Page 24 of Love In Translation

“Be nice, Paddy.”

“I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue.”

Rheo tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling. While her grandmother understood her need for stability and approved of her independence—financial and otherwise—she’d made it clear that Rheo’s predictability didn’t need to extend to men. Paddy believed Rheo should have excitement in the bedroom and assumed Callum wasn’t the man for the job.

She wasn’t wrong. Fletch’s kiss packed more punch than the lukewarm orgasms Callum had managed to pull from her. But predictability was safe. She knew what to expect.

Rheo didn’t like roller coaster rides. And Fletch was the biggest, baddest ride out there.

Six

Chúpamela!

Rheo jabbed her finger on the pause button on her video and cursed again. She flung a ballpoint pen against the wall, wincing when it left a black streak on the cream paint.

Over the past ten days, since Fletch’s arrival, she’d spent a lot of time planning her return to New York City. First on her list of priorities was to find out how rusty her translation skills were. Like most things, simultaneous translation required practice, and she hadn’t spoken Spanish, or any other language aside from English, for many months.

Biting the bullet, she’d downloaded training manuals for translators and spent a few hours every day moving up through the various levels. Once she got into the swing of it, the first two levels were easy, but today’s sessions—each two hours long—were much harder. She’d fallen way behind, and her Spanish word choices were consistently inaccurate. Thinking she might have a block with Spanish—the language of her biggest failure—she’d switched to French, and the results had been equally disastrous. There had been nothing simultaneous about her efforts.

Alone in Paddy’s office, with only a machine judging her, she fumbled her words. If she couldn’t get it right here, with no one applying pressure, how could she return to her job? Nicole expected her to come back with the same or better skills, and Rheo was way off. Way, way off.

Dear God, this was an ongoing nightmare.

Rheo heard a knock and hastily minimized the program before telling Fletch to come in. He strolled through the door, a little sweaty, a lot sexy, carrying two water bottles. Rheo swallowed, trying to keep her thoughts out of her eyes and off her face. Her nipples were out of control. It wasn’t fair he was so damn sexy, that every atom in her body reacted to him on a cellular level.

Whenever he entered a room, fireworks exploded under her skin, the moisture in her mouth disappeared and the ache between her legs intensified. She wasn’t particularly sexual, but Fletcher Wright, adventurer and the last man in the world she should be attracted to, justdidit for her.

Rheo took the bottle of water he offered and leaned back in her chair, watching as he walked over to the window and pressed his shoulder into the wall. Fletch never stood when he could lean...

His pale gray sleeveless vest dipped low enough to show most of his chest. Unsurprisingly, he wore running shorts and a pair of well-used sneakers. On the days he wasn’t leaving early for a hike, a kayaking session, or rock climbing, he always went for a run. Watching Fletcher jog down the street, heading for one of the many trails in the hills surrounding Gilmartin, had quickly become the best way to start her day.

“How far do you run?” she asked him, happy to be distracted from her interpreting shortcomings.

“Normally fifteen, but my doctor won’t let me run more than six miles at the moment.”

Fifteen miles? Why would anyone want to run for so long unless end-of-world zombies were chasing you, threatening to suck out your brains?

“Why only six?” she asked.

He swallowed half his water before answering. “He says my body has taken a pounding and he wants me to rest,” Fletch replied, sounding grumpy.

“And has it?”

He lifted one bare shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “It’s his opinion.”

“An opinion built on experience and many years of study,” Rheo said, her tone dry. Fletch hated being told what to do, that was obvious. “Did you get hurt on one of your expeditions?”

“I put myself in hard-to-survive situations. There’s always a chance of getting hurt,” he replied. He didn’t answer her question, which was an answer in itself.

“You only ever walk to your friend’s house or the deli,” Fletch said, turning his sharp eyes on her. “Why don’t you go for longer walks? Why don’t you run?”

Oh God, he wasn’t going to lecture her, was he? There was nothing worse than an evangelical fitness fanatic. “I hide from exercise. I’m in the fitness protection program.”

Fletch didn’t smile, and Rheo threw up her hands. “C’mon, that was funny!”

“You’d enjoy hiking if you did it a bit more, got a bit fitter.”

Rheo leaned back in her chair and rested her hands on her not-so-flat stomach. “You’re confusing me with my cousin,” she told him. “She’s the adventurer in the family... Actually, that’s not true. Everyone in my family is obsessed with the great outdoors except me.”

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