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Foamy water from broken waves rushed up alongside and lapped at their legs. Natalie expected Jamii to go rigid. And she saw the instant of fear in Jamii’s eyes, the sudden tension.
But Christo had her securely wrapped in his arms, and he didn’t let go until the water had receded again. Then he scooped up a handful of wet sand and drizzled it on Jamii’s legs.
She laughed. Then, to Natalie’s surprise, Jamii wriggled off Christo’s lap onto the wet sand so she could do the same to him. Another wave broke while she was scooping up the wet sand, and she tensed momentarily, then continued.
Natalie’s gaze met Christo’s over Jamii’s head. He smiled. So did she. It was a moment of perfect communion.
He stood up then and held out a hand to Jamii. “Come with me?” It was an offer. An invitation.
Jamii, after only the briefest of hesitations, put her hand in his. Then, standing together, they faced the waves.
Jamii was not an easy sell when it came to feeling comfortable in the water again. But for the rest of the afternoon Christo persevered. He acted as if he hadn’t said he wouldn’t spend the day with them. He acted like he was perfectly happy to be there.
When at last they called it a day and walked back across the sand to the apartment, he walked with them.
“Say thank you for everything,” Natalie prompted Jamii when they reached the garden. “Christo did you a great favor today.”
Jamii nodded. “Thank you,” she said to him, and Natalie could hear the sincerity in her voice.
“You’re welcome,” Christo said gravely. “But you know you could have done it on your own.”
Jamii bobbed her head. “But it helps to have someone there for you, like you said. Will you come down with me tomorrow?”
“Jamii!” Natalie protested.
But Christo nodded. “Sure.”
“And will you have pizza with us tonight?”
Natalie’s face went scarlet, imagining that Christo would think she’d given Jamii the idea to try to create entanglements where he didn’t want them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Jamii, you mustn’t presume—”
“He has pizza with Grandma and me sometimes. Don’t you, Christo?” her niece demanded.
“Sometimes I do,” Christo agreed. He lifted his gaze and met Natalie’s almost defiantly. “Laura considers it her duty to feed me when I seem at loose ends.” There was a hint of something in his face that she couldn’t read.
“Are you at loose ends tonight?” she asked warily.
“I am.”
“Then I guess you’d better have pizza with us.”
“I guess I should.”
It was like having one of her long-ago fantasies come to life—opening the door of the apartment and having Christo leaning against the doorjamb smiling at her, then holding out a bottle of wine.
She took it wordlessly, the mere sight of him robbing her of words. He was freshly shaved, the stubbled jaw of this afternoon smooth now. His hair was damp but freshly washed and combed. He wore a clean pair of faded jeans and an equally faded red T-shirt. Nothing special.
But in Christo’s case, it definitely wasn’t the clothes that made the man.
And all the desire she’d assured herself she intended to keep well tamped down and controlled seemed to rise right up and smack her. She stared wordlessly at him.
And, heaven help her, Christo stared back.
It was the way he looked when he made love to her. His eyes darkened. His smile faded. He took a step toward her—and Jamii appeared.
“Hi, Christo! Come see the book I’m writing?”
Christo blinked, then dragged his gaze away from Natalie and focused on her niece. “Sure.”
While Natalie tore up greens for a salad, she listened to Christo and Jamii talking in the living room. He paid just as much attention to Jamii’s literary efforts as he had to making her comfortable in the water. He listened intently as Jamii told him all about the care and feeding of hamsters and guinea pigs.
Natalie marveled at his focus. But then, when she called them to come and eat, she felt that his focus had shifted to her. Or maybe it hadn’t—it was just her oversensitized nerve endings and imagination.
Whatever it was, every time Natalie looked up, it seemed that Christo did, too. Their gazes would connect and sizzle, then slide slowly away. When he passed her a glass of wine, their fingers brushed and it felt as erotic as when he’d learned the contours of her naked body. And from the speculative look he gave her, she dared to imagine he felt the same way.
