Page 11 of Ice Ice Maybe
“Seriously—don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’ve got this.”
Just then, a man walking by with a gym bag glanced at me.
I gave a small wave. “Hey there.”
“Hey,” he said, continuing on his way.
“If that was a gym buddy of yours, you should have introduced us,” Zena said as she watched him enter the health club. “That’s what couples do.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know him.”
She raised an eyebrow, a flicker of suspicion crossing her face. For a moment, I thought she might press further, but instead, she let it slide.
“Who else will be at Island Prime?” I asked.
Zena hesitated, glancing back at the entrance of the health club, then turning back to me. “It’s an intimate dinner—Coach Quinn and General Manager Steve Barlow. And, of course, you’ll also get to meet my mother, but you need to pretend like you’ve already met. Call her Mrs. Dalton when you see her, then she’ll tell you to call her Elena.”
I felt my head spinning with all this new information. This fake relationship was getting more complicated by the minute.
“Uh-oh …” Zena glanced over my shoulder again and froze. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“What?” I asked. “Can I look this time?”
She shook her head. “No. Kiss me. Now.”
I hesitated, but something urgent in Zena’s eyes told me she was serious. In one fluid motion, I stepped forward, snaked my arm around her waist and pulled her flush against me. Her gasp of surprise was cut short as I captured her lips with mine.
For a split second, Zena was still, and I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. Then she melted into me, her hands sliding up my chest and around my neck. What started as an act became startlingly real as she parted her lips, deepening the kiss with a hunger that matched my own. There was no way she could have been acting.
I lost all sense of time and place, aware only of Zena—the softness of her lips, the warmth of her body pressed against mine, and the faint scent of her perfume mingling with carne asada from the restaurant. She made a small noise in the back of her throat, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and I tightened my grip on her waist in response.
When we finally broke apart, both of us were out of breath. Zena’s eyes were wide, her lips slightly swollen, and I imagined I looked equally stunned. That was when I realized with a jolt to my senses that our little charade had become far more complicated than either of us had bargained for.
Zena finally broke the silence, her voice slightly shaky. “I think we might have miscalculated this whole fake dating thing.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said with a nod. I glanced around the parking lot, trying to track down the person who had startled her, but not seeing anybody at all. “What spooked you?”
Zena wrinkled her nose. “Okay—I’m sorry, but I tricked you. There was nobody behind you.”
I blinked twice. “What are you talking about?”
“It was a test,” she said. “To see how you would respond under pressure.”
My thoughts whirled like a windmill, but then I said the first coherent thing that popped into my head. “And how did I do?”
She nodded and licked her lips, her eyes holding a mixture of emotions I couldn’t quite decipher. “You passed with flying colors.”
Before I could formulate any type of response, Zena slid into the driver’s seat of her car and shut the door. The engine roared to life, and with a quick wave through the window, she drove away, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust and the fading scent of her perfume.
With my lips still tingling from our kiss, I stood there rooted to the same spot as Zena’s car disappeared around the corner. My mind raced with a thousand questions, with the first and most important one being: What the heck just happened?
Chapter Four
Zena
I approached Island Prime from the parking lot, the familiar sight of the rustic wooden structure over the bay never failing to impress me. The restaurant seemed to float on the water on its stilts, its large windows already aglow with soft light, even though it was only ten before six.
I entered the restaurant and walked past the busy hostess in the front lobby, since I knew where I was going. Always the same table in the far corner. The restaurant’s interior was a stunning blend of modern elegance and coastal charm with its dark hardwood floor and accents, aqua chairs, and warm, amber lighting. The place was already packed, the ambiance a mix of lively conversations and the clinking of glasses and cutlery.
