“Can I trust my partner?”
“Yes. You can trust me to take care of you in bed.”
“And you can trust me to take care of you out of it.” She turned and looked out over the sea. “All right, Professor. I’ll think about it. I don’t know about this whole go-with-the-flow thing, but I still think we’ll both be more focused if we get this out of the way.”
She was making excuses, rationalizing something that wasn’t rational. But she needed that wall between them.
For now. “I’ll wait for you tonight. I’ll wait for you all the nights we’re here. But I’ll make it clear to Eddie that you’re working.”
“I should have called you,” she said quietly.
He wanted to touch her, but she wasn’t ready. “I wish you had.”
She looked back at him, her lips quirking up. “We could have already thrown down, and this wouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
He sighed and leaned on the railing, the smell of the sea surrounding them. “You’re a brat.”
She leaned against him. “Yeah, probably.”
When he put an arm around her, she didn’t protest, and he was perfectly satisfied to stay that way the rest of the trip.
Chapter Five
Tessa didn’t mind the heat of the day as she walked alongside David. It was way easier to deal with a little sweat than the heat that had flashed through her the minute she’d realized David Hawthorne was kind of a freak.
What if it’s not just sex, baby? What if it’s something more?
Her whole body had gone gooey when he’d leaned in and whispered those words in her ear.
She was not the girl who went gooey, damn it. She wasn’t a girl at all. She was a grown-ass woman who didn’t melt at the thought of having a man’s hands on her.
She wasn’t the woman who sighed and rested against him and let the waves rock them as they approached the ridiculously romantic island she hadn’t expected to visit today. Nor had she thought she would be walking down a dirt road toward a magnificent house in the middle of the jungle. She stopped as she got her first glance at the big house they would be staying at. “Wow.”
David stopped beside her, and she could practically feel his satisfaction at her awe. “Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. Montez designed it himself. He wanted it to seem like the whole place had risen from the jungle. Like a wave coming off it.”
It was a glorious structure made of wood and glass intertwined with vines and trees, as though the jungle was trying to reclaim its space. Or the two had found a way to live in harmony. “It’s beautiful.”
“He spent years making this place shine.” David started walking again, his big body moving with grace. “The last ten years of his life he never left here. Eddie had to bring out doctors when they realized Ricardo had cancer. Some people think Ricardo could have lived longer if he’d been willing to get treatment on the mainland, but he had no interest in leaving. He said this was the place where he’d truly learned to live, and this would be the place where he died.”
There was something lovely about that, about being able to make that choice. She moved back to his side. The bus ride had been perfectly pleasant. She’d imagined some broken-down vehicle no one with a brain would consider safe, but it had been a lovely, comfortable if older bus. The few people on it had been chatty and more than willing to talk to the professor when he introduced himself. He’d proven he could switch from Latin American Spanish to Castilian without breaking a sweat. The Spanish they spoke in Argentina was a bit more formal than what they spoke across Latin America, but David eased into it with a flair that her mother would approve of.
He was ridiculously charming. He’d sat with an older woman for a long time listening to her stories about working in this building for years. She’d gone on and on about cleaning products and how hard it was to keep the place sparkling when the owner refused to shut the windows. She’d listened in and it had been boring, but David had made that old woman feel comfortable, and he’d thanked her profusely for speaking with him.
He hadn’t flinched when a massive, kind of stinky dog had bounded onto the bus and walked right up to him as though that dog knew who the sucker was. He’d simply found some beef jerky in his backpack and petted the old thing while its owner had settled his luggage.
Then he’d talked to that guy for what felt like forever.
They’d loved him. When the bus had reached the town they were stopping at, everyone who was going on down the line shook David’s hand and wished him well. Some promised to talk to him further if he needed more information. They were all excited about his project.
He wasn’t the quiet guy who stood in the background. Not when it came to this. He was the shiny center of the universe, the benevolent scholar who made everyone feel important.
When had she learned to cling to the shadows? To hang in the background and try to go unnoticed?
Maybe there wasn’t one thing or moment that had taught her. Maybe it was simply part of who she was, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that, but being around David was a nice contrast to her normal day.
His fascination with the world around him was infectious.
How would that translate to sex?
“The whole place is powered by solar and hydro.” David had gone into teaching mode. “He was one of the first adopters of green energy.”
It should be obnoxious, but she found it oddly soothing. “Didn’t he make his money off something to do with solar?”
A brilliant smile lit his face. “Yeah. He invented some of the components that they still use on solar panels today.”
Yep, there was that gooey feeling again. She forced herself to look back at the house or she might stare into his dreamy eyes and turn into a drooling idiot. “How did he do it? I mean, if this place wasn’t inhabited before, how did he build all this stuff?”
“It wasn’t completely uninhabited. The town on the east coast was here. It was a fishing village at the time. It’s bigger and more modern now. Montez brought workers out here. He paid them, and when they were done, he offered them all the materials they would need for homes of their own and leased land to them at very little cost, locking the rent in for a hundred years. He did the same with businesses.”
“So this whole place runs on his money?” She wasn’t sure she understood how it worked.
“There’s a fund that’s managed by Eddie’s company. The interest alone on the money Montez left for the island is incredible. But they do have some tourism on the island, and the scientific projects bring in cash. The people who live here aren’t ever going to be wildly wealthy, but they also don’t have debt, and they get to live here,” David explained. “On this small island they’ve got waterfalls and great surfing and fishing. They’ve got this glorious wilderness around them, and they’re taught from a young age to value it. It’s a slice of paradise.”
“I’m afraid I would miss high-speed internet.” She was more of a city girl these days.
“Oh, I would, too. I mean, look, I’m fascinated by this place, but I’m not longing to move here,” he admitted. “I would definitely miss being able to get anything I wanted delivered in a couple of hours. But it’s cool to get a glimpse of another world. That must be the butler.”