Touching Paradise (3 page)

Monroe laughed quietly as she turned down the volume. Great sales pitch. Teach people how to be spontaneous by prescribing a detailed plan. Tara would have been having a field day.

A skinny man in a long, crooked apron cautiously peeked his head into the breakfast area. He gripped a large plate with both hands. Golden onion rings threatened to spill over the sides. The sandwich was enormous, a triple-decker with fat slices of bread and slivers of tomato squeezing melted layers of cheese.

“You’re my hero!” Monroe said, smiling, and the man placed the plate in front of her. She charged it to her room and left a big tip to make up for the late-night order.

He glanced up at the television. “My wife has that book.”

“Really?”

He smiled. “It’s a catchy phrase, no? She tells everyone about it. She’s the kind of woman who likes to believe in things.”

“Does she believe in the shark warriors, too?” Monroe asked with a laugh.

The man’s face went serious. “There hasn’t been a fatal shark attack near this island in over a hundred years. The warriors keep us safe.”

Monroe’s smile froze. “You don’t think it’s because overfishing has depleted the shark population?”

“There are mysteries in this life that we can never know.” His expression softened as if he felt sorry for her.
 

“I’m… sure you’re right. The food looks great.” She hooked an onion ring on her finger, then dunked it in ketchup.

“Enjoy your vacation,” he said formally, seeming to remember that she was a guest.

She wished him a good night as he walked out, then she took a big bite into the gooey sandwich. It probably wasn’t half as good as her untouched gourmet dinner at Linda’s wedding reception, but it was exactly what she needed. Comfort food. The bread was perfectly toasted, lightly browned and crunchy. She devoured the sandwich, then shoveled the spicy coleslaw into her mouth, alternating bites with the salty, greasy onion rings. When every last crumb was gone, she wiped her fingers clean and slumped back in the chair, relaxed.
 

That was probably two days’ worth of calories, but she was on vacation. Only boring people stuck to diets on vacation. She wrinkled her nose. Did that count as changing her mind? Eating artery-clogging food was unlikely to transform her life in any positive way. Except she did feel better, so maybe that counted. She nodded. That definitely counted.

Change your mind to transform your life.
Or was it the other way around? Transform your mind…? She didn’t remember. And it didn’t matter because it was all self-affirmation nonsense. It would never work.

Back in the room, her thoughts turned to Thomas again.
Kinda hot.
Jerk.

She was taller than average, a little heavier than average. She had a definite hourglass shape that had embarrassed her when she hit puberty before her friends. Her legs were strong, thanks to spinning class. No one would allow her within a hundred feet of a fashion runway, but she wasn’t a troll, either. She couldn’t really blame her bad luck with men on her looks.

New York was the problem. The male/female ratio sucked. There was a reason Linda had met Marco during a Chicago business trip.
 

Maybe she’d meet someone after the boat outing and have a sexy dirty
nasty
fling before going home exhausted but wiser. Ignore phone calls from Thomas, then pretend not to recognize him if they passed on the street.
Thomas? Sorry, your name doesn’t ring a bell. Where did you say we met?
She smiled, imagining holding up her hand, thumb and forefinger only centimeters apart.
I’m getting a little memory now, a teeny, tiny one…

She snorted out a laugh. Yeah, right. She’d never have the balls to do something like that. And despite what Tara thought, Thomas wasn’t so very bad. Was he?
 

Funny, but now that she thought about it, she didn’t miss Thomas
so much as having a goddamn date. Someone to hold her purse while she snapped candid photos of the newlyweds dancing. A bringer of drinks and an opener of doors. And, ok, someone to share the bed with, but that sat sadly low on her list of regrets. But then, she and Thomas weren’t exactly keeping the neighbors awake, and it had nothing to do with the size of his equipment.
 

Maybe that’s what he’d meant by
boring.
Bad in the sack.

Oh, god
. Now it made sense. Kinda hot but boring. She’d wondered why he’d said it like that, what one had to do with the other. No wonder he’d looked horrified after it slipped out.

What bullshit.
He
was the boring one.

Forget him, forget him…

She checked her messages, which didn’t take any time whatsoever because she had none. Tara was right. Thomas was a dick. Any halfway decent man would have sent at least one email apologizing again, asking how the wedding had gone.
 

