Hot Shade

by Tamara Lush

  Luca winced. Oh God. He stared at the gleaming white floor.

  “Then she went ahead and married your father. But I got her pregnant. She later sent me a letter telling me that that she was having morning sickness the day of the wedding and knew the baby was mine.”

  “So. You’re my…father?” Luca whispered. “That’s insane. Why…why didn’t anyone tell me? Why wouldn’t my mother have said something?”

  Federico exploded. “She didn’t want to leave her family behind to come to America, which is what I wanted. And she thought she wanted your father. Maybe she saw him as a better prospect, someone more noble. I was going to be an ambulance chaser, a personal injury lawyer in Miami. But I wasn’t going to destroy my brother and tell him that his son—the apple of his eye, the love of his life—wasn’t really his.”

  Luca froze, unable to move. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything he had been through.

  “And I knew your father loved you more than anything and would take care of you. Probably better than I would. Hell, I screwed up with your mom. I left her behind. I was stubborn and refused to return to Italy. I didn’t think I’d be a better father. But that’s why I was so happy when you called me when you were in Argentina. I could finally help you. My son.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Luca’s voice was hoarse. When his eyes met Federico’s, though, he knew that the older man wasn’t lying. Federico’s eyes were the same color as his own.

  “I’m sorry, Luca.”

  Luca sank back in his chair, winded. He gaped at Federico warily. After a few minutes, the man tipped a pour of liquor into his glass.

  Luca spoke, but his voice sounded like it was coming from someone else. Detached. Confused. How could this be happening?

  “Is this why my parents fought all the time?”

  Federico, standing at the window, turned. “Maybe. I’m not sure. Your mother sent me an email about three years ago. Apologizing. She told me about you, and how proud she was that you were a reporter. She said that she and Cristiano had a loveless marriage and that she wished she’d made different decisions.”

  Luca exhaled long, pushing out his lips. The whole conversation had left him reeling. Exhausted. He stood up, unable to look at his uncle, and he shook his head vigorously as if to remove the memory of Federico’s words from his brain. “Where am I sleeping?”

  With a sigh, Federico rose and walked down an all-white hall. Luca followed, and Federico pointed.

  Opening the door to a guest bedroom, Luca turned. “I don’t know what to say. What to call you. What to think.”

  Federico put his hand on Luca’s shoulder and squeezed. “Let’s just take things as they come, okay?”

  Luca nodded and stumbled into the bedroom, flopping down onto the white modern platform bed. He took his phone out of his pocket and brought up Skylar’s contact. His finger hovered over the screen. He wanted to call her, to hear her voice. To tell her about what he’d just learned. But he knew that if he did that, he’d have to explain everything else about his life.

  He wasn’t ready to do that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  At least the American reporter girl drove an Italian car. She had that going for her. Otherwise, Annalisa was growing more annoyed with the American by the moment.

  She watched Skylar walk out of the newspaper and into a cafe down the street. The girl’s style was all wrong. First of all, the high heels. Black was for nighttime, not hot summer days. The dress was too plain and she needed better jewelry. Annalisa sniffed with distaste as she saw Skylar emerge from the café with a big plastic cup.

  When Skylar pulled out of her parking space in front of the newsroom, Annalisa followed in her rental Toyota at a safe distance behind. Skylar drove into a parking lot, and Annalisa hung back and watched her get out of her car and walk toward the adjacent building, pausing near a giant plant to take a call. She watched Skylar grin and laugh flirtatiously while chatting, and Annalisa wondered if it was Luca on the other end. Probably, since Skylar twirled her hair with her finger and looked upwards, coyly.

  Making matters worse, Skylar had great hair. Annalisa had to admit that.

  Her stomach flipped as she watched the woman practically glow from the conversation. This was not good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Skylar’s phone rang just as she was about to walk inside the building, and her mood soared. It was Luca. She hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days, and the edges of panic were setting in, which was silly since he’d sent her the chocolates. Still. Why hadn’t he called or texted in two days?

