Cara tried to listen to the lecturer at the front of the hall, but her gaze kept drifting back to the time on her laptop. It wasn’t that the lecture was boring—the effects of mental health driven on or exacerbated by addiction and the statistics for the children growing up in those situations, was a particular subject Cara had great interest in. If for no other reason, to help better understand her own childhood and parents.
For whatever reason, she couldn’t concentrate long enough on the lecturer’s words to keep track of where the guy was, or what he was currently discussing. That was probably caused by the fact this was her last thing to get done at school, and then she had the weekend free.
Cara had been doing well.
Two weeks, no missed days.
She hadn’t even missed study halls or the specific lectures that were not considered required attendance for her grades.
Given her track record over the last few months of missing more time than she actually attended, Cara was going to take that as a win. It was one lecture—the current one—that she probably could have afforded to give herself off to relax, but she had refused. Seems she should have skipped it and downloaded it later off the university’s online portal, because she wasn’t getting a damn thing out of it anyway.
While it wasn’t good form on a student to leave a closed lecture hall, Cara considered doing just that and grabbing a bite to eat on her way to the bus stop. She ended up pushing through those last ten minutes or so, taking the time to close down her laptop and pack her things away. Some lecturers went far over their time, but thankfully, this one was done the second the clock hit four.
Cara was done, too.
Normalcy, she told herself as she walked out of the lecture hall. You’re trying to get back to some kind of normal here.
So far, she was succeeding.
Or it seemed so.
She hadn’t stayed in bed for hours on end. She went out and did things, grabbed groceries, paid bills, and whatever else needed done. It wasn’t like she was a social butterfly, but she made it a point to grab coffee with a couple of friends, and have lunch with her aunt, too. Which was a hell of a lot more than she had been doing before.
Cara hadn’t realized how deep her head had been stuck in the sand for all those months. To an extent, she had liked the darkness of being alone, even if the loneliness felt like it might kill her.
She figured, what did it matter?
No one would be able to understand her grief, anyhow.
Cara was right on that end.
No one did understand.
But they sympathized.
Maybe it was that the hardest part of her grief was finally waning enough to let her breathe. Maybe she had somehow managed to survive the depression that had sank its dirty claws into her mind for so long. Or maybe forcing herself to do normal things and actually see what was happening around her had been enough to wake her the hell up.
Maybe it was none of those things.
She did know that whatever it was, she was grateful. There was nothing to life, if a person wasn’t living it. Lea would have understood that better than anyone else.
“Hey, Cara!”
She had opened the main doors to Hall Three to leave, but turned to face the familiar girl running up to her. Lynn had been one of the few mutual friends that Cara and Lea had shared together, who had come from them attending the university.
“What’s up, Lynn?”
The girl smiled widely. “Just wondered if maybe you might want to hang out this weekend? We’re all thinking of heading to the new club that opened up in Niagara Falls.”
“That club is supposed to be crazy popular right now, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“So, four hours of waiting in line to get inside a club that is so full, you can barely see what’s happening five feet in front of you?” Cara asked, slightly amused.
Lynn shrugged. “I guess. You interested?”
“Not this weekend, but thanks.”
Cara didn’t regret refusing the invite. She didn’t have shit going on, she had no plans coming up, and she liked that fine. Lynn didn’t seem to mind either, giving her friend a hug before heading back in the direction she came.
Normal, Cara found herself repeating.
Like a damn mantra.
She was coming to learn that sometimes, breaks were good, too. A break from the world, from friends, and from life. It didn’t mean she was doing worse or whatever, just that she needed a little time out.
That’s what she wanted this weekend.
A little time out.
Of course, he would be waiting in front of her apartment building when Cara got off the city bus. Of course, he would be wearing one of those fucking three-piece suits, looking like a goddamn God, as though he had nowhere else better to be in that moment.
And fuck, did he look good.
