by Serena Bell
Elisa scowled. “You can’t do that.”
God, she was as bossy as ever. “I sure can.”
She glanced around, lowered her voice. “Who saw you together?”
“What?”
“Who saw you guys together? In the airport. I’ve had a videographer following her around, but were there also paparazzi there? Are there photos?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“So you know what that means, right? Every entertainment magazine and show in the city’ll have a piece on Celine and her new man—”
He couldn’t help himself. He winced.
“Yes, that’s you.” She quirked her fingertips into quotation marks. “Celine Carr’s ‘New Man.’ That’s what you get for messing around with a celebrity. Finally found a woman you couldn’t just slip into and out of unnoticed, huh?”
“Hey.”
“Truth hurts?”
She was vicious. And he liked it. He liked her, eyes flashing, his old friend. He’d rather have her bitching at him than not talking to him any day. He’d missed her.
A thought came to him, unbidden. She’d be amazing in bed. The type who’d bite his shoulder and rake his back and yell when she came.
Not that it was an option. With that look on her face, it would be a cold day in hell before she’d have a civil conversation with him, let alone tangle with him in the naughty, uncensored way he envisioned.
And, really, could he blame her? He’d screwed things up royally back when he’d had his chance at her. He’d signed away his rights for all eternity.
Not to mention that, less than five minutes ago, he’d sworn off serial seduction. Hell, he’d sworn off women.
“If you leave now, they’ll have a field day. They’ll make mincemeat out of you, and Celine will come across as pathetic. You don’t want that.”
“So what’s your point? I should stick around?”
“I’m saying that, if I were you, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to run off. There are more decorous ways to do it.”
Decorous. Such an Elisa word.
“Let us get there, take some footage and photos of Celine doing her thing, make it clear that she’s shopping around, not committed to you—then you split. Much less humiliating for both of you.”
He could detect the hope and desperation behind her attempt at convincing him. She meant, Much less humiliating for me.
Her seatmate had returned from the bathroom and hovered expectantly over them. Time to go.
Well, okay, then. He could make this less humiliating for her. It would be a kind of penance, a chance to get back in her good graces. Not, he chastised his cock and all the other body parts clamoring for a piece of the situation, those good graces. But—
There was a chance, a small chance, he could make this better for her. Or at least less worse. And if he did, maybe they could be friends again. Because seeing her had reminded him of how much fun it had been to be friends with her in college and for the three years afterwards when they’d buddied around New York. How sometimes it had felt like the two of them against the world. Blowing off studying to eat pizza on the roof of the library, verbally dismembering their common enemies behind closed doors, stealing the Buddha statue from the religion department and installing it as guardian over the condom jar in the health center. She’d been funny, sharp, energetic, but kind, too, jollying him out of bad moods and dragging him on hikes in the New England mountains as an antidote to sophomore slumps and senior stress.
She was not the kind of friend who came along every day. There were eight million other people living in New York City, but no one played Scrabble with the focus or intensity that Elisa applied to the game. And of the other 7,999,999 New Yorkers, he had yet to find one who liked to deliberately pick bad DVDs and do her own Mystery Science Theater 3000, dissecting and mocking the films with glee. And no one had ever laughed at him with the utter abandon that Elisa had employed the day she’d taught him to Rollerblade, hoisting him up off the ground and then falling down beside him, breathless with hysteria.
You didn’t get second chances too many times in life.
“Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”
3
ELISA COLLAPSED INTO the cushy first-class seat. “Okay. I think I talked Brett into not taking the next flight back.”
There was silence from beside her, and she turned to discover that Celine was not awed and grateful, but confused. “He wanted to take the next flight back?”
Oh, man. She’d blown that. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that Celine might still think a romance could develop between her and Brett? Brett always did manage to inspire unreasonable expectations in women. She of all people should know that. “He said the situation was too weird for him. You didn’t mean to mislead him. It’s just that he thought he was getting a special weekend with you.”
“But you said now he’s staying?” There was a sweet, hopeful note in Celine’s voice. No wonder this woman got her heart publicly broken a minimum of five times a year. She had no hard-candy shell, only the melty center.
“Well, no—not staying. Just, I—” There was no diplomatic way to say this. “I thought it would be embarrassing for you if he left now, whereas if he stayed, we could make it look like you sent him away on your own terms. You guys can put on a nice show of having a destination date, and then you can decide you’re not interested and move on. Everyone looks good.”
Celine narrowed her eyes. “Everyone, meaning you?”
Elisa kept her irritation under tight wraps. “Everyone meaning everyone. Me, you, Brett. A more graceful exit for all of us.”
“What if that’s not what I want? A graceful exit?” Celine’s voice rose.
“What do you want?”
“He said the situation was too weird, right? Because of the boot camp weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“So let’s do the boot camp weekend another time!” Celine was excited now. She pulled out her iPhone and tapped open her calendar. “I can’t do the next three weekends, because I’m filming straight through, but I could do—no—I’m sure we could figure something out, though, right?”
