Falling for you

Chapter Nine

ISABELLA

“Yes, boss! They sure are yummy, or as Sweetness over here would say... Lekker.” He winks at me, and I giggle.

“You’re South African?” He asks, chuffed with his keen powers of perception.

I smile, but shake my head at the assumption. “Well… technically, no. But at the risk of sounding like a pompous, pretentious brat… uhm… my family…are cosmopolitan citizens of the world.” My anxious intonation, refusing to yield and acknowledge how cool it must be to be different, makes it sound like a question when it isn’t.

“We’re from everywhere, and we moved so often we hardly got to put down roots until we got to Spain.” I absentmindedly twirl a stand of hair, hating that anything makes my reticent-self a bundle of nerves.

“Sorry, it’s a long story. You proba—.” He grabs the strand out of my hand, tenderly tucking it behind my ear, before gripping my chin to stare into the depths of my soul.

“I don’t have anywhere to be, Little Bird. Please, I want to hear it.” There’s that nickname again, as if it were always so.

Despite its etymology and complex gender ramifications in the battle of the sexes, the term manages to ignite each one of my senses.

“Why do you call me that? It’s sexist, and I don’t like it.” I puff my cheeks and skew my lips, biting back my tongue, for I shouldn’t lie.

I never do.

“Does it matter if we both know you love it?” His handsome smile, scrambling my frontal lobe and rendering me unable to form sentences or coordinate movements.

He’s got me there, and I can’t tell him otherwise.

He doesn’t wait for a redundant reply.

Why should he?

For Judge, time is but a premise bending to his will, and apparently, so am I—craning my neck as he moves impossibly closer.

“Where are you from then, Little Bird?” Now he’s just rubbing it in, as I blink repeatedly with my mouth agape.

That magnetic gravitas of his keeping me prisoner with those steely eyes has eclipsed my smart mouth into relearning its nervous stutter.

“I—I… I was born in a quaint little fishing village called Cap Malherureux, Mauritius, but we lived in Cape Town at the time. One could say, I interrupted my family’s holiday rather prematurely.” Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, flooding my system with a stupefying love potion the longer I stare.

“So, how come I detect Asian features? They really come alive when you smile.” He raises his smouldering scrutiny back to mine, and I blush at the thought of him studying me so closely.

Someone unblush me right this minute. I don’t even care if I just made up a word.

“P—people try to place the little, weird hybrid, but they never really get it right.” I chuckle nervously, reaching for the same strand behind my ear, but he stops me.

His hand lingers, and his rough palm traces my jawline like an unuttered whisper, causing a shudder to run down my spine and finally relax my shoulders.

He’s the vision of land at sea. A grounding, calm presence, beckoning me to the safety of its shores.

I take an unabated breath—rugged and necessary—to wind up my thoughts. I’m a toy about to break into a jittery, rehearsed song and dance. Something my parents both pushed onto us, that’s too perfect, but it’s what I know.

Or maybe... It's all they would tell me.

“My mother is Chinese-Sicilian, my father is Zimbabwean, and I’m a worldly girl who is from everywhere and yet has never belonged.” His silently devoted audience and diligent gaze, soothing both body and soul, encourage me to go on.

“My parents met at Doctors Without Borders, not too far into its initial stages. They fell in love with the program, and their romance blossomed soon after. My grandfather, however, disapproved of my mother working all together. Fortunately, he never knew about the love affair, for it would have been forbidden. So, during their post in Nigeria, they eloped to the furthest point anyone would ever think to look.” He hangs on my every word, and I picture what it’d be like to run off with someone like him.

“South Africa.” He taps his straight nose with a subtle nod to let me know he's still invested in the story.

“Yes, exactly.” His charming mannerisms, etching a demure smile on my lips.

“So how did you end up in Spain?” He asks, leaning on the counter with a seductive lilt.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps they fell in love with this small village we always go to. We moved so often, it could be anyone’s guess where we’d end up next. Istanbul, Marrakesh, Paris, London, Berlin. When we settled in Cape Town for a few years they said it felt different, and then—it was time for a fresh start. Again.”

Some things are better off left unsaid.

I recover quickly. That memory is buried too deep and under too many thick layers of marbled trauma for it to sift its way back to the surface.

“Or it could just be money.” I add ruefully, while grasping at straws with a cheer I hope isn’t as transparent as I feel.

He nods, knowing all too well the cost of living and raising a child—let alone two. “Dad got an incredible offer at a hospital in London. His eminence is a world authority on cardio-thoracic surgery, and doesn’t have a humble bone in his body. More remunerable positions kept presenting themselves, he took them, and they’ve never looked back. Matteo, my older brother, is studying at Oxford Brookes, and that’s why I’m here, and not in the States.” I pull my turtleneck above my lip to hide the blush creeping onto my cheeks, and peer up at him to gauge his response.

