They interacted in the homes of their friends, or public places like the youth center and the hospital. It was strange she’d never thought about that before, but now it seemed very intimate having him so near a bed she’d slept in.
She liked it.
“Sara, doesn’t it ever bother you to completely live up to every stereotype that has made us call you princess since you were twelve?”
She thought about that for a moment. “I’ve never taken it as an insult.” He walked to the edge of the still-rumpled bed, stared for a moment, then took a seat in the desk chair.
“It was never meant to be an insult,” he agreed. “At first it was just funny, then it just stuck. Because it fit.”
“Which means you’ll totally understand if I say no to the biking. Sweat and I don’t get along well, not to mention being out in the sun too long. I burn easily.” His eyes took in how much skin she had showing, even under the pink paint. At that reminder, she felt her heart rate speed up. Suddenly she could think of a few reasons she could get used to sweating.
“You were out—dressed in nearly nothing—yesterday on the beach.” She shook her head. “I didn’t go out in the sunlight for more than a few minutes until after dusk.”
“Ever heard of sunscreen?”
“Ever heard of skin cancer?”
“Ever heard of wearing clothes that cover…things…up?”
“Ever had a sunburn?”
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Just My Type
He paused. “I don’t think so. Nothing bad anyway.”
“Well, they can hurt like hell. Then they itch and peel. Not to mention the freckles. No thank you.” Mac stretched his legs out and folded his hands on his stomach. “You’re pretty mouthy for a girl with a hangover.”
“I’m feeling a little better.” She realized it was true.
“Drink the Gatorade. Take a shower. Then we’re going out.”
“I’m not biking. Or running. Or rock climbing,” she said on her way to the bathroom.
“How about snorkeling?”
“Ew.” She stopped by the vanity and exchanged the Gatorade for a brush. “Seaweed, fish poop, mud.” Mac chuckled. “These are some of the most beautiful waters in the world. You’re going to pass up the chance to see coral and fish and…”
“I have the Discovery Channel,” she said, trying to brush through a particularly bad knot of hair.
She turned and faced the mirror. And froze.
No
! She was a mess. Her makeup was smudged, her hair was a disaster, the pink paint was smeared all over, and her eyes were bloodshot. This was a fantastic way to entice Mac into bed. Puke on him and then greet him the morning after looking like the undead.
She
never
saw anyone without being put together. She wasn’t high maintenance— She stopped. Okay, she was. But she didn’t spend hours getting ready— Again, she paused. Okay, it took her over an hour on even the most casual day.
The thing was, it wasn’t vanity. She just liked that stuff. It was fun. It was her hobby. She loved messing with her hair. She kept it long because of all the style options it gave her. It wasn’t unusual for her to try two or three completely different hairstyles in one morning before deciding on how to leave the house. She also loved makeup and nail polish and stick-ons and body lotions and sprays and gels. She loved the colors, the textures, the smells. She liked clothes and shoes too, finding it fun to have a variety of styles and needs from casual sweatpants to fun jeans to fancy dresses. Bit it was the before-the-clothes-go-on stuff she liked best.
“I read there are some historic shipwreck sites and…”
“So go,” she said, suddenly irritable. She tossed the brush down. She was going to have to find a salon. She was going to have to dazzle Mac later to make up for this disaster. “I came down here to vacation alone anyway.”
Mac didn’t say anything for a moment.
She avoided looking at him. He was either looking at her like she was nuts, or like she’d hurt his feelings. Either one would make her feel bad.
“Fine. I’d love to snorkel.”
“Great. I’ll find plenty to do.”
“Like?” he said
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Erin Nicholas
“I have a long to-do list,” she informed him. Which was a lie. She’d come down here to do three things—go far away from home by herself, get drunk for the first time ever and figure out what was so damned great about sex anyway. In that order, for the most part.
She only had one thing left to do.
And now that Mac was here, the chances of her doing it were looking pretty slim. She couldn’t do it with someone else. Not when the man she was madly in love with was right here. And that man was certainly not cooperating. Yet.
