Five and a half minutes later, when the last student was gone, Nicki threw down the tangled rubber intestines she’d just picked up and whipped out her phone, heart racing.
Email. From Rachel.
Her finger trembled over the screen. Rachel might just be apologizing for choosing somebody else—
She read the email. Very short. Just a few words…
Yes
.
She’d won. Rachel was giving her the Jury-Jarski Hawaiian condo for the summer.
Her legs weakened. She reached out to a desk and sank into a chair, waves of anxiety washing over her. “I’m going to Maui,” she whispered.
She’d have to fly, drive, and God only knew what else.
She sank forward until her forehead pressed against hard, scratched Formica. When the phone in her hand vibrated, she lifted her head to read the screen, expecting Rachel, but it was Betty’s name on the screen.
“I see you won that contest,” Betty said.
“How’d you find that out?”
“Are you kidding? When you told me about that contest, I friended her on Facebook, too. She just posted her regrets to us losers.”
“I’m going to Hawaii,” Nicki said in a daze.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t rub it in.”
The thought of the airplane made her hands clammy. “I can’t go.”
“You can write about it for the blog,” Betty said.
“I can’t go.”
“Fine. I’ll take your place.”
Nicki snapped out of it. “Am I nuts?” She stood up from the desk. “Don’t answer that. I don’t care if I pass out on the plane. I’m going to Hawaii.”
Betty sighed. “You won’t pass out. At least not on the plane. That’s one of your minor phobias, right?”
Nicki thought of all that water that usually surrounded islands. Feeling anxiety cramps coming on, she rubbed her stomach. “Right.”
“You’ll do fine.” But then Betty’s voice suddenly rose in alarm. “But you’ll miss Lucy and Miles’s wedding!”
Nicki bent to pick up the white streamers off the floor before her next class. “I know.”
With a sigh, Betty said, “I suppose it’s a decent excuse, being outside of the continental United States.”
“Promise me you’ll never tell Miles the truth about Thor. Not even at the wedding. That’s when you’ll be most tempted.”
“Too late to worry about that, babe. I’m sure he ran home and read the whole blog. You didn’t disguise him very well. You even mentioned the little scar over his left eyebrow.”
Nicki flinched. “I hope he believes I’m over him,” she said. “Whenever I see him, I always act extra thrilled for him and his miniature redhead.”
“Watch it. Lucy’s one of my best friends.”
“Sorry. Even though she ruined my chance at happiness in this life, I’m sure she’s very nice.”
“She didn’t ruin anything.” Betty lowered her voice. “You’ll be fine after you have a
real
vacation, you know what I mean?”
“There’s a spa at the resort, but I don’t know how much I can afford,” Nicki said.
“What I’m talking about should be free.”
Nicki wound the streamers into a ball and set them on her desk. “Ah.”
“It’s about time Phobic Phoebe finally had sex,” Betty continued.
“Phobic Phoebe keeps that part of her life private.”
“Because it’s imaginary.”
A student stuck his head into the classroom. “Hi, Ms. Fitch!
“Hey there, David,” Nicki said. “Ready to have your internal organs sucked out?” His class was at the end of the day, but he was already wearing a plaid sheet around his shoulders.
“Yuck,” Betty said in her ear.
“I’ve got to go,” Nicki told her.
“Reconsider the sex thing. Not for the blog. For you.”
Nicki suspected Betty just wanted the page hits. Since David was still lingering in the doorway, she turned away, cupping the phone to her cheek. “I’ve got other plans for this summer, and it’s got nothing to do with men.”
“Oh, no. You’ve gone gay.” Betty pretended to weep. “I blame myself. If only—”
“If only I hadn’t answered the phone,” Nicki said, hanging up. She stared off into space, imagining white beaches, warm sun, and blue water stretching north, south, east, and west.
Everywhere. Surrounding her.
Her hands trembled.
With rough movements, she arranged the props for the next mummification. She was going to get over this. Having a fling on a tropical beach was what normal people did.
She
needed to learn how to walk on that beach without going batshit crazy. She’d have eight gloriously solitary, empty weeks she could devote to self-improvement.