Cara hated how almost every part of her knew instantly that her attraction to this man was not the least bit containable or innocent.
Gian Guzzi.
Leather driving gloves. Shined, leather shoes, untouched by the dirtiness of the winter in the city. Lazy grin. Confident posture.
Gian.
She didn’t have the slightest clue how Gian knew where she lived—she hadn’t given him her address that morning weeks ago, and she hadn’t even given him her phone number, despite his promise of coffee. She knew that him showing up at the restaurant when she was filling in for a bartender that night a few days back had been nothing more than happenstance, and even then, he still hadn’t asked for her information.
Almost like he didn’t have to.
Like maybe he already knew.
Cara couldn’t decide if she liked that, or not.
She stayed back a few paces, as he clearly hadn’t seen her get off the bus, and decided to watch him for a moment. He was exceptionally beautiful for a man, in a rough, cocky sort of way. When he tugged on the wrists of his leather driving gloves, Cara’s cheeks heated with the memory of taking them off, just so he could get his bare hands up her dress in a car.
Nothing innocent about this at all.
Gian both amazed and terrified Cara.
Never had a man had the ability to make Cara so entirely aroused, yet coy at the same time.
She was not shy, yet in a blink, he could make her that way. She was not loud, but he could easily make her scream. She was not controlled by selfish desires, but a big part of her still screamed want, want, want when it came to Gian Guzzi.
And that was bad all over.
Or was it?
Cara didn’t know.
“Are you going to stand there and stare at me all day, or come over and talk to me?” Gian suddenly asked, never once looking away from the opposite direction of where Cara was standing. “Not that I mind your staring, because, well … Tu as de beaux yeux, ma chérie. But I already have a big enough ego to fill this city, no need to go adding to my complex.”
That fucking French of his was going to kill her someday.
And she wasn’t even sure she understood what he said.
“Did you say I have beautiful eyes?” Cara asked.
Gian’s grin turned even sexier as his gaze finally landed on her. “I did—well done, Cara. Brava.”
And there went his Italian.
Cara sighed. “You’re Catholic, right?”
Sure, he was.
He was French and Italian.
He was a damned Catholic.
“Of course,” Gian said, turning to face her more. “Why?”
“Then you’re familiar with the Bible and sin. Tell me, is there any place in the good book that explains how much of a sin it has got to be that you can manage to be that attractive and charming in three languages?”
Gian laughed loud and hard.
Cara’s stomach tightened into a dozen more knots.
Fuck.
Yes, that’s what she was.
Fucked.
“There is no such thing in the Bible,” Gian assured.
“There should be,” Cara mumbled to herself. “It’s not fair to all us unsuspecting women walking around, you know.”
Gian lifted a shoulder. “There’s really only one woman who needs to be worrying about it, at the moment.”
“Oh?”
His brown eyes lifted to meet hers unabashed, his grin still firmly in place. “You, Cara. Just you.”
She didn’t know what game this man was playing, but he was damn good at it.
“What are you doing here, Gian?”
“You owe me a coffee. It also happens to be dinnertime, so I thought you might like food, too.”
Cara came a little closer to the back of his Lexus. “And you knew where I lived, how?”
“Constantino is chatty when he drinks,” Gian admitted. “I tend to use that to my advantage at times.”
“My cousin?”
“Surprised he knows things about you?”
“A little,” Cara replied. “We’re not really close.”
“You don’t have to be,” Gian said, not elaborating further. “He also mentioned you might have your weekends free, which is why your uncle often calls on you, if he needs an extra hand at the bar like he did the other night.”
Cara eyed him curiously. “So, you’ve been asking about me?”
“Oui. Is that a problem?”
“Maybe.”
“Funny, bella, you don’t sound like it’s a problem.”
Cara barely held back her smile.
Damn him.
“Is your weekend free?” Gian asked quieter.
“My whole weekend?” Cara shrugged. “That’s a hell of a lot more than coffee or dinner, Gian.”
