Getting Him: A New Adult International Romance Serial (Angelique's Greek Book 2) (2 page)

It was the last thing she wanted to do. The idea of it seemed so lonely, sitting at airports and watching happy families coming back from vacation and couples excited about jetting off for romantic breaks, and what did she have to travel back to? Her mother’s sympathy and cooked food would comfort her, but it could not fulfill her.
 

She couldn’t bring herself to press the
Book Now
button and put her smartphone back in her handbag. She might be able to get a better price at the airport, anyhow.

“Your taxi is here, Ma’am,” the receptionist said.

“Thanks,” Angelique replied, trying to muster a smile.
 

She headed out behind the porter who insisted on carrying her bag to the taxi for her. Mumbling good day to the taxi driver, she wiped away the tears that had gathered on her lower lashes and wondered what on earth was to become of her. Would she ever have the life her heart craved?

She rummaged in her purse for some lip gloss, trying to feel normal, when she heard a knocking on the tinted window. She turned, assuming it was the porter, to find Theo looking at her, panicked. A lump in her throat, she brought the window down.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not lying,” she said, her voice almost breaking out into a sob.

“Where are you going?”

She looked ahead of her and held her head high. “Back to the Bahamas.”

“Oh, don’t,” he said. “Please don’t. At least let me talk to you first.”

Her heart leapt but she hid it well. “I really don’t see what there is to talk about.”

“Please hear me out,” he said, opening the door and holding his hand out to her. She took it.

*****

Chapter 2

It was all a blur to Angelique as Theo paid the driver for his trouble, checked her case in behind reception, and led the way through the hotel out onto the beach. His eyes scanned the shoreline dotted with tourists and he looked dissatisfied.

“Let’s go somewhere quieter,” he said.

“Sure.”

They walked on in silence, Theo’s hair blown by the breeze, his eyes intense. Angelique slipped off her shoes and enjoyed the coarse white grains of sand under the soles of her dark feet. Her heart ached but she felt more alive than she ever had before as she watched the waves curl in the distance and peter out onto the shore. The sun blazed on her skin in a way that reminded her of home.

Eventually the beach ended with a rock face, but Theo scaled up it and held his hand out to Angelique. She had climbed a thousand of them back in the Bahamas and kept her hands firmly by her side. Touching him would only conjure thoughts of a phantom romance.

They climbed down the other side into a small secluded cove, no more than twenty feet wide, where the water was calm and clear.
 

“Wow,” said Theo. “This is nice.”

“Yes.”

She felt the soft sand underfoot but tried to harden her heart.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked. “We could sit on the rocks here, or on the sand?”

She sat down on a large rock, her toes dangling into the water. He followed suit a couple of feet away. The sound of the ocean was the only one for a moment.

“I don’t normally do this,” he said eventually. “But…” He looked at her, his head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes wide and searching.

“But what?” she said, staring resolutely at her feet as they rippled the clear water.

“I can’t work out if it’s just me, that’s the thing,” he said. “You know when you think there’s something but you’re not sure if there is or you’re just imagining it.”

If you only knew,
she thought.

He took a deep breath. “I really like you, Angelique. I’ve liked you since we talked about this trip over dinner in Dubai.”

Her heart racing, she glanced up at him. The sincerity in his eyes was so powerful, sending pulses through her body—she had to look away again.

“As soon as you left the room up there, I knew you were telling the truth,” he continued. “I had kind of gotten lost in my work. You know, I’ve realized that’s something about me that I really don’t like. When things get tough I just bury myself in work. I took up meditation about a year ago and when I do it I realize a lot of things about myself. I noticed this pattern in my behavior, but I thought I’d gotten over it by now. Looks like I haven’t.”

She loved the fact that he meditated, that he was so self-aware.

“I just get so distracted,” he said. “Like I can’t focus on anything but work.”

“Like a coping method for difficult situations?” she said, her eyes alight. She had always felt alive in this kind of conversation.

“Exactly,” he said.

He looked at her in a way that said,
‘You understand me.’
Swept up in emotion, their gazes locked together in a powerful union until Angelique became self-conscious and looked back into the water.

“I believe you,” he said. “I believe what you said about Lorenza.”

“I can’t believe the way she just lied like that,” said Angelique. “She’s so good at twisting things around.”

He studied his hands and spoke quietly. “You know, there have been warning signs, but anytime there was one I just shoved my head back in my book and kept working. It’s so
cowardly.
” He struck one hand against the other, his voice rising in frustration.

“It’s not cowardly,” Angelique said. “It’s human.”

He looked up at her and smiled. “Thanks. You know, you’re about the only person who doesn’t make me feel like I’m being put up with, do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Like everyone else is just putting up with my quirks, or weirdness, or faults or whatever, just because of my money. It’s not like that with you.”

Angelique smiled. “You’re a good guy. I don’t see what there is to put up with. Enjoy is more like it.”

“Thanks,” he said, like it really meant something to him.

“And I meant what I said. I’d love to read your book sometime.” She was fascinated to find out about his life in poverty, how he had managed to wiggle his way out and become one of the wealthiest men in the world. “I want to know your story.”

“I want to know your story too,” he said.

Angelique looked over the ocean. “I don’t really have a story.”

“Everyone has a story,” he said. “Their pain, their triumph, what it means to them to be alive, to be human.”

“Yes,” she said. It was such a big subject that she struggled to find any words to articulate herself. “I want to make a difference but I don’t know exactly how yet.” It sounded so pathetic as she heard herself say it.

