Smiling when his knee hit the bed, she held out her arms for him without opening her eyes. His name escaped on her next breath. Then he was lost in her, with no desire to find his way back.
Chapter Ten
Lizzie watched striped fish dart in and out of coral. She couldn’t believe she was diving. They’d gone on a snorkeling cruise earlier in the week and Lizzie had loved it so much, she agreed to try diving. Nic had been right. It was amazing.
“Try it once,” he’d said. “If you don’t like it, we won’t go.”
He knew one of the local dive instructors. After spending a day giving her a crash course, Reston took them on a short dive and Lizzie fell in love. Swimming along the protected coral reefs was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. There were so many colors. So much life. All of it a living art. Awed by the beauty and peace surrounding her, her mind was quiet and she experienced real freedom for the first time.
The instructor swam up and tapped his watch and Lizzie nodded. It was time to go. Reluctantly, she swam toward the sunlight and broke the surface of the water at the same time Nic did. They climbed back into the boat and started removing their gear.
“See, mermaid,” Nic teased.
“That was amazing.” Happiness radiated from her like a small sun. “Thank you for taking me, Nic. I would have never done this without you.”
He nodded and stripped back down to his swimming shorts. The ride back to shore was quiet. They sat on the edge of the boat, his arm around her shoulders as they watched land grow larger and larger. “I have something special planned for dinner,” he told her, leaning to press a kiss to her temple.
She hadn’t expected him to be so affectionate, but if they were near each other he was touching her. A casual arm around her shoulders, his fingers laced with hers, or even their feet touching under a table if they were eating. He always maintained contact. The barrier between Nic and the rest of the world didn’t include her.
Her plan to get over him had failed miserably.
There would be no getting over Nic.
“Special?”
“Very exclusive,” he promised.
“We’d better go change.” She glanced down at her worn khaki shorts and the tacky bright lime green tourist T-shirt she’d knotted at her waist.
“No, they’ll let us in.” He grinned at her, his sunglasses hiding what he was thinking.
She knew he was having fun. He was wearing a matching T-shirt in the same electric lime green but the silly T-shirt worked on him. He raised it from tacky tourist to island cool.
Lizzie laughed when they pulled up at a shabby building desperately in need of a paint job. Bikes, motorcycles, cars and trucks were crammed into a tiny parking lot and a line of people waiting to get in. The sign over the building said Mickey’s in fading red letters.
“Popular spot.” Lizzie grinned.
“Mickey was a professional kite boarder. He opened this place to have something to do when the wind wasn’t good.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m serious, but the word got out about his fish tacos and he had to expand and hire staff so he could stay open.”
“Mr. Maretti.” A guy in striped board shorts and no shirt waved at them from the front of the line.
“That’s us.” Nic grinned his “I told you so” at her.
“You aren’t going to clear out the rest of the restaurant too, are you?”
“Are you kidding? There would be a riot.”
Nic leaned back in his chair, his arm resting on the railing next to their table on the back porch. He watched Lizzie chew the last bite of her fourth fish taco. She was licking her fingers and Nic was having a hard time not grabbing her hands and pulling her across the table so he could lick them for her.
She knew it too, because she was taking her time, watching him with a mischievous smile that amused and tortured him at the same time.
He’d thought she was lovely at the wedding. She’d been drop-dead sexy in Miami. She’d been a sensual dream come true in the turquoise dress she’d worn on their first official date. Now, sitting across the red-checked vinyl tablecloth, her skin glowing with a warm honey tan, and her hair streaked lighter by the sun and blown into loose waves by the ocean air, she was perfection. Right down to the light freckles the sun had scattered across her nose.
Nic had no idea how he was going to let her go. He wanted to wrap her in a net, put her on his boat and sail out to sea.
“Did you save room for dessert?” The chirpy server interrupted Lizzie’s playful seduction.
“No,” they said in unison.
The server shrugged and left the check on the table.
