Chapter 4 #4
He shook his head. “God, I don’t need fancy.
I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in oh,” he looked up toward the sky.
“Maybe in at least a year and a half. My meals have been at crappy diners or MREs. Meals Ready to Eat, remember?” he added, noting her blank look.
“Absolute poison for anyone who likes food. They are tasteless, manufactured to last years and could probably survive a nuclear blast. Gum you up good, too.”
“Ack.” Sounded awful. “I’m doubly sorry that the food at the Consulate was so bad, then.”
He covered her hand with his. “I’m not. This meal more than makes up for that. I haven’t eaten like this in a long time. And I haven’t had such good company in a long time. Tonight’s a real treat.”
Parker looked at Nick. Really looked at him. And saw beyond the attractive face and tough, outsized body. Saw beyond the veneer of a wealthy, successful businessman who traveled the world.
She saw a lonely man, who had a tough job, and whose life held very few comforts. She was almost certain he had no one at home, if he even had a real home and not some corporate headquarters somewhere. He’d said he lived in London because it was a convenient time zone and that he was rarely there.
There didn’t seem to be a woman in his life. There was just something about him that said he wasn’t a cheater, a player. God knows she’d dated plenty of those and they had tells. Things they wouldn’t talk about. Skirting some subjects. If you knew what to look for, you could tell.
But Nick was what he appeared to be—a highly successful single businessman in a hard business that required constant travel to unsavory places.
And she slipped, a little. That wall she’d had around herself since she was a girl developed a crack, opening up. New feelings started slipping in, feelings she’d never had before, centering around Nick.
She liked this man. A lot.
She put her other hand over his. “Tomorrow night I’ll make you something you’ll like.”
His eyes caught hers. He said, voice low, “I already do.”
Parker could almost feel the world disappear beyond his broad shoulders. Fade into nothing. The other diners, the glittering city, Vesuvius, the Bay. Poof! Gone. There was only Nick.
Parker startled when the waiter appeared, holding a huge platter. “Signori. Ecco a voi.”
Nick nearly jumped when the waiter suddenly appeared.
Nick never jumped, never startled. Everything that could happen to him had already happened, except dying.
He was immune to surprises, or so he thought.
But there he was, drowning in the most beautiful pair of eyes he’d ever seen.
Endless pools of cobalt blue, completely lost in them when all of a sudden, this guy pops up and pulls him out of ParkerWorld and oh, man was it a wrench.
To his utter surprise, he resisted coming back into the world.
Nick was an ex-soldier, current security specialist, a warrior down to his bones.
He lived in the real world, not some imaginary place with rainbows and unicorns and chirping birds.
He never needed to be brought back into the world.
He lived in the real world, warts and all, for better or worse, all the time.
So having lost himself even for a moment in amazingly beautiful eyes was unheard of for him.
Even worse, he liked it there.
He liked being immersed in ParkerWorld, with a beautiful, fascinating woman. It was a hell of a lot better than his world, full of violence and greed and hatred.
This was serious stuff. He’d be worried that he was losing his edge, except he was really enjoying himself and for the moment didn’t care.
It had been a long, long time since he’d enjoyed himself.
So when the waiter showed up and brought him back into himself and into the real world, he just sat back and let Parker deal with it.
The waiter held out an enormous oval serving dish covered in a white crust. He laid it on a trolly and expertly broke the crust, revealing a huge fish, which he filleted, plating large chunks of white flaky fish. He spoke to Parker, with a question in his voice.
She smiled. “The waiter wants to know if he can dress the fish for you. Which means some olive oil and lemon.”
At that moment, with Parker smiling at him, the twinkling lights of the harbor in the distance, the stars coming out, the waiter could have poured shit covered in glitter over the fish and he’d have nodded yes, happily. Lemon and olive oil sounded great.
“Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen fish cooked in salt. Doesn’t it become salty?” Truth was, he didn’t care. He was having a real good time. The fuck did he care about salty fish?
