Out of Hours...Boardroom Seductions: One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife / Innocent in the Italian's Possession / Hot Boss, Wicked Nights

“For us, you mean?”

He nodded.

“Yes. I’ll be having dinner with them when they come to pick her up. But after—unless you want to come along.”

Once more he shook his head. “Have fun. Gotta go.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Friday night with Jamii meant non-stop chatter and homemade tacos, baking cookies and watching DVDs.

Jamii wanted to invite Christo.

Natalie blanched, imagining what he would say to that. “You don’t even know him!”

“Of course I know him,” Jamii said huffily. “He’s my friend. Me an’ him an’ Grandma go bowling together.”

“Bowling?” Natalie simply stared at her niece.

“Uh-huh. So I do know him. Sometimes I eat breakfast with him when Grandma fixes it. An’ he has good cereal. Cap’n Crackle.”

Natalie hadn’t noticed that when she’d been in his kitchen yesterday. But she began to realize that Jamii really did know him. Still he hadn’t accepted her invitation this morning.

Which meant what? It wasn’t too hard to figure out when she let herself think it through. Christo was fine relating to Jamii when she was with Laura. He liked Jamii and the relationship then, but not when it involved Natalie. Natalie, as the woman he took to bed, belonged in a different box in his life.

So she didn’t expect to see him until Sunday night.

She and Jamii went to the beach Saturday afternoon. They spread their towels out at the top of the rise of the sand where it was still damp from the highest tides, but where at this time of day the water never reached. Unlike the old Jamii who used to make a beeline for the water, this one lay face down on the sand and began to dig a tunnel and make a castle. Natalie left her to it, picking up a book and trying to read.

The stream of chatter didn’t let her get much read. But she kept her eyes on the pages, so she was unprepared for Jamii’s sudden yelp. “Christo!”

“Hey, Jamii. What’s up?”

Natalie’s gaze jerked up to see the man himself standing there with his surfboard under his arm, dripping his way up from the water.

“Wanna build a castle with me? I’m making a whole city with lotsa tunnels, but I need a longer arm.” She looked from his face to his arm hopefully.

“Jamii—” Natalie began to warn her off, not wanting her niece disappointed.

But to her surprise, Christo, after only a brief moment’s hesitation, stuck his board in the sand and dropped down beside her.

“I could do that.” He glanced at Natalie, but she couldn’t read anything in his expression besides simple friendliness. “Hey.”

“Er, hey.” What else, after all, was there to say?

It was the most bizarre afternoon Natalie could ever remember.

On the surface it looked perfectly straightforward and normal. Anyone seeing them would just think that they were a family—two parents and a child, enjoying a Saturday afternoon on the beach together.

Of course, they were anything but.

In fact, she kept expecting Christo to finish whatever bit he was doing, then get up and leave. He didn’t do “entanglements,” after all.

But he stayed on. He was totally engaged in working with Jamii, talking to her, listening to her, patiently showing her how to create stability in the walls they were making.

“You could help,” he said to Natalie once.

So she did. Some other children came by and wanted to help, too. Christo welcomed them all. He was like the Pied Piper to all of them. Jamii wasn’t the only one who would have followed him anywhere by the time they had finished.

Even Natalie went down to the water with him to wash off the sand, then came back and dropped down on the towel. “Don’t you want to rinse off?” she asked her niece.

Jamii just shook her head no.

“Suit yourself,” Natalie said, resigned to getting Jamii to take a shower when they got back to the apartment. She tried to focus once more on her book when a shadow fell across her lap.

Christo, still sand-covered, had come back and stood frowning down at them. He flicked Natalie a puzzled look, then turned his attention to Jamii.

“What’s up?”

“Nothin’.” She didn’t look at him, then, just started to dig again.

Once more Natalie thought he’d leave. Instead he dropped down to sit beside the little girl. “Why aren’t you coming?”

Jamii shrugged. “Don’t want to.” She turned her face away.

Christo frowned, then looked to Natalie for the answer. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

Natalie hesitated, then decided that Jamii’s fear wasn’t likely to go away until someone actually acknowledged it. So she told him what Dan had told her last night.

“Jamii went out in a boat with some friends. No one checked that her life preserver was on right. They hit some rough water and she tumbled out of the boat. The preserver came off and she nearly drowned.”

“I did not!” Jamii protested, mortified.

But Christo’s jaw tightened. “You could have,” he said fiercely. But then the look on his face gentled. “That’s rough.”

“I like it okay,” Jamii protested stubbornly. “I just don’t wanta go in right now.”

“I don’t blame you.”

He sat for a few more minutes in silence, his knees pulled up, his arms wrapped around them, as he sat and stared out at the water. The silence in him, the containment that accepted and absorbed the feelings of the other person reminded Natalie of how he’d been with the children in his office.

He’d had infinite patience with them. Now he showed the same patience to Jamii.

Natalie watched him warily, wondering what he would do.

He didn’t talk now. Not for a long time. He never looked at Jamii either. Or at her, for that matter. Then, quietly, he began to speak.

“When I was your age,” he said quietly, “I spent summers in Brazil at my grandmother’s. It was winter there, but it was still warm, and some of my friends and I built a tree house. It was way up high and it swayed in the wind, and we thought it was the coolest place in the world. We rigged a pulley between two trees and did the Tarzan thing swooping between them.” His mouth tipped at the corner and, from his expression, Natalie could see that he was remembering the time with fondness.