Page 24 of Forever: The Companion

Lucia scowled, eyeing the doorway. “Not sure if he knows or not …”

“And why is that?”

“Because I found where he hid the phones, and now I’m hiding from him so that he doesn’t know I’m on them. No big deal.”

“Lucia!”

“I’m worried about work!”

“The gallery is fine,” Lucian replied, “and that is the last time I will tell you. Unless something happens, don’t call me again. Enjoy yourself, as your husband wants you to. That man went through a lot of trouble to get this last-minute vacation set up for you both. Take the time to … do something. Sleep in more, eat food you’ve never tried, take more walks … whatever. You deserve it and so does he. You’re worrying for nothing. I love you, bambina, and I will see you when you get home.”

“Daddy—”

“I said what I said.”

He didn’t even give her the chance to respond before he hung up the call. Lucia was left standing in the empty walk-in closet—they hadn’t brought along nearly enough things to actually use the space—staring at the phone in her hand. She had enough sense to at least turn the phone off entirely and place it back on the top shelf of the shoe rack in the closet. She put it with Renzo’s, where he’d clearly thought she wouldn’t go looking for it.

Nonsense.

She looked everywhere.

A whole lot of good it’d done, too.

She might have found the phones, but she hadn’t gotten what she’d wanted from them. It was like despite being in this beautiful place where she should be having the time of her life, the universe still wanted to laugh at her.

Or maybe …

Maybe she should just do what her father said.

And follow Ren’s lead.

Lucia gave one last look at the shelf where Renzo had hidden the phones and decided that would be the last phone call she made while on this island. Yeah, she would still worry about everything happening back home and with the gallery. That was just who she was, and she certainly wouldn’t apologize for it, but there was nothing she could do, either.

Enjoy her time.

So, she would.

Lucia went in search of Renzo—when she’d left him earlier in the kitchen, he’d been going over the menu for the next week with the chef—but quickly realized he was no longer worrying about the food. In fact, her husband looked as though he didn’t have a single care in the world as he walked along the far edge of the pool with bare feet at the back of the house.

It kind of looked like he was walking on water. The far edge of the pool was nothing more than a glass wall with a ledge that was about five inches wide. The water of the pool went right up to the top of the ledge, though, giving it that invisible appearance. It seemed to drop off into the backdrop of dense forest, framed by a waterfall a good hundred yards away, before dropping down from a ledge made up of sharp rocks into a crystal-clear pond of water down below.

One of her most favorite parts of the vacation home. Renzo’s too, she knew.

For just a moment, Lucia stayed back in the shadows of the sliding glass doorway leading out to the rear terrace that Renzo had left open so she could watch him without being seen. He stopped in the middle of the ledge, a good ten feet on either side of him before he would be safely back on the terrace.

Not that it seemed to bother him.

One wrong step and he’d fall thirty feet below to the ground.

She didn’t worry about that happening at all.

Besides, she was far too interested in the way her husband looked in nothing but loose-fitting pants that only reached above his ankles in length, resting low on the hard cut V of his groin. His tattooed back was on display as he stretched his arms high above his head.

He truly was a beautiful man.

And she was the lucky bitch who had his whole heart.

“Enjoying the view?”