“But there isn’t anybody else as cute as you,” Dental-Floss-Bikini whined. “Believe me. We’ve been looking.”
Why wouldn’t these women take no for an answer? I would be in over my head with them. I suffered from self-doubt when I was alone with just one woman. How on earth was I supposed to rise to the occasion to satisfy three who were quite obviously horny as hell? Where would I start? What did foreplay look like with three women? The only knowledge I had of such things were pornos, and even then, I’d found simply watching it overwhelming. It seemed like a hell of a lot of work.
And it would be sticky if whipped cream was involved.
I didn’t like sticky.
I continued backing away and hoped the women wouldn’t follow. “I have a girlfriend,” I lied.
The three of them rolled their eyes.
Banana-Nails shrugged. “So?”
“I don’t see her,” Malory added.
“Bring her with you.” Dental-Floss winked.
Jesus, they won’t quit!
I needed to be firm and direct. I gathered my composure and stopped backing away. “Fine. I don’t have a girlfriend. But I’m just not interested, all right? I’m sorry.”
The three of them looked back and forth between each other with blank expressions on their faces.
Dental-Floss gestured at the three of them with a manic hand. “You’re saying no to this? Seriously?”
“Uh, yes. Seriously.”
Malory rolled her eyes and twined her fingers around each of one of her friend’s hands. “Forget him. We don’t need him to have a good time anyway. Do we, girls?”
The three of them criticized my choice as they marched off, hips swaying, hair swishing back and forth across their backs, sandals slapping against the soles of their perfectly manicured and moisturized feet.
I stood dumbly in the middle of the market and looked around, wondering if anyone had seen or heard the exchange. If they had, nobody seemed to care. The crowds were busy seeing to their own business.
Women stopped to look at beautiful handmade shawls and pashminas hanging from hooks along the sides of tents. They caught in the breeze and tantalized the shoppers with their shimmering thread and sparkly sequins. The fabrics were dazzling shades of ruby red, sapphire blue, turquoise, pink, and emerald green.
As I watched, several were pulled down from hooks and purchased, and finally wrapped around the shoulders of their new owners, who looked up at their husbands for compliments.
They received them.
I smiled to myself.
That was a much more appealing situation to me than three strangers who wanted to use my body as a whipped cream dipstick.
I made my way through the remaining part of the market I hadn’t yet seen and came across a local couple with puppies for sale. The mother dog was lying at the feet of her owner, while eight black puppies with bits of white markings all in different places played and napped within a cardboard box. I paused, peered down into the box, and smiled.
Images of sitting on the little porch—once it was repaired, of course—outside the cabin with a canine friend lounging at my feet flooded my mind, and I liked the feeling of contentment that washed over me.
If I knew I was staying a long time or possibly indefinitely, I might have picked one up out of the box and brought it home with me. But there was still so much up in the air and a dog was a commitment I couldn’t afford. So I pulled myself away from the box regretfully and continued through the rest of the market, now making my way back the way I’d come to head for the road.
There, parked along the curb, I happened upon an old Ford Ranger with a rusted bumper and peeling faded blue paint. There was a cardboard sign propped up on the windshield and a price of three hundred dollars had been scrawled across the board in permanent marker.
It would make my life a hell of a lot easier to have a vehicle on the island while I was there instead of always relying on public transportation.
I found the owner sitting across the street at a coffee shop, paid him his money, and gave him a little extra to help me with the process of insuring the truck. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I was driving myself back to my temporary homestead with bags of groceries on the passenger seat and music flowing through the speakers.
Life was good.
Chapter 4
Katie
The Rubella’s were a young and obscenely wealthy couple. From what I’d learned