“Last day tomorrow,” Nic said. “What did you want to do?”
“Take the boat out,” she suggested.
“Take the boat out,” he repeated, leaning across the table and catching her hands in his. “And keep going. How does that sound?”
She grinned, not taking him seriously for a second. “Sounds perfect. Except for the meeting in Hong Kong you can’t reschedule again.”
He sighed, sorry once again he’d answered the call from Pam a few days ago. “I’ll be gone a week. When I get back…”
A huge slice of coconut cream pie hit the middle of the vinyl-covered table. “What’s this bullshit I hear about no dessert?”
Lizzie watched a tall scruffy guy grab their ticket despite Nic’s protest. “Maretti, your cash is no good here.” He stuck out his hand to Lizzie and grinned. “I’m Mickey.”
“I’m Lizzie,” she said, shaking his hand momentarily dazzled by his million-watt smile.
He was wearing a faded T-shirt with the Mickey’s logo, board shorts, no shoes, a scraggly blond beard and a haircut so short it must be growing out from a recent shave.
“You’re adorable,” Mickey corrected, then grabbed a chair and sat down with them. Lizzie met Nic’s warning glance across the table and almost laughed out loud. Was he jealous? “Your taste is improving, Maretti.”
“I hear you’ve been late on your payments,” Nic shot back. He sounded serious but she knew better. Mickey did too. He tipped his head back and laughed.
“I paid you off years ago.” He turned to Lizzie. “I had a shack and was doing fine. This guy comes along and tells me I should expand. So I think maybe a food truck and a couple of picnic tables but no, he mentions me to some food critic and the next thing I know some food network big shots are down here challenging me to cook-offs, eating my food and telling the world. Now I have to work seven days a week and had to buy this building and I have people lining up every day. I was retired until Nic Maretti ruined it.”
Lizzie laughed, something softening inside her at Nic’s discomfort with Mickey’s obvious gratitude.
“He paid me back with T-shirts sales alone,” Nic explained.
Mickey grinned at Lizzie. “He’s a good guy but he doesn’t like for anyone to know it.”
“You could have gotten a small business loan,” Nic reminded him.
“Yes, but the paperwork.” Mickey shivered in disgust. “You know how many times they make you sign your name? Reston said you’ve been diving a couple of times.”
“Yeah, he came out and gave Lizzie a class.”
“Yeah.” Mickey winked at her. “He mentioned that too. It’s all over the island you brought a girl with you this time. Lots of excitement in the air. Don’t forget I cater too.”
Lizzie almost spit her water across the table. “I’m sorry.” She grabbed a napkin and tried not to cough.
“I like her,” Mickey announced. “Try the pie, Lizzie. I make it myself.”
“He doesn’t make it himself,” Nic assured her. “Reston doing okay? He avoided all my questions. Said everything was all good.”
“Yeah, a group of Asian businessmen who decided they needed diving lessons and stayed an extra week to explore more reefs kept him pretty busy a few months back. I think they’re back on track. Amanda’s in her third trimester.” He
turned to Lizzie. “Amanda’s my sister.”
“I met her,” Lizzie said, remembering the girl in the office who was ready to give birth any day. “She said they’re having a boy.”
Mickey nodded. “They’ve been trying for a while to have kids. Spent their life savings on IVF, almost lost their house to it. If a certain convention hadn’t come through town, I’m not sure what they would’ve done. Make him eat some pie, Lizzie. He loves coconut.”
Mickey stood and shook Nic’s hand again. “Let me know next time you’re headed this way. Found a new fishing spot we need to check out.”
“Will do,” Nic assured him.
Lizzie watched Mickey walk away, shaking hands and visiting other tables. “You loaned him the money for this place?” She tried a bite of the pie and nearly died of pleasure.
“More like forced him to take it,” Nic admitted. “He started a food truck business when he blew out his knee in New Zealand a few years ago.”
