The Espionage Effect(78)
Did I regret not confiding completely in her? Sharing the extent to which I’d been broken?
No. Until Alec—until this vacation—I hadn’t been ready.
I tossed a frozen grape at her. It lodged between perfect breasts restrained by her bikini top.
She plucked it out and popped it into her mouth, grinning. “What’s with this new you?”
“You don’t like me playful?”
“I love this new side of you.” Pursing her lips, she sucked two long drafts through the straw sticking out of her green coconut goblet. “Who knew a fling would be so good for you?”
“Sure as hell not me.” I grinned. The whole thing had taken me by surprise. Including the unstoppable feeling of elation after all Alec and I had shared last night.
A parasailer floated high in the sky, dragged like a kite by a canary-yellow speed boat that glided south. Following its direction, my gaze drifted farther along the beach, past Alec’s place and down the coast toward Escobar’s. My thoughts darkened, naturally gravitating toward the evil in the world that occupied the same airspace as so much good.
Then I forced the demons out of my head. Newly baptized into enjoying life, I would appreciate all the good I could get, like all the thousands of beachgoers on this silvery strand, ignoring the bad—until the time came to deal with reality.
“Well, your new side is coming dancing with me tonight.” She sat straighter as a resort staff member walked by wearing a round drum container that dangled from a cross-body strap. He held a tower of empty ice-cream cones in one hand and a metal scoop in the other.
“French vanilla?” he asked.
“Two.” She held up her index and middle finger, in case the basic number got lost in translation.
“Dancing?” Not remotely hungry for anything sweet, I didn’t argue about the ice cream. Nor did I move from my reclined position nestled into the pillows.
“Dancing. The resort is having a beach holiday party. Two days before Christmas, and we’ll be shaking our asses on a sugar-sand beach with the trade winds blowing on our faces.”
On a headshake as I huffed out a laugh, I grabbed a dripping ice-cream cone from the man’s outstretched hand. Anna’s mention of trade winds cast my brain on a warp speed factoid leap: our trade winds blew from the northeast, others swept across the globe from the southeast, the equatorial section where the two met was called the doldrums.
Then my mind flashed to the other meaning of the word doldrums: listlessness, despondency. How I’d felt before I’d come on vacation. What I’d been prior to meeting Alec.
Serendipity had an intriguing way of shifting the polarity of the world.
Sheer white screens spanned from posts that had been sunk into the sand, obscuring the resort guests from the south, the north, and partially from the west, save for a narrow entryway. Running along the uppermost line of fabric, strands of lights, some green, some white, twinkled against the night sky as they trembled in a slight breeze.
At least fifty guests gyrated to the latest dance music, writhing and bouncing to the pulsing beat as the ever-powerful ocean waves crashed to their own rhythm a dozen yards away.
Barefoot in the cool sand, a coral-pink beaded tank top clinging to my body over billowing gauzy pants, I laughed. At nothing. At everything.
Alec had texted me a few times throughout day. Once to apologize for the hasty drop-off after the incredible time we’d spent together…and that he missed me.
Then a second time, short and to the point:
Miss you.
I’d texted back:
Miss you too.
Then I’d fired off another, a split second after the first.
Spud.
His last replied almost immediately.
Pink.
We’d regressed into kids. Happy about silly things. Grasping at fleeting moments of joy amid a threat lurking just beyond our private intimate world.
Didn’t mean we’d forgotten. Far from it.
But while Alec and I were stuck in a holding pattern waiting on EtherSphere and Escobar, I danced, soaking in music that had little to do with the holidays but everything to do with carefree celebrating. I would capture precious memories wherever I could.
Anna’s smile brightened, her green eyes flashing. “You dance like a deranged lunatic.”
With added gusto, I jutted out an elbow into air to the right while swiveling my hips around left, ending in a jerky pop. “I’ve been saving up dance moves,” I shouted over the blaring music.
All of a sudden, her eyes widened as a current of heat sizzled over my bare shoulders an instant before solid warmth pressed there. I gasped in surprise as firm hands gripped my hips, stilling my body in the middle of another hip gyration.
“We should have spent more time perfecting your dance moves, Pink.”
I exhaled a shaky breath as he pressed closer, my body shuddering in sensual recognition of his touch as his soft lips brushed up the column of my neck.
My movements slowed in time with his, as he guided my hips into a gentle sway, back and forth. I closed my eyes and slid my hands over his, grateful to have him back.
When the rhythmic song ended and another began, I spun within his arms to face him as we continued to rock side to side in our own leisurely pace. “What are you doing here?”