“It is, but shit, go big or go home, Cara. I’m interested in you—very interested, love. I’m not about to hide my intentions in that regard. It won’t get me what I want, if I do. So if your weekend is free, and you might like a bit more than dinner with me, you should get your pretty ass inside my car as soon as you possibly can, so we can get out of here.”
Cara sucked in a sharp breath, stunned and aroused at the same time. With only a few words, he’d provoked her into a reaction, and this time, he hadn’t even needed to touch her to do it. He demanded, she reacted.
Damn him, indeed.
“And what would this weekend include?” Cara asked.
Gian waved a hand, smiling. “I’ve come into some real estate in Ottawa, and I greatly need a break from my life. I’ll get to leave this city for a bit—breathe outside of this familiar hell. It’s not been a fun couple of weeks. I’d like to see the real estate, and enjoy myself while I do it.”
Cara wet her lips. “With me.”
He nodded, that piercing gaze of his pinning her in place. “With you, Cara.”
Well, then …
“I have to grab a bag,” she said.
Gian gestured at her building. “I’ll be here when you get out.”
“This was not at all what I expected when you said real estate,” Cara admitted, taking in the old oak floors and outdated—yet beautiful—pieces of furniture in the two-level penthouse. There was nothing modern about the decoration of the penthouse, and even the light fixtures threw back to yesteryears, when Cara hadn’t even been alive. It was beautiful, to be sure, but old. “It’s like we jumped back in time about fifty years.”
Gian hummed under his breath, running his finger along the curved wooden arm of a chaise. Not a speck of dust was anywhere to be seen, yet the place looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years. “As far as I know, that was about the time he bought it.”
“He?”
“My grandfather.”
“Oh,” Cara said softly.
“Mr. Guzzi!”
Cara damn near jumped out of her skin at the new voice, though Gian barely moved a muscle except to smile at the newcomer. An older gentleman, and a slightly younger woman, came walking down a spiral staircase. The woman stayed behind the man, her uniform suggesting she was a maid of sorts, while the gentleman’s suit said something entirely different.
“We’ve been looking forward to seeing you, and taking you on a tour,” the man said, coming to stop in front of Gian with his hand extended.
Gian shook politely. “Yes, well, the tour won’t be needed, Derek, but merci.”
“But—”
“I think Cara and I can handle the exploring on our own for the weekend.” Gian gave her a wink over his shoulder. “Right, mon ange?”
“Sure, we can.”
She didn’t think he had any exploring in mind, to be honest.
“If you’re sure,” Derek started to say.
“Perfectly sure.”
“Penelope comes in to clean and dust Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” Derek explained. “She is done for the day, and all the beds have been stripped and changed.”
Something odd took over Gian’s features. Cara didn’t recognize it.
He cleared his throat, glancing upward at the ceiling. “And which room did he prefer? Or, which one did they use, so I can avoid that?”
“Well, Corrado hasn’t been here in more than a decade, Gian. And those items are long gone.”
Gian didn’t appear to care. “Which one?”
“The only one without a balcony,” Derek replied quickly. “Louise didn’t like heights.”
“Great. I have your phone number if we need anything, so …”
Derek and the maid seemed to catch on to Gian’s unspoken words quickly enough, and made themselves scarce. Cara only heard the quiet click of the front door closing before she turned back to Gian.
He had walked forward, further into the penthouse, toward a row of windows that still had wooden frames, and could be opened from the inside. He crossed his arms, staring out the windows at the old buildings across the way.
“Your grandfather hasn’t been here in ten years, but kept a maid on a three-day-a-week schedule?” Cara asked, confused.
“And Derek is on call, too, as he’s the building’s … well, like a consigliere, of sorts. This is one of the only suites in this building that hasn’t been renovated or updated in some way over the years. They would greatly like me to keep it that way, as it increases the value of the building as a whole, to say the original owner’s penthouse is in mint condition from when it was built fifty years ago.”