“Screw you,” she said, and tossed the phone onto the empty bed next to her. For some reason, the life coach’s words suddenly bubbled to the surface.
Change your mind to transform your life.
 

What would a transformed life even look like for her? All she did was work, and she couldn’t walk away from her job. Well, there was one thing a transformed life wouldn’t include, and she was going to fix that right now.

She retrieved her phone and wrote Thomas a very clear email, then hit send before flopping back onto the bed.

So. Now she was single. Again. She smiled. Better to be alone than to have a crappy, unreliable boyfriend… even if he’d given nice massages and made her laugh. He smelled nice. And the sex wasn’t
terrible.

She scrambled for her phone, hoping the email hadn’t gone through. But there it was, in her sent messages. She reread it, chewing on her lip. “
Thomas, this isn’t working. We both deserve to be with someone who prioritizes us and the relationship above everything else. I truly wish you the best.
”

What was wrong with her that she felt equal parts relieved and nauseous?

Groaning, she slid down and pulled the covers over her head.

Chapter 3

At 7:40 the next morning, Monroe was frowning at her reflection. As if Thomas’s lack of response wasn’t hard enough on her ego, she hated the way she looked in a bikini. Or, at least, in
this
bikini. It was brand new, purchased the year before at an end-of-season sale. She always washed new clothing before wearing it; she must have accidentally sent the swimsuit through the hot water cycle.

The bikini covered all the essentials… barely. She was definitely spilling out of it. And the floral print was brightly colored. Just her luck. The suit had gotten smaller but the colors hadn’t faded. It was a
look at me
thing to wear.
 

Thank goodness it was a halter top or her boobs would have been falling out the bottom.

Shaking her head, she pulled a yellow coverup dress over her head and slipped on flip-flops, then grabbed her beach bag.
 

She eyed her phone. Would she be able to enjoy herself if she brought it? No, she’d be checking nonstop.

When she reached the lobby, her friends were nowhere in sight. Her stomach twisted. She wasn’t
that
late. Was she?

She walked out onto the bright orange sidewalk and squinted in the morning sun. Gulls wheeled overhead, squawking. It was a lovely morning, the perfect day for an outing.
 

“Are you Monroe?” A tall and slender long-faced woman wearing a backward baseball hat tentatively approached.
 

“Yes.”
 

The woman smiled. “Excellent. My name is Sosie, I’m from Dive Happy Caribbean, and I’ll be your driver and lead guide. This way.”
 

They approached an empty van with the company’s name painted on the side, and guilt washed over Monroe. “I’m so sorry you had to hang back for me. Please tell me the others didn’t wait before leaving.”

Sosie pursed her lips and stopped walking. “Um, no. Your friends canceled. You didn’t know?”

Monroe’s stomach dropped, and her hands went cold despite the sun. “Canceled?”
 

Sosie squinted a little. “I didn’t take the call but I think they’re sick.”

“Sick?” Monroe knew she sounded like a parrot, but Sosie wasn’t making any sense. “That’s not possible.” She hurried back inside. “I need to call my friend upstairs,” she said to the startled receptionist, who looked no older than sixteen.

“Um…” The clerk’s eyes went wide in confusion. “I don’t know…”

Monroe leaned over the counter and groped blindly for the phone. Another clerk hurried over and set the phone on the counter.
 

Hands shaking, she dialed, but no one answered. She was on the verge of sprinting up to Tara’s room when a faint voice said, “Yeah?”
 

Monroe’s hand tightened on the phone. “Can you hear me?”

“What’s wrong? Shit. You don’t have anyone to look after you.”

Sadly true—though Monroe didn’t see why it was coming up
now
.
“Did you really cancel?”

“Food poisoning. Linda should have called you. Guess you’re one of the lucky ones.”

“I didn’t eat at the reception.” The news sank in. “Oh! I’m so sorry.” She didn’t dare ask how bad it was; Tara could be squeamish. But if Tara was answering the phone, there probably wasn’t a need to call an ambulance.

“Not half as sorry as I am, believe me. Linda feels awful about it, and I think I’ll need a divorce because I cannot be intimate with a man capable of some of the things I’ve seen and heard the last few hours.”

