Afterward, they found a darling inn in Cambria, a small midcoast town near Hearst Castle that she’d heard of but never had the chance to visit. Their room was cozy, with a queen-size bed and a plush rug by the fireplace.
Lyssa was hugely tempted to rip off her clothes and pull Cal down with her in front of the fire. But despite her momentarily lapse in line, when she’d almost declared her feelings to him, she knew that to truly get all the way to love, she needed to know him better outside of either work or sex. He was amazing at both. Naturally. But though her heart was falling more for him with every passing second, there was the opposite side of the coin too. She needed Cal to fall for her just as much. It was mutual love that counted. He needed to want her for more than her work capabilities, her funky chicken, and everything she made him feel when she touched him.
Building a life together was so much more than just work, or sex. Or even the inescapable pitter-patter of her heart where he was concerned. It was about knowing, and trusting, and supporting each other through thick and thin, good and bad, up and down, no matter what. Building a life together was about unconditional love. And that, she sensed, came only when both people had completely let down their guards.
Her guard hadn’t fallen all the way yet.
And, if she wasn’t mistaken, neither had his.
Hoping tonight might be her chance to make inroads on uncovering Cal’s hidden parts, she grabbed his hand. “Let’s go for a walk by the ocean. I saw a boardwalk across the road.”
They walked to the end, stopping on their return trip to watch the elephant seals.
“It’s a satellite pod,” he told her. “A much larger group heads up to Año Nuevo.”
She’d heard of the preserve just south of Half Moon Bay, where tourists could view the elephant seals’ nursery. They were huge, lumbering creatures nestled together along the rocky beach below the railing. Two males rose up in open warfare, pounding their chests violently against each other, causing the females to slither out of the way. The tiff was over in a moment, and they settled again.
“They’re magnificent,” he said. “Especially up close. I was lucky enough to win a lottery ticket to see them at Año Nuevo. They’re their own art form. Two great bulls got into a major conflict, probably because one was poaching on a female, and he chased him across the beachhead. They can move unbelievably fast. It was like watching a dance.”
He spoke so lyrically. There was so much more to him than she’d ever imagined. And she certainly couldn’t imagine any of the women she’d seen him pictured with on glossy society pages trekking over the dunes to see elephant seals.
Before London, she’d thought of him mostly in a business sense, as if he had no life outside his business and his ventures with her brothers, because he wasn’t married, he didn’t have kids, and he never seemed to date a woman for more than a month or two. It had been silly of her to think he was so one-dimensional.
In the same way her brothers still thought of her as the little sister who needed to be taken care of, she’d done the same thing to Cal, pigeonholing him into a slot made for an untouchable, unemotional businessman.
“Why do you always let me pick the music in the car?”
To his credit, he took her out-of-left-field question in stride. “I’m interested in what music you like.”
She tilted her head. “What have you learned?”
“That you like everything from New Age to sixties rock to classical to musicals to big band to old standards like ‘Unforgettable.’” He grinned. “I think it’s great that you’re impossible to stick into a box.”
What a lovely thing to say. And even lovelier that he had taken the time to notice.
“Now I want to know what kind of music you like.”
“Will you think badly of me if I say I don’t really listen to music?” He grimaced slightly, as though he was a little embarrassed. “There’s always news to stay abreast of or a podcast to listen to or an interview to learn from.” Then he paused. “But I like how your music makes me feel.”
He put a hand over his chest, and her heart swelled at how sweet he was. She went up on her tippy-toes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
“I like the way being with you makes me feel,” she said softly.
He pushed the hair away from her face, tucked it behind her ear in a sweet, intimate gesture. “It’s the same for me, Lyssa.”
He lowered his mouth to hers, and this time their kiss went on far longer than just one beautiful moment. It would surely have led them back to the inn and forgetting all about seeing the light show, had her stomach not chosen that moment to growl. How could she possibly be hungry again after Frank’s seafood?