at Natalie and held out a hand to her as well.
She thought the hand was just to pull her to her feet. But when she was upright, he didn’t let go.
He didn’t do anything else. Didn’t brush his hand across her arm. Didn’t come close enough to touch her cheek with his lips. It was very circumspect.
And intimate. Because it was not simply sex. It was a connection outside of bed. The two of them together were a couple, walking hand in hand down the beach toward the pier.
While they walked through shin-high waves that broke and foamed around their ankles, he talked more to her than to Jamii. In fact, Jamii might as well not have been there at all.
The conversation was casual—about the weather, about the water. About ideas for more woodworking projects he had. It was for Jamii—Natalie knew that. And yet, as their fingers were laced and his thumb rubbed against the side of her hand, and neither of them glanced up at Jamii on his shoulders, Natalie couldn’t help believing it was about something else.
A wave surged against their knees, rocking them a little, and Natalie heard Jamii suck in a sharp breath. Christo kept right on talking without missing a beat. His fingers tightened on hers, but he never faltered, never misstepped.
Only when they reached the pier and turned to walk back the way they’d come did he actually address a comment to Jamii.
“Want to go back to your towel now or do you want to get your feet wet?”
There was a long pause—long enough for Natalie to imagine Jamii was going to opt for going back to the towel. She might have done so, at Jamii’s age.
But Jamii, bless her heart, was made of sterner stuff. And had Christo in her corner. “I guess I could stick my toes in.”
Christo smiled. He turned his head to look up at her. “Do you want me to put you down here or do you want to walk in?”
“Here. With you.”
He let go of Natalie’s hand to reach up and lift the little girl off his shoulders, but he didn’t set her on the ground. Instead he walked back to where the water was just beginning to lap against the shore, and he sat down on the sand, with Jamii on his lap. Natalie sat down beside them.
Foamy water from broken waves rushed up alongside and lapped at their legs. Natalie expected Jamii to go rigid. And she saw the instant of fear in Jamii’s eyes, the sudden tension.
But Christo had her securely wrapped in his arms, and he didn’t let go until the water had receded again. Then he scooped up a handful of wet sand and drizzled it on Jamii’s legs.
She laughed. Then, to Natalie’s surprise, Jamii wriggled off Christo’s lap onto the wet sand so she could do the same to him. Another wave broke while she was scooping up the wet sand, and she tensed momentarily, then continued.
Natalie’s gaze met Christo’s over Jamii’s head. He smiled. So did she. It was a moment of perfect communion.
He stood up then and held out a hand to Jamii. “Come with me?” It was an offer. An invitation.
Jamii, after only the briefest of hesitations, put her hand in his. Then, standing together, they faced the waves.
Jamii was not an easy sell when it came to feeling comfortable in the water again. But for the rest of the afternoon Christo persevered. He acted as if he hadn’t said he wouldn’t spend the day with them. He acted like he was perfectly happy to be there.
When at last they called it a day and walked back across the sand to the apartment, he walked with them.
“Say thank you for everything,” Natalie prompted Jamii when they reached the garden. “Christo did you a great favor today.”
Jamii nodded. “Thank you,” she said to him, and Natalie could hear the sincerity in her voice.
“You’re welcome,” Christo said gravely. “But you know you could have done it on your own.”
Jamii bobbed her head. “But it helps to have someone there for you, like you said. Will you come down with me tomorrow?”
“Jamii!” Natalie protested.
But Christo nodded. “Sure.”
“And will you have pizza with us tonight?”
Natalie’s face went scarlet, imagining that Christo would think she’d given Jamii the idea to try to create entanglements where he didn’t want them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Jamii, you mustn’t presume—”
“He has pizza with Grandma and me sometimes. Don’t you, Christo?” her niece demanded.
“Sometimes I do,” Christo agreed. He lifted his gaze and met Natalie’s almost defiantly. “Laura considers it her duty to feed me when I seem at loose ends.” There was a hint of something in his face that she couldn’t read.
“Are you at loose ends tonight?” she asked warily.
“I am.”
“Then I guess you’d better have pizza with us.”
“I guess I should.”
It was like having one of her long-ago fantasies come to life—opening the door of the apartment and having Christo leaning against the doorjamb smiling at her, then holding out a bottle of wine.
She took it wordlessly, the mere sight of him robbing her of words. He was freshly shaved, the stubbled jaw of this afternoon smooth now. His hair was damp but freshly washed and combed. He wore a clean pair of faded jeans and an equally faded red T-shirt. Nothing special.
But in Christo’s case, it definitely wasn’t the clothes that made the man.
And all the desire she’d assured herself she intended to keep well tamped down and controlled seemed to rise right up and smack her. She stared wordlessly at him.
And, heaven help her, Christo stared back.
It was the way he looked when he made love to her. His eyes darkened. His smile faded. He took a step toward her—and Jamii appeared.
“Hi, Christo! Come see the book I’m writing?”
Christo blinked, then dragged his gaze away from Natalie and focused on her niece. “Sure.”
While Natalie tore up greens for a salad, she listened to Christo and Jamii talking in the living room. He paid just as much attention to Jamii’s literary efforts as he had to making her comfortable in the water. He listened intently as Jamii told him all about the care and feeding of hamsters and guinea pigs.
Natalie marveled at his focus. But then, when she called them to come and eat, she felt that his focus had shifted to her. Or maybe it hadn’t—it was just her oversensitized nerve endings and imagination.
Whatever it was, every time Natalie looked up, it seemed that Christo did, too. Their gazes would connect and sizzle, then slide slowly away. When he passed her a glass of wine, their fingers brushed and it felt as erotic as when he’d learned the contours of her naked body. And from the speculative look he gave her, she dared to imagine he felt the same way.
Watching him eat the pizza was worse. It had the effect of making her remember vividly the scene of the young gorgeous Albert Finney in the old film Tom Jones, eating the chicken and licking his fingers, and causing every woman who watched it to experience a serious spike in her heart rate.
Not that Christo was licking his fingers. He was perfectly well-mannered. It was her fevered brain that was working overtime.
In desperation, she shoved back her chair and stood up. “I’ll just go make some coffee.”
But the moment she was in the kitchen fumbling with the coffeemaker, he was there behind her and she spun around, nearly knocking the dirty dinner plates he carried out of his hands.
“What are you doing?” she demanded