Honeymoon Hazards

Contents

Cover

Copyright Information

Honeymoon Hazards

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

About the author

PREFACE

This book was a lot of fun to write.

In fact, it sort of forced its way into the queue, so to speak. I was working on a different book I had hoped would be quite light, but which kept turning darker and more emotional. That happens reasonably often for me… not necessarily the turn to darkness, but the sense of losing control of a story or a book. Anyway, I was sort of stuck and a little frustrated.

Then I got sick. Food poisoning, something. I don’t know. All I know is that for the first twenty hours of it, I alternated between thinking I was dying and, well, hoping I would. While I was in bed, the idea for this story came into my head. I sort of conceived of it as an erotic version of the old Hitchcock classic
Rear Window
, well, without the murder plot, and with a lot of sex. So basically a voyeur book.

Ultimately, that’s not quite what I ended up with, though it does have elements of that. But I did get a light romp and it gave me some time off from the other book I was working on. It turns out, that’s what I needed, because I have since completed a first draft of the other book as well. Anyway, I hope you like it.
Honeymoon Hazards
is much closer in tone to my first book,
The Two Sides of Terri
than to my second,
Whatever it Takes,
though as is often the case in my stories, there is a certain casual attitude toward the sanctity of marriage vows.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people. I want to again thank Kenny Wright, who provided editorial guidance and who is also responsible for the design, both of the cover and interior. I always feel bad imposing on him for help since it inevitably takes time away from his own writing, and I already find myself often anxiously awaiting his next book. If, by any chance, you’ve read and enjoyed my work, but have not yet read his, I would urge you to immediately put down this book and read his stuff first. You can follow him at
http://www.kennywriter.com/
.

I also want to again thank Julie P for copyediting this work. You can find her at
https://www.freelancer.com/u/jp2004.html
.

Most importantly, I want to again thank all of you who have supported my books and written encouraging emails over the past few months. It really does mean a great deal to me, and I appreciate it tremendously.

PROLOGUE

I loosened my bow tie and stared across the dance floor. There was Claire, my wife, though it still felt weird to call her that, dancing with Danny, my best man. He was probably, as usual, reminding her she’d had a shot with him first.

Danny and I were unlikely best friends. He was a frat boy, LAX player, and I was, I guess, a geek, double major in CS and Philosophy. He had six inches on me… and that was just in the pants. Bada bing! But he was a seriously nice guy. Fate made us freshman year roommates, shared interests made us friends. We were still hanging out almost a decade later. He was a finance guy by then, I was in computers. We were both in Los Angeles on business and hitting some local clubs.

We both spotted Claire, almost simultaneously, at a loud, crowded, happy hour. We argued about who’d spotted her first, as if that, somehow translated to romantic priority.

“She’s not your type. Party girl.” He insisted.

“No way. Definitely bring her home to mom,” I argued.

“We’ll see,” he replied, striding off to strike up a conversation.

He didn’t last long. He’d played it wrong. She wasn’t the tequila shot and bathroom hookup type of broad after all. I laughed as she dismissed him. Now it was my turn.

She chuckled darkly as I approached her; she’d apparently noticed Danny and me standing together earlier. “What is this, you and your buddy running some sort of pig party?”

“Huh?”

“You know, a puerile game you boys play where you compete to score with the ugliest chick?”

I laughed. “So, now I’m intrigued. What are you?”

She shrugged. “Not a bimbo who’s gonna fall for your shit?”

“Well, sure. But I already knew that. So, what’s your deal?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Should I study crystals? Kabala?”

“You know cynicism can become pathological, right?”

“Or just realism.”

I looked at her. Pretty, pretty, young girl with a weirdly dark sensibility. I had no illusions I could score with her, no desire to engage in empty flirtation, and yet… she was strangely addictive.

I studied her more closely. Big, blue eyes, skinny with a great ass. She was too objectively hot to consider herself ugly.

“Okay, so you don’t really think you’re a pig.”

She wasn’t dressed slutty. She was wearing a simple pair of well-fitted jeans, and a ribbed tee that accented her flat belly, small, pert breasts, and well-toned arms. But no visible piercing, no effort to invent non-existent cleavage. No desperation about her.

“And you’re not insecure enough to be just fishing for complements. So I’m thinking you just said that to fuck with me.”

She laughed. “Amazing powers of deduction, Sherlock. Do girls really fall for this?”

Man, she was making me work hard. And Sherlock or not, I thought I’d done a pretty good job assessing her from afar.

I continued, “This isn’t your scene. You think everyone here is an asshole.”

“No, I don’t” she hissed. But she did.

“It’s okay. Almost everyone here
is
an asshole.”

“But you’re not?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I am. But here is my number. I’d love to talk about it over dinner.”

I don’t know what gave me the strength to walk away from her that night. Pretty, smart, cynical. I knew, or maybe hoped, I’d be with her forever. But she wasn’t the kind of woman you win; she was always the kind of woman who chooses you.

My approach worked. She called me. Away from the club scene, she let her shield down. She was everything I’d always liked in a woman. Beautiful, smart, but more; wickedly sarcastic at times, strangely competitive, predictably unpredictable. Just like that first night, there was always something about her that kept me on edge. I liked that.

CHAPTER ONE

A beautiful bride, a gorgeously appointed hotel room, a sweeping vista of tree studded mountains. It should have been the beginning of a perfect honeymoon, a week in paradise to kick off a lifetime of marital bliss. Or something like that.

