her throat. “I didn’t realize it was that kind of thing.”
And maybe she had the dim notion that he would be abashed at that. Had she wanted him to be? But it didn’t matter, because all he did was grin wider.
“It can be any kind of thing you want it to be, babe.”
“Can it be a thing where you don’t call me babe?”
“Right now it’s a thing where I’m hungry,” he said, no hint of anything like shame anywhere on his beautiful body, much less that gorgeous face.
Maya was still naked, and that suddenly felt very different from before. When they’d been in the shed, her skirt had dropped down and it was as if nothing had happened. She’d clung to that as she’d walked away, reeling.
This was much more...obvious. Vulnerable, maybe.
And she had the distinct impression that he knew it.
That was why she made no move to cover herself, though she wanted to. She stayed where she was, watching as Charlie rolled the cart over to the table in the corner, then settled himself down, as if he had every intention of sitting there, watching the sea and having a snack.
And very much as if she wasn’t there at all.
What surprised her was the kick of temper that wound through her at that. As if this wasn’t new. As if this was an old fight between people who knew each other.
Get a grip, Maya, she ordered herself.
She decided temper required clothing, so she swept up the throw she’d left on a chair earlier. And wrapped it around herself as she slipped into a seat at the table.
“What did you order?” she asked, as he removed the big silver covers from a selection of plates and then slid them into the center of the table.
“Food.”
There was laughter in his blue gaze, and Maya still didn’t know why her heart was kicking at her as if they were in a fight. She hardly knew this man. And sure, the sex had left her reeling and fragile all over again, but he wasn’t doing anything. A monosyllable just made him a man.
The kind of man she’d read about in books or seen on television shows, because the men she knew never said one word when they could rattle off fifty instead. The men she knew had never missed an opportunity to pontificate. At length.
Charlie had said less in the time she’d known him than any man she’d ever known before had said in the first five minutes of their acquaintance. But it wasn’t as if she thought she was misunderstanding him.
She ordered herself to view this—him—as a revelation.
An opportunity to spend time with a man who was completely outside her usual wheelhouse.
Maya took stock of the food herself. It was more of the same simple-yet-delectable fare she now associated with Italy, and she was surprised to feel her own stomach go hollow and greedy in anticipation.
For a long while, neither one of them spoke. And Maya found herself fascinated—or maybe the word she wanted was compelled—by how intimate this was. First, sex like that, so untamed and wild. And now food, shared half-naked, which made it all feel sensual.
As if this was the foreplay they hadn’t quite gotten around to before.
Either time.
“Aren’t you going to get in trouble?” she thought to ask as she feasted on pasta dressed in a simple olive oil. Tart olives, and light perfectly grilled fish. “Won’t that man report back that you’re up here? Obviously not doing...whatever it is you do?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Does the hotel not have rules about staff mixing with guests?”
Charlie sat back in his chair then, that big sculpted body of his looking more relaxed. But it put Maya on alert.
He even smiled, but still, she suddenly felt like prey.
Not, she was forced to admit a moment later while her heart kicked at her madly, that feeling like prey was necessarily a bad thing.
“I know women like to talk after sex,” he said.
She eyed him. “Is that a woman thing? I thought it was a human thing.”
“I’m not opposed to it,” he drawled, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “But is this really the topic you want to cover?”
Her cheeks felt hot and she lifted her chin a little, ignoring the way that same heat seemed to roll over her. It should have been embarrassment or some cousin to that kind of humiliation at her own awkwardness, but everywhere the heat touched her it turned out she didn’t feel embarrassed at all.
She felt a whole lot more like greedy. Like she wanted to glut herself on him, one way or another, whether the blunt instrument was his cock...or him.
And somehow she managed to hold on to that feeling while harnessing the part of her that had been known to decimate opposing counsel at depositions.
“Okay. You sound American. How did you come to be a handyman at a St. George property on the Amalfi coast?”
“I’m very handy.” He grinned when she frowned at him. “Sometimes jobs fall in your lap.”
“Do they? That hasn’t been my experience.”
“You don’t seem like you have a whole lot of experience.”
Her frown deepened. “If you’re talking about sex, I don’t have a lot of experience with random strangers. I’ve never viewed that as a bad thing. And as far as jobs go, they’ve never fallen in my lap. I plotted them out, then pursued them to the best of my ability.”
With single-minded focus, sacrificing everything she could if it would help her get where she wanted to go. But she didn’t say that, because she already sounded like she was in a job interview.
Charlie laughed. At her, in that low charged way that told her too many things about him. Chief among them that he wasn’t that worried about finding work. Not the kind of work that had always been the center of Maya’s life.
“That doesn’t sound like any fun.”
“A career isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a career.”
“You have to ask yourself what the point of all that crap is. Why do it at all? Because someone told you that you were supposed to?”
Maya felt strongly that, given the slightest provocation, the strange sensation in the back of her throat could turn into a scream. At him.
And she didn’t need to fully understand the inherent danger he wore in that hard and rangy body of his to know he wouldn’t like that very much. She knew she certainly didn’t want to become the kind of woman who made scenes. Her parents had raised her to be calm and collected in the face of any and all provocations. Maya figured a departure from her usual reserve was allowed on her wedding day. But giving
