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Instead he’d worked on one of his arguments for a case he was in conference about next week. But out of his window he’d kept noticing the light in Laura’s apartment.
And then he’d noticed when it went off.
She’d gone to bed. And dear God, he wanted to be there with her. He wanted to spend the night making love to her, then holding her, watching her fall asleep in his arms.
She had once.
No one ever had before. He couldn’t remember a single woman he’d slept with who had settled against him that way, who’d snuggled close and shut her eyes and simply trusted him like that.
Natalie had because Natalie was not like the women he had affairs with, or noninvolved relationships with. Or whatever you called these liaisons that had everything to do with physical needs and nothing to do with the heart.
Natalie, like her mother, had everything to do with the heart.
He shouldn’t have slept with her. And at the same time he said that, he knew he could hardly wait to do it again.
Was that why he’d sought them out today? Was that why he’d stayed?
He twisted in his bed, sprawled and shifted and punched his pillow and tried to answer that.
But he couldn’t come up with a good answer. Not one that his lawyer’s mind would admit or accept. He always enjoyed seeing Jamii. But it was less Jamii’s company than Natalie’s that he’d been angling for. Just having her there, watching and listening while he and Jamii were talking had felt—he punched the pillow again—right, somehow.
And, of course, he was glad he’d stayed when he discovered Jamii’s fear of the water. He knew paralyzing fear. He’d had it himself. What his grandmother had done for him was something he’d always been grateful for. It seemed a small enough thing to share it with Natalie’s niece.
And whether Natalie knew it or not, Christo knew that her niece had overcome her fear only in part because of his confidence in her. It was also having Natalie there. Natalie was the one Jamii knew, the one she loved and trusted. He told Jamii the story. He helped her. But he could not have done it alone.
She needed the love and acceptance of her family as well.
He wasn’t sure Natalie understood that. But maybe she did. She was Laura’s daughter.
Dear God. He couldn’t believe he was sleeping with Laura’s daughter.
He was going to have to stop. Soon.
But not yet.
Natalie opened the door almost before he knocked the next morning. “I have a tremendous favor to ask.”
“Oh? That sounds promising.” Christo grinned. “Wash your back? Make slow, sweet love to you?”
“I wish,” Natalie said frankly. “I wonder if you would watch Jamii.”
He blinked. “I said I’d take her swimming.”
“Yes, but I figured I’d go, too,” Natalie said. “So you wouldn’t be watching her precisely. I would be. But I— we—the business—has a job I need to do.”
Christo’s eyes narrowed. “You need to be somebody’s wife?”
Natalie nodded. “Somebody’s hostess in this case. One of our best clients is having a group of business colleagues out on his yacht. He was expecting Rosalie to do the honors. But Rosalie, I’m sorry to say, got food poisoning last night. Sophy just called me this morning.”
“And Sophy can’t do it because—”
“Because she gets seasick. I’m it, I’m afraid. I can see if Harry’s mother would mind having Jamii for the day. Jamii likes Harry and vice-versa, but—”
“No,” Christo said, surprising himself. “I’ll take her.”
“You’re a saint,” Natalie said and threw her arms around him. She kissed him, stunned him, really, that a swift simple kiss could have that much power.
She shouldn’t have asked him. She didn’t know what else to do.
And he could have said no.
She was surprised he hadn’t.
Natalie took her cell phone with her. “Call me,” she said, “if you have any problems. Dan and Kelly should be back by suppertime. They know you’re taking over for me. I rang them this morning. They say they’ll take you to dinner instead of me. It was part of the deal,” she explained.
“They don’t need to feed me dinner,” Christo said promptly.
But he’d said no to coming out with her and Jamii on Saturday, too, and look what had happened that day.
“Whatever you want,” she told him.
“You,” he said.
Natalie was holding on to that thought.
She’d been afraid, after last night’s unconsummated ending, that he might want to be finished with her already. She would not have been surprised if he’d called today and said he couldn’t make it.
But he’d come. He’d even flirted a little. So their affair had lived another day. She wondered if she should notch them on a bedpost. Though even as she thought it, she knew she shouldn’t be facetious. She was riding high now. But she was riding for a fall, and she knew it.
“Believe,” her mother always told her. “Trust. Hope.”
“And you’ll get kicked in the teeth,” her more realistic daughter had countered after her father’s defection.
“You don’t believe that,” Laura had chided her.
And Natalie knew she didn’t. So she’d just keep believing, trusting and hoping that maybe someday Christo would realize he loved her, too.
