CHAPTER 22
KATIE
“Wake up, you two! You’ve been in hiding long enough!”
Rosie’s screeching voice and thumping fists are not exactly the way I’d have wanted to be woken up this morning. But here we are.
“Freaking, Rosie,” Nathan groans from his spot, cuddling me. “We need to speak to her about boundaries.”
Smiling, I pull out of his arms, giggling as he holds me tighter, refusing to let me go.
“She’s not going to give up,” I tell him over the racket his sister is making at our door. “If we don’t let her in, she’ll just keep knocking.”
His lips brush my temple, and I give in, sinking into him, as reluctant to leave his arms as he is to let me go.
“Bugger off, Rosie!” he bellows.
She huffs. “No can do. Let me in!”
“Come on,” I whisper as I sit up, pushing my tangled hair over my shoulder. “We better let her in.”
“Fine,” he grumbles, not moving. I guess I’ll be getting the door.
“Give me a second,” I yell as I thrust my arms through my robe and pad to the door, self-conscious about how I look. Rosie is going to take one glance at us and guess what we’ve been doing all night.
With flaming cheeks, I open the door, dodging Rosie’s raised fist, which is poised, ready to knock again.
“Well, well, well. You are both alive, then,” she smirks, brushing by me and flouncing into the room. “I knew it.”
“Knew what?” I fiddle with the edges of my robe, pulling them tighter and wishing Nathan would get out of bed so we don’t look so obvious.
Her head swivels between us, a devilish grin splitting her pretty face. “I knew those bikinis would do their job!”
Nathan hurls a pillow at her, and she ducks with a chuckle. She appears so thrilled by the turn of events that it’s hard to stay annoyed. After all, she’s been shipping the two of us this whole time.
“What do you want?” Nathan asks as he finally gets out of bed and into his own robe. Without an ounce of self-consciousness, he strolls over to me and tucks me up under his arm before kissing my neck.
So, I guess we’re going public with the no-longer-fake-real-relationship then?
“I want you to share your gorgeous girlfriend for one day,” she states, her grey-blue eyes bouncing between us with glee. “You’ve had her to yourself long enough.”
“Not possible,” he grunts as my cheeks flame harder.
“Come on, big brother. I’m happy the two of you have finally given in to the smouldering chemistry between you. But you have to remember why you came here in the first place. Appearances need to be kept up.”
Nathan’s jaw tightens. “Not anymore. We’re not here for that.”
Rosie’s head tilts, the wheels in her mind turning. “Fine. You’re done playing those games. Whatever. But how about thinking about me? I’ve been stuck with those people for two full days without you guys as my buffer. Did you even think about that?”
“Not for one second,” Nathan says as I smother a giggle. This sibling relationship is delightful.
“Katie, please,” Rosie turns her puppy dog eyes to me. She senses I’m the weakest link. “Today, Victoria is throwing a spa day, and I cannot, I repeat, cannot, spend a full day with that woman and her evil bridesmaids.”
“You’re really selling it to us,” Nathan drawls, his arm tightening around me like he wants to protect me from what she’s describing.
Her lips twist. “But it won’t be so bad if we are there together,” she tells me, pointedly ignoring her brother. “We could have a day of pampering the two of us, ignoring the bride-to-be and her terrible minions. It will be fun.”
It doesn’t sound fun, I think, while knowing I’ll give in. Rosie has been a good friend to me from the second she re-entered my life, and I owe her this much.
“I’ll go,” I say to a rapturous squeal of triumph.
Nathan turns to me and cradles my face with his big hands. “You don’t have to, Kitty Kat. Don’t let this one bully or guilt you into something you don’t want to do.”
“Bully,” Rosie huffs under her breath.
I pat his hands, still caressing my jaw. “It’s fine. I’ve never spent a day being pampered in a luxurious spa before. Who knows? Maybe it will be fun?”
“That’s the spirit,” Rosie encourages, wrenching me from her brother and folding me into a hug. “Thank you, Katie. I mean it; I owe you for this.”
I squeeze her back. “It’s not a big deal.”
She draws back, a crease in her brow the only sign that it may be a bigger deal than she’s letting on.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she says as she marches to the door, leaving me with no time to change my mind.
“See you then,” I say to the closed door. Once she got what she wanted, Rosie wasn’t hanging around for any second thoughts. She left so fast, she almost left skid marks behind her.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Nathan says again.
I cross over to him and loop my arms around the back of his neck, loving the way his arms immediately tighten around me.
“I do, and it’s fine.”
