but it’s got everything we need. Plenty of space for Maxie to run around.”

Small? Sure… sometimes I thought I was the only one in the family who realized we were rich. Any house with two guest bedrooms did not count assmallin my eyes. But maybe I was the odd one out. “I’m so glad,” I said. “She’s a big pup these days.”

“Oh, a destructive force of nature is what she is,” she said with a mock-exasperated eyeroll. “Anyway, speaking of trouble… the lady here has been saying my reward points don’t apply here, so I have to say, I’m not off to a good start here.”

Because the girl at the concierge counter, who looked barely more than eighteen and paid barely more than minimum wage, had direct control over company financial policies. Ah, whatever. Grandma had come from a different time and the world was changing faster than ever these days. I’d be out of touch one day too. I put a hand on Grandma’s arm, squeezing lightly. “Tell you what, I’ll see what I can figure out while Dad’s getting my and Shane’s stuff to our room, and you can go see Daniela and Nicole, okay? They just got here right before Shane and I did.”

I successfully corralled Grandma away, turning to the concierge staffer with a sympathetic smile, and I preempted her before she could go on the defensive.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Grandma’s just had a long trip and she doesn’t travel often… what was she trying to do?”

The girl tried to maintain a polite customer-service smile, but I could see the genuine gratitude there at the change in tone. “She was just trying to redeem her travel rewards for an upgrade, but they’re with a company we don’t have any agreements with, so unfortunately we’re not able to accept the points.”

“And you didn’t wave your hands and change the company policy? Unbelievable,” I said lightly. “Well, she just wants a little something nice to make the vacation special. I’ll get some chocolates and flowers delivered to her room and tell her it was upgraded. Do you know a good place for that in the area?”

She laughed. “You’re kind of better at my job than I am. I can order that and credit it to your room if you want—you know, save yourself the trouble of running around and all.”

“That’d be perfect. Ryan Bell. My boyfriend Shane Austen and I are staying in suite 36. Is there somewhere I can put in a good word for your service?”

Poor girl looked like she’d cry a little bit. Judging by that and the state of the lobby around us, I was guessing my grandmother wasn’t the first person who’d been demanding with her today. She took a slip of card paper from underneath the register, a brochure for the concierge, and clicked a pen to circle a web address at the bottom. “You can fill out a survey for your experience here,” she said. “My name’s Allison. Feel free to ask for me by name if you need anything for your stay! I’m more than happy to help.”

“Thanks, Allison,” I said, pocketing the paper. “I’ll pass along the news to Grandma. Hope the rest of your shift isn’t too stressful.”

“Ha. We’ll see.” The brief look that flared over her face said she wasn’t supposed to say things like that to a customer, but I wasn’t their customer base who thought of staff as background objects, so I wasn’t exactly looking to dock points for it. “Enjoy your stay, Ms. Bell.”

It was a whirlwind of activity through the lobby—I lived close by to my mother and father, but I didn’t really see much of either of them since the whole blowup after my career switch, and the rest of my family was all spread across the country, so with the exception of my brother Oscar who’d taken my side in the career-change debacle, I didn’t see any of them much. And that, of course, meant greetings and gushing from every direction as I talked to every family member it was possible for one person to have, swirling around from person to person. Grandma was satisfied with my explanation ofthey couldn’t accept the points because the system isn’t programmed for it, but they sent a few upgrades to your suite and have a little treat en route for you to make it up to you,and my siblings caught me after that interaction, at the back of the lobby as most people were filing out to check their suites.

“Pulling black magic referencingthe programming,” Oscar said—my brother, who, despite being my twin, managed to look nothing like me. We’d always joked about which one of us had been the changeling swapped out at birth, and Oscar had a field day with telling people he had a twin named Ryan and letting people assume I was an identical twin brother so they’d do a double take if they saw me. He stood five inches over me at just a shave over six foot, dishwater blond hair in a scruffy mop, thick bushy eyebrows and light brown eyes almost olive-tinted, with a smile that could win over an attacking army. I wasn’t exactly dishing outwinning smileslike that. I’d been told I was theneattype,organized, everything in its place,which I think was a polite way of telling me I had a serious expression and looked a little boring.

I shrugged, sidling up next to him along the back of the luxe cream couch, right by a window looking out at the pool. “What Grandma doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” I said.

My younger sister Stella entered the scene as she always did—striding in dramatically, pulling a face as she looked at me. “Grandma’s pushy and annoying, is what you mean to say.”

I smiled at her. “Stella. Nice to see you.”

She already had a drink in hand—guess she’d hit up the bar first. Looking for a cute bartender to flirt with, probably. She was a hopeless romantic until the moment she was actually in a relationship, when the thrill of the chase settled into something boring and she wanted out, but thenexttime would definitely be true love. So she said, anyway. She was a little shorter than me, with Oscar’s blonde hair in long, romantic waves, thin-rimmed glasses and lips she insisted didn’t have fillers even though we all saw what they looked like when she was growing up and noticed they suddenly changed at one point. I figured get fillers all you like, but denying it felt tacky.

Not that I’d say that to her face. Stella had the social grace of a half-starved raccoon, but luckily right now her ire wasn’t directed at me. She made a face into her drink and said, “We can’t get two seconds into a vacation without her harassing the staff, huh?”

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