what Noah didn’t get in Almost Paradise.
Grumbling, he rolled over onto his stomach and took his pillow with him. He clamped it over his head, doing his best to shut out the morning light that filled the room thanks to the overhead skylight and the glass-block walls. It didn’t work. The pillow didn’t block out the funny, gurgly sound of the waterfall, either, or the now-and-again plop of the fish as they swam around in the little pond across the room. It sure didn’t do a thing to stop the memories that had kept him tossing and turning all night.
Noah knew a losing battle when he saw one and he flipped over and chucked the pillow aside, a kind of overstuffed surrender flag. There was no use trying to sleep, just like there was no use trying to forget everything that had happened since he walked into Cupid’s Hideaway, so he kicked off the blankets. Scraping his hands through his hair, he sat up and looked around.
It wasn’t just a bad dream.
The tropical plants were real. The winding paths were real. The faint background noise was real, too, a recording of roaring lions and squawking birds that must have been on a timer because he hadn’t—thank goodness—heard it during the night.
As if he needed more proof that he was smack-dab in the middle of a situation he wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten himself into, Noah saw the fabric fig leaf on the bed beside him. No doubt, the fig leaf was Maisie’s idea of a joke, a little prop never meant to be worn but rather to be used as a kind of trigger designed to titillate the imaginations of the couples who stayed in Almost Paradise. Like the entire Cupid’s Hideaway concept, the fig leaf was clever and bizarre and a little corny. In its own warped way, it was also very funny.
So why hadn’t he and Laurel done any laughing?
Not a question Noah wanted to consider.
Hoping to get rid of the memories as easily as he got rid of the kink in his neck, he stretched and got up, headed to the bathroom. He was done asking himself questions. It was bad enough he’d spent the night second-guessing his handling of the situation and wondering where he got off thinking he could waltz into what was essentially enemy territory and come out without being handed his head, or at least his heart, on a silver platter. It was even worse realizing that four long years of telling himself he’d done the right thing—both for himself and for his career—didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Not when Laurel was stretched out on the bed and he was lying on top of her.
Halfway down a winding path lined with flowering orchids, Noah stopped, nearly upended by the thought. He sucked in a long, slow breath, willing his heartbeat to slow down, telling himself to remember that there was more to any relationship than simply sex.
An easy enough concept to understand. Or at least it should have been. But try as he might, he couldn’t forget that in the months he’d shared with Laurel, simply sex wasn’t so simple. With Laurel, it was more like great sex. Mind-numbing sex. Heart-pounding, better-than-ever-before-or-since sex. He also couldn’t forget that in that one moment, there in the dark in Almost Paradise, when Laurel’s breasts were pressed to his chest and Laurel’s breath was warm against his skin and Laurel’s heart beat to the same manic rhythm as his, he’d wanted her again. Wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone. Or anything. At anytime. Ever.
The thought was enough to send Noah’s temperature soaring, and that was enough to convince him he was in deep trouble. He knew what he had to do. He was a man of science, one who was the first to sneer at the touchy-feely stuff so many pseudoprofessionals advocated. But this time, he knew he had to make an exception. This time, it was time to listen to his instincts.
And his instincts told him to cut and run.
He knew exactly what he had to do. Get the Golden Apple and get out of there. After all, it was what he’d come to the island for in the first place.
Even after all these years, just thinking about the prestigious award he’d been presented by his medical school graduating class never failed to stir a curious brew of emotions in Noah. Pride, sure. How could he not be proud of the fact that he’d been honored as the most successful, the most competent, the most admired student in his class? It was a mark of distinction he hadn’t been about to turn down. Not even when he found out Laurel had come in second for the award.
But there was something else tangled up with the pride, some emotion that was hard to define but impossible to ignore. Part anger, part disbelief, part baseball-bat-to-the-side-of-the-head surprise. Every time he thought about the fact that when Laurel walked out on him, she had the audacity to take the Golden Apple with her.
Four years removed from the incident and the residual effects still burned through Noah like acid. All the more reason he needed to get away from Cupid’s Hideaway. And get away fast. He’d take the ferry to the mainland. He’d get back to his life as he knew it. It was all he ever wanted.
No. Noah corrected himself. Not precisely true. Today he wanted something else, too—a long talk with the fluffy little old lady who’d played him for a patsy.
Once he was done, he’d get out of there. The sooner he was off the island, the better. It was time to put some distance—and all the water in Lake Erie—between himself and Laurel. Just the way he’d done four years earlier.
Satisfied that he’d reasoned through the problem and come up with a solution guaranteed to preserve his self-respect as well as his self-esteem, Noah stepped behind the screen of living tropical plants that served as a shower curtain. He lathered down with a bar of soap that looked like a miniature pineapple, washed his hair with shampoo that smelled like coconut. Considering all that had happened in the last fourteen hours or so, he had to admit he was pretty pleased with himself.
Which didn’t explain why his mind kept wandering. Or why every time it wandered, it wandered straight to Laurel. Or why, every time it did, he found himself turning down the water temperature.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Noah was downstairs in search of coffee. And answers. What he found instead was an empty lobby. There was no fire dancing in the fireplace as there had been the night before, no tea on the buffet. He heard some off-key singing coming from the kitchen but he knew the voice didn’t belong to Maisie, not unless her tastes included vintage Rolling Stones along with her La Bohème. He headed down the long hallway beside the front desk. The first door past the kitchen had a pink-feathered wreath hanging on it and a dainty needlepointed picture to the left of the door, one of a fleshy cherub with a naughty smile on his face. He knew he’d found what he was looking for.
“Good morning!” Maisie chirped in response to Noah’s knock. He pushed open the door and found her looking as perky as the birds that darted around the patio outside her office. She was dressed in a pantsuit that perfectly matched the last of the summer’s hot pink geraniums growing in pots around the patio door and she was bent over what looked to be a set of blueprints. When Noah walked in, she rolled up the blueprints, tied them with a red velvet ribbon and stashed them in the corner.
Maisie’s smile was as bright as the sun that filtered through the lace curtains. “Sleep well?” she asked.
“Frankly, no.” Noah didn’t need to remind himself that he was fond of Maisie. He always had been. But as much he liked Laurel’s grandmother, he couldn’t afford to be hoodwinked by that sunny smile or the old-lady act. Not again.
He crossed his arms over his chest and pinned her with the kind of look that had been known to make even third-year medical students shake in their shoes. “You want to explain what this is all about?”
“This?” Maisie’s eyes went wide, and her hand automatically went
