She felt Blaine turn, and shortly afterward a low whistle escaped through his teeth. “Buddha is right.”
Janie turned. “Wow.” A serene sculpture of a reclining Buddha filled the entire cavity behind them. If she hadn’t been captivated by the monkeys it would have probably been the first thing she saw, because it appeared to be carved completely out of gold. “That took some serious penny-saving,” she whispered, not sure why she’d dropped her voice but doing it anyway.
“Surely that’s just paint,” Blaine said in a matching whisper.
“I don’t think so. Look at how smooth it is. They have painted sculptures at the resort and in the temple just outside. This is…it’s different. It looks like pictures of the Golden Buddha in Bangkok. Just smaller.”
Blaine gave a low whistle again. “I should have given that cab driver a better tip.”
Janie nodded and took a few steps closer to the icon. “We should have brought something. A token. I don’t know, a donation or something.”
“I don’t think he’s that worried about donations. He’s made of gold.”
She turned and rolled her eyes at him. “Not for the statue, the villagers. Imagine what it would have taken for them to save for this. No wonder this place feels old—it’s been decades, a century even, in the making.”
Both of them were silent a while, lost in their own thoughts. Janie was thinking about Little Acre. The small church in its center that everyone’s father’s father had a hand in building. There was no gold in its framework, but it had a touch of this sense of calm, of unified purpose. The thought warmed her toward her townsfolk.
Taking another step forward, almost close enough to touch the statue, a blur of golden fur rushed past her. Blaine’s hand was on her before she had a chance to react, and he pulled her into his arms, forming a protective shell with his body.
The blur was a monkey of course. One of the males, who now sat atop Buddha’s shoulder, its teeth bared and its fur standing on end. As if it were a sign, ten or so more monkeys bounded around them, all leaping up onto the various limbs of the Buddha. It should have been scary, but Janie wasn’t frightened. Somehow she knew they wouldn’t hurt her unless she did something wrong.
“I don’t think touching is advisable,” Blaine said.
Janie smiled. “Perhaps not, but they’ve been pretty polite about letting us know.”
“More than can be said for some people.” Blaine’s laugh echoed through the cave. It was a big noise that startled the monkeys and started them chattering.
Janie was delighted. “Look, they’re laughing too.” And it was true. The monkeys’ faces were pulled back in wide grins, and two of the smaller ones hugged each other. Janie nestled closer into Blaine’s arms and closed her eyes for a second, allowing herself a wish that she would remember this perfect moment forever, a moment where nature and human history met without malice or artifice. Where she didn’t have to second-guess a guy’s motivation or his background and could just enjoy being in his company.
“Uh-oh.”
She blinked her eyes open. The two monkeys who had been so delightedly hugging moments before had progressed their relationship to the next level. Janie squeaked as the male monkey showed off his penis to his apparently appreciative girlfriend.
“Looks like they could use some privacy,” Blaine said with a low chuckle. “Shall we?”
So much for a perfect moment. Although what could be more natural than two animals copulating? She stole a glance at McDashing. If she kissed him now, did that make her a sucker for his lies or a smart woman who was going to get what she wanted? If he’d lied about his name, what of other things? As if he read her mind, Blaine gave her a squeeze, running his hands down her sides before taking one of her hands.
But if he started it, then kissing him back would just be polite. Wouldn’t it?
He looked down at her and brushed his thumb lightly over her lips. “Thank you for sharing this with me,” he said, and the thrill of contact sent a rush of blood downward.
“It was my pleasure. I have a feeling we’ll be sharing plenty more.”
“That so?”
Time to take charge, girlfriend. “Sharing something like this with a stranger is the stuff dreams are made of. I mean, what are the odds? Meet a single stranger, explore hidden treasures with him. Share glimpses of our pasts. I never thought I’d be so lucky.”
