Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning MoonGirls' Guide to Getting It TogetherRookie in Love

by Jo Watson

  2. The beach—every minute and a half some cute, giggling, cooing couple walked past me holding hands and drooling on each other. They wallowed in the water, latching onto each other like codependent koala bears. They cuddled in the sun and whispered sweet nothings. They made me sick.

  3. The spa—same thing. Couples, couples, couples all clinging onto each other like they would die if several of their body parts weren’t attached at all times.

  4. The pool—same as the beach, but without the waves.

  Eventually I prowled up to the reception desk and demanded to know what else there was to do in this God-forsaken hotel—okay, I didn’t say that last part out loud, but I was thinking it, so that counts for something, doesn’t it?

  After a few curious stares, the kind of stares that seemed to say, shame I wonder where her husband has gone, I was handed a large pile of flyers.

  Botanical gardens—too many flowers.

  Elephant rides—too smelly.

  Temple tours—too many temples.

  Grand Palace tour—too grand and palace-y.

  Shopping at the market—mmm, now that was more like it.

  In fact, that was exactly what I needed: some retail therapy. And everyone knows that the shopping in Thailand is supposed to be awesome. Let’s face it, there’s nothing like the smell of new clothes to make you feel better about your sad life. Nothing can beat the sound of your slip being printed, and signing on the dotted line—because it means that whatever is in that bag is now officially yours. When people tell me money can’t buy them happiness, I always tell them they just haven’t found the right place to shop yet. New clothes are like an aphrodisiac, they put you on a high of happiness, and the purchase of a new handbag can be pure ecstasy.

  With this in mind, I jumped into one of those tricycle boxes and headed for the market—the holy grail of all my future happiness. And when I arrived, it didn’t disappoint.

  I’m not sure there’s an adequate way of describing the market that fully encapsulates its atmosphere. Certainly, I had never seen anything like it before. The thousands of stalls packed together tightly, the bright colors, the exotic smells of cooking hanging in the warm air, and the sounds. Your senses are assaulted around every corner, either by the sight of a stand selling multicolored sarongs or the smell from a stand selling pineapples and spices. The atmosphere was electric, alive, and it hummed with the possibility of bargains and purchases aplenty. I almost didn’t know where to begin…almost.

  I immediately gravitated to a large collection of colorful beach bags. My eye was drawn to a large bag made from bright pink, purple and gold traditional Thai fabric. It was exquisite. But as I was about to reach up and claim the precious thing, a tiny little woman appeared out of nowhere. Without asking, she grabbed me by the hand and started pulling me toward the back of the stall.

  “Come, come I take you to back room.”

  “I beg your pardon.” What the hell did she mean?

  “Nice bags, nice bags there.”

  With those magic words, my fears were forgotten. The little old lady pulled back a curtain, glanced around quickly and dragged me inside. I had officially found the buried treasure. I was standing in a tiny room I could barely move my arms in, but it was covered from floor to the ceiling with some of my best—and usually very unaffordable—friends: Prada, Gucci, Louis, Salvatore, Fendi, Chanel, Chloe and Dior. I didn’t know where to look, where to turn, what to touch. It was all so dazzling and beautiful. Now, I’m not usually an advocate of fake anything, but after scrutinizing them all, there was simply no visible difference, and they were all so pretty and colorful and cheap.

  Ten minutes later, and after much deliberation, I walked out with five handbags of happiness and a new understanding of how it all worked here. From now onward, every stall I went to, I asked for the back room (and they all had them).

  Hours later and a Christian Dior watch, a pair of Gucci glasses, another three bags, a Fendi purse, a Louis Vuitton bracelet, a few shirts, skirts, bikinis and sarongs, and two pairs of Manolos later, I was finally done. I was buzzing. High from adrenalin, endorphins and handbags, Damian, Michael and that wedding “thing” were distant memories. The only thing on my mind right now was my growling stomach. I needed to replenish my depleted reserves, and fast.

  So I jumped into another Tuk-Tuk and in my best Thai (the Google translator was officially my new best friend), I asked to go to the best restaurant in Phuket.

  And what he took me to was beyond my wildest expectations. It was a restaurant called Baan Paa, which was located on a small cliff overlooking a deserted beach. The building looked more like a traditional home than a restaurant, and was surrounded by lush greenery. Walking into it, you got the feeling of being lost in paradise. I was led to a table on the balcony overlooking the pale white rocks that fell into the calm, turquoise sea below. It was perfect.

  Co.in.ci.dence (Noun) A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.

  I’ve heard it said many times before that there are no such things as coincidences, only fate pushing you toward a predetermined destination. Orchestrating your life in such a way that everything works out just the way it should.

  Out of all the restaurants in Phuket. Out of all the hours in the day. Out of all the people in the world. With all of those variables and many more that needed to combine in perfect synchronicity and unison to create this very moment, despite all of that…

  Damian walked past me.

  Chapter Nine

  You know those 3-D optical illusions? Those pictures made up of seemingly random patterns or dots that, when stared at for long enough, with just the right intensity and at the right angle, a 3-D image emerges out of the chaos? It’s usually a galloping horse, a biting shark or a bird flying toward you, or some other dramatic animal in motion. But once you’ve seen it, you can always see it and the random patterns never look the same again.

