3 Weeks 'Til Forever Read Free Page A

Usually, she would never have allowed this but somehow,
she couldn’t imagine him calling her JC any more than he obviously wasn’t going
to.
     
    “Do
you mind if I sit down beside you Janey?” he asked, testing her name to see how
it sounded when he said it.
     
    She
was thrown off by how direct and assertive he could be at one moment, then
polite and almost unsure at others.
     
    Pulling
her beach wrap tightly around her, she simply said, “Sure.”
     
    Janey
hated talking to people with their sunglasses on; she was direct and liked that
eye-to-eye connection. Somehow though, she wasn’t ready to be direct with this
man so she left them on.
     
    He
looked at her as if to say, I know why you’re not taking those off , even
though they were at the beach and the sun was shining and she had every
legitimate reason to keep them on.
     
    Redmond
lowered his length onto the padded beach lounger, but he didn’t lay back, as
Janey was doing. He positioned himself on the end so he could sit and take in
her full frame at a glance.
     
    Seeing
him sitting in this position, she wasn’t sure why she’d allowed him to
interrupt her beach time. He seemed almost threatening, like a lion waiting to
pounce. But she wasn’t afraid – at least not of his physical presence.
     
    She
was disturbed by the attraction she had for him. It had been a long time since
any man had captured her attention. Since her mother’s death three years ago,
she’d focused all her attention on her business.
     
    And
even though her best friend Carita had told her she shouldn’t be wasting her
‘pretty years,’ she just couldn’t stomach the complications that came with a
relationship.
     
    “So
what brings you to my island?” Redmond broke through her self-reflective
reverie.
     
    “Actually,
work – and to get in some R and R.”
     
    “R
and R?” Redmond questioned.
     
    “Rest
and relaxation,” Janey explained.
     
    “In
my culture, when one wants rest and relaxation, the natural place for it is
home. Sol y Besos is obviously not your home, so why do you have to go
away to get some ‘R and R?’” as you say?”
     
    “You’re
right, obviously your beautiful island is not my home. I live in New York City,
a very crowded, noisy concrete jungle, as we natives call it. I love it with
every fiber of my being and can’t imagine living any place else, but it’s not
the most relaxing city in the world.”
     
    “For
my work, I travel a lot, so when I really want to unplug, I always come back to
this paradise. That’s how I think of Sol y Besos .”
     
    “Thank
you for speaking so kindly about my island. I’m glad you find it to be a refuge,
even from the home you obviously love so much.”
     
    She
liked the way he referred to his homeland as ‘my island;’ it appealed to the ‘ I’m
connected to and proud of my culture ’ part of her conscious.
     
    “What
is this work that brings you here?” Redmond asked.
     
    Janey
gave Redmond a rundown of her business, told him how and why she started it and
some funny anecdotes from some of the places she’d been.
     
    There’d
been the snake in the hut in the jungle in Brazil; the ice storm she’d been
stuck in in Reykjavík, Iceland; and the bicycle accident in
Amsterdam that left her on crutches for a month.  
     
               
Janey had a way of telling stories that made her friends laugh until their
sides hurt. Apparently, she had the same effect on Redmond because his husky
laugh showed his beautiful white teeth a lot that afternoon.
     
    “Wow,
you weren’t kidding when you said you’d been all over the world. I doubt if I
could find half the places you’ve mentioned on a map.”
     
               
“Travel has been the love of my life since I was a child. I never dreamed that
I would do so much of it.”
     
               
“The love of your life? Shouldn’t a man hold that title? Who is the love in
your life in the form of a man