“Well then, we better enjoy our luck while we’ve got it.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. Kissing. Kissing me! Janie’s brain fought to work through whether he’d said he was single or denied it, but her brain lost out to her body as her skin, her blood, her entire essence got caught up in the kiss. His tongue sought hers and his hands wrapped around her waist, spanning her completely and making her feel petite and delicious for the first time in a long time. She ran her hands down the hard, flat planes of his chest, and all she could think of was getting his shirt off and rubbing her skin against his.
As if he read her mind, his hands slipped under the hem of her shirt and made their way over her belly, his thumb rubbing the underside of her breast till she was sure her nipple would take out his eye it was so hard.
Just as she was about to throw all sense and reason out the cave and rip her own shirt off before demanding he put his mouth to work on her overheated skin, something brushed past Janie’s calf, and the monkeys gave a loud squawk almost in unison.
Blaine pulled away, and Janie realized there were about ten monkeys near them, and one scampering away, all of them looking none too impressed with the fact that the humans in their midst had thought the romance of the locale was for sharing.
“I think they’re asking us to leave,” Blaine said, dropping his hands. “Don’t know about you, but as much as I’d like to take this further, I don’t fancy getting a monkey bite as a consequence.”
The heat of the moment faded quickly with the very real threat of the monkeys’ displeasure turning physical and as Janie’s lust dissipated, her stomach took its cue and gave a loud growl.
He laughed. “Time for lunch anyway.”
Lunch was no less a feast than any other meal she’d shared with Blaine. Only this time there were dishes she’d never read about in her guidebook and tastes she’d never even dreamed of. She tried to coax the elderly Thai woman into telling her what was in each dish, but she only laughed and waved, making pictures in the air that could have been fish, or chickens, or trees for all she knew.
“I don’t think she wants to share,” Blaine said after the fourth time Janie had tried, and failed, to elicit the contents of the spicy sour broth she was eating.
“It’s just so good,” Janie said. “And I wanted to learn to cook some dishes while I was here. It’s on my to-do list. I’ve never tasted anything like it. Back home there’s pretty much a rotating menu of seven dishes in the whole town. If anyone cooks anything different, everyone hears about it. Like it’s a dirty little secret to eat something different.”
Blaine frowned. “Seriously? Don’t you have a restaurant in town?”
“There’s one,” Janie said with a sigh. “The Little Acre Diner. Aunt Alexia works there sometimes. She cooked her mama’s moussaka recipe once and it was amazing, but no one except me and my…ahem…ex ever ordered it, so they took it off the menu.”
“Is that why you were with him?” Blaine asked gently. “Because he was adventurous enough to try moussaka with you? It’s not like it’s a super-strange dish.”
The thought nudged at the hurt-stones in Janie’s stomach and she grimaced. He’d been the one who insisted they try it, and despite the fact that it was her Aunt Alexia’s, she’d hesitated. It was no wonder Two-Minute Tom had called her out on a lack of adventure. But that’s all different now. She straightened. “Possibly. It had eggplant in it, and apparently people in town think it’s a weird vegetable.”
“But what about dating other guys? Even non-moussaka-eating ones?”
“There wasn’t a whole lot
of choice.”
“You didn’t go online?”
Janie shook her head and took another mouthful of the delicious broth to give herself time to work out what to say so she didn’t sound like the fool she felt. “No one does that in Little Acre. That sounds like the place is some sort of cult. But it’s not. It’s just we’re miles from anywhere. And going to a big city, Austin or something, takes hours and gas.”
“You don’t have a car.”
The shrug came before she managed to put her brave face on. “Some people get out. I don’t know. Someone will beg a car off their pop, or they’ll get good enough grades to get a scholarship to college out of state.”
“You didn’t want to go to college?”
“I couldn’t have left Pop. Not after Mom died.” She took a deep breath. “He’s on heart meds and he forgets to take them. My brothers are useless. I love them, but they’re useless. And we don’t have the money to pay someone to do the work I do.”
“He’s dealing with it now while you’re away.”
“Because I made the boys a roster and asked Aunt Alexia to check in and put all sorts of things in place to make sure he’ll be okay. And I’m not gone that long, so the books will keep.”
