“What?” His eyebrows drew together a little. He rose and took a step toward the river, his head brushing fig leaves. For the first time ever, she could just take her time and enjoy the view of his naked torso without that fluttering, wild excitement and urgency taking over. Damn, he was hot. The golden tone to those broad shoulders and that lean ripple of abs belied all those business suits.
“What happened, you kidnapped one of your cousins’ teddy bears and held it for ransom when you were six to get revenge for something, and the label has stuck to you ever since?”
He glanced back at her, a complicated expression startling across his face. Like she’d hit surprisingly close to home. His eyebrows drew more sternly together. “Trust me, I’m quite capable of being ruthless.”
She grinned at him. “I noticed.”
Damien…ha! Was that color on his cheeks? He reached up to touch a fig by his head, his hand hiding his face.
That spring of laughter inside her kept surprising her. This great, bubbling source of happiness. She’d been happy with him that night in New York, but a you’ll-have-to-wake-up-soon happiness, rimmed around by the grief that waited just as soon as she stepped outside his sphere. Here…everything felt so alive. Sorrow wasn’t lurking just outside, waiting to mug her as soon as it got her alone. They were outside. Here life waited. There was nothing to wake up from, because it was broad day.
And she’d just had maddening, greedy, life-filled, joyous sex. More of it than she had quite realized a person could have in one afternoon. Damien had a really interesting way of venting his grudges.
She grinned a little. His long, hard grudge. Made a woman kind of want to annoy him again and see how long he could keep that temper of his up the next time. She smothered her smirk in her arms.
“So is that fig you’re fondling supposed to be the actual phallus or a testicle, in terms of male sex symbols?” Her grin escaped.
Laughter caught Damien completely by surprise. His face lit with it. Oh, he liked her teasing him. He liked it a lot. He dropped his hand. “I compartmentalize. Mostly, to me, they’re just fruit.”
“Oh, fine, ruin them for me for life while you still get to enjoy them.”
He grinned, and it made him look so wickedly happy and young, as if life was burbling up in him, too. “Are you sure you won’t eat one?” He stretched it down to her on the tips of his fingers.
She gave him a pretend indignant glower, and then grabbed it and ate it. Figs fresh off the tree were a miracle of flavor that had apparently survived being a sex symbol since the Greeks, so no sense letting him ruin them for her. She stuck her tongue out at Damien after she swallowed.
Humor and happiness startled across his face again. His eyes looked very green, as if the green river behind him and the light filtering through the great green fig leaves brought their color out.
“My reputation for ruthlessness doesn’t have anything to do with sex,” he pointed out to her. A wary fascination showed in his eyes, his hand curling around a fig branch for support.
She grinned. “That’s a relief. When a man has an actual reputation about his sexual proclivities, it’s never a good sign.”
Laughter sparked in his eyes again. He took a step back toward her. “We’ll keep it between us, then?”
Her breath hitched. Her eyes clung to his. “Oh, I…” hope so. All the ways you like to have sex and I like to have sex…let’s keep them just between us. Just you and me.
What if…he was a person she could show all her dirty side to and all her sweet, fragile, wishing side to, too? The idea filled her with the most exquisite hope.
Hope like standing on a terrace above New York looking down at the lights of the city and still believing in stars above.
His face grew serious. He knelt in front of her on the sand and studied her face a long moment. “You look beautiful,” he said suddenly. “Right now. Just”—his fingers reached toward her and then fell away—“beautiful.”
Naked on the sand and God knew what going on with her hair? She wasn’t beautiful, even when she was all dressed up for a party. Not compared to the people he was used to, certainly. She raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you sure I don’t look a total mess?”
“Well, you do. But that’s part of what’s so beautiful.”
Heat touched her cheeks. He threaded his fingers through her hair, removing bark, and then lay back on the sand, curling one hand loosely around her ankle as he drew a knee up and threw his other arm over his forehead, shielding his face from the dappling of sun.
Such a perfect, gentle cave of drooping fig branches and green leaves and filtered sunlight. The quiet rush of water. The insistent song of cicadas. A place out of time where anything was possible. She sat and he lay there for a long time, not speaking, just…quiet together.
Quiet together was a wonderful way to be. And she’d never even suspected he needed it, that quiet. Well, on the terrace that night she’d thought she’d found a kindred spirit, but the next day, she’d convinced herself that he was Damien Rosier, glamorous and sophisticated, and quiet moments with someone like her could not possibly be his thing.
She’d been so stupid. What a reckless, self-destructive thing, to run away from a man like him because she got scared.
“I made a wish for happiness,” she said suddenly, low, gazing at the pattern of sunlight on sand. In the edge of her vision, Damien’s head turned.
“That night.” Her nose tickled a little. Not quite a prickle of tears but she still had to focus on breathing, on the water, on the light and shade. “In New York.”
Damien watched her silently, his gaze a pressure against her cheek.
“I was so lonely and so…tired. With my father dying. And at the same time, I was trying, you know? I joined forces with Tara, and we were building that company, with me as its perfumer, so I could be the person he and I had always dreamed I’d be instead of the one I’d become by accident. It was almost my promise to him, that I would do that. That I would dream. That I would be happy.”
