She turned her body back toward me, one hand on her hip like a cocked gun. Her eyes smoked like a hot barrel after pulling the trigger. She inched closer to the desk, and the stalk in her step reminded me of an opponent on the battlefield. “Because I said so?” She spoke slowly, enunciating every single word. “I can put up with some of your bullshit, but not all of it. Let me tell you right now, ‘Because I said so’ ain’t gonna fly. You don’t tell me what to do. I tell me what to do, and I’m going shopping.”
I’d never been more infuriated and more aroused at the same time.
“See you when I get back.” She marched off.
I released a growl under my breath before I left my desk. “Hold on.”
She headed to the front door.
“I said, hold on.” I grabbed her by the elbow.
She twisted out of my hold like she’d anticipated it, but her palm didn’t slap me in the face.
Kinda disappointed. “Just let me change.”
“Change?”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Shopping.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I ignored the question and headed off to get dressed.
It was a quiet day because it was Tuesday. There were some tourists, but they were at the beach or lounging at their resorts. Camille bought a couple tops and some dresses, and then grabbed some hair essentials.
“Give Hugo a list next time.”
“I need to get out of the house once in a while.” Her hands were full of shopping bags as she walked. “As nice as your place is, it gets old.”
I grabbed the bags out of one of her hands and carried them.
She gave me a double take in disbelief.
“You were having a hard time.”
“Was not. Just admit you’re a gentleman.”
I’d rather die.
“Sometimes, at least.”
While we enjoyed the shops with the ocean as our view, I watched for unfriendly eyes. From what I could tell, no men were tailing us, none that were camped out down the road, waiting for one of us to leave. My actions were the result of paranoia, but after all the shit that had happened, it wasn’t really paranoia at all.
Grave wanted what was mine—and he wasn’t going to get it.
When she’d bought everything she needed, she rubbed her stomach. “Now I’m hungry.”
“You want to eat somewhere?”
“Sure.”
Like a regular couple on a shopping day, we went to a restaurant with an outdoor patio and took a seat. All her bags were on the empty chairs beside us, and she adjusted her hair underneath her fedora before she looked at the menu.
We sat under the umbrella in the shade, but my eyes still narrowed because it was so bright. The sunshine was so brilliant, it reflected off the water and made me squint slightly.
She looked through the whole menu like it was a book. “What are you getting?”
“Salad.”
“All you ever eat is salad and steak.”
“Creature of habit.”
The waitress came over and took our order, and once that was done, we were resigned to stare at each other. I had a lot of shit waiting for me when I got home, but I tried not to think about all the stuff I’d have to catch up on.
She took off her sunglasses and set them next to her purse on the table. “I know shopping isn’t your thing, so why did you come?”
“The reason you came to stay with me in the first place.”
It took her a moment to draw the right conclusion, and when she did, her face fell. “Sometimes I forget.”
Her feminine handwriting was imprinted on my mind like a picture on a table in the hallway. I felt no remorse for violating her privacy, not when her confession was stuff I’d already surmised on my own.
A long stretch of silence ensued, so long, our food was brought to us.
She’d ordered a pasta dish with minestrone soup, and I ate my salad with shrimp. Other couples were in the restaurant, some holding hands on the surface of the table, others laughing or grinning.
Her eyes caught mine then would flick away.
I stared at her or the ocean, the only two things worthy of my attention.
“So, how long is this going to go on?”
Having no idea what she meant, I gave her a quizzical stare.
“You won’t kill him, right? You don’t want to look over your shoulder forever either.”
“I always look over my shoulder.”
“Doesn’t that get exhausting?”
“I don’t know another way of life.”
She hesitated with her meal, as if my words really struck her core. She stared at me for a moment before she returned her spoon to her bowl. “How did you get into the diamond business?”
“I did my research. Knew there was a lot of money in it.”
“But you do more than sell diamonds. You’re in this criminal underworld… How did that happen?”
“Guess I was born into it.”
Now she seemed uninterested in her food altogether because she stopped eating. “You’ve never told me about your father.”