Slowly, Corinne sank back down on the couch and took a sip of her drink. “I wouldn’t know,” she muttered.
“What!” Darla shouted, practically spilling her drink. “You’re telling me you’ve never slept with him?”
“Do I look like the sort of woman who would sleep with a man while he was sleeping with other women?” Corinne asked, offended at the mere idea.
“No.”
“When I’m finally with Brendan I want it to be special. I want it to be perfect. After all, he will be my first.”
“First what?”
“My first lover,” Corinne clarified.
Darla snorted at such an outright lie. “Are you kidding me? I know of at least one. What about Carlos?”
“Who?” Corinne asked, feigning ignorance.
“Carlos. The guy with hair and the motorcycle who you…”
“I know who Carlos is,” Corinne snapped. “I’m just choosing to forget him. I’m revirginizing myself for Brendan.”
Darla’s brow scrunched. “Can you do that?”
“Yes, it’s done all the time,” she replied breezily. “I read it in a magazine. The point is, Brendan is my future. My destiny. My one chance to have the kind of life I’ve always dreamed of. If this trip away from him doesn’t convince him of that, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You could always, oh, I don’t know, maybe find someone else,” Darla suggested. “What about Matthew? This may be out of left field, but I think he might like you.”
Corinne dismissed that suggestion as if she hadn’t even heard it. It was ridiculous. Matthew Relic liking her. Matthew Relic and her together. Impossible. It would be like putting the sun and the moon together.
“No. I refuse to turn into my mother or my sister or my father or my brother. All of them like to just flit and fly from one love to the next like bumblebees in heat. That is not going to be me. No, I’ve already decided that if things don’t work out with Brendan, then I’m through with men forever.”
Darla’s eyes widened. “Wow. Forever? That’s a really long time.”
“Yes,” Corinne choked out, feeling the fear building inside her.
“I think that calls for at least one more brownie.”
Corinne did, too.
2
SHE STOOD OUT like a ripe plum in a white bowl.
Okay, so he wasn’t the best at analogies but Matthew understood what he meant. With her red hair billowing out from underneath a grand straw hat, wearing her purple bathing suit and matching sarong, and stretched out in her chair on the powdery white sand, she was exactly as he had described. It just didn’t sound as good when he tried verbalizing it in his mind. Good thing he’d tried this one out silently before he used it on her.
What he wanted to say was, boy she sure did look pretty. It was clear to Matthew, and surely to every one else on the beach, that Rinny was the most stunning girl on the stretch. In the clutter of people—most of whom were happy loving couples—camped out on the beach outside the Paradise Hotel and Casino, Matthew had no problem spotting his girl. If he were less of a practical man he would say that she had a powerful aura about her. Whatever it was, it seemed to attract him like a fly to…He should probably forget the analogies.
Flipping his beach towel over his shoulder, Matthew marched across the beach to her private camp. She had a beach chair on either side of her—probably to keep the happy loving couples at bay—filled with a radio, three books, enough sunblock to ward off a nuclear blast and finally her. She sat in the middle chair, her legs covered by the sarong she wore, her arms covered by the shade of her near-sombrero. The sunglasses that she sported were shaped like cat’s eyes. Purple to match her suit. No doubt she had as many pairs of sunglasses as she had outfits.
His Rinny always knew how to put the package together. Standing before her, he waited for recognition from her that he was blocking her sun, but she was too covered in shade to notice. Beneath the glasses she must have had her eyes closed so Matthew decided to simply plunk his six-foot frame down next to her on one of the chairs. “Hi, Rinny.”
Corinne had been dreaming. Brendan had been down on one knee before her with a ring box in his hand and a loving expression on his face. He had been promising her his love, fidelity and friendship for all the rest of his days. The dream was so powerful she could almost feel the tears well up in her eyes as they might if it were really happening.
Then suddenly, Brendan’s face became Matthew’s face with its deep-midnight-blue eyes and strong chin. And he was calling her Rinny. No one else called her by that absurd nickname. She wasn’t even too sure why she allowed Matthew to continue to use it. Although the thought of trying to break him of the habit seemed exhausting. Matthew was like a steamroller. Slow. Plodding. Inexorable. And difficult to push off course. It made him a phenomenal accountant, but a bit of a bore.
“You asleep, Rinny?”
There it was again. This time Corinne did open her eyes and peer out over her sunglasses. There he was, plain as the sun, sitting next to her as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Matthew Relic was on Paradise Island. Somehow the two didn’t seem to fit, but there was no doubt it was him.
“What are you doing here?” She wasn’t too sure how she felt about his presence. Piqued because he had interrupted her vacation? Confused as to why he would follow her here? Or maybe a little happy to see a familiar face? After only two days, she realized that the next week and a half was going to drag with no one to talk to.
Most of the couples she met only stopped long enough to ask her where her husband was and if they wanted to get together for couples tennis. As soon as she explained that she was on the island by herself, they made their excuses and went on their way, absorbed with each other. She would have found the whole thing utterly depressing if she hadn’t continued to tell herself that the purpose of this trip was to secure the very same happiness that these couples had found.
“Darla told me you seemed a little down before you left. She said something about a lot of brownies.”
Corinne groaned, remembering how sick she’d felt the next day after eating all that chocolate.
“Anyway, she told me where you were staying. And I figured you would still be smarting from your breakup with Brendan, so…”
“Breakup?” Corinne interrupted. “We did not break up.”
“Sure you did. I was in the filing closet, remember? ‘No one is ever going to love you like I loved you.”’ He changed the words, but the meaning was the same.
Corinne laughed her, oh-you-silly-boy chuckle. “Matthew, Matthew. You don’t understand. That wasn’t a breakup, that was an ultimatum.”
“It was? It sure sounded like a breakup.”
“It wasn’t,” she explained. “You see I left him to give him a chance to feel what it would be like if I really left him. No doubt right now, at this very minute, he is at home contemplating what his life without me will be like and he’s wondering how he can get me back.”
Right now, at this very minute, Golden Boy was probably at home romancing Marjorie from human resources. But Matthew kept that opinion to himself. He didn’t want to hurt Rinny. He just wanted her to see that Brendan was no good for her, while he, on the other hand, was perfect. It wasn’t going to be easy. He could see that now. He needed an angle.
“So