Mai Tai for Two Read online

  Julie’s Hawaiian Vacay Itinerary!

  You and your “work husband” have just won an all-expenses-paid vacation in Oahu. Now the fun begins...

  Get lei’d. (With flowers, obvi.)

  Settle into your gorgeous ocean-side cabin. Contemplate living in Hawaii forever.

  Become overwhelmed with hideous unexplained jealousy when your bestie decides to make sexy moves on your work husband, Alan.

  Dismiss jealousy. After all, you’re not interested in Alan “that” way...are you?

  Avoid joyous dancing when bestie’s ex arrives and sweeps her off her feet—leaving Alan completely and totally available.

  Now you’re alone with Alan. Alone. In paradise. Take a deep breath, have a mai tai—or two—and (gulp!) make your move. Be classy.

  “Accidentally” let Alan peek under your grass skirt.

  Take off grass skirt.

  Do Incredibly Naughty and Sexy Things everywhere.

  And do not think about what happens when you and your work husband go back to reality....

  Dear Reader,

  You know when they draw the name for the really big door prize, the one you can’t believe somebody actually donated? We all finger our little ticket stubs, pretending not to care, because we know we won’t win. It’s too much, too lucky, too outrageous.

  But somebody wins. And this is the story of two such somebodies, whose amazing luck seems to follow them from the Silicon Valley all the way to the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

  Julie and Alan are “work spouses” and good friends, but the unexpected dream vacation they find themselves on is charmed in all sorts of ways. The tropical setting. The exotic wildlife. The fruity drinks with umbrellas and tiny plastic swords. And that’s all before they even get to the wild night of dancing by the light of the tiki torches.

  They’ve done this once before...accidentally falling on each other’s faces. This time, it goes way beyond faces. And this time, they can’t blame it on champagne and mistletoe. They have to face the morning after, and decide what to do about all the mornings after that. And they only have four days to figure it out.

  I hope you enjoy their delicious dilemma!

  I love to hear from readers. You can find me online at www.delphinedryden.com, or on Twitter @deldryden.

  Aloha!

  Delphine Dryden

  DELPHINE DRYDEN

  Mai Tai for Two

  Sexy, contemporary romance stories

  for today’s fun, fearless female.

  Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin

  www.Harlequin.com/Cosmo

  About the Author

  Delphine Dryden majored in English at the University of Texas at Austin, and probably should have gone ahead for that MFA and PhD to become an English professor like she planned. Instead, she took a detour through law school, practiced law for a woefully brief time, and wound up working in special education for the next fifteen or so years (first as a teacher, then as an educational diagnostician). Somewhere in there, she also obtained a master’s in educational psychology/special education.

  Delphine writes contemporary erotic romance for Carina Press, and mainstream steampunk romance for Berkley. She has also published with Ellora’s Cave and Cleis Press. Her writing has earned an Award of Excellence and Reviewers’ Choice Award from RT Book Reviews, an EPIC Award and a Colorado Romance Writers’ Award of Excellence.

  A few years ago, Delphine gave up the day job to write full-time. Now she balances that with parenting two kids and two dogs, and occasionally designing web sites or making trailer videos. She and her family are all Texas natives, and reside in unapologetic suburban bliss near Houston.

  Also by Delphine Dryden

  Carina Press

  The Theory of Attraction

  The Seduction Hypothesis

  The Principle of Desire

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  “But I never win anything!”

  Julie kept saying it long after she should have stopped, probably annoying her coworkers no end. It wasn’t true, of course. She’d won stuff—everybody won stuff. Little things, like a spelling bee, or a round of rock, paper, scissors. Once, she won an office pool on when the receptionist’s baby would be born (three in the afternoon, on a lovely Tuesday in May).

  This was different. The little stuff barely counted as wins next to something this spectacular.

  She leaned over, raising her voice over the steadily increasing after-work crowd noise in the bar, and asked Alan Cortese to pinch her.

  He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure pinching you would be harassment.”

  “Not if it’s on the arm. Besides, we’re not in the office right now. Ouch!” His fingers left significant heat behind on her shoulder. “I take it back. It’s harassment if you do it that hard.”

  “You’re awake, okay?” He used his cheesy emcee voice, rolling his prize certificate up and using it as a microphone. His dark eyebrows waggled over bright brown eyes alight with mischief. “Julie Perfetto, you’ve just won a vacation for two to a fabulous tropical resort in beautiful Hawaii! What are you going to do now?”

  “Never complain about a company motivational event again.”

  “That’s a given. Me, either. I can’t believe either of us won this fucking thing. What are the odds? What else are you gonna do?”

  “Yikes. Call Amanda, I guess, once she’s done at work. How about you? Who are you gonna bring on the trip?” She knew he wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, but maybe he had a sleeper candidate.

  “No clue. I don’t know, I’ll probably end up giving the tickets to my parents. Sitting on the beach isn’t really my thing.”

  Ugh.

  Not for the first time, Julie considered what a dutiful son Alan was. He really did put her to shame. Parents. She should have at least thought about calling her parents. It was really big news. She told herself she would totally call them. Right after she called Amanda.