“You sound just like me,” he said. “Is that you, Theo?”

She giggled a little. Everything felt so comfortable. Her heart swelling with fear in her chest, she dared to ask him, “When you say you like me, in what way do you like me?”

He let out a long breath as he picked up the soft sand in his fingers and let it trickle through back onto the beach. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I mean, you’re beautiful, obviously, but that doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. I think I mean that I could see us being really good friends. And maybe something more. I mean, else—something else. I don’t want to say more because if you want your love to last a lifetime, you have to be good friends, so it’s just as important.”

“Yes,” Angelique said.

It felt so good to sit there with him by the ocean, listening to him talk. He thought she was beautiful, he thought they could be friends, he thought they could be something
else
. She could think those three thoughts over and over all day every day and never get tired of them.

A whisper in the back of her mind said,
Maybe even for a lifetime.

“Do you feel … do you feel the same?” he asked.

She did not even need to think about it. “Yes.”

His expression widened into a smile. “That’s why I want you to stay. We’re both here for a reason. Let’s make this hotel a reality. Remember the vision you told me over dinner in Dubai, how you wanted to make a space where people can get away from all the stresses of life, where they can recharge and get in touch with nature? I think we can make that vision a reality, you and me. Life has brought us together.”

Only one thing kept her spirit from soaring. “What about Lorenza? I can’t do this with her here. There’s too much bad energy between us.”

“I don’t want her here,” he said. “Now that I think about everything she’s done, I believe what you said about her. You know she came to my bedroom in her gown then dropped it to the floor and pushed herself on me. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t going to refuse her, but she was the one who made every move.”

The thought of him being intimate with Lorenza set Angelique’s stomach churning. She turned away.

“Angelique?” he said. “Please don’t be mad with me. I would never have allowed it if I had known you shared my feelings.”

“So are you going to just tell her to leave?”

“I was thinking about it,” he said. “But I thought maybe we should test it out, just to be sure. I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“Test how?”

A slow smile spread over his face. “Lorenza told me you didn’t go to see the second piece of land.”

“After I found those messages I was going out of my mind,” Angelique said. “I couldn’t focus on anything else. I had to get the realtor to bring us right back.”

“Understandably,” he said. “But what I was thinking is … you’re still going to view the land, right?”

“Sure.”

“When you go, why don’t you leave Lorenza here with me?” he said. “That way you’ll be able to see the land without her bothering you, and I can see how deep this plan of hers really goes.”

“Well, okay,” Angelique said. She’d have just preferred it if he’d fired her right away, but didn’t feel bold enough to push for it. “I’ll go call Kalani.”

“Stay with me a moment longer,” he said. “It feels like heaven here, just you and I.” He looked over the waves. “Ah! What pleasant visions haunt me, as I gaze upon the sea. All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.” “That’s very poetic,” she said, leaning back on her elbows and turning her face toward the sun.

“It’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” he said. “I try to write my own poems, but mostly they’re so bad that they just make me laugh.”

*****

Chapter 3

“Wow,” said Angelique. A feeling of wonder built up in her chest and threatened to burst. She clutched the realtors shoulder. “Kalani, this is it.
This is it!”

She had never seen anything so perfect. The entrance was thick with jungle vines and growing palms, the ground littered with coconuts, but the further they went in, the clearer it became. It was a long, thin piece of land, stretching about 150 feet across and going on for seven acres, all the way down to the beach.
 

“That’s like seven football fields,” Kalani had said. “The owner cleared it about six months ago.”

Angelique stood among the coconut trees that jutted into the intensely blue sky, wondering if this was all real. She tried to imagine what it would be like when it was cleared, but her mind was bursting with so many ideas that she struggled to get a handle on one. She imagined bougainvilleas dangling down from the pergolas that would lead to the beach, bursting in white and peach and violet and flamingo pink. She’d plant love apple trees along all the paths, she decided, so that when its hot pink pompom flowers inevitable fell apart they would adorn the walkways with an almost fluorescent fuschia carpet.

A creak behind her startled her. “What’s that?”

Kalani smiled. “Just bamboo.”

“Oh,” she said, clutching her chest. “It scared me.”

Right away she went back to thinking of how beautiful she could make this place. She wanted to create a sanctuary, a place where people could get away from the world and all the stresses of life. She wished Theo was there to vision and dream with her.

“So you think this is the right place for you, huh?” Kalani said. “It really is a special piece of land, isn’t it? It has a good vibe about it.” He wiped away the beads of sweat that wet his black hair and dripped down his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt.

“It sure does, my boy,” said Angelique. “It’s like you’re a million miles away from anything, deep in the bush.”

“Yes,” he said. “But still the supply for electricity, water and internet is not too far away.”

“Exactly,” she said. “The best of both worlds. I hope I can do it justice.”

“But of course you will,” said Kalani. “I can tell you are a strong-minded woman. You have a clear vision of what you want to do. Don’t let anything get in the way of that vision.”

Angelique looked at him, past his overweight, scruffy exterior and right into his kind eyes. In that moment he was like the brother she had never had.
 

“Thanks,” she said.

Eventually they headed back to his rickety, open-top Jeep with peeling white paint and he cranked it into motion. Angelique had become accustomed to the sound of steel guitar that twanged from Kalani’s radio anytime they were in the car. As she watched the tropical scenery whizz by, her heart full of Theo and her braids flashing back in the breeze, she felt like nothing could ever go wrong in her world again.