“After nine.”
Shannon looked around the room to find a clock . . . didn’t see one.
“I need some coffee,” she said more to herself than Avery.
“I won’t keep you. I’m just checking to make sure you’re okay.”
She wiggled her toes on the carpet covering the dark wooden floors of the room. “I’m fine.”
“You left pretty abruptly last night.”
“Victor convinced me to sneak away.” She offered a tiny white lie to keep the questions at bay.
She heard footsteps from outside the room and then a knock at her door. “Shannon?” Victor called through the wood.
“Just a minute,” she said, covering the phone with her hand in an attempt to keep Avery from knowing she was talking with someone.
It didn’t work. “Oh my God, he’s with you.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I need to hear all about this.”
Shannon didn’t believe for a second she’d escape the dozen questions her friend would ask.
“It was late, we’d both had another drink. I slept over. Nothing happened.”
Avery laughed. “That isn’t a good enough explanation. But I’ll let you go for now.”
“I’ll call you this afternoon.”
“Okay. But before you hang up, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
Shannon stood and stretched. “About what?”
“You and Victor made the tabloids last night. A small shot on the front page leading to a full-page spread on the tenth.”
Any dust in Shannon’s head blew away with the news. “Whatever could they possibly say about me on a full page?”
“It’s never flattering.”
“Did they photoshop thirty pounds on me and say I was suicidal?” Which had happened a year after the split with Paul.
“No. But I wanted to warn you if you hadn’t seen it. And since you’re obviously still with Victor . . .”
“Got it.” She knew the drill. “I’ll call you later.”
They said their goodbyes, and Shannon tossed her cell phone on the bed.
In the bathroom, she found a bathrobe and made use of the brush and the extra toothbrush on the counter. She considered putting her jumpsuit on from the night before but couldn’t bring herself to start her day without coffee.
One last glance in the mirror . . . no makeup, sleep in the corners of her eyes, a borrowed shirt and bathrobe. This was the-day-after Shannon. If Victor didn’t like this look, they had no business spending serious time together. With a shrug, she padded, barefoot, out of her room and toward Victor’s kitchen.
He wore jeans. His back was to her when she entered the room, his hands busy pulling cups from a cupboard.
“Is that coffee?” she asked to get his attention.
He turned, his jaw slacked slightly, and his eyes did a slow crawl down her frame.
Shannon shifted her feet under his microscope.
“I might not wash that bathrobe.”
She took his words as a compliment and grinned. Her morning look must not have offended him. “Good morning.”
He shook his head with a slight groan, turned back to his task. “Coffee with sugar, right?”
“How did you know?”
He poured her a cup. “Every morning on the beach you were huddled over a cup, reading.”
“I’ll take the coffee, but I’m fresh out of reading material.” She took the cup he offered and doctored it with the sugar he had sitting out.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did. You?”
He sighed. “Do I offer the lie or tell the truth?”
She leaned against the counter, brought the cup to her lips. “Is this like the game of truth or dare?” The java splashed against her tongue, waking her fully.
“Knowing you were across the hall kept me up until three.”
She lowered her cup. “I should have gone home.”
“No, no, no . . . I wouldn’t have slept at all, then.”
She doubted that. She sipped her coffee again. “This is really good.”
“You’ve found my hidden talent.”
“Making coffee?”
“We all have one thing.” He led her out of the kitchen and into his informal dining room. There was a newspaper spread out on the table, evidence that he’d been sitting there for a while.
“How long have you been up?”
“Since six thirty.”
“That’s not a lot of sleep.”
They sat opposite each other, and Victor brushed the paper away. “My internal clock wakes me with the sun. It’s a curse.”
“It makes you productive.” She set her cup down, glanced at the paper. “About last night . . .”
“Yes?”
“Avery called this morning. It appears the paparazzi found something worthy of their magazines last night when you and I walked outside.”
He picked up his cup, shrugged. “Like I said, I have nothing to hide. Besides, they won’t know who I am.”
Shannon shook her head. “They will know your name, your business, and your net worth, if they think it will sell papers. They’re not called gossip magazines for nothing.”
Victor reached over, placed a hand over hers. “Don’t spend one more minute worrying about me.”
“I’m not worried, just warning you. We should come up with a statement we both stick to if we’re cornered by the media.” At least that’s how she’d approached them in the past. Scripted lines delivered and repeated to avoid the unfortunate slip of the truth.
Victor drank his coffee and regarded her with a tilt of his head. “What kind of statement do you suggest?”
She hadn’t thought about that. Shannon leaned back in her chair and processed the situation aloud. “We need to stay as close to the truth as possible. We met in Tulum.”
“That’s easy.”
She continued. “They will find out about our connection and about Corrie running off.”
“I can’t imagine they’d care about that.”
She looked at him as if he were new. “Your bride runs away and you’re seen with the photographer barely a month later. They’ll conclude there was something between us either before or during the wedding.” As that picture developed in her head, the nastiness that the media would paint started to appear. “They’ve been looking for something nasty on me for years. It can go a couple of ways. You’ll be a cheating bastard who got caught, or I’ll be the woman who lured you away. Neither are very flattering.”
“Or the truth.”
“Truth isn’t what they’re after.”
Victor shrugged. “I can handle it.”
“I’ve found that, so long as there is little fuel, the story just drops. Especially if something new comes around to take its place. It helps that you’re not famous and I’m no longer in the public eye because of my ex.”
He sat forward. “So we tell them we met in Tulum.”
“They’ll ask if we have a romantic relationship. Sex sells papers.”
He grinned. “And how should we answer that?”
Shannon traced the edge of her coffee cup with her index finger. “Maybe that we’re exploring our options.”
“Are we?” He flashed his teeth with his smile. “Exploring our options?”
“I’m wearing your T-shirt and drinking coffee in your home. I think we’re exploring something.”
His gaze drank her in, and his silence had her heartbeat working overtime. “Fifty-five days is too long,” he said under his breath.
“Victor—”
“I have dreamt of your lips, of your touch . . . of you every day since we’ve met. I want to explore.”
Her face started to heat. “I don’t know how to explore, Victor. I haven’t had a casual relationship since before I was married,” she confessed.
“Who said anything about casual?”
“You just jumped out of a—”
“Relationship,” he finished for her. “I know. But it wasn’t right. I can see that now.” He reached over and took her hand in his once again. “I met with Corrie last week. You know what I discovered?”
Did she want to hear this? “What?”
“That we were never right for each other. Her immaturity is the tip of the mountain of everything that was wrong about us. I wanted the next step in my life, and somehow thought I could just order up that bride and everything would be fine.”
A chord struck in her spine. The fact that she was once the “ordered bride” wasn’t lost on her.
“I leaped into that relationship without thinking.”
“You’re jumping again,” she argued.
“No. I’m thinking.”
“I’m not sure you’re thinking with the right side of your brain,” she said.
He grinned. “Admittedly. But it’s more than that. Or at least I think it’s more than that. It needs exploring to find out.”
“Fifty-five days—”
“Is too long.”
Her hand started to shake ever so slightly. Fear? Excitement? She couldn’t name the emotion to save her life. “The timing is off.”
“Why are you so against this? You’re attracted. Don’t try and deny it.”
She removed her hand from under his, pushed back from the table. “I’m an adult,” she said more to herself than him. “I don’t need to deny anything.” I’m not ready. As the words popped into her head, her body called her a liar.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” he asked.
I fall in love. You destroy me. The words ran through her head like a ticker tape on the evening news. None of which she could repeat without revealing too much. So she picked the words that would scare any man away. “I’ll get pregnant.”