Royal Wedding - Meg Cabot Page 0,26
to smooth them down with my fingertips.
Then the speedboat took us across the sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes aquamarine water to our own island, complete with a private dock leading to a thatched-roof cabana, inside of which is a king-sized bed so massive, you need a footstool to climb onto it (at least I do, anyway. Michael is tall enough not to need one).
There are two full his-and-hers baths (with teak shutters that open from the clawed-foot tubs to a spectacular view of the sea, so while you’re soaking in there, reading a book, you can also watch the waves, like in a commercial for erectile dysfunction). There’s a dining and sitting room, decorated to look like one of those old-timey beach houses from the movies where people wore safari suits and drank gin and tonics to prevent malaria and said things like “I’m terribly worried about the volcano, Christopher.”
And of course there’s an outdoor shower and hot tub, but you don’t need to worry about anyone spying on you using them naked, because the whole place is surrounded by a completely private beach, and there are no other living beings for miles around, except exotic seabirds and the occasional flash of silverfish leaping from the water against the pink sunset and a pod of dolphins that live nearby and come nosing around, curious about what we’re doing.
Dolphins. DOLPHINS.
And then there’s Mo Mo, the personal room-service butler assigned to us by the resort, who brings us succulently prepared meals three times a day by boat, and then also restocks the minibar and cleans our snorkel masks, before leaving us completely to ourselves. He rings the bell on his boat very loudly whenever he’s approaching to let us know he’s coming so we can put on our clothes.
Not that I don’t always have on clothes when I’m outside of the cabana, because I’m not about to pull another Me-Ah-My-Ah! and get spotted topless by a passing Google satellite or camera-equipped drone copter (though I know Lars and the rest of the security squad are stationed on the closest island with long-range sniper rifles, looking to take any of those out. This has become Lars’s favorite new hobby).
At first when I got here, I was like “Michael, this is insane. This is way over the top. How much is this costing you? You are spending way too much money. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but at least let me split the—”
Michael stuffed a rum-soaked piece of pineapple into my mouth and asked, “Can’t you relax for five minutes?”
So then I concentrated very hard on relaxing, which it turns out isn’t that hard to do when the sand is so white and soft and the waves so small and mild that you can simply walk a few steps out onto the beach, lie down, and let the warm water lap gently around you while the sun and sand sweetly embrace you until you finally fall asleep (fortunately having remembered to put on SPF 100).
When I woke up the tide was coming in, so the waves were a bit stronger and the beach had gotten a little smaller and Michael was leaning over me without his shirt on asking if I liked it (and also if I wanted to reapply my sunscreen), and I said sleepily, “Okay, Michael, I guess I can do this . . . just for the weekend.”
And he laughed and said, “I thought so,” and kissed me.
Then he asked if I thought I smelled smoke . . .
CHAPTER 16
7:00 p.m., Saturday, May 2
Sleepy Palm Cay, The Exumas, Bahamas
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It is amazing here. We are doing nothing. Nothing except kissing and eating and sleeping in the sun and playing Fireman and snorkeling (which is quite easy to do once you get the hang of it) and looking at birds and dolphins through the binoculars.
Although you don’t even need the binoculars, that’s how close the dolphins swim up.
I’m so relaxed, my eye has even stopped twitching. It could be because of the massive doses of magnesium I’ve been taking, or it could be because of leaving all that stress behind . . . or it could be because of love.
I’m voting for love.
But the most amazing thing is the sight I’m looking at right now, and I don’t need the binoculars to see it either: Michael wearing nothing but board shorts as he lies in the hammock across from mine, reading a book on