I never win anything!”
Julie kept saying it long after she should have stopped, probably annoying her coworkers no end. It wasn’t true, of course. She’d won stuff—everybody won stuff. Little things, like a spelling bee, or a round of rock, paper, scissors. Once, she won an office pool on when the receptionist’s baby would be born (three in the afternoon, on a lovely Tuesday in May).
This was different. The little stuff barely counted as wins next to something this spectacular.
She leaned over, raising her voice over the steadily increasing after-work crowd noise in the bar, and asked Alan Cortese to pinch her.
He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure pinching you would be harassment.”
“Not if it’s on the arm. Besides, we’re not in the office right now. Ouch!” His fingers left significant heat behind on her shoulder. “I take it back. It’s harassment if you do it that hard.”
“You’re awake, okay?” He used his cheesy emcee voice, rolling his prize certificate up and using it as a microphone. His dark eyebrows waggled over bright brown eyes alight with mischief. “Julie Perfetto, you’ve just won a vacation for two to a fabulous tropical resort in beautiful Hawaii! What are you going to do now?”
“Never complain about a company motivational event again.”
“That’s a given. Me, either. I can’t believe either of us won this fucking thing. What are the odds? What else are you gonna do?”
“Yikes. Call Amanda, I guess, once she’s done at work. How about you? Who are you gonna bring on the trip?” She knew he wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, but maybe he had a sleeper candidate.
“No clue. I don’t know, I’ll probably end up giving the tickets to my parents. Sitting on the beach isn’t really my thing.”
Ugh.
Not for the first time, Julie considered what a dutiful son Alan was. He really did put her to shame. Parents. She should have at least thought about calling her parents. It was really big news. She told herself she would totally call them. Right after she called Amanda.
Julie plucked the tour brochures they’d been ogling from the slightly sticky bar and fanned them in front of Alan’s face. “Did you even read these? You don’t ever have to go near the beach. There’s horseback riding, hiking, kayaking. You can take a helicopter ride. Or skip the beach itself and go straight into the ocean for snorkeling. Surfing, even.”
“Are you two going to do all that stuff?”
She wasn’t about to tell Alan her actual plan for the trip, conceived about five minutes after the initial shock had worn off. Find a good-looking guy, take reasonable precautions and then—for once in her life—have no-strings-attached sex. A story for her pervy mental scrapbook, which was woefully thin as yet.
“Oh, hell no. I mean, I probably will do some adventure sports, but Amanda...” She flipped through the themed brochures until she found the one labeled Spa Retreat. “This is how I’ll entice her away from her desk. Massages. Full day spa. Yoga classes. World-class cuisine. And fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.”
“That last one isn’t on the list.”
“I’m making an educated guess. Wow. I have to call her. She’s going to flip out.”
Alan snorted and shook his head. “I can’t see her going that far from her office for a vacation. Even a free one.”
“You just don’t like her because she dumped you.” Julie had fixed them up shortly after she started working with Alan, but the chemistry simply wasn’t there.
“There was no dumping. We only went out three times. Besides, it’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like me.”
It was sort of true. Amanda had liked Alan okay, but she had never like liked him. Julie thought she was nuts for that, but there was no accounting for taste. Then Amanda had met Jeremy, so the point became moot.
Julie herself had friend-zoned Alan right away, because of the coworker thing. Over the past three years he’d also become her generally acknowledged “work husband,” and with that title came the acceptance that he was off-limits...because having a crush on your work husband was pathetic. No matter how much he brightened your day by walking into your cubicle, and regardless of what his ass looked like when he walked back out. Never mind that one ill-advised Christmas-party mistletoe kiss.
Julie could admire a man objectively and enjoy the view, but that didn’t mean she had to start acting a fool. She had her own plans for her life, very specific things she wanted to accomplish in the next few years, and she’d started to feel that boyfriends simply weren’t worth the distraction from her goals. Not that Alan had ever been a boyfriend.
Still, going on a romantic vacation with him might have been interesting. Nice, rather than romantic. Julie told herself it would have been...pleasant. Because of how trustworthy and affable he was. Always good to have another buddy along. It was in character for him to give the trip away, though. Typical good-guy move.
Julie revised her initial reaction. He was too nice, really, Alan was. And Mr. Dependable was maybe not the best person to share a wild tropical vacation with. Her life was already safe and well-regulated enough; the point of a vacation was to get away from that for a little while, but not to gather more emotional clutter in the process. Thus, the no-strings-sex idea.
“Then it’s a good thing you’re giving the trip to your parents, like the good son you are. So sweet. A mother’s angel.” She pinched his cheek like an overbearing aunt at a family reunion. “You know I’ll be out parasailing from horseback while simultaneously kayaking or something, while you’d have probably hung out at the poolside bar drinking beers. So you would have been more likely to see Amanda than me.” This wasn’t true. Alan would’ve been the one on the horse, pulling her along.
He lifted his beer, saluting her with it. “I’ll be sure to tell Mom and Dad to wave to you from the beach as you fly by.”
Chapter Two
Alan recognized the lei flowers from the plumeria trees his mom grew back home. The clean spicy-citrus scent felt right for this place, practically crooning out “Welcome to Oahu.” He watched Julie savoring it, burying her nose in the pink-and-yellow blossoms and inhaling with a beatific smile. Alan reached for his phone to snap a picture, but Julie straightened up and ducked into the car too fast for him to capture the moment. Just as well.
Amanda was close behind her, but Alan lingered outside a few seconds longer while the limo driver bedecked him with a lei of his own. It was less girly than the others, with some sort of small white flowers intertwined with shells, leaves and what appeared to be nuts. He clamped down on the urge to make a nut joke to the guy, figuring he’d probably heard all of those about a million times before.
When he joined the girls in the spacious vehicle, though, he had to lead with, “Yeah, I hung back so the driver could sling his nuts on me.”
Julie snorted. Amanda rolled her eyes, though he caught a hint of a smile. She was sitting directly opposite Julie, and Alan had to make a split-second decision on who to sit next to. The platonic work wife, who reliably laughed at his jokes, or the cute single girl who always
