Page 60 of Damaged

The inside is beautiful, with bright-white walls and dark wooden beams in the coffered ceilings. The tiled floor is brick red, and the art on the walls is bright. Tasteful.

The paintings are powdery pastels of fruits, sacks of bright market spices, and the aqua blue sea.

James comes in behind me. “The others will be arriving tomorrow. I have some work I’ve got to finish up. Take any bedroom on the second floor. Mine is on the first. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you, James.” I deflate a little as he walks away. I have a feeling that’s all I’m going to see of him this evening. All I’m going to get of him alone before his associates arrive.

This place feels like a much more intimate setting than the refrigerated hotel suite, and he can sense it, too. That’s why he’s sticking to business tonight.

What was I expecting? A walk on the beach? A movie on the couch? We’re business associates, too. Ones who touch each other an awful lot.

But of course there was going to be a level of intimacy and trust to our relationship after he saved me from heat stroke. Doing something with that intimacy is another thing.

And he knows better than I do that it would be a mistake.

I stay up watchingCasablancain the living room, because to be honest, I’ve never seen it and it feels like a good time to do so. I keep expecting James to come out of the depths of the house. Out of whatever study or library he’s working from. But he doesn’t show, and the plot and romance of the movie is lost on me.

What has love ever done for you?James’s words replay in my head.

I can’t argue with him. Nothing.

I turn off the movie and go upstairs to bed.

I wake to a light wind off the sea and bird song. It’s like I’ve died and awoken in heaven. Even the smell of the sea is sweet. So different from the brackish reek of the bay in New York.

I roll over in the crisp sheets and stay like that for a good while before I go downstairs. There’s a breakfast bar in the kitchen just like at the penthouse. A woman in an apron gives me a tight smile.

“Good morning,” I say brightly.

“Good morning,” she says back.

I pour a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and step outside barefoot onto the short grass of the yard. I walk out from the shade of the house until the sun shines warm on my back. I don’t enjoy myself for long.

James is sitting on a beach chair in the distance, and across from him is a brunette with long white legs. The woman notices me and starts to wave. I look over my shoulder at first, not entirely confident this stranger wants my attention, but she does.

I start to walk over.

James is in navy chinos and a flowy white linen shirt. The woman is barely in anything at all. She wears a bathing suit with a shawl on top of it. Her breasts are intimidatingly large, and from the relaxed way they sit in her bikini top, I think they’re real.

Is this how men feel when they meet a guy much taller than them? Maybe I’m just insecure, but I feel a little bit outgunned, and we haven’t even shaken hands.

She reaches out her hand to mine. Red nail polish. A faint scent of perfume. We shake. “Hello,” she says in what I believe is an Italian accent. “I’m Alessia.”

“Sophia.”

“Nice to meet you, Sophia. James was just telling me about your adventures in Egypt. I’m sorry you got caught up in his shit.” She takes her hand away to what looks like a glass of orange juice, but it’s in a champagne flute. It must be a mimosa.

“Oh,” I say and look at James. He’s looking off towards the ocean. He’s wearing his sunglasses and I can’t see much of his face, but I think he’s bothered that the two of us are meeting. “It was… scary, yeah.”

“I heard you could handle yourself.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“That’s a good trait to have for someone who works with James. I hear you’re his new assistant? Yes?”

“Yeah. We work together.”

Alessia rests her elbow on her knee so her arm is straight up. She angles her hand down, fingers together so it looks like the head of a swan, her arm the long neck. It’s a dainty position, something you’d see old royalty do. Maybe that’s what she is.

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