“But you don’t want to,” Cara assumed.
She hadn’t realized it was more than the penthouse that he owned.
“I didn’t want this place,” Gian muttered heavily. Sighing, he turned to face her again. “Would you mind exploring on your own for a bit? I have a call to make, and I’ll order us some food, too.”
“Sure,” Cara said.
She could tell something else was on his mind.
Gian was good at hiding it, but she saw it.
Whatever it was.
Cara figured it wasn’t her place to push. She hadn’t come with him for the weekend to pry into his personal life. She had come because, like him, a break from life was just what she needed.
And who the hell said she couldn’t have fun while she did it?
“Is this your grandmother?” Cara held out a black and white glamor shot of a beautiful woman, as Gian walked into the bedroom without a balcony.
“No, that isn’t Aurora. And my grandmother died two years ago. Heart attack.”
Cara’s brow furrowed, as she took in the dozen and one other framed photos on the old armoire. Most held the woman, but a few had children, and some, an older gentleman that looked a hell of a lot like Gian, if he were in his forties or fifties.
“Then who is it? Oh, Louise, right?”
Gian stared at Cara, not saying anything.
“What?”
It took her far too long to realize what he wasn’t saying. A woman named Louise had lived here, and she was not his grandmother. A woman who, guessing by the photos and the statements made about the bedroom, had been involved in a romantic relationship with Corrado Guzzi for years.
The photos of the children caught her attention again.
Decades, actually.
“Oh,” Cara said quietly, carefully putting the photo back. “Well, then.”
Gian shrugged one shoulder, but didn’t move further into the room to join her. “Louise died a decade ago, about the time my grandfather stopped coming for his weekend visits. Apparently, he didn’t want much to do with the place when she wasn’t here, but he also didn’t want to sell it.”
Cara glanced back at the old photos of the children. “What about their kids?”
“Louise had kids—they weren’t my grandfather’s.”
“Huh.”
“You sound … bothered,” Gian said.
Cara’s brow furrowed. “Weren’t you bothered that he had a whole other life, with another woman, in a different city, that wasn’t his wife?”
“It was a secret that was not really a secret in our family. I was told—like everyone else in my family—that it was not a topic we were to discuss, for obvious reasons. I didn’t feel much about it, I suppose it wasn’t my place to. That was, until the deed was handed over to me. Now, I have to consider too much.”
She understood that.
It couldn’t be pleasant.
“Let’s get out of this room, then,” she suggested.
Gian nodded, and stepped back into the doorway, gesturing for her to follow. “Food is here, by the way.”
Cara walked on past, but nearly stopped as she felt his hand find her lower back. That all too familiar shiver crawled over her skin at his touch. “And what comes after the food, Gian?”
She felt his smirk grow as he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. “Any other bedroom but that one, Cara.”
Cara crawled onto the foot of the bed, moving up Gian’s naked side in nothing but one of his dress shirts. The man woke up at the ass-crack of dawn, and it was disturbing because Cara liked to sleep.
She couldn’t sleep when Gian wasn’t, though.
He wouldn’t let her.
Gian had tossed the beige sheets across his lower midsection and groin, but that still left the rest of his body free for Cara to admire. It was quite a sight, especially in the morning with light coming in through the opened windows. For every defined cut of muscle on his body, Cara’s attention was caught and spun. He was lean like a runner, yet built enough like a fighter. It was easy to tell over his suits that he was fit, but it was when he was naked that Cara couldn’t stop staring.
A beautiful man.
Cara laid along Gian’s side, though lower than he was, so that her top half ended at his waist. He peered over the book he was reading, those brown eyes of his raking over her form and the shirt she wore.
“Shame you can’t go out like that all the time,” he said under his breath.
“I could say the same.”
“Yes, and then where would all those unsuspecting women be, huh? Falling all over themselves, I imagine. It would be hazardous for me to do that to the world.”
