All right, the day was half over, and he’d spent a great deal of it thinking about Jen. If keeping his distance wasn’t going to force his mind onto the threats here and at home, then why not make a pest of himself and let her give him the boot? He had nothing to offer but problems. Nearly every subject had to be avoided. If she found him boring, so much the better. They’d each go their own way, and she’d stay safely ignorant and unhurt.
“Kyrios!” Petra called across the terrace.
“There you are,” Cleo exclaimed, hopping up and down on her toes. “Guess guess guess guess!”
“English,” he reminded her as he crossed the terrace to join the girls.
Cleo obediently switched to English. “There is an advanced class tomorrow, and Ms. Jen Carlsen said we could come as her guests, because you signed their papers!” She clasped her hands, her honey-brown eyes full of excitement. “They have weapons practice. Say you’ll come.”
“It sounds like the pair of you were invited,” he responded, laughing at her enthusiasm. “Not I.”
Jen turned his way. “Practice is open to all at the equivalent of brown belt and up. From what I saw of Petra and Cleo’s forms today, I would place them around that level.” She held up a plate. “Cake?”
“It’s delicious,” Cleo exclaimed, adding proudly, “I ate four pieces!”
Nikos accepted the plate, careful not to touch Jen’s fingers. He busied himself taking a bite, and paused to relish the blend of flavors so different from those at home.
“They call it hazelnut and custard,” Cleo said earnestly. “And it tastes like it was made of air!”
It really was delicious. Nikos looked up, to meet Jen’s warm gaze. “You’re welcome to join us,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, giving up. “If I finish helping Joey with his project in time, I’d like that.”
And—regretfully, because this entire situation was impossible—he knew he would.
FIVE
JEN
Jen went home, grateful for the generous lunch that left her so full she wouldn’t be put to the trouble and expense of figuring out dinner once her evening classes were over. But that wasn’t going to last.
Maybe she ought to take Doris up on her cooking lessons. A pulse of the old mix of grief and guilt made her wince as she walked into the silent house. She looked toward her laptop out of habit—it was the only way to shut out the silent, Robertless environment that otherwise was still exactly the way Robert had wanted things: simple, practical, mindful of their carbon footprint. Nothing that they didn’t actually need in order to keep the body going, so that the mind was free to work on exposing the world’s ills.
She still had the taste of that cake in her mouth, which felt . . . irresponsible. That was silly, of course. It was just a cake. It would have been baked anyway, whether she ate some or not. And Robert would have b
een the first to say, “Go ahead and enjoy it if you like it.” Then his face would light up with some other thought and he’d dive back into work.
A restless sense stirred in her, and there in memory was Nikos, relishing what was after all one of life’s simplest and yet most fundamental pleasures: delicious food. Cake didn’t impart important vitamins and minerals. It existed for a single purpose, to please the taste buds. And he’d looked pleased as he ate it.
He certainly wasn’t merely devoted to pleasure, not with that body. She didn’t know what the story was with the two girls—if she had to guess, judging by the girls’ enthusiasm for martial arts, they had won some sort of contest or scholarship, and were traveling around the United States visiting various studios with their martial arts teacher. Maybe they were part of a larger tour group, and had stopped in Playa del Encanto because Nikos clearly knew Joey and Mikhail. All that suggested hard work and dedication.
But she’d seen the quiet pleasure in his expression at the food, the scenery, even the conversation. She wondered if he watched sunsets. Or listened to the rush of a stream. Or breathed the scents of pepper trees blooming, or ran his bare feet in the warmth caught in the sand long after the sun had gone down. All these little pleasures she’d stolen time to enjoy while trying to be diligent in working for the world’s greater good.
Well, she’d get to see the girls tomorrow. She adored kids of any age.
And she would get to see him.
The thought caused a surge of pleasure inside her—not just pleasure, but heat.
She didn’t know what to do with these feelings she hadn’t had since she was a freshman in college. It wasn’t the sort of guilt that came with betrayal. She had made a promise to stay loyal until “death do us part,” and had. It was that her reaction to this stranger was so intense. If anything, it felt stronger than it had when she was nineteen, and most of her idea of romance had been inside her own head. She had no idea what to do with that.
She wandered to the bedroom, staring down at the bed in which she now slept alone, still on her side, the other side flat and clean, as if Robert were about to climb under the covers.
She looked down at herself. Maybe all this intensity was just a hormone spike. She still had periods, though they’d slowed down to three or four a year.
She stood in the middle of the bedroom, restless, uncertain. This past couple of years, she had indulged her secret wish to write fiction, which Robert had never understood—the last novel he read had been in his senior year English Lit class. Jen hadn’t been able to explain her craving for other worlds and wild impossibilities like magic. They had traveled to some of the most beautiful and dangerous places on Earth, but Robert never wanted to linger. They always kept moving in search of the truth of whatever ecological disaster or corrupt CEO or nasty politics they were investigating next. However, those wonderful, fascinating places had been seeping into her story ideas as she lingered over memories in ways she hadn’t been able to linger in the places when she was actually there.
She knew that these past couple of years she had been writing as a way of escaping the sense that her life had become a narrow box.