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“I can’t help but feel like some toy you get to play with before discarding.”
His features harden. “A lot of women would be happy to be my toy.”
“Maybe they’d think differently if they knew they might only have a few days to live.”
He looks at me with sympathy. Not a good sign. “You’re sure your brother didn’t abscond with the painting?” he asks.
“I’m positive!”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“But what if he doesn’t know where the Morelli is? I can’t reach him. I can’t do anything while I’m trapped here.”
Rafe thinks for a minute. “I’ll check in with Alessandro and see if he’s been able to get ahold of your brother.”
That’s a sign, albeit a small glimmer, that Rafe isn’t completely indifferent to whether I live or die.
“Relax,” Rafe tells me as he rubs the sunblock into my arm.
“It’s kind of hard to relax when I don’t know if I’m going to be alive four days from now.”
“You didn’t have a hard time last night.”
I blush. “I was...distracted.”
He doesn’t say anything as he applies the sunblock to my shoulders and then to my back, giving me a half massage as he does so. I try not to think about how good his hands feel on me. I should have gone on more dates when I had the chance. Then maybe I wouldn’t be so captivated by Rafe’s touch. Maybe.
I’ve never come across a man like Rafe before. He exudes confidence, but not in a brash, loud, or in-your-face kind of way. He either has few emotions or keeps them well checked. It’s hard to imagine him flying off the handle or going into a jealous rage. I’ve met plenty of I-have-testosterone-hear-me-roar guys, the kind I expect most gangsters to be, but Rafe’s cool and quiet calm is no less unnerving.
When Rafe is done covering me with sunblock, he says he’s going to swim a few laps before he’ll have me practice more of my back float. I almost reply with “why do I need to get good at floating on my back if I’m not going to live past Monday?”
Yesterday, I was better able to keep thoughts like that at bay. But now that more time has passed and I still haven’t been able to reach my brother, I’m more worried. Macabre thoughts, like asking Rafe to make it a quick death, seep into my head. I feel like I’m going through the five stages of grief for my impending death. The first 24 to 36 hours, I was in partial denial, thinking that Peter will call me back at any moment and we’ll figure out what happened to the painting.
I tend not to be an angry person, so I haven’t felt the second stage as much. Now I’m dipping into stage three, bargaining. What can I offer Rafe? My body? He’s attracted to me, right? Even so, there are probably dozens of other women he can have, women far more beautiful and glamorous than me. The guy has everything money can buy, so I really don’t have anything that could possibly interest him.
I sigh as I watch his gorgeous body walking to the pool. He dives in and propels himself through the water with a dolphin kick, his arms thrown wide in the butterfly stroke. It’s pretty cool to watch. As Rafe swims back and forth, I go back to thinking about bargaining. Could I possibly seduce Rafe into keeping me? That’s better than death. It buys me and Peter time to figure something out.
James, the server from yesterday, approaches and asks if I would like anything to drink and if I have any special requests for lunch.
“Mr. Lee said you can order anything you want,” James says.
Feeling a touch of stage four, depression, I don’t have any ideas for lunch. “I’ll just have an iced tea,” I reply.
“You can’t have just iced tea for lunch,” Rafe says as pulls himself out of the pool.
I watch as the water drips down his chiseled pecs and abdomen.
“Not that hungry,” I reply. “I had a good amount for breakfast.”
“You should still eat.”
“Why?”
“You’re too thin.”
“What do you care? You want me to put more meat on my bones for the fishes to eat?”
The words tumble out of my mouth before I can think them through. That was the depression and anger talking, but it came out sounding petulant and childish.