Watching him eat the pizza was worse. It had the effect of making her remember vividly the scene of the young gorgeous Albert Finney in the old film Tom Jones, eating the chicken and licking his fingers, and causing every woman who watched it to experience a serious spike in her heart rate.
Not that Christo was licking his fingers. He was perfectly well-mannered. It was her fevered brain that was working overtime.
In desperation, she shoved back her chair and stood up. “I’ll just go make some coffee.”
But the moment she was in the kitchen fumbling with the coffeemaker, he was there behind her and she spun around, nearly knocking the dirty dinner plates he carried out of his hands.
“What are you doing?” she demanded sharply.
He raised a single brow. “Setting a good example?”
He put his plate and hers into the sink, and immediately behind him, Jamii appeared carrying her own, which she deposited there also.
“Oh.” Natalie felt idiotic. And ridiculously aware. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Do you want me to do that?” He was looking at the coffeemaker, with which she didn’t seem to be making any progress. “Let me,” he said, and took the basket out of her hands. He filled the reservoir with water, then opened the cupboard and got out a filter, which he fitted into the basket.
She opened the cupboard to get a grip on her sanity and, incidentally, to find the coffee. It wasn’t there.
Christo just went to the refrigerator—since when had her mother kept the coffee in the refrigerator?—and took out a bag. He measured some beans into the electric coffee grinder she didn’t even know her mother had, then pressed it with the heel of his hand until the redolence of fresh-ground coffee filled the air.
Dumping the coffee into the basket, he put it back into the coffeemaker, then flicked on the switch and leaned back against the cabinet, folding his arms across his chest. He smiled at her.
“I don’t…make coffee here often,” she mumbled.
“I do,” he said. Then he leaned forward and, very gently, kissed her on the lips.
He was melting her right where she stood. She couldn’t move. Stood mesmerized by his kiss. Wanted it to go on and on and on. Wanted him to wrap his arms around her as he’d done before. Wanted to wrap hers around him.
She leaned into him.
“Wanta watch a movie, Christo?” Jamii’s voice floated in from the living room causing them both to jump back.
Christo cleared his throat. Adjusted his jeans.
“We’ve got The Bad News Bears and Cinderella,” Jamii called.
“Cinderella?” Natalie arched a brow at him. She still trembled. Still felt the shivers of unrequited desire running up and down her arms and legs.
Christo gave her a wry smile. “I’m hoping for the other one.”
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I’m staying.”
Their gazes met, locked.
“It’s ready,” Jamii called.
“Go on,” Natalie said. “I’ll bring the coffee.”
One more kiss that left her weak-kneed and then he joined Jamii in the living room. Natalie stood gripping the kitchen countertop, taking deep breaths and praying for a little sanity. When the coffee was ready, she poured them each a mug full and carried it into the living room.
“Sit here,” Jamii wriggled over next to Christo and left Natalie the spot on the end.
She sat down, and with Jamii between them, they watched the movie. Or Jamii watched the movie—not Cinderella, thank God.
Natalie watched Christo’s hands as they cradled his coffee mug. She watched him stretch out his legs and could not tear her gaze from the flex of easy muscles beneath the soft denim of his jeans, unless it was to contemplate his bare feet.
She was aware of the couch shifting every time he moved. She knew when he stretched one arm along the back of the sofa. Close. But not close enough to touch. Did he know how close?
The movie was funny. Jamii was in stitches, giggling madly. Christo laughed, too. Then he shifted again and his fingers brushed against her neck. They played with her hair, they made the nape of her neck tingle and sent involuntary shivers down the length of her spine. She was so exquisitely aware of him that she couldn’t think of anything else at all.
She turned her head to look at him. And he looked back. Their eyes met. His fingers brushed lightly along the back of her neck. She trembled. He smiled.
