Chapter Thirteen
Teresa
I’ve been here a week.
A full week.
Seven days on a private island that doesn’t officially exist, in a house so beautiful it’s almost offensive, with a man who insists he brought me here because he needs my help and then spends every session giving away as little as possible.
It is maddening.
For someone who wants this done as desperately as Vito does, and as quickly as he does, he is remarkably unwilling to open up the way he needs to.
Every morning, I pull and prod and circle and test.
Every morning, he gives me fragments. Useful fragments, sometimes. Interesting ones, too. But still fragments. A sentence here. A memory bit there.
Enough to prove there is something real under all this, but not enough to get my hands around it.
By the end of every session, I’m frustrated.
The heat leaves me frustrated too.
It was easier to romanticize tropical weather before I got trapped in it.
It’s a little cooler at night, a nice breeze sometimes, enough to make the evenings feel almost civilized. But the days are almost too much, and once the sun gets high, the island turns into one big sauna.
By midday, I find I have to stay inside the air-conditioned house unless I want to sweat through everything I own.
I found the laundry room on the second day, tucked down a hall off the kitchen, and since then I’ve been washing my own things over and over with a kind of grim determination I fully recognize as stubborn and pointless.
The other clothes he has for me are beautiful. Light. Expensive. Perfectly suited to this climate and this place. Sundresses, loose tops, soft shorts, sandals, bathing suits, all of it chosen in my size with a precision I would rather not examine too closely.
I ignore them. Or I try to.
Wearing my own clothes gives me a little bit of comfort.
Mentally.
Not physically.
Physically, it’s hot.
Still, in the early mornings before the sun is high in the sky, there is a little relief.
Like right now.
The sun is only beginning to rise, the sky just starting to pale and streak gold over the water, and the deck still holds some of the night’s coolness beneath my bare feet.
I’ve brought a mug of coffee outside and tucked myself into one of the cushioned chairs facing the beach. The air is warm but tolerable, touched with salt and faint moisture, and I don’t feel like I’m fighting the climate.
These early hours have become mine, in a way.
The one part of the day that almost feels like solitude.
I sit on the deck and watch the sunrise because there is something about the ritual of it that steadies me.
The water shifts from dark blue to silver to a brighter, impossible shade that feels almost surreal at this point in my life.
The palms move lightly in the breeze. The house is quiet behind me. No staff. No other guests. No one but him, somewhere else on the island, moving through his own routines.
After a week, I know some of them now.
I know when he wakes.
I know when he disappears to work out somewhere I haven’t seen yet.
I know that he likes to finish those workouts with a run on the beach.
And as if summoned by the thought, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye coming down the shoreline.
Vito.
Running.
With his shirt off.
Sweaty.
I go very still in the chair.
I should look away.
I don’t.
I should be used to this by now.
I’m not.
He’s still a good distance off, but even from here the effect is immediate and impossible to pretend otherwise.
He’s shirtless, skin damp, dark shorts hanging low on his hips, stride long and easy over the packed sand near the waterline. His body moves with that same infuriating contained force he carries everywhere else, only now there’s nothing covering it.
No Henley, no dress shirt, no jacket, nothing to soften the fact that he is built.
I know he works out somewhere on the island.
I really should ask where that is so I can get some workouts in too, because after a week in this house my muscles are starting to feel restless in a way I don’t like. But I’m not ready for that just yet. Not ready to ask for access to another part of his world.
Not ready to pretend normalcy in that particular direction.
I’m not quite ready to accept that there’s no way off this island, even when the rational part of me knows better.
So for now, I just watch him run.
The sun catches on the sweat across his chest and shoulders. His arms pump in steady rhythm. His breathing looks measured even from here, not ragged, not strained.
It is unfair, really, how good he looks doing it.
I know what comes next too.
Right on cue, he slows near the water, bends to strip off his shoes and socks, then walks straight into the surf and dives into the cool blue water.
A swim.
I am not going to pretend I’m not affected by it.
The man is ridiculously good-looking and in really good shape.
That is a simple fact, separate from whether I should be noticing it, separate from whether noticing it makes me deeply question my own judgment.
And I do question it.
Constantly.
Because how messed up is it that the one time I’ve gotten an up-close-and-personal feel of his body was when he was kidnapping me?
The memory flashes through me before I can stop it.
Not the fear first, this time, though that is there too.
The sheer physical reality of him. The crushing strength. The brutal ease of it. The arm across me. The body behind mine. The absolute, horrifying certainty that all my training and preparation had meant nothing in his hands.
I should not be thinking about that now while watching him cut through the water with those strong arms.
I definitely should not be noticing how precisely and cleanly he moves through it, how the muscles in his shoulders and back work beneath wet skin.
And yet my breathing has gone a little shallower.
There is a deep ache inside me I don’t want to name.
There has to be something seriously wrong with me that this is how my body reacts to my damn kidnapper.
And my patient too.
Well. No.
He isn’t really my patient. Not actually.
That eases a tiny sliver of the guilt.
Not enough to matter.
Not enough to make me feel any better about the fact that I am practically drooling by the time he comes back out of the water and starts toward the house.
Water runs down his body in rivulets, across the hard lines of his chest, down his stomach, disappearing into the waistband of his shorts. His hair is wet now, practically black.
His skin looks deeper-toned under the early sun. Every step sends a fine scatter of droplets from him onto the sand.