  “Buona sera, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Luca. It’s good to finally hear from you.” She didn’t want to seem clingy, but she did want him to know that she was a little annoyed that he’d disappeared on her. Her job was making her restless, too. This assignment was a meeting at the island’s community center, and it promised to be a snooze. She’d already written two articles today. One was about an unusual migration of horseshoe crabs on Palmira’s north beach; the other was on a rash of thefts at several of the island’s upscale clothing stores. Basically, this was a long day of unpaid overtime and frustration.

  “Tesoro. I apologize for not calling. I was in Miami, visiting my…uncle.”

  She was about to ask whether Miami had phone and text service but then thought better of it. Something in his tone made her not want to get too scrappy with him. And it wasn’t like he owed her a phone call every day. They weren’t officially dating.

  Her eyes went to a large tropical plant with foliage almost as big as her, and she reached out with her free hand and ran her finger over the veins of a giant green leaf. She then twisted a strand of her hair around her finger, recalling how Luca liked to do that. “I have an exciting night planned. I’m writing a story on bridge tolls. You couldn’t understand how boring this is.”

  Luca chuckled. “Well, I can’t stop thinking about you. What are you doing later tonight? The rest of the week?”

  She turned toward the giant leaf and beamed. “Umm, tonight around nine I’m joining some people from the newsroom at a wine bar on Main Street….”

  “Oh? Which bar?” Luca didn’t sound jealous, just curious.

  “It’s called Bacchus. It’s right near the newsroom. Just down the street.”

  “Hmm. And Thursday? On Friday, you’re mine for the weekend, no?”

  His words made Skylar unsteady with desire. “I’m yours for the weekend. On Thursday I have yoga. There’s a new studio I’d like to check out. Do you wanna come with me?”

  There was a pause. She totally didn’t expect him to go to yoga. Most guys didn’t do yoga.

  “Yeah. Yoga. I’d love to. What time and where?”

  Skylar all but did a little dance. She couldn’t wait to tell Emily.

  After they hung up, it was a lot easier for her to concentrate on her assignment. The bridge toll meeting wasn’t awful. Or maybe it didn’t seem boring because Skylar spent most of it thinking about Luca. As a department of transportation official turned down the lights for a PowerPoint presentation, she zoned out and remembered of all of the places on her body where Luca had kissed her the previous weekend. Her neck. The inside of her wrists. Just above her bellybutton. When the lights in the community center came up, she was uncomfortably wet between her legs, and Skylar pulled the hem of her black sheath dress toward her knees.

  An hour later, after filing her article for the paper, Skylar bounced into Bacchus to meet her friends. A giant glass of sangria called her name as a reward for a long day.

  It was crowded for midweek in Florida in August, and Skylar realized it was due to a seashell collectors’ convention on the island. Weaving through the crowded bar, she found her newsroom friends sitting at a table in the middle of the room. Kira, the editorial assistant, Rebecca, an advertising salesperson, and Megan, who was a news reporter like Sky, were all there. Emily said she’d try to join them later after covering a high
school football game.

  With a faux fresco mural of the Parthenon on one wall and paintings of nude people frolicking amongst vineyards, the place had a slightly tacky yet pleasant ambiance. Usually a bad Jimmy Buffet cover singer crooned in the corner, but Skylar noted with relief that there was no live music that evening. In her three months in Florida, she had gotten so sick of that “Margaritaville” song.

  Bacchus also wasn’t outrageously overpriced, which the cash-poor newspaper employees appreciated. The bar drew a mix of locals and tourists, and the women from the paper liked to scope out the potential single vacationers on the island. Although she had never actually met a tourist that she wanted to hang out with, Skylar liked doing that, too, just for the hilarity of joking with her friends.

  Now that she’d met Luca, the charm of ogling random men was gone.

  She greeted the girls and considered telling them about Luca but decided against it. It was one thing to tell Emily, but it was another to tell every woman in the newsroom who lived on the same tiny island. Maybe if she and Luca were still together in a month. Then she’d tell them.

