Natural Satisfaction (Au Naturel Trilogy Book 3)

by Anna Durand

  "What's a soft launch?"

  "A limited preview before a product launches."

  "Oh." I bit my lip, studying the horses. Didn't I want to change my life? Become a better person who wasn't terrified of being alone or making bad decisions? Facing one of my fears might kick-start that plan. I cleared my throat and straightened my spine. "Okay. Let's do the soft launch."

  "Awesome."

  He walked over to a small shed I hadn't noticed before. It was made of wood and almost the same color as the tree trunks around it. Plus, shadows darkened the area, making the little building blend in even more. Damian pulled out a key ring and unlocked the shed, then retrieved two halters and lead ropes from inside it.

  "Be right back," he said as he went through the gate and closed it behind him.

  I watched Damian sauntering out into the pasture. Hunching my shoulders, I wondered if I was ready for this. What, I could stalk Ollie but I couldn't pet a horse? Sheesh.

  Time to face my fears—starting with horses.

  Chapter Four

  Damian

  I caught the horses and put their halters on, then led them back to the fence where Heidi was waiting. She was biting her lip pretty hard and gripping the wood fence like it might fly away. I got that she was anxious around horses, but I also had a feeling she'd get over that faster if she faced her fear instead of hiding from it. Heidi Mackenzie didn't strike me as the cowering type. But facing fears could be hard, so I'd take it easy with her.

  Not just with the horses. But with dating too.

  Heidi took one step away from the fence when I brought the horses up to it.

  "Meet Lenny and Georgie," I said. "They're geldings, which means they've been castrated so they won't be big-time assholes like stallions can be. These guys are laid-back. That's what makes them great riding horses."

  "Okay," Heidi said carefully, eying the horses like they might leap over the fence to maul her.

  "Georgie and Lenny are lovable. Give them a chance, and you'll see." I held both leads in one hand and stretched my arm out to Heidi, offering her my other hand. "Come on, it'll be okay. They won't stampede over you."

  She took a baby step toward me, just enough that she could grasp my hand. "Isn't this close enough?"

  "You can't pet them from there. Come a little closer." I gently pulled on her hand until she tiptoed to within a foot of the fence. "Good. Now just reach out your hand to touch Georgie's neck."

  I patted him with my free hand, trying to show her Georgie wasn't a wild beast. He nuzzled my cheek.

  Heidi almost smiled.

  "Give it a try," I said. "He won't bite, I promise."

  She moved closer, inches from the fence, and slowly raised a hand, stretching it out toward Georgie's neck. Her fingertips grazed him, but she pulled her hand away.

  "It's okay," I said, "try again. Take all the time you need. You're not the first horse-o-phobe I've met. Ollie hadn't been super comfortable around horses—got kicked once on a pony ride at a county fair—but I talked him into letting me teach him how to ride. Not long after, we started going on trail rides whenever he visited me. If Ollie can get over the fear, so can you."

  Heidi glanced at me, surprise in her eyes, but she quickly diverted her attention to Georgie. She touched her fingertips to his neck again, but this time, she moved her fingers in a faint petting motion. After a minute or two of that, she laid her palm on his neck and glided it up and down.

  "Look, he's smiling," I said. "That means he likes you."

  "How can you tell he's smiling?"

  "Ludar lidar."

  Her lips kinked into a slight smile. "Yeah, I remember your Ludar lidar. It told you Mara wasn't the right woman for Ollie."

  "No system is perfect."

  She kept petting Georgie, running her hands along the length of his neck, while she looked at me. "What is Ludar lidar, anyway? Doesn't sound very gypsy-ish."

  "Lidar is like radar, except it uses lasers instead of microwaves. I just thought Ludar lidar sounded cooler than Ludar radar." I realized I was still holding her hand, but I didn't want to let go. She seemed to have forgotten her hand was still in mine, or maybe she knew but didn't care. "When I say I'm using my Ludar lidar, it just means that I have an intuition about something."

  "I get it." Heidi skimmed her hands up to Georgie's ears to scratch behind them, which he loved, though I wasn't sure she knew she was doing that. "I might've been wrong about you, and I'm sorry."

  "No need to apologize. I know I can come on kind of strong. It's my way."

  "The Ludar way?"

