Brothers of Paradise Series

Rhys slides into bed beside me and reaches for the light. A click and it’s out, the lodge submerged in darkness, the both of us quietly breathing next to each other. There’s still a veritable ocean of bed between us.

“You know what this means,” I say, because I can’t figure out when to shut up, and my brain has become scrambled eggs after seeing his abs.

“What?” His voice is everywhere in the darkness, and why hadn’t I noticed it was that deep before?

“I’ll have more questions for you.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to match that,” he says. “You haven’t exactly become uninteresting, now, either.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You might regret opening this door, though. Because I might abuse it.”

“In what way?”

“I’ve never had a male friend I could ask questions about sex.”

Rhys sighs in the darkness. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“No? I thought you’d thrive in the role of instructor. You could quote books and sound superior and ask people to call you sensei.”

He laughs. “Now that you mention it, that does appeal to me.”

“Good, because I have a lot of questions.” Things I’ve wondered but never been able to ask. Things guys have done or said that never made sense. “I’ve googled practically everything I want to know, but there are more intimate things. Guy things.”

A long breath. “All right. I’ll do my best to help you buy a ticket to Sexville.”

“Good.” I turn on my side, trying to stay the beating of my heart. In the darkness, he could be anywhere. “I’ll think of a few questions for the coming days.”

“God help me,” he murmurs.

Ivy

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Rhys looks over at me from the driver’s seat, and the look on his face is withering. I hold up my hands.

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop asking.”

“I’ve done this before,” he says, also for the hundredth time. So I settle back into the passenger seat and turn my face to our surroundings, because… wow.

We’re at the entrance to Kenya’s Nyiri Desert, on the outskirts of the national park where Rieler’s resort is located. Joy had told us earlier that day that it’s not particularly large, and laughed when I asked her what it was like compared to the Sahara.

“Like you next to a blue whale,” she’d said.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t gorgeous. Beautiful red dunes beckon, sloping and rising in all kinds of formations, the wind rearranging them day by day.

It’s a foreign landscape, something out of a painting.

And I’m here-in a four-wheeler currently racing up the side of a slope, driven by someone who had been very determined that we didn’t need a guide. He’d made the two-hour drive out here himself. We have a few hours to shoot here before the sun sets, which means driving in the darkness later. That, too, seemed like nothing at all to him.

“They emailed me just the other week about these pictures,” Rhys says from my side. “They might use them for their Kenya promotion or when they open their new hotel in Dubai.”

“So I might be in Kenya or I might be in the Middle East in these pictures?”

“Yes.” Rhys shakes his head once. “Marketing,” he says, spitting out the word like it’s a curse.

I grin at him, and he sees it. “What?”

“It just struck me that you sometimes have the attitude of a grumpy, curmudgeonly old man, and you’re not even thirty.”

“I’m thirty-two.”

“Well, the rest of my point stands.”

He snorts. “Curmudgeonly. You’d really destroy my reputation if you got a chance, wouldn’t you? Suddenly I’m predictable and grumpy.”

I bite my lip to keep from grinning and look out at the dunes. I can’t wait to send pictures of this place to my sister.

Rhys pulls the car to a stop on the top of a sloping dune.

“Here?”

“Here,” he agrees, putting the car in park and grabbing both his camera and his drone.

I climb out of the car and put my bare feet gently down on the sand. It’s warm at first, but the longer my soles are against the desert sand, the hotter it grows. Yep, flats on.

When I make it out of the car, I stop, just staring. We’re surrounded by red dunes in nearly every direction, with the exception of where we’d come from. The gravel road is still visible at the base of our high dune.

“Okay,” I say loudly, “you can pinch me now.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Pinch you?”

“Yes. I don’t really think I’m here. I must still be in my cramped New York apartment, and I’m just dreaming of traveling the world.” I close my eyes and hold up my bare arm. “Come on, Rhys. I’m ready.”

I hear a camera click and open my eyes. “Hey!”

“You looked good.” His voice is unrepentant behind the camera. “Despite the monstrosity they’ve put you in.”

I twirl, which isn’t an easy feat when you’re standing on sand. The silk chiffon swirls behind me. It might be the most beautiful dress I’ve ever worn, the blue contrasting starkly with the red sand.

“Tell me it won’t look good in pictures, though.”

“It will,” Rhys says darkly. “It’s the only reason I’m willing to let it slide.”

“Where do we start?”