“So you flew halfway around the world. A slight overreaction perhaps, but a good one. No wonder your brother made you pack the rape whistle.”
A smile returned to Janie’s face. “My pop couldn’t refuse me this trip. It was something Mom had always said I should do. That’s why she gave me a National Geographic subscription I guess. But it’s just a vacation, not a lifestyle change.”
They were both silent a moment, Janie still feeling the buzz in her lips from the kiss and her head going a million miles an hour about what that might mean for Blaine, and if she changed her mind, for her blog.
“Who would have thought we’d have so much in common?”
Janie snorted as she looked up from where the old woman had cleared her empty bowl of broth and put a steaming plate of noodles in its place. “Things in common? Are you on drugs?”
Blaine’s brilliant eyes were focused directly on her and his gaze was so intense she had to look away. Forking a mouthful of the hot noodles into her mouth to give her an excuse not to look at him, she waited for him to elaborate.
“You were right about me needing to prove something to the world, possibly because of my ancestors. I don’t know…because of everything that’s happened to my brother and I in life. And you, you’re trying to prove that a girl from Little Acres can have it all, even if you don’t know it yet.”
His words sank into her skin and rushed around her body as if they were some kind of drug injected into her bloodstream. He was going deep, just as she was wondering if she had it in her to make up a catchy blog headline? Really?
“Forgive me if that was too big a jump.”
“No.” She put a hand over his. “It was…” She looked for the right word and couldn’t find it. “Thank you,” she said instead. “For taking me under your wing. For sharing all this with me. For indulging me.”
“It’s been my pleasure. You are so different to the people who are usually in my life. It’s refreshing, invigorating even.”
Stop. It. Too. Much. “You are seriously too good to be true,” she managed. But she didn’t get anything else out because Blaine leaned over and, tipping her chin up to his, planted a kiss on her lips that was not light, and was far more than fleeting.
Her lips wanted to follow his forever. To coat themselves with his softness, and her mouth opened wide to accept the dance with his tongue. Every part of the kiss drove her body to get closer to his again. To shed her clothes, to make sure there was as much skin-to-skin contact as she could humanly engineer.
When she came up for air, Janie was greeted with a cheer from the elderly cook. “Your wife, she very beautiful. You should kiss her more often so she knows,” the woman said.
“I’m not his—” Janie started, but Blaine stopped her with another kiss, even deeper than the first. His tongue teased hers this time and demanded she open her mouth farther to him.
At the end of this one, she couldn’t look at Blaine. Wife. “Why did you let her call me your wife?”
“Everyone here is married. So they assume everyone else is too. Go with it.”
Janie frowned. “But it’s a lie. Don’t you care about that? Don’t you want to get married?”
He hardened and shifted away from her. “Marriage isn’t for me.”
Okay. That was weird. She checked his expression and there didn’t seem to be any artifice to his words. He was deadly serious. At least that answered the secret wife question and he hadn’t balked at her referring to him as being single. So kissing him is totally legit.
“Have you had enough to eat?” he asked, and Janie looked down at her completely forgotten plate of food. “I couldn’t eat another bite,” she said.
“Good. Let’s head back to your room.”
My room? Janie’s blood surged, but her head screamed out to watch the heck out.
“Two strangers on holiday. No questions. No regrets. Would that be nice to take back and rub in Two-Minute Tom’s face?” he said.
Yes. Yes, it would. “As long as we wouldn’t be hurting anyone?”
“Who would we be hurting? Like you said, what are the chances of two single strangers meeting and finding hidden treasures to explore? Life isn’t a rehearsal, isn’t that how the saying goes?”
He’d just said it outright: two single strangers. Janie’s heart gave itself a little high five. This was what vacations were for, wasn’t it? Moving on from the past. Making memories. Living the dream. And if his kisses were anything to go by, whatever McDashing had planned for them in her room was going to give her sweet, sweet dreams. Janie nodded, and Blaine led her back toward the taxi he’d arranged to pick them up.
