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Matteo had given his life over, these last five years, to service of king and country, and he had done so gladly. That had meantgiving up a lot of things. Vacations. Christmas at home with his family.
Relationships. He hadn’t had one of those since he and Anna had parted ways. He hadn’t had sex since then, either.
He hadn’t minded.
He’d thought.
“I guess we should do our backs, now, right?” She rolled over, her arm hitting his in the process, and even though he was freezing, it felt rather as if she were electrocuting him.
After rolling around in the snow, Cara, breathing hard and feeling like she’d run a marathon, followed Matteo to a small building. It was full of lounge chairs, and she collapsed gratefully on one next to him, her entire body tingling.
She felt fantastic. Spent and satiated and... actually, she felt like she’d just had sex. She looked over at him to find him watching her. “What?”
“Nothing.” He looked away rapidly.
“What’s happening in my brain right now?” she asked. “That hot-cold cycling releases some kind of happy chemical, doesn’t it?”
“I imagine it does.” He smiled up at the wooden ceiling. “It really is a kind of relaxation that comes from this and...” She watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. “Few other things.”
Oh god, was he thinking about sex, too?
Andwhohad given him those Rilke poems his father gambled away?
“I notice that your toenails are painted a different color than your fingernails.”
It took her a moment to adjust to the new topic. “Uh, yes.”
“Would it be more customary for them to match?”
She cast her mind back to her nail place at home. “I don’t think necessarily.” She extended both her arms and legs to examine her own mani-pedi. She had her usual dark-red on the fingers and a gunmetal gray on the toes. “What would be customary in my line of work is to have plain nails, or to paint them something boring and neutral.” She shook her head. “Blech.”
“So your nails are your little rebellion?”
“I suppose they are. Which is funny because I’ve worked hard to be taken as seriously as my male colleagues. You’d think I’d want to blend in.”
“I wouldn’t think that.”
She rolled over to face him. “You wouldn’t?”
He rolled over, too. Lying on their sides staring at each other, with the tingly sensations still very much present in her body, reinforced the whole post-coital vibe. “I would not.”
“I do blend in in other ways. We have to wear dark suits. Plain heels for women. Mine are too high, but no one says anything.”
“Is there actually a dress code?”
“Not a written one, but you learn pretty quickly. I was lucky to have one of the partners take an interest in me when I came on board as an intern—that was the mentorship I mentioned. When she hired me for real, after I got out of the army, she took me out to lunch and told me what to buy for a starter wardrobe.”
“You went from army uniforms to corporate ones.”
“I don’t mind it. On the one hand, yes, we look like corporate clone troopers. On the other, it can be nice to have a uniform ofsorts. It takes away one big avenue of stress. You don’t have to worry about not fitting in—at least not based on what you’re wearing.”
“Do you worry about fitting in?” he asked quizzically.
Damn it. She had said too much. “Doesn’t everyone, to some extent?” Though probably not him. Say what you wanted about Matteo, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who cared what other people thought of him. Maybe that was the born-rich part. Maybe that kind of confidence never went away.
“I find it curious that you say your nails don’t fit in, given the dress code you’ve described. They’re almost black. It sounds as though your company culture favors black.”
“If nails are painted, they’re supposed to be ballerina pink, some kind of beigey neutral, or done in a French manicure.”
