Hot Shade

by Tamara Lush

  “Maybe I was. But I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I wasn’t polite to you earlier. I’m sorry.”

  Skylar shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m a reporter. I need to get used to people saying mean things to me. Or weird things. Or nothing at all.”

  Truthfully, people had been mostly kind to her during interviews, although one man had slammed a door in her face the previous week when she tried to ask him about why he accidentally plowed into a post office with his car.

  “I hope I wasn’t mean,” Luca said. “I’m glad you didn’t put me in the paper. Thank you.”

  “You were fine. And it’s not like you gave me any reason to put you in my article,” she half complained, watching him drink his water. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed made her want to lick the tan skin of his neck, and the fact that she entertained such an idea with a total stranger mystified yet thrilled her. She felt unusually alive and alert. “So, do you live here?”

  He shook his head. “My uncle owns this house. I’m just visiting.”

  “From Italy?”

  He nodded.

  “Is your uncle or anyone else here?” She looked around, wondering if others would join them poolside. Like his girlfriend.

  Luca shook his head. “I’m alone. My uncle’s in Miami, working.”

  “Ah. And how long are you visiting for?”

  “I’m not sure. Weeks? Months? I’m flexible.”

  He sipped from his glass but didn’t take his eyes off her. Maybe he was single. Possibilities of future drinks, dinners, dates, unfolded in Skylar’s mind. She asked, “What do you do in Italy?”

  He laughed. “Americans are nosy, no?”

  Was he flirting or reprimanding her for asking questions? She didn’t like it when men chided her, because that reminded her of James. He’d never let a day pass without telling her how she did something wrong.

  “Maybe we are,” she allowed. “But I’m a reporter. I’m nosy.”

  “True,” Luca said.

  So, he didn’t want to answer her question. Skylar would have been annoyed except he was smiling at her, all sexy-like. She stared into her water glass at the perfectly round lemon slice. When she looked up, he had a serious look in his eyes and rubbed his chin.

  “How’s the man who was injured by the plane? Any updates? Is he going to make it? Your article said he was in stable but serious condition.”

  Skylar shrugged. “I called the hospital about a half-hour ago and they said he would pull through. He was really lucky.”

  “Certo che si.” Luca paused and glanced at her. “Sorry. I think in Italian. Of course he was lucky.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, and I feel bad for the pilot as well. He was crying because he hurt the guy on the beach. He said everything happened so fast.”

  Luca’s face screwed into a frown and he shook his head. “Weird story.”

  Skylar nodded again, and they both took a drink. She noticed Luca checking her out, opened her mouth to ask him whether he’d helped the victim, but he spoke first while tipping his glass toward her.

  “Please forgive me for being forward, but is that a bathing suit under your dress?”

  Skylar paused. “Yeah. I was at my condo pool when my editor called me to cover the crash. I was so flustered about getting out to the scene that I didn’t go upstairs to change. I don’t usually report in a bikini and a beach dress. It’s pretty embarrassing. I didn’t think people could see my suit.”

  “Maybe it’s just something I noticed. I…notice details.” Luca smiled and lowered his eyes to the ground, which was cute, then swept his glass toward the pool. “Um, you can swim now, if you’d like. It’s still so hot, isn’t it? I’m not used to this kind of weather. I can bring you a glass of chilled wine and we can get in the water, no?”

  Strip to her bathing suit with a total stranger and float around in a gorgeous pool while drinking wine? Not something Skylar would normally do. But Emily was always telling her to stop being so serious. To think about something other than the newspaper and her career.

  “That would be lovely.”

  She tried to sound like the kind of woman who spent sunsets near pools with handsome foreign men, but it was so far from the truth that Skylar almost laughed out loud.

  Luca went inside. Skylar hesitated then pulled her dress over her head, tossed it onto the chaise and slipped into the pool. She dove down as far as she could, touching the bottom with her fingers then powering back up through the water. The movement gave her a sense of freedom, of weightlessness, that stopped when she did.

