After a few more seconds of thoughtful silence, Megan sighed through her nose and got up. “You’ve had too much to drink in the sun,” she said softly, placing a hand on his chest. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
Dean stared at her in utter disbelief, the room’s air conditioner humming in his ears, licking at his wet shirt. He almost started laughing and turned to the eighth floor balcony looking out over the ocean instead. She was in on it, too. Of course, she was. The glass was warm against his forehead. People scurried along the beach below like picnic ants, each on a desperate mission to do it all in one week’s time. Dean watched a shark-spotting plane leisurely troll the coastline, trying to figure out his next move and coming up empty. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, tapping his forehead against the glass and slipping the cell back into his pocket.
Chapter 3
Evy turned off Let’s Make a Deal, the contestant’s costumes adding to her fever daydream. The apartment went dead quiet. Guilt coursed through her veins, pushing the despair back down again, a see-saw effect that had been undulating since waking up. An hour and a half of sleep was no way to come into work fresh and ready, but it was better than zero hours of sleep, which - at one point during the night - she was certain would be all she would get. Eventually she had dozed so lightly she hadn’t been sure if she had slept or not. Until the dream came back to her. The one where Dean had shown up at her apartment. Evy had been so ecstatic, bombarding him with a million questions until realizing she was talking to her building’s maintenance guy who looked nothing like Dean. Even her dreams weren’t safe from her strife, leaving her frightened of catching too much of her reflection today, or the maintenance guy.
The cell phone drew her wandering eyes. She grabbed it and shook her head, her ponytail tickling the back of her neck. Not a single text. Anger was the next to ride a swell inside of her, rising to the top and making her grit her teeth. The thought of him marrying another woman weighed heavily upon her lungs, making it difficult to breathe in the soft glow of dawn’s early light.
This was bullshit. Dean was hers, not Megan’s. Her eyes thinned, her resentment gaining a better foothold leading to full on rage. With great effort, she pushed herself up off the couch, traipsed over to the desk against the wall on heavy legs and woke the laptop from its slumber. The screen grumpily flickered to life, making her squint. It took a few seconds for her eyes to focus in on the list of flights she had already studied for well over an hour last night. Sugars flashed through her mind. Brooke and Ben needed her, were counting on her. Dean’s image pushed them down with both hands, his melting smile and big brown eyes pleading for her attention. A tug of war ensued, leaving her palms wet and her gut clenched.
Chapter Four
“Aloha!”
Dean ignored Cliff’s corny greeting and sat down at the bar, his head pounding like a drum, not believing he had slept past noon.
“Well, you’re looking better today.”
Dean tapped the bar. “Jack and Coke.”
“Breakfast of champions,” Cliff smiled, flashing the gap in his teeth and turning to the rows of liquor bottles stacked behind him.
Dean took a quick look around, scanning the place for a bald guy with pasty skin. When he decided it was clear, he dug his phone out and scrolled to Evy’s name. He stared at it, the wind tousling his hair, still wet from a much needed shower. Dean inhaled breath of air that tasted like salt and hit the call button. Each ring grew louder in his ear, setting off a dull thud at the base of his skull. Cliff set Dean’s drink down just when Evy answered.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” he said, holding his breath and running a hand through his hair. “But things have been…” He stopped talking, grimacing when Evy told him to leave a message after the beep that stung his ear like an angry hornet, piercing his eardrum with its sharp tone. Dean opened his mouth but the words clung to the tip of his tongue, refusing to let go under any circumstance. He hung up and pulled the straw from his drink, not sure what to say or do anymore, and took a long pull of the Jack and Coke, deciding he just needed a little more time to figure it out. It would come to him. It always did.
“Ya know,” Cliff said, resting his elbows on the bar top. “You might be the most miserable looking newlywed I’ve ever seen, and we get a lot of em through here.”
Dean set his jaw, spraying Cliff with a chilly glare. “Might be?”
Cliff laughed. “You’re supposed to be like those two lovebirds over there.”
Dean followed his gaze to a young couple a few tables closer to the ocean. They held hands and stared deeply into one another’s eyes, laughing and kissing and only making him feel worse. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, returning to his drink.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Dean swallowed hard, his headache in full bloom behind his bloodshot eyes. “Why does everybody need to talk about everything?”
A perplexed look tightened Cliff’s features into a ball. “Makes em feel better I guess.”
“Hey, how’s that muscle head guy from yesterday doing?”
Cliff inhaled a cutting breath through clenched teeth. “Not so good, I’m afraid. Fractured eye socket.”
“Seriously?”
Cliff rapped his knuckles on the bar two times. “Hey, it’s like my granddaddy always said: it ain’t a party till somethin gets broken.”
Dean stared at him, ice cubes settling in his glass. “Have you seen a bald guy with black framed glasses around today? He was sitting here yesterday.”
Cliff’s lips stretched downward as he picked up an ashtray and wiped under it. “Not that I remember.”
“But you remember seeing him yesterday afternoon, right? Here at the bar.”
“Uh, I remember seeing a bunch of Hawaiian Tropic models out by the pool yesterday, but we get a lot of people through here, especially at night.”
