What She Needs - Lacey Alexander [132]
“That sounds lovely,” she finally replied, and he smiled.
“What’s your name?” he asked as they stepped down into the soft sand. Both carried their shoes, and he had rolled up the cuffs of his tan pants.
“Jenna,” she said.
“Ah, I should have known—a pretty name for the pretty lady.” He cast a gentle smile in her direction. “I’m Andre.”
As they reached the shoreline, the tide washing up over their toes as they walked, she returned the smile, then asked politely, “So, do you do this often, Andre? Invite women here for walks on the beach?”
“No. This is, in fact, the first time.”
She found herself casting him a look of doubt, teasing—yet wanting to protect herself again.
“I tell no lie, pretty lady,” he said. “My band has played here only a few weeks. We work in Miami, mostly. But this place pays well, so I find myself back on an island for a month—then we’ll see what happens.”
Hmm—so maybe he really was just as respectful as she’d thought. She couldn’t help wanting to know more about someone so different from her. “Tell me about your life, Andre. Are you . . . married or anything?”
He gave his head a quick shake. “No, I’m not the sort of man to cheat. I once had a wife, but . . . she didn’t feel the same way.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenna told him, sincerely.
Yet he only shrugged. “I married too young. It was after leaving her that I left Jamaica, too.”
“And have you been happy since then?”
Another shrug. “The world is a big place and it’s good to see much of it. Broadens the mind. But I miss home sometimes. I visit, but it’s not the same as living there.”
“Will you ever go home?”
He gazed at the moon shining down on the water. “Could be. I think of myself like a palm frond in the wind—I go where the sea breeze blows me. Right now it’s blown me here, to this beach, with a pretty woman named Jenna. So right now, I’m happy to be exactly where I am.” And with that, he gently slipped his hand into hers.
And she let him.
“What about you, Jenna? Married? Single? Someplace in between?”
“Very single,” she assured him.
“And adventurous.”
It was a statement, not a question, and at first she wondered why he assumed that—but then she realized, and the warmth of a blush blossomed in her cheeks. “Oh, you mean because I’m here, at the Hotel Erotique.”
She could see he was instantly sorry to have made her uncomfortable. “It’s not my business—don’t be embarrassed. I’m a great fan of freedom, and I admire the freedom I see in people here.”
“But . . . I’m not like other people here, and despite what I might wish, not all that free.” It felt important to make him understand she wasn’t the average Hotel Erotique guest, although she kept the explanation simple. “I won the trip—without really understanding what it was about.”
Andre turned toward her as they strolled, his eyes going wide. “A big mistake.”
“You can say that again,” she muttered, adding, “but I came anyway.”
“And are you glad?”
“I’m . . . undecided about that right now,” she admitted in complete honesty.
“Oh?”
And maybe she was a little freer than she thought, since right here, in this place and time, with this handsome Jamaican man on an island somewhere in the Caribbean, she saw no reason not to keep being honest. “I discovered that . . . it’s easy to get caught up in the mood of this place, easy to become someone you’re not. I’m not sure . . . who I’ll be now, when I go back home.”
“The way I see it,” he said, “is that wherever you go, you’re still you. Some places allow a person to . . . find new parts of themselves. Yet . . . new is not the right way to say it—no—because I believe all the parts were already there. So I should say that some places allow a person to . . . release parts of themselves.” He nodded to himself. “Yes, that’s better.”
Jenna was unsure if she agreed. “So you’re saying a place can’t change you?”
“Like I said, seeing new places expands the mind. It can only open you up, help you see some of yourself you maybe didn