  It would be awkward to reveal her body to the sculpted and muscular Luca. She was a little curvier than she liked, although the red bikini was flattering to her breasts. Standing on flat feet in the shallow end of the pool, she quickly tugged and pulled at the bikini cups, making sure she wasn’t flashing a nipple or anything. She submerged herself again, enjoying the cool rush against her skin.

  Her long hair floated around her in tangles as she held her breath underwater. She was already a sweaty mess, though, so what did she care? Looking pretty wasn’t possible on this strange day. Not really. If this guy really wanted to know her better, he had to be satisfied with her true self, the one without mascara and heels and lipstick.

  She came up for air with a splash, and when she opened her eyes, she spotted him. His lower half was submerged in the water as he sat on the middle stone step at the edge of the pool. She smoothed back her wet hair with both hands.

  He didn’t take his eyes off her as she slowly paddled toward him. Her heartbeat quickened.

  “You turned on the lights,” she said, parting the water with a breaststroke, sending ripples through the pool.

  “Si. The water is now the same color as your eyes.”

  He handed her a wine glass, and she settled next to him on the step. She couldn’t believe she was so naked, so exposed, near this tempting stranger. It was a struggle to pretend she wasn’t affected by the closeness of his bare skin. What did he do for a living? Maybe nothing. He carried himself so languidly and his skin was so tan, as if leisure was his main occupation.

  “Cento anni.” He tipped his glass to hers.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a toast, like ‘cheers.’ It means ‘one hundred years.’”

  He was so sexy and so…adult. How old was he? From his unlined face and toned body she figured he was in his twenties, but she recognized a sadness in his eyes that made him look older. Did it mean anything to him that she was barely out of college?

  She sipped the wine and realized it tasted like pears and smelled like flowers. It wasn’t like her affordable boxed stuff, which was more like an alcoholic Gatorade.

  “This is really good.” God, she sounded stupid.

  “It’s Banfi Pinot Grigio San Angelo Toscana.”

  He spoke the words in a liquid Italian accent, and a surge of pure lust went through Skylar; she thought she might dissipate into the pool from the timbre of his voice. She was unaccustomed to this kind of instant sexual desire with a man she had just met, and she wondered if she should politely leave before things got out of control. There was no telling what she might do if he spoke to her solely in his native tongue.

  No, she knew exactly what she would do: make some very poor choices that she would later regret.

  “Where are you from, Skylar?”

  She exhaled with relief. At least he had let up on the seductive-sounding Italian words. He was trying to make polite conversation, and there she’d been, assuming that he was trying to seduce her.

  “Vermont. It’s near Boston.”

  He regarded her with interest. “I’m familiar with Vermont. Do you have a boyfriend there? Or have you made a new boyfriend here on Palmira?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I thought Americans were the nosy ones.”

  He laughed. “Touché.”

  She pushed aside thoughts of James, her last boyfriend. Her only real boyfriend. He’d been an editor at the Boston
paper during her junior-year internship, and when her job was finished he asked her out for a drink. They’d only made it through one cocktail before they kissed, and the majority of that first date was spent naked and tangled together. She’d been twenty-one at the time and he was thirty-six, a charming former war correspondent who told thrilling, funny stories about writing articles in hotspots all over the globe. Assuming he would be as passionate a boyfriend as giving reporting advice, she’d fallen for him. She’d been so damned wrong, though, about everything, and now she didn’t trust herself one bit when it came to men.

  But, she wasn’t that college girl anymore, and she wasn’t dwelling in the past. She also wasn’t hopping into bed with any guy on the first night ever again.

  She pasted on a smile. “Unlike you, Luca, I’ll answer questions. I don’t have a boyfriend. I broke up with him when I graduated from college.”

  A huge smile unfurled on Luca’s face. “Right. I saw that online. The part about school, I mean. You graduated from Boston University at the top of your class.”

  She hesitated then grinned. “So, you checked me out online? Did a little Google-stalking?”