“This place is popular.” Lizzie glanced around again. All the tables were full. “You loaned Jen money to start the bakery too, didn’t you?”
“We made the loan through the investment company I have with your brother. The business plan was solid.”
“Food service is high risk. You like to gamble, don’t you?” Lizzie teased him. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t?”
Nic laughed. “I always win, Lizzie. You should know that by now.”
She sighed, giving in and eating more pie. “I’m not sure I could figure you out if I spent the rest of my life trying.”
His smile was unreadable but the heat in his eyes was pretty clear.
“You should try some of this,” she insisted, pushing the plate toward him. “So you own resorts all over the world and you’re a venture capitalist?” she asked carefully, aware he was uncomfortable with her questions. She’d learned this week that Nic didn’t like to talk about himself.
“I like to invest in small businesses,” he admitted. “Sometimes I loan the money.”
“Or sometimes you recommend their businesses to visiting Asian businessmen? Those businessmen wouldn’t happen to be from Hong Kong?”
Nic’s smile was almost embarrassed. “Hong Kong is a big place.”
“I’ll bet it is.” Lizzie let him off the hook, a new kind of warmth glowing inside her. She finally cut a piece of pie and held up her fork for him. “You’re one of the good guys, aren’t you?”
“I make money on all this, Lizzie. I’m not a charity organization.” He met her halfway across the table and let her feed him the pie. By the time she pulled the fork out of his mouth, she could barely breathe. He smiled as he slowly licked his lips. “And I’m not that good.”
She opened her mouth and found she didn’t have enough air in her lungs to respond. He took full advantage and kissed her. Her eyes fluttered shut and her last thought was the pie really was the best she’d ever tasted.
The last day on the boat and Nic was too restless to fish, until she decided she wanted to fish too. She surprised him by already knowing what she was doing.
“I’m Mac Sellers’ daughter. You think he never took me fishing? I hunt too.”
“You hunt?” He couldn’t believe it. “As in you go into the woods and come out with a dead animal.”
She blushed. “Actually, Dad, Stefan and Rogan quit letting me go when they realized they never got a deer when I was with them. Apparently, I’m too noisy.”
“You did it on purpose?”
“Damn straight.” She laughed. “No deer ever died on my watch. Oh, I think I got something.” She jerked the rod back with surprising strength then reeled the fish in slowly.
When it broke water, Nic helped her bring it in. The second he had the hook out of the shiny red fish’s mouth, she said, “Okay, throw him back.”
“Are you serious?” He paused before throwing the fish in the cooler with the others he’d caught earlier. “This is dinner.”
Lizzie shook her head, hand on her hips. “It’s not dinner if I see his face, Nic. Throw him back.”
He opened his mouth to protest.
“Now. Throw him back.”
The fish hit the water with a small splash and swam off. “No more fishing for you, we’ll starve,” he teased her.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him but as soon as he moved to touch her, she yelped and jumped back. “Fish hands. Don’t touch me.”
“You do know this is a fishing boat.” He laughed as she darted away from him.
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“Yes, you will. Now go find us some lunch.”
He watched her disappear, too bewitched to mourn the loss of a good size red snapper. He imagined her dressed in camo, tromping loudly through the forest scaring the wildlife away. He laughed to himself, and didn’t stop smiling when he cast out another line.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled so much. He was always smiling around her, unless he was kissing her. It wasn’t always serious. She was fun, he realized. Everything was more fun with Lizzie.
He loved having her around. She fit into all the jagged edges of his life, filling them with sunshine and laughter and companionable silences. Things Nic had never realized were missing. He finally understood what Pam had been trying to tell him about spending too much time alone.
He wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow when he dropped her off in New Orleans. In fact, he was dreading it. He set his rod and reel aside and decided to go find her. They didn’t have much time left and he didn’t want to waste any of it.
