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

She thought Jamii, her attention caught now, her gaze fastened on him, could see that, too.

“It was great. I loved it,” Christo went on. “But once when I was climbing up with some supplies, my hand slipped.”

Jamii sucked in a sharp breath. “What happened?”

“I fell.”

“A long way?”

He nodded. “Pretty far.”

“Were you…okay?”

“I broke my arm,” Christo said matter-of-factly. “Cracked a couple of ribs.” He shrugged lightly. “Nothing too terrible. They all healed in a couple of months. But I couldn’t go up in the tree again while I was healing. And then, when I had healed, I wouldn’t go.” He picked up a handful of sand and let it drizzle slowly out through his fingers. “I thought I’d fall.”

“But if you hung on—” Jamii protested.

“I know. But I didn’t think about that. I just kept remembering the falling. And I wouldn’t go up again, even though my friends did and I could see all the fun they were still having. They tried to get me to come up, but I said I wasn’t interested anymore.”

Jamii’s gaze narrowed, but she didn’t say anything.

“I wasn’t about to tell them I was scared.” His voice was low enough that Natalie had to strain to hear. She shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but she couldn’t help it. Her fingers tightened on her book and she kept her gaze on the words, but she wasn’t seeing them. She was totally focused on Christo.

So was Jamii, raptly. She chewed her lip. “And you never went up there again?”

“I wouldn’t have,” he admitted. “But one day when my friends weren’t there my grandmother said, ‘I’d like to see that tree house of yours.’ I told her no. I said, ‘It’s not that great.’ I said, ‘It’s too high up for you to get to.’ And she said, ‘It’s pretty high, but I want to see it. I think I can do it if you’ll go with me.’”

Jamii’s mouth was open. She stared at him. “Did you?”

“No. But then she went over to it and started up the ladder by herself. So—” he took a breath “—I went after her. I had to make sure she didn’t get hurt.” His mouth twisted in a small self-deprecating grin. “And I discovered I could do it again after all.”

“Which is what she wanted you to discover,” Jamii, no fool, finished for him.

Christo nodded. He sat back on the sand, bracing his body with his hands. “Yep. And she was right. I could. Just like you can go in the water again.” He looked at her now. “You know that, right?”

In the silence between them, Natalie heard a wave break, then another. Slowly, lips pursed, Jamii nodded. She hunched over her own upraised knees and wrapped her arms around them, too.

“Just like I knew it,” Christo agreed. “But sometimes it helps to have someone to go with who understands.”

“Like your grandma,” Jamii said in a small voice.

“Uh-huh. So—” he slanted her a glance “—if you wanted to try sticking a toe or two in, I’d go with you.”

Natalie held her breath.

Jamii squeezed her arms around her legs. She chewed her lip. She didn’t speak.

Neither did Christo. He just sat there, staring out at the horizon, completely unhurried, as if he had nothing better to do than wait for an eight-year-old girl to make up her mind.

“Could I ride on your shoulders?” Jamii asked him at last.

Christo flicked her a quick glance. “Down to the water? Sure, if you want.”

“And you wouldn’t drop me?”

“Never.”

“We wouldn’t go out far, right?”

“Just as far as you want.”

“And you’ll bring me back when I want?”

“I will.”

“Even if I change my mind?”

“Even if you change your mind.” He didn’t move. Only waited.

So did Jamii. Then, slowly she unfolded herself and stood up, then squared her small shoulders. She looked at the ocean, then back at Christo and gave one quick nod of her head. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

He stood up and held out a hand to Jamii, then swung her onto his shoulders. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Natalie and held out a hand to her as well.

She thought the hand was just to pull her to her feet. But when she was upright, he didn’t let go.

He didn’t do anything else. Didn’t brush his hand across her arm. Didn’t come close enough to touch her cheek with his lips. It was very circumspect.

And intimate. Because it was not simply sex. It was a connection outside of bed. The two of them together were a couple, walking hand in hand down the beach toward the pier.

While they walked through shin-high waves that broke and foamed around their ankles, he talked more to her than to Jamii. In fact, Jamii might as well not have been there at all.

The conversation was casual—about the weather, about the water. About ideas for more woodworking projects he had. It was for Jamii—Natalie knew that. And yet, as their fingers were laced and his thumb rubbed against the side of her hand, and neither of them glanced up at Jamii on his shoulders, Natalie couldn’t help believing it was about something else.

A wave surged against their knees, rocking them a little, and Natalie heard Jamii suck in a sharp breath. Christo kept right on talking without missing a beat. His fingers tightened on hers, but he never faltered, never misstepped.

Only when they reached the pier and turned to walk back the way they’d come did he actually address a comment to Jamii.

“Want to go back to your towel now or do you want to get your feet wet?”

There was a long pause—long enough for Natalie to imagine Jamii was going to opt for going back to the towel. She might have done so, at Jamii’s age.

But Jamii, bless her heart, was made of sterner stuff. And had Christo in her corner. “I guess I could stick my toes in.”

Christo smiled. He turned his head to look up at her. “Do you want me to put you down here or do you want to walk in?”

“Here. With you.”

He let go of Natalie’s hand to reach up and lift the little girl off his shoulders, but he didn’t set her on the ground. Instead he walked back to where the water was just beginning to lap against the shore, and he sat down on the sand, with Jamii on his lap. Natalie sat down beside them.