She ordered herself a second drink and wondered why the drinks and her realizations didn’t make her feel more...buoyant inside. Why the thought of doing whatever she had to do to transform one of those smiles or heated glances into more filled her with something too much like sadness.
But she was not going to sit here mooning over Charlie any longer. She was not.
Maya squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and started to turn in her seat again to make a choice and get the ball rolling—no pun intended—when a hard hand came down on the nape of her neck.
Then held her there.
With a certain gentle implacability that should have infuriated her but instead made her melt. Everywhere.
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you.” Charlie’s drawl was low and laced with a fire that swept through her, lighting her up like one of those Christmas trees. “The pouty one in the corner is Alessandro. Known con artist. He prefers rich, bored housewives to play with in the summertime, but he’ll take anyone this time of year. On the very off chance he could make you come at all, he’d fleece you on the way out.”
Maya tried to turn to glare at him, but he wouldn’t let her. His hand kept her in place—unless she wanted to make another scene—and she felt the heat of him in the moment before she felt him behind her, not quite pressing into her. There was no mirror behind the bar, only polished wood, and she gritted her teeth, wondering how a man she’d never seen in anything but battered jeans and maybe a T-shirt had wandered in past the prissy hostess out front.
“The old man is an expat from somewhere cold. Denmark. Norway. One of those. The wife stays behind in Rome collecting pretty young boys to call her own, but he likes it here, where he can relax. Rumor is he’s a kinky motherfucker, so maybe you’d like that as part of your downward spiral. Though you don’t really strike me as the golden-shower type.”
Maya stiffened and then hated herself for it, because of course he could feel it. “I don’t remember asking you for consultation,” she managed to say.
“And the kid would be energetic, I’ll give you that.” Charlie sounded amused, though the grip he kept on her neck suggested otherwise. “I doubt he’ll last that long, but the upside is he’d be ready to go again pretty quick.”
“Lucky for you, then, that you’re not planning to sleep with any of them.”
Charlie’s hand tightened at her neck, and her curse was that she liked it.
“Are you planning to sleep with them, Maya? Or are you looking for a cheap, petty revenge fuck because you’re pissed at me?”
“I beg your pardon. That sounds like you’re talking about feelings, which I was under the distinct impression was forbidden.”
“Here’s the thing, babe.”
He spun her stool around, and it couldn’t have taken more than a second or two, but that was ample time for Maya to reflect on the fact that she didn’t find that word—babe—as offensive as she should have. As she would have if anyone else had called her something like that. Not the way he said it.
But then he was in front of her, and her heart kicked at her. He was dressed in a dark, impossibly well-fitting suit that did uncomfortable things to her body while it made a symphony out of his. It was obviously bespoke, tailored to his every muscle and sinew, making his rough power elegant. A different kind of raw.
His hard, gorgeous face was grave as he stared down at her. Those blue eyes of his, on the other hand, blazed.
And in case that possessive grip on the back of her neck had failed to announce to the entire bar that he was claiming her, he made it worse by stepping too close and wedging himself between her knees.
“Step back,” she hissed at him, aware that if she moved too much—or at all—her dress would roll too far up her thighs and expose her to the entire bar.
She could tell that he knew it, too.
“Here’s the thing,” he said again, that blaze in his eyes like a terrible fire deep inside her. “I don’t feel like sharing you.”
Her stomach flipped over, then dripped like fire deep into her pussy. But it was more than that. His words rolled through her, changing her and ruining her in one fell swoop.
Because the truth was, she didn’t want a random man in a bar. She wanted him. But surely there was something wrong with her for that. Surely she should want to prowl, totting up her numbers and having healthy, no-strings sex with as many men as possible, the way she kept reading women her age were meant to do.
She scowled at him. “You don’t get to decide. I’m not a possession.”
“Maybe not.” Charlie shrugged. “But I’m possessive.”
“Really.” She didn’t believe him. Or maybe she wanted to believe him a little too much. “Is that a thing you do? You have sex and then get all possessive? Does that happen a lot?”
He did something that made his eyes glitter even more and sent something like chills shuddering down her back. Except she wasn’t the least bit cold.
“I’m not generally a possessive guy when it comes to women,” he said after a moment, his voice gruff. And she had the distinct impression he was as overwhelmed and furious about it as she was. But no—that was a story she was telling herself. That was what she wanted to see, not what was real. “But for you, I’m willing to make an exception.”
“Lucky me.” She held his gaze and tried to look like the sexually liberated woman she should have been but never had been. “But I think I’ll pass.”
She wanted to sweep off somewhere—possibly to the washroom to have a cry—but she couldn’t move without exposing herself to the whole bar. And he settled into his stance, even widening it a little. Effectively trapping her.
He didn’t have to say a word. He just...kept her right there, her pulse a disaster and that blazing fire too hot and wild inside her.
“You can go straight to hell,” she threw at him.
