The Unexpected Honeymoon

by Barbara Wallace

  “That’s just it,” Larissa said. “He is interested. I know he feels the same way I do, but he’s too scared to let himself feel anything. Oh, Lord, I sound like one of those letters in an advice column, don’t I? Desperate in Manhattan.”

  “Dramatics aside, are you sure this isn’t a rebound thing or the atmosphere getting to you?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” she said, stabbing the brownie with her spoon. Best friend or not, Delilah’s question annoyed her. “Look, I know you and Chloe think I’m some kind of romantic ninny, but what I felt when I was with Carlos.... I can’t explain. It’s like something inside me clicked into place.”

  And there’d been a hole inside her since the moment she walked away on the beach. “It wouldn’t matter if he was in Mexico, Manhattan or Mars. I don’t feel whole without him.”

  She looked up at her friend. “Is it possible to find your soul mate only to have him not want you?”

  “That’s not really how soul mates work.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” Appetite gone, she set the sundae aside. It was going to take a lot more than brownies and ice cream to make her feel full again. “So what am I going to do? And please don’t say, give myself time, because I’ll scream.”

  “Okay, I won’t. I will, however, tell you to give him time.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Delilah reached across her to take the sundae off the end table. “Do you remember when I first fell in love with Simon? How he insisted he and I couldn’t be together?”

  Larissa remembered. A terrible trauma in Simon’s past had him believing he wasn’t good enough to be with Delilah.

  “Well, my mother passed along some advice. She told me that if Simon was really my soul mate, he’d find his way to me. And he did. Took a while, but he did. If you remember, same thing happened with Chloe and Ian.”

  “But you and Simon worked together. You might not have been in a relationship, but you still saw him every day. And even Chloe and Ian were in the same city. Carlos is in Mexico, for crying out loud. What am I supposed to do, take the wedding coordinator job?” The idea crossed her mind more than once. That’s how crazy she was about the man; she would relocate to the other end of the continent to be with him.

  “Why don’t we wait a couple weeks before trying something so extreme?” Delilah suggested.

  “You think I’m being dramatic again.”

  “No, I think you’re truly in love, and it stinks. Those weeks Simon and I were apart were some of the worst weeks of my life. You have to have faith that he’ll miss you as much as you miss him, and that the loneliness will motivate him to do something.”

  Terrific. Her happiness rested on Carlos’s ability to cope with loneliness. Larissa had a feeling she’d be waiting forever.

  * * *

  Wasn’t heartburn supposed to clear up after a few days? It’d been almost three weeks, and the horrendous burning ache behind his breastbone hadn’t eased up one bit. He shook out a handful of antacid tablets. Surely there was a limit to how many of these a person should take, as well.

  “Those won’t help, primo.” Jorge walked into his office without knocking, an annoying habit that seemed to have increased over the past two weeks. “Antacid doesn’t cure stupidity.”

  “I need it to survive your bad jokes,” Carlos groused.

  “No offense, but are you sure you’re surviving?”

  Carlos tossed back the tablets with a wince. Other than the heartburn, and a few bouts of insomnia, he was surviving perfectly fine. Business was doing well, the last of Maria’s mistakes had been rectified, and every time he closed his eyes he saw Larissa walking out the door. What could be wrong? He pinched his brow. “Did you want something?”

  “A letter arrived today that you should read. And before you ask, no, it is not from New York.”

  “What makes you think I was going to ask?” He knew better. When Larissa walked out the door, she walked out for good. He knew from the very start he wouldn’t hear from her again.

  The return address indicated the letter was from somewhere in Colorado. Carlos didn’t recognize where. Upon opening, he found a gold-and-white note card. Nothing fancy. The hotel received dozens of similar cards every year. For some reason, however, this particular card made his stomach tighten. Slowly, he opened it and read:

  Dear Señor Chavez:

  I wanted to take this time to thank you for the incredible recommitment ceremony you and Señorita Boyd arranged for us. Linda didn’t stop smiling the entire day and must have said a hundred times that it was better than she imagined. It truly was the trip of a lifetime.

  Unfortunately, Linda suffered complications shortly after we returned. She passed away last week. Whenever I start to miss her, I pull out the photographs from that day. Seeing her smile, and remembering how happy she was helps ease the pain. Thank you for helping us make one last memory.

  Sincerely,

  Paul Stevas

  PS: Could you please tell Señorita Boyd again how much Linda and I appreciated all her help? I don’t have her address. Thank you.

  The card slipped from Carlos’s fingers. Poor Paul. Life kicked the poor lovesick bastard in the teeth exactly as Carlos knew it would. All that love and what happened? The kid was stuck at home with nothing more than memories.

  Proof what he’d told Larissa was right.

  Jorge picked up the card. “I remember this couple. They seemed like nice people.”

  “They were.” Too nice for something like this to happen. “Have Louisa send flowers with our condolences.”

  “Are you going to let Larissa know?”

  He nearly missed the question. It was the sound of Larissa’s name that pulled him from his thoughts.

