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He stopped kissing her. “Are you finished with your calls?” he murmured against her lips.
She had other things to do, other people to speak to. Meetings to attend—many of them important. She needed to remain busy to keep her mind off Israel. Still, she found herself nodding. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Come sit outside by the pool with me.”
She hadn’t found the time to do that since she’d moved into the house, but she nodded for him again. “Yes.” Again. Had he sucked the wordnoright out of her vocabulary?
He swung her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing and she clung to him, face buried in his neck as he carried her through the house. She didn’t lift her head and open her eyes until she felt the sun on her skin. He sank into one of the chairs surrounding the pool, keeping her locked to him so that she could do nothing but sit there on his lap, staring out at the clear water of the rectangular-shaped pool.
“My mother’s a cancer survivor,” he spoke after a few minutes of companionable silence. “I was there from the very beginning and watching her go through that, me being unable to do anything to ease her suffering, was gut wrenching.” He rubbed his nose along her right shoulder. “She’s been through way more than anyone should as far as pain, and if I had my way, I’d stash her somewhere where the world could never touch her because this world doesn’t deserve her. She’s too good.”
The love in his voice tore through Seraphina as she listened. There was no smothering the jealousy that reared its ugly head. She wantedherson to sound like that when he spoke about her outside of her presence.
“My knee-jerk reaction to anyone coming into her life, younger or older, isno fucking way.” He chuckled. “But honestly, I would welcome anyone who enters her life with pure motives, you know? Someone who sees the woman she is and isn’t looking to dim her light or make her lower herself or shrink to fit their idea of who she should be.”
That should be what anyone would want for their parent. “Are you two close?” she asked quietly.
He nodded against her ear. “We are. It’s always been just the two of us. My father and I were never truly close. Hell, he didn’t claim me as his for the first few years of my life.”
“But obviously that worked out since you and your uncle, Daniel, are so close.” She didn’t know much about the Nieto clan, though she knew that Daniel and his late brother, Antonio, had been close.
“Oh, my uncle claimed me from the beginning. It was my father who couldn’t be bothered. Antonio and I did manage to build a relationship after a while, but it frayed when I hit my teen years.”
“Why? What happened then?”
Julián inhaled deeply then exhaled, and it took a while before he answered. “I started changing and Antonio wanted me to remain who I’d been before. He couldn’t reconcile who I was transforming into with the child he thought he knew. He didn’t understand and that scared him, which he expressed through anger and violence.”
There was something heavy in that explanation, a hidden meaning that Seraphina had to stop herself from searching out. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t because she already knew she would be having nothing to do with him after their month together was done.
Julián—Toro. Call him Toro, damn it!—cleared his throat. “Why did you go bald?”
She blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. “I’d just turned forty and wanted something different. I wanted to be in control of my appearance and my destiny.” She’d sat on the floor of her bathroom and shaved all her hair off minutes after she’d killed her husband in their bed. His blood hadn’t yet dried on her hands. She didn’t tell Toro that part, though.
“I like it,” he murmured, stroking a palm over her head. “It’s fucking badass. Fits you perfectly.”
She didn’t need his words, she already knew she was fucking stunning, but it still felt good to hear it from him. And his touch, so soft and reverent, sent a shiver down her spine.Shit.She cast around desperately for a distraction. “Uh, so tell me, Julián. Are you content working for your uncle?”
“I am,” he answered, tone steady. “My uncle trusts me, he believes in me. And I actually like what I do. I’m good where I’m at.” His hold on her tightened just the tiniest bit.
“You’re young, though,” she insisted. “Don’t you want children, marriage? All the things people your age crave?”
He snorted. “I might be thirty-five, but I am notpeople my age, Sera. I don’t give a fuck about children. I mean, they’re okay, I guess.” He shrugged. “But they’ve never been part of my plans.”
She chuckled. “That must infuriate your mother.” Wasn’t that what most mothers wanted, grandchildren?
“Nah, she gets where I’m coming from and she’s cool with it.”
Seemed hard to believe, but she let it go. Enough deep conversations. They existed in comfortable silence until he spoke again.
“Let’s get into the pool.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, gaze narrowed. “Say what?”
He grinned. “You heard me, woman.”
“I haven’t been in the pool at all. Hell, this is my first time sitting out here since I bought the place.”
“Oh, we’re definitely getting into the pool then.” The grin on his face got wider, expression turning mischievous as he stood and stared down at her. “Strip.”
