"What?"
"Nothing." I shake my head. "I didn’t know this side of you existed."
He brushes my wet hair back from my face with both hands, slow, smoothing it away from my forehead and my cheeks. His thumbs drag gently across my skin. He looks at me for a long moment without saying anything, and there is something in his face that I don't have words for yet — something that hasmoved past the controlled and deliberate and landed somewhere quieter.
"I didn’t either. Not until I met you. You do something to me Natalia… something I still don’t quite understand," he says. "Letting you stay at the chalet, wanting to be the only one to teach you to ski, sitting and talking over lunch, craving you more after each time I have you, instead of less… washing you in a shower."
"You’ve never washed a woman in a shower before?"
He shakes his head. "Or chased a woman down after she left and demanded to talk to her, and then fucked in the hallway of a yoga studio because no matter how many times I have her, it won’t ever be enough. No, none of that."
I know what I should feel. I know the version of me that would already be calculating the exit, cataloguing the reasons this is complicated and professionally catastrophic.
But I'm standing in a shower with Luka Popovich's hands in my hair and water running warm over both of us, and I find that I can't locate the part of myself that wants to leave.
"So what do we do now?" I ask.
He smiles and then kisses me.
"You let me take you on a date to get breakfast and then we figure it out from there."
"A date?" I ask.
He nods. "A date."
"Have you ever done one of those?"
"You’re my first."
Then he grabs towels for both of us and we dry off and get dressed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LUKA
We step into the village together.
Side by side, holding hands. We’re no longer five feet apart, and she’s no longer chasing me down a corridor with a PR strategy in her head and a death wish. I don’t have to pretend that I don't like her closeness, or that the sound of her voice when she’s frustrated with me doesn’t make me want to kiss her.
The air is cold, but the sun is warm. The first blue sky since the storm finally blew past completely. One of the best days to be out on the slopes, but right now, this is where I want to be—with her.
Snow crunches under our boots. The village is alive with tourists spilling out of rental shops, ski gear clattering, couples walking the way people walk with no urgency to get anywhere.
"When was the last time you walked around in public with a woman?" she asks, a teasing glint in her eyes.
I glance down at her. She should have already guessed, but I’ll tell her.
"Never."
"Then why now?"
My thumb finds her knuckles, gently sliding over the top.
"Like I said last night, I’m trying something new, and you’re the only one I want to try it with."
I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her freezing hand.
She’s about to jump into a follow-up question when I hear my name. Someone recognizes me near the fountain and asks for an autograph. A teenage kid, which means I won’t ignore him. The paparazzi and journalists are the ones who get a cold shoulder. Not true fans.
