Delphine Dryden - Mai Tai For Two

“That last one isn’t on the list.”

“I’m making an educated guess. Wow. I have to call her. She’s going to flip out.”

Alan snorted and shook his head. “I can’t see her going that far from her office for a vacation. Even a free one.”

“You just don’t like her because she dumped you.” Julie had fixed them up shortly after she started working with Alan, but the chemistry simply wasn’t there.

“There was no dumping. We only went out three times. Besides, it’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like me.”

It was sort of true. Amanda had liked Alan okay, but she had never like liked him. Julie thought she was nuts for that, but there was no accounting for taste. Then Amanda had met Jeremy, so the point became moot.

Julie herself had friend-zoned Alan right away, because of the coworker thing. Over the past three years he’d also become her generally acknowledged “work husband,” and with that title came the acceptance that he was off-limits...because having a crush on your work husband was pathetic. No matter how much he brightened your day by walking into your cubicle, and regardless of what his ass looked like when he walked back out. Never mind that one ill-advised Christmas-party mistletoe kiss.

Julie could admire a man objectively and enjoy the view, but that didn’t mean she had to start acting a fool. She had her own plans for her life, very specific things she wanted to accomplish in the next few years, and she’d started to feel that boyfriends simply weren’t worth the distraction from her goals. Not that Alan had ever been a boyfriend.

Still, going on a romantic vacation with him might have been interesting. Nice, rather than romantic. Julie told herself it would have been...pleasant. Because of how trustworthy and affable he was. Always good to have another buddy along. It was in character for him to give the trip away, though. Typical good-guy move.

Julie revised her initial reaction. He was too nice, really, Alan was. And Mr. Dependable was maybe not the best person to share a wild tropical vacation with. Her life was already safe and well-regulated enough; the point of a vacation was to get away from that for a little while, but not to gather more emotional clutter in the process. Thus, the no-strings-sex idea.

“Then it’s a good thing you’re giving the trip to your parents, like the good son you are. So sweet. A mother’s angel.” She pinched his cheek like an overbearing aunt at a family reunion. “You know I’ll be out parasailing from horseback while simultaneously kayaking or something, while you’d have probably hung out at the poolside bar drinking beers. So you would have been more likely to see Amanda than me.” This wasn’t true. Alan would’ve been the one on the horse, pulling her along.

He lifted his beer, saluting her with it. “I’ll be sure to tell Mom and Dad to wave to you from the beach as you fly by.”

Chapter Two

Alan recognized the lei flowers from the plumeria trees his mom grew back home. The clean spicy-citrus scent felt right for this place, practically crooning out “Welcome to Oahu.” He watched Julie savoring it, burying her nose in the pink-and-yellow blossoms and inhaling with a beatific smile. Alan reached for his phone to snap a picture, but Julie straightened up and ducked into the car too fast for him to capture the moment. Just as well.

Amanda was close behind her, but Alan lingered outside a few seconds longer while the limo driver bedecked him with a lei of his own. It was less girly than the others, with some sort of small white flowers intertwined with shells, leaves and what appeared to be nuts. He clamped down on the urge to make a nut joke to the guy, figuring he’d probably heard all of those about a million times before.

When he joined the girls in the spacious vehicle, though, he had to lead with, “Yeah, I hung back so the driver could sling his nuts on me.”

Julie snorted. Amanda rolled her eyes, though he caught a hint of a smile. She was sitting directly opposite Julie, and Alan had to make a split-second decision on who to sit next to. The platonic work wife, who reliably laughed at his jokes, or the cute single girl who always seemed reluctant to admit she found them funny? He defaulted to his comfort zone, sliding in next to Julie.

Amanda gestured at the lush leather-clad interior, which looked and smelled expensive. “Pinch me.”

“I know, right?” Julie held her lei up, taking another quick sniff. “I’ve felt that way ever since they called my name at that meeting. I mean, I knew it was a luxury vacation, but I guess my experience to date was way too limited to let me imagine what this would really be like.”

She and Amanda both paused to snuffle at their leis again, happy-sighing in tandem.

“I’ll pinch you,” Alan offered. “Either of you.” He flopped closer to Julie, his shoulder brushing hers as he arranged himself. At the unexpected contact, both of them automatically shifted a few inches away, maintaining a buffering distance like magnets with the same polarity.

Amanda shot him a smirk. “I’ll pass on the pinch, thanks. Gosh, it was so great on the plane, Alan, while you were sleeping and quietly watching violent guy movies on your iPad and not giving anyone grief.”

He’d definitely picked the safer side to sit on.

“Don’t make me separate you two,” Julie warned.

“Julie was watching the movie, too,” Alan pointed out. “Don’t lie, Jules. I saw you do that fist-pump during the big shoot-out scene.”

She gave his shoulder a friendly shove, breaking the magical buffer zone again, and he laughed to cover up his startled reaction when she let her hand linger for a second, shaping itself around his upper arm. He thought of the days ahead, the beach and the likelihood of her touching his arm again when he was shirtless. Then he put that thought carefully away, in the same deep cupboard of his brain where he stored all the photos of Julie he hadn’t taken, the smiles she gave him first thing in the morning over the coffee machine in the break room, and the feeling of her lips under his the one and only time he’d let his impulses overcome his good sense.

The cupboard was locked and had to stay that way, because Julie liked him like a brother. She’d told him so, always said he was the dorky brother she’d never had, even though she had three perfectly good actual brothers. He knew two of them through work, and they seemed like nice enough guys. They seemed a whole lot like him, though, which might have been Julie’s deeper point. He reminded her too much of them for her to ever consider him in a romantic light. Even after that single tipsy kiss over a year ago—that kiss, God, all hot mulled wine and mistletoe and wild promise—she’d never seemed to go through the revelation Alan had felt. His whole world had shifted, things falling into place so hard he had to brace himself against the shock. No such bracing was needed on Julie’s part, because to her it had obviously been no big deal. He’d heard her laugh the incident off to a coworker who’d asked if they were together, describing it as a case of tripping and accidentally falling into each other’s faces. A one-time oopsie.

You have to get over any girl who calls you an oopsie, dude.

Instead of getting over it, he glanced at Julie from the corner of his eye and wondered what she’d look like in her bathing suit. Then he tried to correct himself, picturing Amanda in her bathing suit, as though he was simply picturing all the girls that way instead of one in particular. Hot as she was, though, Amanda did nothing for him. Julie crept back into his thoughts, like always.

If he’d had a girlfriend at the moment, it would have been easier not to dwell. He hadn’t wanted to come at all without a romantic plus-one. Unlike Julie, he didn’t have a single friend he especially wanted to spend four days and three nights with in a tropical paradise. Nobody other than Julie, at least, who was technically a platonic friend. But when his parents had refused his offer, he’d decided to suck it up and make the trip alone. He’d spent a few hours by phone and email convincing the resort to make up the difference in the prize amount with credits toward all the kayaking, helicopter tours and other adventurous stuff he hoped to do.