by Lisa Plumley
"Room service!" called a male voice. Ginger snuffled at the bottom edge of the door and then pranced in front of it, eager for some human company that might pay attention to her. She cocked her head when nobody moved and gave a blowsy doggie sneeze instead. Hey, somebody's here!
Dylan coughed loudly to cover the sound, his gaze darting toward Ginger. "Shhh!"
"Room service!" came a suspicious-sounding voice from the hallway. "Mr. and Mrs. Parker?"
"You broke it!" Stacey said, waggling the smashed and empty sachet toward Dylan. For some reason, the sight of it made her want to weep. It was a foolish reaction, she knew, but no less true. Geez, she was a mess, her emotions too close to the surface to be trusted. Blinking hard, she waggled the paper at him as though he could repair it somehow and make it whole again.
He grabbed the sachet with one hand and peered at it, temporarily abandoning his attempts to wipe his face clean. "Lavender Dreams?" he asked, reading it.
"It's aromatherapy," she explained, crossing her arms. "It's supposed to be relaxing." She'd needed it last night, after her encounters with Dylan, but he was the last person on earth she'd admit it to. "I use it sometimes to help wind down at night. I, uh, must've forgotten it was beneath the pillow."
Another knock came, along with a more urgent, "Room service!"
"Just a minute!" Dylan called toward the door of the honeymoon suite, sounding surprisingly polite for somebody who was wearing boxer shorts, an even dusting of lavender-scented powder, and nothing else.
"Wind down, huh?" he said as he headed over to the door, brushing drifts of Lavender Dreams from his head and shoulders as he went. He ushered Ginger into hiding in the suite's bathroom with a push to her wagging rump and closed the door. "No wonder I feel so calm right now."
He grinned and nodded toward the bed. "Better get in bed, snookums. Otherwise, you'll give the room service guy an eyeful."
Joking. He was actually joking about being the victim of yet another of her 'you'll grow out of it' disasters. Stacey couldn't believe it. Did nothing get Dylan rattled?
Only you, a part of her whispered. Ignoring it, she dove for cover, hefted an armload of black silk comforter, and made it into bed just as a uniformed hotel employee wheeled his room service cart into the honeymoon suite.
"Good morning, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Parker," he said, pushing his cart across the suite. He sniffed, wrinkling his nose at the conspicuously lavender scented air, then parked his cart and turned to address them. The poor man nearly jumped a foot at his first sight of Dylan's powder-whitened face.
"Aromatherapy accident," Dylan said solemnly. "Dangerous stuff."
"I'm sure," said the room service employee, peering at the amazing whiteness of Dylan's face. He'd seen stranger things, Stacey supposed, during his tenure at the hotel. "Would you like me to send up someone from our spa to help you?"
Dylan waved his hand. "Nah. I'll just take a walk—"
"Ruff!" barked Ginger from inside the bathroom.
"—down there after breakfast if I need to," he finished, his eyes widening. His gaze met Stacey's, and she had the feeling they were thinking the same thing. The 'W' word. Walk—walk—walk.
Whoops.
The room service employee's attention veered from Dylan's face to the closed bathroom door. His frown made his face look a little like an unhappy mustachioed fist. "Is that
a—"
"Hack, hack!" Loudly—very loudly—Dylan started coughing. A lion with a hairball caught in its throat couldn't have been louder. Finally, the hotel employee whacked Dylan on the back, and his coughing fit subsided.
"Thank you," Dylan croaked. "Terrible, being hit with this rotten cold on our honeymoon and all."
"Yes, I'm sure." With one parting glance at the bathroom door, he shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention to clattering around the silver-covered dishes atop his room service cart. "I hope you're not under the weather, too, Mrs. Parker."
Stacey stared toward the bathroom door, wishing it were possible to mind-meld with a dog. Be quiet, she tried anyway. It couldn't hurt to try.
"Mrs. Parker?"
"Honey?"
"Mrs. Parker!"
"Sugarcakes?" Dylan kicked discreetly on the bedpost, jolting Stacey back from her mind-meld attempts. She looked up to see the room service guy stroking his mustache with narrowed eyes—eyes aimed suspiciously at her.