Damien’s hand shifted from her ankle to close over the top of her dusty foot, firm and sure.
“I’m kind of an introvert,” she said. “I really don’t like that kind of party. A small gathering of friends, of real friends, that’s fun. But not those big, fake displays.”
“Nobody likes those, Jess. It’s a job we do.”
Her eyebrows crinkled. She was pretty sure that a lot of people at those perfume industry parties loved every minute of them, but it was interesting that he didn’t. He seemed so at ease there.
She’d been so stupid.
“But you know how friends always nag you when you’re single? That you need to go out more, that you’ll never meet anyone if you spend your Friday nights at home? I wanted to try. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to believe that happiness existed, and that I could find some and carry it with me even through my father’s death, so I’d still have some, you know? Even after he was gone.” Her voice choked.
Damien sat up and wrapped his arm around her. He squeezed hard—this fierceness to his solidity and heat. Shh. I’ve got you. I know it’s not all right, but I’ve got you, if that can help.
“I made this wish for it, in my lab, that afternoon. Almonds for Christmas, and jasmine for me and my father, and vanilla, because vanilla always makes me feel as if someone who loves me is baking me a batch of cookies. Like I still have a mom, you know? And I know it sounds stupid, from the woman who made Spoiled Brat, at a party like that, but…I sprayed it like a wish. On my wrists before I got there, but then, I couldn’t last long at the party—I just really don’t deal well with that kind of thing—and I stepped outside onto the terrace. But I knew that was cheating, to go to the party but spend the whole evening in hiding, so to still feel I was trying, I sprayed it at the door. A wish. For happiness. Come find me here.”
“I was standing by the door talking to someone, I don’t remember who,” Damien said. “At first I thought it was he
r perfume, but she was wearing this ironic floral.” Yeah, Spoiled Brat’s success had inspired a lot of those. “I wanted to find the person who smelled like…hope, and happiness. This private, sweet happiness that you have with those very close to you. That wish that a child makes the night before Christmas. I just wanted to see what she was like, the person who would wear that scent. I wanted to smell happiness, too.”
She bent her head into her knees. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “that I got it wrong the next day. There was just so much weight on me back then. It was easier to believe I was an idiot than to believe something so perfect could actually be true.”
Damien pulled her into his body to press her face into his chest. He bent his head over hers, closing her in his warmth.
Far too hot, really, on a summer day after they’d already gotten themselves very overheated. But she’d take too much heat over too little, any day.
“And then the next time I saw you, I thought you were picking up a super model, and the time after that, you were stealing my dream company right out from under me and thinking you’d bought me with it, too.” She swallowed hard. “And then my father—” She broke off, and his arms tightened. “It was just a really hard time.”
He didn’t say anything at all. He just held her, warm and strong and there. Tears slipped out of her eyes, and for a second she tried to quell them. But it was so…quiet here. So warm. So…held. Secure. So she let them flow and somehow that made the urge to cry shorter and less painful—just this gentle wave of grief that could pass and let her focus again on the beautiful layerings of refuge around her. A great valley, the forest and river deep in its heart, the shelter of the fig tree. The strong fold of his arms.
And happiness. Life. She was still naked from the way they had seized at life and happiness so shortly before.
Naked. But protected in his arms.
“Damien,” she whispered.
“Mmm?” His deep voice against her hair, the little sound that meant anything she said would be welcome.
She lifted her head to meet his eyes. “I wish…”
He waited, his eyes so close and intense.
Beautiful eyes. Beautiful face. She loved those lines of tension relaxed like this—loved what they said about the kind of man he was, that they would exist at all, and what they said about this moment, that they were all eased away.
She drew a breath and sighed, wishing she could say her wish aloud and make it come true.
This time no anger flashed in his eyes that she didn’t. “Yes,” he said quietly, and kissed her forehead. “I wish that, too.”
Chapter 19
Kisses and kisses and kisses, in the dark against her door, with the scent of jasmine sneaking in among those kisses as if the flowers, too, wanted to touch. The night brushing cool silk around them after the heat of the day. Her hair under his fingers, her skin against his lips.
They were both tired. Ready to shower and sleep. But Damien kept kissing her because he couldn’t stand to stop and walk away. Trailing kisses over her throat in under the fall of her hair, so he could take a deep breath of her scent. Brushing them across her collarbone like wishes. Finding his way to her mouth again.
I don’t want to go.
But a man couldn’t make love on a riverbank multiple times in the afternoon and then proceed into the evening with one hundred percent confidence that he would be able to make an excellent showing of himself if the woman invited him up to her bedroom. He wished they could just…share a shower. Undress in quiet security in each other. Share a bed, just to fall asleep.
Ask me to stay.
Her hair spilled across her face, and he chased locks of it with kisses, brushing it free of her eyes with his lips.
He could imagine it, almost. Close and yet elusive, like the scent of jasmine which could touch them but never be touched. A room with her and a bed, getting undressed and watching her undress, and it not really mattering if they were going to make love or going to sleep. They shared that bed anyway.
