The Bikini Diaries (35 page)

"Hey," he said softly when she reached the cabana.

"Hey."

After that, they both went silent and her heart beat so hard that it hurt. Clearly, they had things to say to each other, but no one was saying them. And given what she'd told him

via her journal, she definitely thought the next move was his.

Finally, he pushed to his feet and said, "Let's walk."

Side by side they strolled through the soft sand down toward the water, and Wendy had

the feeling that he was going to tell her he didn't love her, since if he did, wouldn't he be telling her
now?
And wouldn't he at least look
happy"?
Her stomach sank as they neared the water's edge, but she resolved to stay strong—at least until she was alone.

Once at the shoreline, Brandon seemed hesitant, looking out over the horizon, then

picking up a broken seashell to throw out into the ocean. "You keep asking me to let you explain," he said without looking at her, "but I haven't done that. So please— explain to me what you were doing, what you were after, when you met me."

Oh boy. Wendy sighed. She had wanted
desperately
to explain, but it was so complex that, now that she had the chance, she wasn't sure how to.

Finally, she decided to sink deep into the heart of the matter, for the honest truth of it.

"You don't realize this," she began, "but there are... different planes of existence out there."

He looked understandably confused. "What?" But maybe that was good, since it was the first time he'd really looked her in the eye since meeting up with her a few minutes ago.

"There are ... different types of people living in this world," she said. "There are beautiful people, like you, who are living a charmed life with other beautiful people, always being confident and always feeling desirable. And then there are ... more average people, like me."

He couldn't have appeared more stunned. "I'll never understand what on earth makes you think you're average."

The response flattered her, just like the last time she'd referred to herself that way, but she couldn't be sidetracked if she had any chance of making him understand. "Before I got here, before I started dressing a certain way, trying to project a certain sexual image, I
was
average. So maybe it's all about attitude— who knows? But what I
do
know is—

before you, I never knew what it was like to be on the beautiful side. And I just wanted to experience that. But then I also wanted to... not need it. I wanted to
beat
it. I wanted to use it, the same way guys use girls for sex."

He protested. "I've never used a girl for sex."

She narrowed her gaze on him. "You've never slept with a girl knowing that when it was over she might want more than you did?"

Brandon pulled in his breath, let it back out. "Well, I never set out to hurt anyone."

"My point is... usually guys get to run the show. And usually beautiful people get to make the decisions and get what they want without having to work as hard for it as other

people. And just this once, I wanted to have that sort of power."

She slowed down then, since she was getting to the important part. "But I didn't count on caring about you. And I kept telling myself I didn't, because that went against everything I wanted when I started this whole thing. To care about you seemed... almost like I'd

defeated myself. I hadn't gotten what I was seeking, which was the power to have

meaningless sex. I'd never had meaningless sex before you—and I still haven't.

"I thought it was meaningless at first, just because I felt so good afterward, even though I didn't know you very well. But all that meant, in the end, was that I liked you so much, so quickly, that it didn't
feel
meaningless—it felt like I could be open with you, like I could let you see parts of myself I'd never shown anyone before."

He raised his gaze to her again, his brows knit, his expression earnest. "I never thought of what we were doing as a game, Wendy—but clearly, you did."

"It's the only time in my life I've
ever
treated sex like a game. And in the end, I lost.

Because you found out about it... and it was your horrible reaction that made me realize I'd fallen in love with you."

His eyes changed then, but she couldn't read them. His voice dropped to barely a whisper as the tide washed in around their feet. "So you meant what you wrote. You're ... in love with me."

She glanced down, feeling more exposed than she ever had in her bikini, but then looked

back up. She had to face this. "Sad but true."

"Why sad?"

"Because you seem to hate me now, because of the
other
things I wrote."

He shook his head, looked tired. "I don't hate you. I was... confused. Hurt. For the first time in my adult life I was starting to care for somebody. I was having a relationship

that... went beyond sex, way beyond sex. I thought..." He stopped, sighed, looked to the horizon as if it held the answers he needed. "I can't believe I'm telling you this, but what the hell. I thought I'd found this perfect woman—this woman who had everything:

beauty, brains, personality, and enough passion to make me crazy with lust every day of

my life. And then... I found out you weren't real."

Oh, wow. He'd been crazy about her, and her journal had really, truly hurt him. This was about more than just his ego. Ouch.

"I wasn't real—at first. Except that... I
was,"
she tried to explain. "Don't you see? I changed after I got here. I had this image I wanted to portray, but somewhere along the

way it became real—it blended with the rest of me and became who I really am.
You

changed me.
I
changed me. But I'm real now. I'm that woman... the one you thought I was. Except for the perfect part—I'm
not
perfect. I'm extremely flawed, in fact. I fucked up, and so now... I guess you know how it feels___"

He blinked, looked her pointedly in the eye. 'To be on the losing end? To be one of the

average people
you keep talking about, the ones who don't have everything so easy?"

"Yes," she whispered. 'And I'm sorry. But... you should forgive me. Because I don't think what I did was
that
horrible. I think you're taking it harder than you should because you're not used to getting hurt." There. Wow. She'd been totally, brutally honest—but she had to be. She'd deceived him in ways before—so she had to lay it all on the line now, for better or worse.

"Hell, maybe you're right about that—it
is
new for me, and I'm not proud of how I've handled it. But maybe I'm also taking it hard because I... cared for you so much."

She pulled in her breath. "Cared?"
As in past tense?

But he didn't hear it that way; he thought she was still questioning how he felt for her after all he'd just admitted. "Yes, for God's sake, bunny—cared!" He shook his head, seemed exasperated. “I’m not good at saying this sort of stuff—I never have before. But

of course I cared. Why the hell else would I get upset about your little game? Any other girl, any other time in my life, if I'd found that book, it wouldn't have mattered. But with you... it mattered."

