Anne Oliver - Out of Hours...Boardroom Seductions - One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife / Innocent in the Italian's Possession / Hot Boss, Wicked Nights

Jamii’s mouth was open. She stared at him. “Did you?”

“No. But then she went over to it and started up the ladder by herself. So—” he took a breath “—I went after her. I had to make sure she didn’t get hurt.” His mouth twisted in a small self-deprecating grin. “And I discovered I could do it again after all.”

“Which is what she wanted you to discover,” Jamii, no fool, finished for him.

Christo nodded. He sat back on the sand, bracing his body with his hands. “Yep. And she was right. I could. Just like you can go in the water again.” He looked at her now. “You know that, right?”

In the silence between them, Natalie heard a wave break, then another. Slowly, lips pursed, Jamii nodded. She hunched over her own upraised knees and wrapped her arms around them, too.

“Just like I knew it,” Christo agreed. “But sometimes it helps to have someone to go with who understands.”

“Like your grandma,” Jamii said in a small voice.

“Uh-huh. So—” he slanted her a glance “—if you wanted to try sticking a toe or two in, I’d go with you.”

Natalie held her breath.

Jamii squeezed her arms around her legs. She chewed her lip. She didn’t speak.

Neither did Christo. He just sat there, staring out at the horizon, completely unhurried, as if he had nothing better to do than wait for an eight-year-old girl to make up her mind.

“Could I ride on your shoulders?” Jamii asked him at last.

Christo flicked her a quick glance. “Down to the water? Sure, if you want.”

“And you wouldn’t drop me?”

“Never.”

“We wouldn’t go out far, right?”

“Just as far as you want.”

“And you’ll bring me back when I want?”

“I will.”

“Even if I change my mind?”

“Even if you change your mind.” He didn’t move. Only waited.

So did Jamii. Then, slowly she unfolded herself and stood up, then squared her small shoulders. She looked at the ocean, then back at Christo and gave one quick nod of her head. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

He stood up and held out a hand to Jamii, then swung her onto his shoulders. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Natalie and held out a hand to her as well.

She thought the hand was just to pull her to her feet. But when she was upright, he didn’t let go.

He didn’t do anything else. Didn’t brush his hand across her arm. Didn’t come close enough to touch her cheek with his lips. It was very circumspect.

And intimate. Because it was not simply sex. It was a connection outside of bed. The two of them together were a couple, walking hand in hand down the beach toward the pier.

While they walked through shin-high waves that broke and foamed around their ankles, he talked more to her than to Jamii. In fact, Jamii might as well not have been there at all.

The conversation was casual—about the weather, about the water. About ideas for more woodworking projects he had. It was for Jamii—Natalie knew that. And yet, as their fingers were laced and his thumb rubbed against the side of her hand, and neither of them glanced up at Jamii on his shoulders, Natalie couldn’t help believing it was about something else.

A wave surged against their knees, rocking them a little, and Natalie heard Jamii suck in a sharp breath. Christo kept right on talking without missing a beat. His fingers tightened on hers, but he never faltered, never misstepped.

Only when they reached the pier and turned to walk back the way they’d come did he actually address a comment to Jamii.

“Want to go back to your towel now or do you want to get your feet wet?”

There was a long pause—long enough for Natalie to imagine Jamii was going to opt for going back to the towel. She might have done so, at Jamii’s age.

But Jamii, bless her heart, was made of sterner stuff. And had Christo in her corner. “I guess I could stick my toes in.”

Christo smiled. He turned his head to look up at her. “Do you want me to put you down here or do you want to walk in?”

“Here. With you.”

He let go of Natalie’s hand to reach up and lift the little girl off his shoulders, but he didn’t set her on the ground. Instead he walked back to where the water was just beginning to lap against the shore, and he sat down on the sand, with Jamii on his lap. Natalie sat down beside them.

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.