A Wedding in the Sun

Chapter 3

‘I’m sorry, there’s been some mistake,’ Jo said, peering at the hotel keycards in her hand.

The harried receptionist at the cheap and soulless chain hotel glanced from the vouchers to the keycards. ‘What mistake? You have room 209, on the first floor. If you have any problems after you arrive in the room, you can call.’

Jo shook her head, blinking back her own confusion. ‘But… it’s one room.’ She couldn’t bring herself to glance behind her at Adrián, especially since both of them were so strung out that they could only manage to insult each other and make bad jokes.

The receptionist frowned. ‘Yes? Two people, one double room – for you and your husband.’

The word made her almost throw up a little in her mouth. She was done with husbands and ex-husbands and weddings for all time. ‘He’s not my husband.’

‘Your… boyfriend?’ the poor receptionist tried, which was cute given Jo had a few streaks of grey in her hair these days and two teenage kids. Hysterical laughter rose in her chest as she contemplated the next twist on the worst day of her life.

Imagining Adrián as her boyfriend was a sick joke. He was attractive, with that curly hair and expressive mouth, not to mention dark eyes with an intensity that made her knees wobbly. But he knew he was attractive and he slapped things when he was frustrated and steamrolled poor parent-teacher associations with his big ideas.

Not to mention he’d been married to her ex-husband’s new bride-to-be. Urgh, it was definitely weird that they’d somehow connected after the flight and she’d laughed at his jokes and fed him a muesli bar – just when she’d been enjoying having no ravenous mouths to feed.

She also felt bad for her comment about Oscar. Even if he truly was a little shit, Jo knew as well as anyone that kids were kids and it wasn’t his fault. The way Adrián’s face had fallen when she’d said it…

He seemed to finally comprehend their predicament. ‘There’s only one room? But we’re not— we’re just—’ As he met her gaze, she could feel the whole ex-wife of ex-husband spiel flashing between them again.

‘We’re essentially strangers,’ Jo explained. ‘We just happened to be talking to each other and the flight attendant must have got the wrong idea.’

The receptionist gulped audibly. ‘Oh, I’m very sorry. We booked up all of the rooms we had left with your airline. We already have a large group of bikers staying and… Can I call another hotel for you? Or I might ask a colleague to help because it could take a while. The motorcycle pilgrimage is one of the busiest weeks of the year.’

Jo blinked, trying not to imagine a bunch of tattooed bikers kneeling while the virgin revealed herself to them. She shook off the image. It was a real pilgrimage, not a porn film. And why did Mary always look like 1980s Madonna in Jo’s imagination? Although it was honestly better to imagine a Catholic biker club than to picture sharing a room with Adrián, watching him walk out of the tiny bathroom in a towel, water droplets sluicing down his— his hair. That’s what she’d been thinking.

‘Is it a twin room at least?’ he asked. ‘Or can it be made into a twin room?’

The receptionist nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, of course! In fact, I can change a room with another guest and give you a triple. Will that be okay?’

Jo’s breath whooshed out in relief. They could keep a bed between them at all times. She might even forget he was there, across the wide expanse of the room, snoring peacefully. Actually, he’d better not snore.

But her relief was short-lived after they trudged up to their room. Swiping the keycard with a grim expression, Adrián grasped the handle and opened the door with a flourish – that the room definitely didn’t deserve. It was little more than a box with cream textured plastering, a red feature wall and a flat-screen TV that would have looked inviting if it hadn’t been so close to the beds that they’d get eye strain if they watched something.

Rather than three individual singles, two beds were pushed together and made up as a double and the extra bed was more like a small sofa under the window, designed for a child.

Adrián made a rumbling noise in disapproval. He gulped and said, ‘At least we don’t have our suitcases. They would never fit in this room.’

‘Always look on the bright side, hmm?’ she responded faintly.

‘I’ll take that one,’ he said, striding into the room and heading for the extra bed as though staking his claim. But the room was so small that his trolley bag got stuck between the bed and the wall and he had to stop to manoeuvre it sideways.

Jo grasped the bag to stop him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take it.’

‘Because it’s so ridiculous to want to help you.’

She pulled a face at him. ‘Do I look like I need help?’

He made another of his rumbling noises as though he was fresh out of sympathy for the entire world. ‘No, but I’m sick of hearing you apologise for everything.’

Jo paused, blinking. Did he expect her to thank him, even though he was behaving like a grumpy arse? ‘I could apologise for making you take the small bed,’ she pointed out.

‘God, I need a drink,’ he muttered, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

‘I thought you needed food! I don’t have an emergency stash of alcohol in my bag.’ Although she liked the sound of that.