Except that somewhere between Seattle and Maui I caught something. I spent most of my wedding night not in bed with my new wife, Claire, but rather in the bathroom, hugging the commode. She spent the night on the sofa, keeping her distance from me, and from the vile sounds periodically emanating from the toilet. It was about as unromantic as imaginable.

“God, honey, I’m so sorry,” I said, peeking my head out of the bathroom once I heard her stir.

“It’s really not a big deal, John.”

“It was our wedding night.”

She shrugged. “It’s not like I really had a right to wear white anyway.”

“Yeah, but --”

She stepped closer to me. God, she looked ravishing. She’s one of the few women I’ve ever met who looks as good first thing in the morning as any other time of the day. That perfect, alabaster skin, the big, blue eyes, the mop of wavy, brown hair. She was wearing just a loose nightie. I peered down the front to catch a hint of cleavage between her pert breasts, and below the lines of her long legs.

“Oh crap,” I growled and spun back into the bathroom.

As I completed my business, such as it was, I heard Claire from the other room.

“So I guess you’re not feeling better yet, huh?”

We were newly married, but had been together for years. Seven to be precise. Our friend Jean accused us of getting hitched just to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain, again, why we weren’t married after being together for so long.

There was no real explanation for our delay, except for the fact that we were still not quite ready for kids. We’d met when Claire was twenty-three. I was a few years older, twenty-six at the time, thirty-three now. Frankly, Claire’s thirtieth coming up in the late fall seemed to loom larger than our June wedding.

So it isn’t like I was particularly embarrassed to be sick in front of my new bride. But I was so grossly ill that I would have been mortified to share it with my mom. Then there was the cost. We’d splurged on our resort, and spending $600 a night to puke in a toilet was not my idea of money well spent.

“Please, honey, go to the beach or the pool. Something.”

“I’m just as happy here with you.”

I was standing in the doorway to the balcony watching as Claire ate her breakfast. Steaming hot Kona Coffee, a basket of pastries, perfectly crisped bacon, fresh melon and pineapple. It made me feel ill. Everything did.

“I’ll be fine in a day or so, but I really don’t want you to waste them.”

“Spending time with my husband is not a waste.”

My stomach growled. I’d already exposed her to enough disgusting sounds to last a lifetime.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” she asked. “Is that what this is all about? You got a girl coming up to visit you?”

I laughed. “Yes, Claire, I’ve been faking my illness for the past twelve hours. Her name is Yvette. I snuck her into the hotel disguised as a maid. She’ll be here sometime this morning.”

She grinned at me. “I knew it.”

“I never could fool you.”

She shrugged. “You’re not the first man to fail, helpless before my withering powers of deduction.”

“You’ve been reading too many mystery novels.”

“Speaking of which, I have a new one here with me to read while I keep my sick hubby company.”

But a couple of hours later, she changed her mind. The breaking point was a game of Scrabble.

Not Words With Friends. Claire refused to play that. She calls it a “cheap knock-off,” and insisted the bonus tiles are “misplaced,” whatever that means. Anyway, we were playing Scrabble on my iPad. We were tied with only a few tiles left. I played “QUEAN” on triple word tile, for 45 points. She objected.

“That’s not a real word.”

“The computer accepted it.”

“Use it in a sentence.”

“I, um, I don’t know. I just know it is a valid word.”

“If you can’t use it in a sentence –“

“Claire, we’ve never played that –“

She was tapping away on the iPad. “It’s archaic. No one has used it in hundreds of years. It’s bullshit.”

“Well, what does it mean?” I asked.

“A slut, basically. But that doesn’t matter, you can’t play it.”

I sighed. Normally seeing this side of Claire was always good for a chuckle. She’s perhaps the most competitive person I’ve ever met, but it is an intermittent trait. She’s not competitive about everything. Just some things. Even after seven years I can’t predict it consistently. But when she gets in these moods she’s like a pit bull. Unfortunately, I was feeling too sick to either fight or take amusement from her irrationality.

I’d made the mistake of nibbling on the edge of the piece of toast, and my stomach had immediately begun to rumble ominously. The tremors soon became an earthquake and I interrupted our Scrabble game to run into the bathroom.

When I came out, I caught her staring wistfully out at the perfect blue sky laced with high, thin, wispy clouds. She’d changed into her bikini, blue to match her eyes, and was wearing a thin white cover-up over it. Her sun hat lay beside her, her book in her lap.

“Come on, Claire, at least go for a walk or something. You know you don’t want to stay in this hotel room even for one whole day.”

She hesitated. It was a typical Hawaii morning. 82 degrees with a light ocean breeze. We love Seattle and our world champion Seahawks, but it rains there 150 days a year. It is cloudy 200 days a year, partly cloudy another 100.

I could see the temptation building. She was often like that. An idea needed time to germinate before she would act on it.

“Come with me.”

I shook my head. “Honey, I would love to. But in addition to my stomach, I am now woozy from lack of food and dehydration. I wouldn’t make it ten paces. Believe me, if the situation were reversed, I’d leave you in a heartbeat.”

She laughed. “See, none of my friends ever get to see this romantic side of you.”

“Go. I’m going to be sleeping anyway.”

The anti-nausea pills Claire had procured from the resort doc had me permanently groggy.

“Fine, Mister. But only for a little while. Just to feel the sun on my face for a few minutes.”

I lifted my arms in thanks. “Take your time. I’ll be wearing out a path between the bed and the bathroom.”

She stood. At five-seven she’s a few inches shorter than me, though as she stepped into her cork soled sandals we were about the same height. She blew me a kiss.

“I’ll explore and report back.”

I was already climbing gingerly into bed. “Have fun.”