by Lisa Plumley
Of course, he could be totally off-base.
It wouldn't be the first time he was wrong about her.
Dylan lowered his putter and leaned on it, watching the enticing sway of Stacey's hips as she traveled the length of the path leading toward their tee-off point.
"No, not quite what I expected," she called, propping her putter over her shoulder. She stepped toward him looking like some department store's version of Sporty Femininity, wearing canvas sneakers, a flippy white divided skirt of some kind, and Dylan's favorite bit of attire, a chest-hugging pale pink T-shirt. "But I like it. It's cute."
So was she. She stopped next to him, beside the statue of a giant saucer and teacup emblazoned with the words 'Tee-Time,' and looked around. The miniature golf course surrounding them was filled with meandering paths, statues, the requisite windmill, a pond with a waterfall, and huge plaster apple trees. Shading her eyes, Stacey gazed over it all, then said, "Finally, we can just relax and be ourselves for a few hours."
As a dig about their breakfast-in-bed plans gone awry, it was pretty mild. But the memory of her reaction to this morning's surprise added enough bite to her remark to make it sting. Dylan still wasn't sure how things had gone so wrong, so fast.
Strike one, the Renaissance dinner.
Strike two, the breakfast serenade.
Strike three ... and he'd be out of the action for good. If he was going to convince Stacey to give him another try, he'd have to be more careful the next time he planned a romantic surprise.
Turning, Stacey flipped her putter from her shoulder. It swung through the air with a whoosh, forcing Dylan to duck or else be brained with the thing. He surfaced at eye level with her waist as she spun around.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
Not thinking about miniature golf, that was for sure. Her snug T-shirt had ridden up as she moved, revealing a smooth glimpse of belly and driving all golf-related thoughts straight out of his mind.
Probably part of her strategy.
"Warming up," Dylan improvised, making good on his claim by touching his toes a couple of times. He straightened to a skeptical wrinkling of her nose and added several side-to-side windmills for good measure.
Stacey raised her eyebrows. "The better to play competitive mini-golf, I suppose?"
"Yeah. Aggressive game, if you play it right." He bent his knee in a quadriceps stretch, grabbing his sneakered foot and raising it until it touched the back of his khaki shorts. He smiled. She'd never believe his cutthroat mini-golf story, but it was too late to turn back now. He'd just have to show Stacey he was serious. About this, about the honeymoon charade ... about having a second chance with her.
Any self-respecting guy would still be mad at her, after her blatant lack of appreciation for his first Big Romantic Gesture. Looking at her now, Dylan guessed his willingness to forgive and forget meant he valued spending time with Stacey more than he valued that particular brand of self-respect.
He grabbed his other foot and repeated the quadriceps stretch, ignoring her open skepticism. "You'll be sore tomorrow if you don't stretch out," Dylan warned. "Don't come crying to me if you wake up and can't move."
"That's what the masseuse is for," she said, twirling around to pick up one of their assigned golf balls. Her skirt/shorts combination flared with the movement. So did Dylan's body heat level. The woman could interest him more with a glance in his direction than most women could with a bikini, a bucket of body oil, and a blatant invitation.
"I'll put myself in the masseuse's capable hands," Stacey said. Speaking of body oil, Dylan groused silently. She tossed her bright orange golf ball into the air and caught it again neatly in her palm. "And come out feeling better than ever," she finished, smiling at him.
He hoped not. Dylan didn't think of himself as a violent man, but the idea of the nameless honeymoon surprise masseuse touching Stacey made him feel like punching the guy in the nose. He gazed out over the golf course to cover the sudden surge of unearned possessiveness he felt and tightened his grip on his putter.
"So," Stacey said, sounding tentative, "do we start here?"
He turned to find her frowning down at the bright indoor-outdoor carpeted 'green,' still tossing her ball. Nah, she couldn't mean what he thought she meant.
"You've never played mini-golf before?"
"You say that like it's un-American, or something."
She hadn't. "It is un-American. What kind of childhood did you have, anyway?" Dylan asked.
"A perfectly normal one," she assured him.
