FOUR
ZANE LET HER WORK at the desk. He spread out on the opposite side of the room, where two couches faced a low table.
They worked with little interaction beyond the tip-tap of their keyboards. His preference was to work with his laptop on his legs. Sometimes his feet ended up on the table. He’d even been sitting on the floor for a while.
When she worked at home, she liked to spread out too. Usually on the floor or the bed. Building a new training course meant tying together a bunch of strands. Increasing intensity without scaring participants, making sure everything was covered, was a complicated process. One that required concentration.
“Lunch!” His exclamation startled her. Sitting on the far away couch, he stretched to flex his back. “Damn,” he said. “Shouldn’t have doubled my run this morning.”
She frowned, breathing out as her head dropped to the side. “Was that a humblebrag?”
He laughed. “Could’ve been.”
When he surged to his feet, she bowed back, an inhale catching in her throat. Even from twenty feet away that body was impressive.
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked.
Mmm… Loaded question given her current line of thinking.
Somewhat reluctantly, she dragged her mind from the gutter. “Work. I’m in the mood to work.”
“Someone very smart, much smarter than me, taught me that breaks are important. If we don’t take breaks, we lose perspective. We forget what’s important… So what’ll it be? Sushi?”
“Sushi?” she asked, perking up as her mind shifted gears.
Her interest put another smile on his face. He wasn’t shy about showing his feelings.
“Absolutely. We’ve been sitting in here all morning. Why don’t you go out and get some air? I’ll arrange lunch.”
“Maybe we should go back to the hotel. I don’t see a kitchen anywhere around here.”
And definitely no sushi, she’d have noticed that.
“Go back if you want, but I guarantee the servers have enough going on with Roman’s entourage.”
Good point and with Zane being staff, his colleagues wouldn’t appreciate serving him in the dining room. As she was a guest, it was probably against some health and safety rule to let her eat in the kitchen.
“Okay, here is good,” she said, slipping off her shoes and kicking them under the desk. “I’m going to breathe.”
The doors to the terrace had been open all morning, teasing her with refreshing sea air and the whisper of waves. Just after one p.m. was a good time to give into temptation. Striding out, she opened her arms wide, and her head fell back. But she didn’t slow down. Nope. How often did she have her lunchbreak in such a beautiful setting? The semi-circular terrace was surrounded by a broad waist-high wall. That was the obstacle holding her back from the beach.
The grass bank below was just a few feet wide and a clear path to the sand. On either side of her view, gray rocks extended into the water and trees hung low in the lush tropical forest surrounding them. It felt like the last place on Earth. The last paradise.
“You like the beach.”
His voice, low and deep, rumbled like the distant waves out there on the horizon. It washed over her in a cleansing tide.
“I like forever,” she said, curling her fingers around the far side of the terrace wall. “I like looking out there and imagining all that will be, all that could be… all that’s ever been.”
“That’s a lot of imagining.”
Spinning around, she caught the wall to jump up and sit on top of it. “These are the same waves people have looked out on for millennia. And these rocks we stand on? This land, it’s lush and fertile, borne of volcanic commotion rooted deep beneath our feet. It doesn’t blow your mind?”
He dropped down onto one of the outdoor sun loungers, extending his legs and tossing his arms over the back behind him.
“You blow my mind,” he said. “How do you switch from whatever you were doing in there to these broad existentials in less than two minutes?”
“It’s the air,” she said, opening her arms and leaning back. “Don’t you just feel cleaner here?” Sitting straight, curiosity got the better of her. “How long have you been here? You know there’s more to the world than this, right? It’s not all clean nature and sea air.”
“Unfortunately, I do,” he said. “I like seeing it through your eyes though… You’re so… open.”
“And you’re used to guarded people?”
“I’m used to people being less… impressed… Sincerity is a trait I value.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she asked.
“It pours from you. In the way you act, the words you say, your tone, your expressions. You’re so… bare.”
She laughed, making a point of looking down at herself. “And this isn’t even my most revealing outfit.”
“I can’t wait to see the others.”
They shared a smile.
“Do you work here every day?”
“Most days, yeah. What are you working on?”
