18. Dashi #2
He turned, slowly, as if following the curve of the pool, arms moving through the spring with practiced grace as if he was dancing again. In that same turn, he’d guided me through as he continued to sing under his breath: “This is where I want to be…here with you so close to me…”
I watched, helpless yet hypnotized, as he drifted closer—too close—and before I could stop it, his hand brushed my thigh.
We both jolted.
The singing stopped.
His head snapped around, and I saw the change in real time—the shift in his posture, the way his body tensed as his brain caught up to what his skin had already registered.
As his gaze landed on me, something flashed in the depths of his shock. Dark and unmistakable heat. Need.
Followed by horror.
“Oh, shit,” he choked out. “I didn’t—Marie?”
“I can’t get out!” My voice was high and strangled as I sank my shoulders into the water and, crossed my arms over my chest to keep my breasts from bobbing to the surface. “I’m sorry, but I’m, um, naked in here, and you’ve been blocking the way out.”
“Oh, Christ.” With a glance down, probably to ensure the part of him I’d just been ogling wasn’t visible, he backed up like he’d touched an electric fence, looking everywhere but at me.
“Jesus Christ . Fuck. Ah, well…I can’t just get out either.
Also, um, naked.” He scowled. “What are you even doing in here? This spring is private to my room.”
“I thought it was private to my room!” I waved one arm helplessly above the water. “Robbie told me so.”
His scowl deepened. Oh, I wanted to smooth his brow. “He told me the same thing.”
Slowly, the realization sank in for both of us.
We’d been set up.
Lucas dragged a wet hand down his face. “Unbelievable. First, the fucking bikini, and now this.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just that the best assistant I’ve ever had is actively trying to get himself fired.”
I opened my mouth to ask what my bikini had to do with Robbie’s employment status, but instead, a laugh bubbled from my throat. “He’s an idiot.”
We stared at each other across the rising steam, suspended in this ridiculous, intimate standoff. The absurdity might have been funny if I wasn’t acutely aware of every bare inch of my body beneath the water. Or the fact that I’d just felt his skin on mine.
A droplet slid down his jaw, catching on his throat, where every muscle was strained. He still wasn’t looking at me, but I couldn’t stop looking at him.
“For what it’s worth.” Lucas’s voice was carefully controlled as he kept his gaze firmly on the trees on the other side of the pool. “I can’t see anything.”
I allowed myself to look down. While the sight of the water lapping at that absurdly defined V of muscle at his hips was almost too much to take, it wasn’t anything obscene.
“I can’t see anything either,” I admitted.
His shoulders dropped. Just a little.
I moved out of the shadows and settled back against the stones, trying to process this surreal situation.
Maybe it didn’t have to be that weird that I was in a bath naked with my boss.
Bathing was a cultural thing in Japan, even if most of the onsen were split by gender.
There were co-ed bathhouses in France as well as in New York.
Probably here too. We could be adults about it, couldn’t we?
Lucas seemed to have come to the same conclusion.
“If you don’t mind…” He lowered himself carefully onto a bench on the opposite side of the pool. “I’d like to stay for a minute or two. I’ve had a day.”
The weariness in his voice undercut his attempt at levity. For a moment, I wanted to climb into his lap, wrap my arms around his neck, and kiss the fatigue off his face.
“What kind of day?” I wondered.
“The kind where I spent eight hours listening to executives explain why their quarterly projections were off by thirty percent.”
“What, exactly, does Lyons Corp do?” I found myself asking, a little embarrassed that I didn’t already know. I knew the Lyonses were wealthy beyond belief, but I had never really explored much about how they made money beyond knowing that Lucas was some sort of investment genius.
“Venture capitalism. A.k.a., the devil’s work.”
When I blinked, he sighed.
“I’m what you call a high-level ‘stakeholder.’ That’s corporate bullshit for the guy who gives a lot of money and expects a return on his investment.”
I nodded. “Like me.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what you did for me? You invested a lot of money into my education. A year in Paris with a stipend, tuition, and apartment couldn’t have been cheap.”
His gaze pinned me in place as surely as his hands on my shoulders.
“You are…” He worked that firm jaw a few times, like he was trying to process exactly what he meant.
When he looked away, it was like he’d had to tear himself in half to do it.
“I suppose you are an investment,” he relented. “Though I’ve never thought of you like that.”