“Hon—no. We’ve got a videographer here, I did a huge push in the media, and I can’t get those people to take me seriously again if I bail now.” The thought made her cringe. There were no do overs in PR. No, for realz this time! Celine Carr’s dating boot camp weekend!
“Yeah. That would kinda suck. For you.”
Ouch. Elisa didn’t have to dig down far to read the subtext there. But I’m paying you for this weekend, and you can sit down and shut up, if that’s what I need you to do. And Celine’s unspoken chastisement was dead right. It wasn’t Celine’s job to win friends and followers for Rendezvous.
“You wouldn’t have to go home. You could stick around and just be on vacation.”
Elisa had to smile at Celine’s stab at generosity. “Sure. I could.”
“I’m just saying, Brett’s only upset because you’re still trying to match me up. He’d come around if you were out of the picture. And like I said, not totally out of the picture, just not so visible.”
“If that’s what you want,” said Elisa, with effort. “We’ll have to check in with Haven.”
“Can we call her as soon as we land?”
“Yes.”
Haven was supposed to be on this trip, too, but, at the last minute, her mother had been hospitalized with appendicitis. Haven had wanted to cancel the trip—“Keeping Celine Carr in line is a job for a paid PR professional”—but Elisa had promised that she could handle Celine. Elisa had assured Haven that she’d manage the media according to the publicist’s directions, carefully watch out for Celine’s well-being and call “the instant she sets a toenail out of line.”
Haven was
going to have rabbits when she heard that Celine had showed up for her flight with Brett in tow.
Elisa would worry about that later. She had bigger fish to fry right now, like making sure that her client didn’t get her heart broken instead of having her self-confidence built up.
“Celine—” Oh, this was stupid and awkward. Whatever she said next would sound like sour grapes, but if she didn’t say it, she’d be a really crappy dating coach. So, screw it, she’d rather be sour grapes than drop the ball. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, but Brett Jordan is—”
Well, who was or wasn’t Brett, exactly? And what gave her the right to make that call? She’d had her own share of miscalculations about the kind of man he was. She was hardly an expert.
“What’s the deal between you guys?” Celine’s voice was sharp.
“There’s no deal.” She could see that Celine didn’t believe her. Smart girl. “We were friends. There was a time, briefly, when I hoped—but there was never anything.”
God, she was full of shit. Never anything. Nothing except kisses that had made her limp and golden and floaty, nothing except for his hands on her in a way that had made her willing to beg for more. And what exactly did she mean by telling Celine she’d been hopeful “briefly”? Briefly, if briefly meant all through college and for years after that. Even now she wasn’t sure what she had wanted from him. Not anything he could give, that was for sure.
“So you were in love with him,” Celine said.
“Not in love with him, no, I wouldn’t— It was a long time ago. We were friends. He was—he dated a ton of women, just not me.”
“But you’re not objective.”
The night Elisa had met Brett, he’d come wandering through the dorm looking for someone to play Scrabble with. She’d leaped at the opportunity. He was cute, with pale green eyes, an intense gaze and symmetrically hewn features, but she’d mostly been grateful to find someone who was as much of a word nerd as she was. He had known all the two-letter words in existence, had produced seven-letter words multiple times per game and had constantly manufactured crazy plays, laying one word alongside another to spawn five new words for thirtysomething points.
“I have an embarrassment of Os,” he had said midway through that first night, turning his tile holder to face her. There they were, four Os in a row, lined up. “They’re like four eyes, staring at me.”
Back then, he had longish hair that fell over his face, and he shook it away periodically in a gesture that was too self-conscious for her taste but had made her palms a little sweaty anyway. “Only—they’re Os, not eyes.”
His own eyes had sparkled and a dimple had appeared in his cheek.
She’d started to laugh helplessly and he’d joined in. They’d stopped, gasping, and then started again until they rolled on the floor, and he’d said, “You’re the best Scrabble partner I’ve found since I’ve been here. Will you play again? Will you play whenever I want?”
She’d shrugged, and because she had pride, she’d said, “When I feel like it,” but in her heart, she’d known she’d always play with him.
That night she’d been pretty sure he felt about her the same way she felt about him. There were moments of prolonged eye contact and real flirtation, and when he had boxed up his game and gotten up to go, there was a long, awkward silence that afterward she thought of as a kiss that hadn’t happened. Over the next few weeks, they had become friends, playing Scrabble almost every night, roller-skating, seeing movies, frequenting the same drunken parties, studying together. Nothing had happened between them, and soon she had begun to understand Brett’s pattern. He liked to date beautiful women. Not cute or pretty or striking in an unusual way, but model-beautiful, the handful of women at their college who were truly glamorous. Or maybe “date” wasn’t the right word. He had collected them. He had wooed them and had worn them on his arm briefly and let them pass out of his life again, as though they were bits of flotsam floating by on a river. She had watched, and she had alternated between ferocious envy and gratitude that she wasn’t the one being used and discarded.
