Page 66 of Caught Up In You (Indigo Royal Resort)
“Oh, are those them? They’re palm trees! Are they as cute as they looked online?”
“Ummm, well…” Maeve said, looking up. “They don’t quite look like palm trees.”
“What?”
Maeve held up the baggie she’d been staring at for the last few minutes and as soon as she did, Leona saw exactly what she meant and burst into laughter. The horrified look on Drea’s face when she saw them only made it that much funnier. While up close they might have looked like trees, the way the palm fronds were shaped and the trunk of the trees curved, from afar the gummies looked much more like penises than they did trees.
“No, no, no! I can’t give those out to our guests!” Drea cried.
Leona took the bag of gummies from Maeve and held it out to Drea as if she were presenting a gift. “Welcome to the Indigo Royal Resort Cherish Spa. Here, have a bag of dicks!”
The sand underneath Cullen’s bare feet was warm and sticky, and he loved the way it felt to the point where now he was wondering why he hadn’t taken the opportunity to run barefoot on the beach like this more often. Probably because he was subconsciously too worried about injury to risk anything that was out of the norm, and barefoot beach running certainly fell into that category. Now, however, he found it freeing to know that a twisted ankle wasn’t going to be a major concern.
Another thing he couldn’t ever remember doing, regardless of location, was going for a run without his phone. At first it was weird, not having his earbuds in and not having something to drown out all the noises around him. After the first mile or so, though, he’d not only gotten used to hearing the slap of his feet against the wet sand but had started to pace his breathing with the surf and had actually started to enjoy it. There was something hypnotic about all of it, helping him right all his thoughts. After all, that was part of why he still ran—to keep his mind from getting too fuzzy.
The dings and bells of his phone woke him earlier than he’d intended that morning and hadn’t seemed to stop since, leading to a whirlwind of phone calls and text messages. Half of them had been from Oliver, hounding him for a decision. Somewhere around midmorning Cullen had simply taken to ignoring all those calls and texts, which actually only seemed to increase the incoming speed. But it didn’t matter how fast the calls came in, he still didn’t have an answer. There were also a number of other things he felt he needed to do before he gave Oliver an answer, all of which he spent time trying to accomplish via his own flurry of phone calls, emails, and texts.
And then there was Leona. Her words might have said “take the job,” but he questioned whether or not she really meant that. Was she just telling him what she thought he wanted to hear? Last night had been amazing, other than the hit to the jaw. Spending time with friends, seeing her nurturing side come out as she tried to help with his jaw, and the sex…man alive. Except that hadn’t been just sex. That had been the two of them coming together in a way he hadn’t realized was possible with another individual. He’d felt things so intensely that those emotions now felt engrained in him. He had no idea what these feelings were, but he knew they weren’t something that was fleeting.
Is this what love felt like?
Was Leona feeling it too?
He knew that she was feeling something. He could see it in her eyes. She had been about to say something as he stood there holding her in the afterglow. That was, until his damn phone rang. He could kick himself for answering, for not letting her say whatever she needed to say. Now he wondered if he’d ever know what it was.
By the time lunch rolled around, he hadn’t heard from her since the brief good morning kiss she gave him as she rolled out of bed in the wee hours. She hadn’t said much last night after leaving the spa and heading to the laundry to hide the evidence, not that he’d really known what to say in those moments either. He was pretty sure that she had fallen asleep before her head even hit the pillow after they got back to the bungalow, but he’d held her in his arms nonetheless, looking to rekindle that connection they had made earlier. Checking again to make sure he hadn’t missed a text from her while he’d been on the phone, he figured he would check in with her if there wasn't a message waiting on him when he got back from a run. His phone was down to eight percent battery anyway and needed to be left to charge.
The sun, sand, and the saltwater had given him exactly what he needed. Time away from the crazy just to think. Not that he was any closer to an answer about Atlanta. He’d considered it from what he thought was every angle he could think of and still didn’t have a feel for whether or not it was a good move. Maybe that should tell him something, yet somehow, it didn’t.
Or maybe it was simply that he was still wrapping his head around his feelings for Leona. There was no denying that a switch flipped last night. But from what to what, he had no idea. He had meant what he said to Carlos—she wasn’t just a holiday hookup. That had been true for him since the day on the boat when they had talked about his father. He’d developed a real attachment to her, for lack of a better word, the day they’d spent together on the pitch with
all the kids. No, that wasn’t right. He was “attached” to Josef and had been since pretty much the beginning of camp. He was more than attached to Leona.
The thing was, he just didn’t know the word for it. It felt trivial to say he fancied her. That was what you told your friends when you were fifteen—that you fancied a girl. It was more than that. It was to the point where the best part of his day—that he had spent thinking about her and how much longer until he got to see her again—was when she showed back up at the villa with dinner and told him all about her day.
What he really needed to know was how she was feeling. Was she as caught up in her own thoughts as he was? Did she feel the same way? He just wished he could put a name to it. This wasn’t love, was it? Was there a step before that emotion he didn’t know about?
He needed to talk to her again about the job. Needed to know if she really thought it was a good idea and how—if—she saw herself fitting in to all that. Because despite the fact that he could hear Oliver telling him that her opinion didn’t matter, he knew that was a lie. Her opinion did matter. Maybe more than anything else.
When he arrived back at his villa, he took a moment to stretch before heading inside to shower. He tried to brush off as much sand as he could from his feet as he punched in his code to the keypad by the side of the door, not wanting to track it inside and create a mess. A mess would mean more time Leona spent cleaning and less time in his arms.
He let the heavy door slam behind him as he walked in. He was still lost in his own thoughts and almost missed the tall, slender figure sitting on the loveseat in the living room. If the sound of the slamming door hadn’t made her flinch, who knows how long it would have taken for him to notice her.
“Who the fuck are you?” he exclaimed, caught off guard by the stranger. “And how the fuck did you get in here?”
“Oh good, you’re back,” she said, a sly smile appearing on her face as she stood from the couch and turned to face him. “I was wondering how much longer you were going to keep me waiting.”
Her heels clacked against the wood floor as she stepped closer. Cullen blinked a couple of times as he took her in. She was incredibly tall for a woman, probably close to a full six feet flat-footed, but those intense looking stiletto heels she had on easily put her closer to six feet four. Her perfectly styled, shoulder-length, golden-blonde hair had strands of honey coloring running through it that Cullen knew must cost a fortune in upkeep. Her black dress pants were tailored to her slender body. The white chiffon button-down blouse she paired with it was sleeveless, showing off her toned arms. He would bet anything that if he looked around, he’d find a blazer that matched her slacks too. Everything about her screamed money, lots and lots of money. And yet, she’d broken into his hotel suite.
“You failed to answer my question. Who, the fuck, are you?” he repeated, slower this time.
“Felicity,” she answered, holding out a perfectly manicured hand to him. A moment later, after looking him up and down, she retracted it. “On second thought, you appear unclean.”
“What are you doing here, Felicity?” he bit out her name.
“I’m with Southland Holdings.”
“Should that mean something to me?”