“I can guarantee you I will,” Charlie said. There was a different note in his voice then, tangled through with what she might have called sorrow or self-disgust, if he’d been someone else. “But we’re not debating what’s going to happen to me when I’m gone. We’re debating what you’re going do with that tight little pussy while you’re here.”
Maya should have been appalled that he was speaking to her like that. That he was using such vulgar words. And she was horrified, certainly—but at herself.
She made herself look all the way up the acres of his chest, despite the fact he was dressed like a captain of industry instead of a handyman, which should have confused her more than it did. “I have no intention of entering into another relationship, though I’m sure you wouldn’t use that word. And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be with you.”
“Sure.” His crooked grin was much too smug. “That’s why, every time you see me, you get so wet.”
“That was before you threw me up against a wall in the middle of the village.”
His grin got even cockier. “You were soaking wet then. I bet you are now, too. Should we check?”
Her breath shuddered through her. Out of her. He was electrifying—because he wasn’t anything like the men she knew, all of them as worried about public perception as she’d been. Charlie wasn’t like them. He wasn’t like her.
Maya had absolutely no doubt that if he wanted to, he would go right ahead and get his hands on her—right here in this high-class bar—in a way that would get them both arrested.
And the craziest part was she didn’t think she’d do a single thing to stop him.
“Charlie...” she managed, breathing out his name like it was a prayer.
His blue eyes were so bright they hurt. She held her breath.
“There you are,” came a plummy, rich voice that hailed from the British Isles. “I thought you’d run for the hills after that tedious exercise.”
Maya blinked, confused. An expression she couldn’t read c
rossed over Charlie’s face. He muttered something she couldn’t hear, so there was no reason it should pierce the wall of her chest and make her heart ache.
The same way she ached when he stepped back to a respectable distance.
“So sorry to butt in,” the man standing there beside Charlie said in the same merry way. “Your man raced off after yet another disgracefully boring business-owner’s dinner and I confess I followed, grateful to get away. I have no idea why they insist on boring us to death, as if the taxes aren’t sufficient to that purpose.”
Maya gaped up at the man, dressed in another gloriously bespoke suit that whispered of the kind of wealth and consequence that could afford that level of artisanal tailor. Exactly as Charlie’s did.
Something kicked in her at that. Something she didn’t want to face.
“I beg your pardon,” the round-faced British man continued, smiling down at Maya. “I’m Sebastian Fawkes-Morton, owner and proprietor of a far more modest establishment than the glorious hotel our Charlie owns. What I would give for his view!”
Maya stared up at Charlie, pieces she hadn’t wanted to put together slamming into place. His presence here, dressed like that. His total unconcern about his job. His nonchalance about ordering food into a guest’s room where he’d been lounging about half-naked.
As she gazed at him, he watched her, his expression daring her to get it. To make the logical connection.
“Hold on a moment,” she heard herself say from very, very far away. As if she was trapped in another dressing room, hair and makeup exquisitely prepared for another wedding that would never take place. “The hotel. You own it?”
Charlie’s eyes had never been so blue. Beside him, the man let out a whoop and surely risked death by pounding Charlie on the back.
“This is one of the long-lost St. George sons, my dear!” he crowed, putting the final nail into the situation. It felt like he was hammering it directly into Maya’s head. Because everyone knew about the late Daniel St. George and the hotels—and wealth—he’d left to the sons he’d never met. The kind of wealth that made it deeply, breathtakingly humiliating that she’d ever believed Charlie was any kind of handyman. “That hotel is his birthright!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHARLIE HAD SEEN all kinds of bad shit in his time. Things he could never scrub from his head no matter how he tried. Nasty old nightmares that came out in the dark sometimes and kept him awake. Of all the things that he liked about leaving his life in Texas behind him for good, cutting down on scenarios that left that kind of dank residue inside of him ranked pretty high.
But he couldn’t remember any of those tonight. Because the look on Maya’s face as she stared back at him, his identity no longer a secret, was the thing that was going to haunt him forever.
He had liked Sebastian well enough before this, but as the man kept braying on, Charlie thought he might actually have to kill him.
St. George this, St. George that—Charlie barely heard him because Maya had gone too still. He watched her gaze darken, stormy and shocked and something much worse. Much too close to betrayed. He watched, frozen himself though he would have denied it, as she swallowed. Visibly.
And when she stood from her bar stool, gathering that soft cloud of pink around her, he could see that her hands were shaking.
The last time his heart had beat this hard he’d had a gun in his face.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said in a perfectly smooth voice. But it wasn’t her voice. Not the one he recognized. “I have to get back.”
She aimed the same smile at him that she threw Sebastian’s way. Blank. Absent.
As if she was already back across the ocean, tucked up in freezing cold Canada. As if nothing had ever happened between them, which was what he should have wanted.
