CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tommaso
Bolting straight up in bed, I gasped. My body hot, my pulse hammering.
Portia, in her bed at the foot of mine, snorted and lifted her head to check on me.
The clock on my phone said it was five in the morning. I usually got up at six, meditated, did some yoga, then got on with my day with the animals.
My dream had been … good.
I could barely remember it at this point, but I remember it being good.
I remember it being … sexy.
That would explain the painful erection beneath my duvet, and the sheen of sweat across my naked torso.
Collapsing back into the pillow, I swirled my knuckles into my closed eye sockets and groaned, trying my best to remember my dream.
Flashes of blonde hair, hazel-green eyes, and soft hands were all I could recall.
Danica.
It had to be. Erin had been a brunette with brown eyes.
I raked my fingers through my hair. This woman had me under some kind of spell. She was all I could think about. I craved just seeing her, just being around her. When she left, I grieved. I mourned her absence. And when I knew she was coming back, I could barely contain my excitement.
I hadn’t felt like this about a woman for nearly thirty years.
It was a foreign sensation to me now. Alarming at first until I was able to identify what it was.
She told Sam they’d come back today.
I would see her again today.
Knowing that, meant I couldn’t get back to sleep.
I was too excited. Too nervous. So I slung my legs over the side and carted my naked ass to the bathroom.
But my cock was too thick to piss, so I went to stand in front of the big, floor-to-ceiling windows of my bedroom that looked out onto the ocean.
They slid all the way open and spilled out onto an enormous porch.
I often slept with them open during the summer, allowing the breeze off the ocean, and the rhythmic sounds of the lapping waves to soothe me.
Stretching, I stared out into the darkness.
Portia grunted, but didn’t get out of bed. The princess preferred to sleep in. She needed her beauty rest.
Gripping the top part of the trim for the sliding door, I stretched even more, tuning into all the aches and pains of my body. All the sore muscles, angry joints, and tight tendons.
For as long as I could remember, football had been my ultimate goal.
My destiny. My parents were humble textile merchants who spent every spare coin they had to help me pursue my dream.
And I did so for years, making them proud, and sending money home whenever I could.
They retired before they had to, handing the business over to my sister and her husband, who still ran it to this day.
I bought my parents a bigger house and made sure they wanted for nothing.
Then I met Erin; life was perfect. I played football. She pursued her hobbies and passions and looked after Guiseppe. Life was perfect.
Until it wasn’t.
Until the love of my life left us too soon.
I continued to play football for a few more years, playing the precarious juggling game of professional footballer and single dad, but then a brutal foul by a notoriously aggressive Croatian player during the World Cup took me out.
My Achilles ruptured. I heard the pop over the roar of the crowd, and the call of my teammates.
Then I went down and couldn’t get back up.
Surgery, rehab, a cast, and rest healed me, but I was never the same. Never able to get back to the performance level I had been at. So I retired.
I didn’t want to be in a wheelchair, unable to run, walk or go for a stroll around the property with my son. That was what was important to me. I made my money. Now my fortune was family and fulfilling Erin’s dream.
Sucking in a deep breath through my nose, I lifted up onto my tiptoes and did a few gentle calf stretches. My cock had finally gone down enough that I could go piss. I had another shower too, just to wake myself up, then headed out to the living room for meditation and yoga.
I could normally shut my mind off and focus on my breathing, but no matter how hard I tried not to think of Danica, the more I thought about her. The more vivid her face became on the back of my eyelids.
I ended up with a stiff cock again, and decided the only thing to do was take care of it.
It was six o’clock by the time I finished myself off and headed back to the kitchen for coffee. Portia was awake now, but seemed unhappy about it, and stretched as she waited in the kitchen for me to prepare her breakfast. Oatmeal with blueberries, banana, and spinach.
“There you go, my darling,” I said, setting it down on the floor for her.
She grunted a thank you and went to work emptying the dish.
I was just about to take my first sip of coffee for the day when a deafening crash from outside made me jump. Even Portia stopped eating and lifted her head.
Immediately, my mind went to Midnight. Did something happen to the foal? Did Raven reject him and try to kill him.