  She ordered her sangria and focused on the conversation. Megan was a little drunk and railed against the paper’s new edict for shorter, tighter articles, tossing her shoulder-length curly hair as she spoke.

  “I am, like, never going to get anywhere if I can’t write more than six hundred words per story. What the hell is that? It’s bad enough I had to write a feature about the rainfall totals for July and then about a billiards tournament at the senior center. I should be covering New York Fashion Week.”

  Everyone laughed. Being a twenty-something journalist on a Florida island filled with mostly retirees definitely had its challenges. This was not the glamorous profession they had anticipated while in journalism school.

  “O-M-G. Oh my God.” Megan’s eyes moved from left to right as she leaned in to whisper to the group. “Right behind Skylar. Gorgeous guy. Holy shit. Sky, you’re the only one who can’t see him, but don’t turn around, it will be too obvious. Especially since Kira is drooling in her wine.”

  Kira snorted. “Whatever, bitch.”

  “Megan, I thought you were dating Daniel from advertising?” Sky said, amused. She sipped her drink. Previously, this conversation about a hot guy walking into the bar would have interested her.

  Megan sat back, her eyes focused behind Skylar the entire time. “I am, but I can still admire and look for someone for the rest of you ladies. Sky, just get up and go to the bathroom. He’s at the bar. He’s got on jeans—oh wow, what an ass! And a black T-shirt. A slightly tight, black T-shirt skimming his broad, strapping chest. Short dark hair, smoldering eyes… Shit, I need to stop reading those romance novels. Oh God, he just turned around and looked at us.”

  Megan averted her gaze and buried her face in a menu. Skylar chortled.

  “Sky, go check him out. He’s super hot,” Rebecca said.

  Okay, Skylar would play along. Just for laughs. After Luca, she didn’t think Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Ryan Gosling would impress her if they were standing at the bar.

  Sending a snarky eye-roll to her friends, Skylar rose and turned.

  Oh my God. It was Luca.

  Skylar caught her breath and tried not to look surprised. Tried not to gasp out loud.

  His lips held a secret smile as their eyes met for a quick second. Sky was wearing her tall black heels and wobbled a little. Her fingers found the back of her chair and squeezed, seeking some stability so she wouldn’t fall over. Luca glanced again at her then scanned the bar, still smiling in that mysterious way.

  “See, I told you. He’s so hot you can’t even stand up,” Megan hissed from behind the menu. “Jesus, was he looking at you?”

  What was he doing here? Teasing her? Checking up on her?

  She turned to the group and attempted a smirk. “No. He was not looking at me. But I have to go to the bathroom anyway. I’ll scope him out.”

  Skylar walked slowly by a few tables then past Luca. He looked like a model tonight, something out of the pages of Italian Vogue. Dark and dangerous, and so fucking sexy. She noticed several women staring at him.

  But why was he even there, with a beer in front of him? He’d said he didn’t feel comfortable in bars.

  From where he was situated, she knew he could see her walk down the long hall to the bathroom at the side of the restaurant. Skylar went inside and locked the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Miss. Miss. The bathroom’s down the hall. This is the kitchen.”

  Annalisa peeked between the crack of the double swinging doors and ignored the cook. She had followed Skylar to Bacchus, where the American met her gaggle of poorly-dressed American girlfriends. What she hadn’t anticipated was Luca walking in looking like a Roman warrior, primal and commanding. She’d barely escaped being seen by him. Thankfully the place was crowded and she had taken a seat near the kitchen so she could scramble in there when he walked toward the bar.

  Then again, he would have never noticed her, because he hadn’t taken his eyes off that awful woman.

  “I’m sorry, you can’t be in here.”

  The cook touched her arm, and Annalisa flicked it off with an impatient grunt. She asked, “Is there a door to the parking lot from the kitchen?”

  “Yes, it’s right this way.”

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Luca’s gorgeous face. With rising anger she saw his gaze follow Skylar walking past, and then she watched him leave his seat at the bar.

