5. Eric
ERIC
Ouch. Jetlag.
Although maybe it’s not just the jet lag that woke me. It’s too warm in this bed. And all that heat is coming from a sleeping woman who’s curled up against my back, her nose in the nape of my neck. She’s thrown a smooth leg over mine, and her hand is wrapped around my waist.
Holy hell. Not only does she throw off as much heat as a campfire, my subconscious hasn’t missed those soft curves molded to my back, or that hand that’s only a few inches north of my erection.
Christ. I close my eyes, and—for the briefest moment—I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to just roll over and pull her warm, sweet body underneath mine. It’s been way too long since I saw any action. I’m due.
Then I open my eyes and remember how sharply she turned me down that night in Florida. There was no ambiguity there.
That cruddy memory wakes me up and settles me down at the same time.
I need to get out of this bed. Slowly, I ease myself away from her body.
Alex doesn’t move. I am pure stealth as I slide my feet over the side of the bed and sit up.
Having accomplished that, I rise and make my way into the living room of the suite, where it’s cooler.
The sky outside our floor-to-ceiling windows shows only a streak of light on the horizon. But it’s enough to see the ocean shining back at me. I unlock the sliding glass door and push it open. A fresh, salty breeze rises to meet me.
When I step outside, I see how large the terrace of this suite really is. It wraps to the side, past a table and two chairs, lush flower boxes, and... Is that a private lap pool? It’s rectangular, and maybe fifteen feet long by four feet wide.
Okay. Maybe an unexpected week in Hawaii isn’t pure torture.
After I give myself a tour of the fancy private patio, I return inside to find the in-room coffee maker. I pop an espresso pod inside. Two minutes later I’m sipping coffee when I hear Alex stirring in the bedroom. She makes a phone call, and then I hear water splashing in the bathroom.
I’m contemplating a second cup of coffee when I hear a knock on the door of the suite.
“Alex? Are you expecting anyone?” I call toward the bedroom.
“I ordered food. Let them in.” There’s a beat of silence. “Please.”
I’m still wearing boxers only. But who cares, right? The delivery guy has probably seen worse. And I tip well. So I cross to the door and pull it open.
Hell, there are five hotel employees outside, bearing two carts, a room service table, and God knows what else. “Are you sure you have the right room?”
“Delivery for Alex Engels.”
I step aside but watch them with growing suspicion. Maybe I do share my brother’s genome after all. Why five people? And what’s all this stuff?
It becomes clear a moment later as the employees unload a disturbing amount of food from those carts into the suite’s kitchenette.
There’s a case of bottled water, plus several other beverages and mixers.
There’s fruit piled in a basket. Boxes of crackers.
Various cheeses and yogurts are tucked into the refrigerator, along with pate and other charcuterie items. There’s cereal, milk, various teas, cookies, and biscuits.
“My God,” I grumble.
“Sorry to take so long, sir,” someone says. “Your breakfast is still hot.”
I notice another employee setting out the room service items on the dining table. There’s two big plates with omelets, bacon, potatoes, toast and fruit. There’s a pot of coffee, for which I’m grateful.
“Sign here.” A bill wallet is thrust against my chest.
“Um, gratuity…”
“Already added,” the young man says.
Of course it is. I scribble my signature.
“Oh, and here’s your package.” The guy hands me a box and then follows his coworkers out into the hallway.
I look down at the box I’m holding against my bare belly. It weighs hardly anything at all, and it’s addressed to me, not Alex. The sender is listed as MAX YOUR ASSHOLE brOTHER.
Huh. At least it’s honest. But the postmark is from three days ago, which really hacks me off. And I have no idea what Max has sent us.
As it happens, I don’t find out for another few minutes because whoever packed the darned thing assumed this box would need to survive a battlefield assault. I’ve never seen so much tape in my life. Picking at it with a fingernail gets me nowhere.
So I pour myself a cup of room service coffee and then dig up a knife from a drawer in the kitchenette. When I finally cut all the tape off the box, I find…a throw pillow? What the fuck? It’s small, done up in white and black dots on one side, with stripes on the other.
My brother has obviously lost his mind. Neither one of us has the least bit of interest in home furnishings. I toss the pillow onto a dining chair and pluck a handwritten note out of the box.
Hey, Eric—whatever you do, don’t toss the pillow around. There’s a very sensitive camera inside.
Well, fuck.
Locate the camera by feeling both sides to identify the hard spot.
Then put this on a piece of furniture which faces the door to the suite.
When you and Alex aren’t at home, we’ll watch the door for you.
Please check your texts just before you reenter the hotel room each time, in case we’ve picked anything up.
After you position the pillow, text “sight check” to 35763. You should get a response within five minutes. If you don’t, I need to hear about it. —M
That’s all he wrote. No please. No thank you.
Whatever. I adjust the pillow on the sofa as he asked, and then find my phone to send the text.
I’m annoyed, but not too annoyed to sit down at the table and pick up my fork. The first bite of omelet is just what I need in this life. “Alex!” I call. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”
She emerges a moment later wearing a resort robe and a towel over her hair. I am not going to admire her legs. Nope. Even though she rubbed them against mine all night while I was trying to sleep.
“Morning.” She blinks at me. Specifically at my abs, I think. “Where are your pajamas?”
“Don’t own any.” I glance down at my boxers. All the important bits are covered. “Does it matter? I could put on my bathing suit instead. It’s more or less the same thing in a brighter color.”
“Right.” She clears her throat. But I don’t miss her eyes making another quick sweep of my body. And I have to hold back a laugh. Could Alex be having a moment of regret? “Um…” She shakes her head once. “Thank you for dealing with the delivery.”
“No problem.” I lift a hand to my chest and stroke a palm down my bare skin.
