Chapter 11
735 Words
Chapter Eleven
My hand grazes the side where Enzo slept—why I let him stay, I am not sure. I am not even sure why I let him kiss me, to start with.
The sheets are still warm from his body and I grin as I hear him singing in the shower. He has a deep, beautiful voice. The kind of voice I imagined an Italian singer would have.
But the morning sun brings guilt, mixed with the renewed hope in my love for Salvatore. I think about what we, Enzo and I, did last night and I shake my head, disgusted at my lack of self control.
But I don’t have a lot of time to wade in guilt.
Enzo is out of the shower—deliciously naked with his ink-black hair combed back, still wet and dripping tiny water beads onto his broad chest— and I am already dressed for breakfast.
His blue eyes are unfathomable as he takes me in. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Really?” This interests me more than it should.
But the quirk of his lips, it tells me all I need to know. Whatever it is, I’m going to like it. “Really. But you will have to get naked again.”
He doesn’t explain, probably expecting me to follow his orders without a thought, and crosses to a door I haven’t noticed before and it opens to his bedroom. Convenient, huh?
When he is back, wearing just black swimming trunks, he hands me a scandalously skimpy two-piece bikini and what looks like a long button-down shirt.
I take it in my hands and raise a brow at him. “Where did you find this?”
“Bought it yesterday when I went into town.” He shrugs as if it’s nothing. “Your friend said you’ve never been in the sea. I thought you’d like to.”
He picked it for me. Another small token of his care. “Of course.” Mon Dieu, I’m in too deep. How long has it been since I was attracted to a man? “Give me a minute.”
I go into the bathroom and quickly change into the two pieces of cloth, and I am glad to see that it shows off my body without being vulgar. I smile as I admire myself in the mirror and I think that the dowager baroness and the baron would be shocked to see me wearing these. I put on the dress-shirt—or is it a shirt-dress?—but I leave the buttons undone.
When I walk back into the bedroom, Enzo gives me a once over and lets out a low whistle. “I think I changed my mind about going to the beach.”
When he stalks me with the intention of kissing me and probably making love to me, I grin at him and duck away, running outside by the veranda French door.
Laughing, he falls in step beside me easily and out of the blue he takes my hand in his.
As if either of us were innocent teenagers. I don’t know what it would have felt like to do this when I was fifteen, or even seventeen.
For one thing, I never went to school but to the convent. I never had a boyfriend but I was married off to pay my parents’ debts.
We walk this way on the lawn, the grass still wet with dew, and then we are on the sand.
I force myself to keep walking, head down, blinking the tears that are threatening to wet my lashes, and to distract myself I say, “Tell me something about yourself.”
“I had an older sister,” he says after a moment. “She was the one who taught me to sing.”
I swallow at the past tense and the grit in his voice, but I manage to breathe, “Wow.”
“She had a beautiful voice and so many dreams.” He laughs softly. When it wanes, he says, “You remind me of her in some ways.”
I stumble even though there’s nothing on the sand to make me trip. There’s nothing to blame my clumsiness on except shock.
“Careful,” he says, steadying me.
The gentleness.
It’s almost as jarring as the compliment.
My throat closes and when he releases me, I run to the water, shedding the long shirt, and jumping over a small wave and wading into the sea, letting out a scream when a freezing wave splashes my belly.
To my own ears, it sounds more like a cry of help. And it probably is.
I am falling in love with this man and I have no idea of what to do.
- Writer