It might not have been his ideal day, but spending it with Jamii Ross taught Christo a lot more about her aunt Natalie.
He learned she could play the piano, but she never liked to practice. He learned she liked spinach and artichokes but hated kale and brussels sprouts. He learned she had always wanted to travel, to see different places, but she hadn’t got to go yet.
“Except to Mexico,” Jamii said. “She went with us last year to Cabo.”
He learned she had been the co-leader of Jamii’s Brownie troop last year and would have done it again this year, but she had to work too many hours with her new job and she was really, really busy.
“Too busy to even have a boyfriend,” Jamii reported, as she concentrated on building a turret for their sand castle.
“Was she?” Christo didn’t examine too closely why he was glad to hear it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Jamii asked him.
“I—”
“’Cause if you don’t, maybe you could have Aunt Nat.”
“Tempting,” Christo said.
He didn’t let himself think just how much.
Natalie had barely come in and kicked off her shoes and sank down on the sofa when her phone rang.
“Hey.”
She smiled, warmed at the sound of his voice. “How’d it go?” she asked. “She’s gone, I see.”
“She’s gone,” he agreed. “We had a good time. I know all your secrets now.”
“Oh, dear,” Natalie laughed. “Even about Billy Hardesty?”
“Who’s Billy Hardesty?”
“Good. I’ve got one secret left.” She tipped her head back on the sofa and shut her eyes, just enjoying the sound of his voice in her ear.
“Not for long,” Christo promised silkily. “Are you hungry?”
“A little. There was plenty of food and no time to eat it. I was run off my feet.”
“We can solve that,” he said. There was a click.
She thought he’d hung up and she felt momentarily bereft. Then she heard footsteps and realized that the click had been the front door opening and he was standing over her, smiling down at her. He flicked the phone off.
“C’mon,” he said. And he scooped her up and carried her out the door and down the stairs.
“What are you—? Where are you—?” But she didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. She knew.
He kicked open the door to his place and carried her straight down the hall to the living room where he set her gently on the sofa. Then he sank down beside her and drew her into his arms.
She went willingly, happily.
Was she supposed to resist? It wasn’t possible. It was a dream come true.
Believe. Trust. Hope.
All the words her mother had given her—words she held close to her heart—even as she held Christo there.
Believe. Trust. Hope. And love.
She would give him everything she had and hope that it was enough. There was no choice.
She had to.
It felt as though he’d been waiting forever.
She’d only been out of his bed two nights. Two! Mere hours. And yet it felt like a lifetime. He’d heard her car, seen her come into the garden, and he’d gone after her almost as soon as she’d gone upstairs.
Now he massaged her aching feet and made her whimper with pleasure.
“Who’s Billy Hardesty?” He grinned, running his fingers along the sole of her foot, making her squirm.
“Oooh, you’re evil.” She gasped and giggled, writhed and twisted. “I’ll never tell.”
He ran his hands up her legs. “Never?” His fingers found her, teased her. “Never say never.”
Her eyes were bright and laughing as she tugged him down on top of her. “He’s the first boy who ever kissed me. We were five.”
“Ah. I guess I can let him live, then. As long as he doesn’t make a habit of it.”
“No one makes a habit of it,” she told him.
And Christo found himself thinking, I will.
But he didn’t let himself think of the ramifications of the thought. He only kissed her thoroughly and set about loving her. She returned the favor.
Christo wasn’t used to giving up control, but how could he refuse her? Besides, she didn’t ask. She simply touched. She, too, kissed, nibbled, caressed, laved.
She wrung him out. Left him spent and gasping. Left him sated and, at the same time, wanting more.
Wanting her. Because this—whatever it was—wasn’t enough. Somewhere deep inside Christo felt an odd persistent sort of ache he’d never felt before.
Knew the temptation to say three words he’d never said. Words he swore he didn’t believe in.
And realizing what those words were, Christo knew a fear as paralyzing as the one he’d helped Jamii vanquish.
He didn’t love Natalie!
He couldn’t.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_0a1a519b-568b-5908-aaf6-c879e3c821b3)
WHEN Natalie looked back she couldn’t put her finger on the moment she realized that something was wrong. There was no clear defining instant.
The truth was, there had probably always been something wrong. She’d just been too preoccupied with wishful thinking to admit it.
Or maybe with the misplaced confidence of the young and in love, she had believed she could change Christo’s mind.
She’d been honest with him, after all. She had said yes, that three years ago if they had made love, she would have wanted the whole thing—love, marriage, happily ever after.
But not admitting in her heart that she still felt the same way, she hadn’t been as honest with herself.
