did her best not to sound as irritated as she felt when she spoke again. “My heart is right here in my body, thank you. It goes where I go and it prefers a lovely seaside holiday to freezing cold, horribly dark and depressing Toronto.”
And her heart didn’t feel broken. Bruised, sure. But not broken.
But she was afraid to admit it. She was afraid to say it out loud. Because didn’t that say terrible things about her?
“Maya...”
“An Ethan-free, safe space,” Maya repeated, with more calm than she felt. “If you want to help, that’s what I want.”
She sounded smooth on the phone—the way she should, she’d practiced it so much in all her years as a lawyer—but when she poked the button to end the call, she couldn’t deny that she was agitated.
Maya tossed her mobile aside. She contemplated tossing it over the balcony’s railing so she could be done with it, but restrained herself. Barely. She stood up, suddenly restless and noisy inside instead of happily lost in that same sweet Italian daydream of the past few days.
She wanted to blame her sister for that, but it was her fault for answering the phone, wasn’t it?
Maya moved over to the railing, settled her elbows against the metal scrollwork and looked down. It was a long, long way from her balcony jutting out from the highest level of the hotel to the slumbering sea far below. The village was a jumble of brightly colored buildings, houses and shops and ancient structures dating back centuries, as if someone had tossed them there against the steep cliff walls to see what stuck. It had rained yesterday and in the night, and the wind whispered of the kinds of winters she’d left behind on the other side of the world and all the things she’d left there that she didn’t want to think about. Not here. She concentrated on the scent of flowers on that same wind instead. The bursts of sunshine. The salt in the air that reminded her of Charlie.
She had seen him only once since that insane first day. And only from a distance.
He had been doing something deliciously physical down by the hotel’s big communal pool while she’d been eating in the sunny breakfast room on the main level. He hadn’t looked up, and she’d enjoyed that a little too much—because she’d been able to determine that he was not, in fact, an Italian daydream she’d had after running up all those village stairs for the first time. He wasn’t something she’d made up out of oxygen deprivation and too much cardio.
He was all too real. Mouthwateringly real, with the tattoos and those old jeans and that body.
At the table next to her, a trio of older British women had tittered among themselves, and a glance had confirmed that they were all sharing the same view. Charlie in nothing but those jeans of his, hammering away at something with a sledgehammer. She couldn’t remember what.
No one had cared.
She hadn’t seen him since. Or really, it was more precise to say she’d gone out of her way not to look for him.
Instead, she’d glutted herself on the sun when it shined, the rain when it fell so much softer and warmer than in Canada, and the sea in all its hues from blue to gray and back again. She’d read books that she found in the library off the hotel lobby. A murder mystery that had kept her up late into the night, her heart pounding. A sweet, tender romance that had made her chest feel heavy and her eyes damp, though she’d refused to give in to all that emotion. And just this morning she’d finished a detective novel, all intellectual shenanigans and arch, clever conversations.
She’d drunk enough espresso to swim her way back to Toronto. She’d eaten—Oh God, had she eaten. Fresh fruit and produce by the armful. Pasta so fresh it redefined her idea of what pasta ought to be, bearing as it did so little resemblance to the stuff she boiled in her own pot back home. Fish, cured meats of every description, olives piled high... She was in food heaven.
She was glutted and besotted, and she didn’t let herself think about the mess back home at all. When her mind strayed in that direction, she forced it back to right here, right now. This stunning stretch of coastline in the off-season that felt more and more like hers every day.
And still, when Maya’s gaze dropped down to the man standing at the very edge of the hotel property, right there next to the shed where she’d betrayed herself in every possible way and still didn’t feel the slightest shred of guilt about it, everything in her...hummed.
She had convinced herself, as one day rolled into the next and she’d had only that one sighting of him, that she’d exaggerated that rough, masculine beauty of his. That she was making it over into some kind of fantasy daydream inside her own head when he was just a man. A pretty one, but nothing more astonishing than that.
To make herself feel better, maybe. Not that she felt bad—now. But it was always possible she might feel guilty or ashamed later. It was possible she was doing what she could to minimize it before she was tempted to care too much.
But when she gazed down at him, she understood that, if anything, she kept undermining how truly—astonishingly—beautiful the man really was.
He was so physical. She wasn’t used to it. All the men in her life, from her austere father to Ethan, were...attractive enough, she had always thought, but not like this. Not so raw. Not all that leashed power and strength, which was as much the kind of energy that burned in him as it was those muscles. Or those tattoos that peeked out from the sleeves of the white T-shirt he wore. None of Charlie’s tattoos were trendy. None of them were tribal or vaguely Hawaiian. His looked particular. Specific to him, not something a tourist could pick up on a vacation somewhere. More Sons of Anarchy than generic bro.
That made them hotter.
Or maybe that was just the marvel of his biceps. His forearms. Him.
He shifted where he stood down there by the shed, then looked up. And even though a great distance and towering height separated them, Maya felt his gaze slam into her as if he was still as close as he’d been in that shed. She made a startled little noise that she knew he couldn’t hear.
And still, she was entirely too aware of the way he grinned, crooked and knowing. As if he’d heard it all the same.
She felt...giddy. Silly, almost.
Charlie looked at her for a long while. Then he tilted his head. That was all.
But it might as well have been an engraved invitation.
Maya barely remembered what it was like to date, because she never really had. She had always been too busy, too driven, too focused, which was why meeting Ethan at work had seemed so perfect. And she knew this wasn’t dating. Still, she figured the same rules probably applied. Don’t act too eager. Don’t let him see you care. The person who acts the most disinterested has all the power—
But she didn’t care about any of that. Not now, when she’d already proved exactly how overeager she was and had gotten all those orgasms as a reward.
Maya smiled, big and bright to make sure he could see it from all the way down there. And if there was a part of her that knew she was doing a face dive into this crazy thing that was as far removed from her real life as it was possible to get—
Well. Charlie the handyman was a lot sexier than a pint or five of ice cream and her own tears.
He inclined his
