Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 1 of 2
better? How do you do it?”“Can I ask a very obvious question?” He paused in opening the spy thriller he’d been reading whenever she picked up her own book.
“Of course.”
“What did Niko have that you don’t?”
She tried to ignore the voice in her head that suggested Niko had been smarter than she was. She didn’t really believe that. By the end, he had often gone along with her suggestions even when she contradicted his first instincts. Still, she had to shrug.
“More experience?” she hazarded.
“For God’s sake, Scarlett. He had you. Hire yourself a PA as good as you were. Hire two. You went above and beyond far too often.”
“But I have me. I can do all the mindless things Niko couldn’t. I can type my own emails and summarize my own reports—Okay, I hear it.” She rolled her eyes at herself. The transition had been so gradual she had wound up over her head without realizing it.
Hiring an assistant wasn’t a silver bullet, but she felt she was doing something savvy and constructive when she put in a hiring request with a headhunter the next morning. The weight that had been suffocating her had eased a little, leaving her feeling more buoyant than she had in a long while.
They gave up their phones and took the Jet Skis with a picnic lunch into a small cove where an old ruin was reported to be hiding among the trees.
“I’m always astonished when a structure this big is reduced to almost nothing,” Scarlett said as they walked idly from one ancient room to another, stepping over walls that had disintegrated to knee height. The villa had been roofless long enough for the floor to have become only sand and patches of wildflowers. Sheep grazed the green hillocks beyond. “Even if people took the stones to build other things, it’s so much work to dismantle it.”
“Less work than cutting and carving new ones.”
“I guess, but what made them give up on what they had?” She found a spot where overarching trees framed the water and a view of their yacht. She paused to admire it. “It looks as though they had everything they could want right here.”
“Is that a rhetorical question or something more profoundly related to our situation?”
She cocked her head. “I suppose that is the nature of our conflict, isn’t it? Where to live. Whether we have anything worth salvaging.” She sent him a cheeky grin. “I’d love to say I’m clever enough to talk in metaphor, but I’m really not.”
“There it is,” he said with a tone of relieved discovery exactly as if he’d found something he’d spent months hunting for.
“What?”
“Your smile.” His big hands cupped her face. “You haven’t smiled at me since London.”
“Have I been that sour? I didn’t mean to be.”
“I know.” His thumb skimmed a light caress across her mouth. “And that’s why we haven’t talked about where we’ll live or any other heavy topics. We do, though.” His thumb traced her lips again, this time slower, bringing her nerve endings alive.
“We do what?” she asked dumbly, leaving her mouth parted against the pad of his thumb.
“Have something worth salvaging.”
She shook her head, unsure, as he continued to cradle her face. He lowered his head and let his mouth brush hers, redoubling the tingle in her lips. Gently—very, very gently—he stole one kiss, then another. Kisses that were light and lovely and sweet. Tears pressed behind her eyes.
They hadn’t made love since London. He hadn’t made a move and she had been convinced that if she did, he would read it as acquiescence to fully resuming their relationship.
“I want to believe we do,” she said as he drew back. “But I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he commanded. Maybe it was a plea. “Never be afraid of me.”
Something deeply emotional lifted her hand to cradle his cheek. Her hand flexed subtly, inviting him to return.
This kiss was not so chaste. She tasted the hunger in him and it fed her own.
She moved her hand to the back of his head and returned the kiss, moaning with a mix of pleasure and happiness as he drew her up against him. She wore a bikini and sarong; he was in board shorts. They had nothing else between them except a layer of sunscreen and a dwindling sense of decorum.
He lifted his head and glanced to the handful of sheep in the distance, the trees providing a shady bower, the yacht barely visible through the leaves, bobbing on the water.
“Are you sure you want to do this here?” He was rueful as he looked at her with tender indulgence, and she saw something more serious behind his gaze.
She understood what she would be signaling in resuming intimacy with him, but the very fact they had come this far—able to read each other’s thoughts—made the moment too precious to turn her back on.
She stepped away and untied her sarong, then let the filmy cotton of abstract patterns drift down to form a thin bed on the grassy sand next to the low wall.
He sank down with her, kissed and covered her. Drew her along the path of passion with a sensitivity she hadn’t felt from him before. It was beautiful. Cleansing and healing. The way they came together was ancient, there against rocks carved hundreds of years before by hands as strong as his own. It was renewal in the same way Mother Nature had begun to reclaim the space with wildflowers and blades of grass stealing into the cracks in the stones.
It was exulting, making love with the clouded heavens above, the pagan gods witnessing their earthly act.
It was enduring and eternal and left them in glorious, sated ruin.
* * *
They made love again that night and at breakfast Scarlett was still blissed out when Javiero said, “I’ve made arrangements for our return to Madrid. I’d like to set a wedding date as soon as possible once we’re there.”
Scarlett supposed this was what she got for letting him make