Monroe could tell that her friend was pushing herself, forcing a cheer she clearly didn’t feel. “What can I do? You need Pepto?”

“No. Enjoy the snorkeling.”

“I’m not going alone!”

“Why not? The fee is nonrefundable. Thousands of bucks down the drain if you cancel.”

Monroe frowned. Everyone knew she hated wasting money. She’d once sat through a football game in a quasi-hurricane because she’d learned the tickets had cost several hundred dollars. She didn’t even like sports.
 

“You know what you can do?” Tara asked. “Go. Have fun. Take photos. Then I can Photoshop myself into them later. Ok? Do that for me? I’m serious.”

Damn.
She couldn’t even yell about the blatant manipulation because Tara was sick. “Ok,” she said. “Feel better, and I’ll check on you when I get in.”

“Don’t,” Tara insisted. “Let us have our dignity. HavefunIgottago—” She hung up abruptly, leaving Monroe wincing.

Sosie was waiting a bit off to the side. “Everything good?” she asked.
 

“Sort of. I need to grab my camera.”

“You don’t.” Sosie smiled, her teeth a white flash in her freckled, tan face. “We’ve got two professional underwater cameras. We’ll document everything. It’s our deluxe package.”

Sosie drove them about half an hour away. Monroe stared out the window at the brightly painted, squat Caribbean houses while feeling lonelier than ever. She’d really been looking forward to spending some quality time with her friends, sans menfolk. Never mind that she’d dragged her feet about coming along; she couldn’t have passed this up. And, she realized,
this
was what she hadn’t felt about Thomas. She didn’t miss him. She’d definitely made the right decision. People would be shocked when they heard how she did it, but a man who stood her up at the last minute and then couldn’t be bothered to check in deserved an email breakup.
 

She wondered if he’d responded yet.

“Sosie, hypothetical question. In your opinion, what’s worse: being boring, or being dumped by a boring person?”

“Being boring,” Sosie said, not missing a beat. “It’s harder to fix. A boring person dumps you, it saves you the trouble of having to dump them, right?”

“Right.” So Thomas was probably celebrating being rid of her. Just great.

As they walked into Dive Happy Caribbean’s shop, Sosie quizzed Monroe about her diving experience.

“None,” Monroe said. “I can barely swim.”

Sosie frowned. “I thought…” She shook her head. “We’ll figure it out.”

A strikingly handsome man with dark skin looked up as they entered. Monroe pegged him as being in his early twenties. “Hello!” he boomed. “What’s this about no diving?”

“My friends are certified,” Monroe said, feeling pathetic. “They canceled. I was just coming along to snorkel.”

“No problem,” he said, flashing that irresistible smile. Monroe wondered if he was in the habit of seducing single women on vacation. She could imagine he was very good at it. Too bad he wasn’t a bit older…

“Take
Dragon
,” he said to Sosie.
 

Sosie went behind the counter and flipped open a binder in which she recorded the time and then made some notes. She closed the binder and stowed it. “I thought
Dragon
was out of play this week?”

The handsome man shook his head dismissively. “She only needed a little pep talk.” He winked at Monroe, and she felt her knees go weak. This guy was way too smooth for her, but the attention felt damned good. “Sign here.” He slid several forms over for Monroe’s attention.

She filled out her address and phone number and scribbled her name and the date at the bottom. The man made the papers disappear into a bulging expandable folder. Sosie turned to her. “Ready to have fun?”

Monroe’s mouth went dry. “Where exactly are we going?”

Sosie walked her to a wall map. “I have three sites to show you. We’ll do some snorkeling by this island here. They have a nice coral reef. Then, over here… it’s usually for divers, but I’ve been very lucky with the wild dolphins, if that interests you?”

“She’s lucky. Has a three-week streak,” the man boomed. “Wild dolphins are beautiful creatures. You will feel nature looking at you.”

“What about sharks? Will they be looking, too?” Monroe asked, stalling. The truth was that she was terrified of deep water. She didn’t like it above her waist, and she was a terrible swimmer. Not being a good swimmer made her avoid water… It was a vicious cycle.