“I swear, Sage Tariq, if you shed one more tear over that loser… That’s it! Get up out of that bed!”
Sage looked up from puffy eyes at her friend of over ten years; Eden Carter was a force to be reckoned with. Eden was pretty, vivacious and knew her own mind with a confidence men seemed to find sexy. She was also one of Sage’s best friends, but right now, she was Sage’s least favorite person in the whole world.
Sage curled deeper into the fetal position; she wished heartily that she could disappear. She wished Eden would leave her alone; she wished everyone would just leave her alone. It wasn’t every day one’s fiancé dumped them in front of their boss and other colleagues, was it? She was dealing the best way she knew how.
Okay, so Brent Davies had dropped the bombshell over two weeks ago, but it took longer than that to get over a three-year relationship. Her friends, Eden and Beth, had rallied and taken her on a vacation to ‘get her mind off things’, but considering that tomorrow was the last day of their vacation and she was still tucked up in bed with popcorn and Kleenex, she didn’t think their plan had worked so much.
“Eden’s right, Sage, you need to get out of bed,” Beth piped up in her lilting voice. “We leave Madrid tomorrow, and so far, you haven’t taken in the sights. Eden and I have certainly had more than our fair share of fun while you’ve been lying here moping at the ceiling all week. Why, the hotel maids are beginning to look at us funny because they obviously think you’re an addled cousin we stashed out of sight in the room while we stuff our faces with lobster and sangrias every night.”
“Yeah, they probably think we’re Cinderella’s step-sisters without the step-mother,” Eden grumbled under her breath.
“I bet they think Step-mother is locked in here with you to make certain you stay put,” Beth tossed in.
It was too much, Sage burst into laughter, releasing the tension that had been binding her chest as she laughed and laughed and laughed. Beth was a jewel! She was really Elizabeth Adams, but everyone called her Beth. Sage had known her for just five years, but in all that time, she had seen Beth get angry only once; when someone had insisted on calling her Elizabeth despite her stated preference for Beth.
Beth’s platinum blond hair and big blue eyes, as well as her petite frame and tiny voice, often made people assume she could be pushed around; she usually corrected anyone foolish enough to assume that in her own inimitable style. She also had a dry sense of humor that showed itself at the most unexpected moments; like now.
Even Eden was convulsed with laughter, her heavy red hair swaying around her face as she doubled over with hilarity; tears of mirth standing in her liquid green eyes.
As their laughter died, Sage rose to a sitting position, drawing her knees up to her chest as she looked up at her friends. Her blond hair fell around her face in lumpy strings, some of it falling into her big brown eyes.
“You’re right, guys. I haven’t been much fun, have I?” Sage asked, looking from one to the other.
“No, you haven’t,” Eden said honestly. “You’ve bawled your eyes out and memorized the ceiling for six days straight. Tonight is our last night here, since our flight back to the States is for tomorrow night. Why don’t we make it fun?”
Sage nodded, throwing off the duvet. She had dreamed of being in Spain for as long as she could remember, and now that she was, she had wasted the entire vacation. Anger roiled through her as she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was pretty with a heart-shaped face, big brown doe eyes, long blond hair that hung to her waist, the cutest set of dimples, and huge breasts that had always driven men wild. Her eyes sparkled as she examined her figure. She was very chubby, especially with the extra flesh on her hips, thighs and arms, but she loved her figure and she wouldn’t trade it for anything. She was voluptuous and perhaps slightly over-weight for her height of five foot seven, but she had a perfect hour-glass figure and an amazing carriage, and she was damned if she was going to let any man make her question her own femininity and attractiveness. She only had to walk into a bar sometimes and half the guys went crazy; Eden called her the ‘guy magnet.’
“Brent Davies was a jerk!” she declared suddenly.
She saw her friends exchange glances in the mirror.
“Well, he was,” she insisted. “He broke up with me in the middle of the damn Christmas party, with my boss standing right at my elbow and listening to every word!”
“And with Jessamine clinging to Brent’s arm!” Eden chipped in.
Sage’s cheeks darkened with anger. Jessamine was Brent’s best friend who had never made any bones of the fact that she thought she was a better fit for Brent. She had been after the man for all the three years Sage had known him, even though Brent was too wrapped up in his research to notice. When Brent had proposed to Sage a year ago, Jessamine had almost choked on the insincere congratulations she had managed to force out of her throat.
Then she had slowly gone to work on Brent, planting seeds of doubt and dissatisfaction until nothing Sage did could ever please him anymore. He had begun to find faults with everything; her generous curves, which had driven him crazy in the past, were suddenly ‘excess fat that needed to come off in the gym’; her cooking, which he had always loved, was suddenly ‘too spicy’; her hair was suddenly too blond.
Sage’s fists clenched, now, in anger as she recalled how Brent had had the temerity to tell her at that Christmas party that her weight was a turn-off for him, with Jess and her perfect size zero hanging on his arm at the time.
It had taken all of Sage’s strength of character and maturity to keep from collapsing in an ignoble heap at his feet after he spoke those unkind words to her. She had simply kept smiling as though they were discussing the weather, offered him a distracted nod, and then excused herself to her boss before disappearing into the ladies’ room. She had remained there until everyone had left and then she had slowly crept out and staggered to the curb for a taxi to take her home, knowing she would never be able to drive in that state. The tears she had fought so hard to hold in check had immediately started falling when she’d gotten outside and seen Eden and Beth waiting patiently for her on the curb as though they had nowhere else to be. It was four hours after everyone else had left and yet, they had waited. She had been so devastated that night, she just knew she would never have gotten through it if they had not been there.
They really were the best friends in the whole wide world and she really couldn’t bear to be the reason their vacation was anything but amazing. Eden was a divorce attorney and she rarely got any time off; Beth was a psychologist and the story was much the same. She had to shake off the blues for their sake, she thought.
“If Brent can move on, so can I,” she whispered softly to her reflection.
Eden nodded approvingly and whipped out a list, waving it happily in the air.
“What’s that?” Sage asked, eyeing the paper suspiciously.
“A list of things to do before the end of the vacation,” Beth laughed, her blue eyes twinkling.
Sage shut her eyes in despair; she’d been had!
“What’s on the list?” she asked, reaching for it.
“No, no, no,” Eden sang, thrusting the paper out of her reach. “First things first, you need to take a shower and then we’ll play it by ear.”
Two hours later, she was waxed, plucked, and dressed in a leopard print, backless dress her friends had picked out. The dress clung sinfully to every last line of her body and made her feel very much like a femme fatale.
Eden’s list had fifteen crazy things to do on it and since her friends insisted they had already done all fifteen themselves without her, tonight was her night. She groaned when she saw the first item on the list; great!
Flash a handsome stranger in the lobby... then make a run for it.