Wonderland

by Bridget Midway

  Reid pulled out his phone to check the chatter on a social media site. One person posted “Yawn Fest.” Another person wrote that they hoped the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony brought life to the place. At a comment about there not being any fun events going on for singles, Reid started to type a message about the fun events the next day like that speed-skating activity that Graham seemed proud to have created. Then he heard some laughter and clapping.

  Reid strolled over to The Drift, the resort’s club. The noises coming out of the place forced him to go from a casual stroll to an impatient trot. He stood in the doorway at the club and looked to the stage area. There he saw a couple with microphones in their hands singing “Summer Lovin’” from the movie Grease.

  Reid stopped the club manager. “Karaoke? I didn’t even know we had the machine, and it’s not on the itinerary.”

  The manager shrugged. “It was her idea.” She pointed to a woman with fiery red hair with her back to them. “Can’t say no to her, you know.”

  The redhead turned around. Cynda. Of course. Josie must have let her into his chalet again. Not only had Cynda changed her hair color, she also had on a different outfit. Now she wore a black corset dress and a pair of stacked, red booties.

  Cynda made eye contact with him. Instead of running off like she had this morning and the afternoon, she smiled at him then made her way to the stage.

  “Are you folks having a good time?” Cynda asked in the microphone. She smoothed her hand down the front of her tight dress.

  The motion alone had Reid recalling her naked body. A tickle ran through his body and hands, and his breathing increased. He chalked up his body’s reaction to being nervous about what Cynda would say or do next.

  “I hope you folks don’t mind. I think I want to do a song on my own, dedicated to someone special.” Cynda nodded to the DJ.

  Reid didn’t recognize the song until Cynda started to sing. Cynda sang Beyoncé’s “Naughty Girl.” Along with the song, she included a provocative dance that had her undulating her body.

  Reid suddenly felt hot. He undid his necktie. He should have just walked out of the room, but he couldn’t stop staring at her performance, one she dedicated to someone special. When she sang the chorus about being his naughty girl, he knew her intended target.

  Cynda made it obvious she directed her attention to him when she made her way off the stage and sauntered to him with microphone in hand.

  Reid stayed in his spot. He smiled to let the guests in the audience know he didn’t mind the attention. Truth be told, he did and he didn’t. Did he want Cynda’s attention? Absolutely. Did he want her attention in front of all these guests? Absolutely not.

  Cynda slithered her body around him, rubbed up and down against his side as he stood there, and undulated in front of him, bending over on purpose to press her luscious ass against his steadily growing crotch.

  Christ, he needed to get out of there. At the end of the song, Cynda turned to Reid and kissed him at the corner of his mouth. It took every bit of his strength not to turn his head and kiss her fully on her plump lips.

  Cynda ran back up to the stage to the applause from the people in the audience. She always knew how to get a crowd rallying around her.

  “Not a Christmas song, but I love it,” a male guest commented to his tableful of buddies. “She can be my naughty girl anytime.”

  In that moment, Reid wanted to punch the guy’s lights out. He had to remember his role. As general manager, he couldn’t tell the man to shut up. Since he wasn’t Cynda’s man, he couldn’t tell the guy to back off either. That dance should have clued the folks that Cynda had her sights set on him. Reid still questioned why.

  “Now is there anyone out here who can top that sexy song?” Cynda smiled as she held the microphone up to the audience.

  The crowd cheered and jumped to their feet.

  “I think we have some R-rated songs loaded in this machine.” She put her hand on top of the karaoke machine. “Are there any couples who want to tackle Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Birthday Cake?”

  Reid had never heard of the song, but from the crowd’s ravenous behavior, he assumed the song didn’t just involve cake and ice cream. He had to stop Cynda from embarrassing herself and the establishment.

  He approached the stage. Before he could get to it, a male guest swung his leg out to the side and Reid tripped over it, hitting his head on the corner of the stage as he went down.

  “Jesus!” Reid covered his forehead over his left eye.

  The searing pain laid him out flat. He removed his hand to see it covered in blood. When he touched the spot again, he felt his forehead swelling into a perfect goose egg.

  “Oh, dude, I’m like so sorry.” The young white man with brown dreadlocks covered his mouth as he stared at Reid.

  “My fault. I wasn’t paying attention.” Reid had to be a professional despite wanting to tell him how he wanted to stop Cynda.

  “I’m sorry, man. My lady and I were going to take the stage.”

  When he heard frantic footsteps heading toward him, Reid looked up far enough to see Cynda rushing to his side.

  “Oh no!So much blood.” She grabbed his free hand and helped him to his feet. “Let me call a medic to help you. You need to sit down.”

  Even with blood pouring out of his head, Reid felt his blood rushing to other parts of his body, mainly his cock. The fact that Cynda rushed to his side to help him didn’t go unnoticed. She placed her soft hands on his cheeks as she tried to gain some eye contact.

  “No, I just need to go back to my room and clean this up.” Reid took a step and stumbled.

  “Don’t be stupid. The cut looks pretty deep.”

  “Fine. Take me home and call a medic to meet me there.” So much for having a quiet evening.

  “Lean on me. I’ll help you back.” Cynda wrapped her arm around Reid’s waist.