She wasn’t in the galley. He found her stretched out on the bow, leaning back on her arms, her head back with her face toward the sun. Sunscreen glistened on her skin and she smelled like coconut and paradise. For a moment he wasn’t sure if his lungs would ever work again because she literally took his breath away.
She’d reminded him of a mermaid the first time he met her. She’d stood out in the crowded ballroom, her hair spilling all around her shoulders. Now sunning herself on his boat, he could almost believe she was a mythical sea creature he'd caught in his net. All she needed was an iridescent fin and a shell comb.
When she caught him watching, the smile curving her lush mouth wiped every thought from his mind. “Everything all right?”
She gave a fake and somewhat dramatic sigh, then wiggled her toes. Nic’s throat went dry as the silver toe ring taunted him. “My toenail polish is all wrong.” She made it sound like a national disaster as she flexed her toes so he could see the red polish.
His teeth ground together. It was ridiculous to get so wound up over her toes but he couldn’t help it. They looked delicious. “Tragic,” he agreed in the same world-weary tone. “We could go back to the resort. I'm sure the spa can book you for an emergency pedicure.”
She tilted her head and pouted at him. She was teasing but there was nothing funny about her mouth when she pretended to pout. It gave Nic all kinds of wicked ideas. “Why? Can’t you helicopter someone out here to fix them for me?”
She wasn’t serious, but if she had been, he wouldn’t have hesitated to fly someone out to change her toenail polish. It would take one phone call and he wouldn’t give a damn what anyone said. Then she laughed and the sound brought a lightness back to his chest. For a moment, he couldn’t move.
Lizzie laughed. For an instant he’d believed her. “You know I’m kidding, right?”
He nodded.
“You could, couldn’t you? Make a phone call and someone would be out here ASAP.”
He pushed his fingers through his dark hair. It had grown longer this week and the sun had found some streaks in it. She hoped he didn’t notice because it softened his hard edges, made him seem younger. He wasn’t that old, but sometimes his eyes were positively ancient.
“Yes.” Something shut down in him and he turned away from her, focusing on the horizon. “Or I’d get Pam to arrange it.”
“She must be some assistant
.”
“Pam is more than an assistant. She runs all my companies, with the exception of my Asian offices, and my uncle runs De Santis for the foreseeable future but I’ll have to take it over eventually and it's not something I can delegate.”
“De Santis?” she echoed, humor draining out of her quickly. “You’re going to run De Santis Farms?”
He nodded, his expression deceptively calm. “It’s not a secret. My uncle has no children.”
No, it wasn’t a secret. Lizzie knew his mother had been a De Santis but it had never occurred to her Nic would inherit all of De Santis Farms.
De Santis Farms’ wine, cheese and luxury foods were a household name. The De Santis family was one of the oldest families in Italy. She’d seen a documentary once on the De Santis vineyards in Tuscany. Their vineyard was over five hundred years old and their wine labels hinted that they could trace their family back to the Romans.
They were definitely from different worlds. Lizzie knew nothing about her father’s family. Her mother’s family could trace several generations straight back into the Bayous of South Louisiana. Unlike Rogan’s family, who could trace back to Le Grand Derangement, when the British deported the Acadians in the 1700s from Nova Scotia, Nadine Sellers’ family had not kept up with a family history.
The gap between them widened. Nic was so far out of her league she wondered what she was doing on his boat.
“Lizzie, don’t—”
She shook her head, cutting off his raspy words with her own. “If you’re heir to the De Santis fortune, why didn’t you grow up in Italy?”
“I told you, my mother died.”
Something in the way he said it didn’t ring true. “Your father remarried and moved to Texas.”
“Stepfather,” Nic corrected.
Her jaw dropped as he flinched. Pain flickered briefly in his eyes a second before he closed down like a fortress.
“Forget what I said.” He turned away from her again, grabbing the boat’s railing, his knuckles turning white as he stared out to sea.
Solving for Nic (Self Made Men...Southern Style Book 2) Page 13