“Don’t get huffy. It was just an observation.” He turns toward me and lets the camera fall to his chest.
“Huffy? You mean like leaving a family dinner because you can’t handle some light teasing?”
He smiles. Steps forward. And I realize I’m standing on my toes to try to match his height and I’m still falling short. Annoying. I left my heels on the porch.
“Yes, exactly like that.” His voice lowers an octave. He steps forward again and the lens from his camera is an inch from my chin. I don’t budge.
“Why Italy? Surely there were better law programs than Urbino’s?” he asks.
And here it is. Once I pull the mom card, there’s no putting it back in the deck. He’s watching me like I might hold the answers to the universe. I open my mouth. Close it. Turn back toward the view and pull out my phone from where it’s tucked in my dress pocket.
“I made a promise,” I say, voice thick now, trying to pull up the camera on my homescreen to ignore his probing gaze.
He makes a low sound in his throat and I can smell him—it’s lemon, that scent I couldn’t put my finger on earlier. Mint and lemon.
“Interesting. Una promessa …”
His Italian is as smooth as Nina’s lava cake. I glance back up to find his lens trained on me again. I lift a brow.
“You will be deleting the pictures of your dog taking advantage of me,” I tell him.
He grins, his eyes so dark I cannot find where pupil becomes iris. I turn my focus back out to Urbino and hold up my phone to capture the memory, pressing wildly at the red button like it can protect me from his presence beside me.
He leans into the empty space beside my ear, his breath and the breeze mingling along my neck.
“Certo, dolcezza.”
The roll of those Zs slides down my spine and my eyes fall shut. My mother told me the language was intoxicating, and she didn’t lie. I can feel every sound slipping along my skin—teasing and caressing. I take a small step forward to escape the sensation easing down my back, and James’s hand shoots out to grab me. The shock of his touch sends my phone up and out of my fingers.
My eyes pop open and I look down just in time to see the glimmer of my rose gold case bounce over the edge of the cliff and plunge into the darkness below.
I stare after it for some time trying to make sense of what’s happened. Someone has placed a hex on me. I’m cursed. I pissed off a deity. I turn toward James, and his eyes are round, his lip pulled between his teeth as he watches me like I might explode into a thousand angry pieces.
I let out a breath that might have been in my lungs for an hour and look up to the sky.
“Ava, I’m—”
“You knocked my phone over the cliff,” I cut him off.
“That’s not exactly what—”
“Why did you do that?”
“You were going to fa—”
I put up my hand for him to shut up.
I want to take all of the bubbling anger in my chest out on him, and if he says one wrong word, I’m scared of what I might do. Maybe send him tumbling over that cliff after my phone.
“At least now you won’t be tortured by having to check to see—”
The sound that comes out of me is a mix of Xena Warrior Princess and the sound a motor makes when you run out of gasoline. He takes a step back and holds up his hands. I turn my back on him and head back down the path, walking as quickly as my bare feet allow, ignoring the happy prancing mastiff that’s at my side. I need to crawl into bed and wake up on the other side of this god-awful shitstorm of a day. I need to recover, recoup, and replan.
I need to stay the hell away from James.
OTTO
Ava