Chapter Six
The glitter in his eye as they got out of the taxi was more than enough to encourage Janie as he led her toward her room with some serious speed. Blaine had kissed her again in the taxi on the way back, and the sparks their contact sent through her body created more of a fireworks-laced-in-alcohol head-spin than any kiss she’d ever shared with Two-Minute Tom.
“I hope you don’t think me too forward, but I would very much like to come in,” Blaine said as they reached the path to her room.
Janie didn’t answer, just stopped and reached up to clasp her hands around his neck and pull him in for a kiss that she hoped would say hells yes much louder than saying anything out loud. It must have worked, because Blaine scooped her up and strode the five steps to her door.
The note stopped him, and he lowered her to her feet.
Stuck with a slick of tape, the square paper only read: If you have any information to share about Blaine Galloway, I’d like to speak to you. It could be your ticket to a little slice of fame. —Robert Jonas, Room 576.
Janie’s blood froze. She tried for beguiled horror. “What does that mean? A little slice of fame. And who is Blaine Galloway?”
With a face both instantly blank and hard, Blaine didn’t reply, just pulled the note down and folded it neatly before stuffing it into his pocket. “We can call reception and ask. In the meantime, let’s not stick around while some weirdo is pinning notes to your door. My room. Now.”
Janie’s skin prickled. He wasn’t even going to admit it? She walked quickly beside him as he guided her to his room. He better have some answers, and he better have them quick.
His room was bigger than hers. Fitted out with opulent furniture, all upholstered in a luxe turquoise and with fresh flowers everywhere, the place was immaculate, his belongings hidden from view, as unlike her room as it was possible to get. Safely inside, she stood near the deep sofa and gave him a moment to get his bearings then asked again. “What do you think it meant? The note. I mean, seriously. It’s like something out of a movie.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought he stiffened before he turned the full s
trength of his gaze on her. His face was wan now, the brash Highlander dimmed behind a mask of…fear? “They must have got the wrong room.”
“So you have no idea who Blaine Galloway is?”
His eyes flickered straight up to hers. And finally, she saw it. The lie, painted as clear as the eyes on a temple Buddha. Then his pupils dilated and the game was up. He flopped down on the sofa. “How long have you known?” he asked.
“Since yesterday afternoon, but then today I wondered if I had it wrong. But you are Blaine Galloway.” It wasn’t a question.
He took a long breath. Then he looked up at her. “Hang on. If you knew who I was, why did you kiss me back?”
“Like I said. I thought I must have gotten it wrong. I wanted to have gotten it wrong.”
An uncomfortable silence descended and sat like a fat, full rain cloud in the room.
“Are you going to apologize?”
Blaine looked at her. “I’m sorry I lied about who I was. You caught me on the hop.”
Janie waited. “That’s it?”
“What more do you want?”
This was the moment to channel Tina. This was where she got the real dirt on Laird Galloway. She sat at the far end of the sofa. Perched, her feet firmly planted on the floor in case she needed to make a quick getaway. “How about an explanation? Why did you lie?”
Blaine’s sigh was darker than the sea cave of yesterday. “What harm is it going to do to tell you? No one in Little Acre is going to care, are they?” He took a deep breath and Janie bit her lip, feeling a little guilty about keeping her blog a secret. Then she banished the thought. He was a celebrity, living life in the spotlight. And Tina might be all for it, but writing her holiday adventure up on her blog just didn’t feel like something Janie would ever manage to make herself do. Still, she deserved an explanation.
“My brother Hamish has some serious debts. And the people his creditors are connected with…well, saying no wasn’t really an option. It’s complicated. I’ve been blackmailed and well…I had to get away.” Rubbing at his face, Janie could see the complicated bit he hadn’t explained yet was an enormous drain on Blaine, but she wasn’t ready to feel sorry for him. Not yet. She did let him continue though.
Her Scottish Mistake (A Perfect Escape) Page 7
