by Holly Rayner
He and Gwen had arranged to meet in the center of the hotel lobby, where a cluster of plush couches surrounded a free-standing fireplace. She was already there waiting for him. As she turned to face him, he let out a gasp that he hoped was inaudible.
She was gorgeous.
She had been pretty when they’d met on the beach, of course. But this was something else.
She wore a wine-red dress with a deep V-neck and a slit up the side that exposed her leg to mid-thigh. The skirt was loose and flowed back as she stepped toward him, revealing a golden sandal that strapped delicately around her ankle. Her blond hair hung loose around her shoulders, her curls bouncing lightly with every step she took.
She reached his side. “You’re right on time,” she said, smiling.
He recovered himself. “Did you think I’d be late?”
“No,” she said. “I actually didn’t. But I also thought I was being optimistic.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t let you down.” He held out his arm. “Are you ready for dinner?”
She linked her arm through his, grinning. “I’m excited,” she said. “I haven’t actually been to the Flying Fish yet.”
He nodded. “Neither have I. The staff keep talking it up, though. I’ve been curious for a while.”
“Me too,” she agreed. “To tell you the truth…it’s kind of silly, but I just haven’t wanted to go alone.”
He smiled. Already, the nerves he’d felt earlier were gone. Just being in her presence was enough to put him at ease.
“I was the same way,” he said. “I don’t usually have a problem going to a restaurant alone—as a single guy, if you don’t go out by yourself, you don’t go out at all. But this place…I don’t know, it felt different.”
“It feels like the kind of place you should go with someone,” she agreed. “Maybe because it’s so nice, or maybe because this is Christmas, and we just want to be with people.”
“I’m glad I waited,” Clay said. “Because now I get to go with the most beautiful woman in the resort.”
Clay never said things like that, and he wondered what had gotten into him. Then he watched Gwen’s face turn two shades of red.
Hmm, she isn’t used to compliments.
They ascended the stairs that led to the second floor and the entrance to the restaurant. Clay led the way inside and gave his room number to the hostess.
She smiled. “Welcome to the Flying Fish,” she said. “We have a balcony table for you. Please, follow me.”
She led them through the main part of the restaurant, past diners engaged in quiet conversation, through a pair of curtained doors and out onto a private balcony that overlooked the beach.
Gwen stared. “This is our table?”
“Unless you’d prefer to be seated somewhere else?” the hostess inquired.
“No, no,” Gwen said quickly. “This is beautiful. Thank you.”
“Someone will be right back with your menus,” she said, then disappeared through the curtain.
They took their seats. Gwen was wide-eyed.
“How did we get such an amazing table?” she asked. “Look at that view!”
The view was breathtaking. The sun was setting over the water, and they could hear the sound of waves lapping at the shore. A few people remained out on the beach, but not many. In the distance, they could see Jahni’s tiki bar, now with its lights on.
“This table was part of my vacation package,” Clay explained. “It came with the room I’m staying in.”
“Oh,” Gwen said. “So you must have one of the really nice rooms.”
He nodded. “It’s the room I would have stayed in with my father if he’d been able to make the trip with me,” he said. Then he realized that sounded a little macabre. “I mean, probably not the exact room, but the class of room. We were going to get a big suite so there would be plenty of room for both of us.”
“And you went ahead with that plan when you decided to come by yourself,” Gwen said. She hesitated. “I suppose it must have been difficult to consider changing anything about the trip your father was planning.”
He was surprised. She had hit on the exact struggle he’d had.
“That’s right,” he said. “In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken the suite. It reinforces how lonely I’ve been feeling, being in that giant room all by myself. But when I was booking the trip, it felt like the most respectful thing I could do was to go with the things my father had planned. It felt like I would be dishonoring him by making changes to his ideas.”
He shook his head. “I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Gwen told him. “Grief is complicated. Everybody feels things that don’t make sense when they lose someone.”
He wondered how she knew that. She spoke as if from firsthand experience. But she’d never had a family of her own, she’d told him. What was her experience with loss?
But she grew up in the foster care system. Clay had no idea what that must have been like, but he could imagine that she had dealt with losing things all the time. Homes she’d liked, family members she’d trusted, her sense of security and stability—they had all been torn away from her on a regular basis.
Of course she understands loss.
“What was Christmas like for you growing up?” he asked her.
She laughed. “I’ve seen at least a dozen different Christmases,” she said. “We all think our holidays are the same, but let me tell you, every family I’ve seen has done something wildly different to celebrate.”
“Tell me,” he urged.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter. They placed their orders, and Clay requested a bottle of wine for the table.
When the wine had been served, he urged her on again.
She sipped her wine thoughtfully. “Let me see,” she said. “I remember one Christmas with a family that was all about presents. They weren’t particularly wealthy. They must have saved up for months to make it possible. Every kid in the family had around twenty gifts under the tree on Christmas morning.”
