3. Renée
3
RENéE
I heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to watch the man walking up to the deck. He carried a single duffle bag. Not much luggage considering he’d gone halfway around the world. But then, I hadn’t brought much either. Comparatively speaking, I’d packed the entire house.
“C.T.?” I knew who he was, but I was hit with a case of the nerves and had to resort to my public persona and good manners to see me through the next few minutes.
A head nod. He dropped his duffle on the deck and walked over. He was of medium height, with a rangy build that suggested sleek muscles under his clothes. I usually liked my men taller, but his height deficiency wouldn’t present a problem.
I had instructed room service to deliver lunch and drinks when my guest arrived. I clicked on the resort app to alert them of the fact he’d shown.
He grew closer and looked down at me with eyes shielded behind sunglasses. The rugged jawline and straight brow were definitely attractive, but I wanted to see more of him. Much more.
I stifled a sigh. The closer he got to me, the yummier he looked.
“How was your trip?” The question came out breathier than I would have liked as I grasped for something to say.
“Long.” He walked around the deck, looked out over the water. “Do you want to take a walk with me?”
I closed my eyes behind the lenses of my sunglasses. Good God, I hadn’t even imagined that he’d want to stretch his legs after being cooped up in a plane for so long. Was I so out of touch with people that I didn’t even consider their wants and needs before deciding the course of an afternoon for them? Shame on me. One more point for Zayre.
“Of course.” I stood and realized that even though he wasn’t as tall as most of the men I had been linked to in the last few years, he still had enough inches on me to make me feel…protected. Not sure that was the right word, but he did make me feel something. Which was good. I didn’t want to feel nothing where my date was concerned.
As we made our way to the stairs, I decided that room service could bring the food and set up while we walked. The staff at the resort was extremely professional and non-obtrusive. When they arrived and we were gone, they would do their job, and the food would be ready when we returned.
C.T. let me go down first, as he followed behind me.
We cut through tufts of sea grass to get to the beach proper. Miles of pristine sand and sparkling blue-green water stretched out before us. C.T. took off to the right and I kept pace beside him. He was quiet. Painfully so. In all my imaginings about this weekend, I never expected my date to be so quiet.
Maybe he waited for me to start the conversation. The rules that governed the date said no personal information was to be exchanged, so how were we to come to an accord? To communicate? Anything I might ask him were the usual questions of the where are you from, what do you do variety .
Did he expect me to order him around for the next forty-eight hours? Good Lord, I had no problem telling anyone what to do. I’d created an empire doing just that—but there was something about this C.T. that gave me vibes that he didn’t take orders well.
I smiled to myself as I thought of a way to get the conversation going without telling anything too personal. At least nothing that given out of context would matter.
“What was the first concert you ever attended?”
C.T. turned and looked down at me. I really wish he wasn’t wearing those damn glasses. I needed to see what was in his eyes. Even behind the dark lenses he seemed to judge me and find me lacking. “Excuse me?”
I soldiered on. “The first concert you attended. What was it? Who did you see?”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to speak of personal things.” He bent to pick up a shell and study it.
“A public event isn’t exactly personal, is it?”
C.T. walked a few more steps, rubbing the shell between his thumb and first two fingers. “Well, yes and no. It might be a public event, as you say, but that doesn’t mean everyone went to the same one. That concert at that point in my life is unique to my experience.”
Wow. The truth of that statement hit me right upside the head, like someone had lobbed a coconut at me. So insightful for…an average Joe.
That’s what I’d asked for. An average, everyday guy. A guy I could have picked up in a bar and taken home. For me, that was exotic. But I never expected such a deep answer for a simple question.
“What?” He stood in front of me, staring down with an almost annoyed expression peeking out from around the dark frames.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. If he hadn’t recognized me by now, I didn’t want to tip him off by saying anything that sounded like it had come from one of my books. “I suppose I never thought of it that way before.”
Another reason I’d asked for a regular Joe. The chance of a man in his age bracket knowing my name and face was probably pretty low—unless they were in touch with their inner self. It was my experience that average Joes were not in touch with anything other than their private parts.
To stimulate the conversation, I chose a variation on a technique I used in my books. I let him lead. “So, what do we talk about to get to know each other?”
C.T. took a step forward. “Do we need to know each other? I thought the purpose of the weekend was hooking up with someone you normally wouldn’t.”
Heat blasted my cheeks as if a nuclear bomb had gone off under my skin. I turned into the sea breeze that blew off the water to cool down the embarrassment. “I’m not the type of person who hooks up . I’m not even sure I know how to process that phrase. It sounds so empty.”
C.T. laughed, the sound low and sexy in a counterpoint to the waves that came ashore. “Yes, that’s the entire point of it. Never go looking for a hook up to mean more than one night of mindless pleasure.”
Another hard truth I had to wrestle with in order to get through the weekend. I had called this down on myself. I wanted mindless pleasure, didn’t I? Wasn’t this all about letting go?
“All right,” C.T. said. “What would you like to call it, if not a hook up?”
I considered it for a moment. I laughed, as my mind moved to the shelves of Regency romances I’d read in college. “An assignation.”
He smiled. “And that’s just a fancy word for hook up.”
“Yes, but it sounds so much better.”
“Semantics,” he pointed out.
I returned his smile. C.T. might be an average Joe, but he was one with a brain. And how snobbish for me assume that because a man might fall into the middle-income and education category that he wasn’t intelligent? That he couldn’t carry on an engaging conversation. So far, I was pleasantly surprised by his intellect.
We walked for a bit longer, the sun and sea air felt good. Energized me. C.T. was a man of few words. Each exchange was initiated by me. Was this the way it was going to be all weekend?
Just when I was gearing up to speak, he turned to me. “Have you ever skinny dipped?”
I was so shocked; I almost swallowed my tongue.
Then he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I think it’s time you did.”