Untamed Love

Unlike most people, she didn’t take out a cell phone, book or some electronic device to pass the time. She simply watched him and the rest of her world with her large and devouring stare.

When he was finished with the front and back of the house, he joined her on the stairs with his own open umbrella. Rain tapped the umbrella as he held it over both their heads. She folded hers closed and put it at her feet.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked.

“It’s a beautiful property,” he said. “It’ll be even more beautiful when I’m finished with it.”

He took out his notes and shared his ideas on the space. Trim up the English maze, install a fountain, transplant the fruit trees to another part of the yard, put in a paved walking path winding through the entire front and back of the mansion.

Victor kept his language as straightforward as possible, making sure the entire process was transparent. As he spoke, he noticed her frowning more than once, but she waited until he was finished to voice her concerns.

“I don’t like any of it,” she said.

Victor had to mentally repeat what she said to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding her. Mella shook her head and reached over to tap the surface of his iPad, enlarging the image. Despite the layers of clothes between them, he felt her warmth, the way the muscles of her arm moved.

“The fruit trees should stay where they are. The kids would love to have their own mango trees in the backyard instead of going through the garden to get them.” Her breath brushed against his neck as she spoke, her attention completely focused on the notes he laid out on the tablet. “They’re for fun and food, not just to look good. And the English maze—” she actually put up air quotes with the closest thing to a sneer he’d ever seen on her face “—I want that to look more natural. Those mazes in English movies are boring. You can still leave it a maze, but nothing so rigid. Give the plants some room to breathe. Leave the flowers that are accidentally growing together. I don’t like rectangular plants, and I don’t think the kids will, either.”

The longer she spoke, the more he frowned until he swore his forehead had folded in on itself. Just who was the professional here? “You don’t like any of my suggestions?” He made it a question because he couldn’t believe it.

“Sorry, that’s not quite true.” She grinned at him as if she was about to pay him the biggest compliment. “I like that type of buffalo grass you suggested. It won’t need too much maintenance after it takes hold.”

“Listen...”

But she was already standing up and walking out into the rain with her umbrella. Her purple boots splashed in the puddles and squished in the grass. She stood with the closed umbrella, its curved handle draped over her arm. Mella stared out into the wide yard, her breath blowing out the drops of water falling in front of her mouth.

“This place is beautiful and natural and should feel like a home. The garden is overgrown, but that’s what makes it pretty, don’t you think?”

He didn’t tell her what he really thought.

“The grounds just need a little grooming, not a complete overhaul.” She turned to him, and Victor felt his breath catch. Damn, she was...

“Frustrating.”

She drew up to every inch of her five feet nothing. “What?”

“You can’t have it both wild and civilized, Ms. Davis. You have to choose. Having it both ways just doesn’t make sense, and it’s not possible. I’m telling you the best way to do this.”

“Well, I’m telling you it is possible. I’m trusting you to perform what’s apparently a miracle—” she lifted her eyebrows at him, mouth aggressively smiling, all teeth and little warmth “—and give Nala and the kids exactly what they want.”

“Right now, you’re the one saying what you want. Why, when your opinion, as you’ve just said, doesn’t matter in this equation?”

She was clenching her teeth so hard Victor thought they would crack. “You should assume what I’m telling you is exactly what Nala wants. Create something beautiful that won’t make the kids feel like they’re living in a showplace. It’s a home, not somewhere they’re made to feel like they don’t belong.”

Frustration bubbled up in his chest, but he tamped it down. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s start again, shall we?”

Her jaw relaxed, and her smile became more natural. The sight of it loosened a tightness he hadn’t known was in his chest. She grinned up at him, a small ray of sunshine glowing beneath the heavy gray skies.

“Oh, good.” Her smile widened.

He was so screwed.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_82cb6507-9e2e-5ea0-bca0-c5cf6a9b36e8)

Mella shouldn’t have touched him. But she thought if she put their flesh together, casually, as she’d done with any other man in the past, it would be nothing. That she would get past the foolish notion that touching Victor would be significant. But it had been much worse than she thought.

On the porch of the mansion, she looped her arm through his and felt shivers run through her body, tiny seismic events jolting through her and making her deeply regret the impulsive move. His skin on hers was exactly the shock to the system she had been expecting. And more. He smelled like something she wanted to put on her body. A favorite blanket, an old T-shirt, Christmas socks that felt perfect while she lay by the fire. Even now, after he’d driven off to his office or wherever he needed to be at one o’ clock on a Thursday afternoon, her entire side tingled from where she’d been pressed against him. The core of her felt like it had been flung about on a roller coaster. Stupid. She had been utterly stupid.

