Gone was that creamy shade of skin from the flight down. A few days on the boardwalks had replaced it with a perfect golden bronze. Her long hair was up in a messy mop of a bun, curly tendrils of it curtaining her face and tickling her neck, and the yellow dress she wore made her glow like a daylily. My pulse quickened as she turned to lock up and I realized the hem barely covered her ass.
I didn’t know what it was about women in flowy little dresses, but my hands started to sweat knowing it was all right there to take.
I met Ophelia on the sidewalk, smirking at her adorable half walk, half skip toward me. I instinctively pulled her in by the waist for a hug but she put her hand to my chest and kept me at arm's length.
“Ah, ah,” she tsked, stepping back and giving me her tiny palm to shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Frankie.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Oh, so we’re really doing this?”
She reached down and pulled a pocket-sized notepad and a gel pen out of her purse, scribbling something on the first sheet aggressively. I didn’t have to look to know that every “I” on that page was dotted with a heart.
“She’s taking notes, too.”
“So that we can go back and assess your strengths and weaknesses.”
The woman was an enigma. Every interaction was like a new room at a fun house. I thought I had her figured out, and then all of a sudden, I was surrounded by mirrors and walking directly into double-sided glass. You open one door and you get a smart and organized Type C teacher; the door directly next to it swings like the entry to a wild west saloon and the woman inside has a mouth like a sailor and is throwing back beers to match.
“You’re the boss,” I conceded, dragging her in a second time until her cheek was flush to my chest. “But even if I were meeting you for the first time I’d lead like this.”
“That’s a bit forward,” she mumbled into my T-shirt.
“You seem to have forgotten what meeting me for the first time was actually like.”
“Trust me, I didn’t.”
“So I’m being tested and graded”—we walked toward the truck and I opened the passenger door—“and you just get to enjoy the best fucking date of your life?”
“Let’s not get too cocky, Maverick.”
“Again with the Top Gun,” I complained, helping her hop into the seat. I gave her a playful smack on her ass on the way up and she yelped. “Just get in, Trouble.”
“You’re getting points deducted for that.” Her silly notepad got a fresh lashing.
I was as competitive as the sun was hot, and knowing Ophelia was probably putting my name in a column on a spreadsheet next to a hundred other guys made impressing my fake date like a special operation. I was going to be this woman’s new standard whether she liked it or not.
I closed the car door and leaned in through the window. “Somehow, I think I’ll survive.”
19
Butterflies are cold-blooded creatures. Most of them can’t even fly in temperatures below sixty degrees—their little bodies can’t handle it. The hotter the better, so there was no better place to have an entire museum and gardens dedicated to watching butterflies than Florida.
We lucked out, because while Decembers are fairly stable as far as temperature, the little buggers won’t come out on a cloudy or rainy day either. They like to rest and their wings are too delicate for raindrops.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a breeze to be felt when I turned at the sign for Butterflyland and watched Ophelia’s lips twitch into a smile out of the corner of my eye.
“Your big bad walls are coming down, Frankie,” she quipped. “I didn’t know men who elected to spend their day at botanical gardens existed.”
“That line is going on my dating profile like an editorial.” I laughed. “In quotes and everything, next to ‘Ophelia, 26, stunned and satisfied’.”
“Mile High Club was such a winner though.” She scrunched her nose playfully, and for the first time I noticed that she had a perfect constellation of freckles right over the bridge.
Comparatively, Ophelia was the easiest woman to look at that I’d ever met. She was soft in all the right places, perfect lips, pools for eyes, hair so silken I wanted to run my fingers through it constantly. Whatever shampoo or lotion or perfume she wore smelled like it was literally designed for me to enjoy. Her pheromones triggered a primal response in several key places in my body.
The sexual chemistry was overwhelming—and I hadn’t even been inside the girl yet. She had me wrapped around a dainty little finger, strung up so tight it was cutting off circulation and I was just begging to be let loose.
You know how those commercials tell you to call your doctor if you have a hard-on for more than four hours? Well, I was going on seven days and I hadn’t fucking taken anything.
After I parked, Ophelia walked the entryway semi-circle for ten minutes, fawning over the bottlebrush, and it crossed my mind I could have just let the tailgate down right there for a few hours and it would have satisfied her.
But that was nothing compared to the kid-at-an-amusement-park excitement in her entire body when we finally got inside.
“Look at how gorgeous this is.” She gasped. All around us were flowering green plants and tropical leaves, waterfalls, colorful birds, hundreds of butterflies circling, and greenhouse glass overhead like we had entered our own little fairy-tale terrarium. Then right there in the middle, the sylph herself putting all the spirits to shame. Bright yellow and unbelievably distracting.
“There’s over twenty thousand butterflies floating around in here,” I told her as we walked along the guided path through the aviary. “Sometimes more, it depends on the time of the year.” As I said it, black and cobalt blue wings fluttered between the two of us. “Swallowtail.”
Ophelia assessed me suspiciously. “Did you study the brochure for some extra brownie points?”
“I would never mislead you like that.”
She leaned over the barrier to stick her nose in some pink petals. “How does the fighter pilot know so much about butterflies?”
“What, do you think all my brain can comprehend is camouflage and gunfights?”
She bit her lip. “No. I just can’t seem to figure you out.”
“Well good, we’re on the same page then.” I said. “When Cap and I started the business, one of our first clients was right across the street from here. I kept passing the sign every morning on my drive and curiosity got the best of me.”
“Solo butterfly date?”
“Kind of.” Ophelia looked up in awe as several wings circled our heads. “I spent a lot of time alone back then. I was here for three hours by myself just trying to see how many of them I could find.”
“And how’d you do?” She tried to catch one fluttering by on her finger, but it landed on my shoulder instead. Her blue eyes widened and she clung to the arm of my shirt to get a better look.
“Monarch.” I nodded at it, the sound of my voice sending the orange bug away. “I counted forty-seven before Mateo was blowing up my phone wondering where I was.”