Zori
The sounds of birds and howler monkeys greeted my ears. I was exhausted. My body, deliciously used. The smell of breakfast surrounded me, and I moaned. I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I knew that smell. Mateo was in the kitchen, or he’d told Javier that I loved French toast. Either way, it dragged me out of bed. I threw on the shirt he’d draped over the chair and pulled on a pair of shorts from my bag.
As I made my way downstairs, I heard female laughter along with Mateo’s husky voice. He’s still being chummy? After last night? I couldn’t be ugly about the situation. After all, I was partly to blame. If I hadn’t been so stubborn and pigheaded, we’d be on the main island enjoying the hell out of each other.
Three pairs of eyes turned to greet me. Mateo flipped the toast in the pan over the open fire, and I was a little ticked off that Patricia and Portia got to taste his amazing breakfast.
“Morning,” I chirped, hoping I sounded cheery.
“Morning, beautiful. I’d come and kiss you, but I’m manning the open flames,” Mateo said with a wink.
“Oh, well, I can fix that.” I made my way over to him and leaned up on my toes to place a chaste kiss on his mouth. “Morning, sexy,” I said against his lips before pulling away.
“Matty was just telling us about the shop,” Patricia spoke up, ruining the moment.
“Yeah, I was telling them about the custom rides I build, and how much people are willing to pay to have their cars or rides tricked out.”
I took a seat on one of the stools at the island and joined in on the conversation. I wanted to be mad, but Mateo got along with everyone. I hadn’t seen him pull douche patrol unless absolutely necessary.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I could tell right away that you were good with your hands,” Patricia said, smiling widely.
Did they not hear us making love last night? We weren’t loud, but we weren’t quiet either.
“Oh, yeah, you think I’m good with my hands?” Matty said, winking over at me. He was being flirty. That was normal for him. “You should ask Zori if I’m any good with my hands.” He laughed. He was enjoying himself a little too much, or he was trying to see if I would say anything. I’d always liked his ability to make people laugh.
I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I laughed. Daily. That made me love him that much more. I must have always known in the back of my mind, but after the rejection in high school, my hope—or more aptly, my long, sought-after fantasy—had been crushed. But it was alive again, and I found I was more than okay with it.
“Matty does have wonderful hands,” Portia said, and my head turned in her direction.
“How would you know?” I asked slowly.
“From the other night. When we met on the beach. We talked for a long time, but that’s not all we did.”
My face heated in anger, and I leered over at Mateo, who didn’t deny or confirm Portia’s claim. He didn’t even glance at me, just fixed our plates, loading them with French toast and slices of melon and strawberries.
“Mateo?”
“Hmmm?” he asked as he sprinkled some powdered sugar over the large slices of bread.
“What is Portia talking about?”
He gazed up from the plate he prepared and stared first at me and then at Portia. Wiping his hands on a hand towel on the counter, he rounded the counter and came to stand behind me, wrapping his arms tightly around my stomach. His lips were warm against my neck as he said, “I only gave her a shoulder massage. Calm your nerves.”
My shoulders slumped; I didn’t realize I’d been ready to attack.
“It was a little more than a shoulder rub,” Portia taunted.
“How do you figure? I rubbed your shoulders–that was it. Nothing else happened.”
“What about the things you said?”
Oh, now this I wanted to hear.
“Yeah, what about the things you said to her, Mateo?” I emphasized his name but didn’t pull away from him. I couldn’t if I tried. He’d made sure of it. His arms had me in a tight grip.
“You said you wanted marriage and children. Said that you couldn’t wait to start your life.”
“Okay, and how did that equate to anything more?” he asked. His voice was gruff, and I knew that voice. It was the calm before the storm. It was a side of Mateo that people only got to see when he felt like he had to protect those around him, those he cared about. And I realized he was trying to protect me. He didn’t want Portia hurting my feelings. He probably thought I was going to jump to conclusions. I wasn’t happy about the shoulder massage, but in all fairness, it was just a massage. It could have led to something else, but it hadn’t. Mateo wasn’t like that. He’d never cheated on any of the women he dated in the past. At least to my knowledge, and I was his best friend. Or was until we’d become… What are we?