Why does he have to look that good?
Why couldn’t he have been hideous?
And not in such good shape?
That would have been so much more convenient.
I am not a petite woman. I’ve never been a delicate little thing. I’m tall and curvy; I have hips and an ass. My breasts are full. But somehow this man still managed to take me from my home without, presumably, breaking a sweat.
That should not be as attractive as it is.
And apparently, I am losing my damn mind.
As he gets closer, water drops still scattering around him, I cross my legs, trying to ease the growing pressure between them. Gripping my coffee mug, I lean forward slightly, hiding the fact that my nipples are currently screaming for attention under a thin cotton tank top.
Humiliating.
Absolutely humiliating.
He steps up onto the deck barefoot, shoes hanging from one hand, socks tucked into them, chest still damp. He sees me immediately.
His gaze flicks once over me and then back up.
“Morning, Doctor.”
His voice is rougher than usual, maybe from the run, maybe from disuse this early, and the sound of it does not help anything as it scrapes against my skin.
“Morning,” I say.
I am proud of how normal I sound.
He sets the shoes down near the door and grabs a towel from the cart that sits on the deck, dragging it over his hair, then down the back of his neck and across his shoulders.
The movement pulls my attention in ways that make me ache. His forearms. His hands. The easy strength in them. The casual physical competence of a man fully at home in his body.
I look out at the water instead.
Safer.
Not actually safe, obviously. But safer than staring.
“You’re up early,” he says.
“I like watching the sun rise.”
He nods once and uses the towel again, this time dragging it down over his chest. I hate that I notice that too. Hate that my eyes catch on the motion before I can stop them. Hate that my body seems determined to betray me in every possible way.
The silence stretches for a beat, but it isn’t an empty one. He’s looking at me in that way he does, too direct to be casual, not quite intrusive enough to call out without sounding rattled.
I say, “I assume we’re still doing this morning.”
“We are.”
“Inside today,” I say quickly, before he can suggest otherwise. “I’m not sweating through another notebook on the beach.”
His gaze drops briefly to my jeans, then back up.
“You’d be more comfortable in something lighter.”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate even more that he says it without mockery, just simple observation.
And when I do finally give in, because I know I will—it’s only April, with much hotter months coming our way—he may even give me a smirk.
An arrogant look that says ‘I told you so.’
I think, under different circumstances, I would very much enjoy a battle of wills with Vito Conti.
But he has other priorities at the moment and limited time to achieve them, so I don’t see him relishing in it.
“I’m aware.”
“You know the other clothes are there.”
“I’m also aware of that.”
That almost-smile flickers again, gone fast. “Still making a point.”
“Yes.”
“How’s that working for you?”
“Poorly,” I say, because there is no dignity in pretending otherwise while sitting on a deck at sunrise in denim on a tropical island.
That earns a quiet breath that might be amusement.
He leans one shoulder lightly against the post at the edge of the deck, towel hanging loose from one hand now, completely unbothered by his own near-nakedness. I try very hard not to look at the line of water still moving down his stomach.
I fail a little.
Then I drag my eyes back to his face.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
The knowledge sends heat straight into my cheeks, which is just what I needed on top of the actual heat.
“I want to talk about it today,” I say, because I need the conversation somewhere else immediately.
That gets his full attention.
The shift in him is instant. It’s not dramatic, but aware.
“It?”
I hold his gaze over the rim of my mug. “The catalyst. What event drove you to this.”
He says nothing.
I continue anyway. “You refuse to talk about it.”
His eyes narrow slightly.
“It sounds like you’re pushing.”
“Yes,” I say. “Because you want three years’ worth of work in three months. Under different circumstances, we would take more time to analyze why and work our way to it, but we can’t afford that now.”
The look he gives me at that is hard to read, but I know enough now to recognize resistance when in him.
He says, “So you’ll push me into talking about things even if I’m not ready?”
“This is not my timeline. It’s yours. You want to do this right, we get on one of those boats and head back to Jersey, you call my office, and make an appointment.”
Another beat of silence.
He studies me in a way that makes me feel both seen and appraised, which is not a combination I enjoy with him. Not because it’s inaccurate. Because I know how much I’m doing it right back.
I set the mug down on the table beside me and fold my hands in my lap before I do something stupid like fidget.
The breeze moves through again, lifting the ends of my hair.
“You brought me here because you wanted my expertise, specifically. You said that I’m the only one who can help you.”
“Yes,” he bites out.
“Then you have to let me do that. You have to let me do my job,” I say precisely. “If you wanted a pushover, you chose the wrong person.”
He stares at me for a beat, and I can feel him warring with himself. One side of him wants to argue, push back. The other side knows I’m right.
Finally he says, “Inside, then.”
“Inside,” I agree.
He pushes away from the post and picks up his shoes again.
As he turns toward the door, I let myself watch for one more second than I should. The broad line of his back. A stray drop of water tracing down over skin and muscle. The strong, easy movement of him even after a run and a swim in this heat.
Everything in me tightens in the most inconvenient way.
He glances back once, catching me looking just before I can stop.
“Try not to overthink before breakfast, Doctor,” he says.
The nerve of him.
I lift one eyebrow. “That would require a personality transplant.”
That gets the faintest shift in his expression again.
Then he goes inside, and I sit there in the sunrise with my coffee and my crossed legs and the humiliating awareness that this morning’s session is not the only difficult thing waiting for me.