She slinked out from his hold and turned to face him. “He sounds like a great guy. I’m sure you miss him.”

“I do,” he said with a nod. “I really do.”

He sighed heavily, and Sophie must have decided hockey and this admission were enough for now, because she cupped his cheeks and brushed her lips to his. It was a soft kiss at first, and she explored his lips as if she were kissing him for the first time. Soon enough she pressed harder, nipping with her teeth, nibbling and sucking, and making him groan in the middle of the canal, with the stripe-shirted gondolier mere feet from them.

The kiss was a new beginning. A promise of more to share. A hint of what they might become.

And it blurred the rest of the world. Because all he knew, felt, and wanted had been reduced to the soft and sweet feel of her lips, the smell of her skin, and the scent of her hair.

Then she picked up speed, veering out of poetic and into ravaging. He’d never let her lead in a kiss before, but he did now, and she sure knew what to do to him. She knew how to play rough, how to kiss like a tiger, hard and hungry. She’d turned him on well past the point of propriety in a gondola.

He broke the kiss, clasped his hands on her shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. “Spend the rest of the weekend with me. Come to my house. Swim with me. Meet my dog. Play a round of pool. Besides, I have a change of clothes for you if you need one,” he said, holding up the bag with the peach dress in it.

She made grabby hands, and he yanked back the bag. “You can have it if you say yes.”

Her eyes lit up. She tapped her chin, pretending to think about it. “I feel like you left one very important thing off the to-do list.”

He lowered his hand to her ass and squeezed hard. “No, beautiful. That’s a given. Fucking you will be the main agenda item.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

He opened the sliding glass door to his deck and stood on the threshold, stopping to drink in the gorgeous sight before him.

Sophie wore a white bikini and huge black sunglasses as she stretched out on a lounge chair by his pool, reading her iPad under a big yellow umbrella. Her skin was so fair, he doubted she was a sun worshipper. But even so, she looked stunning with the rays casting their glow on her legs. Late-afternoon shadows fell across his yard, along with a quiet hush.

The stillness of the moment—both the silence and her beauty—felt like a dream. But the image was too sharp, too crisp to be anything but real.

His real life. His real chance. A real change.

Okay, some things hadn’t changed. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.

After a pit stop at her condo, since she’d insisted on picking up clothes, he drove her to his house once he’d ensured his family was already gone. He wanted Sophie to meet them, but he didn’t have the patience for a get-to-know-you session when he simply had to have her. They’d christened the hallway the second the door had closed. He took her against the wall, with Johnny Cash hiding his snout under a pillow on the couch as if he couldn’t bear to watch. Now, his mutt was sprawled on the cool grass under a tree, back legs sticking out behind him like Superdog.

But the woman.

Oh, the woman.

Sophie was all his for the next twenty-four hours. No dropping her off at midnight. No final kiss in front of her building. And no bumping into her brother.

He struck all thoughts of her brother from his brain as he walked across the deck, down the wooden steps, over the soft grass, and onto the tile edging the oval blue lagoon in the middle of his yard. He had two drinks with him, and when he arrived by her side, she lowered her shades to the bridge of her nose, looking exactly like a glamorous movie star on vacation.

“Are you playing my waiter today?”

“Maybe I’m the pool boy,” he said as he handed her a mojito.

She laughed. “I don’t have pool-boy fantasies, I assure you.”

He sat at the end of her chair with his Macallan on ice. “What fantasies do you have?”

She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of the drink. “I fantasize about a man who can make a drink like this. This is divine. How did you know I like mojitos by the pool?”

He shrugged, quirking up the corner of his lips. “Lucky guess.”

She shot him a skeptical glance as she pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “I’m not so sure that’s just luck. I suspect it’s more of your military intelligence training.”

“You think they teach us how to identify a woman’s drink of choice?”

“No, but I think you have a supremely analytical mind and like to piece clues together, and somehow you decided that a woman like me drinks mojitos.”

“And what are the traits that would suggest mojito drinking?” he asked, enjoying the banter as the sun dipped toward the horizon.

“You tell me,” she said, crossing her ankles. Her toenails were painted violet. He wasn’t a man who cared about polished fingers or toes, but somehow this little detail seemed so very Sophie.

“Gorgeous, confident, smart, fun…and likes to enjoy things that taste good.”

She made some sort of sexy humming sound in her throat. “You taste good,” she said.

His dick leapt to attention, ready to give her a full salute. He dropped a hand to her leg, wrapping it around her calf and squeezing. “Everything you say and do makes me hard. It’s like you have a remote control to my dick.”

She laughed as heat poured down from the sky. “I actually ordered that remote last week. They sell them at Sharper Image. Can’t wait for it to arrive.”

Loud peals of laughter ripped through him, and this was a moment he would savor for a long time—the easy way she had with him, how she teased him, and toyed with him, and never backed down. He caressed her warm calf, kissed by the sun, as he tipped his forehead toward the iPad. “What were you reading?”

“A biography of Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe. I have a thing for rock-star biographies.”

“Interesting. Anything to that?”

She pursed her lips together, as if considering the answer. “I think because the lifestyle is so extravagant and extreme. I read them for fun back in college, with a sort of wide-eyed awe, and these people seemed so foreign but so fascinating. They still are—the hours rock stars keep, the crazy things they do, the excess, the conquests, the dangers. It’s like a vicarious thrill ride into a world I’d never want to be in but adore watching unfold.”

“Are you a voyeur?” he asked with narrowed eyes.

“Ha. Hardly. I just like to see the curtain pulled back,” she said, taking a quick drink. Then she set down her glass on the small table next to her lounge chair. “What do you like to read?”

“Business strategy books to stay sharp. Thrillers to keep the heart rate up. And international news to stay educated. That probably sounds terribly prosaic.”

She shook her head. “No. Not at all. I love your reasons, too. They tell me more about what matters to you,” she said with a sweet smile. “Plus, I think whatever anybody’s reading is a good thing. Truth be told, I was actually switching back and forth between reading the Tommy Lee book, and this email exchange with my contact in Rüsselsheim.”

His ears pricked. “Your Bugatti?”

A grin stretched across her features, like a very satisfied cat. “I’m going there to check it out in ten days.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Are you bringing it back?”

“An import service will. But I want to touch it and feel it and drive it myself before the final sign-off.”

An image of Sophie running her hands along the sleek body of a high-end sports car played before his eyes. “What milestone is this one? You said you reward yourself for hitting milestones in giving.”

“I like numbers, especially the big fat ones with lots of zeroes, so I decided that since I sold my company for a hundred million dollars that when I hit that goal in money raised for others, I’d get this car.”