she said, a tingle of nerves and excitement running through her.
“Ready?” their guide called to them.
“I have no idea,” she whispered to Zack.
“Ready,” Zack said.
The elephant rose up, the sharp pitch forward and to the left a shock. She lurched to the side and took hold of Zack’s arm while Anong finished getting to her feet, each movement throwing them in a different direction.
“I think I’m good now,” she whispered, her fingers still wrapped, clawlike around Zack’s arm.
“Just relax, he said this is a path she takes all the time. New for us, but not new for her.”
She didn’t actually want to know the answer to the question, but she asked it anyway. “Accustomed to calming the nerves of the inexperienced?”
“No. I don’t mess around with women who need comforting in the bedroom. That’s not what I’m there for.”
She felt a heavy blush spread over her cheeks. “I guess not.”
She was alternately relieved and disappointed by that bit of news. Relieved, because she didn’t really like to think of her friend as some crass seducer of innocents, and she really couldn’t picture him in that role, anyway.
If he was the big bad wolf, it would be because the woman he was with wanted to play Little Red Riding Hood.
But it was disappointing, too, because that pushed her even farther outside the box that Zack’s “ideal woman” resided in.
Ideal bedmate.
Sure, maybe it was more that than any sort of romantic ideal, but she would like to just fit the requirements for that. Well, really, being the woman he was sleeping with was very far away from what she actually wanted, but it would be a start.
A wonderful, sexual, amazing start.
She jerked her thoughts back to the present, not hard to do with the pitch-and-roll gait of the elephant rivaling a storm-tossed boat. It was a smooth, fluid sort of motion, but it was a very big motion, to match the size of the animal.
It also wasn’t hard to do when she remembered that, as far as their host was concerned, she and Zack were now engaged.
“A tangled web, isn’t it, Parsons?” she asked.
“What was I supposed to say?” he countered. “Ah, no, this is just my best friend that I brought along for a roll in the hay.”
“The truth might have worked. He seems like a nice man.”
“Look, it’s done. I’m sure his assumption works even more in my favor, in favor of the deal, and that’s all that really matters, right? We know where we stand. It’s not like it changes anything between us.”
She felt like the air had been knocked out of her. “No. Of course not.”
They moved through the meadow and down into the trees, onto a well-worn path that took them along a slow-moving river, the banks covered in greenery, bright pink flowers glowing from the dark, lush foliage.
She tried to keep her focus on the view, but her mind kept wandering back to Zack, to his solid, steady heat, so close to her. It would be easy to just melt into him, to stop fighting so hard for a moment and give in to the need to touch him.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Nothing had changed between them, after all. His words.
There was a reason she’d never made any sort of attempt to change their relationship from friends to more-than-friends. The biggest one being that she didn’t want to jeopardize the most stable relationship she had, the one closest to it being unable to stomach the thought of being rejected by him.
Of having him confirm that everything her mother said about her was true. Of having her know, for certain, that a man really wouldn’t want her because she just wasn’t all that pretty. Her mother had made sure she’d known men would still sleep with her, because of course, men would sleep with anyone. But she wasn’t the sort of woman a man would want for a wife. Not the type of woman a man could be proud to take to events.
Not like her sister. Gorgeous, perfect Lucy who was, in all unfairness, smart and actually quite sweet along with being slender, blonde and generally elegant.
Lucy actually would have looked more like Hannah’s sister than like her sister.
A sobering thought, indeed.
She should make sure Zack never met her sister.
The sound of running water grew louder and they rounded a curve in the path and came into a clearing that curved around a still, jade pool. At least twenty fine steams were trickling down moss-covered rocks, meeting at the center and falling into the pool as one heavy rush of water.
Anong the elephant stopped at the edge of the pool, dropping slowly down to her knees, the ground rising up a bit faster than Clara would have like. She leaned into Zack, clinging to the sleeve of his T-shirt as Anong settled.
“All right?” he asked.
She looked at where her hand was, and slowly uncurled her fingers, releasing her hold on him. “Sorry,” she said.
He smiled, that simple expression enough to melt her insides. He was so sexy. Time and exposure, familiarity, didn’t change it. Didn’t lessen it.
Just another reason for her to leave Roasted. If exposure didn’t do it, distance might.
Zack moved away from her, dismounting their ride first and waited for her at the side of their living chariot, his hand outstretched. She leaned forward and took it, letting his muscles propel her gently to the ground. Her feet hit just in front of his, her breasts close to touching his chest, the heat from him enticing her, taunting her.
“Do you want me to wait for you?” their guide asked.
Zack shook his head. “We’ll walk back. Thank you for the ride. It was an experience.”
He nodded and whistled a signal to Anong, who rose slowly and turned, going back with her owner and friend. She watched them round the corner, a smile on her lips. Yesterday, she was at a beachside hotel in San Francisco, expecting to lose half of her heart as Zack married another woman.
Today she was with him on his honeymoon. Riding elephants.
“An experience,” Zack said, turning to face the water.
“It was fun,” she said.
“Not relaxing exactly.”
“No,” she said, laughing. “Not in the least.”
“Mr. Amudee informed me by phone this morning that this is a safe place to swim. Clean. They don’t let the elephants up here and the waterfall keeps it all moving.”
She made a face. “Good to know. I liked the elephants, don’t really want to share a swimming hole with them. It looks
