“What is it?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your tattoo,” he said. “The one on your wrist. What is it of—if you don’t mind telling me?”
How had he seen it? I was certain my sleeve kept it covered. Not that I particularly cared who saw it, but . . .
“The very first day you sat on your patio, reading my rules, your sleeve fell back and I saw it,” he said. “Jackson and I couldn’t make it out.”
“So you were both watching me?” I asked. I tried to sound indignant but I couldn’t sell it. If I’d had a tenant, a stranger, moving in, I’d watch them, too.
“We were just curious about you,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” I pursed my lips as if considering, which was silly, because of course I was going to show him. I loved this tattoo and shared it with whoever asked. After I waited the appropriate beat to show due consideration, I walked over to where he sat and held my left wrist out to him.
My sleeve immediately slipped down, covering it. I went to push it up but he beat me to it. He brushed aside my fingers, pushed up my sleeve, and gently cradled my wrist in his large callused hand. He ran his index finger over the simple line drawing. It felt as if the tip of his finger was leaving a line of fire in its wake. I could smell his sweat-dampened hair and feel the heat pouring off his body. He smelled faintly of sandalwood with an underlying note of vanilla. It made me want to take a bite out of him. I resisted.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Did you design it?”
“Yeah,” I said. My throat was hoarse, so I cleared it and focused on where he was touching me. This was a bad plan as I was finding it hard to breathe. I focused on the floor. “The big loop represents the mom and the smaller one inside of it is the child. I jazzed it up with some swirls and dots. My mom and I each got this tattoo when I turned eighteen so we’d match.”
He glanced at me with a quick smile. “Is she as free spirited as you?”
“She was,” I said. My gaze met his. This was the part I always hated. Telling someone my mother had passed away. People seldom handled it well. They either felt compelled to tell me about someone they lost to cancer, so more sadness to carry, or they told me how lucky she was to be in a better place. Lucky? They did not know my mom. Her idea of heaven was being with her family. There was nothing lucky about losing her so young for any of us. Period. “She died from cancer eight years ago.”
“That sucks.” His gaze held mine and I could see deep understanding in his long-lashed eyes. This was a man who knew loss.
I was about to open my mouth to agree when he glanced back down at my tattoo. He ran his thumb over it in a soothing gesture, lingering where my pulse beat. There was nothing sexual in the gesture. It was a dry, light touch, clearly meant to comfort and soothe, as if I were a child on the playground who needed a boo-boo tended, but it positively unraveled me. My insides dissolved into a hot puddle of holy shit with a dash of what the hell is this?
He let go of my hand, and it took every bit of self-discipline I’d accumulated in life up to this moment in time not to shove my wrist back at him and say, “Do it again.” Instead, I decided that breathing required a few more feet of distance between us. I casually walked, at least I hoped it didn’t look like I was running, a few paces away.
“You said life is short,” he reminded me. “Doesn’t being reckless make it shorter?”
I shrugged, pleased to note I was getting my equilibrium back. “There’s a difference between calculated risks and stupidity.”
“All right, I’ll play,” he said. “Would you say hosting a party, jumping into my hot tub, and making noise well past nine o’clock was a calculated risk or stupidity?”
“Calculated risk,” I replied. “One hundred percent.”
“How do you figure?” he asked. He looked mystified.
“Because I wanted to meet you. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to let such a blatant disregard for the rules go unchallenged, and now here I am, talking to you.”
He looked surprised and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a little impressed. “So you are brave then.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t, not really, but he didn’t need to know that. He took another long drink from the water bottle and wiped the sweat off his arms with a towel.
Don’t stare, Annabelle, don’t stare. I began to stroll around the room. There was an impressive array of equipment here. Racks of weights, all sorts of machines. Maybe my visions of a torture chamber hadn’t been that far off. I was a yoga girl myself. I liked the corpse pose, Savasana, best. I always caught a good power nap there.
“You are aware that I could evict you for last night?” he asked.
“You could,” I said. I kept my voice mild, never mind that my heart was pounding in my chest triple time. I decided to double down. “But you won’t.”
One perfect eyebrow shot high. He tipped his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard; well, that made two of us. It must be the aftereffects of the alcohol from last night. Definitely, no more whiskey sours ever again.
“I won’t?” he asked.
“Nope.” I shook my head.
“And why’s that?” he asked.
I paused and ran my hand over the rack of dumbbells. I wondered if I should just make room for myself among them as I’d clearly found my people. What was I even thinking in provoking Mr. Daire like this?
I turned around and flashed my most charming smile at him and said, “Because then you’ll never learn the cat’s name.”
He laughed a big hearty chuckle that about took me out at the knees. Then he grinned at me, and it stopped my heart right in mid-pump. It just stopped. I felt instantly dizzy and overly warm. I wasn’t positive but I thought I heard birds singing and the smell of freshly baked apple pie. I knew I should look away, but I had a feeling I’d only be able to see spots because looking at him was like staring at the sun.
“Which is another thing we have to discuss, Annabelle.”
Oh my, I did like the sound of my name coming out of his mouth. I forced myself to focus on the conversation and not grin at him like a simpleton.
“How so, Nick?” I asked. Yep, I was going for it. If we were on a first-name basis, so be it. True confession, I liked saying his name almost as much as I liked hearing him say mine. By the way his eyes flashed at me, he either really liked it, too, or he was offended all the way to his core.
“No pets,” he said. He looked quite serious now, and I knew the stakes for winning him over had never been higher. But he hadn’t corrected my use of his name. So that was a win.