“I told you I was afraid of heights.”
“We’re starting fresh today. Remember? What better way to start off than to live a little.”
“I’m all for living, it’s the opposite of living that scares me and keeps my feet on the ground.”
He opens my car door. “They set us up for a double harness. I’ll hold you through the whole thing.”
“Even when we splatter on the ground?”
He chuckles. “We won’t splatter on the ground. Besides, there’s water underneath us.”
I look around and find the cameras already rolling. Taking a deep breath, I finally give him my hand. “What’s your greatest fear?” I lean in and whisper to avoid my voice being picked up.
“Rejection.” He kisses my cheek. “See, we’re both conquering our fears today.”
I’m still on an adrenaline high from our afternoon date as I get ready for dinner. Flynn was right, facing one of my biggest fears was somehow freeing. Leaving me to feel like today really was a fresh start.
As promised, Flynn held me the entire way. My body secured in a harness clipped to his, his muscular thighs straddled me, long legs wrapped tightly around my waist from behind the minute we lifted into the air. One strong arm fastened around my middle in a bear hug left me feeling secure as we soared high above the ocean. Even when I had finally relaxed enough to enjoy the breathtaking view of the crystal-clear aqua water below, his hold on me never loosened. Eventually, I found myself leaning into his embrace instead of clinging to it.
After parasailing, the boat took us to a sand bar in the middle of the ocean and we hand fed giant sea turtles and snorkeled amid schools of colorful fish. Today was a day made for reality television, yet I was so completely enraptured with everything we did, most of the time, I didn’t notice the cameras.
The smile on Flynn’s face when he arrives for dinner matches my own. His long hair is loose, framing an undeniably swoon-worthy face. But it’s his smile that undoubtedly would have women throwing their panties at him on stage.
“What? I didn’t even say anything yet and you’re shaking that head at me like I’m up to no good.” Flynn feigns innocence, although his eyes tell me his thoughts are anything but.
“That smile. I bet women drop their panties for those dimples.”
He takes a step closer. The air between us shifts. “I hope so.”
Unlike the playful carefree mood from this afternoon, tonight there’s a tension that hangs thick between us. The challenge of navigating down the steep natural stairs of the dimly lit cliff to Bottom Bay is handsomely rewarded at the bottom. The serene beach, surrounded by tall privacy-ensuring cliffs is dark and empty. Until we walk a few hundred yards and pass a towering jut of a mountain to the other side. I actually gasp at the vision.
Leaning palm trees are bedecked with sporadically placed candles ensconced in hanging glass lanterns. A blanket is spread in the corner, an oversized picnic basket illuminated by a few candles surrounding it.
“Wow. It’s beautiful.”
Flynn looks at me pensively. “It is. Are you okay with this?”
The ice protecting my heart for the last week melts just a little. I look at him and smile. “I think I am.”
We spend the next three hours eating, talking and laughing. With only the candlelight around us, it’s easy to forget there are probably cameras set up all over. It’s romantic and beautiful, and Flynn is a complete gentleman. I learn things about him I never would have guessed—things we have in common. We both were science majors in college, although his focus was astronomy and mine was biology. We both love Johnny Cash, but don’t get the Beatles phenomenon. And our dads never met a casino they could walk past.
“What makes the stars twinkle, Copernicus?”
“Ahh. That is a common mistake of the layperson,” Flynn says with some sort of accent. I assume it’s an attempt at the dialect of the famous astronomer, but I know little about Copernicus other than he is the granddaddy of astronomy. “Stars actually don’t twinkle.”
“They don’t? I’m not sure I want to hear this.”
Flynn chuckles. We’re both lying on our backs, gazing up at the sky filled with stars—some of them twinkling. He rolls from his back to his side and props up his head on his elbow with one hand. His other hand brushes a stray hair behind my ear. “It’s just the angle we view them at. A ray of light bends slightly when it passes through the atmosphere, it deflects and we see it as a twinkle. If we were on the moon, we wouldn’t see a twinkle at all.”
I smile, captivated by the splendor of the twinkles above, even if they aren’t really what they seem. “Well, then I’m glad we’re here and not on the moon.”