"She's a little hazy before the caffeine kicks in," Dylan explained.
"Oh! Ha, ha," Stacey managed. She glared at Dylan for the kick—couldn't he have found a less jarring way to get her attention?—and clutched the covers to her chest. Hazy, huh?
"I guess you're right, Dumpling," she purred. "A girl's gotta have something to get her motor running in the mornings."
Behind the room service guy's back, Dylan pantomimed a dagger to his chest. With a silent howl of pretend anguish, he staggered backward, then grinned. Stacey stifled an answering smile and turned her gaze toward their visitor. "So sorry we kept you waiting in the hallway earlier," she said sweetly.
"Oh, that's all right," he said, winking at Dylan.
Dylan whipped the imaginary dagger behind his back and gave him a leering sort of man-to-man grin. Stacey could've kicked him, never mind the bed post.
"The honeymooners are always that way," the room service guy went on. "Sometimes we just give 'em a few minutes and then leave the food at the door if they don't answer."
He picked up a delicate white china cup and saucer and poured coffee into it from a silver pot. "'Course, with a special order like this one, we didn't want to do that," he added, carrying the steaming coffee over to Stacey. "Here you go, ma'am."
She took the saucer in her hands and inhaled the rich brewed scent appreciatively. "Thank you," she said, and realized it was really Dylan she thanked most. Even after spending the night with his six-foot frame cramped onto the loveseat, even after being walloped, evaded, out-raced, and told to leave more times than she could count, he was still dedicated to pulling off the pretend-honeymooners thing for Richard and Janie.
In his own overbearing, take-charge way, of course.
Still, Dylan was trying to help. Unfortunately, the fact that he was being nice about things only made it twice as hard to resist him, which made it twice as hard for Stacey to keep her mind where it belonged—on the honeymoon ruse. If she couldn't handle the honeymoon deception better than she'd handled Dylan so far, her family's peaceful coexistence was doomed.
They were almost all she had left now. Four stifling years spent married to Charlie meant she'd socialized more with his business colleagues and their wives than with her own friends. Since her divorce, Stacey had started rebuilding her old friendships, but they were still a long way from the solid, just-us-gals relationships she used to enjoy. The last thing she wanted was to wreck things with her family, too.
She wouldn't, not if there was any way to prevent it.
Grimacing, Stacey sipped her coffee just as Dylan emerged from the bathroom and shut the door behind him, looking clean-faced and better than he had a right to after all he'd been through since showing up yesterday. The moment the door shut, Ginger started scratching. Dylan started coughing to cover the sound. Stacey, trying to be helpful, did too. The room service employee only raised his eyebrows and went on working.
Before long, Ginger apparently got tired of the game and quieted. Stacey imagined the dog chewing up the plush pink bathmat and grinned. Maybe Dylan's dog went everyplace with him—but she'd bet Ginger got him into his share of trouble, too.
Just like her, unfortunately.
Dylan ambled over to the room service cart and starting lifting lids from its covered dishes, releasing the delicious aromas of toast, scrambled eggs, maple syrup, coffee, and the sharp tang of citrus.
"Smells good," he observed. His gaze shifted to her, and an appetite wholly unrelated to food rose in his expression. "Hungry?"
Her pulse leapt. How in the world did he keep doing that to her, with o
nly a glance and a handful of words?
She ought to be nice to him, Stacey knew. She ought to make their honeymoon façade look good. But the way Dylan looked at her made her heart perform a sudden, unsettling mamba in her chest, and the only thing she really wanted to do was run.
"Actually," she wound up saying, "I'd hoped to go out to eat, rather than have overpriced room service food."
Dylan appeared crestfallen. So did the room service guy. Banging the silver dishes, he poured a cup of coffee for Dylan and sloshed it into his hand. "Everything else will be along in a minute, sir," he said.
"Thank you," Dylan said, holding his cup in one hand and shaking spilled coffee from the other. He sucked the outer edge of his thumb, looking over his wrist at Stacey. "This won't just be overpriced room service food," he promised. "This'll be something special. You'll see."