  I winked. "Wouldn't you love to find out?"

  Heidi laughed, the sound soft and delicate. Georgie nuzzled her arm with his lips, and she laughed again. "He's a real sweetie."

  "Yep. And I think he's smitten." I nodded over my shoulder. "Want to try petting Lenny too? Mara and Eve both say Lenny has a muzzle as soft as velvet."

  Heidi moved sideways to get closer to Lenny, but she kept holding my hand. That meant she had to angle her other arm across me to pet the horse, but I didn't mind. I liked having her hand in mine. Heidi stroked Lenny's neck and scratched behind his ears.

  "Look," she said, "his bottom lip is hanging down."

  "Means he's relaxed and happy—and he likes you."

  How could any male, human or beast, not like Heidi Mackenzie?

  After a few more minutes of watching Heidi pet the horses, I decided she'd probably had enough immersion therapy for today. She just got here a few hours ago, so she must've been tired from the long ride in an RV. I had to let go of her hand to take the halters off Lenny and Georgie, and I didn't plan on trying to reclaim her hand while we walked back to the resort.

  But Heidi slipped her palm into mine.

  What happened to "no dating"? Holding hands felt like dating behavior to me, but I wouldn't complain about it.

  Once we reached the lawn, Heidi and I went our separate ways. But before we did that, I stopped us at the edge of the lawn.

  "Are you any less afraid of horses now?" I asked.

  "Yeah, your idea helped. Thank you, Damian."

  "We can do more horse therapy anytime you want. Just call me or come find me."

  She kissed my cheek. "You're not as much of a player as I used to think."

  "Thanks." I'd take any compliment from Heidi, even a half-assed one. "I'll be in the gypsy wagon if you want a palm reading. I give great readings."

  "I bet you do."

  She started to walk away, but I caught her arm to stop her. When she glanced at me, I said, "For the record, I don't think I'm awesome at everything. I suck at geometry. Squeaked by with a C minus in high school."

  Heidi's brows tightened as if I'd confused her.

  Then she headed for her girlfriends who were relaxing on chaises, while I went back to the office to change into my gypsy uniform.

  I spent the next two hours doing my shtick, reading palms and tarot cards, though I didn't gaze into any crystal balls. Maybe I couldn't prove my tarot and palm readings were accurate, but even I didn't stoop to crystal-ball bullshit. The big crystal orb in my wagon was there strictly for show. Tourists loved the way I'd decorated the interior, and they loved my gypsy routine, though I was sure ninety-nine point nine percent of them realized it was just for fun.

  At lunch, I looked for Heidi in the dining hall but didn't see her, so I ate in my wagon. Ollie, Mara, Eve, and Val wanted me to join them in the caretaker's house, but I preferred to have lunch alone. It gave me time to think—about Heidi, of course. I wanted her, and I liked the side of her I got to see when we visited the horses, but I didn't know if I should pursue anything with her. She claimed she didn't want to date or have sex, so I guessed what I wanted didn't matter.

  Maybe I was arrogant and persistent, but I never tried to push a woman into being with me.

  Just as I went back into the guest house to check on my concierge duties, my cell phone rang. I du
g it out of my pocket, but before I could say hello, my mom started speaking.

  "Damian, are you still slumming it at the nudist camp?"

  "No, I'm working at a naturist resort. It's beautiful here, Mom, not a slum." Which I'd told her many times over the past couple of months, but she didn't listen any of those times. My mom wasn't a snob, not really. She just didn't understand my desire to live and work at a nudist resort. "Ollie works here too, you know. Your 'precious, sweet little Oliver' is a nudist."

  I didn't say that like I was offended by how much my mom loved Ollie. It didn't bother me. She loved me too, but Mom had always had a soft spot for my best friend. Seemed like the geek thing actually worked. Even mothers fell for it.

  But Heidi Mackenzie liked my gypsy thing.

  She also crushed on Ollie for a while, so I probably shouldn't have gotten smug about the way Heidi almost drooled over me. Yeah, I did not want to be the rebound guy.

  "Maybe we should come there," Mom said, "to see what our boy is doing in the wilderness with a bunch of hippies."