  Never had he looked at her the way he stared at Skylar. His eyes were wide and hungry. Filled with desire—and something so very obvious that made hot tears come to her eyes. He looked at Skylar with pure adoration. Luca looked like a desperate man, drunk with love. If Annalisa were watching them in a movie, she would have sighed and swooned.

  She was not watching them in a movie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There was a knock at the bathroom door. “Sky,” a voice said softly.

  She flung the door open, her heart racing, and Luca slipped inside and locked it behind him. His lips were slanted in a sexy smirk. Before she could speak, Luca pressed her against a wall painted with a mural of green parrots flying over a vineyard. His body was heavy, insistent, and his heat seeped into her every pore. His lips were fierce and urgent, and he gripped the side of her neck with his hand tighter than ever, and he kissed her violently. Tonight he smelled different, faintly of spice and wood.

  “Sky, I can’t get you out of my head,” he whispered into her ear. “I thought about you nonstop while I was in Miami.”

  He plundered her mouth, and she greedily accepted it, wanting more of his sweet taste.

  Luca’s other hand wound its way up her dress, and his fingers raked over the thin fabric of her black cotton panties. Sky turned her head so he could claim her neck with his mouth, trying not to gasp out loud as he stroked the outline of her labia with a delicate and tantalizing touch. Her clit throbbed and she wanted him to rub it, but when she tried to move his hand into her panties he resisted.

  “Please,” Sky whispered. “Please?”

  Luca shook his head and kept teasing her, brushing his fingers over her with a feather-light touch as he inhaled her neck with ferocity. She pressed her face into his shoulder, and biting him was the only way she could keep from crying out loud from pleasure.

  Why was he doing this to her here? Did she even care why? Skylar grabbed his head and pulled his lips close, wanting to consume him.

  She rubbed the heel of her hand over his jeans, feeling his hard length under the rough denim. When she folded her arms around his neck, he took his hand from between her legs. He simultaneously hoisted her up as she gracefully jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist. Grinding his hips into hers, she felt only white-hot need as they rocked their bodies together.

  “Luca…” She gasped, barely able to form words through her thin breaths. “Oh, fuck, Luca.”

  His li
ps grazed her neck and rested just underneath her earlobe. It was a good thing he had pinned her to the wall, otherwise she would have crumpled to the floor when he again whispered in her ear with that accent, “I have actually, physically craved you. It’s as if I need you to live, like air or water or food. Ti desidero.”

  Abruptly, he stopped. Eased her down. Backed up about a foot.

  He was grinning. He licked the corner of his mouth and leaned in for a soft kiss. Skylar panted and was about to ask him what he was doing when he kissed her again.

  “See you tomorrow night at yoga,” he whispered in her ear. Then he walked out of the bathroom. As the door closed, she watched him enter the men’s room across the hall.

  Skylar was flushed and flustered. Her hair was wild. Her entire body trembled, and between her legs she was a wet, slippery mess. Leaning back on the wall, she tried to catch her breath. Being this intensely, obviously sexual was so foreign to her. Never had she felt this with James, or with anyone. Luca made her want to unleash every sexual fantasy she had, and lately, she had lots of them. This all-consuming need pushed Skylar to the edge of her comfort zone, yet she would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying it wholly. She was.

  Maybe too much.

  She slicked her hair back into a ponytail and put on some red lipstick, hoping to hide the freshly kissed look. Soaping her hands, she ran her wrists under cool water for a long time, hoping the scorching feeling inside of her would go away. Would her friends suspect what happened? What did just happen?

  Her heart beating double-time, she walked out past the bar and Luca. He tipped his beer to his mouth and caught her eye as she did, but Skylar only allowed that for a second. She didn’t want to stare at him because her face would flush even more.

  What kind of game was he playing? The fact that she was so turned on almost terrified her. Since James, her only real relationship, she aimed for order and predictability, not frenzied groping in bathrooms. Yet, wasn’t this exactly what she was looking for? Wasn’t this what Emily had suggested, and wasn’t it the exact reason she’d demanded Luca be with her exclusively?