Setting his cup onto the room service cart, Dylan picked up a plate and spooned what looked like scrambled eggs onto it. He added two strips of bacon, stabbed a pancake with a fork and plopped it onto the plate's edge, then poured maple syrup over the whole thing.
"Sit up," he said, nodding toward the headboard of the bed. "You're about to be served breakfast in bed."
Before she could protest being served breakfast while she was still half-dressed, four more hotel employees came in through the opened honeymoon suite doorway. Uniformed and carrying instruments, they gathered beside the room service cart. All four of them stared at Stacey, then turned expectantly to Dylan. "Are you ready for us, sir?"
"You bet!" Looking boyish and pleased with his surprise, Dylan stuck the plate of food into Stacey's hand. "That is," he told her, "breakfast in bed with music. I'll bet you've never tried this before."
She hadn't. Balancing her filled plate in one hand, Stacey hauled the covers higher and watched the musicians. They quickly tuned up, then launched into a twangy-sounding rendition of what had to be a love ballad of some kind. Grinning, they drifted toward her and surrounded the bed. The music got louder. So did the sound of someone banging on the wall of the neighboring hotel room.
Dylan ducked beneath the upraised arm of the violinist, carrying a filled breakfast plate of his own. Climbing atop the silk comforter, he settled against the headboard beside Stacey with perfect assurance, despite the fact that he still wasn't fully dressed.
"Do you like it?" he asked. "Are you surprised?"
"I'm surprised, all right." What she wasn't was hungry. Not with a T-shirt and panties wardrobe and four strange men grinning down at her as they played the southwestern version of Some Enchanted Evening. For Dylan's sake, and for the sake of the honeymoon charade, Stacey picked up a strip of bacon and nibbled on it.
The music picked up tempo. Dylan smiled at her, bobbing his head along with the music as he packed away forkfuls of pancakes dripping with butter and maple syrup. Trying to get into the swing of things, Stacey forked up some scrambled eggs.
They shook off her fork and landed in her lap. She tried another bite. It wiggled off the tines, too. That's when she realized the bed was vibrating. The musicians knees bumped rhythmically against the mattress as they played their hearts out for the 'honeymooners.' Somebody pounded again on the other side of the neighboring hotel room wall, but everyone else seemed too engrossed in the music to notice.
This was way too much activity for a Saturday morning.
And Dylan was doing far too much to take over the honeymoon suite charade. This was her problem; she'd be the one to solve it. Her way.
"This isn't very inconspicuous," Stacey remarked. Doing her best not to flash the six hotel employees gathered around their bed, she eased her plate onto the bedside table and then snuggled the comforter up the her chin again. "I thought we had a deal."
"What?" Dylan cupped his ear and leaned closer.
"Inconspicuous, remember?"
The musicians charged into the final chorus of whatever song they were playing. Their hotel room neighbor banged away at the wall, suddenly sounding strangely as though he was keeping time with the music. It was like breakfasting amidst a full-blown fiesta.
Dylan frowned. "What? I can't hear you."
"Please make them leave."
"What?"
"Make them leave!" Stacey yelled as the music stopped.
Shocked silence filled the honeymoon suite. The musicians froze in place, their instruments lowered halfway. The guitar player shook his head. Five pairs of sad eyes—Dylan's included—stared back at her.
"Sorry," she peeped.
"My wife gets terrible migraine headaches," Dylan explained rapidly, rising from the bed with more quick-thinking than Stacey would have credited him with. "I'm sorry, the music was wonderful, but I'm afraid that'll have to be all for now."Guilt-stricken, Stacey pulled the black silk comforter over her head and listened to Dylan explain away their abbreviated morning serenade. Their neighbor had quit banging on the wall, she noticed. Dylan would be disappointed—he might not have called the hotel management to complain yet. You couldn't get much more conspicuous than having yourself reprimanded by the management for unruly behavior.
Probably Dylan's plan all along. Why not? It wasn't his family at stake. He'd decided on a course of action for the honeymoon suite charade, and by God, he meant to follow through with it. No matter what she wanted.