Then how have you thought of me? I wanted to ask.
“So,” I said a little too loudly. “Then, the purpose of this trip is to…”
“Same as the rest. Check on my investments and consider others.” Lucas looked even more tired as he leaned back on his bench and tipped his head up to the stars.
“Which today, in addition to interminable meetings, also included a sub-par dinner while a politician’s wife told me about her charity work for three straight hours.
” He chuckled. “I’m sorry to say that I ate your dinner in about two minutes when I got in. Not exactly time to savor anything.”
“Was she like the blond woman from the state dinner?” Immediately, I felt foolish for asking.
“This one was a Japanese woman named Akiko.” Recognition crossed Lucas’s face. “You noticed the blond woman, did you?”
“It was hard not to.” I looked down at the water, embarrassed by my transparency. “You seemed to enjoy her company.” And I thought I was your date .
“You seemed to enjoy my brother.”
It shouldn’t have been an insult or an accusation. But it felt like both.
I looked up. Was Lucas jealous ?
He cleared his throat. “It’s expected. Charming the wives, making small talk, ensuring everyone feels important. Part of the job.”
The casual way he said it made something in my chest ease. The woman had meant nothing. “Oh.”
“Were you jealous?” The question was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it over the water.
I shook my head a little too hard. “Absolutely not.”
“Marie.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You’re a terrible liar, sweetheart.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “I…okay, fine. Maybe I was jealous. Just a little.”
His smile broadened, though it was barely visible in the dim light. “Good. So was I.”
Our mutual confessions out in the open, we lapsed into a more comfortable silence. The lines of stress around his eyes and the tension in his shoulders seemed to relax again.
I didn’t examine further why that seemed to give me peace as well.
“Tell me something more about yourself.”
I frowned. “Like what?”
“How about your family? You said there were six of you, but you’ve only really talked about Joni. Who are the others?”
I sighed, also noticing how the very mention of my siblings seemed to make me tense again too. “Oh, they’re all older than me and Joni. The oldest is Matthew?—”
“Isn’t he the one who ran off with Nina Gardner?”
I splashed the water. “You’re very well informed.”
“More like my stepmother is a gossip. And that was a scandal that half of New York was talking about for months. Leaving her husband for a cop?—”
“My brother was a defense attorney,” I corrected him, somewhat defensive myself. “Criminal justice lawyer now.”
“Either way, it was a damn ballsy move,” Lucas replied. “Not that I blame him. Calvin Gardner was basically gum on the bottom of my shoe. And there’s the other sister who married the duke, right?”
I nodded, now blushing. It was a little ridiculous how much notoriety my family had accumulated, three of us attracting partners well beyond our social stations.
Joni and Nathan weren’t engaged or married, but I had no doubt the announcement would come any time now, and when it did, we would see yet another round of headlines in the Post or some other horrible tabloid making veiled accusations about the “upwardly mobile” Zola family, or worse, us being gold diggers.
It’s what they would say about you , a small voice reminded me when I thought about being with Daniel. Or Lucas.
Who was it, really, that I was thinking of now?
“Well, they are very happy now,” I said.
“But there are two others, right?”
I nodded. “Kate’s the one who owns the men’s vintage shop in Riverdale, but she’s in LA right now, working as a stylist. And Lea…” I drifted off. What was there to say about Lea?
“What happened with her?”
I drooped. “Everything.”
He already knew a little, but this time, I told him the entire story.
How my sister had married young, the forbidden romance with the convict working in our grandfather’s auto shop.
How Mike had turned out to be a devoted husband and father of four who worked hard to support his family every day of his life, but hadn’t been able to escape the demons of his past.
“He died a few months ago,” I finished. “Murdered by a mob boss from our neighborhood. They kidnapped him and Joni and shot him just as they were making their escape.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I was still in Paris?—”
“Thank fucking God for that.”
I looked up. “You don’t mean that. You didn’t even know me then.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “I knew enough.”
I huffed. “I keep thinking I could have done something. Perhaps I could have kept Joni from getting wrapped up with those people to begin with. Helped more with Lea and kept Mike out of it too, somehow.”
“That sounds like survivor’s guilt.”
“Maybe it’s just that I love my sisters.”
“Is that your role in your family? To keep everyone else from making poor choices?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes? I don’t know. If it is, I haven’t been very good at it.”