Me, myself, and I.
Glorious.
Chapter 3
A
NSEL
NEVER
GOT
TIRED
OF
their family’s condo in Maui.
The sun was hot on his bare torso, making him feel like an organic free-range chicken breast too close to the broiler. He’d be hurting later, but he couldn’t resist all the warm, tropical goodness.
Poor Rachel. Stuck in London with her paintbrushes, unable to enjoy her yearly allotment of Hawaiian paradise.
With a contented sigh, he put his feet up on the railing overlooking the glimmering blue ocean and wiggled his toes. Hawaii looked good, it felt good, it even smelled good. If he had to get old and responsible, this was the place to do it.
As he reached for his smoothie, still frothy from its spin in the blender, he saw his phone blinking with a message. He hesitated—why ruin a perfect moment?—but then forced himself to read a text from his old friend and new business partner, Brand Henry Warren.
Agent’s ready to show unit in Kihei
, Brand wrote.
Check it out tomorrow. Take pix.
Ansel groaned into his smoothie before adding the appointment to his calendar.
Offices. Retail space. Boring but practical. He had only a little money left over from the days before Dad turned off the tap, but it was a good time to buy, safe, blah, blah, blah.
He took another sip.
Investing in commercial property didn’t turn him on like starting up restaurants, used bookstores, mobile dog groomers, or for-profit senior-citizen walking tours, but it was more likely to give him the independence he needed. Dad thought he was a useless sponge? Watch me thrive without you, grouchy guy.
Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, he’d thought about investing his paltry nest egg in high tech, but he just didn’t have the head for it. Those people were crazy with their virtual machines and “open source” whatevers, their Scala and Python and Gnu, always rambling on as if regular people had any idea what they were talking about.
Food, books, dogs, old people—he could get excited about those kinds of things. Normal, real things. They made you happy.
He inhaled the scent of the sea, closed his eyes.
Office buildings don’t make you happy
, a voice inside him said.
He brought the bowls of chips and salsa over to his lap, took a few bites, and chewed without tasting, reminding himself that office buildings brought in steady income. He wasn’t doing this for his father’s approval. That was both optional and unattainable.
A dollop of salsa fell on his bare chest. Tomato juice trickled down his abs and pooled inside his belly button.
Smooth, very smooth
,
he thought, mopping it up with his T-shirt, which then tipped the entire bowl of salsa into his crotch. As he jerked back, chips flew across the patio.
He clambered to his feet, chunks of tomato and onion avalanching down his legs, and tried to reclaim some of his lunch before it blew off his balcony to the unfortunate people who lived below him.
Man, he was covered with it. Tortilla chip shrapnel clung to his belly like sprinkles on a cupcake. The fly of his khaki shorts looked like his dick had been blown off.
He strode inside to wash up, not realizing until he was halfway across the living room that a good-looking woman in a huge floppy sunhat was standing in the front doorway with a suitcase, gaping at him as if
he
were the intruder.
“Oh, no,” she said.
He froze, wondering how a tourist could’ve gotten into the wrong unit, before he remembered he hadn’t told his sister he’d be stealing her time at the condo for a few weeks. He thought he’d be safe, since she was in London.
Guess not.
“Hi.” He cleared his throat, brushing crumbs off his stomach. “Friend of Rachel’s?”
She nodded slowly.
“She loaned you the condo?”
The woman nodded again. She was very tall, powerfully built with broad shoulders, and wore a dress that showed off her legs.
Wow. Those were
legs
.
“I’m her brother. Her twin brother,” he said, recovering himself. He’d thought the Pacific was beautiful, but her long legs were a miracle. They practically reached her ears. “Don’t mind me.”
She obviously did mind. Still not moving in or out of the doorway, her horrified gaze raked over him.
He looked down at his crotch. The gore looked even worse out of the sun. “Had a little accident. Not as bad as it looks.” He grinned at her while his mind raced through salvage plans.
He couldn’t move out. He’d promised Brand he could handle the deal in person—only because he had free lodging at the condo. He couldn’t afford to stay on the island for a month, not anymore, not yet. Maui prices would eat up the last serious money he had.