‘Good,’ he snapped in return. ‘Because I’m buying you a drink – whether you like it or not, even though we are “essentially strangers”.’

Bellies full of quiche and misgiving, they dragged their feet in the corridor on their way back to their room later that evening. Jo wished she’d drunk another glass of wine, but given her weird mood, if she’d drunk enough to knock herself out, she might have said something stupid beforehand and she couldn’t risk that.

Although they’d sat for a long time at the hotel restaurant over their meals, Jo had mainly talked on the phone to Liss, who had had a lot to say about the delay, which Jo suspected was more her daughter’s need to process her emotions about the wedding.

She’d glanced up at one stage to see Adrián smiling into his phone screen as he video-called his son and she’d been so distracted that Liss had accused her of not listening. The sigh when he’d hung up had come from deep in his chest.

‘We’ll… see them tomorrow,’ Jo said as they approached the door.

He gave her a faint smile. ‘And then your daughter won’t have to babysit my son any more.’

Shame rippled up her chest, but he pushed the door open before she could say anything and then the claustrophobia of the tiny room made talking about anything serious impossible. He had to duck out of her way so she could reach the tiny bed by the window and she squeezed past, close enough to smell the last hint of his cologne after the long day.

It wasn’t an offensive scent, but the fact that she was near enough to identify it triggered all her frustrations. She still recognised Ben’s cologne whenever she smelled it – four years after the divorce. Although she’d dated a little – okay, she’d been on a total of five disastrous dates – being attracted to someone was not something she could deal with right now.

Pulling the same clothes back on after her shower was an unpleasant experience, but the hotel had placed toothbrush packages in the bathroom, to her relief. She finger-combed her hair, went to the toilet again for good measure and then dived into bed, pulling the covers up high. The waistband of her capris dug into her hip, so she wriggled out of them as quietly as she could, her efforts wasted when she whacked her head on the windowsill, the stupid tiny bed.

Adrián eyed her but switched the main light off as he headed for the bathroom and Jo breathed an enormous sigh of relief. No bare-chested towel walk to endure. She could close her eyes and overthink the next ten days in peace – the next ten days where she’d have to avoid Adrián and try to forget he’d seen her in this state.

He was finished in the shower quickly and Jo pretended she’d already fallen asleep – not that either of them wanted to talk anyway. The bed was so small her feet hung off the end. She curled up on her side facing into the room and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to let her thoughts drift.

She unfortunately succeeded, which was why, a moment later, her eyes blinked open automatically at the sound of him unzipping his trolley bag and then they grew round and refused to close again. The curtains in the room were drawn, but the fading light from the long June day still crept around the hem, casting him into shadows – and what a set of shadows that man had on his back.

He wasn’t overly muscular, just defined – and fine. Her gaze snagged on the spot where his shoulder merged into his arm, a hint of bone protruding. Ouch, how long had it been since she’d found herself in the same room as so much exposed skin?

The lucky bastard obviously had fresh clothes in his trolley bag and he slipped on a white T-shirt with a sigh, running his hand through all those curls. Then he dropped his towel and it took every ounce of self-control for Jo to swallow her yelp of surprise and then she promptly fell off the bed.

His head whipped around as he hurriedly tugged on a pair of boxer shorts, hopping as he overbalanced. Climbing over the bed, he held a hand out to help her up and she was too messed up to refuse it. ‘Are you okay?’

Nodding feverishly, she hurried back into the cot, but hit her head again as she lay down. ‘Ow,’ she whined. ‘Why can’t this day just end?’

‘Take the big bed,’ Adrián said gruffly.

Letting her eyes slam closed for a moment, she took a deep breath and said what needed to be said. ‘Let’s just share it.’

‘Are you sure? I’ll see if there’s an extra blanket to put a divider down the middle?—’

‘I don’t need a divider, Adrián.’

‘I promise I won’t?—’

Jo’s thoughts ranged off to all of the things he might promise not to do to her, which was disconcerting to say the least.

‘…even know you’re there,’ he finished. ‘I sleep heavily.’

She was not disappointed. ‘Good for you,’ she mumbled as she swung her legs out of the bed again and hopped into the near side of the double, Adrián looking pointedly away. Aside from the relentless awareness of his presence, the bed was heavenly after the cramped confines of the cot and she managed to convince herself it wasn’t unusual at all to share a bed with her nemesis and she could drift off comfortably now.

Then he spoke. ‘Were you awake, when you fell out of the bed?’

‘If you’re trying to work out if I saw your naked bum, then the answer is yes. Now can I go to sleep?’