Instead, Charlie felt like he was running for his life when he knew perfectly well he was standing still. Maya was so elegant, so composed, and he hated it. She pivoted around on one of those heels that did things to her legs he wanted to get down on his knees to taste and started for the door.
“Hold that thought,” Charlie growled at Sebastian, finally shutting up the other man midway through a long lecture on the life and times of Daniel St. George, who had somehow found himself in a bar in Houston, Texas, long enough to make Charlie all those years ago. Back when Charlie’s mother had been young and hot instead of beaten down and bitter.
Charlie set off after Maya, not really caring if the entire village and half the Amalfi coast saw him chasing after a woman for the first time ever. All he cared about was that he caught up to her—and he didn’t want to ask himself why that was.
He already knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
He caught up to her out in the hushed hotel lobby, with its piped-in music and designer fragrances. He skirted the over-the-top Christmas trees, the kind of thing that usually put his teeth on edge given how little holiday cheer he’d experienced in his time, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that now.
“Maya.”
His voice was a command. He didn’t bother to pretend otherwise.
And still, he was surprised when she obeyed.
She turned slowly, as if she wanted to torture him with the perfection of her figure. All those lean, stacked curves, enough to make his mouth water and his hands twitch of their own accord.
But he wasn’t dumb enough to pretend he couldn’t see the fury in her dark eyes when she fixed them on him.
“I have no one to blame but myself,” she said, her voice somehow thick and crisp at once. Not loud enough to disturb the self-conscious fanciness of this lobby but pointed enough to slice him in half. “What handyman lounges around for half an afternoon and a whole long night with a guest? Or answers the door half-naked when he orders room service? Or orders room service in the first place? There were red flags all around that I guess I ignored.”
“I didn’t lie to you.” He sounded much rougher than he should have. But he wasn’t planning to think on that, either. “I never told you I was a handyman. You assumed it all on your own.”
“You let me assume it,” she fired back. But then shook her head, cutting herself off. She even slashed her hand through the air. “It doesn’t matter. You and I both know that you could have told me the truth. You didn’t want to. And it only makes you more of a liar.”
“It’s not a secret,” he growled, and maybe the reason he was so pissed off by this was because there was a part of him that knew she had a point. He’d liked that she didn’t know who he was. Even back in Texas, he hadn’t been anonymous. He’d liked the novelty. But he didn’t like defending that choice. “Everyone in this village knows I own the hotel. You would have known it, too, if you bothered to look. My face is in the brochure sitting on your living room table.”
She let out a laughing sort of sound that contained absolutely no humor. Charlie drew closer to her, his hands at his sides—not in fists, though he was pissed enough, and not on her, either, which was what he really wanted.
“You know what? I’ve already had this conversation,” she said, with another one of those laughs that weren’t laughs. And this time when she shook her head, it was very clearly at him. Not at herself. “I’m not having it again.”
“The fact that you made an assumption about me is not my problem,” he heard himself saying, like he was arguing the point.
Maya made a sniffing sound, dismissive and rude. “Okay.”
And she didn’t wait for him to react to that. She turned around again, setting off at a much faster clip than before.
Charlie’s jaw hurt, and he realized he was gritting his teeth like he wanted to break them all off. And his hands had stopped pretending to be civilized, curled into fists he knew were useless in this. Unless he wanted to punch himself in the face.
He didn’t understand what was happening inside him, because he hadn�
��t lied. Not directly. He’d let her think what she wanted to think—how was that on him?
His heart was kicking at him again, but he ignored it. And he should have let her walk right off into whatever temper tantrum she wanted to have, because that wasn’t on him, either.
But no matter how self-righteous he felt about it, there he was following after Maya like he wasn’t in control of his own feet. Like he was a puppet on a string and she’d yanked him close so he could fall into line behind her.
His worst nightmare, basically. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
She made it across the lobby, then pushed out through the doors into the dark December night.
And Charlie was right there, following behind her like he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight.
What the hell was happening to him?
Outside, the village was brightly lit and deserted this time of year. Anyone who wanted to experience the holidays in coastal Italian splendor was tucked up inside somewhere, enjoying the more sedate pace in the area’s otherwise well-trafficked tourist areas. It was as if he and Maya were the only people left in the world—not an image that helped him get a hold of himself.
He didn’t know how to feel the things that moved around inside him. He would much rather feel her instead.
“Is this what you do every time you’re pissed off about something?” He fired the words at her, his voice louder than the sound her heels made against the stones of the ancient square, and all of it echoing back at him in case he’d missed the part where he was being a dick. “At some point you’re going to have to stop running away from the things you don’t like, Maya. Don’t you think?”
She whirled on him then, and he didn’t realize until he saw the sheer, undiluted fury on her face that he’d expected her to be crying. Upset, anyway. Not like she wanted to rip him apart with her own two hands.
“I’m not running away from anything. And I told you I don’t want to repeat this conversation.”
“Babe. I don’t know what you think is happening here, but we haven’t had this conversation before.”
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