Decked with Holly

Not surprising, considering that I’d been doing a real bang-up job even before I agreed to this fauxmance and started lying to my grandpa. What was one more act of stupidity to add to the list?

“It’s not going to attack you,” Nick pointed out calmly as I stared nervously at the hulking mass of underwater equipment. “Relax. Breathe.”

“How am I supposed to breathe when that thing is going to be my only air supply?”

Nick looked bored. “We’re in a swimming pool. In the shallow end. If you get uncomfortable, all you have to do is stand up.”

“Oh, will you look at that? I’m uncomfortable. Let’s leave. Now.”

“Shut up, already. The instructor is going over hand signals.”

I flipped him the middle finger. “I think I’ve got that one covered.”

Nick ignored me.

Which is how, thirty minutes later, I knew that the scary breathing thingie was called a regulator. And that if I put too much air in my buoyancy control device underwater, I’d go skyrocketing up to the surface—which could cause air bubbles inside me to rupture and kill me. Yeah, that was comforting.

Not.

Of course, the perky dive assistant assured me that I wasn’t at risk since the pool at its deepest only reached ten feet.

Something Nick could have told me himself if he wasn’t so busy smirking and discussing nearby reefs with yet another dive assistant. I thought I heard him mention something about a night dive but I chose to ignore it.

Instead I focused on remaining calm while I was strapped into the equipment by reminding myself that he couldn’t let me die—no matter how badly he might want to get rid of me. If anything happened the press would annihilate Nick with endless speculation.

So, it had to be okay if Nick was willing to stake his career on it.

And even though I was nervous, I didn’t honestly want to chicken out. Scuba diving with a rock star in Puerto Vallarta? Yeah, that story would go over well at the parties that Jen and I would doubtless be invited to now. Then again, I wondered whether that girl from last night had been thinking something similar when she tried to pass off Nick as her boyfriend.

The way my cousins had humiliated her was nothing compared to the way they’d go after me if they found an opening. They were probably still plotting ways of getting me into trouble without revealing that they had stumbled into the room with drunken strangers and kicked their seasick cousin out. Even Aunt Jessica would have a hard time spinning that in favor of her precious little girls.

But the time to worry about the Twins from Hell wasn’t right before I tried breathing underwater.

Preparing myself for a panicked struggle for oxygen, I submerged my head completely underwater.

Except . . . well, it was amazing.

I had expected it to be exciting and different, but it took me actually pressing the air out of my buoyancy control device and sinking to the bottom of the pool to understand why Nick had been so insistent.

There was a sense of rightness that reminded me of seeing an eye doctor and knowing absolutely that the letters on the wall were easier to see with option number one. Everything came into focus. Even my Darth Vader breathing struck me as soothing rather than creepy. And for a moment I could almost believe that if I just stayed underwater long enough the life I left on the surface would fix itself without me.

I lay on my back and watched the air bubbles from each exhale make their way up to the surface.

It was so peaceful.

Or at least it was until Nick swam over to me and flashed the “Are you okay?” hand gestures with the ease of long practice.

I was tempted to send him the middle finger again, just for fun. But it seemed ungrateful since I would never have tried scuba diving if he hadn’t pushed me . . . and scuba lessons don’t come cheap. One glance at the price in the brochure and I knew that my publicist salary was now utterly depleted.

Completely worth it.

The last time I felt this relaxed . . . I came up empty. I always have a great time with Jen (exempting our Santa crisis, of course), but she’s not exactly a calm person. She tends to get excited over everything, whether that’s spotting a new guy to crush on or wearing a shirt she had forgotten she owned. Jen floats through life while I sometimes feel like a young child dragged around by an enormous helium balloon into oncoming traffic.

Now this was the vacation I’d been hoping for.

Minus the rock star and the rumors and the paparazzi.

But a girl can’t have everything.

So when Nick flashed me the “Are you okay?” signal, looking completely comfortable underwater (no real surprise there: The guy could stroll into a ballet studio in a stretchy pink leotard and remain unfazed), I didn’t even try to hide my enjoyment. Although, I did struggle to contain my grin in case the mouthpiece thingie wouldn’t work as well if water seeped in.

I signaled back that I was fine and waited for him to nod and leave since I wasn’t panicking or hyperventilating or anything. But instead, he took my hand and led me around the pool. Which was completely unnecessary. I might be new to scuba diving but I still knew how to swim.

Still, linking my fingers into his and enjoying my newfound sense of weightlessness . . . not exactly a hardship.

In fact, the scuba lesson ended too soon to my way of thinking. Although I probably should have just been grateful that I hadn’t spotted any photographers, since my one-piece bathing suit isn’t exactly sexy. Not something I wanted plastered in tabloids so that America could vote on whether I should call Jenny Craig or join a twenty-four-hour fitness club. I didn’t want to deal with any of it.

A mentality I was determined to maintain even when we surfaced.

“Okay. You were right, Nick. That was incredible.”

Nick tilted his head and hit his ear as if he thought there must be water in it. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

I rolled my eyes. “You were right. Thanks for taking me diving.”

For a second I thought he might keep playing it up and pretend I had shocked him into a heart attack or something. Instead, he just grinned. “Glad you liked it.”

And with one easy movement, he helped me hoist my equipment onto the rim of the pool.

“It was just so . . . quiet.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt stupid. There were a billion ways to enjoy silence that were significantly less expensive if that was all I wanted. But somehow underwater the silence had become something more. I just didn’t know how to express it.

Nick only nodded. “It’s even better out in the ocean.” He gestured at the pool behind us. “Not much to see in here.”

“I can only imagine.” Which was true. Although that was definitely something I would have to check out for myself . . . someday.

“Well, what do you want to do now?” Nick hauled himself out of the water and began toweling off. It wasn’t the first time I had seen his naked chest, and since his boxers covered about as much of him as his swim trunks, I should have been able to ignore it entirely. No big deal. Just a really hot guy drying himself after a scuba diving lesson.

“Uh.” I struggled to string words into a complete sentence. “You know. Whatever.”

“Skydiving it is, then.”

I rolled my eyes, but when he slipped his hand back into mine and we dripped off to the resort changing rooms, it felt good to have an inside joke.

It meant that I wasn’t the target, for a change.

And in that moment, having our every move photographed didn’t intimidate me quite as much. Keeping secrets from Jen didn’t appear so terrible either. And continuing this fake relationship to make my cousins jealous didn’t bother me in the slightest.

Even the prospect of facing all my relatives at dinner that night didn’t faze me.

But it really should have.