Chapter 23
ENZO
“Are you leaving?” Lucy asks as she pulls on her sweater.
I’ve only just tugged on my underwear and jeans.
She wants me to leave?
Right now, I’d like to stay forever. Hell, I’d buy some taxidermied birds and a couple of salt and pepper shakers to please her. Whatever it takes to bask in this feeling for a little while longer.
I haven’t felt this kind of passion for anything in a long time. Not for a woman, not for my life, definitely not for my job.
But, as ridiculously humbling as it is to admit, maybe it wasn’t as good for her. Having sex was one of her challenges for herself, a goal to be checked off.
The thought burns more than it should, given that’s exactly what I’d hoped for just last week—hot, meaningless sex with someone who wasn’t going to miss me when I left.
“How’d that feel for you?” I ask, my heart beating fast and hard as I pull on my shirt.
She laughs. “Do you want me to hold up a scorecard with a perfect ten on it? Why am I not surprised? Should I write an anonymous letter to Lady Lovewatch and tell her you’re a very good lover after all?”
I gather myself and give her the kind of answer she expects and probably wants: “Surely you can do better than very good, Lucia. There are millions of synonyms out there. I can think of at least a dozen for your pussy.”
She throws a pillow at me, and I catch it, grinning. It’s heart-shaped and covered in sequins.
“It was good,” she says, holding my gaze. “Fantastic. Fun. Hot. Delicious.” Then something earnest enters her gaze. “Thank you, Enzo.”
“You’re thanking me for sex?” I ask incredulously.
She laughs. “Yeah…no. I’m sure that happens to you all the time, but I was talking about last night. Thank you for taking care of me. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I did. You forgot how to work the door in the Porta Potty.”
“You mean the lock didn’t actually break?” she asks, aghast.
I grin. “I don’t know, and neither do you, apparently. Someone had to step in.”
I think of Hudson, standing there and laughing with her friends while she was trying to escape her plastic prison, and I clench my jaw. Nice guy and all, but nowhere near good enough for Lucy.
Which brings me to my next question…
“Lucy…I want to do this again.”
Okay, not actually a question. More a statement of irrefutable fact. I need to do this again. My brother was right about one thing: I’m having more fun with Lucy than I’ve had in years.
A wicked smile crosses her face. She reaches into a tote bag on the floor and pulls out a red scarf. My mother’s scarf, to be exact.
“You want to do what again, exactly?” she asks, advancing on me with the scarf.
I clear my throat. “Save you from every Porta Potty in coastal Maine.”
“How gallant of you.”
She steps closer and reaches up to wrap the scarf around my throat.
Her warm hands slide from the scarf to my neck, and they linger there, although her body remains several inches away.
Just a few minutes ago I was inside of her.
I want to be inside of her again, preferably sooner rather than later.
I’d like to spend the whole day inside of her.
“Are you going to strangle me?” I tease, holding her gaze as she plays with the ends of the scarf.
“What use would I have for you if you were dead?” she asks, her pupils dilated.
“Judging from the collection of taxidermied animals in the other room, you’d figure something out.”
“What?” She steps back, her forehead creasing.
“Okay, fine. You caught me. I poked around a little last night. You would have done the same in my shoes. I know you would have.”
“Yes, obviously I would have snooped, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, straight-faced, and I can tell she really doesn’t.
Thank God.
“Lucy, there’s a cupboard full of weird taxidermied animals in the living room.”
Her gaze narrows. “You’re messing with me. Again. Seriously, I thought we were beyond that.”
I take her hand and lead her into the other room, my fingers linking naturally with hers, and come to a stop in front of the cabinet of curiosities.
“They’re in there?” she asks, whispering even though we’re alone in here except for Bowie.
“You can do the honors,” I say, nodding toward it, and I drop her hand.
The last several months of my life have been so full of strange surprises that I half expect nothing will be in there. But she opens it tentatively, and there they are.
And the look on her face…
She turns to me. “Did you do this? Did you hide them all in there?”
I look at her deadpan. “You think I found half a dozen taxidermied animals last night, when everything was closed, and hid them in this cabinet while you were sleeping? I’m flattered you think so highly of my skills, but no. You really didn’t know about them?”
She grimaces at the chihuahua fox. “No. I mean, the woman who owns this place is a little eccentric, but I wouldn’t have expected this. I should have guessed there’d be more weird stuff. There must be fifty tins of sardines in the kitchen cabinet.”