“Give me an example,” he said, stretching to his feet.
She finally faced him, horribly self-conscious about her streaked mascara. “Shopping.” He’d clearly been expecting something more risqué because it took him a moment to repeat,
“Shopping?”
“Yes.” She flipped her terribly tangled hair over her shoulder. “There is some amazing local jewelry and there’s this shop that makes handmade soaps and lotions I want to check out.” Mac sighed as if very put-upon. “Fine, let’s go.”
He wasn’t invited. In addition to lotions and jewelry, she had to find a salon to help her do something great to surprise him with later. “You snorkel, I’ll shop. We can meet later.”
“I can shop.” He said it like he was saying,
I can push that heavy boulder up that steep mountain over
and over again
.
“Why would you shop?” she asked, annoyed. Why couldn’t he just leave something alone for a change? “I don’t want to snorkel, so I shouldn’t have to snorkel. You don’t want to shop, so you shouldn’t have to shop.”
“I don’t have to shop. I choose to shop.”
Sara looked at him, then pointed to the front door of the condo. “Snorkel. I mean it. If you come shopping with me, I swear all I’m going to look at—and try on—is unbelievably skimpy swimming suits and lingerie and I’m going to show you every single one and ask your opinion.” He opened him mouth. Then shut it. Then spun on his heel and left the condo without looking back.
“Four o’clock. Right here,” he said simply, before the door shut behind him.
Sara quickly showered and then dressed in a simple white sundress and sandals. With her hair still wet, she grabbed a taxi—or more accurately, had the concierge call a taxi for her—to take her into Christiansted to what he promised was the best spa on the island.
When Sara emerged two hours later, having been wrapped, masked, colored, trimmed, massaged and generally pampered, her headache was gone—as were her natural curls. She’d let the woman straighten her hair, cut two inches off the length and color the light natural blond with chestnut streaks. It was time for a change, time for everyone outside of her to realize she was serious about being a new woman, so maybe 46
Just My Type
they needed to see the outside of her differently. She was even able to ignore the slight stinging of her new tattoo.
She walked right past Mac, turning to watch him stalk toward the front doors of the spa with barely a glance in her direction. Amused, she watched him enter the spa and leaned back against the warm stone wall of the building to wait for him.
Less than two minutes later, he was on the sidewalk glancing in each direction with a deep frown.
“You come here often?” she said, in a false, husky voice.
He turned toward her voice and then stopped. “What happened to you?” She propped a hand on her hip. She knew she looked good. She also smelled good. She’d asked about the local shop that made their own soaps and one of the girls had offered to run over and get Sara whatever she wanted. Upon their recommendation, she now owned, and smelled like, a tangy pineapple-and-mint combination. Which Mac would like if he got close enough to catch a whiff.
“I shopped and got my hair cut.”
He looked from her to the front of the spa, which was quite obviously geared toward the tourists with some money to spend, then back to her. “That takes two hours and fourteen minutes?”
“You were timing me?”
“I snorkeled for an hour. Then waited. And waited.”
“You said four o’clock.”
“I’m hungry.”
“So go eat something.”
He shrugged and, if she wasn’t mistaken—which she surely was—looked a little sheepish.
“Figured you needed to eat too.”
“They served me fruit and rum while I was getting my pedicure.” Instead of admiring her toes he looked at her with a frown. “Rum?” She laughed. “It’s a local staple, Mac, they had to at least offer. I did turn it down. I ate the fruit, though.”
“Yeah, this looks like an authentic island hangout,” he said sarcastically. “It was probably here when Columbus landed.”
“Well, whatever, it’s not your job to make sure I eat. I’m perfectly capable of knowing when I’m hungry.” She pushed away from the wall. She wanted him ogling her in her sundress and complimenting her hair and wanting to kiss her as badly as she wanted to kiss him, not being, well, how he was being.
“Fruit is a side dish,” he said, falling into step beside her. “You have to eat more than that.”
“Such as?”
“A burger, a steak, chicken,” he said.
