“Trust me, that I understand.” I fight back a smile as I turn to find the guys waving us over.
“We’re going for drinks, come on.” Luke waits until I reach his side, and then slings an arm around my shoulders, tugging me against his side in a casual gesture that sends my heart leaping into my throat. He acts like we’ve done this a million times before, and I love the feeling.
“So how did a guy like you wind up with such a stunner?” Paul jokes, flashing me a quick wink as he takes Meghan’s hand, with the kind of ease that makes me smile to see. They’re a good match, the two of them. Easy with one another, relaxed. Plus, I can tell from the appreciative glances Paul keeps shooting his fiancée’s way, they’re both head over heels for one another. It’s adorable.
Inspiring.
I elbow Luke, smirking. “Yeah, how did you win me over, exactly?”
He gazes down at me, eyes alight with mischief, as we trail the others into the hallway and down toward the bank of elevators. “Well, it was in a similar resort to this one, actually, wasn’t it, Celia? We’d been working together for a long time—”
Meghan fakes a scandalized gasp. “Ooh, so it was forbidden office love, then?”
“Something like that.” Luke grins. “But then one weekend, we were finally able to get away from the pressures of work, and just be ourselves with one another. I kissed her in the elevator, and that was that. Right, Celia?”
My cheeks flare bright red. Does he mean now? But he can’t. This is all just part of the charade, isn’t it? He needed a convincing story for Paul, so he used our real one, cleverly disguised. I force myself to smile easily, playing along. “Of course. Though, you’re leaving out the part with the mind-blowing sex.”
He said he’s competitive with his friends, after all.
Paul and Meghan burst into laughter. Luke leans in to kiss my cheek. “Trust me, I would never forget that part.” His gaze bores into mine for a moment, until the elevator doors ding open, breaking the tension. “I was just saving the best part of the story for last.”
The four of us pile into the elevator—the same one Luke and I kissed in not so long ago—and Meghan glances around us. “So, the mind-blowing sex—did that happen in the same elevator where you guys made out, or…?”
“Should we be careful which elevator we take in here?” Paul jokes, and all of us laugh.
When we reach the ground floor, we take a walk around the property first. There’s even more to the hotel than we were able to see from our suite’s windows. We pass tennis courts, a squash area, even an on-site vineyard, where you can go pick your own grapes, and learn more about wine processing from the hotel’s vintners. There’s also a full-service spa area that looks huge.
Meghan flashes me a grin when we pass that. “You and I are definitely coming back here at some point,” she promises.
Finally, we reach the bar, set on the farthest side of the hotel from us. It butts right up against the cliff above the beachfront. There’s a set of stairs near the bar that lead down to the beach, and the building itself sits close to the edge so that from the table we secure, we have a stunning view out over the sea. Down below on the beach, we spot people sunbathing, and a few intrepid surfers out battling waves in the deeper water.
Luke’s the perfect gentleman, pulling out my chair for me and ordering on all of our behalf, since he’s the most familiar with the wine list in this region. He’s always been like this, even at work events, but I’ve never appreciated it as much as I do now, with the full force of his manners trained on me.
It makes me feel special in a way no guy ever has before. I can’t remember the last time I felt like a real lady on a date, much less a pampered one.
It doesn’t hurt that, as we’re settling in after ordering, Luke scoots my chair closer to his, and slides one hand over to rest on my knee, underneath the table. His palm is warm against my skin, his fingers curled lightly around my thigh, a reminder of what we just did in our hotel room not so long ago. A reminder of how those fingers felt inside me, as he pushed my back up against the window.
I feel my breath hitch, and I know I’m starting to get wet again just remembering it. I try to think about something, anything, else. At the same time, though, I reach down to rest one hand over Luke’s, curling my fingers around his as I lean in to listen to Paul’s story, about how he proposed to Meghan. It’s a cute story, in which they were on vacation in the Swiss Alps, and he was trying and failing to teach her to ski, and he worried his whole proposal idea was going to be ruined because she just wanted to go back inside and nap instead of taking the lift up to where he’d planned the thing.