"Not without mini-golf." He edged up behind her, guided Stacey's putter into her hands, and covered her fingers with his own. "You hold the putter," he said, bending low enough to speak against her ear, "just like this."
"Okay." She sounded deadly-serious, as though they were discussing taxes, or maybe an impending shoe sale. "Just like this?"
"Good." Dylan eased his hands over her wrists, straightening them, then over her forearms and up to her slender biceps. "When you swing," he said, "the power comes from here. And also—" His hand cupped her waist, and he felt her body tremble in his arms. "—from here."
"Ummm, shouldn't we start with the ball first?" Her voice sounded as though she'd been holding in her breath and released it all to speak. "D—Dylan?"
"We'll get to that," he murmured, stroking his cheek along hers under the pretense of adjusting her stance. Sweat beaded between his shoulder blades and rolled beneath his faded blue polo shirt, sweat that had nothing to do with the desert sun beating down on them both. "We've got all the time in the world."
She stilled, then her head came up. "No, we don't."
"What do you mean?"
"Look." Glancing back at him, Stacey cupped his chin in her fingers and turned his head toward the entrance to the mini-golf course. A tall, aggressively stylish blonde woman stepped onto the green, then paused with one hand to her sunglasses and surveyed the course.
The desk clerk from the hotel.
Dylan frowned. "Did she give you the twenty-minute, blow by blow account of the bouquet throwing at her wedding, or was I just lucky?"
"Nah, I was lucky the same way," Stacey murmured. "Except I was treated to a rendition of the wedding toasts. Verbatim." She looked over her shoulder at him. "What's the matter, you don't like weddings?"
"Not unless I'm a participant," he said, watching as she swung her purse by its shoulder strap, caught it in her hands, and started rummaging through it. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to come up with a disguise." She pulled out a crushed white hat, a tube of something, and a dark pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, then grabbed his arm. "Come on."
He had just enough time to grab their putters and the balls before she hauled him by the forearm behind one of the fake apple trees. Dylan ducked to avoid one of the eight-inch red painted apples, and hunkered down beside Stacey. She grabbed the pretend tree trunk with one hand and peered around it.
"It's her, all right." Looking businesslike, she crouched beside Dylan and dropped her supplies onto the 'green.' She shoved the sunglasses onto her head like a headband, grabbed the tube, and squeezed a blob of something baby blue into her palm. Squinting, she eyed Dylan.
"So," he said, "we're hiding back here because ... ?"
"Because I need time to think before dealing with somebody else from the hotel, that's why." Stacey grabbed his chin, turned his head to the side and back again, then frowned fiercely. "And also because this time I'm leaving nothing up to chance." She dipped her forefinger into the baby blue goo. "Hold still."
"Whaddya mean?" Dylan slurred, finding it hard to talk with her hand clamped onto his chin like a vise. "She's just a hotel employee. What's she going to do, dial direct to Aunt Geraldine and turn us—hey!"
He caught her wrist partway to his face. The goo on her fingertip gleamed in the sunlight. So did her ex-husband's wedding ring. Unreasonably, he wanted to twist it off and drop it into the murky mini-golf pond. Instead, he nodded toward
the blue goo. "Where are you going with that stuff?"
Stacey cocked her head sideways as though being forced to explain things to an especially backward partner in crime. "I'm going to make sure you're inconspicuous," she said, fairly smugly, he thought, for a person supposedly afraid of having her honeymoon deception found out any second.
"Not with that stuff, you're not."
"Quit being a baby. It's just zinc oxide ointment. Sunscreen," she explained.
"It's blue." Dylan backed up as far as he could without leaving the concealing shade of the thick plaster tree trunk. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Is this your idea of revenge for this morning? Are you sure that's not eye shadow, or rouge, or something?"
"Like I want blue cheeks." She blew a deep breath and crab-walked over to him, then locked her vise grip onto his chin again. Her flowery scent, soap or shampoo or something else, washed over him, successfully scrambling his thoughts enough that Dylan quit squirming for a second.
Stacey seized the opportunity. "Don't be ridiculous," she said, peering down at the goo on her finger. "You'd look awful with blue eye shadow. It would totally clash with your eyes."
Dylan smirked. "Ha, ha."
