She bent her head into her knees. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “that I got it wrong the next day. There was just so much weight on me back then. It was easier to believe I was an idiot than to believe something so perfect could actually be true.”
Damien pulled her into his body to press her face into his chest. He bent his head over hers, closing her in his warmth.
Far too hot, really, on a summer day after they’d already gotten themselves very overheated. But she’d take too much heat over too little, any day.
“And then the next time I saw you, I thought you were picking up a super model, and the time after that, you were stealing my dream company right out from under me and thinking you’d bought me with it, too.” She swallowed hard. “And then my father—” She broke off, and his arms tightened. “It was just a really hard time.”
He didn’t say anything at all. He just held her, warm and strong and there. Tears slipped out of her eyes, and for a second she tried to quell them. But it was so…quiet here. So warm. So…held. Secure. So she let them flow and somehow that made the urge to cry shorter and less painful—just this gentle wave of grief that could pass and let her focus again on the beautiful layerings of refuge around her. A great valley, the forest and river deep in its heart, the shelter of the fig tree. The strong fold of his arms.
And happiness. Life. She was still naked from the way they had seized at life and happiness so shortly before.
Naked. But protected in his arms.
“Damien,” she whispered.
“Mmm?” His deep voice against her hair, the little sound that meant anything she said would be welcome.
She lifted her head to meet his eyes. “I wish…”
He waited, his eyes so close and intense.
Beautiful
eyes. Beautiful face. She loved those lines of tension relaxed like this—loved what they said about the kind of man he was, that they would exist at all, and what they said about this moment, that they were all eased away.
She drew a breath and sighed, wishing she could say her wish aloud and make it come true.
This time no anger flashed in his eyes that she didn’t. “Yes,” he said quietly, and kissed her forehead. “I wish that, too.”
Kisses and kisses and kisses, in the dark against her door, with the scent of jasmine sneaking in among those kisses as if the flowers, too, wanted to touch. The night brushing cool silk around them after the heat of the day. Her hair under his fingers, her skin against his lips.
They were both tired. Ready to shower and sleep. But Damien kept kissing her because he couldn’t stand to stop and walk away. Trailing kisses over her throat in under the fall of her hair, so he could take a deep breath of her scent. Brushing them across her collarbone like wishes. Finding his way to her mouth again.
I don’t want to go.
But a man couldn’t make love on a riverbank multiple times in the afternoon and then proceed into the evening with one hundred percent confidence that he would be able to make an excellent showing of himself if the woman invited him up to her bedroom. He wished they could just…share a shower. Undress in quiet security in each other. Share a bed, just to fall asleep.
Ask me to stay.
Her hair spilled across her face, and he chased locks of it with kisses, brushing it free of her eyes with his lips.
He could imagine it, almost. Close and yet elusive, like the scent of jasmine which could touch them but never be touched. A room with her and a bed, getting undressed and watching her undress, and it not really mattering if they were going to make love or going to sleep. They shared that bed anyway.
Because that intimate, quiet, private space of sleep was one they wanted to have together.
And he and Jess didn’t have that. They had the mad trust and hope and betrayal of two strangers in New York, and from today they had…he didn’t know what they had. It felt raw everywhere, what they had. Like it might be something good, if it could grow, but right now the fresh exposed skin of it was sensitive to every touch. It didn’t yet allow them to move around a dark room in gentle, casual intimacy, kiss each other good night, and go to sleep.
He
couldn’t. It might be slightly—slightly—easier than walking into a boardroom meeting stark naked, but it still felt awkward and exposed. Like bringing handpicked wildflowers because it was all you could afford when everyone else had given the same girl hothouse roses.
He could afford hothouse roses. He just…thought the wildflowers were more precious.
He buried his face in the join of her shoulder and drew a deep breath, holding it a second before he let it out. Her arms were around his waist, and he liked that moment. He liked it a lot. Her hold of him. His resting in her.
Take it easy
, the old street said.
Trust takes time.
