Chapter Fifteen
She felt his absence even before she opened her eyes. She kept them closed for awhile, replaying the events of the night before. It was somehow both a surprise and an inevitability that she had ended up in his bed. That’s how it felt now anyway.
His claiming of her on the beach had been every bit as forceful as the tide roaring in from the depths of the Mediterranean, but it had only been the beginning. Afterward, he’d carried her naked to the empty house, continuing up the stairs and into the large master bathroom where he’d tenderly washed the sand from her skin before taking her from behind, her hands and breasts pressed against the glass doors as he drove into her. When they were done, he’d led her to the big bed facing the glass doors. Beyond them, the ocean swept unchanging onto the beach, oblivious to the fact that her whole world had opened up in the three hours since she’d gone down for dinner.
But Leo wasn’t done with her, and he spent the next few hours exploring every inch of her, making her come again and again, wringing her out with the intensity of the pleasure he wrought from her body. In between, they lay in silence, her head on his chest, his heart beating out a comforting rhythm against her ear. It felt like a part of her, like she’d heard it since before she was born. They talked about everything — their childhood and their memories and all the secrets they’d kept from each other. And sometimes they talked about nothing at all.
She’d fallen asleep as the first light of dawn began creeping across the ceiling, Leo’s arms wrapped securely around her. Now she opened her eyes, looked around the room, flooded with light. He was gone, just as she suspected, but she could hear the sound of water running in the kitchen, could smell melted butter and warm sugar. Was it Leo or Mina?
She bit her lower lip, suddenly nervous. Would things be weird between them now? Would he regret what had happened? She didn’t know, but even if they weren’t weird, even if he didn’t regret it, they weren’t in the clear. Antonis Stavros was out there somewhere. It was possible he’d pushed aside his mission to kill her in the name of getting his shipment safely to port, but she couldn’t count on that forever. And even if she could, she was not okay with Maggie’s killer going free. Not okay with such a vicious man brokering the sale of weapons whose one purpose was to kill.
She sat up, stretched, then reached for Leo’s shirt. She held it to her nose, breathing in his scent — salt and wind and denim. She stood, slipping it over her head, then looked at herself in the mirror over the bureau. She only thought about trying to tame her hair for a minute. There was really no point.
The sounds from the kitchen got louder as she made her way down the stairs. She looked at her bare legs, rethinking Leo’s shirt. What if Mina was in the kitchen? Diana wasn’t exactly dressed for company.
But when she turned the corner into the living room, she saw Leo standing at the stove, flipping a pancake. For a moment, she could hardly breathe. Her fingers itched to touch his shoulders, to trace the perfectly formed muscles she already knew by heart, to touch the line of hair disappearing into the jeans slung low on his hips.
“Good morning.”
She looked up, licking her lips involuntarily. “Good morning.”
He grinned. “Hungry?”
She didn’t look away as she walked toward him. “Starving.”
He slid the pancake onto a plate, turned off the stove, and pulled her to him as she rounded the granite island. “We’ll have to eat first.”
She laughed. “You’re no fun.”
He squeezed her ass, pressed her into the already-impressive erection growing between his legs. Then he lowered his head until his lips were inches from hers. “Really?”
“No.” She was already breathless with her desire for him. “Not really.”
“That’s what I thought.” He captured her mouth in a long, lingering kiss that was as tender as it was all-consuming. “I’m sorry I had to leave you in bed. We have a big day. I wanted to get started.”
“I understand,” she said, trying to will away the wetness between her legs.
He swatted her bottom. “Let’s eat. I think we both need some energy after last night.”
They ate on a table out on the balcony, overlooking the beach where Leo had finally made her his. The sun reflected off the water from a clear blue sky, and the air was scented with the brine of the sea and the strong, black coffee Leo had brewed in the french press. She was in heaven, and she swallowed the last bite of pancake on her plate and closed her eyes, trying to memorize every bit of it.
“What are you thinking?”
She opened her eyes to find Leo studying her. “I was thinking this is a perfect morning. A perfect moment. I was thinking I wish it could last.”
His expression was serious as he nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“But it can’t, can it?” she asked.
“I plan to give you thousands of perfect mornings like this one, Diana.” His voice was hard, his gaze fierce. “But I have work to do first. And we have things we need to talk about.”
She nodded, looking at her hands. “Because you lied.”
“Because I lied,” he said. “And because the reasons I lied are valid.”
“What reasons?” she asked.
“The work that I do is dangerous,” he said. “To me and to anyone who’s part of my life. But that’s not all.”
She looked up. “What else is there?”
He flipped over the knife next to his plate, turning it back and forth. She recognized the fidgeting. It was something Leo did when he was nervous, when he was choosing his words.
“I don’t want this life for you, Diana.”
She looked around, taking in the sea beneath them, the long stretch of pristine sand, the beautiful house. “It doesn’t look like a bad life.”
He scowled. “It’s not all this. It’s strange hours and strange countries. It’s the kind of instability most people can’t imagine. Not the fear of losing your job — fear of losing your life, of being put in prison. And…”
He swallowed hard, and she knew they were finally getting to the crux of his argument. “And?” she prompted.
He shook his head. “You’re better than this, Diana. You should be with someone who has read the classics, who knows Brahms from Beethoven, who knows what it means to live right.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. The only thing worse than Leo’s confession — this confession — would be to think Diana pitied him. And that wasn’t why she felt like crying, why it felt like someone was scraping out her insides with a pickaxe.
It was because this was Leo, saying he wasn’t good enough, and she knew suddenly that this is what he’d always believed.
All the summer days he’d spent at her parent’s house, playing games of IT on the big lawn while Mozart leaked from the windows of the house.
All the times he came across her reading a book that had been written before either of them were born. Before her parents and grandparents were born.
All the times he’d sat at her dinner table while her father asked questions about college and her future.
She’d never once thought to imagine Leo felt inferior, because she’d never once thought of him that way. But now she saw it all, like a long and painful film whose sadness only fully hit you at the end.
His expression was guarded as she rose from her chair, came around to his side of the table, sat unceremoniously in his lap. His arms slid around her hips, and his face was just inches away. She almost couldn’t breathe with the need to touch her lips to his.
“What does it mean to you to live right, Leo?”
“You know what it means,” he said gruffly.
“I know what it means to me,” she said. “I want to know what it means to you.”
“It means a stable job with a stable paycheck. The kind of job that can’t get you killed or arrested, and dinner at six every night.”
“It sounds terribly boring,” she said. “And not at all the way I would describe living right.”
He looked confused. “How would you describe it?”
She held his face in her palms, looked into his eyes. “As sharing life with the one person in the world I can’t live without, building a future with that person, laughing and crying with that person. I’d describe it as working toward something together, no matter what. My parents have been married since they were twenty-two. When I look at them, I don’t see the house filled with antiques and art, the money they’ve worked so hard to save. I see the love in their eyes. That’s what I want for myself, Leo. And I want it for you, too. I want it with you.”
“You might change your mind,” he said.
She touched her lips to his. “I’ve had twenty-eight years to change my mind, Leo Gage. I think you’re stuck with me.”
“I should be so lucky,” he said. A cloud of worry passed over his features.
“What is it?”
“I want you to live in peace. And that means we have to get Stavros.”
“How do we do that?” she asked.
An aggressive knock sounded from the front door as he opened his mouth to answer. He gently removed her from his lap and stood.
“That will be your answer.”