Page 20 of Moonlighter

Max: Because she’s worth a couple billion, and people are assholes? It’s not that complicated.

Eric: It’s just so invasive.

Max: So turn the pillow around when you’re in. Just don’t forget to reverse it when you leave. Alex knows the drill. She won’t forget. Nice underwear. Where are your pajamas?

I don’t even bother to reply. Why is everyone so obsessed with pajamas?

By the time I get back to the table, the food from Alex’s plate is missing. I actually scan my surroundings. “Where did it go?”

“Where did what go?”

“Your breakfast. There’s no way you ate that so fast. It was the size of a football.”

Her eyes flare. “That is a dickish thing to point out. I was hungry.” She picks a strawberry out of the fruit salad and nibbles it daintily.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.” I stab my own omelet. “I genuinely did not believe you could… Never mind.” One does not win an argument with a woman. One simply survives it.

“Look.” She throws down the napkin. “Pregnancy has given me the appetite of a teenage boy. Ergo, my ass has doubled in size. But if you want to keep breathing, don’t make any cracks about that.”

“I would never. There’s nothing wrong with your ass. Not one thing.” I refill my coffee. “Not that I looked,” I add quickly.

But I totally did.

Her eyes narrow as she gets up from the table. “You don’t have to flatter me, either.”

“I don’t do flattery. Now, what’s on your agenda for today?”

“Sunning myself at the pool, mostly. I’ll look over my speech and return some emails. The conference doesn’t get going until tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I guess I’m sitting by the pool, then. “After you’ve had enough sun, I need to get a workout in. So you’ll need to come back to the room, or else head to the gym with me.”

“I could stand to get some exercise. It’s good for jet lag. How long do you spend in the gym?”

“Two to three, depending on how good the equipment is.”

She blinks. “Two to three…hours?”

“Give or take. Depends how far I run after lifting.”

“That’s impossible. I can’t spend three hours holed up in the room waiting for you. I was going to get a massage and a pedicure.”

“Two then,” I concede. “That’s my bare minimum. You have to do your job, right? I also have to do mine.”

“And your job is working out like a mad man?”

“Working out like abeast,” I correct her. “I’m thirty-four years old, Alex. In four weeks I’ll be at training camp, fighting to dominate guys who are wet behind the ears at twenty-two. They want to take my place on the team. I can’t let ‘em. I don’t work out, I get soft.”

“I see. Okay.” She folds her hands. “I think I know a way to compromise.”

I don’t like compromise.

Alex’s solution is that she gets her early afternoon spa treatments while I finish my workout. That ought to make sense, except for a couple of crucial details.

She has the hotel staff bring a treadmill up to the private patio, so that I can run ten miles while looking out at the ocean. The treadmill is cranking at a brisk pace, and I’m sweating out of every pore as the waves lap the beach.

But I’m not looking at the ocean as often as I should be, because Alex is also getting a massage on a portable table a couple of meters away from me. Face down, she’s oiled up and naked on that table, her skin glinting in the Hawaiian sun.

Sure, there’s a towel covering her ass. So all I can see is her back and her oil-slicked limbs. And a kissable stretch of her neck. But my imagination is top notch. Worse, another guy—and he’s a young, twenty-something Hawaiian stud—has his hands sliding up and down all of Alex’s bare skin.