He peppers my face with small, soft kisses before landing on my mouth. He kisses me slowly, deeply, until my knees wobble before drawing back with a smile. “Are you sure you can’t think of a better way to spend your day?”
Right now, I can’t even remember my name.
“Oh, you play dirty, Mr Jackson.” I push at his chest and walk backwards away from him. “I’m sure we can survive a few hours apart.”
His azure gaze caresses my body, and a muscle in his cheek jumps. “I’m not sure I can.”
I squeak at the gravely tone in his voice, pointing him towards the ocean and closing the bathroom door. “You need to cool off,” I yell to him as I spin into the room and face the shower.
A cold shower, it would seem.
Turns out, I need cooling off as well.
?·?·?
Two hours later, I’m in a dark room, wrapped in seaweed.
The spa experience started off well, despite Victoria looking like she’d sucked on a lemon at the sight of me.
It wasn’t like she could turn us away, though; Rosie is the sister of the groom, and I’m the girlfriend of the brother of the groom.
But that didn’t mean she and her gaggle of friends had made us feel welcomed either.
“Let’s split up from them,” Rosie had said after they’d fluttered off, whispering to each other and casting not-so-subtle withering glances at me. “It will be better for everyone.”
And so, we did. Rosie and I got undressed and into another gorgeous robe and then settled back in our massage chairs for a mani and pedi.
After that, things took a turn. Rosie, being more adventurous than me, submerged herself in a sensory deprivation tank and in a panic to avoid doing that, I’d blindly agreed to a detoxification massage, and that’s how I ended up here.
As a human sushi roll.
After wrapping me up nice and tight, my masseuse Angelique left me to ‘relax’ in this room, in the dark, in silence. I’m so uncomfortable, I want to scream. But this doesn’t seem like a place to tolerate that sort of behaviour.
“They can’t leave me in here forever,” I mutter, blowing at the hair that is stuck to my cheek, adding to my misery. With my arms swaddled down next to my body, I can’t do anything to fix it. I will just have to lie here and suffer.
“Think of something else,” I urge my brain.
Cake. Chocolate. Biscuits. Nathan. Ah, that works.
Nathan. My mind wanders over his many expressions; the way his eyes light up when he’s talking about racing, the way he licks his lower lip just before he kisses me and the way his jaw clenches when he’s worried for me.
The man has many facial expressions, and they’re all one hundred per cent perfect.
“There’s no way that relationship is real.”
I stiffen, tilting my head in the voice's direction just beyond my closed door, my eyes twitching as I identify the owner.
Victoria.
“Of course it’s not,” another—equally grating—voice replies. “She’s a nobody. Where did she even come from?”
“She went to his secondary school on a scholarship,” Victoria spits out the words like they offend her. “And apparently, they reconnected and fell in love. I’m not buying any of it.”
My breaths are ragged, and I struggle to control my breathing. I don’t want to make any noise and alert them to the fact that I’m right here. Within hearing distance.
“He’s just doing this to make you jealous. It’s clear he wants you back.”
My stomach drops at this, and I screw my eyes shut, listening intently.
Victoria sniggers. “It’s like he’s forgotten that he was calling me, begging me to come back to him.”
“I’ll never get over it.” Nathan’s words suddenly seem painfully real.
Another voice chimes in. “It’s clear he’s just using her to get to you. Can you imagine him out on the circuit with her? Taking her to all those glamorous events? She couldn’t even get her fake tan done properly.”
I cringe, shrinking further into my seaweed cocoon. They’d noticed my white ankles?
“It won’t last,” Victoria declares with authority. “She’s not right for this world. She’ll never fit into his world. She’s not good enough.”
Her words trail off as the mean girl crowd disappears somewhere. Perhaps somewhere to sharpen their claws and polish their horns?
“Wow, that was a lot,” I say out loud, needing to say something to break the silence they’ve left behind. Silence filled with remnants of their cruelty.
Did they know I could hear them? And were they right about Nathan? Does he still have feelings for his ex?
“Right, time’s up,” Angelique appears like her angel namesake, to unwrap me from my seaweed prison and get me out of here. “How do you feel? Like a new person, yes?”
If by a new person she means a slightly more damaged person than the one before, then yes, I’m a new person.
“I feel great,” I lie with a wobbly smile. “But I think I’m done for the day. Can you let my friend Rosie know I’m leaving? She’s still in the tank.”
Angelique’s smile is serene, oblivious of my inner turmoil. “I will. Have a lovely day.”