Page 40 of Sex, Lies, & Techy Guys (Love on the Sunshine Coast)

“That’s for guests, not for you.”

“Well, I can’t deal with the thought of you doting on guests. Not other women. Definitely not men. And not even small children, unless they belong to us. So I’m going to book every single date on this calendar.” And I can because Tony Albrecht turned out to be a pretty impressive man. He paid us everything we were owed and recommended us to his friends after we showed him his most vulnerable online points and how to secure them.

She throws her hands up in the air. “This is my business. It’s not a joke.”

“You and Kyle should have told me you were working on your website.”

“I didn’t even know. He’s been asking me questions about what I wanted, then showed me this morning. Isn’t it pretty how he matched the website colors to the decorations in the living room?”

Kyle’s come into the room, joining our fray. “She didn’t know, and I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d throw a fit.”

If I hadn’t spent a giant chunk of change booking all available dates, and my heart wasn’t ripped out of my chest that they did something behind my back, I would deny throwing a fit.

I appeal to his sense of reason. “You want her to have other men staying in her bed?”

“It’s not the bed she sleeps in. Respect her business, Lance.”

He’s using his logic, but it’s not computing.

“Yeah, well, I thought I could but I’m a big fucking asshole. I guess it’s time that we make a decision.”

They look at each other and then at me, brows furrowed, eyes narrowed.

“You don’t get to decide whether I’m going to run a business.”

“I know that you want to run your own business but you have to hear my offer.” Rushing to the master bedroom, I grab the envelopes from my drawer, and I return so quickly Penny and Kyle haven’t moved.

I extend the plane tickets to the two of them. Each of them opens the envelope they grab and pulls the ticket out. Kyle smirks and huffs, and Penny’s mouth falls open.

“The Maldives, are you serious?” she asks.

“I had a clever way of bringing it up, and I was going to ease you into the idea. The bottom line is that I have to marry you. And you know, being a travel writer didn’t really sound like that bad of a gig. So, I thought we could start by going to The Maldives, getting married, seeing the sights. Between the three of us, I figure we could write up stories about everything we see when we’re there.”

Kyle slides the ticket back in and closes the envelope. Patting it against his other hand, he says, “I’m guessing that if you have your way, that would mean the four walls of a hotel room.”

“We don’t have to include that part. Think about it…the tour Penny gave us and the excitement she had showing us each of the sites.”

“I don’t know anything about The Maldives.”

I let it go that she focuses on The Maldives rather than the marriage part.

“No, but you would research it just like you did when you wanted to learn how to run a bed and breakfast. You would research everything and have an agenda laid out. You could still feed us, and pick where we stay, and which sites to see. We’ll film you telling us everything you learn online and—”

Kyle spontaneously joins in. “Most of our cybersecurity work can be done from anywhere. And if someone wants to meet us in person, we could bring you with us.”

I nod when Penny looks at me questioningly. “And we can monetize it. We can be influencers. You were so beautiful in the snippets we made about the Sunshine Coast.”

“Will that be weird? The three of us?”

“It could be a selling point. I mean, certain groups might shun us, but if anybody talks about how bad we are, we turned it around. We could call ourselves the Naughty Travelers or the Tawdry Trio.”

“Tawdry? Who uses that word?” she asks.

“It’s a work in progress. But maybe that could be our specialty. We could check out the sexual flavor of different areas. Everybody blogs about beaches and food and sure we can do that, but we could explore the other side of cities.”

“What are you saying?” She might be coming around.

“We’re already unconventional. Why not have fun?”

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