Page 23 of Between the Lines

Not quite able to meet his eyes, he watched the way Luca’s capable fingers fiddled with the cold fries on his plate. Nice hands, strong and broad. “Not easily. Not when I don’t know them well.”

“Huh.” Luca shook his head. “I mean, it happens to everyone sometimes, butallthe time? That’s tough.”

Theo looked up, startled—delighted—by Luca’s unexpected empathy. “It is what it is,” he said after a pause. “I just wish people would be more direct, you know? Say what they mean, tell me what they want without hinting or expecting me to read between the lines. It would make my life a lot easier.”

Luca shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. “It would, huh?”

“Absolutely.”

He raised his eyebrows, stretching enough that his t-shirt rode up to reveal a tempting flash of tanned stomach. Theo tensed, mouth going dry, as he looked up and met Luca’s eyes—and somehow he couldn’t look away, didn’t even want to. Impossibly, he felt safe locked in that direct gaze. It was a risky fantasy to indulge and yet indulge it he did; he felt powerless to resist. “Listen,” Luca said, “you wanna get out of here? There’s a nice walk to the Majestic along the cliffs. We could head back together, if you want? I’d like that.” He smiled, the slow curl of his lips might have been an invitation. “See? This is me being direct about what I want.”

Theo’s pulse skipped, remembering with a low thrum of want the electric sensation of Luca’s hands on his bare shoulders. Wondering how far the invitation in Luca’s smile extended, and how far he wanted it to extend. “Thank you,” he said, smiling, too. “I appreciate it.”

“So?” Luca pushed to his feet. “You coming?”

Theo set down his beer. “Why not? A clifftop walk in the dark. What could possibly go wrong for a guy who trips over his own feet?”

Chapter Nine

The hush was an immediate relief as they stepped outside and Luca took a deep breath, his ears ringing in the silence. But if he was hoping the sea air would cool his blood he was out of luck because there was something else in the air tonight, a coiling tension he’d felt all evening—since the beach. Earlier, if he was honest. A tension Luca now fully recognized as tentative, mutual desire.

Acting on it would probably be a terrible idea, but some of Luca’s greatest nights had been terrible ideas...

“Loud in there, huh?” he said, coming to stand close enough to Theo that their shoulders brushed. Theo’s hair, disheveled from the sea, fell over his ears and forehead, tousled and touchable. Luca flexed his fingers, resisting temptation. “Come on,” he said, “the path’s this way.”

Theo hesitated. “Will it be light enough up there to see where we’re going? I wasn’t joking about tripping over my own feet—as I expect you’ve noticed.”

Was that something to do with the dyspraxia thing Theo had mentioned? Luca didn’t like to ask, and he supposed it didn’t really matter. Instead, he put a hand on Theo’s shoulder and turned him around. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Check out the moon.” It hung fat and full behind them, a nimbus of silver glowing in the misty air.

When Theo saw it, his breath caught. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah.” But Luca wasn’t watching the moon; he was watching Theo’s lips curl into a breathtaking smile, he was feeling the bone and muscle of Theo’s shoulder through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. He was watching goose bumps rise across the back of Theo’s neck. Luca smiled and let his fingers linger on Theo’s shoulder for a beat longer. “Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s go.”

Luca had walked the cliff path many times, but it always looked different at night: wilder, more dangerous, more magical. In the moonlight, the Majestic glowed bone white ahead of them, her filigreed porch and balconies picked out in silver, genteel and beautiful. Timeless. He wondered if Theo understood why his new hotel would be so much less. Glancing at him, about to ask, Luca found Theo’s thoughtful gaze fixed on the Majestic, too.

“She was built at the turn of the century, right?” he said, as if reading Luca’s mind. “The turn of the previous century, I mean.”

“Eighteen ninety-eight. My family bought her in thirty-two.”

“Depths of the Depression.”

“Yeah. We’ve always been a family of optimists.”

“Areyouan optimist?” Theo looked at him, head cocked. “You don’t like weddings...”

Why Luca should be pleased he’d remembered that little detail of their conversation, he couldn’t say. “Black sheep of the family, I guess. Or maybe I’m just better at learning from experience.”

Theo lifted an eyebrow. It looked less haughty this time, more wry. “Some people might call you a cynic.”

“Some people might be right.”

Theo smiled—he had a nice smile—and they walked along in silence, the moonlight just enough that they could see where they were putting their feet. Luca had to contract his longer stride to match Theo’s and he watched their feet pacing together in time—he in his flip-flops, Theo in his deck shoes—crunching on the stony path. “So your run-in with this Grant dude didn’t make you a cynic, huh?”

Silence. Then, “At first, maybe. I thought a lot about revenge: getting him fired or telling his husband, somehow finding a way to hurt him like he’d hurt me. I used to lie awake at night thinking about it.”

“I assume there’s a ‘but’?”

“Nothing profound.” Theo weaved a little closer as they walked, bumping shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice. “I just...ran out of energy. It was exhausting, maintaining that level of anger, and it wasn’t getting me anywhere. So I decided to focus on my career instead, leave Grant to his demons. God knows he’s got enough.” A pause, then, “Want an inspirational quote?”

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