I raised a brow. “And that matters… why?”
“It doesn’t.” He shrugged. “I’m just filing it under things I’ll bring up later to annoy you.”
“You should have pulled her off him,” Dina muttered as she pulled out of the lot, heading in the opposite direction of the speeding SUV. The road curved gently down the mountainside, all rolling green hills and sharp stone ridges.
My men would follow Sophie to her destination and report back to me and I wouldn’t give her another thought.
“Honestly,” Amir continued, “if you hadn’t stopped me, I’d have pulled her off you. The lady has some curves.”
Jesus Christ.
My shoulders tensed and an emotion I wasn’t quite familiar with shot through me. Why would Amir take notice of Sophie’s curves? That wasn’t what I paid him handsomely for.
“She didn’t weigh that much,” I replied flatly. “And it’s nice to see a woman with curves. Although, I suggest you stay focused on her body parts above the shoulders in the future.”
“Aha,” Amir replied while Dina snickered in the driver’s seat, muttering curse words in Albanian. “Duly noted, boss.”
I let out a sardonic breath, the sound dry and sharp in my chest. They were both hopeless romantics, disguising their soft hearts beneath layers of sulk and silence, and some days I feared they’d be the end of my patience.
Still, I couldn’t deny it—even if only in the privacy of my own thoughts—the woman was striking. She carried herself with a natural balance, an hourglass curve that caught my eye before my mind could catch up, stirring an unwelcome flicker of curiosity.
Dammit. Maybe I’d been single too long.
I wasn’t a saint, and I’d never pretended to be, but age had made me selective. Faces blurred together now, voices faded as soon as they spoke, and in the past year, no woman had managed to hold my attention. This one had—without trying, without even knowing.
She hadn’t asked for my name. She’d been too busy talking in hurried, breathless fragments, fingers tight at my collar, her warmth ghosting my cheek.
Then she was gone, off to make a new friend out of some unsuspecting shop owner or other, no doubt.
A reluctant smile tugged at my cheeks.
Something about her—about the way she lingered in the air even after she’d disappeared—caught at a loose thread in the back of my mind. And when that happened, I knew better than to let go.
Good thing I’d be seeing her again.
Chapter 6
Sophie
Croatia was beautiful. Montenegro had felt wild and exotic. But Albania… Give me Albania any time of day, month, or year. I loved it here. People really knew how to live, and watching them, I was starting to wonder whether I had ever done it right.
I was slowly moving on, inching past the shadow of Jonathan’s death, the sting of Jacqueline’s threats, and the constant fear those criminals had instilled in me. Whenever I let my guard down, memories surfaced like jagged shards, daring me to stumble back into old pain and falter, but I held fast. Persevered.
Here, in this country, the air felt different. Each day, the heaviness lifted a little more, and I began to feel pieces of my old self returning. It was subtle at first—the quiet moments of laughter, the ease in conversation, the sense that I could breathe without looking over my shoulder. And with each passing day, I realized that perhaps, finally, I could find the way back to my old self.
Yes, it had only been a week since I crossed the border, but every day had somehow managed to outdo the last. Well, aside from the minor mishap with the snake. From what the locals I pestered had tosay, those slithery creatures seemed to prefer the mountains and had the decency to stay away from the coastline.
Totally fine by me.
It had been a week since the incident, and I was finally starting to let it fade into that fog of things best left forgotten.
Instead, I fixed my attention on the view stretching in front of me while I sat on the shaded balcony of the small, picturesque hotel tucked into the hills right outside Vlorë, nursing a mug of bitter coffee.
Gosh, Albanians sure knew how to drink their coffee. It felt like a shot of adrenaline straight to my bloodstream. And to think the lovely owners of this inn brewed a milder version of the coffee for me.
I let out a sigh and leaned back on my chaise.
The air hummed with the lazy rhythm of summer on the Albanian coast, thick with the scent of salt and wild thyme drifting up from the cliffs below. The Adriatic shimmered below with its turquoise colors, kissing the Ionian Sea while waves crashed against the rocks in a rhythmic heartbeat.
