Anxious about having said too much, I point left at a fork in the path to change the subject. “I have a good feeling about that way.”
“Onward, trailblazer.”
We reach the labyrinth’s center and stand before a statue of Eros. Klaus takes my hand, fingers dovetailing firmly with mine, and the weight of the moment settles around us. There’s a thin, far-off whine from an airplane, the reedy intermittent calls of insects and birds, laughter and chatter in Italian from a couple in the next row.
Klaus releases my hand and unslings the jacket from his shoulder, digging in an inside zipper pocket. “A small gift for you,” he says lightly, holding out a velvet box.
I suspect he’s prefaced it this way because the offering of little jewelry boxes typically has the context of a proposal, and he doesn’t want me to panic. I’m expecting something casual… charm bracelets are having a moment right now with driver wives and girlfriends, who sport charms from each grand prix location—a dragon from China, a kangaroo from Australia, that sort of thing.
I tip open the lid and my breath catches. Nestled in the velvet is a heart-shaped emerald as big as my pinky-nail… easily two full carats or more. The simple, unadorned beauty of the massive stone, suspended on a white gold box chain, is breathtaking.
I look up, eyes wide. “Klaus, this is”—I inspect it again, stunned—“not a ‘small gift.’”
“Since you mentioned the hand-me-downs of your childhood, I’ve been wanting to give you something lovely that will forever be yours alone.”
He gently takes the box from me and removes the pendant. The chain is long enough that he slips it over my head without having to undo the clasp. He positions the stone at the center of my chest,the backs of his knuckles skimming one breast, sending electric heat down my arms and legs.
I grab the placket of his shirt and pull him toward me. We pause a centimeter apart. A smile tilts one corner of my mouth at how earnest he looks. The unexpected power is heady, knowing this is a man who sails effortlessly through a world of prestige, speed, high-stakes business, and iron control… yet his dark eyes search mine with the trepidation of someone who’s walked to the open door of a skydiving plane and isn’t sure he can jump.
“And for months, I’ve been wanting to give youthis,” I whisper, rising on my toes to brush my lips against his.
We tease and slide, our mouths connecting in heartbeat-quick touches. One of his hands delves into the front of my blazer and spreads at the juncture of my shoulder and neck, and I can’t suppress a breathy moan.
“Talia,” he murmurs as we come together again and again. “Lioness… witch…conqueror.”
It’s a good thing we’re in public, or I’d knock him to the ground and jump on him with the same confidence he showed getting on that motorcycle. Gravity pulls at the core of me—my heart, my spine, and everything below that, aching for his touch. I fall into this man with an inevitability, like displaced water flooding an empty vessel tugged beneath the surface in a cascading surrender to physics.
He pulls back first, cradling my face and combing my bangs aside to kiss my forehead. An airy whimper of disappointment escapes me, and he laughs, encircling me with one arm and pocketing the empty velvet box.
“Hot-blooded woman,” he teases, setting us in motion down another gravel path. “You’ll get us in trouble.”
I snake an arm around his waist. Looking up at the cartoonishly perfect mounds of white cloud against the cerulean sky, I rest a hand over the pendant, wondering if I’m imagining that it’s unusually warm from having been trapped between us as we kissed.
“Thank you for this incredible necklace,” I tell him. “I don’t even want to imagine what it must have cost you.” It’s easily a five-figure stone. I know he can afford it, but the extravagance still shocks me, having been raised so frugally.
“Compared to the value of your friendship, it’s a trinket.”
We amble along leisurely on the gravel. A prickle of worry intrudes as something occurs to me: I’ve accepted a gift that probably cost what most people would spend on a car, so… has my journalistic loyalty been bought and insured?
And worse yet, is that exactly why he’s given it to me?
8
MONTRÉAL
ONE MONTH LATER
NATALIA
The Parc del Laberint d’Horta was one of the most romantic moments of my life, and since then, my brain has been warning my heart to be cautious. I mostly listen… but not so assiduously that Klaus and I haven’t been sneaking off on little dates during stolen moments of freedom from our respective career demands.
In Monaco, we went for a midnight picnic in a retro-looking speedboat Klaus owns, a Riva Aquarama. We sipped champagne and had “picnic” items that were insanely luxurious. Around the boat were blue glass jars filled with tangles of fairy lights. We curled up together under a silvery faux-fur blanket and watched the stars.
At one point that night, noticing I was wearing the emerald necklace, Klaus traced a fingertip from the hollow of my throat down my cleavage, then followed with his lips in a scorching path to the heart-shaped stone. He moved it aside with his tongue andkissed me beneath it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that turned on from such a simple act.
I held back from anything more intimate, as much as it tormented us both, alone out on the water, the warm Mediterranean breeze caressing the hints of skin we exposed in the few minutes of heated petting we couldn’t help falling into.
But I won’t forget what my aunt said. I need to be able to trust Klaus fully, and for him to trustme. I can’t let myself blunder into the same kind of unthinking, lust-fueled, immature relationship my reckless parents had, by all reports.
