Kelly Hunter - Paradise Nights

‘Oh.’ He struggled for words, for some sense of normality, a modicum of discretion, while Sam looked up at him hopefully and Nico eyed the bathroom door. ‘How big is this fish?’

‘Big,’ said Sam with a grin. ‘Where’s Serena?’

Not a question he wanted to answer. ‘She’s been downloading the photos she took of you and Nico this morning onto her computer. I think she wants to use one of them for her postcard series. Go take a look. In the sitting room.’

Sam didn’t need any more urging. Nico, on the other hand, stayed right where he was.

The bathroom door swung open the tiniest bit, an inch or so, nothing more, and Pete stepped in front of it, blocking Nico’s view as he reached for the handle and pulled the door firmly closed.

Nico stared at him, studying his wet hair with a narrowed gaze. Pete stared back with not a lot to say. He tried putting himself in Nico’s place. Tried to pretend he’d just caught some poor schmuck coming out of his sister’s bathroom, with every indication of his sister still being in there. What would he do?

Castration seemed like a reasonable option.

Hopefully Nico was of a more civilised bent.

‘You want to explain why that bathroom door suddenly seems to want to swing open by itself?’ asked Nico silkily.

‘Not really.’ But for the sake of discretion he gave it a shot. ‘Could be the wind.’

‘Wind?’ said Nico flatly.

‘Uplift. Downdraft. Air. Wind.’

Nico didn’t look convinced.

‘O-or it could be that the door’s set on a slant and swings open by itself.’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘Pity.’ He was running out of plausible excuses. ‘Maybe it’s possessed.’

Nico’s lips twitched. ‘Nice try.’ But he wasn’t buying it. ‘Serena’s a grown woman,’ he said after a lengthy pause. ‘She makes her own choices. I try and respect that.’

Castration didn’t seem to have entered Nico’s mind. This was a good thing.

And then Nico’s gaze swung from Pete to the bathroom door and his face hardened. ‘Hurt her and I’ll hunt you down.’

Or maybe it had. ‘No one’s going to get hurt,’ he said curtly. ‘Serena knows what she’s doing, and so do I.’

‘Do you?’ Nico rapped on the door with enough force to make it vibrate. ‘Dinner’s at seven. Chloe and Sam are eating with us,’ he said loudly and stalked off.

No sooner had Nico disappeared than Serena stalked out, as fully dressed as a person could get in skimpy white shorts and a pink and lime bikini top. She glared at him, thoroughly miffed about something, possibly his parting shot about her being a disaster, but it was too late to take it back now. Besides, he didn’t want to. ‘What?’ he said. What now?

‘You call that discreet?’

‘Well … yeah. It could have been worse.’

‘How?’ she demanded. ‘Nico knows I was in there; that you were in there with me. How on earth could it get any worse?’

‘Hell, Serena,’ he said, darkly amused by her indignation. ‘Five minutes earlier and he’d have found us naked on the day-bed.’

Chloe arrived shortly after that and added her voice to the dinner invitation. ‘It started with me offering to cook for you all at my place,’ she told them ruefully as she set a big basket on the kitchen bench and turned to look back out the kitchen door to where Sam and Nico were cleaning the barbecue. ‘I’m still not sure how the invitation got turned around to having it here. I hope you don’t mind. I brought the fixings for a salad with me and some bread and wine. Nico says he’s cooking the fish.’

‘I love it when he says that,’ said Serena.

‘So you don’t mind?’ Chloe turned towards her and Pete, her expression faintly apologetic. ‘You weren’t planning to go out to dinner? Just the two of you?’

‘Well … we could?’ said Pete. ‘I hadn’t thought much about dinner at all. Yet.’ He caught her gaze, a question in his, and that small act of courtesy and uncertainty after all that had gone before was Serena’s undoing.

‘If we stay here I can guarantee us a glass of wine or beer with dinner,’ she said lightly, opening the fridge and raiding it for both items and setting them on the counter. She had no idea how much their disastrously wonderful lovemaking had changed things. Absolutely no idea what he wanted from her. All she knew was that he was welcome at her table and that she didn’t want him to leave. ‘Matter of fact I can guarantee them now.’

‘There is that,’ he said, with the whisper of a smile.

‘So you’ll stay for dinner?’ said Chloe hopefully. ‘The more the merrier, I say.’ She didn’t want to dine alone with Sam and Nico was what she meant . ‘There’ll be plenty of food.’

There was that word again, thought Serena wryly. Plenty. She looked at Pete and that was exactly what she saw. ‘Here.’ She passed him the beer, got another bottle from the fridge and a lemonade for Sam and handed those to him as well. ‘Go help Nico and Sam man the barbecue while Chloe and I get busy in the kitchen.’

‘Does this feel light-hearted to you?’ he muttered, shooting her an enigmatic glance as she held the kitchen screen door open to let him through. ‘It doesn’t feel light hearted to me. Feels kind of family-oriented.’

‘I know.’ She smiled wryly. ‘But stay anyway.’

Having Pete stay on for dinner was a bigger mistake than she’d thought it would be, decided Serena an hour later as she sat at the garden table and watched him bond with Sam and Nico over slow-barbecued potatoes and soon-to-be-barbecued sea bass. She didn’t want to notice the way Sam looked up to him, or how much Nico seemed to enjoy his company, never mind Nico’s earlier words of warning outside the bathroom door. Pete Bennett charmed without thinking, without understanding what it would do to a woman fresh from his lovemaking to watch him interact so easily with the people she loved.

‘If I were a betting woman—which I’m not,’ said Chloe, coming up beside her and handing her one of the two glasses of champagne she held in her hands, and sipping delicately on the other, ‘I’d say the universe you’ve been contemplating of late was standing right there by the barbecue. And what a universe it is,’ she murmured with a wicked smile, and Serena felt her own lips curve in reluctant agreement.

‘It’s only a temporary universe,’ she told Chloe. ‘He’ll be leaving soon. I’ll be leaving soon.’

‘Haven’t we just had this conversation?’ said Chloe dryly.

‘No, that was a different conversation. You and Nico have a shot at something beautiful. Pete and I … well … he’s going in one direction and I’m going in another. I don’t want to change direction to accommodate him.’

‘Perhaps he’ll change direction to accommodate you.’

The thought slid through her, bright and beckoning, demanding closer examination.

‘He’s very good with Sam,’ said Chloe. ‘He cares for people.’

She’d noticed. And all of a sudden she was standing there wondering just what kind of father he would make, what kind of husband. And what it would take to capture his heart.

No.

Some other woman could glory in his passionate lovemaking and delight in the compassion beneath his strength. Not her.

Some other woman could heal a heart too heavy and too wounded to carry any more loss. Not her. She had dreams of her own to chase. Dreams that didn’t involve him.

Serena tore her gaze away from Pete to stare out at the ocean with a growing sense of panic.

If only she could remember what they were.

It was almost ten p.m. when Chloe deemed it time for her and Sam to head back to the village. Dinner had been served and savoured and Sam was fading fast in the wake of his early morning. Pete stood as well, offering to walk back to the hotel with them, and the happy family picture the three of them made set Serena’s eyes to narrowing. Never mind that it wasn’t real, Serena didn’t like it. Neither did Nico.