“Is that what you do with romance? To fix bad relationships and give people hope that they can find a love that lasts forever?”
“Yes, or at least imagine it does.” She massaged his shoulders. “So, big boy. To make your writing mean something, you have to find a concept that comes with drama, adventure, and high stakes. Saving the world is a good one.”
“If we take your nun and escaped murderer concept, we could have the unknown enemy be someone trying to start World War III.”
“Exactly. To make the stakes higher, let’s say our nun knows a secret or is in possession of important information that could save the world.”
“Assassins are after her,” Aiden added, feeling his juices revving. “She’s being taken to a safe house, but her plane crashes or she stows away on a private yacht and ends up marooned on a desert island with the murderer.”
“Who is also the only guy who can save her, or instead of a desert island, what if she’s needs to hike out of a jungle and he’s running from the authorities?”
“They team up, because she’s a nun and she covers-up for him, while he helps her get away from the bad guys.”
“Who are going to blow up the world,” Jade said.
“Right, high stakes.”
“Now, tell me, what about this concept grabs you?”
“The murderer might kill the nun, but he’s protecting her instead. The question is, can she trust him or will he turn on her?”
“Add sexual tension,” Jade suggested. “Maybe the nun is rethinking her vows, otherwise, you might as well have a beauty queen be the heroine.”
Aiden threw his head back and laughed. “You’re agreeing with me about the beauty queen who is secretly a spy, posing as a nun?”
“No, there’s more drama if she’s a genuine nun who doesn’t believe in murder and sex, teaming up with a sexy guy who happens to be a murderer.”
“But even though he’s a murderer, he did it for a greater cause.”
And so it went. It wasn’t all work and no play, though. Far from it.
After jotting down their ideas, Aiden reeled Jade in for a long, lingering kiss, and then they were off to another island adventure, followed by a romantic evening of dinner and dancing.
Chapter Thirteen
The next few days were dreamy and creative.
Jade reveled in a whirlwind of romance where she and Aiden would alternate between acting sickening in love, and then sneaking off to jot down their story ideas.
During the days, they went out and about: sailing, shopping, to the spa, hiking, swimming, and exploring. Aiden showed Jade how to tie knots, start a campfire, scale boulders, and they imagined surviving in the wilderness while being hunted by the enemy. He also showed her what was edible, how to booby trap a trail, and he gave her basic self-defense training so she could write about the moves and holds.
Their evenings were magical with fine dining, dancing, and long, slow walks on the beach, before further exploration of their bodies on every surface inside their private suite—especially trying different positions so she could see what fit where and improve her love-making descriptions.
It was as good as being in love without the angst, drama, and hurt feelings—a way of experiencing what it would be like to have a romance without actually being in one.
After another perfect day in paradise, Jade and Aiden returned to the villa they’d started calling “home.”
She was hot and sweaty and tipsy after partying on a yacht in the middle of an ocean so blue it defied description. After that, they’d toured a ruin of an old fort, taken pictures inside a dank dungeon, and posed with cannons on top of the rampart of chiseled stone walls.
“I’m bushed, and my feet hurt,” Jade said as she sank onto a chaise lounge by the pool. “Let’s stay in for dinner tonight.”
“Great. I’ll get you all to myself.” Aiden took off his T-shirt, showing her a sight she’d never tire of. “Going to cool off with a swim.”
“I’ll watch.” She wiggled her eyebrows and licked her lips. How many times had she described his muscles, both solid and fluid, and the smooth way he moved, or stalked, like a large predator, with no wasted movement—efficient and fast.
Her gaze followed him as he climbed onto the diving board and executed a perfect somersault dive. He surfaced moments later and swam laps back and forth across the pool.
Jade lay back on the lounge and opened a well-thumbed paperback she found lying around in the book-exchange hut. It was an old-fashioned bodice-ripper romance from the late twentieth century where a pirate captain had captured a young woman traveling to marry a rich Caribbean planter.
The lush descriptions as well as the dangers confronting a maiden, left alone in a den of pirates, had Jade swooning and salivating one minute and anxiously biting her nails the next.
“What are you reading?” Aiden’s shadow darkened the page as he stood over her, toweling himself off.
“Something I found lying around.” She showed him the cover with a bare-chested, long-haired blond man dominating a half-dressed woman in distress.
“Is there anything real in those romances?” Aiden kicked his legs onto the chaise next to her and dug through his camouflage knapsack.
“Not these old ones,” Jade said, laughing. “Pure fantasy. In real life, I don’t think many women would like to be captured by pirates, made to serve him hand and foot, and forced to share his bed.”
“They’d rather be holed up at a resort with a trained killer, made to go on grueling hikes, almost drown, and then serve him hand and foot all night long.” Aiden grinned and ducked the paperback she threw at him.
“I don’t serve you hand and foot.”
He lobbed the paperback back into her lap. “What do you call licking me all over and moisturizing my entire body, especially the happy parts?”
“Don’t get too cocky!” Jade exclaimed and Aiden’s grin widened further. “You know it’s all research. Navy SEALs happen to be a popular women’s fantasy, and I’m simply mapping out the terrain.”
