Page 96 of The Pairing

And then someone knocks on the door, and the spell is broken. Theo laughs and goes “whoops” and ducks behind a wardrobe, and I pull on trunks to accept a delivery from a friendly maid.

“Complimentary wine,” I call out, examining the bottle of red I’ve been handed. Theo emerges in their swimsuit as I turn over the monogrammed card tied to the bottle’s neck to find a handwritten note. “Oh, it’s from. . .your sister? She must have called ahead. That’s sweet of her.”

The card says:

Theo,

Might have taken it a bit too far. Sorry. Love you.

—Sloane

P.S. Offer still stands.

“Let me see,” Theo says, whisking the bottle and card away. Their face hardens slightly as they read, mouth going sharpish. “Oh, nice. Can’t imagine where else we’d find wine in a place like this.”

They open the wardrobe and shove it inside. When they turn back to me, they’re smiling.

“Are you ready?”

Now, that—thatseems like something I wasn’t meant to see.

“Let me get my book.”

Theo is the first in the pool, naturally.

Past the last villetta and a wall of trees, the grounds unfold into a sloping meadow with a wide swimming pool and panoramic views of the surrounding hills. Lemon-striped loungers fan out under umbrellas in the grass, and I sink into one with my shirt open to the sun and my book open to the last place I left it. The air is hot and perfumed with wisteria, and past the birds and the snip of the gardener shears, I hear the clean, quiet ripples of Theo swimming laps.

Soon others wander to the pool, and a man in yellow linen brings trays of antipasti and buckets of chilled wine. Honeymooners cruise off into the hills on borrowed bikes with wicker baskets. A cook leans out of a green-shuttered window, calling toa maid. Signora Lucia floats about, watering plants with a loving diligence that reminds me of my maman, which is more sweet than bitter in a place like this.

“Mind if I join you?” says Ginger Calum, appearing with a fluffy white towel over his shoulder.

“Not at all.”

He hands me a glass of cool amber wine and keeps one for himself. “What is it they say here? Salute?”

“Salute,” I repeat, endeared.

“Shady day for this ginger lad,” he says, arranging himself under the umbrella on the chaise beside mine. I thought he was flushed with drink last night, but now I see he’s sporting a spectacular Florentine sunburn. He pulls a tablet and a battered field journal from his tote. “Just as well. Loads of work to catch up on.”

I lift my sunglasses to glance at his pages, jammed full of time-stamped notes and hand-drawn data tables.

“What is it that you do, Calum?”

“Me? I’m a wildlife biologist.”

“Is that right?” I pictured him as more of a sexy fireman or Olympic shot-putter. “What kind of animals do you work with?”

“Mostly white pointers for the past year or so, but I’m keen on all Indo-Pacific marine predators. I wrote my dissertation on chemotactile social recognition in the blue-ringed octopus.”

I can’t imagine a more wonderfully surprising answer from a man I heard belch the French alphabet last week.

“You’re a doctor, then?”

He grins. “Don’t let Calum hear you say that, he’ll take the piss. He’s anactualdoctor, or so he says.”

In the pool, Blond Calum is doing handstands, only his legs and feet poking out of the water. He has a tattoo on his calf of a prawn wearing a cowboy hat.

“That man?”

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