Darling, time to get up!
Oh, man. I groaned trying to force my eyes open. It was already morning?
How did I go from trying to rest my eyeballs to having completely crashed as soon as my head hit the pillows?
Baby, you awake yet?
Yeah, yeah, I thought in irritation. You can stop being my alarm clock now.
I heard a chuckle coming through loud and clear in my mind and then I was left alone with my thoughts.
The clock showed 8 AM. It seemed as if that was the normal wake up time for everyone at the hotel.
Didn't they know guests usually liked to sleep in?
I dragged myself into the shower and stood there in the warm jet stream for as long as I could stand it. Then, I scrambled around in my bags looking for something clean to wear.
There was nothing except the two floral dresses I had bought at the Boardwalk clothing shop the day before.
Ugh. I was going to look like a little hula girl.
Grimacing, I pulled on the least offensive one, with its black background and all those broad tropical green leaves. Then I pushed two flower earrings onto my ears and brushed out the tangles in my waist-length hair.
I sighed as I untangled the tresses. When did I not notice that it had gotten this long?
I looked at my watch. No time to tie it or braid it. It was just going to have to hang back there and try not to get in my way.
I had to go.
Where are we meeting up? I asked Connor.
Same breakfast banquet as yesterday. Dr. Montblanc is requesting to see you.
If you hurry, you can meet me before breakfast. I have something for you.
Where?
I'm right outside your door.
I gasped in delight and ran to the door, pulling it open wide. The first thing I saw was a huge bouquet of plumeria flowers.
"Ah!" I screamed in delight and took it from his hands. I buried my nose into the blossoms, inhaling its sweet scent.
Connor's smiling face came into view from behind the huge bouquet.
"I thought you'd like it."
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"I picked it. There was a plumeria tree nearby, so I went out and picked a bunch for you."
"It's flowers from a tree?" I asked, looking at the bouquet.
"Yeah. The best blooms were on top of the tree, so I levitated to get up there. Had to do it furtively because the early morning gardeners were out." Connor grinned like a monkey.
"Here, let me do something for you." He pulled out several blooms and bunched them together with magik, and then he placed them in my hair.
I reached up to touch it and was pleasantly surprised that it was securely clipped to my hair by nothing at all.
I laughed with joy and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek.
"Thank you," I said.
"You're gonna have to do better than that." He puckered up and tapped his lips with a finger.
There was no way I could turn that down, so I stood on tippy toes to reach his lips. But Connor was 6'2" and I was 5'.
The gap between our lips was over a foot, even though I was on my tiptoes. I growled under my breath and jumped up, grabbing onto his neck with both arms.
Connor laughed and caught me. Then he lowered his head.
His lips sought mine with a tender touch but then Connor gave a sharp intake of breath.
His desire quickly exploded into barely concealed hunger as he suckled and caressed my mouth with his lips and tongue.
His kiss deepened until I could barely breathe. I was tingling from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. My stomach fluttered as a horde of butterflies began their assault.
Since he was crushing me into his body, I was seeing stars at the periphery of my vision because I was barely able to take a breath.
Am I dreaming?
No. We're both wide awake. I laughed with reticence. You're also crushing me.
"Sorry, Babe."
Only after he was satisfied that he had extracted adequate payment for the bouquet did he escort me to the banquet room.
For once, we were the first ones there.
We sat down at our usual seats and a waitress came through the doors to serve us coffee and juice and to give us the breakfast menus.
"Where is everybody?" I made the offhand comment.
"Probably still sleeping." He sipped his coffee, grimacing at the bitterness.
"What? Aren't we suppose to meet up with Dr. Montblanc this morning?"
"Yup. At our usual time," he grinned.
"Which is…"
"Ten."
"So we're here super early…"
"Yep. I woke you up early because I couldn't sleep all last night, so I flew around on my hoverboard until 6 AM"
"And then?"
"Then I picked some flowers."
"And?"
"Then I sat outside your doorway until 8 AM when I could wake you up without you being too mad at me."
"Oh Connor! Why didn't you tell me? I would have let you into the room."
He shrugged. "I didn't want to disturb your sleep. You looked so tired last night."
"But you couldn't sleep…"
"Corwin and I had another huge blowout last night. We took to the skies because we didn't want to disturb anyone."
"What happened!?"
Connor laughed. "We yelled at each other for awhile, and then threw some golf-ball sized hale stones at each other."
"And when that didn't do anything damaging, we threw lightning bolts at each other."
I raised my eyebrows in alarm.
"Don't worry. We do that kind of thing sometimes just for sparring practice. Did I tell you we're really good fighters?"
"I saw you and Corwin fight once. It was scary."
"We're pretty tough. It takes a lot more than a few lightning bolts to do anything to us, but it did let us throw off some steam and cool our heels a bit."
"What in heck could you possibly be fighting over that was worth throwing lightning bolts at each other?" I shook my head.
"You."
I sighed.
This was so hard. It was hard on everyone and there was no good solution at all. I had hoped that the twins would accept some sort of compromising solution.
Unfortunately, it seemed that they were going head-to-head over this, and the end result was going to be serious fallout for them and me.
I was damned if I do, and damned if I didn't. My only choice would be to take the path of least damage, but it was one that I truly did not want to walk down.