  “The card says they don’t have her address,” Jorge said. “She’d probably want to know what happened.”

  She would be heartbroken, as well. Paul and Linda had become special to her. “Will you call her?” he asked his cousin.

  “Don’t you think she’d rather hear the news from you?”

  He couldn’t. Memories of her visit plagued him enough without hearing her voice.

  Funny how Paul’s memories brought him comfort, while thinking of a weeklong affair brought him nothing but insomnia and heartburn.

  The ache in his chest started to spread. So much for antacid. “Given how we said goodbye, I’m sure hearing from me would be awkward.”

  “Since when has ‘awkward’ ever bothered you? I’ve heard you talk to guests over some pretty sensitive subjects.”

  “I never slept with any of those guests.” Slept with. Sounded way too crude a term for what he and Larissa shared. When he was with her, he felt...

  He felt.

  Heaving a sigh, he shoved the thought from his brain, where it joined the countless other thoughts waging war in the center of his chest.

  “She doesn’t want to hear from me, Jorge,” he said. Looking to the papers on his desk, he made a production of fishing through them. Perhaps his cousin would get the hint that he didn’t want to have this conversation any longer.

  No such luck. “I think she does, primo. I think she wants to hear from you quite badly.”

  “She also wants more than I can give her,” Carlos snapped. “My calling would only open the wound. I’m asking you to do it. Now, if there’s nothing else, I have work to do.” He went back to shuffling through his paperwork.

  Jorge stood, but rather than leave, he crossed around to the other side of the desk. Carlos tried to ignore him, but his hulking presence cast too big a shadow.

  “What are you afraid of, primo?”

  “Other than not signing off on these contracts in time?”

  “You know what I mean. Larissa. I watched you when she was here. She was special.”r />
  More than special. “I’m not afraid of anything. Larissa and I had a weeklong affair that ended badly. I wish it hadn’t, but it did. Life goes on.” Eventually his guilt and regret would fade away. That’s what this ache in his chest was, right? Guilt over leading her on?

  “Rich talk, coming from you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, dear cousin, that Mirabelle is dead.”

  “I know that,” Carlos snapped. Dear God, but he knew that. Why were they talking about Mirabelle all of a sudden anyway?

  “Because Larissa isn’t,” Jorge said when he asked. “She’s alive and waiting for your phone call.”

  “No, she’s alive and in New York City,” Carlos replied. Even if he did call her, what good would talking do? Eventually she’d hang up, and he’d be faced with her absence again. “Calling her won’t bring her back.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She has a life there. A family. A career.”

  “So?”

  “So, she’s not coming back,” he said, slamming his hand on the top of his desk. Jorge’s questions served nothing other than to churn up the acid in his stomach. Needing space, he shoved himself to his feet.

  Outside his office window, the beach reached out to meet the crystal-blue water. It was a view he’d tried to avoid all month long. Too many associations.

  “How do you know? Have you asked her?”

  Of course he didn’t ask her. “You saw how we ended things.” Her asking him questions he didn’t have answers to.

  Not true. You know the answers.

  Carlos closed his eyes. The voice had been taunting him more and more over the past three weeks, as well. Pushing him to have unwanted thoughts, asking him to open doors he’d be better off keeping closed.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever hated her as much as I do right now,” he heard his cousin say.

  “Hate who?” Although he already knew the answer. Certainly couldn’t be Larissa. She’d done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.

  “I know it’s wrong for me to say because she had so many demons. She needed so much. Too much. I saw how much you loved her.”

  “She was my world. Not that it did any good.”

  “I know, and that’s why I hate her. Because she was too sick to see that and because when she died, she passed on her demons to you. I hate that she turned you into a coward.”

  Carlos shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He didn’t want to talk about Mirabelle. Lately, when he thought of his late wife, the thoughts morphed into memories of Larissa. Her laugh, her innocent sense of wonder. He pictured her eyes when she saw the cenote for the first time, and her face every time their bodies joined together. Each and every memory twisted in his gut, begging for him not to push them away.

  Perhaps Jorge was right. He was a coward. But couldn’t his cousin see, cowardice was the only thing keeping his heart from ripping into pieces a second time?

  Hasn’t it torn already? The truth finally won the battle. All his lying to himself, all the walls he so desperately tried to keep erected, and in the end, Larissa still claimed his heart. Somewhere between the moment she opened her hotel door and their fight on the beach, despite all his best defenses, he’d fallen in love with her.

  Whoever said the truth would set you free, lied. His pain was worse than ever.

  “Call her, primo,” Jorge urged.

  “I can’t.”

  Can’t or won’t? Larissa’s final question came floating back, mocking him. So desperate to hear him admit his feelings. “She isn’t coming back.”

  “How do you know unless you ask her?”

  Before Carlos could argue otherwise, the two-way radio on Jorge’s waist went off. A problem in the ballroom. “You better go,” Carlos told him.

  “Sending me off on an errand won’t change my opinion, you know.”

