He raises his hand to shield himself from the splashes, laughing. “Arse! That’s a new one. I have been called an ass before, never an arse. I am honored.”
“You shouldn’t be!” I splash him again. “I could have drowned.”
“I would have rescued you.”
“I don’t need rescuing,” I tell him, the words coming out harsher than I meant. I swallow. “I’m going to get you back for this.”
His right eyebrow raises. How does he do that? “Hmmm,” he muses. “You are a murder mystery writer, perhaps I should be worried.”
“Aye, you should be. Lock your door when you go to sleep tonight.”
I turn around and swim for the shallow end until I feel the bottom beneath my feet, then twist so I’m facing him.
He stays where he is, treading water, and damn it, I wish he didn’t look so damn sexy right now. “I will lock my door, but not because of you. We have guests tonight.”
I stare. This is the first I’m hearing of this.
“My sisters,” he goes on. “I just talked to them this morning. Giada and Veronica, they live in Rome. They’re driving up today to see Maria. All three will come over here for dinner when Maria brings Vanni back. They’ll be staying overnight, but as you can see, there is plenty of room.”
He must read the anxious look on my face because he adds, “Don’t worry, you’ll like them. They are very nice. I mean, they will be nice to you. Not to me. See, I am the youngest, the baby, and they never let me forget that.”
I smile at the idea of Claudio being bossed around by three older sisters.
“Ah, see,” he says, splashing water toward me. “I told you you’d like them. I have no doubt the four of you will gang up on me. Even Vanni won’t come to my side.”
“I’m sure you can handle yourself just fine,” I tell him.
He starts swimming past me for the stairs and pulls himself up. “Sure, but that is a given,” he says. He picks up a towel and starts toweling himself off, patting it over his thick, muscular thighs, his rippled abs, his sculpted shoulders.
And I do the pervy thing and watch him do it.
Fuck it.
If he’s going to look like that, then my leering gaze is what he’s going to get. It’s only when my eyes start focusing on the thin quality of his Speedo and the flattering outline of his dick, that I realize it might be a bit much.
He stands at the edge of the pool and gazes down at me through heavy lids. “Do you still like what you see?” he asks me. There’s a husky quality to his voice, all playfulness fading away.
This time he means it.
I just stare up at him for a moment.
I’m sure I’m saying it all with my eyes.
Then I dive under the water and swim nearly the whole length of the pool holding my breath.
When I pop back up, he’s gone.
The day passes by slowly. After the swim, and breakfast, Claudio locked himself in the studio, the door closed. I took that as a sign to leave him alone and try to get my own head on straight. So I took my laptop to the study, wanting zero distractions. Writing outside is lovely, but too many times I find my attention being stolen by the birds or the smell of flowers and that pull to just wander through the rose garden, marveling at things.
Today I really wanted to put in the work. And though it was hard at first to push Claudio out of my mind, I did. I tackled the scenes with my heroine, made her face her mother’s death, and cried my eyes out. It was hard, and my soul felt like it was bled and smeared on the computer screen, but in the end I felt like a weight had lifted. It was cathartic, and more than that, it gave me confidence. If I could write that difficult scene, then surely I could tackle the rest.
Lunch was quick, and Claudio was both jovial and serious, his moods flitting between both. We had minestrone soup and crusty bread with olive oil, nothing too fancy, but satisfying all the same. Then we both went our separate ways for a few hours until I heard a bunch of shouting reverberating through the house, and I knew his sisters and Vanni had arrived.