  Julie plucked the tour brochures they’d been ogling from the slightly sticky bar and fanned them in front of Alan’s face. “Did you even read these? You don’t ever have to go near the beach. There’s horseback riding, hiking, kayaking. You can take a helicopter ride. Or skip the beach itself and go straight into the ocean for snorkeling. Surfing, even.”

  “Are you two going to do all that stuff?”

  She wasn’t about to tell Alan her actual plan for the trip, conceived about five minutes after the initial shock had worn off. Find a good-looking guy, take reasonable precautions and then—for once in her life—have no-strings-attached sex. A story for her pervy mental scrapbook, which was woefully thin as yet.

  “Oh, hell no. I mean, I probably will do some adventure sports, but Amanda...” She flipped through the themed brochures until she found the one labeled Spa Retreat. “This is how I’ll entice her away from her desk. Massages. Full day spa. Yoga classes. World-class cuisine. And fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.”

  “That last one isn’t on the list.”

  “I’m making an educated guess. Wow. I have to call her. She’s going to flip out.”

  Alan snorted and shook his head. “I can’t see her going that far from her office for a vacation. Even a free one.”

  “You just don’t like her because she dumped you.” Julie had fixed them up shortly after she starte
d working with Alan, but the chemistry simply wasn’t there.

  “There was no dumping. We only went out three times. Besides, it’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like me.”

  It was sort of true. Amanda had liked Alan okay, but she had never like liked him. Julie thought she was nuts for that, but there was no accounting for taste. Then Amanda had met Jeremy, so the point became moot.

  Julie herself had friend-zoned Alan right away, because of the coworker thing. Over the past three years he’d also become her generally acknowledged “work husband,” and with that title came the acceptance that he was off-limits...because having a crush on your work husband was pathetic. No matter how much he brightened your day by walking into your cubicle, and regardless of what his ass looked like when he walked back out. Never mind that one ill-advised Christmas-party mistletoe kiss.

  Julie could admire a man objectively and enjoy the view, but that didn’t mean she had to start acting a fool. She had her own plans for her life, very specific things she wanted to accomplish in the next few years, and she’d started to feel that boyfriends simply weren’t worth the distraction from her goals. Not that Alan had ever been a boyfriend.

  Still, going on a romantic vacation with him might have been interesting. Nice, rather than romantic. Julie told herself it would have been...pleasant. Because of how trustworthy and affable he was. Always good to have another buddy along. It was in character for him to give the trip away, though. Typical good-guy move.

  Julie revised her initial reaction. He was too nice, really, Alan was. And Mr. Dependable was maybe not the best person to share a wild tropical vacation with. Her life was already safe and well-regulated enough; the point of a vacation was to get away from that for a little while, but not to gather more emotional clutter in the process. Thus, the no-strings-sex idea.

  “Then it’s a good thing you’re giving the trip to your parents, like the good son you are. So sweet. A mother’s angel.” She pinched his cheek like an overbearing aunt at a family reunion. “You know I’ll be out parasailing from horseback while simultaneously kayaking or something, while you’d have probably hung out at the poolside bar drinking beers. So you would have been more likely to see Amanda than me.” This wasn’t true. Alan would’ve been the one on the horse, pulling her along.

  He lifted his beer, saluting her with it. “I’ll be sure to tell Mom and Dad to wave to you from the beach as you fly by.”

  Chapter Two

  Alan recognized the lei flowers from the plumeria trees his mom grew back home. The clean spicy-citrus scent felt right for this place, practically crooning out “Welcome to Oahu.” He watched Julie savoring it, burying her nose in the pink-and-yellow blossoms and inhaling with a beatific smile. Alan reached for his phone to snap a picture, but Julie straightened up and ducked into the car too fast for him to capture the moment. Just as well.

  Amanda was close behind her, but Alan lingered outside a few seconds longer while the limo driver bedecked him with a lei of his own. It was less girly than the others, with some sort of small white flowers intertwined with shells, leaves and what appeared to be nuts. He clamped down on the urge to make a nut joke to the guy, figuring he’d probably heard all of those about a million times before.

  When he joined the girls in the spacious vehicle, though, he had to lead with, “Yeah, I hung back so the driver could sling his nuts on me.”

  Julie snorted. Amanda rolled her eyes, though he caught a hint of a smile. She was sitting directly opposite Julie, and Alan had to make a split-second decision on who to sit next to. The platonic work wife, who reliably laughed at his jokes, or the cute single girl who always seemed reluctant to admit she found them funny? He defaulted to his comfort zone, sliding in next to Julie.

  Amanda gestured at the lush leather-clad interior, which looked and smelled expensive. “Pinch me.”

  “I know, right?” Julie held her lei up, taking another quick sniff. “I’ve felt that way ever since they called my name at that meeting. I mean, I knew it was a luxury vacation, but I guess my experience to date was way too limited to let me imagine what this would really be like.”

  She and Amanda both paused to snuffle at their leis again, happy-sighing in tandem.