  He glanced at her with a self-satisfied smile. “I didn’t have to stalk. It was all there on your Twitter feed. Graduated in May at the top of your class. Majored in journalism. Minored in psychology. Nice photos of you on graduation day in your cap and gown, by the way. You looked cute.”

  So, maybe he was interested in her. A guy who did such a deep dive into her Twitter account had to be intrigued, at the very least. And he thought she was cute! She sipped her wine with a little smile.

  “So, here’s another question, Skylar. Why did you come to Palmira to work? Why didn’t you stay in Boston? Or go to New York? Don’t all reporters want to go to New York City?”

  “Of course we do. But we all can’t afford New York,” she shot back.

  Luca nodded. “What about Boston?”

  Boston was out of the question because James was there. And because the paper had a hiring freeze. But she wasn’t going to say that.

  She shrugged. “I had an offer at a website in New York, but it was rewriting others’ stories and aggregating content. It didn’t pay much. At least here at the newspaper I’m able to do my own reporting and writing. The Post is actually a good paper. It has a reputation for training writers and we’re gaining in circulation. Mostly because all the retirees here read it obsessively.”

  “Then it was a good decision, career-wise, no?”

  “I hope so. I also came because I own property here.” That felt funny to say, as if she were some trust-fund baby, which couldn’t be further from the truth. She quickly added, “My grandmother died a year ago and I inherited her condo.”

  “I see. I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.”

  “Thank you,” she said, then steered the conversation back to Luca. “How do you know Vermont?”

  “I went skiing there when I was at boarding school in Connecticut. Going to school here in America is why I can speak your language a little.”

  “Ahh. That makes sense. You speak English more than a little, though. Better than most native speakers.”

  “Thanks. Languages come easy to me. I also speak Portuguese, Spanish and French. And Italian, of course.”

  She didn’t speak anything other than English and wondered if he knew that. “And do you use those language skills for your job?”

  He grinned and moved his thumb and forefinger up and down the stem of his wine glass. She watched his hand, fascinated by the long, thick fingers and clean nails.

  “You’re persistent. To answer your question, I’m a graduate student at the University of Naples. I’m here on Palmira so I can write my, um, my master’s thesis. I needed time to focus and a quiet place to think.”

  She wondered how rich his family must be if they owned this mansion, which sat behind a row of stately palm trees. Even though she was looking at the back of the house, she sensed it was a huge building and wondered about the interior. She nodded and lifted her eyebrows, as if she were interviewing someone. “Yeah, Palmira is perfect for peace and quiet. There’s not much going on here, that’s for sure. You won’t have any distractions. What’s your thesis about?”

  Luca laughed, a short, brittle sound. “Ahh, it’s about deconstructing the mythology of the Mafia hero in the media.”

  Her eyes widened, because she loved Mafia movies. “Oh. Oh! Wow. That’s fascinating. Like The Godfather and The Sopranos?”

  Luca smirked and looked up at the house as he took a sip of wine. Had he just rolled his eyes a little? Maybe she’d offended him. Undeterred, Skylar slipped into reporter mode, hungry for more details.

  “Did you go to Sicily?”

  He tilted his head and looked puzzled. “Uh, no. Why?”

  “Isn’t that where the Mafia is?”

  Luca sounded troubled. As he talked, his English became slower and the pronunciation of his words became crisper. “The Mafia is all over my country. There are different crime syndicates in different regions. What you know as the Mafia is named different things all around Italy, kind of like different gangs here in the United States. It’s La Cosa Nostra in Sicily. In Naples, there’s the Camorra. In Reggio Calabria, there’s the ’Ndrangheta. There are organized groups in other parts of the country also.”

  “I had no idea.” Skylar paused. “Are you looking at how organized crime is portrayed in Italian media or U.S. media, or what? Movies? TV? Books?”

  “Both in Italy and in the U.S. Uh, and mostly movies and TV. Some books. A book. Another book. Yes, books.”

  He sounded humble and a little nervous about his work, which made Skylar like him more. “Do you know people in the Mafia, or in organized crime?”