Money rustled in his wallet, many pairs of feet shuffled toward the doorway ... and then, silence. Stacey poked her head out.
"What did you think you were doing?" she yelled, scrambling for her pajama bottoms. She found them, and managed to pin Dylan with her most scathing look as she yanked them on beneath the covers. "All I wanted was a nice, peaceful breakfast in a little café someplace, away from all the craziness of this hotel—and especially away from this honeymoon suite. So what did you do? Invite in four people to join us!"
"Aunt Geraldine—"
"Don't even give me that." Shaking, Stacey threw back the covers and, finally dressed, leaped out of bed. She stomped over to where Dylan stood and put her hands on her hips. "This might have been another one of Aunt Geraldine's honeymoon surprises, but you took every possible advantage of it."
"I thought you were enjoying it."
She had been. A little.
But that was beside the point.
"You're just, just, just—" She cranked her arm in the air, trying to summon up an explanation. "Just taking over everything! You bulldozed in here, made me take you on as a partner in this stupid charade—"
"Wait a minute. You agreed that I—"
"No, you agreed," Stacey said, shaking her head. "You agreed you should be here, you agreed you weren't leaving until the weekend was over, you agreed I needed help."
Dylan gazed over her shoulder, probably hoping she'd wrap up her tirade soon so he could go back to his pancakes, and his indifference only infuriated her more. Even now he wasn't listening to her.
Just like Charlie.
"As usual," she said as she folded her arms to hide her trembling hands, "you didn't stop to consider what I wanted."
His gaze slipped to her face, and his expression sobered. "That's not true," Dylan said quietly. "All I thought of this morning was what you wanted, what you'd like."
She unfolded her arms and paced across the suite. Why couldn't he see how everything he'd done made it impossible for her to even find out what she wanted? He hadn't so much as asked what she wanted for breakfast or where she wanted to go—or what kind of musical accompaniment she'd like, Stacey fumed. Dylan was a man who intended to be in charge, and he'd put himself squarely there.
"But what about our deal, our deal to be inconspicuous?" she asked, hating the wail in her voice but unable to squash it in time. "You're breaking our deal right and left."
"I only thought of what would please you," he said again. Crossing the suite's plush carpet, Dylan stopped beside her and rubbed his hands gently along her shoulders. "I didn't mean to make you mad."
"That's what they always say," Stacey muttered.
> His hands dropped from her shoulders. Obviously, Dylan had no defense. "No," he said, "but I'll bet that's what your ex-husband used to say. The difference here is, I mean it."
Wavering, Stacey stared at him, trying to gauge if what he said was true. Was she overreacting because of her past with Charlie?
No. Dylan really was trying to take over the honeymoon charade, and the breakfast had only been more proof of that. Still, she supposed it was possible he meant well.
She bit her lip, then reached out to touch his shoulder. "Oh, Dylan, I don't know," Stacey said. "This whole thing has me going nuts. If I survive the weekend, it'll be a miracle." He couldn't help wanting to be in charge. That was just the way he was. Who was she to hold it against him? "I'm sorry," she went on. "I didn't mean—"
He held up his hand. His gaze swept the room service cart and their empty bed, then came to rest on her face. "No need to explain," Dylan said, his mouth twisting into a half-smile that somehow hurt her more than the anger she expected. "I understand. You've got me confused with someone else. We'll have to change that, won't we?"
She gazed up at him without the slightest idea how to reply. She'd been so certain of his motives. But if Dylan really didn't care what she wanted, then why did he look so disappointed?
"Enjoy your breakfast," he went on quietly. "I'll be in the shower, getting ready for the rest of this charade. We've got a golf date in a little more than an hour."
Before she could answer, he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Hugging herself, Stacey stared at the door as the shower spray turned on, punctuating the end of their discussion.
The end of the easy playfulness between them.
And the end of her certainty about anything.
Chapter Six
"Not quite what you expected?" Dylan asked Stacey, smiling at her as he stretched his arms overhead, golf putter in hand. If her expression was anything to go by, she'd expected to set foot on a course very different than the one they'd arrived at twenty minutes ago in fulfillment of Aunt Geraldine's next honeymoon surprise.
