The Relationtrip, Chapter 3: Logan
*Standalone *Slow Burn *Vacation Romance *Travel *Friends to Lovers
I have no clue what I’m doing. Holding Sloane Sanders in my arms is lethal—at least for me. I can’t be doing this. I have to get away from her.
Where? I glance over to the woman on my other side. She’s buttoned and polished to perfection, the way Sloane usually is when she sells houses. I took her professional headshot with my cellphone three years ago on the island of Oahu, and I’m surprised she hasn’t updated it yet.
Everything about Sloane surprises me. The fact that she’s so soft. So feminine. So funny. So put together.
I write women like her into my romance novels, and they always get their happily-ever-after. Even if their lives are messy on the inside, I craft the perfect man for them, and he provides the one thing they’ve been missing in their life.
I feel like Sloane is the one thing missing in my life, and I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and tell myself, You will tell her this year. You will tell her how you really feel about her.
I’ve had feelings—real feelings—for her for the last three trips. Two solid years. She hasn’t been out on a single date since she was left to walk down the aisle and announce to her family and her was-gonna-be groom’s family that he wasn’t there.
He’d never showed up at the venue. He called her ten minutes after she was supposed to walk down the aisle to let her know he “just couldn’t.”
I can. I can be the man Sloane needs and wants, if only I could open my mouth and tell her. “Ask her,” I murmur.
We live in two different states, but I talk to her every single day. Sometimes I don’t hear her voice, but we talk often enough that I can imagine it easily. She wasn’t fully awake when she told me I smell great. I know she wasn’t. Sloane sometimes says things she isn’t fully aware of when she’s falling asleep and first waking up.
I know this from our first trip together, where she blubbered at the counter next to me, something about her fiancé not showing up for the wedding.
Then she did something absolutely incredible. She squared her shoulders, tugged her backpack straps tighter, and showed the woman her second ticket. “Can I cash it out? Give it to someone?”
The woman gave her a kind, sympathetic smile. “Everyone here has a ticket to somewhere, sweetheart.”
I took a step closer. I didn’t. Well, I did, but my flight had been canceled. The ticketing agent I’d been working with had gone to get her manager.
Sloane’s agent looked at me, and I’d given her the best smile I could muster. “I don’t have a ticket,” I said.
Sloane looked at me then, her eyes sliding all the way to the floor and back to my face. She’d cocked her head and that gorgeous hip of hers. “You want to take a trip to Mexico with a stranger?”
I don’t remember a lot of details after that. I probably shrugged. And hummed. My sister says I hum instead of clearing my throat. “It’s halfway between,” Hattie tells me. “Sort of a throat-clear-scoff-hum.” She’d shaken her head next. “It’s annoying is what it is.”
I still do it. I don’t even know I’m doing it sometimes. It just happens. No matter what, after answering about twenty-seven questions, showing my driver’s license and giving her my phone number and address, Sloane had verified I didn’t have any warrants out for my arrest and I probably wouldn’t murder her on the Riveria Maya.
We’d taken her honeymoon trip together, and we’ve been taking a tropical retreat every January since. It’s the one shining part of my life I would rearrange anything and everything to do, especially now that I’ve been fantasizing about telling Sloane how I really feel.
“Not a fantasy,” I mutter to myself. “You’re going to tell her.”
She smells like sugar and mint and cola, and I want to taste all of that on my tongue so badly, my fingers curl into a fist. I glare at the screen playing some lame action movie I’ve put on to distract myself from the delicious female next to me. I want her in my life more than she is. I want her in my house, in my bed.
So you’ll tell her, I promise myself for probably the fiftieth time since I boarded a plane in Minneapolis. Tonight, even.
We’ll be arriving in Belize about eight o’clock, and I’m exhausted already. So tomorrow. I’ll tell her tomorrow.
I have a lot of things to tell her, including what I do for a living. When people ask me, I tell them I run my own business from home. Because I do. I write romance novels and publish them. Some myself, and some for one of the biggest publishers in the world.
I should know how to craft my own HEA, but I’m still working out the details. For now, I’m going to copy Sloane and take a nap. It might be the only thing that saves me from shaking her awake and telling her I’ve been in love with her for over two years.
