Our food arrived and I dug in. Hot sex with Caro was currently replacing my daily work-out. Gotta say it rocked.

It suddenly occurred to me that I really didn’t know what a normal day was like for her—in fact I didn’t know that much about her life. We’d spent so much energy just reconnecting, I hadn’t had a chance to ask her before.

“Tell me about your place in Long Beach, Caro,” I suggested.

“Oh! Sure, okay. Well, it’s small; a bungalow in an area called the West End. It was built about 90 years ago, and it was pretty beaten up when I bought it. I restored the porch at the front so I can sit out and watch the ocean, and in the winter the windows get covered in salt from the wind coming off the Atlantic. I have some really great neighbors, and they look after the place while I’m away. My friends like to come out from Manhattan on the weekends. You spoke to Nicole, she works in merchant banking; and then there’s Jenna, who’s a bitch-on-wheels attorney, but actually she’s really lovely; and Alice, she’s a Professor of literature at NYU. I met her when I was going to school there…”

Fuck me! Bankers, lawyers and professors? I was so out of my fucking league.

I should have known—I should have realized.

What the fuck was she doing with me?

She must have seen something on my face, because she stopped suddenly.

“What’s the matter, Sebastian?”

The food felt like sand in my mouth, and I struggled to swallow.

“How am I going to fit in with your life there, Caro? All your friends have these amazing careers … and I’ll just be a jobless grunt with a high school diploma.”

“Sebastian, no!”

“You know what they’ll think. Marine: Muscles Are Required Intelligence Not Essential.”

“Hey! No one will think that, and you know what? I don’t give a shit anyway. Sebastian, haven’t we had to listen to enough crap in the past to care less what anyone else thinks now? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me?”

Yeah, well, not sounding so convincing now.

“Sebastian, do you love me?”

My eyes fixed on hers.

“You know I do, Caro. Sempre.”

She reached across the table and took my hand.

“Then whatever happens, we’ll deal. I vaguely remember someone saying that to me. Oh, wait, that was you a couple of days ago. Sebastian, the only thing my friends will care about is that I’m happy.”

It was hard to believe.

“What about your plans to be a personal fitness trainer?” she went on. “And, jeez, Sebastian, we’ll be in New York: you could do something amazing with your language skills. Don’t go and get all shy on me now, Hunter!”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to relax. If she believed it, why the fuck couldn’t I?

“Yeah, okay. Sorry. I just kinda freaked for a moment there.”

“I know and I understand. It’s weird for me, too, and we haven’t been doing this for very long. I guess you could say we’re out of practice with the whole dating thing. I feel very un-me sitting here in this shockingly short miniskirt, but I tried it, for you.”

“Shockingly short?” I said, smiling despite myself.

She pulled my hand under the table and let me run my fingers up her bare thigh.

“Yeah,” I agreed, raising one eyebrow. “Shockingly short.”

Her hand clamped down on mine, stopping my ascent.

“Okay, Columbus, you’ve discovered enough for one evening,” she said, laughing at my chagrined expression.

Then her smile softened.

“Come, tesoro, take me home.”

I woke up long after dawn—unusual for me since I’d joined the Marines. It might have had something to do with the way my body felt deeply relaxed, or the fact that I’d made love to Caro for hours the night before.

Yeah, we fucked too, and sometimes that was rough and fast and hard, but something about her softness and sweetness and the love I saw in her eyes made me want to go slow and savor every second. And although I didn’t want to admit it, our time was running out—again.

I smiled as her eyes slowly opened.

“Ciao, bella.”

“Ciao,” she said, smiling up at me.

She stretched, accidentally bumping against my dick that had been rigid for quite a while and was begging for attention.

My hand drifted over her hip, and she didn’t stop me when my fingers slipped over the damp curls of her mound and into her slick heat. She sighed and groaned, a sound that caught in my chest and made my heart beat faster. Christ, this woman.

Two hours later, Signora Carello served us breakfast on a small terrace overlooking her backyard. It was a blaze of color and I could see that Caro loved it here. If my girl was happy, I was happy.

The signora joined us for coffee.

“So,” she said, smiling at Caro, “you are hoping to find family in Capezzano Inferiore?”

Caro’s expression was wistful.

“That would be the icing on the cake, but really I just want to see the village where my father came from. If I find family, well…”

It pissed me the hell off that I couldn’t give her everything she wanted.

The signora smiled sympathetically and patted Caro’s hand.

“Perhaps you will find family in a different way,” she said, glancing at me and smiling.

Caro looked at her dubiously and I thought she was going to put her reporter brain into gear, but she didn’t. Instead, she drained her coffee cup and stood up to leave.

Signora Carello squeezed my hand and whispered, “Amor regge senza legge.”

It took me a moment to translate, but then I grinned at her and she winked. Yeah, I liked that one: Love rules without laws.

We strolled through Salerno and I enjoyed the feel of Caro’s small hand in mine. I’d fucked a lot of women in the last six years, but holding hands, out in public, that was way more intimate. I liked it: it felt right.

Caro stopped to admire the yachts in the harbor as we leaned on the railings, the sun turning the water to a deep blue.

“I should take you sailing some time,” I said. “If we had more time, I’d rent us a boat and teach you.”

“I already know,” she smiled. “Although I haven’t been out on a sailboat for years.”

“Really?” I was surprised. “I didn’t know you could sail.”

“Ah, you don’t know all my talents yet, Hunter.”

I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “I’m looking forward to finding out.” Then I straightened up. “But when did you learn?”

She seemed uneasy, and when she answered I knew why.

“David taught me.”

“The asshole?”

“The very one.”

I hated hearing her talk about her ex-husband, and I definitely didn’t want to hear that he’d taught her to sail. That skewered my heart. I knew it was irrational to hate something that had happened long before Caro and I had gotten together, but I did. I hated every single second that she’d ever spent with him. I hated that he’d been her first. I hated that he’d nearly broken her, and if I ever saw that fucker again, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

“It was a long time ago, Sebastian,” she said softly. “And we agreed we couldn’t change the past, so stop looking so mad or I’ll have to kiss you indecently in public.”

I was still off balance as she spoke, but my pulse quickened when her meaning filtered through the red mist that had descended the second she’d mentioned her ex-husband.

“Nope, still pissed off, Caro. You’ll have to kiss me. I don’t know if it’ll work, but you could try.”

I stared at her challengingly.

“Are you sure, Sebastian?” she purred. “Because I don’t want to get you all hot and bothered.”

“I’ll risk it.”

She turned to face me, standing so close that our bodies touched. And then she ran her hand over my ass, under my t-shirt, and dragged her nails down my back hard enough to make my breath catch in my throat. With her other hand, she pulled my head down and kissed me hard, stealthily rubbing over my zipper at the same time.