Chasing the Groom

Chapter Three

I wake up to blue skies, the smell of sea air and...wait a minute. Is that...Drew? The familiar scent of musky aftershave fills my nostrils, and I pull myself up against the bed sheets.

A sudden memory of him, eighteen years old with black hair flapping around in the breeze as he got down on one knee in the middle of the street fills my mind.

Drew’s here! He’s found out where I am and he’s come to apologise for running off with that woman. He’s come to tell me he still wants to marry me.

“Drew?” My eyes search the hotel room, landing on a figure standing by the balcony. I sink back onto the pillow when I realise it’s not him.

“Amy?” I blink a few times. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting into character.” She waves the aftershave bottle at me.

“You’re getting into character?” I groan and lift my head up again. “Aims, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re going on about.”

“I’m trying to think like Drew.” She stares out of the glass door that leads to the balcony and inhales. “Maybe I can figure out where he is.”

This must be something she picked up the year she was at drama school.

“Getting anything?” I ask after a pause.

Amy’s eyes are closed. “He’s near the ocean. Possibly in a hotel or a villa.” She pauses, her eye flickering open. “Or an apartment.”

“Gee, thanks Mystic Meg.” I roll my eyes at her and swing my legs out of bed.

“What did you say the woman’s called again?”

We’ve taken to calling her The Woman. Not the floozy or the fiancé-stealing tart or, God forbid, her actual Christian name.

I swallow. “Lexie.”

Oh God, please don’t say she’s going to start spraying Chanel No. 5 or whatever women called Lexie wear.

“She sounds like a bitch.” Amy shrugs and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge.  “So, I’ve had this totally amazing idea about how to find them.”

“It doesn’t involve dressing up in Drew’s clothes and running along the beach chanting his name, does it?”

“No.” Amy screws the cap back on her water bottle. “I was thinking we should start networking. You know, chat to the locals, see if anybody’s heard of him.”

“Isn’t that the same as your last plan but without the photo?”

“Of course not! This is about really getting to know these people before I try anything like that again.”

I pull a plain cotton dress out of my still-packed suitcase and wiggle into it. “Which people were you thinking of?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start with the hotel staff.”

I laugh. “The Spanish hunks, you mean?”

“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”

I shake my head at her. “I’ll go see what Lou’s doing. Hopefully she’d got a better idea. See you downstairs for breakfast in ten minutes?”

God knows what trouble Amy will get up to in ten minutes.

When the three of us have assembled in the dining room, I soon realise that Amy isn’t going to waste any time putting her plan into practice. She starts by leaning against the podium, twisting her dark hair around her finger and giggling at everything the cute restaurant manager says.