“Arrogant ass.”
“Complex,” he corrected with a grin.
Then, he went back to his book.
His free hand came down to tangle in her hair as he continued reading, his fingers stroking through the strands carefully. He didn’t tug or pull, not like he did when he was fucking her, but rather, stroked her hair gently as if to relax her.
And it did.
Before Cara had realized what was happening, her face rested in Gian’s palm, and his thumb stroked her cheekbone.
It was intimate.
But not the kind of intimate like the night before, when he fucked her until she couldn’t breathe or see properly.
It was sweet.
But not like his pet names, not like his French or Italian nothings in her ear.
Cara was pretty sure this was not how hookups were supposed to go, and she certainly shouldn’t be considering feelings for Gian, but he made it difficult not to. This was only supposed to be a weekend away—a break, nothing more. And yet, it felt strangely domestic. Something familiar and comforting, with someone she didn’t know all that well.
She decided to get her mind off of that nonsense.
“Are you going to read all morning?” she asked.
“It’s good for the brain, Cara.”
“So is food. Or coffee. Television. A shower. Sex.”
Gian’s right eyebrow lifted and his lips curved salaciously. “Those are all good things, too.”
“Not good for the brain?”
“Some of them,” he said.
Before she could think better of it, Cara snatched his book away and tossed it to the floor. As it landed with a thump on the hardwood, Gian’s narrowed gaze turned on her. That one look threatened fun and bad and sinful, all at once. Cara simply smiled back in the face of his unspoken threat.
“Oops,” she whispered.
“That was not nice. I was at a good part.”
Cara shrugged. “Oh, well.”
“That was terribly bratty, too.”
“Yes, but—”
Gian lurched toward her before Cara could even get her words out properly. She didn’t even have the chance to try and get away from his hands grabbing hard to her waist and pulling her higher up the bed. Her laughter bounced off the walls as his fingers danced over her skin, tickling with killer precision and making her sides ache.
Somehow, though she wasn’t quite sure how, Cara managed to get up on her knees, and then stand. Gian followed right behind her, still holding tight and refusing to let her go. She grabbed for a pillow, but he knocked it back down, and she fell with it.
Gian went with her.
That was how Cara found herself pinned under a grinning Gian and how she knew her plan to at least get him out of the bed before noon was screwed.
But she was probably going to like it.
“Word to the wise,” he murmured an inch away from her lips.
“What’s that?”
“Compliance will get you everywhere with me, but brattiness will get you something, too. You like the one, so you’ll probably like this as well.”
Then, his fingers pressed harder, sliding lower down her sides, and his body followed the same path. Sliding down her body, Gian pushed the dress shirt she wore higher, his lips coming down to kiss against her heated skin every so often. And his tongue … it lapped at her flesh, taking small tastes of her body before darting back into that wicked fucking mouth of his. Her legs widened for him, and she couldn’t even find it in herself to be ashamed that she hadn’t pulled on a pair of panties after showering that morning.
“Now, be a good girl,” Gian said as he hovered over her pubic bone, “and let me eat in peace, Cara. On your knees, please.”
She blinked. “What?”
Gian only tipped his chin up, and that was it. He didn’t repeat himself; he didn’t like to, she had learned.
Cara’s brain finally caught up to the rest of her body and she scrambled to get on all fours like he wanted. She had thought watching him between her thighs would be a nice sight first thing in the morning, but he apparently had other plans.
If there was a torturous, sinful hell, Gian’s mouth was it.
It was his tongue lapping against her sex as he spread her ass cheeks wide and grabbed hard enough to leave his fingerprints behind. It was the way he groaned at the first taste of her pussy, so deep and rough that it traveled over her spine before it even reached her ears. It was the curving flicks of his tongue that beat against the underside of her clit over and over again until her legs shook, and she was pushing back into his mouth to get more.
And then he was pulling away, those fucking chuckles of his filling her senses with his satisfaction and her growing orgasm that was now lost.