Dean exhaled a weary breath and followed Cliff’s gaze to the pool spilling into the North Pacific, trying to put the pieces together. Like Cliff, the short girl behind the front desk hadn’t seen Ryder today or yesterday, which meant he was either using a fake name or staying somewhere nearby. Dean grabbed a pen off the bar and scribbled something onto the dry side of his coaster. “If you see him, can you call me right away?” He slid the coaster and a folded twenty across the bar. “There’s an extra fifty in it if you do, but on the DL.”
Cliff’s eyes widened as he studied the money and the coaster. “Sure, Dean. I can do that.”
“And I’ll take another one of these when ya get a chance.” He gestured with the drink and wandered off to the pool, the sun burning his skin without the canopy’s protection. It was a hot one, and another day of drinking in the sun was just what the doctor ordered.
He stopped at the edge of the blue pool and took a good long drink, staring at the sparkly reflection looking back at him and wondering who that man was. This had all been a horrible idea gone terribly wrong. It had bought them some time and gotten the liquor license back but now he was at a standstill, unsure of anything anymore, scared to close his eyes and scared to open them. He squinted down the beach to where another couple was getting married by the same portly minister from yesterday. This couple, however, had their own witnesses and actually looked happy to be there. Waves crashed just beyond them along with his spirits. It should have been Evy with him on that beach, holding hands and smiling like they had just won the lottery.
“Dean!”
His heart sank and his adrenaline spiked. He spun on the heels of his sneakers, the glass slipping through his fingers and shattering around his feet. He opened his mouth in slow motion, barely able to find his voice within. “Evy?”
***
Evy sprinted through the sun speckled lounge, brushing past long palm throngs and springing into his arms. She buried her nose in his neck and inhaled deeply. “Promise me you’ll never leave me again.”
He picked her up and twirled her through the air, his pulse racing, her smell igniti
ng a flame deep down inside. He set her down and held her out by her bare shoulders, not believing his eyes. She pushed her floppy sunhat back and peered at him over a large pair of sunglasses.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, goose bumps rippling across his flesh despite the blistering heat.
“I had to come.” She wiped away a tear rolling beneath her shades. “I couldn’t just sit around anymore and do nothing.”
Dean exhaled a nervous breath and tore his gaze from her long enough to take a good look around. Cliff stood polishing the bar, shrouded in the canopy’s shade, watching them out the corner of his eye. Dean turned back to Evy’s beautiful face, butterfly wings tickling the lining of his stomach walls. “We can’t be out in the open like this.”
“I don’t care about Ryder.”
His face crumbled. “How do you know about…”
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard, his words dying on their lips. Their tongues reunited, sending sparks blasting across the thin veils of his eyelids, his problems fading to a far corner of his mind where cold dampness trickled from the cracks. But they didn’t stay there for long.
Dean pulled away, struggling for breath. “Come on,” he said, towing her through the bar. “Where are you staying?”
“On the third floor.”
He glanced back without slowing, palm leaves tickling his cheeks. People strolled through the open-air lobby with carefree attitudes, on their way to lunch or the beach. Dean tapped the button for the elevator as he kept a nervous eye out for Mr. Ryder or Megan. Heart hammering in his chest, he turned to Evy, unable to keep his eyes from her for long. They took each other in, the world buzzing around them. The bare legs spilling from her shorts stole his breath as much as the tank top doing its best to support her generous curves. It was all he could do to keep from wrapping her in his arms and smothering her with kisses.
The elevator opened with a soft ding that brought him back to reality. They moved aside as an older couple ambled out, wearing Hawaiian shirts and straw hats. Dean pulled Evy inside and punched the number three button five times in a row. The doors refused to respond.
“Come on, dammit,” he whispered, pressing Evy up against a wall with a framed picture of the exact same beach sitting a hundred yards away. Evy’s hand was warm against his skin. His pulse beat in his neck as he searched the doors for a sign of life.
“You bastard.”
Wrinkles carved through Dean’s forehead. He slowly turned to Evy who was staring at the gold band around his finger.
“I can’t believe you went through with it!”
He turned and hit the button again just as Megan squirted from the restaurant’s glass doors. He sucked his stomach in and flattened Evy up against the wall with his arm.
“How could you, Dean?” she cried, pushing him away.
He shushed her and tried the button again, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Come on, goddamn it.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Evy!” he whispered, afraid to peek around the corner, knowing Megan was searching for him and probably heading for this very elevator right now.
Evy grunted for freedom and he pressed her back against the wall.
Seconds dripped by like cold molasses, Dean’s heart pounding too hard for his ribcage to contain. With a light ding, the doors finally started coming together with a relaxed air that made Dean’s blood curdle. A few seconds later, he could feel gravity’s pull as they ascended the tall shaft.
He let out a pent-up breath. “Out of all the hotels around here, you pick this one to get a room?”
Evy backed against the rear wall and folded her hands across her chest, watching the green numbers flip higher above the doors. “You’ve got a lot of nerve criticizing me.”
“I’m not criticizing you, it’s just that this is way too risky.”
Her eyes swung over to him and honed to a pointed glare. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting your little honeymoon?”