"Besides, that wouldn't look very inconspicuous, now would it?" Her gaze darted toward the blonde hotel desk clerk, then met his. "Now hold still."
Her finger, laden with shimmery blue, came closer. Dylan eyed the stuff warily. "I don't care if we're found out," he said, leaning far enough away that she couldn't touch him. "I'm not letting you smear that stuff on me."
"If you keep arguing with me, you're going to blow our hiding place," Stacey hissed. "Trust me, will you?"
Trust me. It was what he was always asking her to do for him. How could he refuse?
He couldn't. Hell.
"Only if I get to smear some on you, too," he said. Hey, that might actually be fun. Grinning, Dylan thrust his face forward again.
"Fine." She came closer, peering at him intently. Dylan admired the curve of her cheek, the delicate arch of her eyebrows, the straight, even line of her nose, and tried not to indulge his suspicions that Stacey was about to give him his first beauty makeover.
"Cute freckles," he said, hoping to distract himself with a little conversation. Too late. Her finger smoothed cool goo on the bridge of his nose, and he jerked backward.
She smiled. "I don't have freckles. Hold still. This'll only take a minute."
She did have freckles, a pale smattering just over the bridge of her nose and the top of her cheeks. They looked cute.
"Yes, you do."
She plopped her sunglasses onto her face. "Quit trying to distract me." She dabbed a couple more times, spread her goo-covered finger across both his cheeks, than examined her handiwork with a critical expression. "I guess that'll do."
Keeping her baby-blue covered palm aloft, Stacy dug into her purse, muttered something, then pulled out a mangy-looking Chicago Cubs baseball cap and a pair of aviator sunglasses. Dylan leaned over, looking into the depths of her purse.
"Have you got any snacks in there?" he asked. "Maybe a hank of bratwurst or a spare Thanksgiving turkey? I'm getting kind of hungry, and it looks like you've got room for—"
She smacked him in the knee with the Cubs cap. "Ha, ha. Here, put these on," she said, shoving the cap and aviators toward him. Leaning closer, she turned up his shirt collar, too. He felt like The Fonz.
"I happen to travel prepared," she said staunchly. "There's no crime in that."
"These look like men's sunglasses."
"They are," Stacey told him, shrugging. "They used to belong to Charlie. I haven't seen him lately to return them."
Dylan looked at the hat and sunglasses in his hand, having a satisfying vision of himself stomping the stuff into dust. Sighing, he put them on instead. "How come you're still carrying around your ex-husband's personal belongings?" he asked.
"Look, I only got divorced from Charlie. I didn't hire a hit man to rub him out, or anything. Sheesh, to hear you talk, you'd think I'm packing a Charlie Ames voodoo doll in here," Stacey said, fiddling one-handed with something inside her purse.
"Are you? Because I think the voodoo idea actually has some merit."
"Ha, ha."
Dylan adjusted his hat brim, then reached over to scoop up a little of the blue oxide goo from her palm. Time for his turn at finger painting.
"You're supposed to put it on the angled, prominent parts of your face," she instructed, setting her purse down, "like your nose and chee—" Stacey looked up at him, mid-sentence, and burst out laughing. "Ch—ch--cheekbones," she choked out, trying to stifle her amusement.
He frowned. "What's so funny?"
"You." She caught his expression, looked chagrined, and tried to settle down by coming closer so Dylan could apply some goo. Except when she got there, her gaze roamed over his hat, his sunglasses, his turned-up collar, and his undoubtedly bizarre-looking goo-smeared face, and he could tell she lost the battle to quit laughing right there. Her lips quirked. A sound something like a snort came out, then she pressed her mouth tightly together.
"Go ahead," she said, pushing the words between barely moving lips. Stacey removed her sunglasses and nodded toward his hand, indicating the ointment. "I'm ready. I think."
Dylan raised his goo-tipped finger and swiped a gob of baby blue onto her nose. Her gaze wandered from his face upward, then made another circuit around his head. Her body started shaking.
Shaking with suppressed laughter.
He rested his forearms on his thighs. "What?"
A laugh burbled from between her lips. "You look like The Invisible Man. All you need is a trench coat, and you're in business."
