Page 97 of Give & Take

My mouth is dry. I feel suddenly completely exposed. As I should.

I drop my knee. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” I blurt out.

He snaps his gaze back down to me. “No.” Then frowns. “Wait, which part? Me being in here with you? Or you hiring me in the first place? Or something else?”

A breathslides out of me, which blows a tiny fluff of bubbles from the heap at my chest. “Both. I should have hired some elderly Scottish lady. Someone with rumpled pantyhose and excellent pie-making skills.”

“I can make pie.”

I close my eyes. Jokes are good. I can do jokes. “No you can’t.”

“I mean I’m sure I could if I tried.” He’s back to his normal, confident self.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re incredibly self-assured? Some might call it cocky.”

“Nonsense.”

“What do you mean, nonsense?”

But then Raph skims a finger through the bubbles. Whatever it was I did that gave me the upper hand a moment ago—that put him at a loss for words—it’s gone. I can hardly breathe as he drags his finger in a cleaved path through the bubbles, only a scant few inches above my body.

It could be a lazy gesture that doesn’t mean much. Except when I look at Raph, his eyes are on me. He’s smirking, just a little. Yet he looks…mature. Like he’s making all the jokes, but he’s the one who’s firmly in control here.

A tingling heat runs through me, right under where his finger trailed a moment ago.

“Well,” he says, and I realize he’s answering my question, about him saying nonsense to me calling him cocky. “Every single human is amazing, don’t you think? All of us. We’re living, breathing manifestations of divinity. Or stardust. Whatever you believe. The chances of us evenexisting are 1 in 10 to the 2,500,000th power. Or something close to that.”

“Is that right?”

“Statistics don’t lie.” His eyes twinkle as he looks at me.

My stomach twists. But it’s not just my stomach. It’s my chest, too. I feel…too happy around this man.

This much younger man leaving at the end of the summer.

I’ve tried so hard not to think about that. Not when I’m trying to let myself relax; to fall into whatever this is because fighting it is just too hard.

His eyes don’t leave mine. “You okay, Sunshine?”

I shake my head. “No,” I whisper.

Raph studies me a moment, then brushes a strand of wet hair from my temple. His finger leaves a wet path across my skin that somehowfeelslike sparkles. Like he’s left that stardust he talked about there. I want to commit the sensation to memory.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. Not in a confused way, but in a way that tells me he wants me to lay it all out. To list out all the things that are wrong with what we’re doing so he can negate them one by one.

And I want him to. God, I want him to.

Suddenly I feel like the younger one here, the more naïve one. The more vulnerable one. I’m certainly the one with more to lose.

“Nannies don’t normally come into the bathroom with their employers. That makes their employers very bad people.”

“Do you think you’re a bad person, Lana?”

There’s no innuendo there. It’s a serious question. But it still sends a spark of something through me. Something dark and forbidden.

“No,” I say tentatively.

He strokes another strand of hair from my face and I take a stuttering breath at his touch. I close my eyes, tipping my face toward his hand.

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