Heat Wave(57)

The night is balmy and the clear sky is doing something to my head. Or maybe it’s the copious amounts of punch. When Nikki and Lucia decide to leave, I wander past the restaurant and down to the beach, passing a plumeria tree. I shove my nose into the center of the white flowers and breathe in deep, then start plucking them off the tree. I know it’s wrong and I should only pick up the ones that have fallen to the ground, but I’m drunk and the idea of making my own lei or decorating my body with them is extremely appealing.

Plus the smell is so intoxicating. It’s just as sweet and heady as the air here, a smell that makes me really feel I’m in paradise and has an immediate relaxing effect.

“Duplicitous,” Logan says from beside me, his voice low and rough.

I jump, the flowers flying up and out of my hands and twirling to the sand below. “Jesus, way to sneak up on me!” I cry out, hand at my chest.

He stares at me, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. He looks different, his eyes less hard, his face more open. The half-moon illuminates his face just enough for him to look both mysterious and devastatingly handsome.

Damn him.

“Sorry,” he says, quickly bending over to pick up a flower. He holds it out in front of me, then his hand goes over my right shoulder and he slides the flower behind my ear, his fingers rough as they graze the tip of my lobe. I can’t help but close my eyes, my breath stilling inside me. Even the waves seem to slow down, the surf echoing in my ears. “The right side means you’re not taken.”

“Well I’m not,” I say, but my words come out in a whisper. I slowly open my eyes again and he is still there, this beautiful, troubled, strange man that no one seems to know and everyone thinks they’ve figured out.

“No, you aren’t.” His voice drops a register, sounding almost melancholy.

“What did you mean? You said duplicitous. Just now. When you scared the shit out of me.”

“The flowers are not what they seem,” he says, finally breaking our heated gaze. Thank god, because that was getting a bit intense. My heart is still pounding so hard I’m afraid he might hear it over the waves.

He runs his hand along the flowers and their dark, shiny leaves. “Plumeria, Tiare, Frangipani. No matter what name we give them, they remain a lie.”

I peer at him closely. “Are you drunk?”

He cocks a brow. “What makes you say that?”

“Well I’m drunk and we’ve all been drinking Dan’s potent punch. Plus you’re talking about lying flowers, so there’s that.”

“I’ll have you know I’m not drunk,” Logan says but he kind of slurs it. And it’s kind of adorable. “And I don’t have to be drunk to be talking about lying flowers. Here, smell.” He plucks one off the tree and steps even closer, the distance between us tightening up into intimate levels. He raises the center of the flower to my nose and I don’t have to lean far to stick my nose in. I take a deep breath just as I had been earlier when I was hitting the blooms up like I was huffing paint.

“They bloom at night,” he says, taking the flower away and smelling it himself, rather delicately. “To lure the sphinx moth. Only they don’t have any nectar—it’s all a rouse. So the bloody moth flies from flower to flower, in a fruitless search for nectar. And while it does that, the moth pollinates, ensuring the flower’s survival.” He flicks the flower to the sand and stares at it for a few moments.

“Is this a metaphor for something?” I ask after a few beats.

He glances at me quickly before turning his attention to the waves, the spray illuminated by the moon and the faint light of the hotel rooms. “If it is, you’ll have to let me know who you’d be…the flower, or the moth.”

“Neither,” I say. “I’m just the girl who wants to put the flowers in her hair.”

He chuckles at that and nods a few times, shoving his hands in his pockets. Silence is a line between us, weighted and heavy. I have this feeling that if I don’t say a word, the silence will continue, thickening by the minute, like adding flour to water.

I look at him. “Can I ask you something?”

“No.”

“It’s about Juliet.”

Finally, his eyes come back to meet mine, brows furrowed with worry. “What?” he says hesitantly.

“Did you cheat on her with that girl Charlotte? The one who worked here?”

For a second it seems like he hasn’t heard me. Then his eyes widen and he physically recoils, shaking his head. “What the bloody hell, Veronica?”

“I just want to know. I need to know.”