And, yup, her eyes lock onto my fingers, and she follows my movements like a hungry dog eyes a piece of meat.
How funny is this? Now I’m definitely not putting on a shirt this morning. Not until I absolutely have to. Why ruin the fun?
She finally drags her gaze off my body, picks up a coffee urn and pours herself a cup. Then she takes a moment to examine both coffee urns. “I think you have the decaf.”
“What?” I yelp. “Who orders decaf?”
“Pregnant women.” She takes the cup out of my hand and swaps it with hers.
“I am allowed to drink a single cup of real coffee each day, but I try to wait until the moment when I need it most.” She picks up the urn of regular coffee and tops up the cup of decaf.
“Although, jet lag calls for cheating. Just a harmless amount.”
“No judgment here.” Unlike my brother, I’m not in the business of telling anyone what to do.
Speaking of my brother, my phone vibrates with a text. I shove a strip of bacon in my mouth, wipe my hands, and then get up to read it.
Max: Camera works!
Eric: Okay. Whatever. Why does Alex need this level of spy fuckery in her life?
Max: Because she’s worth a couple billion, and people are assholes? It’s not that complicated.
Eric: It’s just so invasive.
Max: So turn the pillow around when you’re in. Just don’t forget to reverse it when you leave. Alex knows the drill. She won’t forget. Nice underwear. Where are your pajamas?
I don’t even bother to reply. Why is everyone so obsessed with pajamas?
By the time I get back to the table, the food from Alex’s plate is missing. I actually scan my surroundings. “Where did it go?”
“Where did what go?”
“Your breakfast. There’s no way you ate that so fast. It was the size of a football.”
Her eyes flare. “That is a dickish thing to point out. I was hungry.” She picks a strawberry out of the fruit salad and nibbles it daintily.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult.” I stab my own omelet. “I genuinely did not believe you could… Never mind.” One does not win an argument with a woman. One simply survives it.
“Look.” She throws down the napkin. “Pregnancy has given me the appetite of a teenage boy. Ergo, my ass has doubled in size. But if you want to keep breathing, don’t make any cracks about that.”
“I would never. There’s nothing wrong with your ass. Not one thing.” I refill my coffee. “Not that I looked,” I add quickly.
But I totally did.
Her eyes narrow as she gets up from the table. “You don’t have to flatter me, either.”
“I don’t do flattery. Now, what’s on your agenda for today?”
“Sunning myself at the pool, mostly. I’ll look over my speech and return some emails. The conference doesn’t get going until tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I guess I’m sitting by the pool, then. “After you’ve had enough sun, I need to get a workout in. So you’ll need to come back to the room, or else head to the gym with me.”
“I could stand to get some exercise. It’s good for jet lag. How long do you spend in the gym?”
“Two to three, depending on how good the equipment is.”
She blinks. “Two to three…hours?”
“Give or take. Depends how far I run after lifting.”
“That’s impossible. I can’t spend three hours holed up in the room waiting for you. I was going to get a massage and a pedicure.”
“Two then,” I concede. “That’s my bare minimum. You have to do your job, right? I also have to do mine.”
“And your job is working out like a mad man?”
“Working out like a beast,” I correct her. “I’m thirty-four years old, Alex. In four weeks I’ll be at training camp, fighting to dominate guys who are wet behind the ears at twenty-two. They want to take my place on the team. I can’t let ‘em. I don’t work out, I get soft.”
“I see. Okay.” She folds her hands. “I think I know a way to compromise.”
I don’t like compromise.
Alex’s solution is that she gets her early afternoon spa treatments while I finish my workout. That ought to make sense, except for a couple of crucial details.
She has the hotel staff bring a treadmill up to the private patio, so that I can run ten miles while looking out at the ocean. The treadmill is cranking at a brisk pace, and I’m sweating out of every pore as the waves lap the beach.
But I’m not looking at the ocean as often as I should be, because Alex is also getting a massage on a portable table a couple of meters away from me. Face down, she’s oiled up and naked on that table, her skin glinting in the Hawaiian sun.
Sure, there’s a towel covering her ass. So all I can see is her back and her oil-slicked limbs. And a kissable stretch of her neck. But my imagination is top notch. Worse, another guy—and he’s a young, twenty-something Hawaiian stud—has his hands sliding up and down all of Alex’s bare skin.
I can’t stop glancing over there. I’m probably going to stumble and kill myself. It will be all Alex’s fault, too. She even moans once in a while, especially when he works on her feet.
It’s the moans that really kill me.
Note to self: it’s not easy to run with a semi. This is not relaxing. My body temperature is climbing to an unreasonable level, and I don’t know whether to blame all the weight training I did earlier, the Hawaiian sun, or the luscious woman on the massage table.
At the nine mile mark I slap the stop button on the treadmill and let it slow to a stop. I can’t take it any more.
“Quitting early?” Alex asks from the massage table.
I don’t even answer that insulting question. “Avert your eyes.”
“Why?”
I march over to the edge of that pool, my back to Alex and the masseuse, my front to the Hawaiian surf. I strip off my sweaty running shorts and jump into the narrow pool.
Ahhhhh. Cool water is just what I need.
“Where is your bathing suit?” Alex yelps. “It’s not that private a terrace.”
“Where is yours?” I fire back.
The massage therapist laughs. “We’re done out here, anyway. I can’t do a pedicure in the sun; it makes the polish sticky. Here’s your robe.”
“It’s just as well,” Alex says. “There are snacks inside.”
“I thought we were having a late lunch?” I need a real meal after that workout.
“Oh, we are,” Alex assures me. “The snacks are just a warmup.”
She sits up, clutching a sheet to her luscious bosom while I suffer. It’s going to be a long week in Hawaii.
Max isn’t getting a Christmas present this year. Or ever again.