  “I’ll pinch you,” Alan offered. “Either of you.” He flopped closer to Julie, his shoulder brushing hers as he arranged himself. At the unexpected contact, both of them automatically shifted a few inches away, maintaining a buffering distance like magnets with the same polarity.

  Amanda shot him a smirk. “I’ll pass on the pinch, thanks. Gosh, it was so great on the plane, Alan, while you were sleeping and quietly watching violent guy movies on your iPad and not giving anyone grief.”

  He’d definitely picked the safer side to sit on.

  “Don’t make me separate you two,” Julie warned.

  “Julie was watching the movie, too,” Alan pointed out. “Don’t lie, Jules. I saw you do that fist-pump during the big shoot-out scene.”

  She gave his shoulder a friendly shove, breaking the magical buffer zone again, and he laughed to cover up his startled reaction when she let her hand linger for a second, shaping itself around his upper arm. He thought of the days ahead, the beach and the likelihood of her touching his arm again when he was shirtless. Then he put that thought carefully away, in the same deep cupboard of his brain where he stored all the photos of Julie he hadn’t taken, the smiles she gave him first thing in the morning over the coffee machine in the break room, and the feeling of her lips under his the one and only time he’d let his impulses overcome his good sense.

  The cupboard was locked and had to stay that way, because Julie liked him like a brother. She’d told him so, always said he was the dorky brother she’d never had, even though she had three perfectly good actual brothers. He knew two of them through work, and they seemed like nice enough guys. They seemed a whole lot like him, though, which might have been Julie’s deeper point. He reminded her too much of them for her to ever consider him in a romantic light. Even after that single tipsy kiss over a year ago—that kiss, God, all hot mulled wine and mistletoe and wild promise—she’d never seemed to go through the revelation Alan had felt. His whole world had shifted, things falling into place so hard he had to brace himself against the shock. No such bracing was needed on Julie’s part, because to her it had obviously been no big deal. He’d heard her laugh the incident off to a coworker who’d asked if they were together, describing it as a case of tripping and accidentally falling into each other’s faces. A one-time oopsie.

  You have to get over any girl who calls you an oopsie, dude.

  Instead of getting over it, he glanced at Julie from the corner of his eye and wondered what she’d look like in her bathing suit. Then he tried to correct himself, picturing Amanda in her bathing suit, as though he was simply picturing all the girls that way instead of one in particular. Hot as she was, though, Amanda did nothing for him. Julie crept back into his thoughts, like always.

  If he’d had a girlfriend at the moment, it would have been easier not to dwell. He hadn’t wanted to come at all without a romantic plus-one. Unlike Julie, he didn’t have a single friend he especially wanted to spend four days and three nights with in a tropical paradise. Nobody other than Julie, at least, who was technically a platonic friend. But when his parents had refused his offer, he’d decided to suck it up and make the trip alone. He’d spent a few hours by phone and email convincing the resort to make up the difference in the prize amount with credits toward all the kayaking, helicopter tours and other adventurous stuff he hoped to do.

  And hopefully, all that distraction would be enough to keep him from tripping and falling on Julie’s face again.

  * * *

  Julie felt like pressing her nose up against the glass, the better to take in the absurdly lush tropical foliage and iconic views. The drive from the airport to the resort took them most of the way across the island, and every random glance out the windows presented post
card-worthy scenery while the warm, spicy scent of the lei flowers filled the limo and charmed the very air she breathed. Hawaii. Oahu. Surely she would wake up at any moment.

  She was accustomed to enjoying things after working for them, and the windfall nature of the trip had an illicit and slightly guilty charm. She’d overprepared, researching and packing for all possibilities, determined to plan it all out and wring every drop of perfection from this once-in-a-lifetime event. Now she worried that she’d set herself up for disappointment, because it was only a hotel, after all, no matter how many stars it ranked on the travel guides. Only Hawaii, and only four days and three nights. If she did pick somebody up to spend time with, he would most likely fall closer to Lothario than to Prince Charming on the spectrum. But the place felt magical, anyway. Like anything could happen.

  The hotel grounds did nothing to debunk those fairy-tale delusions. More magic, more fresh tropical flowers, actual parrots on perches. The trips were her company’s big employee-appreciation door prizes for an unexpectedly fruitful year, and they hadn’t skimped. The hotel deserved all those stars it had earned and then some. The staff clearly knew how to do celebrity treatment, and they whisked the threesome in and out of the lobby in a twinkling, no lingering among the hoi polloi—not that there were any hoi polloi there, but if there had been, Julie and her two friends wouldn’t have had to wait with them for a bellhop.

  The luggage was whisked away on a golf cart, while the trio opted to walk from the main hotel building to the beachfront “cottage” accommodations. Not really cottages, but isolated clusters of half a dozen luxury suites each, dotting the shoreline of the small bay on which the hotel sat. All had glass doors facing the beach and ocean, and were screened from the main hotel by trees and hibiscus bushes for an illusion of privacy. The short stroll to get there was a treat in itself, a mini-tour of some of the resort’s amazing amenities and breathtaking views. All the views were breathtaking. There were no mediocre angles to the place. Julie kept thinking of descriptors, then realized she was quoting the brochures to herself. Truth in advertising, to be sure.