  Whether he wanted to now or not, he would have to talk to Cynda and figure out what to do about the two of them.

  Chapter Five

  Cynda’s dedication to rock climbing and yoga really helped her assisting Reid back to his chalet. She at least got the stubborn man to agree to pressing an ice pack to his head. Once inside his home, she took him to his bathroom and made him sit on the toilet.

  “I’m calling the medic.” Cynda started to leave the bathroom when Reid grabbed her hand to stop her.

  The connection heated her flesh. Not a great time to be thinking about sex, especially with a man who needed help, but she couldn’t stop the thoughts. As soon as he touched her, her bones transformed to pudding. She could have collapsed into his arms, blood-covered and all.

  She gazed back at him. Despite him looking beaten up and tired, she still saw the sexy man underneath, the one with the incredible eyes, strong hands, and broad shoulders.

  “Can you just help me? Maybe it’s not that bad.” He gently pulled her back so that she stood in front of him.

  “Let me see.” She brought down his hand. “At least the bleeding has stopped.” She touched around the wound with her fingertips. “Really swollen. Might need some stitches.”

  “Oh no.”

  Cynda considered him with seriousness. She stared into his eyes as he spoke.

  Reid asked, “How am I going to make it in my modeling career with a scar?”

  She released the breath she held and chuckled along with him. “I thought you were being serious.” She opened his medicine cabinet and pulled out some ointment cream, adhesive bandages, gauzes, and cotton balls.

  “I am being serious. Who will want me with a hideous scar across my forehead?” He laughed harder this time as she cleaned his wound with a cotton ball and peroxide.

  “Why were you rushing to the stage anyway?” Cynda split her gaze between his cut and his eyes.

  “I wasn’t rushing the stage as you call it.” He turned his gaze down.

  “Now who’s lying?” She stopped cleaning his forehead and noticed the bleeding had sto
pped. “You’ve never seemed nervous around me, well, after you finally decided to leave your house when you and your family moved to the neighborhood.”

  “You scared the mess out of me. I’ve never met a girl like you. You threw rocks at my window at night and dared me to climb down to play with you.” Reid paused after he said that then smiled.

  Knowing that recalling the past made him happy stirred up butterflies in Cynda’s belly.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re thanking me for risking your life when you were a kid?”

  “No. I’m thanking you for everything you’ve done here today. I heard about it from guests and employees.” He smiled. “You really did help me out a lot.”

  Cynda pulled a washcloth from a towel rack and rinsed it with warm water. She wiped the towel carefully over the cut, then over Reid’s face where blood dripped. She rinsed out the towel and left it on the counter by the sink.

  She picked up the red-and-white tube of ointment and put a dot of it on the tip of her finger. She smoothed it over the cut, which caused him to suck air between his gritted teeth. To ease the pain a bit, she blew her breath over it.

  “I told you I would help you.” With just as much care as when she cleaned his wound and his face, she placed the bandage over his cut. “I started hearing some talk around here and I couldn’t let you go down.”

  Reid furrowed his eyebrows. “Talk?”

  Cynda nodded. “Families were having a great time as usual. You’re doing a wonderful job making sure they have fun. The singles, not so much. That’s why I rolled out the old karaoke machine. It’s cheesy but it does get a party started.” She smiled. “I hope you didn’t mind.”

  The reassuring smile he showed her let her know he didn’t.

  “I got that impression from some of the tweets I saw. I was going to tweet back that more exciting events are coming tomorrow but I heard you and stopped.”

  Cynda rolled her eyes. “Typical Reid.” Then she shook her head. “You have to strike while the iron is hot. Some things can’t wait a day or even a minute.”

  Reid sat up taller, almost in an indignant manner. “I know that. You don’t think I know that? That’s why I checked our social media pages. That gives me a good gauge on what’s going on around here because some people won’t tell you how they really feel when they’re in your face.” He glared at her.

  Cynda swallowed and took a step back. He meant that dig to her. It reached its intended target. She put her hand over her stomach when she suddenly felt sick.

  “It’s the reason I want to head up the marketing just for Village Resort. I want to be the one to take care of the media for this location.”

  At his revelation, Cynda couldn’t help but snicker. “You? Tell me. Besides Twitter, what other sites are you using?”

  He cleared his throat. “You know. All the sites. Um, Facebook. MySpace.”

  Cynda’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my God. Did you just say MySpace?” She laughed. “Honey, no one is on there anymore. You have to get out and talk to people. Besides, isn’t all this social media stuff Graham’s job?”

  A look of disappointment covered Reid’s face. All Cynda wanted to do now involved covering his poor face with kisses. He’d accused her of not cooking his breakfast this morning and it hurt her. Now she’d done the same thing by laughing at his goals.

  “I’m trying to expand myself. No one seems to understand that.”

  By no one, Cynda knew he meant her father. If her father turned down his request, she knew having her laugh at him didn’t help matters.

  She understood him more than he could ever know. Cynda wanted to expand herself also by running her own business, a resort of her own.

  Although Reid’s goal seemed small, at least he went after it, let other people know about it, unlike her. She couldn’t even bother to answer a phone call from her friend to get her dream going.