He drew another deep breath, easing. Of course. Of course it did. That made perfect sense.
It was easier to believe I was an idiot than to believe something that felt so perfect could actually be true.
Perfect. He had felt perfect to her, too.
He lifted his head and framed Jess’s cheeks, stroking her cheekbones with his thumbs, burying his fingers in her hair. Happiness sifted across his fingers with every strand of her hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so happy. He was greedy for it, afraid to spoil it by trying to cram too much of it in his mouth at once, but afraid it would all be gone tomorrow if he didn’t grab it now. He’d lost it once before, after all.
“I’ve got to go,” he murmured.
She blinked heavy eyes at him, a little wistful, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t say she wanted anything different. She didn’t say
I wish you would come up.
Come up to that small room over the shop, with its lavender sheets, and make her stretch out on her stomach while he stroked her back. Gave her all the tenderness that tree bark couldn’t.
It would be ridiculous to put antibiotic on those little pink marks, since they hadn’t even broken the skin. But he kind of wanted to minister to them. As if it would put the last healing balm on a major wound.
As if it would heal…himself.
Kind of odd, since he was impervious to harm.
Take it easy. Take your time.
Again, even the thought was easing. Right this second, given how thoroughly he had used her body that afternoon, she’d probably hold up her fingers crossed in a hex symbol if he tried to worm his way upstairs:
Down boy. Let me get some sleep.
That made him laugh a little. He petted her hair. “You’ll be okay?”
Because if you’re not…if you might be scared of the dark without me or anything…feel free to say.
She gave a tiny, slumberous nod that made him want to just pick her up and carry her up the stairs to bed. Her eyes were a little wistful. But she didn’t ask him to go check under her bed for monsters. Just to make her feel safe.
“You’re tired.” He kissed her again quickly. Trying to wean himself off this kissing.
She nodded.
He was better at talking than she was, he remembered suddenly. She had that streak of ironic wit that could sneak out when a man least expected it—like sinking his teeth into expected sweetness and encountering delicious crunch and spice—but he’d been the one, that night in New York, who had gotten her to open up, this courtship of a stranger that lured her into talking with him, telling him about stars in Texas.
While, somehow, her very quiet lured
him
into telling her about stars, too.
“Have you ever windsurfed?” he asked.
She blinked, kiss-heavy confusion. And shook her head.
“Do you want to learn?”
A little smile, a little sparkle of humor that dusted pleasure all over his heart like it was a damn beignet and she was sugar. “Right now?”
He found himself smiling back at her. Tugging the corner of her lips with his thumb, in gentle hunger for this teasing. “Tomorrow. It’s Sunday. My cousins and I often go. But I can take you early, to teach you some basics before everyone else gets there.”
“No harvest tomorrow?”
“It’s every other day the first couple of weeks, before the jasmine starts hitting its peak bloom.”
“I’ll probably be terrible at it,” she warned. “And look like an idiot.”
“Well…yes. It’s not exactly an easy sport to learn.”
She smiled again, that sugar dusting of humor. Like a spritz of Christmas almond scent in the air to join the jasmine and stone. “You don’t mind me looking like an idiot?”
Laughter curled up in him, wicked and delighted to wake. “Not so much, no.”
Her eyes sparkled. “I’ll try to return the favor some day.”
He bit back a grin. Instead he raised an eyebrow in hauteur. “I think you might find that something of a challenge.”
And she laughed out loud. He kissed her quickly, hard and hungry.
Damn
, he wished he hadn’t started this whole conversation about him going.
She smiled up at him when he lifted his head. “You’ve got to go,” she reminded him.
He nodded.
“You’ll be okay?”
She was teasing him again. He liked it to a ridiculous degree. “Probably not,” he said and took her key to open her door. He pushed her gently inside and pulled the door closed between them, then stepped to the side to make a key-in-lock motion through the window. She reached for the door, and he heard the old lock clunk into place.
He should call a locksmith and get a modern deadbolt installed on that door, now that a living person was behind it. Hell, maybe he should stay the night, just to make sure.