She looked harmless; big but shy. He’d have to convince her to share the condo with him. “Come on in. Did you just fly—?”
She spun on her heel and fled out the door.
* * *
He didn’t recognize me,
Nicki thought. Relief warred with outrage.
The bastard!
Breaking into a jog, she rolled the suitcase down the hall and around the corner to the sunny bank of elevators, where she paused. She’d rather jump out the window than get into one of those dangling death traps right now.
Ansel Jury-Jarski was supposed to be thousands of miles away. Rachel had promised.
Spinning around, she found the stairwell, yanked open the door, and stumbled across the landing. After a demoralizing drive from the airport, in which she got lost six times on the small island, she’d given in to her phobias and taken the stairs instead of the elevator to the fifth-floor condo. Now she had a blister swelling on her right palm, and the straps of her kitten-heeled sandals felt like razor blades.
She put a hand on the wall of the stairwell for support, sucking in shallow breaths. Did she look that different from when she was eighteen? Sure, she was wearing a dress and no glasses, and her hair was a little brighter than it had been then—perhaps three shades brighter—and that dorm room had been dark, not to mention they’d been lying down, which is of course how one thing had led to another…
But she’d just told him she was a friend of Rachel’s. That should’ve rung a little bell in that thick, handsome skull of his. The most memorable night—well, early morning—of her entire college career, and he didn’t even have the decency to remember it?
God, what a disaster. And that disaster was standing smack dab in the middle of paradise, pooping all over it.
She pushed the suitcase over the top stair and followed it down. Paying for a room was going to bankrupt her; even one night in a place like the condo she’d just glimpsed—
oh, it was gorgeous
, she thought with a stabbing pain between the eyes—cost as much as a month’s rent in Berkeley. And the change fees with the airline for the flight home were no lower than the cost of a brand-new ticket.
She needed this vacation. But how could she stay? Picturing Ansel’s dumb, cheerful face, she kicked her suitcase and watched it tumble down the stairs and flop on the landing of the floor below.
The door banged open behind her.
“Wait!” Ansel jogged down the stairs two at a time. Stopping at her side, he raked his eyes over her before settling on her hands. “Where are you going?”
She wobbled down the stairs and picked up her suitcase handle to continue, as irritated with her hot cheeks as she was with her trembling.
“Hello?” he asked.
She released her suitcase and wiped her sweaty palm on her hip, stopping herself when she remembered her new dress was dry-clean only. Keeping her chin down, not saying anything because he might recognize her voice, she moved down the stairs.
“Good-bye,” she muttered. Might as well be polite, even if he didn’t deserve it.
“No, wait.” He leaped down to the landing. The impact of his feet hitting the floor reverberated against the walls. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ll stay somewhere else. It’s okay.” She just wanted him to leave her alone.
“It’s not okay. Rachel gave it to you, right?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded without meeting his eyes.
“Then it’s yours. I didn’t know you were coming.”
He was looking right at her under a shaft of sunlight coming through a skylight at the top of the stairwell, and still no hint he recognized her. Being rich and handsome carried him through life, apparently. No need to remember the little people.
Her breathing steadied. Little? Right. Carefully she lifted her head, stood up to her full five-foot-eleven-and-fifteen-sixteenths, and met his gaze straight on. “You’re not staying?”
His smile dazzled. “Just here briefly on business.”
Those gorgeous gray eyes of his were oblivious. No flicker of curiosity, familiarity, or unease, just the easy, good-natured charm she remembered. A guy who’d never met a person he didn’t like.
Or one he’d remember, apparently.
She should be relieved. She
was
relieved. Now she didn’t have to worry about running into him someday and seeing him get uncomfortable—or worse—at the sight of her. He’d probably crawled into bed with lots of girls in college.
Fabulous.
She moved her suitcase to her other hand.
No. This sucked the big one. The exact type of guy she was trying to get away from had contaminated her tropical sanctuary. The proto-guy, the one who’d set the stage for all the others. The first one to be totally, completely oblivious to her. She couldn’t possibly turn into a sexy butterfly with that nasty caterpillar crawling all over her leaf.