Instead, I close my eyes, ignore the blasting of guns in my headphones from the stupid movie, and lean over to kiss her forehead. “I really like you, Sloany,” I whisper, and then I let myself relax completely.
* * *
Hours, a shuttle ride, and a trek to a golf cart, then a golf cart ride later, I stand at the check-in desk at Oriandon, the luxury resort where I’ve booked Sloane and I two rooms. “Logan Murphy,” I tell the woman across from me.
The desk has been busy tonight, and the scent of steak and shrimp hangs in the air. My stomach grumbles, because it’s been hours since the burger and fries in Atlanta. Sloane has hung back, out of the way, guarding our luggage while I deal with keys, getting maps, directions, and towel coupons.
“ID and credit card,” the woman says, and I hand them over. She tappety-taps and clicks, a frown appearing between her eyes. “When did you book this room?”
“Tuesday,” I say. “Just barely.”
She doesn’t look at me at all, and that’s not good. I’ve checked into enough hotels and resorts to know. “Give me a minute, please.” She speaks in crisp, perfect English, her accent clearly there but easy to understand.
She walks away before I can protest. What would I say anyway? No? You can’t have a minute?
I glance over to Sloane, but she’s buried in her phone. I know she wants these tropical retreats to be just that—a retreat from the busyness of her life. I want to call her to my side to reassure myself that everything is fine. Of course we have rooms here. I just booked them on Tuesday.
She looks up, sees me, and immediately grabs her suitcase handle and mine. She tows them to the counter. “What’s going on?”
“She went somewhere,” I say. “I don’t know.”
Sloane frowns too, but I’m not going to leap over this chest-high counter to look at the computer. Her stomach growls, and I grin at her. “I’m sure the buffet will still be open.”
“If it’s not, I’m eating off your arm,” she teases.
The first hour or so with her had been filled with some tension and nerves. I know they all came from me. It’s getting harder and harder for me to conceal how I feel about her. Even now, I let my hand drop to hers, where I give it a quick squeeze and let go.
“Food and a bed,” I say. “That’s all we really need, right?”
“And frozen drinks on the beach.” She smiles too, and we both look at the pair of women who return to the computer station.
“I’m so sorry,” the first says, glancing at the two of us before pointing to the screen. The second woman examines it like if she looks long enough, the secret to world peace or the cure for cancer will snap into place.
She finally looks up. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “We had a computer malfunction—a glitch—and we’ve overbooked the resort.”
“So do we have rooms?” Sloane asks, putting her elbows up on the counter.
“No,” the woman says.
My heart sinks to my feet. I’ve been up since five-thirty this morning, and I gained an hour flying to Belize. I want food and a bed, and I want them both right now.
I blink. “I booked two days ago. There were plenty of rooms.”
“Yes, but it was a glitch.” The woman wears sympathetic eyes. “I have one room available. I can give it to you for the same rate as the regular room.”
I lean into the counter too. “It’s not a regular room?”
“How many beds does it have?” Sloane asked. Outside of that first trip, we’ve always had our own rooms. I’d paced in mine morning and night last year, trying to work up the courage to tell Sloane I wanted to kiss her instead of just whisper secrets about our mothers together.
Girlfriends do that with each other.
I want her to be a different kind of girlfriend for me.
“One bed,” the woman says. “It’s a king bed, and there is a large couch and sitting area.” Her eyes light up. “The balcony is fabulous. Faces the ocean, and it has a jetted tub.”
“On the balcony?” Sloane asks, and dang if she doesn’t sound interested.
“Yes,” the woman says. “It’s one of our luxury…honeymoon suites.” She looks between me and Sloane. I look between her and Sloane. Sloane looks only at me, her eyebrows raised.
My heartbeat thunders in my chest, and it feels like a herd of wild horses are stampeding through my veins.
I break her gaze and look at the woman. “For the same cost as one regular room?”
“Yes, sir.”
I meet Sloane’s eyes and know instantly what she wants. We melt into each other’s sides, and as I lift my arm around her once again, I say, “I guess we’re going to take our second honeymoon then.”