Stealing Phin Read Online Free Page A

voice, the masseuses began spewing out questions in Spanish.
    Too mortified to think or explain, I grabbed my clothes and darted out of the room stark naked.
     
     

CANYONEERING
     
     
     
    Early the next morning, Dez and I stood outside the Volcano Villas, waiting to be picked up for our canyoneering tour. The air was hot and humid, but smelled fresh and felt nice on my skin, so I didn’t mind it. It had rained last night. But the sky was bright and sunny when we woke up in the morning.
    It was a new day, and I was determined to let all the horrible memories of yesterday’s botched massage be washed away by the rain. Although, in all honesty, it would take something more along the lines of a typhoon to achieve that. So, when the transportation that was supposed to take us to the tour site pulled up fifteen minutes late, my heart sank.
    “There’s no way in fuck I’m getting onto that thing,” Dez said, looking at “that thing” with distaste. She was hung over and in a bad mood.
    “Now there’s something you don’t say very often,” I said, though I had to admit the exact same thought flitted through my mind.
    I eyed the wood board slats nailed to the sides of the bed of the pick-up truck—jerry rigged seating for ten. A green tarp tied to the top of three metal bars that arched over the truck bed offered questionable protection from the weather.
    “It looks like one of those trucks that smuggles illegal aliens across the border.” I mumbled.
    Ugh. This tour was already not going how I’d hoped. I wanted, no, I needed it to be engaging enough to make me forget about last night. After I got back to our villa, I had spent the rest of the evening stewing until Dez came back late from the pool bar, completely tanked. Too tanked, in fact, to be the sympathetic ear I needed to vent to about how I streaked my way back to the room from the massage-that-never-happened. Not to mention the Not-gay-after-all Hottie who turned out to be a jerk.
    It was just as well. Complaining about him would’ve just gotten me even more worked up, although, I wasn’t sure that was possible. The way he looked so smug about the fact that he’d tricked me into showing him my goods made me so mad I could spit more venom than a jungle viper.
    I just hoped I’d never see him again. He probably slept with both masseuses, too. And at the same time. The thought made me even angrier. He was one of those guys blessed with good looks and charm, and he didn’t deserve either. I didn’t use the word “hate” often, but what I felt toward this guy came pretty close to that.
    I shook my head, as though that would loosen the thoughts cycling in my brain on a continuous loop and make them spill out of my ear. Frustratingly, the image of The Hottie in his sexy boxer briefs was the most stubborn one of all.
    The truck door creaked open, and a middle-aged man holding a clipboard jumped out and approached us. “Buenos días!”
    “Buenos días,” I said half-heartedly. Dez pouted silently.
    “Please, what are your names?”
    “Phinegan Swift and Desiree Lockport.”
    The man scanned down the sheet of paper on his clipboard and checked our names off. I glanced over at Dez and could tell she was hoping he wouldn’t find our names and that this was actually the shuttle for another tour, say, a tour that ends in Hell.
    “Okay, mis amigas,” The man put down his clipboard and swept his arm out toward the rusty truck. “Would you like to take a ride on my Massage Machine?” He said with a grin.
    Cringing from the mere mention of massages, I resisted the urge to ask the man why his truck was called the Massage Machine. Fifteen minutes later, as we turned off the paved road and trundled up a mountain on a steep and bumpy dirt path, the mystery revealed itself.
    “For every bruise that’s on my ass because of this ride,” Dez grumbled as we jerked and jostled and bounced around on the wooden bench, “you owe me a drink.” After she’d woken