Exactly when Natalie realized that Jamii wasn’t laughing now but was asleep between them, she didn’t know. But Christo obviously knew. He moved carefully, easing himself up and scooping the sleeping child into his arms. “Where do you want her?”
And Natalie tore her gaze away from his to clamber to her feet and lead the way into her mother’s bedroom. She pulled back the covers on the bed and Christo bent to lay Jamii down. He brushed the little girl’s hair away from her face, then stepped back.
Christo was so close to her—and she was so aware of him—that she could hear the soft intake of his breath. And her own caught in her throat as he turned to face her, touched her arm and began to guide her backwards out of the room.
It was as if they were dancing, his hooded gaze hot and hungry as it met hers. His fingers slid up her arm and over her shoulder to the nape of her neck, echoing his earlier touches, heightening her awareness.
They were in the hallway now, and her back was against the wall, and he bent his head, his lips coming down inexorably to meld with hers.
They parted under his touch, opened to him as they had last time, as she longed to do. She slid her arms around him, drawing him closer, pressing against him, reveling in the hard strength of his body against the soft curves of hers. He slid his hands under her shirt, caressed her back, cupped her breasts.
“Aunt Nat!”
Christo jerked back, chest heaving. Natalie straightened sharply, and looked around, relieved not to see her niece standing there staring at them.
“What?” She tugged her shirt down, then slipped past Christo to go to Jamii. “What’s wrong?”
“I fell asleep! We didn’t get to see the end of the movie!” Jamii sat up in the bed, staring up at her, crushed. “Can I see it now?”
“Not…now,” Natalie said, wishing her heart would stop hammering so frantically. “Tomorrow. In the morning.”
Jamii sighed and slumped against the pillows. “Is Christo still here?”
Before Natalie could answer, Christo said from the doorway, “On my way home.” He sounded calm and steady, and Natalie wondered how he managed it.
“Will we go swimming tomorrow again?” Jamii asked him.
“I’ll come and get you in the morning. Go to sleep now.”
“But—”
“You heard him. Sleep,” Natalie commanded. “Or you won’t go.”
Jamii made a face, but she lay back down. Natalie bent and kissed her good-night, then turned and followed Christo back into the living room.
The needs were still there, thrumming inside her, even as she spoke. “We can’t—” she said almost apologetically.
“I know.”
He sounded terse. Tense. Dissatisfied. All of the above.
He gave her a hard, fierce, almost angry kiss and stalked quickly out the door.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1b416c84-d74a-5e48-ab84-ef58ce187e9b)
IT HAD been a damn fool idea—spending the day with Natalie and Jamii.
He never should have done it, Christo thought. He lay in his bed and tried not to remember spending the night there with Natalie. But like everything else with Natalie, it didn’t work.
Like today. He’d turned down her suggestion to go to the beach with them. He hadn’t spelled it out. He didn’t need to. He’d been honest with her. He’d told her he didn’t do forever, didn’t want complications, commitments, all that sort of thing.
It simply made sense not to create entanglements by going to the beach with her and her niece.
And then he’d done it anyway.
Well, not intentionally. At least he hadn’t been stupid enough to do that. But when he’d spotted them on the sand as he’d come out of the water after going surfing, he’d simply found his feet heading in their direction.
He knew Jamii, of course. She stayed with her grandmother often, and he liked her. She was far less complicated than most of the kids he dealt with on a regular basis. He liked her fresh, open acceptance of life. She was like a small version of Laura.
And she didn’t half remind him of Natalie as well.
But he hadn’t gone to say hi only to Jamii. He’d missed spending Friday night with Natalie in his bed. Two nights he’d spent with her now, and somehow last night, without her, he’d felt far more alone than he usually did.
Maybe it was because he had worked late, then come home to see the light on in Laura’s apartment, to know they were up there—he could even hear Jamii’s giggle—and he’d wanted to go up as well.
He hadn’t, of course. No way. No point. Bad idea.
