He’d been keeping to himself for weeks, now they were on a luxury yacht. She took out her cell phone and texted Alysse.
Staci: You’ll never guess where I am.
Alysse: Where?
Staci: On a yacht...with Remy. Is this a mistake? Tell me to jump overboard and swim for shore.
Alysse: Ha. Stay there and enjoy your time with him. The competition is just heating up and he must like you if he’s wooing you.”
Staci: I’m scared.
Alysse: Men are like that. Remember how afraid I was to trust Jay.
Yeah, but Jay loved Alysse. Jay had come back to town to win her friend’s heart and make a new life with her. This was totally different. She heard footsteps and glanced up to see Remy approaching with a champagne glass in each hand.
Staci: TTYL
Alysse: Like I said, relax and enjoy it.
Staci doubted that was going to happen. She’d let Vivian’s words and her own natural reticence take over and she knew that it was going to be hard to be calm around Remy. She didn’t know if he was sincere even though he did seem to be. But then she’d never had a good radar to judge when a man was lying.
She put her cell phone back in her bag as Remy sat downnext to her and handed her the champagne. “I realize we should be dressed more formally but I didn’t want to give my surprise away.”
“And what exactly is your surprise?” she asked as the boat’s engines were fired up.
“A day out at sea, just the two of us. I took the liberty of securing permission with Jack for us both to be gone until ten tonight.”
“All day at sea?” she asked.
“I thought we could go swimming and sunbathe. And just have a chance to get to know each other away from the house. A chance to take a break without thinking about the competition,” he said.
“You know the water in the Pacific is cold unlike the Gulf of Mexico,” she warned him.
“I do. I have wet suits for us both. Have you ever tried spear fishing?” he asked.
“No. Have you?”
“Yes. In the Bahamas with my grandfather. I’d like to show you,” he said.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Why not? Given the way I’ve been cooking I could go home next week and then I wouldn’t see you again, would I?”
“At least not until the competition is over. I can’t think beyond that but I do know that I want to enjoy every moment with you,” he said. “And I think you want the same. That’s why ignoring each other isn’t working for us. We need to pay attention to this part of ourselves. You are constantly on my mind and my body aches for yours,ma chère.”
“You seem to have done a good job of ignoring your desires and cooking up a storm,” she said.
“That’s an illusion,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. A part of her had missed him too but she really had her hands full. All of herenergy either went to cooking or ignoring him. Maybe he had a point about why that wasn’t working.
He handed her the champagne flute and lifted it to her. “To new beginnings.”
“New beginnings,” she said, taking a sip of the champagne as they sailed farther away from the shore. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Trust me,” he said. “The captain said we have a thirty minute ride to where we will try fishing. Why don’t we sunbathe?”
“Okay but this is nice.”
“It is but I want to see all of you,” he said.
