Chapter 43

Music blaring,Sam danced around her kitchen while she prepared dinner. The stone crabs were on ice and her lemon infused butter was melting on the stove.

Wiping her hands on a towel, she smiled to herself. She was excited for Natalia to arrive, nervous flutters stirring in her stomach. Things had grown deeper between them so quickly it was hard to keep her heels firmly under her head.

She understood how hard Natalia was trying, in her own guarded way, to open up and let Sam in. Sam could see the discomfort in her eyes when she shared something vulnerable about her past or allowed a tender gesture. But Natalia did it anyway, pushing past her limits for Sam.

Every sliver of herself that Natalia showed only made Sam want to know more. See more. The wanting felt dangerous, but risk was no deterrent. She wanted to stare right up at the sun to understand how it worked. Fried retinas be damned.

Just thinking about Natalia made her heart skip, leap, and trip over itself. She was in high school again, but this time, her unbearable crush was reciprocated. Maybe reciprocated. No, no, definitely reciprocated. Probably.

She jumped when a knock sounded at the front door right on time. Smoothing her button-down shirt, Sam strode over and swung open the door.

Natalia stood on the front step, wine bottle in one hand, and a burnt orange Birkin bag in the other. In tailored black pants and a sleeveless blouse, Natalia was effortlessly elegant. Her dark hair tumbled over one shoulder in gentle waves.

“Hey,” Sam said, lips curving into an automatic smile. Her chest fluttered at the sight of Natalia’s soft expression. Her luminous brown eyes were open and nearly unguarded.

“As promised, I come bearing gifts.” Natalia replied, lifting the chilled wine bottle.

Sam stepped back so she could enter. As Natalia brushed by, Sam caught a hint of her perfume — warm, spicy, utterly intoxicating. She had it bad and couldn’t find the will to care.

Floating into the kitchen, Natalia regarded the metal bucket filled with tiny ice cubes serving as the traditional bed for stone crab claws. She made a gesture Sam chose to interpret as approval, before setting the bottle on the poured cement counter.

“Where’s your opener?” Natalia asked.

Sam pulled the simple corkscrew out of a drawer and reached for the bottle. “I don’t want you to have to do manual labor. I’m sure a choir of cherubs descends from the heavens to open your bottles.”

Natalia narrowed her gaze, proving to Sam that she could, in fact, get even more attractive. “Too many Diet Cokes at lunch, Professor?”

Sam laughed, tucking the cold wine bottle under her arm to open it. “Maybe I’m still buzzing after the call with Lola and Adriana.” She found the middle of the cork with the sharp point. “I don’t know what I was expecting. They’re so different, but somehow exactly like you.” She chuckled. “Lola, especially, was so intense. She was hellbent on not?—”

Natalia raised her hand to stop her. “You can’t tell me anything until after the ink is dry. I can’t risk influencing you based on what I know from Zoe.”

“But she’s not even part of the contracts. It’s the lawyers from the studio and production company. God, so many lawyers,” she added, thinking about the dozen boxes on their video conference that morning.

“I know.” She grabbed the bottle from Sam’s distracted hands and pulled out the cork herself with a satisfying pop. “But I have to maintain the boundary.”

“Is this forbidden, Ms. Flores?” Sam neared, finding her hips with her hands and kissing her the way she’d been aching to do since she’d left that morning. “That’s so hot.”

Instead of kissing her, Natalia bit Sam’s bottom lip and slithered away to grab wine glasses from the open cupboard.

With a laugh, Sam held her fingers to her lips. “Where did you learn to open a bottle the good old-fashioned way?”

Natalia poured them each a glass of white wine. “During college, I worked at a tapas place?—”

“Tapas was a thing in the 90s?” Sam rested her back against the counter.

Natalia cut her with a glance. “It’s been a thing since the thirteenth century, Professor. Shouldn’t you know that?” She handed her a glass.

“An obvious and unforgivable gap in my knowledge base,” she conceded. “Tell me more about this restaurant. Was there a uniform?”

Leaning an elbow against the counter, Natalia lifted her glass in a silent toast before taking a sip. “Oh, there was a uniform,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“Well, don’t hold out on me! What was it?”

Natalia did a terrible job of hiding her tiny smile behind the clear glass and pale-yellow wine. “I don’t know if you can handle that information.”