Mella sat in her car with the windows up, steam fogging up the interior as her thoughts ran completely away from her.

This is pointless, she thought. I need to get out of here.

With a shuddering sigh, she started the engine and roared her little car down the long driveway. The tires hissed through the rain, windshield wipers thudding back and forth across the glass.

There was work to do at the café, but she didn’t feel like dealing with any of it. Not with the awareness of Victor Raphael riding so close to the surface of her skin. Mella just drove. She didn’t realize where she was going until she pulled into Mary McLeod Bethune Park. The small Coconut Grove park lay between two roads, one open to vehicular traffic and the other closed to everyone but the long line of motorcycles doing the charity ride for pelican protection and conservation.

Her aunt Jessamyn, who didn’t give a damn about pelicans but used any excuse she could to travel with other bikers, was on the ride. Around one thirty, she and the other riders were supposed to take a break at the park to eat and stretch their legs before continuing north to Deerfield Beach. If Mella had thought about it, she would have ridden her own motorcycle to link up with her aunt, but the anticipation of meeting with Victor Raphael that morning had made basic thought processes impossible.

It was still raining, and her hair was already wet. The rain jacket she pulled from her car kept the rest of her mostly dry, though. Her boots squelched in the grass as she crossed the manicured green to the other side of the park and to the line of motorcycles. She took out her phone and called her aunt.

“Are you still at the park?”

Her aunt immediately answered in her gravelly voice. “Yeah. By the statue of the old girl. One of the shaded picnic benches.” In the background, Mella could hear other voices and the occasional grumble of a motorcycle.

Mella waded through the crowd of bikers, fifty at least, and easily found her aunt in the roundabout, her bike parked near the eight-foot bronze statue of Mary McLeod Bethune. Her aunt straddled her big purple Harley while she chatted up another biker, a man with a handlebar mustache and most of his muscled chest bare under an open leather vest.

Even in a crowd like this, her aunt stood out. Almost unnaturally beautiful, she’d gotten even more striking in her middle age. She had long ago traded her sleek pantsuits and blazers for jeans, biker boots and the occasional tuxedo when she was in the mood. Today, she wore her mostly salted hair in two big French braids with the ends curled like snails at her shoulders. The freckles on her sand-colored cheeks glistened under the steadily falling raindrops.

As Mella came closer, her aunt’s companion gave her a fist bump, then wandered off. Aunt Jess waved at Mella. “I didn’t expect to see you here, honey.”

“I didn’t expect me, either.” Mella made a face, irritated with herself now that she was officially running to her aunt as if someone had stolen her lunch money.

“What’s wrong, Michaela?” Her aunt’s forehead wrinkled in concern.

But even though she’d run halfway across the city to see the woman who had raised her, she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. It being whatever the hell Victor was doing to her.

“I’m not sure,” Mella finally said. “Maybe I’m just feeling restless.” She rubbed a hand over her face.

But Aunt Jess wasn’t buying her helpless act. “You’re a terrible liar, Michaela. But I’ll wait.” She got off her bike and pulled a minicooler from her saddlebag, then pointed Mella toward an empty picnic bench under a nearby banyan tree offering some protection from the light rain.

Aunt Jess unpacked two sandwiches, two bottles of water and a bag of potato chips from the cooler. “Eat. It’s lunchtime, and I doubt you’ve made the time to get something.”

“I was going to stop by Gillespie’s on the way back to the café.” But she took a sandwich anyway, one of her favorites her aunt made with turkey, rye bread and raw kale. The wasabi mayo burned sweetly as she chewed her first bite. “This is good.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her aunt chided, but she was smiling. She opened the other sandwich and nudged the bag of kettle chips closer to Mella’s hand.

When she was very young, Aunt Jessamyn had been one of Mella’s favorite adults to be around. Her aunt liked the same movies Mella did, cooked the best food and liked to do different things from the rest of her family, including her own parents. Although Aunt Jessamyn had a kid of her own, Shaun, she often acted like a child herself, laughed loud and long in public, impulsively took Mella and Shaun on trips to Disney World and learned to ride motorcycles just because. She loved doing things for the experience of them, and that was one of the things Mella had always enjoyed about her favorite aunt and her mother’s only sister.

The three aunts on her father’s side were boring. It just seemed natural that after Mella’s parents died when she was eight, Aunt Jessamyn was the one to take her in. She’d loved her parents and missed them every day, but she was glad she had Aunt Jess.