From the first moment Brett Jordan had strolled down the dorm hallway with his Scrabble game in hand and poked his scruffy, beautiful head into her room, she hadn’t been objective.
She wouldn’t lie about that, not to herself and not to her client.
She looked up and saw with a jolt of relief that the flight attendant was headed toward them with a tray of champagne flutes. That would improve things. Not that they could really get much worse.
She collected two flutes from the tray and handed one to Celine. “No,” Elisa finally answered.
And when Celine tilted her head quizzically, she shook her own and said, “You could safely say I’m not objective about Brett.”
4
“CELINE! CELINE!” PAPARAZZI and reporters shouted.
Elisa was still reeling from the bumpy and terrifying descent onto the St. Barts’s airstrip. It would be way too generous to call this an airport. Runway ten—the pilot had referred to it with affection, for reasons she couldn’t fathom—ended in a shock of white beach and aquamarine water.
He’d warned them that the plane’s safety system would protest the landing, but that didn’t stop Elisa’s heart from practically fleeing her chest when he dived over a hill and the warning system blared “Pull up!” She’d held her breath for the entire length of the runway while brakes squealed and flaps flapped, convinced that they’d miss the runway and land either on the highway or in the water. She’d been sure they’d have to climb out of the sea to start their trip.
“Celine!”
Elisa counted maybe ten yammering entertainment buzzards. Pretty good for a minor celebrity, and she felt a twinge of pride. They were here because of the buzz she’d made.
And then the pride deflated like a leaky balloon.
What a waste now, thanks to Brett.
They’d disembarked the plane into a brilliantly sunny, warm paradise, with white sailboats in the harbor, red-roofed houses dotting green hills and palm fronds waving in a light breeze. It had taken them just a few minutes to clear customs and collect their baggage, and now they stepped out of the protective atmosphere of the single-gate airport and into Celine’s world. Media and clamor.
“Celine! Tell us why you’re doing this! What’s a weekend dating boot camp?”
No—Elisa wouldn’t let her work be a waste. She would find a way to make the most of this moment. She’d come this far, and she was not going to back quietly away. Until the weekend was over, this was her show, her chance.
She and Brett and Celine pushed through the minimob. She kept a hand on Celine’s back, moving her forward. Haven Hoyt had carefully coached Elisa on managing this moment.
“Don’t stop walking or they’ll pin you,” Haven had said. “And for God’s sake, smile. Every single second is a photo op, and the last thing you want is a photo of you with a grimace on your face plastered all over the internet.”
They were almost to the cab, a soft-top Jeep Wrangler, a tough-looking jungle car in a sea of cutesy Smart cars. The cab would ferry them straight to the hotel, and then hotel security would take over the work of holding the media off Celine. Elisa’s smile was starting to hurt, but she remembered Haven’s words and kept it in place.
A microphone crowded her face. “Where’d they meet?” It was a blond woman Elisa vaguely recognized from the evening entertainment shows.
“On the town.” Ooh, she was pleased with her answer. So much better than “in a drugstore.”
“Were you with her?”
“She did it herself, using techniques I taught her. Teach a woman to fish...”
Laughter from the peanut gallery. That was good, right? Her smile was real now. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted her videographer, Morrow, han
ging back from the pack, and he gave her a thumbs-up. She liked him a lot, and his previous clients, including some heavy hitters, had raved about his work.
The blond woman was a bulldog. “Is it serious?”
What had Haven said? Every question is an opportunity. “They’ve only known each other a few days. But who knows? If things go well, maybe she won’t need me after this weekend.”
More laughter. She looked over at Celine who was smiling brilliantly. Brett’s expression didn’t match. But he was a guy, so instead of looking grim, he looked serious and thoughtful. Authoritative.
That jaw. The fact that he hadn’t shaved this morning made her want to test the texture of his stubble with her tongue.
Her smile had slipped slightly, and she tugged it back on.
“If she’s only known him a few days, why’d she bring him to the Caribbean?”
Excellent question. I wish I knew. “Destination dates are becoming very popular. Rendezvous encourages its clients to pick exciting locations even for first dates. And of course Celine will meet many men and have a whole variety of dates this weekend.”
She’d even gotten her business’s name in without sounding like a total tool. They were at the Jeep, sliding across the backseat, Celine, then Brett, then Elisa, and the relief was as profound as if they’d entered a decontamination chamber. She slammed the door behind them, and the cab pulled away to a chorus of flashes.
“You were great!” Celine said.
“Very smooth.” Brett’s tone was so dry that once again she couldn’t tell if he was mocking her.
She snuck a look at him. In the center seat, he’d leaned toward the windshield and was staring out at the green, brown and blue world. The road was narrow, and people kept squeezing past them in the opposite direction at ungodly speeds. She could blame the rapid trip of her pulse on that, not on the hard length of his thigh pressed against hers.