  Yep, my mother thought hippies were gauche, but being a gypsy was high class. Where did I get my Ludar prince routine? From my mother. She liked to dress up as "Ileana the Ludar queen" and do highly entertaining palm and tarot readings for our neighbors at birthday parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, whatever. People loved it.

  And they knew it was bullshit. My mom was born and raised in Brooklyn, and her real name was Monica.

  "You don't need to come here, Mom," I said. "Unless you're suddenly itching to get rid of your clothes. A lot of the naturists here are your age or older, so all you codgers can commiserate about how your asses hurt while enjoying a little nude sunbathing."

  She huffed. "I'm fifty-six, not eighty. Don't lump me in with the codgers just yet."

  "I know, Mom, it was a joke."

  "But I was serious about visiting you. I need to make sure my sweet Ludar prince hasn't gotten himself into trouble."

  Maybe I had gotten myself into trouble—just a little, with Heidi the celibate sex kitten—but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Definitely nothing my mom needed to know about. I was an adult, not a dumb kid.

  I'd just reached the bottom of the stairs, about to climb up to the second floor. "Gotta go, Mom. Say hi to Dad."

  "Be careful, Damian."

  We hung up.

  Of course my mother couldn't say "have a good day." No, she had to tell me to be careful. I didn't know if Mom would ever accept the idea that I lived and worked at a nudist resort, I loved it, and I would never quit. This was my dream job.

  So yeah, I might've been crazy. But in a good way.

  After I took care of the concierge requests, I resolved to find Heidi. Probably a bad idea, but then, I'd always enjoyed a challenge—and a dirty-hot bad idea.

  Chapter Five

  Heidi

  I lay on the bed in my room, staring up at the ceiling, counting the little acoustic balls stuck to it. I kept losing count, though. The balls had no pattern to follow, so I was pretty sure I counted the same ones five or six times. What did it matter? Why was I staring at the ceiling?

  Because of Damian Petrescu, that was why.

  The man was trouble. I didn't care how sexy he was, or how surprisingly sweet he could be, I would never, never, never sleep with him. Six months of celibacy. I'd made that vow, and I refused to break it on my first day at the resort. I had willpower. Somewhere. Probably buried way down under a lot of hooey like all that silly stuff I used to love to do.

  No more chasing butterflies. No more playing miniten in the nude with no sports bra. And absolutely no more flirting with every guy who walked past me. Time to dig out that willpower because Damian would push me to the limits of my self-control. I wasn't blaming him, not directly. After I told him I planned to be celibate, he hadn't pushed me at all. He'd barely flirted with me after that. But our time at the horse pasture had shown me a side of him that left me stunned and confused. Sweet, patient Damian didn't jibe with the Ludar prince who offered to "upgrade" me to dating if we had sex first. Or maybe he had said he'd upgrade me from dating to sex. Ugh, I couldn't remember. Didn't matter since I was never going to get naked with him.

  Avoiding Damian seemed like the best solution to the problem of my MIA willpower.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  I moaned like a miserable coward. "Who is it?"

  "Damian."

  Oh shit. Why had he appeared two seconds after I thought about him? Maybe he did have Ludar lidar or whatever the hell it was. And what on earth did Ludar mean? He explained lidar, but that other word was a mystery to me, one I did not need to solve.

  "Are you going to open the door?" he asked. "I brought you a surprise."

  Great. He probably brought me lingerie.

  I moaned again and heaved myself off the bed to trudge over to the door. Taking a deep breath, like that would quell my lust at all, I opened the door.

  Damian stood there wearing his gypsy outfit. He held out his hand. "Give me your phone."

  "Excuse me?"

  "It's for your surprise. I promise I'm not trying to hack your phone. Ollie would know how to do that, but I haven't got a clue." He kept holding his hand out, and when I didn't move a muscle, he gave me an amused smile. "Trust me, Heidi. You'll like this."

  Grumbling, I got my phone from the bedside table and gave it to him.

  His thumbs flew over the screen, and his focus was zeroed in on whatever he was doing. After a minute, he handed the phone back to me. "There you go. Jams to lift your spirits, everything from Mozart to Miles to Minogue."

  "Huh? I know who Mozart is, but the rest made no sense."

  "Miles and Minogue." Damian chuckled. "That means Miles Davis, the jazz musician, and Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop singer."

