Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(56)

Well…yeah. That about summed it up. He felt this strange burst of relief inside him, to be so exactly understood.

“Okay,” she said, and ran her hand down his arm to find his hand, curling her fingers into his palm. “We can try together.”

***

Lina’s happiness felt like a great big swell coming in, dangerous but beautiful, and she wanted to be a surfer, to know how to capture it and ride it all the way in to the beach.

Seize it. Every beautiful possibility life could hold.

Never again in her life would she be able to just trust that she had a tomorrow. That had been taken from her.

Or maybe, in some weird way, given to her. That she would always, as long as she lived, know that she and everyone around her were just as ephemeral as her desserts.

And as resilient as human beings.

She pressed her fingers into Jake’s palm and ran her callused thumb up the side of it, so happy to be holding his hand she almost didn’t know how to hold that much happiness inside her. It was too much happiness for so small a thing, a hand hold, but she wanted to savor all of it. She didn’t want to dial that happiness back one iota to something rational and wise.

“So what would you do now, if you were taking me out on a date?” she asked him.

Jake still had that look as if she was holding him upside down by his ankles over a hundred meter drop into a rocky wild ocean and her grip was slipping. He opened one hand in clear denial of any knowledge of this kind of thing. “Weren’t you taking me out?” he asked, rather desperately.

She didn’t exactly date much herself—no time—but at least she had ideas. She tugged him, pulling hard to try to get his big body on the hard plastic lounger. “I think you might stretch out with me right here”—she tugged his recalcitrant body as hard as she could—“and be romantic and cuddly.”

A little bit of that secret humor of his was starting to show around his mouth and eyes, at her tugging and its inability to budge him. He liked being so much stronger than she was, didn’t he? “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And if you’re good at it, and make me feel all romantic and sexy and soft, you might even get so lucky that later”—she leaned in until her lips brushed his ear—“I get all alive on top of you.” She nipped his earlobe delicately and sat back with a grin.

A deep rumble in his chest. He curved his hands over her butt and pulled her back toward him. “You are so dangerous I think you could only be legal in France.”

She smiled at him and pulled. And he relented—or perhaps got his courage up—and stretched out on the lounger. There wasn’t room enough for both of them to lie side by side, which was perfect, because it meant he had to pull her in snug against him. Her hat fell off onto his stomach, and she got to lie on her side with her head on his shoulder and her thigh over his.

Oh. He did that so very well—be big and warm and strong and make her feel so solidly held. His arm was firm and sure, his body hard and human, and his free hand sank into her tousle of loose curls, stroking them, massaging her nape gently.

A swell of emotion all through her. I think I’ve fallen really hard for you.

She wondered if she should tell him. He might find it unnerving. She found it beautiful. If I can die in an instant, I guess I can fall in love in a couple of days.

She smiled into his chest, deciding not to trouble him with it when his heart was already thumping so hard under her hand. She flexed her hand against his pec gently, trying to knead his heart into calm. His heart might be a little feral after so long out in the harsh elements on its own.

Maybe hers had gone a little feral, too, because she could feel it easing the longer they lay there. This great, spreading sense of peace and warmth. Under her hand, his heart beat got slower and slower. She glanced up at him—

And found him completely alert, his eyes flicking from bridge to bridge to a lone man walking with a backpack to a man on the opposite bank to a passing barge.

She sat up a little, affronted. “You’re not enjoying this.”

“Of course I am.” He sounded startled she didn’t realize that.

“You’re not relaxing into this.” Even though his heartbeat was steady and slow now, as opposed to its initial hard thump.

“I’m relaxed.” Again he sounded mildly surprised she could think otherwise.

“You’re not relaxing into me.” Was he wondering how long before he could escape? He had said he was used to relationships that were just hook-ups. And she’d bet she wasn’t the first hook-up to start getting romantic ideas either. He might be biding his time until he could run for cover.

Hazel eyes stopped their flicking from point to point to finally rest on hers. “It’s pretty exposed.”

Oh.

His arm squeezed her. “Don’t worry. There are policeman everywhere. It’s just me. I like to keep an eye on things.”

“Your heart rate slows down when you’re alert to danger?”

He shrugged. The hand that had been in her hair slid to cover hers on his chest, possessively. A sweet warmth ran through her at the gesture. “That’s what they say,” he said after a moment, absently.

“Who says?”

“The people who study us.”

“You?”

“Us.” A tiny wry twist of one corner of his mouth. “People like me, Chase, Ian, Mark. Elias, too, I’m sure. You know, us civilians.”