  That’s what happened with Damian.

  He looked completely different today. Or was I seeing him differently?

  He was still dressed in his signature black, but looked much more casual and relaxed. The sleeves of his shirt were shorter this time, and I noted that the tattoos on one of his arms crept all the way up to his shoulder. I’d never liked tattoos. I’d always seen them as a sign of heroin dependency, excessive moodiness and a tendency to throw TVs into hotel swimming pools. But on Damian they were—dare I say it—sexy. As he turned around, I saw his T-shirt said Read Books, not T-shirts. I smiled to myself; that was so Damian.

  His hair was particularly messy that day and the whole thing looked a bit like a lopsided Mohawk. It was weird and irreverent and wouldn’t have suited anyone else but him. By this stage his facial hair was more than just a five-o’clock shadow, which only added to his dark mystery. His thick, black eyebrows accentuated his big, wide-set black eyes and I stared at him trying to figure out who he looked like.

  But there was no one; his look was completely unique. It was gawky and shy, strange and weird, rebellious and naughty all at the same time. And right at that very moment, he looked dark and broody and dangerous. Now, normally I considered myself more of a “blonde and buff” kind of girl. But there was something about Damian that was so…so…

  Oh my God. He suddenly turned and looked straight at me, and I knew I had an embarrassing look plastered across my face. He waved tentatively, and I waved back. A moment later he was standing at my table.

  “Hey…so…um…yeah, nice hair.” What a stupid thing to say, but it was all that had come to mind.

  Damian smiled and ran his fingers through it playfully, twisting it and creating a kind of messy Mohawk. “The guy in the kitchen insisted.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve been washing dishes here, and he said it was too long. So he attacked me with scissors and a razor.”

  I was confused. “Why are you washing dishes?”

  “Need cash.”

  “Oh, of
course. I forgot about that.”

  “I can’t. Trust me. The image of that guy coming toward me with a plastic glove will be burnt into my brain forever.”

  We laughed, and when it tapered off, I knew I had to say it.

  “Look…I’m really sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have screamed at you like that. I’m really sorry.” Our eyes met.

  “Me, too. I shouldn’t have said that stuff about not getting married. I had no right to.”

  We smiled in mutual acceptance of the apologies.

  “Well…” He started turning away from me. “Enjoy your meal and the rest of your vacation.” And then he walked away. Just like that, he was heading for the door.

  Anxiety gripped me; I’d lost him once today and I didn’t want to lose him again.

  “Wait!” The word flew out at a volume that was entirely inappropriate for a public place; fellow diners turned and stared at me.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m going back to town, to get something to eat and then I have a thing tonight.”

  “Why don’t you have lunch with me?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t afford a meal like this on a mere dishwasher’s salary. But thanks for the offer.” He started walking away again.

  Stop it. I wished I possessed the gift of telekinesis now, and I could make him turn around with the mere power of my thoughts, instead of having to open my mouth again.

  “I’ll pay.” The volume, the decibel and the pitch were all over the place once more, and the eyes turned back to me. “You can pay me back sometime, I know you’re good for the money.” I’m sure I must have looked at him with pleading desperation in my eyes and I mentally kicked myself for this too.

  “Sure,” he said with a smile, and sat down.

  Up until now our relationship (or whatever you call it) had been characterized by awkward moments. Awkward silences, strange smiles and looks (or lack of looks). But from the moment he sat down at the table, the conversation just flowed. We ate, we drank, we laughed and I found myself telling him the strangest things.

  I told him about the time my mother did a radio interview for one of her plays and was so drunk that she fell off her chair, hit her head and had to be rushed to hospital. I told him about my cat Buttons, my obsession with reality TV and about my first kiss. I told him I liked the color pink, that I preferred baths to showers and preferred sweet to savory. I basically told him everything and anything that popped into my head in the moment. All the while, Damian held my gaze intently, and I could see he was listening to every single word I said. And he clearly found me funny, because he would laugh loudly at almost everything I said. It occurred to me that no one had ever found me this funny. He never took his eyes off me, not for a second. In that moment I felt like I was the center of his universe and that he was hanging on my every word.

  “And you?” I finally asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.” I hadn’t meant for that word to come out of my mouth the way it did. With that strange whispery tone that made it drip with a certain subtext that now hung in the air between us like a big white elephant.

  I blushed. I couldn’t help it. And when I looked up at Damian, he was looking down at the table and smiling.

  “Well,” he finally said. “When I was young I had the biggest crush on Cheetara from the ThunderCats. She was my dream girl. I was also obsessed with space and I wanted to be an astronaut. I even tried to make a space suit out of my mom’s tin foil…didn’t work. Um…my friend and I started a rock band when we were twelve and called ourselves The Worm Holes, but neither of us could play an instrument. And when I was sixteen, and had very bad taste, I got my first tattoo—the worst tattoo in existence.”

  He stuck his leg out and I noticed a small tattoo on his ankle of a butterfly with skulls on its wings and daggers for feelers.