  "Oh, right, I get it."

  "I was trying to be clever with my alliteration, but I guess my efforts tanked."

  "No, it's not you. I'm still feeling kind of off-kilter." Why did I tell him that? Since I didn't want to date him, he didn't need to know. But he had suggested we could be friends. Maybe it was okay to blab that stupid confession to him.

  "Being back at the resort is weird for you," Damian said. "I get that. After the stuff with Ollie the last time you were here, I'm sure it'll take time for you to get comfortable."

  "Yeah, I think so."

  "Don't hide in your room all day. Listen to the music I gave you, then take a chance and get out there with your friends."

  I couldn't understand why he cared about making me feel better. We didn't know each other, not really. But he did care, and that gave me a strangely comforting sensation of warmth on my skin. "Thank you, Damian. It was so sweet of you to give me this music."

  "No problem. I'll leave you alone, but I hope you'll come outside later."

  He turned to walk away.

  And for some reason, I grabbed his arm to stop him.

  Damian raised his brows. "Something wrong?"

  "No." I let go of his arm and bit my lip. "Would you, um, like to talk?"

  "About what?"

  I hunched my shoulders. "Anything, I guess. When we talked earlier, it was nice."

  "Sure, I can hang with you for a while. I promised Ollie I'd take the new guests out to the pilot project later, since they've got a horse-crazy kid, but I've got some time to kill."

  He sat down in the chair by the window while I relaxed on the bed—sitting up this time, not lying flat on my back staring at the ceiling balls.

  "What does Ludar mean?" I asked. "You called yourself a Ludar prince, and you mentioned your Ludar lidar."

  Damian rested his feet on the bedside table, his ankles crossed, and clasped his hands over his belly. "The Ludar people came from Eastern Europe, mainly Bosnia but also Romania. My mother is descended from that line. My dad is of Rom heritage, which means Eastern Europe and Russia. Both Ludar and Rom are known as gypsies. We call ourselves
that, but I think it's mostly because that's easier for most normal people to remember. Rom, Ludar, Romnichels, it all gets kind of confusing."

  "Okay. So you are a genuine gypsy."

  "By heritage and by choice, yeah, I am. But nobody in my family has ever been to the old country. We're all Americans who love football and apple pie." His mouth slid into a sexy smile. "But we do have gypsy powers. Want me to read your palm?"

  I didn't know how he did it, but he managed to make that simple question sound erotic.

  "You don't actually believe you have psychic powers or whatever, do you?" I asked. "The gypsy thing is cool and fun, but you can't actually divine my thoughts."

  "No." He winked. "Or maybe I can."

  He planned to keep up this "I'm a mysterious gypsy thing" for as long as possible, didn't he? Maybe he was teasing me, but I couldn't tell for sure. Did I want him to tease me? Friends could do things like that, so it wouldn't necessarily mean he was trying to seduce me.

  I felt a twinge of disappointment when I realized that.

  No, I didn't. Get a grip, Heidi.

  So what if Damian looked extra sexy in that black outfit, kicking back in a chair like he owned the place. I didn't even care that the way he'd smiled a minute ago made my tummy flutter. I had willpower, if I could ever find it.

  "Do you speak Romanian or whatever language the Ludar speak?" I asked.

  "I don't know much Romanian, not like my mom. She's fluent. I took French in high school, but I don't remember anything except how to ask where the bathroom is."

  "Yeah, I took Spanish, but I've forgotten all of that too. Can't even ask where the bathroom is."

  He smiled, and even though he wasn't trying to be sexy, he was.

  And my tummy fluttered again. Dammit.

  "Where does your family live?" I asked.

  "St. Paul, Minnesota. My mom was born and raised in Brooklyn, my dad too, but they moved to St. Paul when I was in eighth grade. Dad got a job there. My brother and his wife and kids live there too."

  "How did you wind up in Idaho?"

  He smirked. "You mean how did I wind up in the potato state working at a prison. It's simple. After college, I wanted an adventure, so I joined a circus run by gypsies, mostly Ludar and Rom. By the time we got to Idaho, I'd had enough of the vagabond lifestyle, so I applied for a job as a prison guard. They hired me, and I kept that job until Ollie convinced me to work here instead."