“I’m putting together a training package,” she said. “I work for an HR consultancy company. On their training team. Companies hire us to go in and train their people on whatever. Some are standard packs, like if there is new software or hardware people need to learn to use. Those tend to come from whoever produced it. We go through them and customize the set as we have to, then we go in and deliver them.”
“Others aren’t standard?”
She smiled. “I do a lot of studying. A lot of online courses. We build our own packages, for confidence and development. We do things like sexual harassment seminars and go to various conventions and things as well… If your people need to learn it, we can teach them.”
“Putting the packages together is your job?”
“I build them and go out to deliver them too.”
“A jack of all trades.”
“Something like that. What is it you do?”
“Nothing as exciting as that,” he said. “How long have you been with them?”
“A couple of years,” she said. “I did in-house training for a multinational before that.”
His arms slithered down to the chaise at his sides. “You didn’t enjoy it?”
“Less latitude,” she said. “A lot more layers and bureaucracy to deal with. Plus, it was the same thing over and over. I prefer variety.”
“So you have your dream job? Great! Not something many people get. And it gives you time off to go places with your sister.”
“Our offices are being refurbished. There was a flooding issue. Working away was sort of ideal timing.”
“Can’t say it didn’t work out for me too,” he said. “Is it just you and your sister?”
“In the family?” she asked and nodded. “Yeah.”
“She’s younger than you?”
“Yes,” she said, picking up her legs to cross them in front of her. “You interviewing me for something?”
He laughed. “Just getting to know you. What about your parents?”
“They’re teachers. Met in college. She was a freshman, he was a junior. I was a surprise in her junior year. They got married just before I was born and had Alessia three years later… My grandparents helped out a lot.”
“I bet. What do they teach?”
“High school. My mom is an English teacher. Dad’s a history buff.”
His head bobbed. “Your grandparents still around?”
“My mom’s parents, yes. They live just a street over from my parents. My dad’s parents died when I was little… car wreck.”
His eyes drifted to the sea. “I’m sorry… I know what that’s like.”
“How do you know what that’s like?” she asked, sliding down from the wall when it was clear his attention was elsewhere. There was nothing out on the waves, she double checked, so it had to be something in his head. “Zane?”
Like he’d forgotten she was there, his focus jumped to hers. “Sorry, I was somewhere else.”
“Tell me,” she said, sinking down to sit on the edge of his lounger. “Where were you?”
“My mother died in a vehicular accident.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sensing it was still raw for him. “Recently?”
He smiled and breathed out a laugh. “No… A long time ago.”
Slipping a hand under his, she curled her fingers around his palm to take it to her lap. “You were close?”
He shrugged, fixated on their joined hands. “I was a kid. It blindsided me. Blindsided all of us… Didn’t appreciate what I had until it was gone.”
“We’re all guilty of that. Do you have siblings?”
“A brother,” he said. “Stepbrother.”
“Your father remarried. Do you get along?”
Bright amusement lit his face. “Rourke’s a law unto himself.”
“What about his mom?”
“Was she a good replacement for mine? Truth is we were sent off to boarding school. Most of our raising was done there.”
“By teachers?”
“Let’s go with that.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said. “My parents are still together. They can be pretty zany sometimes, but we had stability.”
Clearing his throat, he adjusted his angle. “Do you have a big family?”
“Not that we’re close to. You?”
“Rourke, cousins on my mom’s side.”
“That’s good. That you kept in contact with them.”
One side of his mouth tilted. Was there something more to those relationships? Watching him intently, drawn in, his eyes ascended to hers, his smile creeping higher. Yes, she was definitely missing… something.
“That mind of yours is working again,” he murmured, his voice a deeper purr than before.
She conceded a smile of her own. “You’re staring… at me.”
“I am,” he said without any hint of contrition.
In fact, he might actually be proud. Taking control of their joined hands, he guided hers up, laying it flat in the center of his torso. No colleague would do something so… intimate. Yet, as she watched his hand flatten over hers and felt its warmth, she admitted, only to herself, that she liked it.
Swallowing hard in hopes of calming the quickening of her heart, she took a slow, measured breath. “When will our sushi arrive?”
“Might be a while,” he said, sinking lower. “But don’t worry, we’ve got a lot of ground still to cover.”
Getting to know each other? It might be the longest lunch break she’d ever taken in her life, but they were in a tropical paradise—nothing was business as usual.