Panic ran frantic steps through me as I raced for the door, slid into my shoes, and ran across the gravel driveway from the house to the barn.
Portia was hot on my heels, grunting with every step.
I flung open the barn door and raced through it, drawing the attention of all the horses.
I reached Raven and Midnight’s stall, preparing myself for the worst before I peered over the side, only to find them snuggled up together on the ground.
Midnight was asleep and Raven must have just been as well.
Groggily, she lifted her dark head and glanced up at me.
Oh, thank god.
“You’re all good?” I asked her.
She blinked at me, then gently nuzzled Midnight.
Nodding, I checked on the rest of the horses. They were all fine too.
So what the hell was that noise? Leaving the barn, I headed to the smaller stable where I kept the donkeys, and before I even made it there, I knew that it had to be that ass, Pinata.
Sure enough, there he was, not in the fenced part of the field at all, but booking it across the open pasture toward the wooded area that I shared with the school principal that Danica and Cameron didn’t like.
That fucking donkey had kicked a hole in the side of the barn big enough to get out, then proceeded to hop the fence. And now he was on the run.
No wonder his previous three owners got rid of him. He was a menace.
Maybe I could find a dog food company or something that wanted cheap donkey meat.
It was still getting light out, and the shadows and mottled sky played with my eyesight. One minute I thought I could see the beast; the next minute he seemed to have vanished.
I raced after him, my pant legs getting soaked from the tall grass, my toes already squishing in my drenched socks through my loafers. Since of course, I’d slid into the wrong shoes, and these were far from waterproof.
Cursing under my breath as I sucked in lungfuls of chilly morning air, pushing it out to create clouds in front of me, I scanned the tree line in search of Pinata.
Nothing.
The trees were a mix of towering evergreens, various deciduous trees, and gnarly, twirling madronas. But the canopy was thick enough that it blocked out almost all light from reaching the inside, and I might as well have been looking for the stupid donkey in a black hole.
I growled and pressed on, ignoring my drenched feet and the way my jeans clung to my calves now that they were soaked.
“All animals were precious. All animals were precious,” I kept telling myself. Determined to harness Erin’s calmness and love of all Mother Nature’s creatures.
Something tells me even she would have considered sending Pinata to the dog food factory after this stunt.
I reached the trees and could see nothing but shadows. Shrubs and trunks, limbs and needles, but no donkey.
Standing still, I tuned into my surroundings, trying to hear him and his hoof steps, or maybe him eating something. But the birds were singing their morning song and drowned out any sign of a jackass.
I grumbled again, then spun around at a sound behind me, only to find Portia, making her chubby way through the grass that was taller than she was. She came to stand beside me and glanced up as if to ask, “Now what?”
“Come on,” I said in Italian, charging forward into the trees, the damp earth pungent and acidic at the back of my throat as I inhaled.
We slowly made our way through the woods, careful not to trip on all the roots and fallen sticks.
I didn’t really come over here much, but by the looks of things, the winter storms from last year and early this year had loosened a lot of large, dead branches, which now created a shadowy spiderweb of pointy sticks across my path.
I ducked under one big branch only to see a light in the distance flick on.
That must be the motion-sensor light at the principal’s house.
Did Pinata activate it?
I suggested sending him over there yesterday—as a joke. Did that donkey hear me and think I was being serious?
Now I was giving too much credit to an idiot.
I used the light to guide me, bushwacking and cringing when I knew I stepped on something wet and squishy. Probably a big slug. I hoped it was a big slug.
Fortunately, the largest predator we had on the island was a bald eagle. I didn’t have to worry too much about bears, wolves, or cougars. Just stupid donkeys.
Taking a literal spiderweb in the face and swatting at the air like a crazy person, I emerged on the other side of the trees and onto the driveway of one Dipshit Principal where, like a prisoner caught by the spotlight as he attempted to flee maximum security, Pinata stood on their front porch eating the flowers from Mrs. Dipshit Principal’s flower pot.
“Pinata,” I hissed, glancing up at the second-story window to see that it was open. I waved the beast toward me, but he just swished his tail in defiance and continued chewing.