“Maybe an extra treat will help her get over it.”
Smiling, she nodded. “Maybe.”
“I’ll give her an extra ear rub before I go.”
She eyed his expression. “You’re in a good mood this evening.”
How could he not be, after such great lovemaking...such great sex, he corrected himself immediately. “Yeah, I guess. It was a long week, lots of annoyances. Feels good to get away from the inn again for a couple hours.”
She frowned a little as she reached up to stroke his face in a soothing gesture. “You do look a little tired. Maybe you need a vacation.”
He grimaced. “Now you sound like my sister.”
“Which one?”
“Bonnie. She’s been nagging me to take a vacation.”
Alexis shifted onto her side, bunched her pillow beneath her cheek and studied his face. “Aren’t you interested in getting away for a few days? You said yourself it feels good to leave the inn occasionally. Considering you basically live at your office, no one could blame you.”
“Where would I go?” he asked with a shrug.
“Don’t you have family you’d like to visit? Or someplace you’ve always wanted to see?”
“I see family every day,” he said in amusement. “And I can’t think of any place I’m dying to see at the moment.”
“You could visit your dad,” she suggested, suddenly sounding a bit tentative. “Have you ever been to New Zealand?”
He felt his eyebrows drawing down into a scowl and deliberately smoothed them. “Just saw my dad in December. That’ll hold us for a year or so.”
She backed off quickly from that topic, obviously sensing it led down a path he didn’t want to take. “So, did you ever have a yen to visit the Pacific Northwest? Seattle, maybe?”
He was momentarily taken aback by that question. He happened to know Alexis would be in Seattle for a seminar the week after next. Surely she wasn’t suggesting he accompany her?
“You know I’m going out for a seminar the last week of March,” she said as if echoing his thoughts. “I just thought maybe you could fly out to join me for a couple days? The seminar is only a day and a half—Wednesday and part of Thursday—but I’d already decided to stay through the weekend, so I booked my room through Sunday.”
She named the hotel, adding that it was on the waterfront, in a tourist-heavy part of town. “I’ll have quite a bit of free time and I’ve never visited there before, and it would be fun to have someone to go sightseeing with, though I’ve heard this is hardly the optimum time of year to vacation there. Event planners have to schedule our conferences in off-season, and it was the West Coast’s turn to host.”
Out of all that babbled explanation, he focused on only one point. “You want us to go away together?”
She waved a hand dismissively, her tone studiously casual. “No need to make any announcements about it, you know. It was so nice when we slipped off for our hike the other day. I just thought it might be fun to spend a couple days in a city where there’s almost zero chance anyone would recognize us and make a big deal of it. You’d get a short vacation, I’d combine work with play, then we’d return home and dive back into our separate busy seasons. Considering my upcoming schedule and probably yours, too, we’ll be lucky to have a free evening to see each other until winter.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. He really had gotten spoiled by seeing her fairly often, by both of them having free evenings to spend together. With the busiest season of the year coming up for her, especially, he had no doubt that would change soon. While his workday started early and usually ended by the time darkness fell, Alexis would have events or appointments nearly every evening, especially weekends. She’d mentioned that she would be working several out-of-town events in coming months, even after the seminar.
She seemed to look forward to that impending crazy, hectic time, which he supposed boded well for her clients and her bottom line, but rather pushed him to the sidelines. As it should be, of course. Her career should definitely take priority over a loosely defined affair, no matter how great the sex.
She smiled and shook her head. “It was just an impulsive suggestion. Maybe you can take a couple days to go on a hike or mountain-bike ride, set up camp and drink beer with a couple of your guy friends. That’s my brother’s idea of a good time.”
He’d never met her younger brother, nor any other members of her family. “I’ve spent a few great weekends camping and drinking beer with pals myself. Not a bad way to wind down.”
“Bonnie told me she and Paul enjoy horseback riding on their days off. Mountain trail rides at his friend’s stables. Sounds like fun. Kinley mentioned that she and Dan like visiting museums and galleries and sampling new restaurants for Dan to review in the magazine he writes for.”
“Kinley got that from our dad. He’s what they call a foodie. Every time he visited us when we were kids, he took us out to restaurants that served foods we didn’t normally eat—and at least one annual trip to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Dad has a rather disturbing obsession with Dolly Parton,” he added drily.
“Hey, Dolly’s a brilliant songwriter.”
He groaned. “You have no idea how many lectures I’ve heard on that subject.”
“‘Coat of Many Colors,’ ‘Jolene,’ ‘9 to 5,’ ‘Hard Candy Christmas’...”