Free 12 Hours In Paradise by Kathryn Berla

we’re going back, then let’s do it and get it over with. Your decision, Dorothy.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I think you know what I want.” He placed his hand over mine. “But I want your decision to be completely independent of mine.”
    “I want to stay with you.” I squeezed his hand. “I want to finish our adventure. I want to answer the questions.”
     
    ***
     
    Suddenly everything changed. We’d made a commitment to each other, a big commitment. I didn’t know where it would lead, but I was giddy. I felt both brave and scared. I felt more grown-up than I’d ever felt before, but at the same time I felt like a naughty little girl.
    “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Arash had said earlier. We were in for a pound. And if my father found out, or Arash’s chaperone, well, then we were in for about a hundred pounds. A thousand maybe.
    “We finished set one,” I announced triumphantly. “What do we get? A prize?”
    Arash furrowed his brow and looked down at the clipping. “More difficult questions,” he announced.
    “ More difficult? The ones we answered were supposed to be easy?”
    “I’m afraid so. Think you’re up to the challenge?”
    “What do you think? Of course I am. Let me see that.”
    I held out my hand for the article, our treasure map, the questions we were relying on to guide us through the night. But just at that moment, a breeze sneaked up from behind, flirting with the hem of my dress, toying with my hair, distracting us while it made its move for the thirty-six questions of love. The paper flew from Arash’s hand, or was it mine? It fluttered like a hummingbird just beyond the reach of our grasping hands until the impish wind, tiring of its game, deposited the questions rudely in the middle of the pool. Exactly in the same spot where the bubble goddess had performed only minutes earlier.
    “Oh no!” I cried out to match the O Arash’s mouth had silently formed.
    It all happened so quickly.
    “No problem,” Arash said. “We can handle this.”
    “We can?”
    “Hold this, please.” He unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. I was treated once again to a view of his percussionist’s upper body. I took the shirt and draped it across my arm.
    “And this.”
    He removed his shorts, folded them once, and passed them to me. In his boxer briefs he looked kind of awesome. His thighs were as muscular as his arms. Probably all that skiing in Switzerland growing up. He stepped out of his sandals.
    “And this.”
    He took off his glasses and carefully placed them in my hand.
    “I’m as blind as a bat, so please guard these with your life,” he said.
    I was glad that close up, my eyesight was perfect.
    He was gorgeous. His eyes soaked up the entire night sky, so black and so deep. Tiny, bright lights reflected from their surface like miniature stars. How had I ever lusted after Harrison in the cookie store? How had I not noticed Arash back then? Shouldn’t he have shone like the brightest star in the sky? Had something happened between then and now? A mask he had removed? A veil whisked from the front of my eyes?
    His smile was slightly crooked, but his teeth were perfect, white, and straight. He stood before me completely unguarded. Vulnerable in his near-nakedness, but as unaffected and natural as he had been before. Could I stand before him the same way? With such confidence?
    I doubted it.
    “Good-bye, Dorothy. If I don’t return, please see yourself back to the hotel with apologies to your family on my behalf.”
    “Shall I let Mrs. Coburn know what happened to you?”
    “That would be nice.”
    He walked to the edge of the pool and executed a perfect dive off the side. He glided what seemed like a long way underwater before surfacing with the paper triumphantly grasped in his upturned arm. He made his way back to the side of the pool using a clumsy one-armed stroke, the precious questions held safely out of the water in his other hand.
    Once he reached the side, he