She shrugged. “I don’t eat a lot of meat.”
47
Erin Nicholas
He sighed. “I know. You’re damn picky.”
“It’s not picky, it’s…” She thought about the fact that a lot of food either didn’t appeal to her or upset her stomach. She didn’t eat anything too spicy, too greasy, too heavy, too sweet… “Okay, maybe I’m picky.”
Jessica had raised Sara since she was twelve and their father had died. She’d read probably twenty parenting books and had taken the healthy eating and nutrition stuff to heart, since it was something she could control—unlike the nightmares that plagued Sara at least four nights a week for the first eight months.
Sara hadn’t had soda, candy bars, potato chips or any other junk food. She hadn’t even tasted a Cheeto until she was twenty. She ate pizza on occasion and liked ice cream, but she simply hadn’t developed a taste for snack foods. She wasn’t all that crazy about eating, period. She ate because she got hungry, but rarely had a craving and didn’t know of a food she couldn’t live without.
“This is the Caribbean. The fish here has to be phenomenal,” Mac suggested as they walked.
She didn’t understand his obsession with whether she ate, but she liked shellfish. “I could probably eat scallops or something.”
“You will eat scallops or something,” he said firmly. “You need to eat and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat a burger.”
“You probably haven’t.”
“That’s weird. Who doesn’t like cheeseburgers?”
Sara shuddered. “Me.”
“Maybe you just haven’t had a good one.”
“I don’t want one. Maybe I’ll try scallops.”
“You order them or I’ll order them for you.”
Mac often got bossy with her but never surly. She hoped the uncharacteristic behavior was due to sexual tension. If it wasn’t now, it would be.
“Sure, let’s go eat,” she said, with a big smile. “Scallops sound good. Thanks, Mac.” He looked suspicious—she just couldn’t win—as he escorted her down two more blocks and then around the corner. “The cabby said this place has great food.” Mac held the door open for her.
She looked at the front of the dilapidated building off the main street. “The cabby? Why don’t I go back to the spa and ask them…”
Mac took her elbow and steered her through the doorway of the tiny restaurant that held ten empty tables. “Because I want to eat real food that comes in a proportion that might have a chance at filling me up and won’t cost me a month’s pay.”
Sara pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She’d never thought about finances where Mac was concerned. He was a single guy with no major expenses as far as she knew. Truthfully, she didn’t know 48
Just My Type
much about Mac’s lifestyle outside of what he did for a living. Since her brother did the same thing she knew quite a bit about it and how much it paid. She knew about the time he spent with his friends since all of those people were also her friends. Oh, and of course she knew about his
romantic
liaisons. Or, at least she knew what she overheard and inferred.
She knew his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was in college. She suspected that was part of his bond with Sam since he was the only one of Mac’s friends who had also lost both parents. But she didn’t know about his hobbies, or if he had investments, or if he was paying off college loans or out-of-control credit cards, or if he had siblings.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she blurted as Mac steered her to a small corner table and held her chair out. She didn’t sit, but stood watching him process her question.
He shook his head. “Only child.”
“Welcome! Please sit.” A young boy, of fifteen or sixteen, approached from the general direction of the kitchen. He laid menus on the table, but Sara barely noticed him. She continued to stand, staring at Mac, feeling she couldn’t let this moment slip away.
There were things about him that she wanted to know. She’d never met any of his family or any other friends besides the guys that were as much a part of her life as his.
“Do you have grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins…”
“Grandparents are gone. Yeah, a few of the others. But my family is the guys, and you and Jess, and Danika now.”
For some reason, Sara felt her throat tighten and her eyes sting. She’d known it, of course. Everyone in their group felt the same way. They were all closer than a typical set of siblings and any one of them would do anything for the others. But hearing him say it, with the look he had in his eyes and that tone in his voice, made her homesick suddenly. She loved all of those people so much.
The waiter continued to hover near the table, clearly confused about why they weren’t sitting.
“We’re going to need a minute,” he told the boy. The waiter moved off, but neither Mac or Sara even blinked.