Clay let out a low whistle. “That’s wild. That must have been fun for you, though.”
She grinned wryly. “It was weird for me. You probably wouldn’t know this, but kids in foster care can’t have a whole lot of personal possessions. It’s too hard to keep moving them from house to house all the time. You get what you can fit in a single bag.”
She took a sip of her drink and then continued. “The family included me in their tradition, but most of the gifts I got were just replacements for things I had already. New clothes, so I could get rid of some that were too small or too worn out. A couple of new books—but I could only carry a few books around with me, and I didn’t want to get rid of my favorites, so I ended up reading them but leaving them behind when I left that placement.”
“Oh,” Clay said. “That’s kind of sad.”
“They gave me a couple things that were really nice,” Gwen said, remembering. “Their daughter and I each got necklaces with our birthstone on them. That was special.”
“That is really sweet,” Clay agreed. “Do you still have it?”
“No,” Gwen said. “I kept it for a couple of years, but it went missing when I was in another home. I think it might have been stolen, but who knows.”
“Tell me about your favorite Christmas,” he said. “There must have been one you really liked.”
She nodded. “I think the best one was when I was thirteen. I was with this family that did acts of service as Christmas gifts, and they used the whole month as a giving season instead of trying to cram it all into one day. All December long, everyone would surprise each other by doing nice things. I remember coming home from school one day to see that my room had been decorated with fairy lights by the family’s youngest daughter. I loved that. And later, she and I teamed up and snuck out of our beds in the middle of the night to hand-scrub the kitchen floor so it would look like it had been clean
ed by fairies or something in the middle of the night.”
He cocked his head. “That was your favorite Christmas?” he asked.
“I know, it’s a little weird,” she said. “That I would choose the year I spent scrubbing floors in the middle of the night over the one where I got a lot of presents. But that year was the closest I came to feeling like I was really part of something. Everyone went out of their way to include me that year. And I was able to participate on my own once I understood how it worked. My foster dad was the only one in the family who played chess, so I surprised him by learning the rules and challenging him to a game. It turned into the two of us spending the whole day together. It was amazing.”
She was blushing, but Clay was floored. Almost everyone he knew talked about gifts when they talked about Christmas. He had always felt like he and his father were the weird ones for minimizing that part of the holiday. But Gwen seemed to value other aspects of it much more highly, just as he did. He was suddenly even more attracted to her, if that was even possible.
The food was delivered to their table, and Clay recounted some of his own favorite holidays from his childhood. Though he didn’t have as many different stories to tell as Gwen had, she seemed interested in hearing about the way he and his father had celebrated.
“I would have enjoyed that,” she said when he told her about their annual feast. “That’s something that everyone can be a part of. In fact, a feast like that works better if you have someone who’s not around every year, because that person can introduce a new recipe.”
“That’s true,” Clay said. “What would you have made, if they’d asked you to cook something for Christmas dinner at one of your homes?”
“Some kind of pie, probably,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed baking. I don’t have any family recipes I can bring to the table, but you can always make a pie your own by arranging the crust in an interesting way.” She smiled. “I’d cut out holiday shapes—stars, Christmas trees, things like that—and use them to decorate the top of the crust. Maybe dust them with powdered sugar to really make them stand out.”
“That sounds amazing,” Clay said.
When the meal was finished and they got to their feet, Clay felt a pang of sadness. He wasn’t ready for this night to end.
“Would you like to come back to my suite?” he asked. “I was planning to watch a Christmas movie, as I think I told you, and I’d be happy for you to join me.”
“That sounds great,” she said.
They spent the next few hours curled up on the sofa in the previously unused living room of Clay’s suite, watching black-and-white movies and sharing another bottle of wine. Clay was constantly aware of Gwen’s proximity. She had started out leaning on the arm of the couch, but as the evening progressed, she moved closer and closer to him until at last her head was resting on his shoulder.
Every nerve in his body felt awake and alive. When was the last time he had felt like this in the presence of a woman? He honestly couldn’t remember.
As the movie ended and the credits began to roll, she turned toward him. “I should probably go back to my room,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
But she made no move to get up.
And Clay found that he didn’t want her to go.
He hadn’t gone into this night with the expectation that it would be anything more than dinner. After all, they hardly knew one another, and it had been a long time since Clay had gotten involved with anyone new. And besides, there was no future for them. He would be going back to Texas in a few days, and he knew that she was from New Orleans.
Still, he wanted to prolong this as much as he possibly could. He wanted to make this night last and fill it up with memories that he could take home with him.
“You don’t have to leave,” he told her, leaning closer into her. “You can stay. If you want to.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide, shining. Was that hope he saw on her face?
“We could watch another movie,” he said, hardly knowing what he was saying. “You could…you could sleep on my couch.”