There it was again—past tense. "Are you saying, Brandon. that it's too late for us?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying at all." Again, he looked tired, frustrated, as he stooped down in the wet sand and began doodling in it with a piece of shell as he talked. "Wendy, I'm good at business, I'm good at socializing, I'm good at sex... but I'm not that good at feelings, which is why I tried to shut them off when I thought I meant nothing to you. But it backfired and I ended up saying horrible things.

"Same thing at Volcano's the other night. I saw you at the bar and I wanted you so

fucking bad, and I thought maybe I could do this, just fuck you for fun—nothing more.

But I figured out I couldn't, and so ... I just shut down, just had to get away from the situation. As the CEO of this place"—he motioned behind him with one hand, still

drawing lines in the sand with the other—"I'm a pretty damn good communicator. But as a guy who's trying to tell a girl how he feels..." He shook his head yet again. "I'm just no good at finding those kinds of words."

Wendy swallowed. She'd been wrong. He really
did
feel what she felt. But he was right—

he was pretty bad at explaining it. Which meant...
"What
kind of words, Brandon? I need you to say it."

He rose up and looked into her eyes, his expression passionate, pensive, and maybe even

a little nervous—then he pointed down to the sand where he'd been doodling. He'd

written:

And Wendy could barely breathe.

"I should have told you before now," he said, "but when you're a guy like me, a guy who's never... loved anybody before, and then you do, and it hurts, it's hard to... put

yourself out there again. And
I'm
the one who needs to be forgiven. Can you forgive me, bunny?"

"Yes," she said immediately, her eyes still glued to the note in the sand. He still hadn't said it out loud, but maybe this was better. Like her, he'd put it in writing. And maybe that explained why her journal hurt him so very much—because seeing something in

writing somehow made it seem more real.

Brandon looked surprised that she was suddenly being so easy about this. "You do?"

She nodded vigorously, then pointed back down at the sand. "If you really mean that."

"I do," he said softly but surely.

At this, Wendy threw her arms around him and kissed him. He wrapped around her in a

full embrace and as his tongue snaked into her mouth, things felt right again, with him, and in her heart, for the first time since she'd taken that ill-fated shower seven long weeks ago, leaving him alone with her journal. "I really love you, Brandon," she said, peering into those blue eyes that had captivated her at first sight. "I really do."

He gazed back at her and spoke slowly, carefully. "I... I love you, too, Wendy. I really want
this, us.
I'm sorry for being a jerk. You're just... the first girl I've ever loved and it threw me for a total loop."

"I told you, I forgive you," she said, "as long as you don't make a habit of it and you go back to being the hot, sweet, sexy guy I fell for."

He smiled the handsome, winning smile she'd fallen in love with and said, "Consider it done, bunny." Then he chuckled. 'And consider me lucky that you're sweeter on the

beach than you are in the boardroom."

They laughed about that and talked about how fun and strange it was going to be to work

together by day and be a couple by night. Wendy asked, "Will we tell people? Or will we keep it a secret?" and they decided they'd figure that out later.

"Right now," Brandon said, "all I want to do is wait for it to get dark out here, then take you back to our beach cabana and have my way with you."

Wendy couldn't wait for that, either—her pussy hummed with anticipation already. "I've been a bad girl," she said, "so I think I deserve a spanking."

A lecherous grin unfurled on his face. "Don't worry, bunny. Good girl or bad, I see lots of spankings in your future."

Just then, a particularly high wave rolled in, crashed over their ankles, and Brandon

glanced down at the sand behind him to say, "It washed away my message to you."

She liked that he was a soft enough guy, deep inside, to sound sad about that. But she

looked into those sexy, sparkling blue eyes of his and promised him, "Nothing will wash this away, Brandon. It's scary for me, too. But I want this, I trust in this. Nothing will wash it away."

Epilogue

The year after Wendy had first come to Emerald Shores, she was as happy as a woman

could be.

Okay, so maybe she and Brandon occasionally knocked heads in the boardroom, but

they'd learned how to leave work at work, and mostly, he seemed to respect her ideas—

even if he still claimed the resort would be out of business if they approved every money-spending idea she came up with. Overall, though, a year after Carlisle Enterprises had

invested in Emerald Shores, most of Wendy's "suggested improvements" were in place, business was booming, and everyone was happy.

Wendy did miss her family, but as she'd hoped, they visited often, and she went home on

occasion, too. She'd even taken Brandon for Thanksgiving, and made it up to his mother

by going to Alabama for Christmas, where she'd finally gotten to hear his accent, since he seemed to slip back into it there.

Of course, the nights and weekends were her favorite parts of life these days. She enjoyed her work immensely, but she enjoyed her pleasure even more. She still maintained her

home at the larger condo she'd selected in the Shellside Towers, even if most nights

found her at Brandon's place. Sex with Brandon never got old; she still wanted as much

as she could get, and she still let her every inhibition run free with him. He'd continued encouraging her to spread her sexual wings—there'd been a few more hot, steamy

evenings with Pete, and one particularly scintillating night when Stacy had joined the

three of them. But those encounters had taken place early in their relationship, and since then, they'd pretty much made it a two-person show, having decided that experimentation

was fun, but being alone was even hotter.

Wendy loved living at the beach, having weekends and the occasional weekday afternoon

to hit the sand and soak up the sun in her sexy bikini, but she and Brandon actually spent more time there in the evenings, holding hands and watching sunsets. Of course, White

Bikini Babe was there, too—although spring had brought out a new metallic silver and

even skimpier bikini. To this day, Wendy had never exchanged a word with the woman

who had changed her life, and she still thought it best to keep it that way.