  “Go.”

  “Fine, I’m going, but we will revisit this conversation. Along with the fact that we need a new wedding coordinator so I don’t have to deal with catering crises every five minutes.”

  His cousin faced failure on both points. Carlos was done talking about Larissa. And as for a wedding coordinator, he doubted any future candidates would ever be as good as the woman who checked out a few weeks ago.

  No one in general would be as good as her.

  How long he stayed staring out the window, he didn’t know. As he watched the sun drift from one corner of his window to another, hundreds of thoughts raced through his mind, all coming back to one central question. What are you afraid of?

  Turned out his fear had been a self-fulfilling one, didn’t it? With all his effort to hold Larissa at arm’s length, to keep from feeling pain, he created even more.

  Slowly, he walked back to his desk, where Paul Stevas’s letter lay. What was it Larissa said that day on the beach? About Paul and Linda facing the bad together? He wished he could remember her exact words, but he’d been too busy scrambling to protect himself and they didn’t permeate his brain until now.

  Before he realized what he was doing, he’d taken out a piece of hotel stationery and started writing.

  Dear Paul,

  I am so sorry to hear about Linda. She seemed like a very wonderful person. It was obvious the two of you loved each other very much. I’m glad we could help you enjoy your final days together.

  Cherish the memories. Love is too precious a gift to forget.

  He folded the note and set it aside to accompany the condolence flowers. Love was a precious gift, he thought. Mirabelle’s demons hadn’t let her see that. And as a result, his demons hadn’t let him see the same thing when Larissa came into his life. If only he’d been brave enough to realize how lucky he was to be given a second chance at happiness.

  How do you know until you ask her?

  He reached for the phone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TWO WEEKS, FIVE DAYS and twenty-seven hours. That’s how long it had been since she said goodbye to Carlos and flown back to New York, and the hole in Larissa’s heart loomed larger than ever.

  “If you love him set him free,” she muttered. What a joke. She heaved her pen across her desk where it hit the postcard pinned to her wall before landing on a stack of media contracts. A nice red dot now marred the sky over the La Joya swimming pool. She should take the darn pictures down anyway. Looking at them only made the longing worse.

  God, but she missed Carlos. Why did she have to be so stubborn about insisting he admit his feelings? She should have stayed the extra day and had one last wonderful memory. Granted, she’d still be sitting here in New York without him, but at least she wouldn’t keep picturing the way his forlorn expression reflected in the glass as she walked out of the lobby.

  No, you could torture yourself with some other memory.

  “We brought you back a sandwich.” Chloe rattled a white paper sack as she and Delilah invaded her cubicle doorway. “Roast beef with slaw.”

  “Thanks, I’ll eat it later.” Ignoring the look between exchanged between her friends, she set the back on the corner of her desk.

  “You should have joined us,” Chloe said. “Feels like summer has finally kicked in out there. It’s even warm enough for you.”

  “Sorry I missed it, but I had too much work.”

  “Interesting how that’s been happening a lot lately,” Delilah remarked. “Work keeping you from lunch, that is.”

  “I don’t see what’s so interesting about it. No different from the way you work late all the time.” Actually, it was a lot different and all three of them knew it. Her work might be piling up, but it was because she’d been unable to focus. While her body sat in New York, her mind and heart were back in Mexico. The other day she went so far as to see if
La Joya hired a wedding coordinator yet. At least if she were physically in Mexico, she’d feel like she was putting up a fight.

  A hand settled on her shoulder. She looked up into Chloe’s brown eyes. “It’s going to be all right,” her friend told her.

  “Would you say that if this was Ian?”

  Her friend’s eyes widened a second, and she shook her head. “No.”

  “Exactly. It’s not going to be all right as long as he’s not part of my life.” That’s what she got for wanting real. Her life wasn’t a life at all without him. She was no better than Carlos right now, existing in a void.

  “You know what? I’m going back.” Time she took a piece of her own advice. How could she expect Carlos to reach out and take a chance, if she wasn’t willing to do the same?

  She reached for the phone, only to have Delilah’s hand curl around her wrist. “What will you do when you get there? Pick up where you left off?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And then what?” Delilah asked. “Six months from now when he still won’t open up to you, are you going to feel any better?”

  “I don’t know.” She certainly couldn’t feel any worse.

  In the end, her phone rang, ending the argument. “Hi, Larissa, it’s Jenny from first-floor reception. Can you come down for a moment?”

  “Sure. I’ll be right there.” She hung up with a frown. “That’s odd. First-floor reception wants me.”

  “Maybe someone sent you a present,” Chloe teased.

  A present indeed. She and Delilah had been doing everything under the sun to cheer her up. They’d probably ordered a balloon bouquet or something equally silly. Forget what she said about not being able to feel worse. As horrible as she felt right now, she’d be completely lost without these two.

  “I’d better go find out.”

  * * *

  After four years of working at CMT, Larissa had come to expect all sorts of sights in their corporate lobby. None of them prepared her for the man standing at the reception desk.