  Luca pressed his lips together and frowned. By his reaction, Skylar suspected it was a stupid question.

  “Yes. Almost everyone in Italy knows someone who is doing something corrupt.”

  She was secretly thrilled. Intrigue was like catnip to journalists. “Oh. Kinda like Florida. Politicians, businesspeople, there’s lots of corruption here.” She tossed off the words like she was an old hand at Sunshine State corruption. Really, she knew she hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of this Wild West-like place.

  He shifted his leg, and the lengths of their thighs pressed together underwater. Skin against skin. Luca’s thigh was muscular against her softer, smaller curve, and she took a sharp breath as a jolt of sensual electricity sent shockwaves through her body.

  He glanced at her sideways. “Aren’t you a little young to be so jaded?”

  “I’m twenty-two. I can’t be much younger than you.”

  “I’m twenty-eight. How long have you been in Florida?”

  “Three months.”

  Luca sipped his wine. “Not that long.”

  She fought back annoyance. “Corruption and weird shit happens here all the time. It’s what my editor and all the reporters at the paper say. Right now I’m covering mostly boring stories—meetings and lame crime and some features. But everyone tells me I’ll eventually witness the weird for myself or write about it if I stay in Florida long enough.”

  “Well, that’s something to look forward to.”

  They both laughed, and Skylar felt a little dizzy. Luca was funny and handsome. She worried that her voice was too excited, her laugh too eager, her eyes too interested in what he had to say. Her weakness had always been self-assured men who told good stories and made her laugh. She had even opined to her friends in college that it didn’t matter if a man was handsome or not; if a guy could spin a good tale, he was worth a date or two. But Luca…well, he was gorgeous and spell-binding.

  And probably only on the island for a while. Which made him instantly dangerous.

  “I actually love it here,” she said, trying to sound casual. “New England was boring. I love the strangeness of this place.”

  He nodded and laughed, and his leg pressed harder against hers. “Wei
rd things do happen here, don’t they? I watched a story the other night on TV about a strip club in Tampa offering free flu shots.”

  “Right?” Skylar said. “I saw that. And the face-eating zombie in Miami? Did you read about that?”

  “Yeah. And, those…what do you call them? Potholes?”

  “Potholes? No. Sinkholes,” she corrected with laugh. “Where the ground opens up and eats cars and houses and, that one time, a person!”

  Luca’s eyes met hers and he held up his wine glass. “To Florida.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “To Florida. May we not get caught up in its insanity.”

  Why did Luca think that was so funny?

  Skylar set her glass on the pool edge and slipped off the steps. “It’s so stupid hot,” she murmured, easing backward into the water, face up, idly wondering if she looked like a manatee. Luca followed, propelling himself forward with one broad stroke of his arms.

  She’d reached the middle, so Skylar submerged her entire body and head. When she resurfaced and stood on flat feet, the water skimmed the tops of her breasts. Luca was nearby, and he seemed a lot taller.

  “Your tattoo. Is it Italian?” she asked. “What does it say?”

  He stepped closer, holding his arm above the water. She admired its sinewy bulk as she ran her finger about an inch from the skin of his bicep, not quite touching—although she wanted to touch him, very much. Why was her stomach clenching like that?

  “Si. E Italiano. It says, ‘Chi più sa, meno crede.’”

  She wanted him to repeat whatever he’d said, over and over, in her ear.

  “What’s that in English?”

  He answered so quietly that the Gulf waves in the distance nearly drowned out his voice.

  “‘The more one knows, the less one believes,’” she repeated, nodding.

  Here’s what she did know: Luca was the most handsome man she’d ever been around, and she might regret it if she left now. Maybe out-of-control was something she needed. And yet James’s words echoed in her mind.

  “You’re cold. Unfeeling. So boring in bed.”

  Bed. That was where this night could end, she was certain from the way Luca looked at her, all predator-like and hungry. It was more than flattering. It was hot. But Skylar didn’t even know his last name, and no way would she give herself to a random stranger.