Chapter 2
Beautiful view. He’d been telling the truth.
A simply furnished apartment structured on two floors that he said he had rented online from a white-haired Italian woman who was sitting in the village’s little piazza when they passed through it and who gave Elena a judgmental look when “Julien” nodded buona sera to her. Set partway up the cliff at the edge of the village, its terrace gave them a view not only of Corniglia but of the four other villages of Cinque Terre, nestled into their cliffs along the sea to either side, all five luminous in the night.
“Wow,” Elena said softly.
“It’s your big decision time.” He stood at the rail beside her. Big, close...and now they were in private. And he wanted a decision. The butterflies went on high alert. She met his eyes. He smiled a little. “Water, red wine, or limoncello? The landlady left gifts. I think the wine is from a cousin’s vineyard, and she made the limoncello herself.”
“I, uh…” had better stick to water, she had been going to say. Because if she did do this, she wanted to remember every detail. Every ridge in his abs, every rub of his calluses, every time his mouth curved as if he was getting exactly what he wanted out of her. But she was in Italy, and limoncello homemade by an old woman who sat in the piazza and kept an eye on her tourist-renter’s doings sounded like something she shouldn’t pass up. Seize experiences. They may be all you get to keep. Her life motto. “Maybe a limoncello and soda.”
She followed him back into the little kitchen to watch him mix it because…well, there were limits. You haven’t seen him in fifteen years. And her hopeful trust in someone she wanted to have care about her had been betrayed many times before.
One part limoncello, four parts Perrier, over three big ice cubes from the apartment’s freezer. He wasn’t trying to get her drunk. He didn’t need to get girls drunk, did he?
The limoncello tasted delicious, tart and sweet and so lemony she could have been drinking one of the nearby groves in a glass. Lightened with the Perrier and ice to something cool and refreshing.
“I think she uses her own lemons,” AKA-Julien said. “That grove that goes up the hill behind this building is hers.”
It could be a perfect evening, if she let it. The view of luminous villages along the Mediterranean. The taste of lemon. A hot but courteous “stranger” who probably knew exactly what to do with his body for best results in every situation, including the one just a trip down the stairs to the bedroom.
It could conceivably be the most perfect evening of her life.
As long as she didn’t tell him why she was really here. Or rather, why she had started out here. Why she was really here now, in his apartment…come on, Elena. You know that has nothing to do with the job.
She turned toward him. He reached out a hand and drew a strand of her hair through his fingers, long and slow, as he had earlier, holding the end and rubbing it a moment before he let it fall. His gaze rested on her lips.
Her heart thumped. Her body felt flushed and wanting. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
Steady eyes assessed her without accusation. “Got someone who’s trusting you not to?”
The only person with any interest in what she was doing right now was Colette Delatour, and the nonagenarian’s relationship didn’t extend to control over Elena’s personal choices.
Oh, he meant like a boyfriend or husband. “No. I’m on my own.”
And it’s better that way, too, she thought defiantly, just as she’d thought it every single time it came up—every day in her head—ever since she reached adulthood.
“You don’t have to be on your own.” That big hand curved around her shoulder, callused thumb stroking her bare skin in a delicious circle of warmth. “Tonight.”
She swallowed and took another sip of limoncello. Golden tart sweetness.
You know, you really didn’t have to spell out it was only for tonight. I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t getting ideas of permanence.
She knew way the hell better than to still get dreams of permanence. She wasn’t a kid anymore.
But her fantasies were still dumber than she was, because they fluttered their stupid butterfly wings around a vacation fling. She didn’t have to tell him the truth until the end of it, right? It wasn’t as if anyone had ever cared about shattering her trust and assumptions after letting her indulge in them for a little while.
So in the fantasy, they hiked together and picked lemons and caught ferries and made memories that were warm and strong and sexy and that a woman could pack up into a mental suitcase and carry on with her through life. Physical possessions should always fit into a suitcase. Otherwise you might have to leave something precious behind. But mental suitcases—well, she liked to pack those as full as she could, with every possible experience. She had gigabytes of photos.
This night could be one that she remembered even when she was eighty, every time she took a sip of limoncello.
That big hand stroked over her shoulder to the nape of her neck, warmth and calluses. Firm and easy on that vulnerable nape, leaving her the freedom to twist away, he spread his fingers up into her hair, curving against the back of her head, and pulled her into him as he bent and kissed her.
Vivid gold surged through her, sweet and stinging, as if she was herself a slender bottle of limoncello and had caught the last ray of the sun. His mouth, like his hold, was firm enough to take what he wanted, but not so firm that she couldn’t break away if it was something she didn’t want to give.
She dissolved into his heat like that sugar in the syrup his landlady must have used to make the limoncello. By the time he lifted his head, she was pressed against him, one hand on his hard chest.
His eyes had turned the color of the dusk. “She makes a good drink.” His thumb tugged her lower lip. “Tart. Sweet. Makes a man want to taste it again.”
She drank another swallow of the limoncello involuntarily. His fingers tightened in her hair, and this time his kiss went deeper and hungrier, his other hand coming into play to rub down her body to her butt and press her into him.
His hard body felt like a dream come true. She folded her arms against his chest, trying to bury herself in him, get wrapped up as completely as possible. The limoncello spilled a little on his shirt and her hand, and he lifted his head again, his hand closing around hers over the glass.
Big, strong hand closing over hers, big, hard body wrapping around hers…the taste of his lips and the lemon…the nightfall…the gorgeous view spread all around them. This overload of textures and brightness and warmth and a soft hush of dark where anything was possible.
His great presence wrapped around her and said: You’ve been alone until me. But now I’m here.
“Lucien,” she whispered.
He jerked violently.
His body went taut. His fingers pulled free from her hair. His hand loosed her nape. He took three steps back, the cool air off the night sea rushing in where his warm body had been.
“Who the hell are you?”