"Very funny." She was probably right, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Here he was, trying to do things her way—her supposedly inconspicuous way—and she couldn't quit giggling over it. "Wait until you see what you look like when I'm finished with you."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me."
"Shhh!" Stacey hissed suddenly. "I think I hear something."
Dylan heard it, too—the desk clerk's cheery, high-pitched voice, floating toward them from the 'Tee Time' cup.
"Come on, Mark!" she said. "Let's get going! I've got to be back at work this afternoon!"
"Okay, honey!" a chipper-sounding male voice answered.
Great. There were two of them. Identically buoyant.
"Hurry up," Stacey said, sticking her face forward.
You asked for it. Loading up his fingertip again, Dylan smoothed out the blue goo until it covered her whole nose, plus her supposedly nonexistent freckles. Then he dunked into the ointment again and drew three thick stripes on each of her cheeks. He finished up with fat blue dots in the center of her forehead, above each eyebrow, and on her chin.
A masterpiece.
By Picasso, maybe.
"Done," he said, taking the tissue she offered to wipe off his hands and scrubbing them clean of ointment. "You'd better give it a minute to dry."
"Thanks." Smiling with the pleasure of a woman in charge for the first time, Stacey fanned her fingers in front of her face. She grabbed two handfuls of her shoulder-length hair, twisted them behind her head, and then squashed her white floppy hat over the whole bunched-up assembly. "I think we're set," she said, easing her sunglasses on carefully. "Let's go."
Dylan eyed her hat. "Okay, Little Buddy."
"Huh?"
"We look like The Invisible Man meets Gilligan."
Just for a second, her face took on a wary expression. "You're kidding, right?"
"Yeah." If following her idiotic plan was his only chance of getting in Stacey's good graces, you bet he was kidding. Dylan helped her to her feet, waited as she brushed off the seat of her skirt-shorts, and then gathered up their golfing gear. "Of course I'm kidding."
He still wasn't convinced how this was supposed to make them look inconspicuous. However, the further he followed her loose-limbed, graceful sway toward 'Tee Time,' the
less he cared. It was enough just to be together. Cooperating, for a change.
Halfway to the giant teacup Stacey stopped so fast her tennis shoes squeaked. Dylan, too engrossed in admiring her to have full control over his feet, bumped into her. She teetered—half-unbalanced by the weight of her monster purse, he figured—and then grabbed his arm and managed to spin around to face him.
"Hold it." She whipped her purse between them. In the spirit of cooperation, Dylan propped it up with his hands while she shuffled things around in it. "I forgot this," Stacey said, pulling out a compact instant camera.
She slung it by its strap around his neck, then stepped back to examine the effect. "Perfect," she announced. "You look like a perfect tourist."
"Or maybe Claude Raines on vacation."
Stacey smiled. "Now you're getting into the swing of things. Let's go."
"Whew! That was close!" Stacey muttered two hours later, feeling triumphant and not a little bit vindicated from the safety of her perch in the jeep's passenger seat.
"Nah," Dylan said, braking beneath the shade of the Atmosphere's piazza. He turned off the ignition, leaned against the steering wheel, and gave her a heart-stopping grin. "Not close at all. Admit it. Your plan worked."
Stacey shook her head. "I must have been out in the sun too long," she said, pretending to fan herself with the souvenir pennant he'd bought her at the mini-golf course. "Are you actually agreeing with me that my inconspicuous method worked best?"
"Best?" His grin widened, and despite his tourist-Invisible Man getup, she thought he looked pretty fantastic. It figured. Not even a disguise could make Dylan Davis look goofy. "I didn't say your plan was the best," he said, tossing the keys to a valet. "I just said it worked. This time."
"This time, huh?" Stacey watched him round the front of the jeep, then stop beside her seat. "This time and every time, you mean."
"Mmmm," Dylan grunted noncommittally. He held up his hand and she took it, too happy with their recent turn of events to try and force an agreement out of him. Their golf game had been a success, they'd remained relatively incognito—despite some amused glances from the other mini-golf patrons—and, most importantly, they'd actually learned to cooperate.