Footsteps(37)

He was staring at her as breathlessly, and she indulged a little vanity. She was wearing her Keds to protect her wounded foot, and she’d been worried that they ruined the look of her bathing suit—and then she’d felt silly for being worried. But seeing the hungry way his eyes took her in, lingering over her chest and belly as she’d lingered over his, she’d known that she looked fine.





She’d worn the black two-piece with the fuchsia embroidered trim because she knew that it worked for her—the top had the right support without being bulky, and the bottom had enough coverage not to be indecent but no more than that. It was James’s favorite, but she set that thought aside.





She’d wanted Carlo to see her. Like a schoolgirl, she’d wanted him to find her beautiful. And now he was coming toward her, his light brown eyes fixed on her, devouring her, and she felt pride and hope. And fear.





“Bina.”





“Carlo.” She started to rise, but he held his hand out, stopping her.





“No, sit.” He sat in the chair on her other side; Carmen returned to her seat. “I’m glad to see you. Are you all right?”





“Yes. You?” It was a silly thing to ask.





But he answered in a way that surprised her and made her heart speed even more. Leaning toward her, his voice low, he murmured for her alone, “Missed you.”





“Carlo.” She turned and looked into his eyes. What she saw there was heat and need and care. Glad as she was to see it all, she blinked and turned away. She didn’t like this fear she felt with her hope. Things felt like they were moving too quickly, out of control.





Luca sat down across the fire pit. Sabina wasn’t sure what to make of this brother. In the time she’d been here, she’d caught him several times leering at her, but he never seemed sorry or ashamed to be caught. He simply smiled, every time, taking the wind out of her irritation. He was built in a way she thought of as ‘thuggish’—like the men James hired to protect him for some of his business. Like all the men here except their father, Luca was shirtless, wearing long shorts. He had more hair than Carlo on his chest, in a lighter shade of brown. He also had tattoos on both biceps and across his belly. His brown hair and beard were close-cropped. He looked like the kind of man she should be afraid of.





But he had that disarming smile. So he unsettled her. But Carlo’s ease with him told her that he was a decent man.





He smiled at her now, his eyes on hers—they were light, perhaps blue or green—as he spoke to his brother. “We were just telling Sabina about the killer whale that beached a couple of years back. Remember that?”





Sabina turned back to Carlo and saw him nodding, still looking at her. “Yeah. That was pretty cool,” he answered.





“Luca said you saved it. All of you.”





“Yeah. The whole town, really. We kept him wet, dumping buckets of sea water on him, and then the fish and wildlife people came and we helped ‘em dig a trench. When the tide came in, we floated Shamu right back out. It felt good to see him swim away.”





“Scary though, that such a fish would swim so close to people.”





“Not a fish,” Luca jumped in. “Whales are mammals.”





Sabina felt herself blush a little at her mistake; she knew better. But Luca’s correction had felt condescending. She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Thank you for the biology lesson. Will there be an exam?”





A wide smile evolved across Luca’s face, and Sabina could read surprise, then humor, then appreciation in the movement of his mouth. Instead of answering her, he turned to Carlo. “Nice. I might have to turn on the charm, brother. Take you on.”





She cocked her head at that. “You think you have so much charm?”





Luca’s response was a full-body laugh and then a nod of surrender.





She spent most of her days making small talk with other society people, and she excelled at party chat. She was known for it, known to be a sparkling party guest, because she knew the right mood to strike, with whomever she spoke, whether she’d just met them or not. She could read people well—a skill she’d honed of necessity, married to James and needing to read him quickly and accurately and to make decisions about her own responses.





But she’d rarely indulged in the kind of barbed banter she’d just started with Luca. It was too much like flirting, and James would have ‘corrected’ her for it. When she cast a quick eye to Carlo now, feeling almost guilty, Sabina understood for a final certainty that she was putting Carlo in James’s place, gauging his responses as if she were accountable to him. It frightened her. And it made her furious with herself.