Page 28 of Beauty
“Sure.” She folds her towel in half, then in half again, and drapes it over her arm. “I can do that.”
“Want me to walk you back to your room?”
She rolls her eyes. “If you hadn’t given up your nice room to avoid me, we could walk back together. But no, I can get back myself okay. Unless…” She trails off, scanning the beach before blinking up at me.
The look is weighted, heavy. Like she has something other than lunch in mind.
Stomach tightening and heart racing, I force myself to respond. “Unless?”
She presses her teeth into her lip. “I can walk back with you, and then you can come to my room.”
Maybe it’s my imagination, but it almost sounds like she doesn’t want to leave me any more than I want to leave her. Like spending thirty minutes apart is a terrible waste of the limited time we have here.
“Okay, though it probably makes sense to stop at your room first, since you’re near the water.”
With a shrug, she turns toward the path that winds along the beach and to the villas.
“So, Paris,” I hedge.
Last night, once I finally found the strength to stop kissing her, I got the hell out of there, worried about what would happen next if I didn’t, so I never had a chance to ask about her move.
Sienna hums, her focus on the sidewalk ahead. “Yes, Paris.”
“Why are you moving?”
“Job. It’s a big move for my career. But I’m nervous. Being the youngest of five siblings means that I’ve always been kind of cocooned.”
Amused, I parrot her words. “Cocooned?”
She giggles. “Like I can’t go anywhere without someone being in my business. They all care. They only do it because they love me. But I’m ready to fly, ya know?”
I nod, smiling. “Yeah, butterfly, I think you are.”
“Butterfly.” She hums. “I like that.”
“Better than sweet cheeks?”
Her already flushed face goes red. Most of the time, she’s sassy, but then she has soft moments like this, almost like the sexy clothes and sharp tongue are a front. A defense mechanism, perhaps. Like the intricate designs on a butterfly. The colorful attitude protects her. It allows her to stand out, or blend in, depending upon the role required of her at that moment.
One of my strengths is my ability to read people. It’s served me well in my career. I study my opponents’ tells so I know when they’re about to deke left or glide right. I know when a goalie hastaken his focus off a certain spot. It takes a second of indecision on his part and a fake-out on mine to get the puck into the back of his net.
Though I don’t normally use that intuition in my day-to-day life. I’ve never really had reason to, I guess. My focus has always been fixed solely on hockey. If I’m not studying tape, training, or working out, I’m keeping my brain occupied with crossword puzzles or a documentary. I like learning and I like studying, but I’ve never been interested enough in a woman to use those skills to discover more about her.
But with Sienna, I want to know everything and I’m studying every detail. It takes work, and I’ve got to really focus on the little comments, the body language, and the facial expressions, because she’s not giving me much to go on.
“In what industry is this big career move happening?”
Sienna stares off toward the ocean, those green eyes going distant, and shakes her head. “Can we not do that whole thing?”
“What whole thing?”
Head tilted, she sighs. “The careers, the last names. I don’t want any of that to influence the way you look at me.”
I frown. “Why would your last name influence the way I look at you?”
“It influences how everyone looks at me,” she says, a soft sadness to her voice.
My hackles rise a little, an unfamiliar defensiveness overtaking me. “I’m not everyone.”
