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Carlo beamed. Knowing Reuben, I was sure he’d booked somewhere upscale for us to stay, which arguably meant Carlo was used to dealing with people who didn’t like to be kept waiting at all. Carlo held out his hands to take our bags, but we both waved him off. Resigned, he shrugged and gestured toward the far side of the terminal. “Signore Reuben, he has made arrangements for you. Andiamo. This way, per favore.”
We wound through the small private terminal, Cal tugging at my hand the whole way.
“You can let go of me. He’s not watching us anymore.” The words were mumbled out of the side of his mouth, and he tried to pull away again, but I just squeezed his fingers tighter between my own.
I didn’t want to let go. The reality of the situation was that I liked holding Cal’s hand. I liked it a little too much. Which should make me want to drop it, but it didn’t. I liked pretending Cal was mine, and if getting to press quick kisses on his cheeks and hold his hand for the sake of our cover made my heart turn over in my chest, that was my business and what I was going to consider a perk of the job.
“Someone is always watching, Cal.” I squeezed his hand even tighter until he let out a little grunt that I liked almost as much as having his hand in mine. “You should know that. Then again, maybe you don’t. Might be why Alex never let you have the jobs that required finesse after what happened in Colombia.”
Cal sputtered through clenched teeth. “Wha—You?—”
“Calm down, sweetheart. We can’t all be good at the hard things.” I loved needling him like this. Giving him shit about his prowess, or assumed lack thereof on the job, pissed him off more than anything else, and it gave me a delighted little thrill to see the vein on his neck, the one that ran right through his saddle patch bulge as he tried not to rise to the bait.
He’d stopped walking, forgetting I still had his hand, and I tugged him forward as he tried to murder me with his stare, no doubt taking what I’d said about someone always watching to heart.
“Here we are, signori,” Carlo called from a few yards ahead of us. He was holding open a glass door that led out to a concrete dock. Several boats were moored in small slips, and Carlo ushered us to a mahogany water taxi with Palazzo Venezia painted on the side in elegant gold script. On board, the seats were soft cream-colored leather, and Carlo gestured for us to make ourselves comfortable. He went to a small refrigerator and removed a bottle of chilled prosecco.
“A drink while we travel?” He held up the bottle.
“Yes, please.” Cal scooted back in the seat and crossed his legs, his ankle resting on his knee.
Carlo smiled. “And you, signore?”
I started to refuse, but Cal leaned forward and put his hand on my thigh. The heat that radiated from the casual touch made me forget what I was about to say for a second, and Cal spoke for me.
“Of course he’ll have a glass. We’re celebrating, aren’t we,sweetheart?”
His last word was full of venom that was probably undetectable to anyone who didn’t know Cal, but I saw it for what it was. He was using the nickname I frequently threw at him to bait me. And in doing so, he’d painted me into a corner.
“Yes, we are definitely celebrating,darling.”
“Ah, fantastico.” Carlo popped the cork and filled two wine flutes, passing one to each of us and setting the bottle in an ice bucket on the small countertop over the minifridge. “Help yourself to the rest of the bottle. It will take us about forty-five minutes to get to the hotel. And don’t worry. I noticed Signore Reuben’s mistake on your reservation, and I fixed it for you.” He gave us a wink and moved to the front of the boat, where he turned on the engine, then hopped over the bow to remove the mooring line before resuming his position behind the wheel and deftly maneuvering us into the lagoon.
“What mistake did Reuben make on our reservation?” Cal had already knocked back more than half his glass of prosecco while I’d taken only a single sip from mine.
Shrugging, I shook my head. “No clue. Guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
“Guess so.” Cal said nothing else, settling back to enjoy the boat ride, content to sip his wine like we weren’t supposed to be working. When he got up to fill his glass for the third time, I finally broke the silence.
“We’re on the job.”
He looked around, waving to Carlo, who turned to make sure everything was all right, then resumed his seat. “I know.”
I tipped my head toward his refilled glass.
“Oh, am I doing this honeymoon thing wrong? I thought I was supposed to be madly in love with you and celebrating our marriage.” He lifted the glass. “This is how I celebrate. Or rather how I’m dealing with having to be mat—marriedto you.”
Mated. Cal had almost said mated. My mind snagged on the word and wouldn’t let it go. It was just a slip of the tongue, nothing more, but hearing him say it felt right. Much better than married. A lot of shifters didn’t really go in for the whole marriage thing, instead preferring to mate in whatever waywas traditional for their shifter species. For most shark shifter species, we exchanged bites like a lot of others. But some shifters still did the big white wedding with all the affiliated pomp and circumstance.
Apparently, Cal and I were the pomp-and-circumstance type since we were doing this whole honeymoon charade, but that made me wonder about orcas and their mates. As much as I wanted Cal, I’d never fantasized about a forever with him like that. Okay, that was a lie, but let’s just say I’d never given it enough serious thought that I’d done any real research into how orcas claimed their mates. Were they one of the species that believed everyone had a soul mate out there, someone they were fated to find and be with forever? Great white shark shifters didn’t.
But I didn’t like thinking there was someone out there who was fated to be Cal’s, or even if there wasn’t, that he believed there might be. It would just be another thing that separated us because there was no way I could ever be Cal’s if he was searching for his fated mate.
“Do orca shifters believe in fated mates?” The question fell from my lips, and Cal choked on his wine.
“What the fuck, Jack?” He coughed hard, trying to clear his throat. When he finally got the coughing fit under control, he glared at me. “Why do you want to know?”
“It just occurred to me that you mentioned we couldn’t sell this cover because we didn’t have rings, but you neglected to think about how not wearing each other’s claiming bites might be the bigger giveaway.”