“The taste of you could kill me, Cara. I’d eat you, morning, noon, and night, and I wouldn’t even think about anything else. It would kill me.”
She let out a shaky breath, unable to say anything.
She needed a second to think again.
“Do you remember what I told you?” he asked a second before his palm swatted gently against her wet sex. His fingers slid along her clenching opening a second before another soft slap landed against her ass. The sound echoed in the bedroom, making Cara suck in a sharp breath. His fingers—three of them—slid into her pussy, stretching her open and making her back arch from the sudden intrusion.
“About this—your cunt and me, love. What did I say?”
Cara didn’t even have to think about it.
Even when she thought they might not see each other again—and certainly not for sex—she still heard those words of his.
“It’s yours, when we’re together,” she mumbled against her arm.
Gian’s pleased hum answered her back before he said, “Exactly that, Cara.”
She felt him move on the bed, reaching for something. Cara looked, only to see him pull his cell phone from the bedside table. Gian’s eyes turned back on her with a wicked gleam.
“Your pussy is so pink and wet, especially when you want to come. I want you to see what it looks like when you’re bratty and greedy, Cara. Let me.”
“You’ll delete it—”
“Not a chance,” he interrupted fast, “but no one else will ever see it.”
Just the cadence his tone took on told Cara he was telling the truth. She nodded and his hand slipped over her body with the softest touch again—something she was learning was a sign of his approval, his happiness. He was rough in bed, not that she minded, and the softness only came when he wanted to gift her something back.
Cara heard the phone’s camera ding with a familiar shutter-like sound. She looked over her shoulder, only to see Gian’s attention was on her body again, and his fingers were pressing deep into her hot sex. Every single nerve ending she had seemed to be attached to her pussy as his fingers slid in and out with a slow assuredness that drove her fucking mad.
“I want to come,” Cara mumbled.
Her body ached for it.
Her mind screamed for it.
Gian only smirked, his gaze never once leaving his work. She felt his thumb drive upward, spreading her sex open before sliding over her clit with small circles.
“Gian, let me come.”
He didn’t.
Not right away.
In fact, he pulled away from her again, only long enough to find a condom from a pack he’d tossed aside the night before. Never once did that damn phone of his leave his hand, but Cara found that she didn’t give a shit. She wanted one thing from him right then.
Just the one.
To come.
He filled her full all over again, his cock much thicker and longer than his three fingers had been a minute before. And yet, there was no hesitation in the way her body took him entirely, and she could hear how fucking wet she was as his groin fit tight to the curve of her ass.
“I want to—”
Gian’s hand landed where the curve of Cara’s ass met her thigh, and it fucking stung. But that quick bloom of heat quickly melted into something delicious as he rubbed the same spot. “I’m aware, but you can wait.”
“Why?”
And why was she so damn whiney?
“Because I like how you sound when you’re like this, and you deserve it after what you did to my book.” His fingertips danced up her spine before tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck with a firm tug, pulling her head higher. “Just feel me for a bit, Cara. Christ, all I can feel is you.”
It was the dip in his tone, the way it roughened and edged, that made Cara shiver. She knew he liked that—enjoyed seeing it—and so she didn’t even try to hide it.
His thrusts came deep, but slow, at first. Measured with every flex, and quick on the pull, like he wanted to dive right back in again. Each one brought her higher, right back to the peak of bliss where he’d stop, tease her with his hands and his words, and then start all over again.
And then his thrusts came harder, faster, and even deeper. He tossed his phone to the pillows, so he had another hand free. Cara’s gaze caught sight of the video playing on the screen of the device, her senses caught between watching and feeling. His fingertips dug into her ass, pulling her back with every flex of his hips. The trembling in her legs had spread to every other part of her fucking body, and she couldn’t breathe again, not when all she could think about was release, and when she could finally get it.