Now my head spun with questions that I needed answers to. Portia forgotten, I asked, interrupting whatever it was she had been about to say, “Mateo, what is this?”
He turned me on the stool so that I faced him, my legs on either side of his, allowing him to step in between my thighs.
“This is everything.” He kissed me soundly on the lips before glancing over at the other ladies and smiling. “Breakfast is outside today on the veranda, and then I thought we’d do some hiking, to the other side of the island.”
Portia and Patricia agreed and grabbed their plates to take outside. I was hesitant. We’d clearly taken a step in the right direction, but this little idea of having more than one woman around was discouraging.
“What’s going on, Matty?” I asked him straight up.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are they still here?”
His eyes searched mine before he dipped his head and stole a kiss before I could protest.
“They’re here for the remainder of the week, just like us. It’s cool.”
“It’s not cool. Portia keeps eye-fucking you, and Patricia, I can’t put my finger on it, but she acts as if she’s already part of the in-crowd. I’m not comfortable with this at all.”
“Zori, up until yesterday, you were adamant about us not being together. What changed? And don’t say my excellent bedside manner. Give it to me straight. Be real with me.”
There was a huge lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow. It choked the air right out of me because I was scared. Scared shitless.
Because he was right.
“I was wrong. That’s what changed.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Us?” I said quietly.
“All right, well, what if I was wrong about us?”
My head snapped up, and I searched his eyes, getting caught in his smoky gaze and the confusion I saw lingering beneath the surface. Shit. What if I’d messed this up? I knew I’d changed my tune rather quickly. It had all happened so fast. But the feelings were always there. I’d just buried them. He’d rejected me in high school. So why aren’t you telling him?
“You don’t mean that. Do you, Matty?”
Instead of answering me, he tugged me off the chair, grabbed both our plates, and motioned with his head for me to follow him out onto the veranda where the other girls were already sitting. Only they weren’t alone. The man from our flight the other day was there. What was his name? Shephard McIntyre. He smiled over at me then stood from the table as we approached. I could feel the tension in Mateo. He wasn’t at all happy that Mac was here.
“McIntyre, why are you here?”
The other male chuckled slightly and took a plate from Mateo.
“I’m here to spend time on the island with the beautiful señoritas. Kenderly said my presence would be beneficial here. So, here I am.” Mac placed the plate on the table and gestured to the empty seat next to him. I noticed that Patricia and Portia managed to save a spot for Mateo, right in between the two of them. Bitches. I tried to stop the fire from spreading up my cheeks. But whenever I got upset, I couldn’t help it. I knew my displeasure was on display for all to see.
“You okay, honey?”
Honey? Now Mac was calling me “honey?” I glanced across the table to find Mateo glaring in Mac’s direction. Why would Kenderly tell him to come here? Keep an open mind. Maybe it was to distract the other two women. I remembered reading in a review that Kenderly was supposedly psychic. Maybe this was her way of an intervention? But the ladies were still enamored with Mateo. And it seemed Mac was into me.
“I’m fine,” I said between thin lips.
I picked up the fork and dug into my French toast, which didn’t taste so good now. There was only one house on this island, and now there were five of us. Three women and two men—if I didn’t count Patricia’s father, Javier.
Breakfast was a flurry of questions back and forth. I learned that Mac was, in fact, very well off, and he’d been looking for love in all the wrong places until now. He was on the island to sell his whiskey to Mr. Aragon. Portia was immediately interested in his conversation, and Mateo is quickly forgotten. I wished I could say the same for Patricia. She was still very much into Mateo.
“I hear you guys have activities planned today. Some hiking, the girls were saying?”
I nodded in Mac’s direction but didn’t say much else for the remainder of breakfast. My mind worked double-time. I watched Portia, and as I did, my stomach tightened further and further. Not in anticipation or excitement, as her interest in Mac was clearly through the roof. It was with dread. I was Mateo’s Portia.