Back on a different sort of island—Manhattan—the tabloids had spilled untold barrels of ink on stories about their relationship. Ethan Breslow, scion of the Breslow venture-capital-and-LBO empire, onetime bad boy of the New York party circuit, had finally grown up, thanks to a down-to-earth pediatrician named Abigail Michaels.
Before he’d met her, Ethan had been a notorious dabbler. Women. Drugs. Even careers. He tried to open a nightclub in SoHo, tried to launch a wine magazine, tried to make a documentary film about Amy Winehouse. But his heart was never in it. Not any of it. Deep down, where it really counted, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He was lost.
Then he’d found Abby.
She was loads of fun, and very funny, too, but she was also focused. Her dedication to children genuinely touched him, inspired him. Ethan cleaned up his act, got accepted at Columbia Law School, and graduated. After his very first week working for the Children’s Defense Fund, he got down on one knee before Abby and proposed.
Now here they were, newly married, and trying to have children of their own. Really trying. That was becoming a joke between them. Not since John and Yoko had a couple spent so much time in bed together.
Ethan swallowed the last sip of Perrier-Jouët. “So what do you think?” he asked. “Do we give the DO NOT DISTURB sign a break and venture out for a little stroll on the beach? Maybe grab some lunch?”
Abby nudged even closer to him, her long, chestnut-brown hair draping across his chest. “We could stay right here and order room service again,” she said. “Maybe after we work up a little more of an appetite.”
That gave Ethan an interesting idea.
“Come with me,” he said, sliding out of the canopy bed.
“Where are we going?” asked Abigail. She was smiling, intrigued.
Ethan grabbed the ice bucket, tucking it under his arm.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Abby wasn’t sure what to think at first. Standing there naked with Ethan in the master bathroom, she placed a hand on her hip as if to say, You’re joking, right? Sex in a sauna?
Ethan put just the right spin on it.
“Think of it as one of your hot yoga classes,” he said. “Only better.”
That pretty much sealed the deal. Abby loved her hot yoga classes back in Manhattan. Nothing made her feel better after a long day at work.
Except maybe this. Yes, this had great potential. Something they could giggle about for years, a real honeymoon memory. Or, at the very least, a tremendous calorie burner!
“After you, my darling,” said Ethan, opening the sauna door with good-humored gallantry. The Governor’s Club was known for having spectacular master bathrooms, complete with six-head marble showers and Japanese soaking tubs.
Ethan promptly covered the bench along the back wall with a towel. As Abby lay down, he cranked up the heat, then ladled some water on the lava rocks in the corner. The sauna sizzled with steam.
Kneeling on the cedar floor before Abby, he reached into the ice bucket. A little foreplay couldn’t hurt.
Placing an ice cube between his lips, he leaned over and began slowly tracing the length of her body with his mouth. The cube just barely grazed her skin, from the angle of her neck past the curve of her breasts and all the way down to her toes, which now curled with pleasure.
“That’s… wonderful,” Abby whispered, her eyes closed.
She could feel the full force of the sauna’s heat now, the sweat beginning to push through her pores. It felt exhilarating. She was wet all over.
“I want you inside me,” she said.
But as she opened her eyes, Abigail suddenly sprung up from the bench. She was staring over Ethan’s shoulder, mortified.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s someone out there! Ethan, I just saw somebody.”
Ethan turned to look at the door and its small glass window, barely bigger than an index card. He didn’t see anything—or anyone. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Abby nodded. “I’m sure,” she said. “Someone walked by. I’m positive.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“It was probably just the maid,” said Ethan.
“But we’ve still got the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.”
“I’m sure she knocked first and we didn’t hear her.” He smiled. “Given how long that sign’s been out there she was probably wondering if we were still alive in here.”
Abby calmed down a bit. Ethan was probably right. Still. “Can you go check to make sure?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. For a laugh, he picked up the ice bucket and put it in front of his crotch. “How do I look?”
“Very funny,” said Abigail, cracking a smile. She stood up and handed him the towel from the bench.
“I’ll be back in a jiff,” he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled it toward him. Nothing happened.
“It’s stuck. Abby, it won’t open.”
“What do you mean the door won’t open?”
In a split second, the smile had disappeared from Abby’s face.
Ethan pulled harder on the handle, but the sauna door wouldn’t budge. “It’s like it’s locked,” he said. Only they both knew there was no lock on the door. “It must be jammed.”
He pressed his face against the glass of the little window for a better view.
“Do you see anyone?” Abigail asked.
“No. No one.”
Making a fist, he pounded on the door and shouted. “Hey, is anyone out there?”
There was no response. Silence. An annoying silence. An eerie silence.
“So much for it being the maid,” said Abby. Then it dawned on her. “Do you think we’re being robbed and they’ve locked us in here?”
“Maybe,” said Ethan. He couldn’t rule it out. Of course, as the son of a billionaire, he was less concerned about being robbed than being locked in a sauna.
“What do we do?” asked Abby. She was starting to get scared. He could see it in her eyes, and that frightened him.
“The first thing we do is turn off the heat,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He hit the Off button on the control panel. He then grabbed the ladle sitting by the lava rocks and held it up to show Abby. “This is the second thing we do.”
Ethan wedged the ladle’s wooden handle into the doorjamb as though it were a crowbar, leaning on it with all his weight.
“It’s working!” she said.
The door shifted on its hinges, slowly beginning to move. With a little more muscle Ethan would be able to—snap!
The handle splintered like a matchstick, sending Ethan flying headfirst into the wall. When he turned around, Abby said, “You’re bleeding!”
There was a gash above his right eye, a trickle of red on his cheek. Then a stream. As a doctor, Abby had seen blood in almost every conceivable way and always knew what to do. But this was different. This wasn’t her office or a hospital; there were no gauze pads or bandages. She had nothing. And this was Ethan who was bleeding.
“Hey, it’s fine,” he said in an effort to reassure her. “Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
She wasn’t convinced. What had been hot and sexy was now just hot. Brutally hot. Every time she breathed in, she could feel the sauna’s heat singeing the inside of her lungs.
“Are you sure the sauna’s off?” she asked.
Actually, Ethan wasn’t sure at all. If anything, the room was beginning to feel hotter. How could that be?