“Don’t. I love it.” He kissed the side of my face.
* * *
Dressed, we walked—holding hands—to the outline of the old building. Small piles of debris had been taken over by moss and overgrown grass. Andrew gave me a brief story of the family that had lived here, and with nothing else left for us to do or explore, he left me standing on the hill while he dashed to the boat.
Andrew returned with the picnic basket and a blue blanket. He spread the blanket on the shaded spot beneath the tree and invited me to join him there. The obscure Colombian coast was behind us, and a vast shimmering ocean was in front of us, seagulls flying in the distance.
I kicked off my boots and let the sun warm my feet. Andrew uncorked a bottle of red wine, poured it into glasses, and offered me one.
“Wow, actual glass stemware? At a picnic?” I sipped my wine. “Are you that environmentally cautious or too posh? Usually, people bring plastic cups.”
“I don’t mind helping our planet, but you also commented the other night that drinking wine out of plastic ruins its taste.”
“Oh, god.” I laughed and covered my eyes with a free hand. “You’re making me sound like such a wine snob. I don’t care. I was just pointing out that when you’re trying a new wine for the first time, it’s best to do it out of a glass, not plastic. But thank you. This is a lovely Malbec.”
Out of the basket, Andrew took out two plates covered with brown paper. He unwrapped them, revealing pre-cut cheese and fresh bread, red grapes, and gooseberries. Aw, he remembered golden berries too. He gave me a sweet smile and withdrew a tiny glass bottle with clear liquid stopped with a cork. Andrew uncorked it and added a white and purple Cattleya Trianae orchid. A warm glow shifted through me at his thoughtfulness and romantic nature.
“Come now,” I said in an awed whisper. “What else do you have in there?” I peeked in. The basket was mostly empty, except for one silver condom packet at the bottom. I glanced at Andrew without suppressing my smile. “You were serious about your plan, weren’t you?”
“Of course.” He kissed the tip of my nose.
We lapsed into a comfortable silence while nibbling at our food, stealing glimpses of each other now and then. I munched on everything, whereas Andrew only ate cheese and fruit.
“Why aren’t you eating bread?” I said, smoothing away loose strands that the wind liked to play with. He shook his head and held up a finger while he chewed.
“I was always a chubby kid,” he said once he’d swallowed. “And all the shite I had to take from other kids could top this mountain. I was fifteen when I joined a cricket team. Later I tried rugby but didn’t enjoy it much.” His gaze focused on something in the ocean. “Maybe it was that, or maybe I finally hit my growth spurt, but in the next two years I grew two feet more, and muscles replaced my baby fat. I got different attention from everyone, especially from girls, but the fat, insecure kid stuck with me for years. Of course, I enjoyed the attention and didn’t want to lose it, so I lived on a strict diet and worked out like a maniac.” He shrugged. “The diet became a habit. I can have whatever; I just don’t crave it.”
“I bet you were a Casanova.” I crinkled my nose and bit into a large, red grape.
“The kid inside me pushed me to stay fit, but also kept me on a short leash of insecurity.”
It was hard to imagine the stunning and confident Andrew as a chubby kid or a timid young man. He for sure wasn’t shy anymore, at least not with me, and I loved his pure animal magnetism. And what baffled me the most was why in the world Brie let Andrew go.
“How long were you and Brie together?”
“Three years.”
I raised an eyebrow. That many years meant a serious relationship. I was having a hard time picturing them together.
“I thought she was special with her being my first and such, but we got too busy with school and drifted apart. We reconnected several years later. Things were going well, but then my parents died and…” Andrew looked away.
“And what?”
“I found her with Richard.” Andrew scrubbed a hand down his face as he blew out a slow breath. “While I was grieving and helping pregnant Charlotte, they were making a fool out of me.”
What a bitch.
“I think she’s an idiot.” I took his hand and laced my fingers with his. Andrew smiled, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles, his eyes running over our linked hands. “I fell head over heels for Greg on the first day of our economy class when he had this long debate with the professor. For three years I was so blind I didn’t see any red flags… like how he never introduced me to his family. He always had great excuses why, and I believed him. They lived somewhere in North Carolina and often traveled, so he always went to visit them. Alone. I couldn’t pay for a trip, and he didn’t offer to pay, but anyway…” I exhaled a heavy breath, the weight of how stupid and naïve I’d been pushed hard on my chest. “When they came to his graduation, he introduced me as his friend, and acted cold and fidgety.” Andrew listened with a tense expression, his brows pulled together, creating a deep cleft in between. “Long story short, he broke it off outside the football stadium after the graduation. He said I’d been stupid to think there was a future for us. He couldn’t muddy his family blood with someone like me—trailer park trash.” The same gut-punching sensation I’d felt that day crashed into me again. I looked up at the sky through the tree branches, blinking away the tears forming in my eyes. I wasn’t going to cry over that shithead. “His exact words were, ‘You can take a girl out of a trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of a girl.’”
“Adriana, Greg is a brainless numbskull fucking imbecile.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Oh gosh, I was so infuriated. One drunken night, William and I set a goal for me to marry into a royal family. We wasted hours researching and planning a scheme for how I could insert myself into their circle. Obviously, the next day while enduring a major hangover, I came up with a better plan: to work hard and move up in my career. I understand that I can’t rid myself of the past, especially one I had no control over, but the idiot’s words convinced me that I wasn’t good enough.”
Andrew grasped my hand. “You’re more than enough. The most important things in life are how pure your heart is, who you become, and how you treat others. Not how blue your blood is, or where you grew up, or how posh of a school you went to. You’re so astute, smart, and beautiful that you leave even the most confident man speechless and wonderstruck.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” I whispered. I set the empty wineglass next to the basket and laid back on the blanket. A lazy cloud drifted in the infinite blue sky before us, and a gentle breeze played with leaves on the tree. Andrew moved plates out of the way and lay next to me, one hand under his head and the other finding mine once again.
“Which royal family?” he said.