“I must admit, your love scenes have gotten better.” Aiden took out his ereader. “Some of your earlier ones are, shall we say, lacking?”
“I thought you deleted my books.” Jade’s heart lurched, and her stomach tightened. “I’m not sure I like having you know my secret desires.”
“You’re admitting your love scenes are real?” He lowered his face and ran his tongue along the top of her bare shoulder.
Jade gasped, knowing her face changed colors. She’d been caught. “I use my imagination a lot.”
“Like this.” He nipped the sensitive spots along her neck, then sucked her into submission. “And this.”
“Don’t you ever get enough?” Jade asked, despite her insides quivering and begging for more Aiden.
Their week would soon be up, and she would have to go back to her normal sexless and loveless life. Writing love scenes, something she used to enjoy when it was all fantasy and imagination, would be torture, replaying everything she experienced and felt with this man, her perfect match.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get enough of you.” Aiden’s kisses grew more ardent, and his voice vibrated to the very corners of her hungry and unrealistic heart.
“Our week together is almost up. What happens next?”
“You write a bestseller, and I disappear into a desert or jungle, maybe the Korean peninsula, covert ops. we pretend we don’t know each other—just the way you want. No romance. No love story. No future.”
“Yes, that was what we agreed to.” Jade’s throat tightened. “Do you think it’s possible for me to write as if there’s a happily ever after when I’ve never experienced it myself?”
“Do you?” He nipped kisses across the back of her shoulders and neck.
“You write about places you’ve never visited.”
“True, but those are mere physical details anyone can fill in. In romance, you’re channeling the emotions, the feels, the deep-s
eated yearnings of the soul—or so you’ve been teaching me.”
“Not everyone needs love, at least the romantic kind.” Jade wanted to back away from the sweet sensations fluttering over her, but instead, she leaned in and cuddled her face up to his.
She loved the feel of being in love, even if her head wasn’t there.
“If they don’t need romantic love, why do they read romances, if not to feel what it’s like?” Aiden’s baritone voice lingered in the hot tropical air. “The question is, how does a romance writer peddle that which she claims she does not need?”
“You’re writing about a nun and a murderer,” Jade said, turning the spotlight on him. “Seems you’re writing about things you know nothing about—unless there’s something I don’t know?”
“We’re talking about you, Miss Reed. Are you a hypocrite? Selling that which you do not desire?”
“I’m like a drug dealer. I know how addictive my product is, and I cannot afford to get caught up in it.” Her voice was tight as she tried to bottle up the fluttering of her foolish heart. She was addicted to Aiden, plain and simple, and he was torturing her. “You said yourself that you were leaving and never looking back.”
“Do you want me to look back on you?” He feathered a tender kiss on her trembling lips.
Jade’s heart ached to say “yes” to harbor the seed of hope, the dream that somehow Aiden cared about her more than a one-week fling. He was so in tune with her, another writer who was learning to weave words into feelings, to evoke images and patterns in a reader’s mind, and to create desire, need, want.
She closed her eyes, unable to withstand his probing gaze, the way his voice resonated with the song in her heart—the melodies she’d buried, not daring to feel the rapture and joy of a transient love, only to spend forever in pain, grief, and regret.
Her head swayed up and down, despite herself, and she whispered, “Would you look back for me?”
“I don’t think I could ever stop.” He thumbed her lower lip, and she kissed it, then turned her face so her cheek rubbed against his rough, calloused hand. “What are you afraid of?”
“Saying goodbye,” Jade admitted. “Because no matter what happens, one of us will leave—either through death or betrayal.”
“You’d rather say goodbye while there’s still life and good feelings?”
This time, she nodded vigorously. “Yes, exactly. And I can take the store of good memories and recreate them over and over again, from book to book, and my well will never run dry, because every time I write a love story, it would be our love story, and the thousands of ways it could play out, and I’d always have a happy ending.”
His smile dissolved, and his eyes drooped as he patted her hand and settled back onto his lounge chair.
“Now I know why I want to write spy thrillers. Good triumphing over evil is something everyone can get behind.” He drew a paperback from his knapsack. “Look what I found in the book exchange.”
Keith Kirkland’s latest bestseller flipped open in Aiden’s large hands, and his eyes dipped hungrily to the words in print.
Jade’s stomach soured and growled. She pointedly looked away, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to that Josh Ridley you were reading?”
“Oh that? Got tired of it.”
“Really? Why?” Jade stuttered. “I mean, I’m always interested when a reader stops reading, even if it’s a different genre.”
“The plot feels fake, like he’s trying too hard. He has no clue how a military operation is conducted. His hero is tortured, almost eaten by cannibals, sick with fever, injured, but still manages to escape through an alligator-infested swamp and set traps for his pursuers? Oh, and after all that, he’s saved by a woman.”
“What’s wrong with being saved by a woman?”
“Nothing if they didn’t act like lovesick idiots, and she wasn’t all over his muscles and somehow, miraculously, his fever and intestinal parasites are gone.”
“She’s a medic, and she nursed him back to health. They weren’t even interested in each other at first. Are you sure you didn’t just skip to the good parts?”
