Still So Hot!. Serena Bell

that your guy?”

      “No. Crap. It’s the guy from the plane.”

      “Great. How long has he been standing there?”

      “I don’t know. He might have just showed up.”

      From where they were standing, they couldn’t hear the whir of the digital shutter, but Brett knew he had to be shooting. It was too good an opportunity. The two of them, conspiring over the prone body of the sleeping TV star. “Do you think he heard any of our conversation?”

      She eyed the distance between them and the burst of color in the foliage. “Probably not.”

      “So it’s all visual. Stick out your hand. Like you’re shaking mine. Look businesslike.”

      “Isn’t it a little late for that?”

      “Probably. But we can at least not give him any more raw material for scandal, right?”

      She stuck her hand out, and he took it. Her hand was small, slim and surprisingly soft. She was angular and regal, but she still had that ultrafeminine, satiny feel to her skin. He wanted to rub his thumb over the back of her hand, over her wrist and up the inside of her arm. He wanted to see if the rest of her was as ridiculously soft and sweet. As her cheek. As her mouth.

      Man, he was despicable. She was right about him. She’d always been right about him. And she’d been altogether right to get herself out of his life, because if she’d stuck around, he would have found a way to get in her pants. And there was no reason to think he’d have treated her any differently than the other women he’d discarded.

      He’d proved it by running out on her that night and again two weeks later with her sister. God, he didn’t like to think about that.

      He was still holding her hand. She took it back and said, all business, “Good luck with drinks.”

      “Thanks.”

      “If you’re lucky, you won’t see me again, except maybe the back of my royal blue bathing cap as I do lengths of the pool.” She waved, then turned.

      “Okay.”

      But it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She pivoted to walk away in earnest, and he checked out the bathing suit from the rear angle, that admirable contrast between the curve of her ass and the narrowest point of her waist, and hoped his bathing trunks weren’t obviously broadcasting his admiration.

      He hadn’t actually said he’d leave after he ended his “relationship” with Celine. He hadn’t looked up earlier flights home, and he didn’t want to. It would be the gallant thing to do, of course. He should walk away and let Celine turn the weekend into a triumph. And it would be the prudent thing to do. The network was already going to be ticked at him for getting himself in the spotlight and not in a “family man” way.

      But as he cursed that stupid, old-fashioned bathing suit, and its unexpected effect on his brain and cock, he knew one thing for sure. He wasn’t ready to have Elisa Henderson walk away from him for good, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to walk away from her.

      6

      SHE LAY ON the bed in her room. Decompressing. She had slipped into her nightgown to get out of her travel-worn clothing, and because the cool breeziness of the fabric felt good against her hot skin.

      There was still a little light in the sky, and she could see the ocean through her open sliding glass doors. She’d consumed most of the room’s gift basket, passion fruits and kiwis, in a frenzy of stress-eating that she’d had to follow up by drinking the orange juice from the minibar.

      She’d tucked herself under the bed’s lightweight white quilt and plumped herself up on a stack of feather pillows. So this was how the other half lived. She’d grown up in a small ranch house and shared a bedroom with her sister, their mother running her accounting business out of the other bedroom. Her mom had worn sweats 80 percent of the time, changing only when clients came to the house and did business at the kitchen table. Elisa had never learned to tell a salad fork from a shrimp fork, much less slept under Egyptian cotton sheets. She was hardly the poster child for someone who should be trafficking in image, celebrity or luxury.

      But she kind of liked it—the horizon pool, the overeager staff, the flowers and tropical fruit, and white-tiled hotel room floor. She could get used to this, provided Brett behaved and the rest of the weekend went as planned.

      She used her smartphone to clean out her email in-box and listen to her voice mail. There was a message from one of her clients, a third-grade teacher. Elisa grinned as she heard Savannah’s giddy voice. “Oh, my God, it was such a good date. I really, really like him, and he kissed me, and seriously you are my fairy godmother. I can’t wait to see you on Tuesday and tell you the whole story. I’m totally not telling it now, because I will clog up your voice mail, but we had such a good time and you were totally right. A jazz club was a way better choice than a movie. We could talk, and he kept leaning close to tell me funny things! Thank you, thank you! See you Tuesday!”

      That was what she loved. The joy in Savannah’s voice. The rib-crushing hug Savannah would undoubtedly give her at her next appointment. The details Savannah would dish over tea and shortbread cookies. And good first dates often led to good second dates and on down the line. Elisa couldn’t start writing Savannah’s wedding toast yet, but she’d been to nearly thirty client weddings now, and almost all of those couples had had great first dates. Elisa liked to save the voice mails to replay for her clients when they came in to display their engagement rings. She saved the message, then switched over to read an email that popped up.

      It was another Facebook friend request from Brett. She’d refused at least five of his in the past two years. Each one had been an unpleasant tweaking reminder that he still existed. Somehow, despite her refusals, he remained stubbornly optimistic that she’d want to be “friends.”

      She deleted the request. She was softening toward him despite herself, and the last thing she needed was to see his face and his news every day.

      She texted her sister, Julie. You won’t believe this. Guess who Celine picked up en route and brought to the Caribbean?

      

      

      george clooney?

      

      

      Hint: The one topic we never discuss.

      

      

      Long pause, then, brett???????????

      Elisa’s phone rang.

      “How does that even happen?” Julie demanded. Her sister’s voice, warm and familiar, was a welcome comfort. It was a miracle that what had happened with Brett and Julie had not poisoned the sisters’ relationship. Elisa thanked God for it all the time. And she thanked God she’d told her sister, that night before Julie had gone out with Brett, “Whatever happens, I don’t want to hear about it. Not a word.” Because she knew there was no way in hell she could stand it. It was only the not-knowing that had made it possible for her and Julie to go on as if nothing had happened.

      “I think I’m being punished,” Elisa told Julie.

      She explained the whole situation, from the long moments of worrying that Celine hadn’t made the flight, to the drinks date going on in the resort bar at this very moment.

      “Does he know how important this is to you?”

      “I think so.”

      “Tell him if he screws this up for you or Celine, I will kill him.”

      Elisa loved her sister’s ferocious protectiveness and wished for the ten-millionth time that Julie lived in New York with her and not on the other side of the country in Seattle. “I’m not worried. Brett’s on board. He’ll finish up with her, and then I’m going to take over, and we’re going