She smiled at him through the window that half stole the sight of her from him with its reflection of the lamplight, and then turned away and disappeared into the dark.
He stood there a long moment, and then made his way through the old twisty streets to his own apartment and climbed his narrow, winding stair.
She hadn’t offered to come check under his bed for monsters either, he noticed. Because that would be ridiculous, of course. No monsters would dare mess with him. He’d slice them up and hang their body parts on the wall as a warning to others.
But he felt a little anxious to be lying in his bed by himself, just the same.
***
Jess undressed quickly. She’d learned to do that, these past two and a half years, to keep it brisk, to dive under the comforter, because sometimes grief lurked under the bed, ready to come out and grab at any toe it found peeking out from under the covers, then climb up it and settle in her heart.
She thought she was taming it, though, that monster grief. These days it was so much softer than it had been in its first wild rages. Cuddly, almost. If it climbed onto her pillow, she could tuck it into her chest and pet it, wistful but not weeping. Sometimes even smiling, as she stroked those memories, as if grief had become a tactile pleasure, or a loved one’s perfume, that she kept on a shelf to open for a whiff from time to time. A way to think about and remember someone lost, to value that someone.
But tonight either that monster under her bed had gone on vacation or she had, abandoning the home where grief lurked for other climes, leaving no forwarding address.
So much life had filled up her day. Her week. Sun and stone and flowers, scent and sex. She wanted to think about Damien. The thought of him moved in the darkness. He had a little smile on his face. He was unbuttoning his shirt, taking off his watch and cufflinks. She closed her hand over the real watch on the old, scarred nightstand. It was cool and hard in the night, but he wasn’t.
He smiled at her. Moonlight softened the idea of him, and shadow brought out his darkness.
She liked it. She snuggled in the sheets and closed her eyes to pretend he was really there. The sheets smelled of lavender, and the room smelled of time. Old time. Time that had been piling up there for a while, waiting for someone to come in and shake it awake, dust it off.
She breathed it in, focusing on a smile in shadow and moonlight. Dark hair blurring into darkness. Warmth. Warmth that would fill the whole bed, if he was there.
He was a really nice dream.
Cuddly, even. She touched his watch on her nightstand, that impervious, elegant titanium, and imagined his eyebrow shooting up at the suggestion he could be cuddly. A little curl of laughter teased through her as she fell asleep.
“
I
think it’s cute,” Allegra said, hugging her knees and grinning.
“Allegra, you think everything is cute!” Layla retorted. “Which, granted, might have been justified in Matt’s case. He’s a teddy bear—don’t tell him I said that. But Damien is most definitely
not
. That’s like calling a black panther cute.”
“Or James Bond,” Jolie agreed. Layla gave her a delighted high five.
The women, wet from their own windsurfing, sat now on the beach, watching the men out on the waves. Léa was the only one of the women who had grown up by the sea and could have windsurfed just as long as the male cousins, but she had joined the other women when they retired exhausted to the beach, as if she enjoyed hanging out with them. Léa, with her straw blond ponytail, was a second cousin to Damien and the other Rosiers out there. Jolie, who had hair the color of something fresh baked out of the oven, had just married Gabriel Delange, whom Damien had also introduced as some kind of cousin. The restaurant owner, right. Jess was losing track of who was related how, getting tangled in this massive web of family.
“He’s supposed to be getting that shop back from Jess.” Allegra nodded at Jess, who sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching this happy group of females with some fascination. Gold strands of warmth and affection seemed to glimmer in the air around them, stretching between them in an unfamiliar web of family and support. She’d had friends, of course, but never those television-storybook friends to whom she could turn for anything and everything. And in terms of family, she had had the one thick golden cord with her father, and that was it.
The friendliness here was particularly crazy because as far as she could tell, these women barely knew each other. The heart of that network of gold threads was out on the waves. Except for Léa, all of these women had joined the family recently, by virtue of being in a relationship with one of the men currently windsurfing.