The doors parted and twenty seconds later they were inside her room, soaking up an awkward silence as thick as the humidity in the air. The room was hot and much smaller but with the same breathtaking ocean front view. He wiped his brow with his shoulder and fumbled with an air-conditioner that refused to turn on.
“You’re such an asshole! I can’t believe you actually went through it,” she barked, slamming her brimmed hat and shades down on a cherry colored desk. “How could you do this to us? Do you not love me?”
He turned and fell into those beautiful green eyes that had lost their sparkle. “You know I love you,” he said, trying not to lose his temper.
She laughed. “Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.”
“You tell me what I was supposed to do, Evy! Let Sugars die and everyone I know end up ruined because of my mistake?”
“You’re a coward! You caved to a man who isn’t worth the time of day!”
He opened his mouth to argue but only a frustrated gasp came out. His hand swept through his hair, his eyes surfing the thin carpet for something to say.
Evy dropped onto the edge of the bed with an angry bounce. Silence enveloped the room, the thermostat rising with her temper. “I would’ve never married someone I didn’t love,” she said softly, her voice trembling around the edges.
“Evy,” he said, the hurt look on her face breaking his heart. “We are going to get out of this.”
“We?” she laughed, glancing at the ring on his finger. “So what kind of ring did you buy her? Big diamond I imagine.”
“I didn’t buy anyone a ring. They were already in the room when we got here.”
“Oh, I bet they were,” she uttered, her words laced with disdain. “Were they wrapped in pretty little bows on the pillows?”
Her scent drew him closer. He crossed the room on rubbery legs, determined to heal those runny green eyes. “I only love you,” he said softly, somehow finding his patience once again. “This whole thing is temporary. You know that.”
“Do I?”
He lifted her chin with two fingers, directing her eyes to his. “There was no other way, but it’s not real. It will never be real, not like you and I.”
Her bottom lip quivered as a single tear left a shiny streak down her cheek.
A fond look softened his gaze. He bent over and cradled her face in his hands. “I only want to be with you.”
She searched his eyes, delving deep into his soul. The ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of her lips. “That’s all I wanted to hear,” she whispered.
“And nothing is going to stop that from happening.”
He leaned in and kissed her, closing his eyes and sucking her in. Her warm lips tasted like vanilla, sending a lethal mix of longing and ecstasy shooting through his veins. A hailstorm of lights pelted his eyelids, leaving blurry tracers in their wake. He kissed her harder, Evy’s breath hot against his cheek, their tongues dancing to a tune only they could hear.
She pulled away, chasing her breath and finding his eyes.
He stroked her hair and smiled. “I love you so much.”
Before he knew what had happened, she had unbuckled his jeans and slid them to his ankles with his boxer-briefs. Evy stared at the erection bobbing in the air in front of her, taken aback by its swollen size. She took him into her soft hand and looked up into his eyes, a playful grin on her lips. Dean coiled his fingers in her hair to steady his balance as she gently stroked his rigid shaft, his breath coming in short gasps.
Evy’s grin deepened with his response. She looked back to the monstrosity in her hand and stroked faster, cupping his sack with her other hand and making him squirm.
“Oh, baby,” Dean moaned, watching her do what only she could do. It had never been like this before and there had been a lot of befores. What transpired between him and Evy, however, was so different it bordered upon supernatural. Paranormal. The hairs on his arms and legs stood on end, caught up in her enchanting spell with the rest of him. He gritted
his teeth when her hand moved quicker.
“You like that?” she asked, her voice jerky with the movement.
“Oh yeah,” he replied softly, pulling at her hair.
Her tongue slipped out and wet her raspberry colored lips. Dean tipped his head back and closed his eyes, moaning as she licked the underside of his shaft from the base to the tip. He groaned loudly when she slid him into her warm mouth. Her outstretched lips worked in perfect tandem with her hand, meeting in the middle before going their separate ways again. Dean brushed her hair back to see her beautiful face, his chest swelling. Evy pulled her hand away and took him all the way into her mouth.
Dean’s breath caught in his throat as he watched her lips sinuously slide up and down his throbbing cock, just over the rim and back down again. “Evy,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as if in pain.
She sensed his weakening and went in for the kill, bobbing faster and playing with his balls. His mouth opened as wide as it would go, sucking in bountiful breaths of air to appease his racing heart. He cracked his eyelids and watched Evy’s blond head rise and fall on his erection, pumping him like a well. He blinked away the fuzzy light from the balcony’s glass door and bolted upright in bed, staring at the blond hair sprawled across his lap.
“What the fuck?” he cried, pushing her off of him.
Megan rolled back on her knees and wiped her chin, a coy look invading her face. “What’s wrong, sexy?” she asked, her firm breasts peeking out from a red bikini that was way too small.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked, pulling a sheet over the boner twitching in his lap.
Megan grinned like the devil, her red lips smeared and shiny. “Didn’t that feel good?”
Once the room slowed to a lazy spin, Dean realized he was lying naked in their hotel bed. Megan’s hand slithered up the sheet like a snake in the weeds and throttled Dean’s bulging cock with an ironclad grip.
Fate Interrupted 2 Page 3
