Allie made ape noises and mimed beating her chest.
“No more gin for you.”
“I’ll be good. Tell me more.”
“At first I loved the challenge of her, but after a while she just exhausted me. Everything was a battle she had to win.”
“Oof. No fun. Then who?”
“After Margaret, Missy. To be continued...” He went back into the house, brought out the burgers and put them on the grill to sizzle, loving the way Allie looked sitting on the deck, all yellow and white against the gray weathered boards, like a daffodil blooming on rock.
She caught him staring and smiled. “Missy?”
“Missy, yes. She turned out to be the opposite of Margaret, at least on the surface. Sweet, charming, with a high-level job. I wondered sometimes how she could manage people or money effectively by being so obliging. Then I discovered she was screwing a colleague and wanted me just for my money. Since then, there’s been no one I’ve thought about seriously.”
Until now.
The thought blindsided him.
“God, Jonas.” Allie’s expression turned to sympathy and, for a flash before it was gone, tenderness. She cared about him. At least some. “It’s weird how we can be so blind to obvious destructive patterns when we start dating people.”
“No kidding.” He moved the burgers around on the grill for something to do while he got his thoughts back in order. Allie? He’d barely known her three days.
“It makes getting involved with someone sort of terrifying. My last boyfriend, Raymond, was a completely passive lump of a person.” She waved her hand in front of her face, apparently dismissing Raymond’s memory. “I was so thrilled that he adored me. I kept telling myself no one was perfect. I couldn’t have everything in one man. And then, finally, I realized, well, no, Allie, but you should have something in him.”
He felt that same tenderness he’d glimpsed in her eyes. He wanted to tell her she deserved everything, but didn’t want to bring to her attention that she was finally sharing personal details. As it would be too much too soon coming from him. “When people are first dating they put on a show of being who they want to be, or who they think they are, rather than who they really are. So you waste all this time investing emotions into what is essentially fake.”
Allie stiffened, made a noncommittal sound, picked up her drink and took another swallow.
Jonas flipped the burgers, wondering what he’d said. Nothing that applied to them. They weren’t dating, just fooling around. Nor did he get the impression Allie was putting on any kind of a show. He certainly wasn’t. So why had she abruptly put out the fire she’d brought to the conversation and to the evening?
He brought out the hamburger rolls and opened them, ready to warm them up. “Hungry, Allie?”
She came out of her trance and smiled. “You bet.”
The hamburgers were delicious: juicy and flavorful, slathered with the pesto and topped with flavorful summer tomato slices and melting fresh mozzarella. Allie’s eyes popped when she took her first bite and encountered the unexpected flavors, which pleased him way too much.
They chatted about the weather, their day, the area’s history, her favorite places in New York, and his in Boston. The door into her life and the emotions had been slammed firmly shut.
After they ate, they brought their plates to the kitchen and sat outside, lingering over the bottle’s last two glasses. Jonas didn’t know when he’d felt such a crazy mix of contentment, anxiety and raging lust.
“I have watermelon. Would you like some?”
“Love some.”
“Brandy?”
“Absolutely.” Her skin was rosy in the evening light. Strands had come loose from her hairstyle and curled around her face in the lake air, making her look sexily mussed.
He got up, reluctant to leave her, even for a few minutes, and went into the kitchen, half-hard just from looking at her and imagining all the things he wanted them to do. At the counter, he cut a few slices of watermelon and put them on plates, then poured two glasses of the brandy he’d brought out from the house, put it all on a tray and carried it back to—
She was leaning against the railing, which she’d covered with beach towels so her body would be invisible from the lake, her back to him, staring out toward the water. He’d seen her in the pose before.
But not like this.
Her hair was covered in strips of black sequin-covered cloth—half wig, half hat—with a distinctly Cleopatra shape. A brass cobra coiled around her upper arm. The gold material he’d glimpsed under her shirt wasn’t a camisole; it was a slender band covering her breasts. Below that, gold chains glittered around her slender waist. More black sequins stretched over her hips in a narrow band, extending into a tiny swatch of a skirt that barely covered her bottom. On her feet she wore black strappy sandals with medium-high heels. An Egyptian seductress.
She turned her head to reveal eyes lined with black, almond-shaped with a stripe extending from the outside corner almost to her hairline. Her profile caught the setting sun, the lake behind her, her body in beautiful silhouette. Exotic. Seductive.
He was no longer only half-hard.
Jonas put down the tray. “I’m not sure I’m still in the mood for watermelon.”
“No.”
“Cleopatra.” He came up behind her, covering the delicate fingers resting on the railing with his hand. His chest pressed against her mostly naked back. His pelvis found black sequins, pushed suggestively against them. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a great asp?”
A groan came out of her that made him work not to chuckle. He kissed her bare shoulders, one then the other, lightly bit her sweet-smelling skin, then soothed the bite with his mouth.
“Your servant is here, my queen,” he murmured. “What do you desire?”
“Here.” She tipped her head, leaving her long, graceful neck open for exploration. He happily complied, moving his hands to the narrow span of her waist, then following the chain around front to slip his fingertips over her stomach and under sequined elastic. Her skin was smooth, soft. He couldn’t get enough with his fingers or his mouth.
“Very nice.” His fingers returned to the small of her back; he stepped out of the way while they journeyed back under the sequins and around her firm bottom. Jonas closed his eyes, savoring her shape until his fingers grew impatient and pushed their way down and forward between her legs, where they encountered warm moisture...and cool air.