Hopefully, he didn’t notice. There are certain things I’d rather not relive.

“So you must speak quite a few languages, huh?” He tugs the polo-neck back down, rewarding me with a smile that would make the most pious of priests’ strip from his collar and leave the man of cloth behind—streaking along the highway to Hell like a pagan to heresy to the tune of AC/DC.

“Uh-A few.” I clear my throat, not to gape or rhyme.

Thank the Lord for monosyllabic answers, so a girl can catch a breath.

My belly fluttering at the exhilarating thrill of revealing another piece of myself to him. But I’m reticent to brag, Matteo got that self-serving trait—not me.

At least the almighty, omnipresent oculus of God knows my sin won’t be that of pride, but he really is putting lust up to the test.

“Umm… If you really want to know, five to be exact. Catalan, Spanish, English, as well as being fluent in Italian and Japanese.” The apples of my cheeks warm to the touch, feeling his heated gaze scorch into my mind.

A brand I’d be proud to let scar.

I play it off, thinking he can’t really be this into me, yet the ironclad conviction of his argent stare insists upon it.

As if he’s trying to telepathically tell me that the next language I’ll be curling my tongue around is Judge.

“And you?” I tap the tip of his nose playfully, making his face light up at the unexpected gesture, as he grabs my cheeky finger and pulls a chuckle from us both.

“What’s your heritage? No, wait! Let me have one guess…” Pretending to actively consider it, although I’m quite sure I have the right answer already.

Isabella, pause for dramatic effect.

“You don’t drop your gees, and your accent may have mellowed across the pond, but that ‘oh so warming’ southern twang is the ain’t of it all. Is it not? Personally, I would say sod the Dickensian bias of the word. I find it… a mature, mellifluous roll of the tongue akin to a fine wine.”

“A fine wine, huh? I like that, Little Bird.” He sequesters my finger to press it on his soft lips.

I swallow audibly, retracting my hand from his grasp before it goes any further.

“Um… so if I had to guess… I’d have a stab in the dark at the Old Dominion, Virginia?”

Good golly, I wish I hadn’t pulled my finger away.

“Close, little globetrotter.” He runs his long fingers through his hair with a pensive look on his awfully fetching face; when I do something else he doesn’t expect.

Honestly, I don’t expect it, either. This man has me acting on lust and instinct, and I don’t know what my body will move me to do next.

Where has this version of me been all my life?

I mimic his movements from before, stopping him from tousling his hair like he did with me. I bring my hand down his five o’clock shadow. My skin prickles with such glorious delight that I very almost moan, and we chuckle again. Our laughter, organic and comfortable.

“Ha…ha, copycat.” He quips dryly, but definitely amused.

“I’m a quick-study.” Bringing his finger to my lips, but stopping short from touching—watching as his attention darts to my lips and bites his own, barely holding back the beast.

His lips curl into a wolfish smile, a worthy diversion that once again manages to turn the tables on me.

“I was born and bred in Harlan County, a holler near Lexington, Kentucky. I joined the US Navy at 18, after beefing up building houses in the Alaskan wilderness. And once I got recruited into SEAL, the rest is classified.” I snicker at the word classified, challenging that sense of authority he’s so fond of and forcing his hand to take a step further.

Maybe if I keep courting danger, he’ll pull me into his lap?

“I traveled the world and settled for the MC way of life with my blood brothers from the program. Civilian life ain’t for everybody—not for us at least. Normal life is a shock. It’s an adjustment, so much more complex than the plain directives the military used to acclimatize us and detach from the violence. Quite a few struggle with that when they leave. So… we found a loophole to come back, use our skills, and still make a living.”

“In England, no less. Why not back home?” My eyebrows furrow as I tilt my head to the side.

“Back home got too small, and my ex wanted a change of scenery. So we stayed for the gap in the market and the standard of education for the kids.” I snort involuntarily at his reply and quickly cover my mouth.

My face, ripe with rosy embarrassment, twists my features into an eyes-closed grimace.

Jake—the guy more concerned with sport than a degree, who can’t be on time for his own practical joke?

When I open them back, however, I see something out of the corner of my eye that I hadn’t spotted before. I was too entranced by this beautiful specimen of a man.

“You guys have a vintage jukebox?!” I jump off the stool like a child tumbling down the stairs on Christmas morning.

“Yeah, check it out. Drinks should be up shortly…” His sentence trails on, but I don’t hear it.

“Oh, I will.” I’m so close to squealing and making an unashamed fool out of myself; I scurry to it before he can even finish.