Free 12 Hours In Paradise by Kathryn Berla Page A

spread the paper carefully on the ledge.
    “You may want to avert your eyes, Dorothy.” He grinned up at me. “The material…well, let’s just say it’s a bit flimsy.”
    “And what if I don’t?” I taunted him. He was my prisoner in the pool for the moment, and I was enjoying it.
    “Please avert your eyes, Dorothy. To save me from complete humiliation.”
    I smirked back at him.
    “Oh, screw it,” he blustered. “Just give me my shirt, please.”
    I couldn’t torment him any longer, so I set his shirt and shorts on the side of the pool and picked up the soggy questions, then retreated to our lounge chair. Before I knew it, he was out of the pool, drying off with his shirt and zipping up his shorts, not having revealed a thing to me.
    The questions? They were sodden. Mush. Nothing but ink-smeared pulp. I wadded them up into a ball.
    “My glasses?” He stood before me, still bare-chested. His hair was swept off his face. It hung down the back of his neck. Soaking wet and with all the curl removed, it was much longer than I realized.
    I placed the glasses carefully over his ears, adjusting the part on his nose that was always just slightly off balance.
    “Now you look like Arash again. Sort of. Except for your hair.”
    “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
    “A very good thing.” I blushed. “But I have bad news.”
    I held out my hand, palm up, the ball of wet paper balanced sadly in the middle.
    “What…have…you…done?” He grasped me by the shoulders and pulled me close. My lips brushed his bare chest. I could have kissed him then. But I didn’t.
    “What did I do? You’re blaming me ? I tried my best to save it, but it was hopeless.”
    “Never mind,” Arash said. “We’ll survive this tragedy just like we’ve survived everything up until now…your blister, for instance.”
    “How?”
    And then I had one of those duh moments.
    “I’m sure we can find it online.” I held up my phone. The screen was black. The battery dead. I’d only just begun to recharge it when I left my hotel room.
    “Mine’s good.” Arash picked up his phone, his thumb gliding across the screen. His face lit up. “There’s an app. There’s an actual app for what we’re doing. Hold on, I’m getting it.”
    “An app for falling in love?”
    I guessed that was okay although not quite as romantic as our crumpled treasure map. At least it wasn’t likely to be blown away by the wind.
    We heard footsteps and looked up to see a man with leathery, tanned skin and spiky, gray-tinged hair making his way toward us.
    “Hey, what are you kids doing out here? The pool closes at ten. You’re not allowed to be swimming now.”
    “ Kids? ” Arash murmured under his breath, and I got a brief glimpse of something I hadn’t seen in him before. Something I couldn’t identify, but I knew it mirrored the same thing in me.
    Embarrassment? Powerlessness in the face of authority?
    But he recovered quickly. Smoothly. Arash style.
    “Begging your pardon, sir. But my friend, Dorothy whom you see here, Dorothy and I were just relaxing poolside admiring the view from your lovely hotel when a capricious…no, a malicious zephyr snatched something from us. An item near and dear to our hearts.”
    Arash’s nose wrinkled as though to emphasize the grave danger we were facing. The man folded his arms across his chest and regarded us with a baffled smile.
    “Naturally, I couldn’t disappoint the lady, you understand. Nor did I want the object in question to be sucked into your pool pump, possibly causing serious damage and, who knows, maybe even a pool closure tomorrow for thousands of disappointed hotel guests. So I dove in to retrieve it.”
    “Go on, get out of here. No more swimming, you hear?”
    “We leave even as you speak.” Arash took my hand and led me toward the gate, which marked the exit to the beach. “Have a pleasant evening.”
    “You two be careful, okay? The crazies come out this late at night. Just keep