The waiter was doing his best to keep up a professional demeanor, but he kept sneaking glances at Parker like he had when Parker had ordered their dinner.
Parker spoke briefly to the waiter, who took his time answering, never taking his eyes off her. Parker didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she did. Maybe she was used to men not taking their eyes off her and had learned long ago not to pay attention.
Nick found it hard to imagine a straight guy with all his hormones not staring at her.
Parker turned to Nick with a smile. “The fish won’t be salty, promise. The salt forms a crust that keeps the moisture in. You’ll like it. And the greens are local to here, called friarielli. They are bitter, but good. And the potatoes are roasted with rosemary and oregano.”
“Sounds good.”
Nick enjoyed everything, including the bitter greens which were surprisingly good. He wasn’t much for bitterness, life being bitter enough as it was. But these were tasty, cooked in a garlic sauce.
There was silence as they ate. This level of food deserved attention.
Parker’s appetite ran out before his did.
He was still going strong when she laid her fork across her plate and sat back.
It felt like forever since he’d had decent food.
And here he was eating food of this quality with an amazing dinner companion like Parker, surrounded by the beauty of Naples.
Life had been pretty harsh these past years and now life was trying to make it up to him at every level.
“Ahh. This is really good stuff.” He put down his fork and smiled at Parker. “So, when is your next book due?”
“Well.” She sighed and took a sip of her wine.
“It’s due next April. The problem is that my production company wants the documentary to come out at the same time as the book.
It’s hard to get the dates to mesh. The production company sort of speaks a different language from the publishing house.
” She smiled. “Sorry. Those are first world problems, I’m sure you face much worse in your job and don’t want to hear about mine. ”
“Yeah, I’ve faced worse, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in your problems. Actually, I find them fascinating. Probably because I couldn’t write a book if you put a gun to my head. It feels like magic.”
Parker turned her head, fixed those twin cobalt headlights on him. “That sounds like the way I feel about how you negotiate Neapolitan traffic. Like magic.”
Nick met her gaze. Held it. “I guess right now we’re both touched by magic.”
There was no way she could miss his meaning. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly.
Damn right. Something was happening here, and it had never happened to Nick before.
He’d been attracted before, plenty of times.
Maybe not with this degree of intensity, but he’d had his share of infatuations.
He liked women, a lot. Not just for sex, though that was always fun.
He liked their soft voices, and gracefulness and different take on things.
He lived in a man’s world of iron and steel, and softness was precious and rare.
But this—this was something else. This was all of that cranked to eleven.
Nick could almost see the lines of attraction in the air, like iron filings over a magnet.
Parker was fascinating and intelligent—certainly better educated than he was—and incredibly talented.
And that otherworldly beauty that was entirely natural.
An image sprang full blown in his head. Parker in the morning in bed, after a night of sex.
Already full lips rosy and swollen from his mouth.
He kept his eyes on her face, but he had excellent peripheral vision.
He could tell her breasts were small but full and absolutely perfect.
When they woke up, her nipples would still be cherry red because he couldn’t imagine not licking them, sucking on them for hours.
Between her legs, she’d be soft and wet and a little swollen because fuck, once he got in, he wasn’t getting out for a long, long time.
Shit, he’d given himself a boner. Not the hopeful half woodie he’d had all evening, but the real deal, hard as a club and almost painful.
He had to get rid of it, fast. First of all, because he was wearing lightweight trousers, and if she looked down, she could see it.
And secondly, because women had the spooky ability of catching things in the air, and he was sure she would soon realize he had a hard-on.
After which he could kiss this relationship goodbye.
What woman wanted a randy guy who couldn’t control himself and got wood at a restaurant, of all places?
Nick was thirty-eight years old, and this was the first time since freaking high school he couldn’t control his dick. And here he was, losing control of his dick with the most attractive woman he’d ever been out with and that he wanted to see again. And again and again and again.
This had to stop. Right fucking now.