“Please,” Myrna said. She held the stem of her glass steady while the wine was poured.
“You, sir?”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Brian said.
“Uh-um,” the waitress stammered. “I-I’m sorry?”
Myrna swiveled her head to give her husband a chastising look, but he wasn’t glaring at the now nervous waitress or his wine glass. His glare was trained on the couple at the next table.
“Well, hello there,” Kev called, offering a friendly wave. “We do keep bumping into each other.”
“Ignore him,” Myrna said. She pushed at Brian’s chair so that his back would be toward the intrusive couple.
“How can I ignore him?” Brian said between clenched teeth. “He never goes away.”
Now Myrna had no doubt that Gail had been eavesdropping on her the night before and had taken note of all the times and places she and Brian would tour that day.
“Let’s enjoy dinner and pretend they don’t exist,” Myrna said. Her final plan for the evening had been to take a stroll with Brian along Arashi Beach to the California Lighthouse and watch the sunset, but she knew Kev and Gail would miraculously show up there too, and that would not be romantic in the least.
Myrna worked hard at being flirty and attentive to Brian throughout dinner, but he was tense and obviously struggling to keep his attention on her. By the time the boat docked, Myrna was ready to stab someone in the eye with her high-heeled shoe. They hung back as the other couples disembarked. They seemed to be in silent agreement that Kev and Gail would be gone if they were last to set foot on land.
“That was a nice dinner,” Brian told her, his gaze trained on the gangplank that the guests were walking down.
“Do you even know what you ate?”
His eyebrows drew together. “Seafood?”
“Are you asking?”
“Seafood,” he said with more certainty as he watched the waitress clear a plate with an empty lobster shell from a table.
“I was planning on taking you on an evening stroll to see the California Lighthouse. The best sunsets on the island are supposedly viewed from there.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Not tonight, it doesn’t. You know Kev and Gail will show up there, and you’ll get all pissed off again.”
Brian rubbed a hand over his face. “So what do you want to do then?”
“We’ll just go back to the hotel room and barricade ourselves inside. At least there we have our privacy.”
Brian shook his head in disgust. “You went to so much trouble to plan this out; it isn’t fair that we have to hide out in our hotel room while they get the run of the island.”
“It’s a great hotel room,” she reminded him.
He grinned and nodded. “And it does have a perfect view of the sunset.”
“We won’t know what we’re missing if we skip the lighthouse.”
“And the company is far more important than the view anyway,” Brian said.
“Yeah, not having them in our company is much more important.”
He chuckled and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you finally see things my way.”
When they decided it was probably safe to venture ashore, they walked down the swaying gangplank to the dock. Turned out it wasn’t so safe after all.
“Hey, you two,” Kev said, “isn’t Aruba fantastic? I’m so glad we decided to get married here.”
Without comment, Brian took Myrna’s hand and led her toward a taxi stand. She was grateful to see a taxi idling there. She was not going to chastise Brian for being rude. Some people deserved his rudeness—Kev and Gail, for example.
“Do you mind if we share a cab?” Kev asked as Brian opened the door for Myrna.
“Actually—” Brian began, but Myrna placed a calming hand on his chest. Not because she wanted to protect Kev, but because the guy wasn’t worth getting upset over.
“Sorry, Kev, but we’d like a little alone time on our way to the lighthouse. I’m sure you understand.”
Kev apparently wasn’t smart enough to realize she was baiting him or that he shouldn’t know their next destination.
“Oh, yeah. I get it. I guess we’ll see you there then.”
The fact that Gail snapped two pictures of her with her cellphone was not lost on Myrna, but frankly she was too worn down about the entire situation to make an issue of their continued boorish behavior.
“Yeah, we’ll see you there,” Myrna said. She didn’t feel the least bit sorry about lying to them. In fact, she hoped they sat around the lighthouse until dawn waiting for them to show up. The fuckers.
Brian took Myrna’s hand and placed an unexpected kiss on her knuckles before assisting her into the back seat of the cab. He saluted Kev with one finger to his brow—just happened to be his middle finger—before joining Myrna inside the car.
“Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” he said before tugging her close for a toe-curling kiss.
“So you’re heading to the lighthouse?” the cab driver asked.
“Go ahead and drive that direction,” Myrna said, “but don’t stop. We actually want to go to our hotel, but take the scenic route.”
A lengthy make-out session with her husband in the back seat wasn’t a bad Plan B, Myrna decided. They’d make it back to their hotel, Kev-and-Gail-free, eventually.
Chapter Eight
Brian released a deep sigh when he and Myrna entered their empty hotel room. Alone at last. It turned out that their drive along the coast at sunset had been incredibly romantic and they’d lucked out in getting a very discreet cab driver who seemed to expect them to paw at each other the entire ride.
“Romance time is over,” Brian said, drawing his giggling wife into his arms. “The rest of this evening is all about sex.”
“Thank God.” She captured his beard-roughened face between her palms so she could kiss him with lips and teeth and a whole lot of tongue.
His dick had been half-hard in the cab; he was painfully ready for her now. They shed their clothes impatiently on their way to the bedroom. He suckled and kissed every inch of her delightful flesh, running his hands over her body needing to prove to himself that she was really here and she was really his. When she began to beg for possession, her hands pulling at his body with desperation, he climbed from the bed and rushed to his suitcase.
Myrna lifted her head from the pillows and arched an eyebrow at him. “What are you doing?”