  “So what have you done these last few years?” Reid blotted his face dry with a towel. “I think you can figure out what I’ve done and will continue to do. I’ve been here.”

  “Minding the store?” Cynda smirked.

  “Yes. Tending to your family’s business.” Reid seemed to pride himself on his loyalty.

  Cynda respected him for that. “While you have been doing that, I have been learning, exploring, expanding my mind. I’ve prayed with Tibetan monks. I’ve learned how to cook at Le Cordon Bleu. You don’t want to know what I learned in India.”

  “What? How to meditate? How to make tea? Are you a vegan now?”

  “Kama sutra.” She didn’t have sex with anyone there, but she had read several books on the subject. To see Reid’s expression change at her admission made the trip there worth it.

  “Oh.” He swallowed hard. “You know there are a lot of colleges in Virginia and in Colorado. You could have learned all of that there.”

  Cynda shook her head. “There’s nothing like exploring the world and meeting new people. Now that you’re a workingman, you get some vacation time, don’t you? You could come with me on a trip.”

  “Still playing pied piper, huh?” He exhaled. “Where would we go?”

  “Where would you like to go?” Cynda ran her fingers though his hair to push it back from his face. She had to see his eyes.

  “Rio.”

  Her eyebrows shot up at that answer. “Really? I would have thought you would have said Canada that way you could still stay somewhat close to the U.S. Or maybe even England. You’re a man of many surprises. So why Rio?”

  He thought for a while before answering. “It reminds me of you. All party but beautiful and colorful and mysterious.”

  His compliment disarmed her. She took a couple of steps back from him until she almost hit the wall behind her.

  “We need to talk.”

  Cynda opened her mouth to say that they were talking now, but he cut her off.

  “I mean really talk, about us.” He motioned his hand between them. “You broke my heart when you refused to come live with me here in Colorado.”

  Cynda’s throat tightened and tears stung her eyes. Before she spoke she took a deep breath and organized her thoughts. “How do you think I felt when you refused to come with me?”

  “Honey, you didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where we would stay. I didn’t know how we would make money. Hell, I didn’t even know where we were going.”

  “Isn’t that exciting, the unknown?” She put her hands to her waist as she stared at the man who still owned a piece of her heart.

  Reid glared at her. “You’re talking to a man who moved around more times than I can remember. All I wanted was roots, and I wanted to have them with you.”

  “No, with my family.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “No, with you, always you. Do I love the Richmond family? Of course. You all became more of a family to me than my own.” He reached out and held Cynda’s hand. “But you, you became so much more to me. You had my heart.”

  She considered his words and his reasons for not going away with her. The more she thought about it, the more she felt like a heel for not understanding. Cynda knew all too well about Reid’s volatile childhood.

  “I thought you would want to go away with me to get away from your family.” Cynda’s reason, although not wholly true, had a kernel of truth to it. “I wanted to give you freedom.”

  Reid chuckled. “Baby, your definition of freedom vastly differs from mine. I see freedom as doing what I want with the person I want. What I wanted was a great job I could be proud of with a perfect woman I adore by my side.”

  “Did you ever think that someone like me, who has only stayed on my parents’ properties, would want to go out exploring to see the other possibilities?” Cynda took a step closer to him and stared at him in his eyes so that he would know she hadn’t lied.

  If he looked deeper, though, he would see she still held something back.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

  C
ynda shook her head.

  “I saw in some tabloid that—”

  She cut him off before he could finish his statement. “I have no one special in my life. Not right now.” She licked her lips. “What about you?”

  Reid smiled. “Work. Same one it’s been for the last few years.” He released a long breath. “Damn, I’ve missed you.” He pulled her closer to him and buried his face into her stomach. “I missed your scent.” He interlaced his fingers with her hand that he held. “I missed your touch.”

  Those were the words she longed to hear from him. Cynda always knew that he cared for her. Knowing that he missed her, ached for her, meant that the smoldering embers of need had always been in him. She could easily stoke his desires to build a bigger flame.

  “That was one hell of a song you did tonight.” He peered up at her as she stroked his hair.

  On instinct, she swayed her body back and forth. “You like my dance?”

  Reid nodded. “I think I don’t know you as much as I thought. You have a great singing voice.” He let her hand go and touched her thighs over her dress. “And I’ve always known that you could move.”

  As much as she didn’t want it to, Cynda’s body trembled. “So what don’t you know about me?” This time she moved closer to him so that she stood in between his parted thighs.

  “Why are you here? Why now? Why me?”

  Cynda bent over and whispered in his ear. “I’m here. Isn’t that all that matters?”

  “There’s something I want to do to you, with you. If your plan is to go away again and not call or visit for another six or seven years, I don’t want to—”

  She cut him off. “Stop being so scared.”

  He stared at her. “Stop running.”

  The more she stared at him, the more she wanted him. Cynda lowered her head as Reid brought his face up to kiss her. When their lips touched, she had to brace her hands on his shoulders to remain standing.

  Reid’s grip on her thighs tightened. He slid his masterful tongue in her mouth. Cynda moaned as she accepted it, sucked it, played with it with her own tongue.