‘Sorry, I thought you were asleep.’

‘I didn’t imagine you… revealed yourself on purpose.’

‘Illuminating, was it?’ She heard the smile in his voice.

‘Not a religious experience, but I could hardly ignore the light of the enormous moon in our tiny hotel room,’ she grumbled, tugging the blanket more firmly around herself and hoping he’d get the message that she didn’t want to chat like a pair of kids at a sleepover.

‘Hey!’ he protested. ‘I need some of the blanket too!’ He pulled it roughly and she rolled with it, her thigh falling against his.

She wrenched her leg back to her side, but not before her imagination headed off into the wilderness again – a rather pleasant wilderness that featured warm skin and crisp hair and closeness she hadn’t experienced in too long. She had to stop thinking about him like that.

‘You’re worse than my son,’ she complained. ‘I had to sleep in his bed a lot when he was little, because he— Anyway, we should go to sleep.’

As he mumbled in agreement, she thought about Dec again, about the affectionate and rowdy little boy he’d been before he was swallowed by his smelly bedroom and his computer. He could finally wash his own hair these days – although not very well – but how was he feeling about all the changes in the family?

‘You miss them a lot,’ Adrián commented, making her realise she’d been moving restlessly in the bed.

‘Of course I miss them,’ she retorted. ‘They’re like my own body.’ Except young and not-yet battle worn.

‘How are they dealing with the wedding?’ he asked.

Jo grimaced, flopping onto her back and abandoning thoughts of sleep for the moment. ‘I wish I knew. It’s all so drawn out. Why are they having this pre-wedding party anyway? Is that a Spanish thing?’

‘No,’ he answered defensively. ‘But Mónica’s family is… big. Not all of them can travel for the actual wedding next week, but they can’t be excluded either – that’s a Spanish thing.’

‘What about exes? Are they usually included?’

When he didn’t answer, she risked a glance at him to find his face alarmingly close, his gaze dark with dismay.

‘Forget it,’ she grumbled, rolling over again. ‘I don’t want to talk about this right now. It’ll land on us soon enough tomorrow.’ She wasn’t sure she liked the way ‘us’ had crept into that sentence, but it was better to think about the unpleasant wedding than his naked body right now.

‘You’re right. Good night, Jo.’

‘Good night, Adrián,’ she mumbled in reply. ‘Um,’ she began before she could hold it in. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about Oscar. I was upset and took it out on you. If there’s one thing I shouldn’t have forgotten, it’s that seven-year-olds are jerks and that’s not your fault.’

She peered over her shoulder and caught his quick smile between that musketeer facial hair.

‘Is that what you learned from parenting two? Kids are jerks?’

‘Yep,’ she said with a firm sigh.

‘Thanks for the pep talk. I hope teenagers are better.’

‘Nope. Teenagers are arseholes.’ She should have left it at that, but he caught her with the intensity in those eyes and she rolled over to face him warily. It must be tiring for him to be so passionate all the time. She was exhausted just looking at him – which must have been why she had to suck in a heavy breath.

But his expression grew sad and distant. ‘I know Oscar is difficult. I’ve heard it from every nursery nurse, every teacher. You can’t imagine I didn’t know what you meant.’

‘But he’s your son,’ she filled in, which only made him fix her with another unsettling gaze.

‘Yes, and I’m worried about how he’ll cope with the chaos of the wedding preparations – without me. I— We—’ He cut himself off to consider his words.

‘We had a bad day,’ Jo filled in for him.

‘The worst,’ he agreed roughly. ‘Maybe we should try to be friends – just until we arrive in Zaragoza tomorrow?’

‘What’s not friendly?’ she asked in a peeved tone.

‘I can see it in your eyes every time you think about the softball team missing out on the PTA money,’ he commented.

‘If you think I’m forgiving you for that, then you’re dreaming.’

‘A truce then,’ he suggested, tucking his hand up under his chin. ‘A verbal ceasefire.’

‘I didn’t think we were at war, but okay – a truce.’ She met his gaze and it was worse than catching a whiff of his cologne. Too long looking into that handsome face and she’d start to think of their relationship as more of an alliance and that was going too far, considering they were about to be tortured by the nuptials of their exes.

‘Unless you steal the blanket in the night. If you do that, all bets are off,’ he said sternly.

‘Are you looking for a pillow in the face? If you steal the blanket, I’ll come over there and get it back!’ His silence made her mistake quickly evident. ‘Um, I mean, I’m staying on my side of the bed. No matter what. And now I’m going to sleep.’

At least she hoped she was.