Because that intimate, quiet, private space of sleep was one they wanted to have together.
And he and Jess didn’t have that. They had the mad trust and hope and betrayal of two strangers in New York, and from today they had…he didn’t know what they had. It felt raw everywhere, what they had. Like it might be something good, if it could grow, but right now the fresh exposed skin of it was sensitive to every touch. It didn’t yet allow them to move around a dark room in gentle, casual intimacy, kiss each other good night, and go to sleep.
He couldn’t. It might be slightly—slightly—easier than walking into a boardroom meeting stark naked, but it still felt awkward and exposed. Like bringing handpicked wildflowers because it was all you could afford when everyone else had given the same girl hothouse roses.
He could afford hothouse roses. He just…thought the wildflowers were more precious.
He buried his face in the join of her shoulder and drew a deep breath, holding it a second before he let it out. Her arms were around his waist, and he liked that moment. He liked it a lot. Her hold of him. His resting in her.
Take it easy, the old street said. Trust takes time.
He drew another deep breath, easing. Of course. Of course it did. That made perfect sense.
It was easier to believe I was an idiot than to believe something that felt so perfect could actually be true.
Perfect. He had felt perfect to her, too.
He lifted his head and framed Jess’s cheeks, stroking her cheekbones with his thumbs, burying his fingers in her hair. Happiness sifted across his fingers with every strand of her hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so happy. He was greedy for it, afraid to spoil it by trying to cram too much of it in his mouth at once, but afraid it would all be gone tomorrow if he didn’t grab it now. He’d lost it once before, after all.
“I’ve got to go,” he murmured.
She blinked heavy eyes at him, a little wistful, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t say she wanted anything different. She didn’t say I wish you would come up.
Come up to that small room over the shop, with its lavender sheets, and make her stretch out on her stomach while he stroked her back. Gave her all the tenderness that tree bark couldn’t.
It would be ridiculous to put antibiotic on those little pink marks, since they hadn’t even broken the skin. But he kind of wanted to minister to them. As if it would put the last healing balm on a major wound.
As if it would heal…himself.
Kind of odd, since he was impervious to harm.
Take it easy. Take your time.
Again, even the thought was easing. Right this second, given how thoroughly he had used her body that afternoon, she’d probably hold up her fingers crossed in a hex symbol if he tried to worm his way upstairs: Down boy. Let me get some sleep.
That made him laugh a little. He petted her hair. “You’ll be okay?”
Because if you’re not…if you might be scared of the dark without me or anything…feel free to say.
She gave a tiny, slumberous nod that made him want to just pick her up and carry her up the stairs to bed. Her eyes were a little wistful. But she didn’t ask him to go check under her bed for monsters. Just to make her feel safe.
“You’re tired.” He kissed her again quickly. Trying to wean himself off this kissing.
She nodded.
He was better at talking than she was, he remembered suddenly. She had that streak of ironic wit that could sneak out when a man least expected it—like sinking his teeth into expected sweetness and encountering delicious crunch and spice—but he’d been the one, that night in New York, who had gotten her to open up, this courtship of a stranger that lured her into talking with him, telling him about stars in Texas.
While, somehow, her very quiet lured him into telling her about stars, too.
“Have you ever windsurfed?” he asked.
She blinked, kiss-heavy confusion. And shook her head.
A little smile, a little sparkle of humor that dusted pleasure all over his heart like it was a damn beignet and she was sugar. “Right now?”
He found himself smiling back at her. Tugging the corner of her lips with his thumb, in gentle hunger for this teasing. “Tomorrow. It’s Sunday. My cousins and I often go. But I can take you early, to teach you some basics before everyone else gets there.”
“No harvest tomorrow?”
“It’s every other day the first couple of weeks, before the jasmine starts hitting its peak bloom.”
“I’ll probably be terrible at it,” she warned. “And look like an idiot.”
“Well…yes. It’s not exactly an easy sport to learn.”
She smiled again, that sugar dusting of humor. Like a spritz of Christmas almond scent in the air to join the jasmine and stone. “You don’t mind me looking like an idiot?”
Laughter curled up in him, wicked and delighted to wake. “Not so much, no.”
Her eyes sparkled. “I’ll try to return the favor some day.”
He bit back a grin. Instead he raised an eyebrow in hauteur. “I think you might find that something of a challenge.”
And she laughed out loud. He kissed her quickly, hard and hungry. Damn, he wished he hadn’t started this whole conversation about him going.
She smiled up at him when he lifted his head. “You’ve got to go,” she reminded him.
He nodded.
“You’ll be okay?”
She was teasing him again. He liked it to a ridiculous degree. “Probably not,” he said and took her key to open her door. He pushed her gently inside and pulled the door closed between them, then stepped to the side to make a key-in-lock motion through the window. She reached for the door, and he heard the old lock clunk into place.
He should call a locksmith and get a modern deadbolt installed on that door, now that a living person was behind it. Hell, maybe he should stay the night, just to make sure.
She smiled at him through the window that half stole the sight of her from him with its reflection of the lamplight, and then turned away and disappeared into the dark.
A Wish Upon Jasmine Page 20