She bit her lip, still gazing up at him. “What about your bed?” she asked.
It was exactly what he had been hoping to hear.
He stood, bent down, and picked her up in his arms. It was a relief to do so. He had been longing to hold her close all night long, but he had hesitated, unsure whether the feeling was one-sided. Now he was sure that she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.
He carried her into the bedroom, pushing the door closed behind him with his foot. And as he crossed the room toward the bed, he heard the sound of the old-fashioned wall clock in the living room striking twelve. Midnight.
Christmas had arrived.
Chapter 5
Gwen
Gwen woke up to the sun shining in her eyes.
That was strange. The window of her hotel room faced west. She hadn’t woken up to the bright light of a sunrise since she had been here…
“Sorry,” a voice, raspy with sleep, spoke up from beside her. A male voice.
Suddenly, the night before came rushing back to her. Her date with Clay. Returning to his room and drinking more wine. And everything that had followed after.
She rolled over. He lay propped on one elbow, gazing at her.
“We forgot to close the curtains last night,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I had other things on my mind.”
Gwen laughed. “I’d say we both did.”
She crawled out from under the covers and found last night’s dress on the floor. Taking a moment to appreciate the fact that she had worn something loose and flowing, she pulled it over her head and went over to close the curtains.
When she turned back, Clay was lying on his back with his hands behind his head.
“Were you watching me?” she asked, feigning outrage.
“You’d stare too, if your view was this nice,” he said. “Merry Christmas, by the way.”
“That’s right!” She had completely forgotten, in the excitement of waking up with a near stranger, that it was Christmas. “Merry Christmas to you too.”
He sat up. “Do you have plans?” he asked.
“What plans would I have?” she asked, laughing. “You know I’m by myself today.”
“I don’t have any plans either,” he said, “Would you like to spend the day together?”
“This date has turned into a lot more than just dinner,” she said. “Next you’ll be wanting me to move in with you!”
“It’d be quite a commute for you to the New Orleans Police Department,” he said with a wink.
She grinned. It was nice to have someone to joke around with.
“What did you have in mind for today?” she asked. “More old movies?”
“Maybe later,” he said. “First, I think we ought to take advantage of some of the amenities this resort has to offer.”
“Like what?”
“Have you looked at the excursions at all?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But they’re so pricey. And they all seem like they’re designed for two people to do together.”
“We’re two people,” he pointed out.
“That’s true.”
“And today is on me,” he said. “I’ve wanted to check out these excursions the whole time I’ve been here, but I’ve had no one to go with. If you’ll agree to be my plus-one, I’ll happily pay for both of us.”
“I can’t let you do that,” she protested. “You bought dinner last night.”
“You’d be doing me a favor,” he insisted. “I thought I was going to have to go home without having tried anything exciting. Having you with me opens up a lot of doors.”
“If I’m doing you a favor,” she said, “I guess that’s all right.”
He got out of bed and walked toward her. “Go back to your room and get ready,” he suggested, then kissed her forehead. “Then we’ll meet in the lobby again, in the same place as last night. I’ll
make us some reservations.”
Gwen felt a flutter of nerves. “What are you going to reserve?” she asked.
He grinned. “I want to surprise you.”
The parasailing instructor handed Gwen a lifejacket and helped her climb out onto the launch platform on the back of his boat.
Gwen gulped. “Are you sure this is safe?” she asked, securing the lifejacket around herself.
“Sure, I’m sure,” the instructor said. “We go out dozens of times every day.” He clipped her into the sail. “Just don’t touch this clip while you’re in the air, and everything will be fine.”
Immediately, Gwen was sure she was going to accidentally touch the forbidden clip. She locked her hands together in front of her.
Clay nudged her with his elbow. “Are you nervous?” he asked.
“Terrified,” she admitted. Sure, she was a cop. Supposed to be fearless, right? But her work as a police officer kept her on the ground.
“But you still want to do this, right?”
She swallowed hard. The excursion had been paid for. She knew how badly Clay wanted to go. Even though there was a part of her that wished she was back on the beach right now, she was committed.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
The instructor nodded. “If you need to come down for any reason, put your arms like this.” He made an arm signal and had them copy it for him. “Good. All right, sit here and keep your legs up for liftoff!”
He returned to the steering wheel of the boat. Gwen felt it accelerate. A moment later, the sail caught the wind, and she and Clay were lifted into the air.
She let out a cry of exhilaration. They were flying!
Clay took her hand as the line that connected them to the boat continued to unspool, letting them fly higher and higher. In moments, Gwen forgot all about the clip she wasn’t supposed to touch. All she could think about was the view—miles of ocean all around, interrupted here and there by spots of green.
The boat drove around the coast of Green Turtle Cay. In the distance, Gwen could see other islands. Most of them were bigger than their own, but a few were minuscule, mere spots on the horizon.