  “I thought I was very hardcore, or something.” We both burst out laughing, and it went on and on like that for hours. We even figured out that his father once used my dad’s law firm for something.

  At some stage I looked around and noticed that the restaurant had almost cleared out. The waiter had that desperate look on his face, like it was the end of his shift and he wanted to give us the check. The sun outside had started to dip below the horizon, filling the sky with a pale pink glow.

  “How long have we been here?” I asked, gesturing at Damian’s watch.

  Damian looked at it and suddenly shot out of his chair. “I need to be somewhere and I am running late. Thanks so much for lunch, Lilly.” He took a pen out of his bag, grabbed my arm and started writing his number across it. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but call me.” And then he leant down and kissed me on the cheek. Although he was in a hurry, the kiss was not. It was slow, and he let his lips linger for a moment too long. I slowly turned my head toward his and our lips brushed past each other. I looked at him and his eyes were closed. He opened them slowly and looked straight into mine. We were so close I could feel and taste his warm breath; it was sweet with a hint of red wine on it.

  “Goodbye, Lilly. Thanks for lunch,” he whispered, before turning and running out of the door. That same anxious feeling rose up again, and I jumped up and ran over to our waiter.

  “How much is the check?” I practically shouted in the poor guy’s face.

  He told me and I quickly dug in my bag, grateful that I had almost the exact amount in cash. I shoved it in his hand quickly and then ran outside as fast as I could under the weight of all my shopping. Damian was only a little way up the road and I screamed as loudly as I could.

  “Wait up!” He turned, and although he was far away, I could tell he was smiling.

  “I’m coming with you.” I said finally catching up to him.

  “But you don’t even know where I’m going.”

  I shrugged.

  “If you knew where I was going, you probably wouldn’t want to come.” His expression was serious, but I didn’t care.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, we were back in town. When I’d decided to go with him, I hadn’t imaged a long jog in terribly humid weather under the weight of my recent splurge.

  Although it was night now, Phuket was even busier than before. It was humming with people and lit up like Las Vegas. The market that I’d been to earlier was bursting at the seams with tourists and partygoers. I was so busy looking around in awe of the transformation that when I looked back, Damian was gone. I tried looking for him, but there were so many people that for me to actually get anywhere, I had to physically push them out of the way. I made a move for the less crowded street, hoping for a better vantage point, but was very suddenly—and very nearly—knocked over by a man on a bicycle. I tried to jump out of the way, but it looked like the collision was inevitable, until I felt something pull me to the pavement. It was Damian. He gripped my arm tightly and shook his head at me with a smile.

  “Someone as clumsy as you shouldn’t be left unattended in a place like this, who knows what could happen?”

  And then we were off again. He dragged me through the streets, past restaurants and karaoke bars with badly sung Justin Bieber blaring out of them. I was struck by just how many there were, it seemed that every second restaurant had some kind of karaoke happening. Drunk students swayed together singing, while hot Thai girls dressed in heels and short skirts dropped it like it was hot. Old men with beers cheered them on.

  But Damian was pulling me further and further into the bowels of the city.

  The hordes of people started to dissipate and began to be replaced by small groups of the sexiest women I’d ever seen. They all had long, black shiny hair and the most incredible figures, with legs that went on for miles. Some of them were wearing garish outfits, complete with diamanté bikini tops and feather headdresses, and others were wearing almost nothing at all. The atmosphere had suddenly changed from the happy-go-lucky energy of the night market, to something that was much darker and sexually charge
d. The light around me became very red, and colorful neon signs lit up all the puddles in the road. I knew where we were.

  I stopped walking and let go of Damian’s hand.

  “Where are we going?” I looked up at the neon sign of naked woman with ginormous breasts flashing at me.

  “I told you, if you knew, you wouldn’t have wanted to come.”

  I heard a buzzing and looked behind me, the word nightclub was blinking at me angrily and it was enough to give anyone an epileptic seizure.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Well…” Damian paused for a moment. “I kind of need to make some quick cash.”

  I gasped. “You’re a male prostitute!”

  Damian looked at me for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Is that what you think of me?” He was laughing even harder now.

  “It’s not quite like that, I promise.” And he continued walking even though my feet were glued to the pavement. He turned to me and threw his arms in the air. “To come or not to come, Lilly, that is the question.” His corny words seemed to taunt me, as if he knew that I was the kind of girl who’d never been to a place like this, and probably never would. I looked around nervously; drunken men were stumbling into clubs with women draped over them. Women on street corners were hiking up their skirts and whistling loudly. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to wait here alone, that’s for sure.

  “Wait for me!”

  After walking up yet another two or three bright-red alleys, we finally stopped outside a club called Tai Po. It looked exactly like the other five hundred we’d just seen, complete with bright, flashing neon lights and a constant buzzing sound coming from the wattage of a thousand lightbulbs.

  “Here we are,” Damian said, letting my hand go.

  I turned to survey the outside of the club, and then I saw the sign.

  Male strippers needed. Total nudity not required. We pay cash. 1,500.

  It took me a few seconds to make the necessary mental links; they were offering money for men to take off their clothes, and Damian was a man and he needed money, and now we were here, which meant that….