“Have you been going through my things?” Aiden extracted the Josh Ridley paperback from his pack and tossed it at her. “If you’re so interested, you can finish it and tell me what happens. Meanwhile, I’m going to stick with Keith Kirkland. His details are impeccable.”
Jade bit her tongue and flipped through the book Aiden so easily dismissed. She, as Josh, would have a better grasp of details if she could run the writing workshops Keith did with ex-military aspiring writers.
“If you like wham-bam, no thank-you ma’am sex scenes,” Jade sniped. “Keith’s guys can’t even keep it up a minute.”
Aiden rolled his eyes. “Guys don’t read thrillers for the sex. It’s the action and the thrill of the chase.”
“Keith is overrated.” Jade couldn’t help huffing. “Now, Josh, he’s more in touch with his emotions. He doesn’t objectify women, but his heroes are still full alphas. Just because there are alpha women, doesn’t take away from the hero. Keith? He’s threatened by strong women.”
“You seem to know a lot about thrillers.” Aiden’s eyebrows arched. “But you’re out of touch with what men want. We don’t want Josh Ridley style analyzing and complicated emotions. We want kick-ass action and gun blazing glory.”
“While objectifying women?” Jade felt her ire rise faster than the bile in her gut.
“Says the woman who’s all about abs and pecs, feeling up my muscles so she can objectify men in her books.”
“You are definitely not my Perfect Match.”
“Nope, and you’re not even close to what I’d bring home to my mom.”
“I dare you to have the nun save the murderer in your book.”
“That would be a dumb plot point no one would believe in, something Josh Ridley would write.” He pointedly stuck his nose in his book, and Jade, likewise, transported herself back to the pirate ship where the heroine was proving her mettle by binding up wounds after a raid.
Chapter Fourteen
Jade was actually glad when Aiden decided to go out alone that evening. True, they’d planned on having food delivered, but after his cruel critique of her alter ego, Josh Ridley, she was in no mood to speak pleasantly to him.
It looked like their faux-romance was over. She couldn’t wait to say goodbye to this island and the resort, one of many in her father’s business empire.
Ile d’Amour was nothing special. It wasn’t the largest Caribbean island, nor was it the glitziest. Its beaches were pristine, and it had a small cruise ship harbor. The volcano wasn’t the largest or most active, and no historic battles were fought at its forts.
As for Aiden Lin? He was yet another example of why she should not pin her heart on love. Real men did not behave like her romantic heroes, and real life was complicated, messy, and unsatisfying.
Jade stared at the blinking cursor on her laptop. Now that she had a few hours alone, she should work on her new Navy SEAL series. Her hero would be nothing like Aiden Lin. He would be brave and honorable—a bit of a rogue, with a great sense of humor.
He craved danger and did not want to fall in love, but he also loved his family. And in his abstract mind, he thought having a family of his own would be cool.
Just not now. Not when he was deployed to the most dangerous places in the world. What kind of woman would love a man who could die at any moment?
Jade typed a few words about the heroine. She would be independent and strong. Make her a doctor or a lawyer. She had her own life, and she didn’t need a man to complete it.
How would she meet the hero?
How about if they both won a contest and ended up together on an island vacation?
No!
It would never work out. Who in their right mind fell in love with a man who could drop off the face of the earth on the heels of a phone call?
Apparently, someone stupid like her.
&nbs
p; Jade erased everything she’d written and stared at the blank page.
Aiden could die at any moment. Or he’d forget about her once he was back with his platoon.
She was stuck with no way out, because the only reason any woman would care for a guy whose life was in constant danger was if she already loved him and wanted to make his in-betweens perfect. To give him joy, happiness, fulfillment, and acceptance without expectation he’d ever come home. To bind up his wounds and comfort him when he lost a buddy or an entire platoon. To be his strength when he was unable to cope. To be the angel while he walked through the hell of war.
To be his true and living heart.
Loving him was not for her benefit. Not when she’d endure long, lonely deployments, nights of worry and days of missing him.
But whenever he had leave, she’d be there, and she’d treasure every precious moment.
Could she do it?
Her heart told her yes. After all, she wrote stories like this, and she was a strong woman—like her heroines.
Did she have a choice?
Not really. Aiden already invaded her every thought. Being with him made every sensation brighter and more vibrant. She truly couldn’t imagine a future without him.
Well, she could, but she’d worry about him just the same, even if he’d completely forgotten about her.
She couldn’t let that happen, could she?
Love had dropped into her lap unannounced, and she, of all people, hadn’t recognized it. Hopefully, she hadn’t hurt him too much with her sniping and criticizing of his reading tastes—even if he’d put that dastardly Keith Kirkland on an undeserved pedestal.
After all, he was about to write a thriller with a nun for a heroine partnered with a convicted murderer—Josh Ridley style.
Wouldn’t he die someday when critics compared his book to one of Josh’s?
It was worth sticking it out just to stick it to him.
Besides, like her heroines taught her—if she wanted something, she should get it and not wait around for a man to make the first move or save the day.
Jade (Perfect Match Book 4) Page 7