a jerk, but did miss. Still. Every day. All the damn time.
It was time to be over him. A year was much longer than long enough. Amanda couldn’t wait anymore to feel over him, she needed to do something about it. A symbolic gesture, a break between her old life and the new. And a golden opportunity to take that first step into a new future had just been plunked into her lap, courtesy of her best friend.
Step one: Get rid of this headache.
Step two: Do some very unwise things.
Step three: Profit? Probably not. But hopefully after step two, I’ll be too satisfied to care.
* * *
Jeremy still wasn’t sure why he’d called Amanda’s mother that fateful day a month ago. The mood struck him every few months, to keep in touch, to maintain even that peripheral connection. Although he got along fine with his own parents, he’d come to think of Sandy Perry as almost a second mom while he was with Amanda. Losing one should have meant losing the other, but he refused to accept that. So he called or emailed from time to time, and so did Sandy, and neither of them ever admitted that their agenda was less than honorable. He was not keeping tabs on Amanda, and her mother was not reporting behind her daughter’s back to the guy she still rooted for. Not at all. It was just keeping in touch. If a little information about Amanda slipped in on the side, well, that was only to be expected. They both knew her, after all. It only made sense she would come up in the conversation.
This time his call had crossed paths with an email from Sandy, and their talk had been more honest than usual. Amanda’s mother had never come right out and said, “Go to Hawaii and woo my daughter back with a surprise offensive.” But when he pulled up her email midway through the conversation, he saw that she’d included the specific dates of Amanda’s windfall vacation, and the name of the resort where she’d be staying. All couched in innocent language, of course. Wasn’t it amazing that Julie had won this trip and decided to share it with Amanda, and wasn’t it such a romantic spot?
“Sir, we can do the orchids and heliconias, but did you want to include some anthurium, as well? It’s one of our most popular choices. It really gives the arrangement that signature tropical look.”
The woman at the resort’s florist shop held up a picture-perfect example of the most sexual flower Jeremy had ever seen. A labial lily-shaped body in glossy deep red, with a creamy rounded spike poking out from its center. “Uh...”
She’d clearly been through this before. “I know. But you really should have at least a few. Maybe three? We also have them in a coral pink right now.”
Because they needed to look more like vaginas?
“I think the red will be fine. Sure, three.”
“Fantastic. It’ll be ready for you by nine in the morning. You said you wanted to pick the bouquet up, not have it delivered, right?”
Yes to picking the bouquet up. Yes to the exorbitant price. Yes to seeing Amanda again, even if she tossed the bouquet and kneed him in the balls before slamming the door in his face.
Dammit. Note to self: do not think about Amanda in conjunction with balls.
Fortunately the florist’s was only a stop on his afternoon jog. He’d already spent the morning in the gym, because being on vacation was no reason to change his habits of the past year. Every time he remembered Amanda and started to get hard, he worked out to take his mind off it. At least during the day. He still jacked off in the evenings, because he wasn’t a masochist and he thought about Amanda a lot.
It was a silver lining, Jeremy thought as he picked up his pace, heading out of the main hotel complex toward his beachside-cottage room. True, he had somehow lost the only woman he’d ever loved, and despite his business successes, the past year had been pretty hellish emotionally. He was spending a small fortune on what was almost certainly a futile bid to win her back, and he had no solution to the problem that had split them up in the first place—her job remained in San Jose, his company was putting down roots in Seattle since he’d moved it there nine months earlier, neither of them wanted to live in the other’s town, and none of that was likely to change.
But he was definitely in the best shape of his life.
* * *
The moment Amanda walked out of the resort’s incredibly well-appointed lobby, her headache started to ebb. One massive ear-pop, the sliding sensation of something loosening in her sinuses, and the keen ache faded to a barely perceptible throb. The attendant nausea waned to a minor background annoyance. The worst was over.
She knew it was coincidence, but it was almost as though exposure to such concentrated beauty vanquished the pain. The walk from the resort hotel’s swanky lobby was like entering Shangri-La, or stepping into Willy Wonka’s giant chocolate room. Amanda couldn’t help appreciating the tropical splendors and classy amenities despite the pain lingering behind her eyes and lurking at the base of her skull.
The semidetached cabin suite had a private lanai with a nearly clear view across a lawn and the beach down to the water, with only a few strategic hedges and coconut palms to add privacy and frame the image. Life inside a “Wish you were here” postcard would look like this, all pale golden sand and turquoise water in surfer-perfect waves, tanned bodies frolicking along the wide, deep strip of beach that curved along the sheltered bay. The view in the other direction was nearly as amazing; the room was gorgeous, a sleekly high-end display of modern design. Highly polished wood, fresh tropical flowers and a general air of expensiveness permeated the place. Amanda immediately wanted to stay there forever.
When she and Julie celebrated their room’s awesomeness, jumping up and down and squealing, Amanda began to feel like she was finally on vacation. Sadly, she also knew she’d have some work to do. The combination of stress, the headache and her usual ineptitude with small talk had resulted in a certain amount of bitchiness on the plane and in the limo on the way over. If she wanted to woo Alan, she was off to a terrible start.
But they had time. Not a lot, but enough. Amanda’s determination to take affirmative getting-over-Jeremy steps returned when she realized she was still seeing him in passing strangers. Like the hottie who jogged past their cottage’s lanai when they sat outside to enjoy the view.
Amanda enjoyed the view very much indeed, even if the guy made her think of Jeremy. Not just Jeremy, though. He looked like a damn movie star from the back, but she couldn’t think which one. Shirtless, in only a pair of navy-and-white board shorts and running shoes, he looked a little pale for the tropical setting, but other than that, too perfect for real life. Broad shoulders, lean muscles shifting across his back as he ran. His short sandy hair was damp, possibly from sweat, and she was struck with a craving to know what it felt like. Soft or stiff, prickly or like thick wet velvet? Had he been swimming, was he wet all over?
God. He might not be all that wet, but now she sort of was.
She and Julie both stared in silent admiration as the guy crossed the patch of lawn and disappeared between the hibiscus-laden bushes that separated their cottage row from the next. When his toned back and delectable thighs were finally out of sight, the girls released a sigh in tandem.
“Whoa. Is it just me, or did he look familiar?”
Julie nodded. “Not just you. I didn’t see his face, but he still looked like James Bond. One of the awesome Bonds, too. He totally looked capable of
