scene in front of me. This was so much better than any book I’d ever read. Perhaps better than any book that had ever been written. No writer could do this moment justice by putting words to it. Because there were not enough words in the universe to describe all the feelings rushing through me.
Noah helped me down onto the picnic blanket then reached for two other small blankets and spread one out across my knees once I’d gotten comfortable. I leaned back against the pillow and looked out over the dark sea in front of us. It looked so vast, spreading out from here all the way to the horizon, where it vanished into the night sky, joined it as if they were one. Noah popped the champagne and poured us two glasses. He passed one to me and then paused.
“What?” I asked.
“I want to say something, but it might sound strange.” The warm orange glow from the candles made his eyes a completely different shade of blue now.
“Say it.”
“I don’t know if you believe in stuff like this, but I do.”
“Believe in what?”
“You know I told you that it felt like Sindi was always meant to be my sister,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s just that . . .” He shrugged and went silent for a moment. “You know, I wasn’t meant to be on duty that day that you had your accident. I was meant to be on leave already. The only reason I came in was because two people got sick that day. Two people had to get sick on the same day for me to have to go to work.”
“Really?”
“And if I had been on duty, I don’t work that part of town. What I’m trying to say is that I feel like we were meant to meet each other. That’s all.” He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t say anything. “Sorry, was that too much? Too deep? Did I get carried away there with meaning or—”
“No.” I cut him off. “You didn’t. It’s just weird, because I was feeling the same way. I mean, what are the chances of getting stuck in an elevator, and then hearing you say your address so randomly, and then waking up and that being the only thing I really remembered?” I paused. “It’s been a weird two weeks, that’s for sure.”
“It has. But really, really good.”
“Really good,” I echoed.
He held his glass up and I clinked mine against his. “To weird, fateful meetings,” he said.
“To weird, fateful meetings,” I repeated, taking a sip of the champagne. The bubbles burst against my lips and tongue, and each one felt like it contained a little magical possibility.
CHAPTER 66
We didn’t do much eating, we didn’t do much drinking or talking, for that matter. In fact, we’d spent most of the evening doing nothing more than staring at each other in the dim, warm candlelight. The only sounds around us were the rhythmic breaking of the waves, and the sound of our breathing. When a breeze picked up, rushing through the palm trees and causing our candles to dance frantically, I shivered. Noah walked over to the edge of the pool and dragged his fingers over the water.
“It’s heated,” he said.
I didn’t know much about the world of real romance and seduction, but I knew enough to know that the fact the pool was heated wasn’t really the pertinent point that Noah was trying to make. It being heated was almost irrelevant, the question and intention lay more in the what were we going to do about the fact it was heated?
“It’s heated,” I repeated.
Noah smiled. Naughty and flirty. “Do you want to . . .” He left the question open-ended and it hung in the air around us. We both knew what the question was. God, even that gray monkey sitting in the palm tree watching us knew what the question was.
“I’ll get my swimsuit.” I rushed back to my room and changed as quickly as I could. I wrapped a fluffy gown around me and, before walking back out, looked at myself in the mirror.
“This is it!” I whispered to myself. This was the moment. I could feel it. It was about to happen, and I was ready for it . . . or was I?
I smiled at myself and then ran my hand through my hair. It was weird how it looked different on me. When I was chicken-eating Zenobia-Phobia, it just looked like a non-hairstyle. The kind a momish-mom who