But if there was someone else out there for both of them, it was unfair of him to tempt her into a love affair, even though it was clear that both of them wanted it.
* * *
The day wore on in endless temptation.
Now that Gio had become aware of Max as a desirable woman, he couldn't stop being aware of her—everything. The curve of her breasts under her T-shirt and the way they bounced slightly as she moved around the campsite made him long to bury his face between them. The swell of her rounded hips begged to have those tempting buttocks cupped in his hands, lifting her into his lap—
And so it went.
Gio found himself yearning for the Black Robes to show up just so he'd have a distraction. On the other hand—less cult equaled more time with Max. Definitely a dilemma.
Max found an old pack of dog-eared playing cards in the glove box of her car, and they played for a while. It turned out that they both enjoyed cards, but poker was the only game they had in common. After a couple of rounds of poker using pebbles for chips, during which Gio manfully did not suggest strip poker, they switched to teaching each other their childhood card games.
"What about you?" Max asked as they played a casual game of cut-throat War. "What was it like to be Giovanni Romano before all of this happened to you? What's the life you're trying to get back to?"
"As to the last part, I don't know," Gio admitted. "I knew who I was. Now I feel as if I've completely reinvented myself, and I can't even imagine who I'll be at the end of it all. It's very strange to feel like a new person at the age of seventy-three."
"I don't know, I think it's pretty weird reinventing yourself at any age," Max said. She trounced his four with a jack and added it to her growing pile of cards. "Whowereyou, then?"
And Gio told her. He talked about his childhood at the family estate in Italy, where his family had lived for so long there was a definitely possibility they had roots going all the way back to the actual Romans. He told her of the olive groves, the climate-controlled rare book library beneath his villa, the statues and fountains, and the spring that flowed even in the driest seasons.
"But I'm rambling," Gio said, although Max in no way seemed bored. She actually seemed fascinated, inserting questions when he paused, but it was beginning to feel to him as if he was unfairly dominating the conversation. "Where did you grow up?"
Max hesitated briefly, just long enough for Gio to wonder if he'd stepped on another land mine in her personal minefield, before she said, "Argentina, but it's not worth talking about. There's not much to tell."
"That sounds fascinating to me."
"It isn't. It was a small mountain town, and I left." She broke off sharply, threw her cards down and rose from their card-playing table, an overturned crate. "You know what? We're going stir crazy sitting here. I think I need to get some exercise."
"Do you want to be alone?" Gio asked. He collected and squared up the cards.
Her face was an interesting mix of yes and no, but what she said was, "It doesn't matter. I can't leave you alone in case they show up. I just need to get outside for a bit."
They went out into the stark, brilliant sun. Past midday, there was hardly a scrap of shade anywhere. Gio sat in what shade there was beside the hut, stationed as lookout with a pair of binoculars, the tranq rifle, and a camp chair. He sipped from a canteen of water and wished for the homely comfort of a glass of wine and a plate of cheese.
Meanwhile, Max went through a set of isometric exercises that could not have been more keenly calculated to drive him mad. She twisted, bent, stretched, did a series of planks and one-legged lunges, while Gio sipped water and wondered if there was a nearby lake or stream that he could plunge into for the rural equivalent of a cold shower.
He didn't think she was doing it on purpose. The distant look on her face suggested that she was using the exercises the way that she would have gone jogging if she had been willing to leave him alone, losing herself in the distraction and the physical sensations of her body. Unfortunately, knowing that didn't help much. Even the inward-turned, rapt look on her face made him think of the way she might look under very different but no less physical circumstances.
He had already gotten the feeling that Max was far too honest a person to attempt a complicated seduction. Max's idea of a seduction probably would just be taking her clothes off.
Great, now he was thinking about Max taking her clothes off. With Max twenty paces in front of him, sweating while she did a back-bend exercise that lifted her breasts high.
Gio crossed his legs.
Max straightened out of her bend, stretched her arms, and came over to his patch of shade. She swiped the canteen out of his hand to take a drink. She was sweating, her T-shirt clinging to her lean body. Loose strands of hair, escaped from her braid, stuck to her face. She flopped on the ground beside him.
"Good exercise?" Gio asked, crossing his legs the other way.Down, boy.
"A run would have been better, but this will do." She reached up a hand for the binoculars. Gio passed them down, and she scanned the horizon.
"I didn't see anything," he said. "We're completely alone out here."
Max tapped his arm. "Not completely." She handed him the binoculars again, and pointed. "There, at the top of that ridge, above the darker patch. Do you see?"
It took him a few moments of scanning the dun-colored hills to pick out what she was talking about. There were several horselike quadrupeds browsing on the desert scrub. One of them raised its head on a stubby neck with a short mane. It had long, upright ears.
"Wild donkeys?" Gio asked.