“This isn’t your place,” I say, my pulse racing. Puzzle pieces start rearranging themselves in my brain.
“You thought these were my taxidermied animals, and you slept with me anyway?” she asks, laughing. When she sees the look on my face, she laughs harder, bending over, her hair everywhere.
God, she’s beautiful when she’s laughing at me.
“I was trying to be nonjudgmental,” I say with a smile. “I figured there was a risk I might end up in your cabinet of horrors, but it seemed like it was worth it.”
“I’m flattered,” she says, still laughing.
“You should be,” I say. “So are we squatting in a serial killer’s house?”
She’s shaking with laughter as she gives my arm a light punch. “I’m cat-sitting for one of our regulars.”
“Ah, so I don’t have to add catnapping to your list of potential crimes.”
“I won’t say I’m not tempted,” she says, her laughter finally dying down as she glances back toward the bedroom. “It’s a bit lonely at my place. I lived with Charlie when I first moved to Hideaway Harbor, but she moved in with Lars a month ago. Well, you probably know all about that.”
“Not really. I only met him a couple of times before he and Aria broke up.”
“Long enough to threaten to kill him.”
I smile at her. “I’d do anything for my sister. Would you like me to threaten to kill someone for you too? Turn me in their direction and set me loose. I have plenty of unprocessed anger to release.”
“I guess I do too,” she says, her expression becoming more serious. “I shouldn’t have unleashed it on you. Even if you can be insufferable.”
I reach up and run my fingers over her jaw, then cup my hand around her chin. “You can unleash your rage on me any time, Lucia. I can take it. Will you see me again?”
She pauses, her gaze unwavering. “Yes, but I meant what I said earlier. This can only be about sex.”
Such words have never bothered me until this very moment.
Maybe it’s that ego she keeps talking about, and I’d just like to believe she wants more from me.
Or maybe I have to concede Giovanni had a point after all.
I have feelings for this woman.
Still, this is what she’s offering, and I won’t say no. With my hand still cupped around her jaw, I lean in and kiss her hard.
I pull back, shifting my hand to cradle the side of her face. “Agreed. But while we’re doing this, you’re mine, Lucia. I don’t share. No sweet little dinner dates with Hudson or any men dressed in Santa suits.”
For a second, I think she’s going to bite me—or maybe bite my head off.
Instead, she nods. “The same goes for you. If Eileen tries to set you up with anyone, you have to say no.”
I snort, spearing my hand into her glorious curls. “I would have said no anyway.”
“And no hookups with tourists or anyone else,” she demands, scowling.
I make a sign over my chest. “Lobster Scout’s honor.”
“Is that really a thing here?” she asks, angling her head to study me, curiosity glinting in her eyes. “Someone else mentioned it to me.”
“Really a thing.” I grin, playing with one of her curls. “Everything in Hideaway Harbor has to be special and precious. No normal Boy Scouts for us.”
“Did you always feel this way?”
“About Hideaway Harbor?” I shrug. “It was a place I needed to escape for my life to begin.”
“And did it feel like your life began when you left?”
Her words wrench at something inside of me, carving into the bedrock of the stories I’ve told myself. The ones that have built me into the man I am.
Because, no, it still felt like something was missing. It has always felt like something was missing. First, my mother. Then, I felt like I could have my job but not my family, my family but not my freedom.
My hand drops from her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. That’s obviously not a frenemies-with-benefits question. But for a man who’s so devoted to his family, you’re surprisingly anxious to leave them.”
The knife drives in deep, cutting through my armor and finding my heart. I rub a hand over my chest. “You know how to hit a man where it hurts, no question about that.”
“I was curious, that’s all. I just…home was always with my mom. Always. And after she died, all I could think about was finding a new home. And when I visited Charlie here, everyone was so kind to me. So welcoming.”
I have to smile at that. “Was I welcoming?”
“There are exceptions to every rule,” she says with an answering smile.
“I guess I was wondering…what’s home for you?
Is it really in New York? Because I’ve been there a few times, and I mean, it’s great and everything, but it always smells like pee and hot garbage, and everyone looks like they’ve been sucking on lemons.
Hideaway Harbor smells like cinnamon sticks all the time, and everyone’s always smiling.
Maybe it’s not actually Hideaway Harbor you don’t like. ”
I shake my head slowly. “Who needs a therapist when they have a Lucia to analyze them?”
“You’ve become really fond of that nickname you’ve assigned to me.”