Her cheeks began to burn with a heat that had nothing to do with the sun. Except she wasn’t about to erase the memory of their first meeting for anything.
‘What are you thinking about?’
She glanced up, her heart suddenly beating too fast. César was leaning against the doorframe, his green eyes roaming slowly over her near-naked body. He’d obviously just got back from his run. His black T-shirt and shorts were damp with sweat, and his golden skin and the stripes of shadow and sunlight across his face made him look almost tigerish.
‘Oh, nothing really,’ she lied.
Unpeeling himself from the wood, he sauntered over and bent down to kiss her. His lips were soft, and instantly her blood seemed to turn to air. As he dropped down beside her on the lounger she took a small breath. Even though it was no longer new to her, his beauty still dazzled her.
‘So why are you blushing?’ he said softly.
She punched him lightly on the arm. ‘I’m not blushing. I’m warm.’
His eyes met hers and then dropped to the veranda floor. ‘Were you working?’
Her cheeks grew warm. ‘I didn’t mean to, but then I thought of something and it all started to come together.’
‘I’m happy for you.’ He held her gaze. ‘I know how frustrating it is when something’s just out of reach.’
She frowned. ‘I’m not out of reach.’
There was a short silence, and then he smiled. ‘No, you’re not. And you weren’t blushing because you’d been working.’
‘I wasn’t blushing,’ she protested.
‘It you don’t tell me I’m going to have to read your mind.’
Cupping her face in his hand, he held her gaze, and, wriggling free, she started to laugh. ‘Okay, fine—I was blushing. But I don’t want to tell you what I was thinking about.’
‘Why not?’
He started to nuzzle her neck, his fingers moving lightly over her skin, and she breathed out unsteadily. Now her whole body was growing warm. ‘A woman should have some mystery.’
Raising his lips from her neck, he lifted his face. ‘But I want to know everything about you,’ he said softly.
Her pulse was beating out of time. There had been other moments before when he’d been gentle, like when she’d told him about Jimmy, so why did this feel different?
It wasn’t. It shouldn’t be.
The fact that he had opened up to her was obviously a positive, but he didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him, and that was what she wanted—what she needed. Because the flipside of love was a pain she couldn’t go through again.
So it didn’t matter that his words made her chest feel tight. Nothing had changed between them, and if that wasn’t clear right now it was probably just down to what he’d told her yesterday playing on her mind. Even if he was saying things that went beyond the bedroom-based borders of their relationship—a relationship that would end when one of them tired of the other.
Or at least the physical side would end. Her hand slipped down to rest on her stomach. There would still always be this link between them.
Reaching up, she took hold of his T-shirt and pulled him closer. ‘I was thinking about the first time we met.’
She watched his face still, as she’d known it would, but not before she caught something flickering across his eyes. It was there and gone before she had a chance to make sense of it, and it was easy to push it aside when his hand was warming her skin. To let herself be distracted by the fine dark hair on his wrists.
‘Do you remember?’
‘How could I forget?’
She felt his fingers slide over her stomach protectively.
‘That evening is burned into my memory. Even when I shut my eyes I can still see you on that sofa.’
She shivered. Her body was starting to ache. ‘I can see it too,’ she whispered. ‘But my eyes are open.’