AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Harper is my daughter,” Skye’s face unknowingly beamed with pride. “She’s amazing.” She reached for her wine and took another sip. “You don’t have any children?”
He swore in Italian, then shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Ever been married? In a serious relationship?”
“No and no.”
“Really?”
“You think that’s unusual?”
“Well, you’re not that young,” she volleyed back, earning a playful flick of water from him. “And you have a lot of charm and skill in the bedroom,” she cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m surprised.”
“I’ve dated,” he said. “Some women for longer than others. But I’ve never met anyone I couldn’t live without.”
She frowned. “Maybe you’re just not meeting the right women?”
“I have never been into the whole fidelity until death do us part thing. It doesn’t make sense to me. Life is too short, and the pleasure of this too great. I like sex, I like women, I like different women, different sex.” He sipped his own drink. “What? Does that make me a chauvinist?”
“I’m trying to decide. Right now, I kind of think maybe it does.”
He laughed, deep and husky. “And if the women I date are on the same page as me?”
“I guess it’s just a lifestyle choice.”
“You said you didn’t want a relationship,” he reminded her. “Are we so different?”
“I can’t be in a relationship,” she corrected.
“Why not?”
“Jay.”
He frowned. “Your ex?”
“Right. He never fought me for custody of Harper. He said I could raise her, at least until she was school age. The importance of a mother being in a kid’s life, and all that. He takes her for one weekend a month, which almost kills me.”
Leandro was quiet.
“But he has made it abundantly clear that if I start dating again, he’ll sue for custody. He has more money than me, connections through college that would get him a great lawyer. And I couldn’t live with it, Leandro. I couldn’t live with only getting her half the time.” Her eyes misted over at the very idea.
Leandro placed his wine down deliberately and pushed towards her, his face a mask of anger. “You should not have to put up with that,” he said quietly. “You do not have to bend to him.”
“But I do. I can’t bear the thought of losing Harper, and so I bend to him completely on this matter. And it’s okay. Honestly, after Jay, I really don’t want to date again anyway.” She shuddered, the thought anathema to her.
“But this?” He gestured from himself to her.
“This isn’t dating,” she pointed out. “It’s the best of a relationship without all the messy stuff. I can’t do mess. Not again.”
He cupped her cheeks with his hands, his eyes probing hers. “I can guarantee you this will be completely mess-free. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” he muttered. “Your ex sounds like a bastard.”
“Yeah, a total A-hole.”
But then he kissed her, and thoughts of Jay evaporated from her mind, so too the lingering vestiges of remembered pain in her heart. Leandro kissed her in the warm water of the spa and she was capable of feeling only goodness and gratitude, her whole body singing with both emotions.
She didn’t think of Jay again.
How could she?