Gian’s hand slid from her hair to her throat, his fingers curving around the delicate line there as he pulled her up from the bed. Her back fitted against his chest as his fingers tightened, and there it was … enough pressure on her throat to make her impending orgasm continue on for what felt like forever.
That little trick of his made her crazy.
“Now you can come,” she heard him say, his words a husky murmur in her ear. “And then you can beg me for another and another, Cara.”
She would.
He was a drug to her system.
And she did beg for him to tease her and fuck her all over again—again and again and again.
Gian had moved the chaise in the sitting room to the old windows that could be opened. Despite the time of year, a warm breeze came in from the windows. Cara found it was a nice place to sit, with her feet propped up in on the windowsill, and her head tucked against Gian’s chest.
“So, a therapist, huh?” he asked above her.
She shrugged. “That’s the goal. I want to have a main focus, though. Addiction. Recovery. Maybe some child-work.”
“Is that because you feel you owe something for your raising, or because it’s something you want to personally do?”
“A bit of both.”
“As long as you know,” he murmured. “When you do something because you feel you owe it, or you have to, you’ll never be as satisfied as you want to be.”
Gian’s fingers roved through her hair as they chatted.
“I know you wanted a break from … everything that happened,” Cara started to say.
“I did, yes.”
“But you can’t only talk about me, Gian. It’s not fair.”
He laughed, rocking them both on the chaise. “Fair enough. What do you want to know?”
“Well, anything.”
“Like what?”
“Your grandfather, maybe. You seemed like you were close, especially if you needed to take a break after burying him. That sounds like someone who needed to get away from their feelings.”
Gian cleared his throat. “Interesting way to put it.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No. You’re very right, actually.” He sighed, shifting beneath her a bit. “I don’t have time to grieve, in a way, because there’s much more happening, now that he’s gone. And that feels terribly shitty of me, that my focus can’t be on a man who practically raised me for a bit, because responsibility and duty wait on no one.”
Cara frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Believe it or not, but this break, is not entirely a break. I’ve thought a lot more about my grandfather this weekend than I would have been able to, had I stayed in Toronto. Less bullshit—less noise in my head and from other people.”
“I get that.”
“Now, your turn,” he said.
“For what?”
“A question that isn’t entirely safe.”
Cara stiffened. “Depends on what it is.”
“Too bad—I answered yours.” His hand landed on her bare hip under the afghan blanket, holding firm as if to keep her there. “Tell me about your sister. Not the kinds of things you tell other people. How you’re feeling. Certainly, not something to placate me. I’ll know if you do, bella donna. I am not a dumb man.”
No, he certainly wasn’t.
Cara barely had to think about her response, though. “She was not like me. Lea was the complete opposite of me. And maybe, sometimes, that left me feeling a bit left out when she could so easily fit in and I couldn’t, but I always had her, regardless. It took me a bit to realize after she had died that I depended on her for a lot more than being my sister and roommate. I didn’t know how to be Cara without Lea.”
“Oh?”
“I’m still not sure that I know.”
Gian’s lips pressed to the top of her head. “I only know you—what you let me know, of course—and I think you do Cara very well.”
She smiled. “I think you would have liked Lea, though.”
“I like you, love. And that’s the important bit.”
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
Cara fell silent, lost in the sensations of Gian stroking her skin under the blanket and the comfortable breeze coming in through the window. She hadn’t known how much she needed the quiet and a break from life and a city that never stopped moving. Sure, below them, another city was moving like the end was near, but she barely heard a thing.
It was only Gian’s speaking again that broke her from the daze.
“We should do this again soon,” he said.
“That might make it seem like we’re dating, Gian. We hooked up, ran away for the weekend, and now you’re planning the next one. I don’t get involved with your type of man—I told you that once.”
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
Cara bit her bottom lip. “Maybe.”
“We’re doing this again.”
It wasn’t even a suggestion that time.
“Are we?”
“Oh, yes.”