Sam set her glass down, heart fluttering. “Oh, come on. Poor form. You have to tell me now.”

Natalia quirked a brow. The movement was a minor ripple in the placid sea of her line-free face. “There’s not a single thing I have to do in this life other than die and pay taxes.”

Sam’s laughter bubbled out of her chest and warmed her skin. “God, you’re so intense,” she said in a way she hoped read like a compliment. “Please, Natalia, will you tell me what you wore to open wine bottles in a tiny thirteenth-century restaurant?”

Tipping her head to the side, Natalia still hadn’t erased the curve at the edge of her mouth. The hint of a smile was a shot of adrenaline blasted straight into Sam’s heart.

“It was very sexy,” Natalia said in a way that could only be described as playful. “Pleated black pants. Boxy white dress shirt. And…”

“If you say a tie, I’m going to drop dead.”

“A maroon tie.”

“I can’t take it!” Sam clutched her chest. “I would have had an unbearable crush on you.”

Natalia moistened her lips, but her smile grew anyway. “Oh, I cleaned up. Working behind the bar, I raked in tips.”

“Tell me you have a photo of this?” Sam asked, before wishing she hadn’t. Natalia was alone during that time. Fending for herself. Who the hell was she going to ask to take a picture of her going to work?

“You’re just going to have to use your imagination, Professor.” Natalia picked up her glass and started for the dining room, mercifully unbothered by Sam’s careless question.

Wanting to ask a thousand more questions, to know even more little details about her, Sam held back. She had to go at Natalia’s pace. Not her own.

Over dinner, Sam told Natalia about her first job — and the objectively unsexy polo and khakis she wore at Greg’s Galactic Golf and Arcade. While they talked, she searched for signs that Natalia was uncomfortable. When they never materialized, she decided on giving her the present she’d picked up that afternoon.

The brown paper gift wrap looked better on Instagram than when she tried to do it herself, but it was too late to mess with it anymore. Natalia was wiping down the kitchen in a shockingly sweet display when Sam returned.

“What’s that?” Natalia asked after drying her hands.

Sam looked down at the plain paper and second-guessed herself. Oh, well. Too late. She’ll hate it and it will be fine.

“I have my Oxford trip next month, and well, two weeks suddenly feels like a long time to be away.” She turned her gaze back on Natalia. “So, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to give you something.”

“Are those two thoughts connected?” Natalia smiled with her eyes and the pink flush starting over her cheeks.

Sam laughed. “What? Are words my job or something?” She handed her the gift, telling her what it was before she had a chance to tear into it. “It’s The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.”

Natalia peeled back the tape carefully, like she intended to preserve the paper. “What’s the point of wrapping if you’re just going to ruin the surprise?”

“She was so cerebral but also very passionate,” Sam continued. “A lot of her poems are about longing and desire and the pain that comes with feeling things so deeply.” She watched as Natalia slowly revealed the leather-bound volume.

Natalia traced her fingers over the embossed title, eyes softening as she looked up at Sam.

“And her brilliance was overlooked for so long because she was a woman, because she didn’t conform.” Sam shifted her weight, unsure of whether she’d made the wrong move. Wishing that she could hear Natalia’s thoughts. “I don’t know. I just thought you might appreciate her perspective. And the beautiful language, of course.”

When Natalia didn’t respond, Sam kept going. It was like the growing nerves in her body were telling her brain that they were taking on water. That she needed to throw all her thoughts over the side or drown.

“I’m going to miss you,” Sam said. “Maybe you can come visit me in Oxford?”

Instead of laughing in her face and throwing her stupid little book on the floor, Natalia’s expression changed into something like regret.

“Two weeks is too long to be away,” she said softly, like some people might say I’m sorry.

Nerves both replicating and easing, Sam pulled Natalia into her arms, the book pressed to her chest. “What’s the point of being the boss if you can’t do what you want?”

“Responsibilities, Professor.” Natalia’s voice dropped to something warm and husky that Sam felt in every fiber of her being. She pulled Sam down to her, lips grazing her cheek. “I’ll let you wear your little toy tonight,” she said so quietly it was nearly imperceptible.

Heat erupted over Sam’s skin, every cell responding to Natalia’s silky promise. Natalia’s lips on hers and hands trailing down her body said what her words couldn’t. Sam didn’t need to hear Natalia’s appreciation. She felt it on her lips and dripping into her chest.