Chapter Five
Beside the Sleeping Giant
T hey spent a good forty minutes in the market, each adding a bag or two to their grips before all was said and done. They had enough produce to last them the week, including a few items Liam had never eaten before. He’d heard good things about guava, so he hoped it would live up to its reputation.
With how early they’d arrive, they could also avoid the bulk of the foot traffic. By the time they were ready to leave, the number of customers had more than tripled. Reconvening near the stairs, everyone shared what they’d gotten. Once they’d all confirmed that they were ready to go, Avril ushered them back to their van.
Avril then decided to remind them all that she was ridiculously wealthy. For a normal person, now would have been the right time to head to their hotel. They’d just purchased a bunch of produce, many of which preferred to spend their day in a cool refrigerator, not in the back of a van. But they already knew they weren’t staying on this island, as evidenced by her revealing that they’d take a plane to reach where they would be staying.
Well, yes, and no. Yes, they wouldn’t be staying on Viti Levu today, but that didn’t mean Avril hadn’t gotten them rooms on the island.
She drove them over the bridge connecting to Denarau Island, where they soon realized that she’d already booked three luxurious rooms in the Radisson Blu Resort. In what was almost too ludicrous to describe, they spent the next bit of their day checking into a hotel they wouldn’t even stay at. Bringing their luggage and recently obtained fruits and vegetables to their rooms, but not unpacking the former, then stowing away any and all perishables for later. All with the understanding that they would soon return and empty their rooms, board a plane, fly to whatever resort they would be staying at tonight, and repeat the process there.
“Everyone,” she said, standing in the hall and stopping them as they exited their rooms. “Please also bring a change of clothes and your most modest piece of swimwear. Our next destination is going to get a little muddy.”
The women understood what Avril was talking about immediately. Less aware of the famous mud pool just a short drive northeast of the airport where they’d begun their day, Liam wasn’t as quick to retreat into his room. Nevertheless, he understood one thing. He was about to get his first chance to see Avril, Anna, and Victoria in bikinis. And the first chance to see Tess in one since they’d become a couple.
For his health, it would have been safer had he only seen one of them at a time. But for his rapidly developing desire for a fivesome, there was nothing he could do but gawk and silently cheer. However, silent didn’t mean unnoticed, because his eyes made it clear to all four women that he was bursting at the seams with excitement and desire.
After each obtaining a change of clothes and some swimwear, they headed back to the van. They spent a good chunk of time retracing their steps, passing by the airport, then bending inland toward their muddy destination. Along the way, their van jostling on the dirt road beneath them, Anna mentioned the nearby Garden of the Sleeping Giant, which the others happily agreed to visit once they were done soaking in mud.
With a bit of searching on their phones, they discovered the existence of a package option for visiting both sights. It would reverse the order in which they visited the two places, starting them off with a guided tour through the famous orchid gardens. The others found this arrangement to their liking. Outwardly, Liam smiled and agreed that that was the right way to do things. Inwardly, he wept. Any delay in getting to the mud pool seemed almost too painful to bear.
The gorgeous, vibrant outpouring of life all around him helped soothe things. The beautiful smiles from the women, Anna’s especially, who got to walk through the lush tropical rainforest helped even more.
It was still early enough when their walk through the dense forest began, traversing wooden boardwalks and surrounded by a thousand different vivid colors of flora, that things weren’t too hot. That would slowly change over the next hour and a half, but they’d all brought water bottles for the trek.
Their local Fijian tour guide offered detailed insights about every unique flower or plant they passed by, always smiling as he led them forward, though letting them dictate when and where they wanted to slow down or pause. And although she probably never would have disrupted her extraordinary poise with a smile as wide as Anna’s, there was one other person who was clearly thrilled to see so much nature.
Victoria probably asked roughly half of the total questions uttered while in the garden. A rare inquisitive nature came to the forefront in the stylish woman, but it made sense. She was an ecology professor, after all.
Their tour guide, once he realized how knowledgeable and interested in his home Victoria was, upped the amount of detail he provided from then on. He appeared more than enthused to stop and expound on tropical hibiscuses and the multi-colored false bird of paradise—also a flower, a hanging one, not an actual bird. It probably helped that the woman he was spending so much time going back and forth with was more beautiful than any he’d ever given a tour to.
There were times when the path grew rugged, and they stepped onto dirt pathways. Sometimes, they passed small, manmade pools, hundreds of lilies floating upon their still surfaces. During others, things grew so dense with plant life that Liam couldn’t see more than a few feet off the path.
Throughout the tour, they could hear the babbling of small, lively streams and tropical birdsong. They caught a few glimpses of both, including what the tour guide described as a collared iory, a type of parrot. Mostly bright green, it had bright red coloring around its neck and chest, like a collar. On its head, determined to utilize every color it could, it had a mix of blue and black feathers.
Most of the hike leaned toward guiding them upward, and there was a rest stop filled with benches and a large gazebo for them to take a tiny break in. After refreshing themselves with much of their water reserves and some time off their heels, they kept going. The culminating moment of their hike occurred when they pressed out of the forest, up a moderately steep incline, and reached a hilltop that allowed them to look across the forest they’d come from, the neighboring mountains fencing it in, and the ocean they would cross in a few more hours to the west.
For a few minutes, five sets of eyes drew in their first genuinely breathtaking sight of Fiji. As far as the eye could see, there was hardly anything but nature in their way. They were more or less wordless throughout, stopping at another gazebo tipping the hilltop they climbed to take it all in, though Avril made sure to get them all together for some pictures—she had a promise to keep to Anna’s mom, after all.
At the end of their tour, once they were back where they’d begun and paid for the experience, Liam noticed the tour guide as he shifted toward Victoria. He recognized the hopefulness in the man’s expression. When he leaned in to quietly speak to the voluptuous woman, he felt a momentary spike of possessive—improper as it was—annoyance. Victoria’s expression didn’t change. A moment later, Liam saw Victoria shake her head.
The tour guide, looking somewhat dejected, moved away. Liam tried not to celebrate his failure, even if it resulted in an immediate sense of relief when it happened.
The five members of their party reconvened. It was finally time for the mud bath. A chance for Liam to see what others would have killed to witness. And he wouldn’t have blamed them. Among all the natural beauty found in this slice of paradise in this corner of the world, nothing could quite compare to what Liam would soon get to see. For in a little over an hour, he would be the only man on Earth seeing some of the most amazing sights ever witnessed.