Page 79 of Crossing the Line
Her lips curved and a smile bloomed. “Oh, what the hell?” She threw her arms around his neck and landed a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. “I’m going to Stanford!” she announced to the birds, the lake, and the morning sun.
Xavier held his coffee at arm’s length so it didn’t slosh on them and laughed. “Congratulations, Angel. What are you going to study?”
Waverly pulled back and frowned. “I have no idea.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he predicted. “Come on. Let’s go back and make breakfast and wake everyone up. They hate getting up early.”
As they walked back together, Xavier slung his arm over her shoulder and brushed his lips against the top of her head.
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Xavier found himself not saying a lot of things.
He wanted Waverly there, in his family’s home at their table laughing over eggs and bacon and pancakes. He wanted her making plans with his sisters for a lazy afternoon on the lake and sharing secret Hollywood recipes with his mother.
He didn’t want this to be her last visit. But there was no one to confess to. This was the mess he’d created and the one he was tasked with cleaning up. But cleaning it up was getting less and less appealing.
He was getting by on less and less sleep these days given her proximity. He checked on her a few times a night. Just sticking his head in her room, making sure she was safe, comfortable. But every time it was harder than the last to close that door and go back to his own empty bed. A part of him hoped that she’d be awake, that she’d say his name and hold out her hand to him. How could he say no to that?
He wanted things he couldn’t have.
She was a client. She was only twenty. They came from different worlds, and their personal aspirations were not relationship material. He had a business to build. And Waverly? Waverly needed time to find herself, finally, without the interference of family or a lover.
So he stayed silent, as he had when she’d talked about Stanford.
Xavier hadn’t wanted to bring up security concerns of what college life would mean for her plans. Just as he hadn’t wanted to tell her what he’d learned about Ganim yesterday, not while she was enjoying herself like this with the people he loved the most in the world. He didn’t want her to associate his family home with learning that the man obsessed with her was already a murderer.
If Les Ganim were still out there in the world by the end of summer, there was no way Waverly was going to college.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After a casual lake weekend with The Saints, Xavier felt a bout of culture shock coming on when he boarded the yacht Robert had borrowed for their last-minute cruise.
The azure waters of the Aegean Sea shimmered beneath the white hull, all one hundred and sixty feet of her. Waverly accepted the hand of a steward, who introduced himself as Leonidas, and climbed off the tender onto the lower deck of the yacht. Xavier followed. The deck, a glossy teak, climbed twin staircases and continued around both the starboard and port sides of the boat on the main level.
There was yet another level above that. Each with a wraparound deck and dark reflective windows promising no paparazzi lens could penetrate the privacy of the interior.
“Think this would fit on the lake at home?” Xavier quipped, peering up behind his aviators.
“Just a nice, quiet family vacation,” Waverly sighed.
“Your parents don’t do anything small.”
While a second steward unloaded their bags from the tender, Leonidas led them up the port stairs to the main deck. They walked aft almost the entire length of the yacht, passing a covered outdoor deck scattered with loungers. A large sofa in marine-grade white fabric faced a large teak table and chairs that sat just outside a wall of retractable glass doors. They entered what Xavier assumed was the main salon. A grand space for grand people was the only way he could describe it. Two seating areas were organized on opposite sides of the room. For casual conversations, there was a gigantic sectional sofa, again in white, and an uncomfortable-looking divan. Glass-doored bookcases that would make a librarian weep housed important tomes as well as trashy paperbacks and stacks of fresh, glossy magazines.
On the opposite side of the space was a bar with backlit shelves filled with every high-end liquor known to man. Here dark leather club chairs and a low, white sofa were clustered around an ornate coffee table. The rugs, antique Persian, offered a soft wash of color in navy and gold.
Beyond the living space was the salon’s dining area with service for twelve with tufted leather scroll back chairs around a glossy walnut table that mimicked the inlay of the room’s ceiling. Wide windows ran the length of the salon. Unshaded, they invited the Greek sun inside.
“Holy crap,” Waverly whispered.
“Be cool, Sinner. You’re used to this kind of insanity, remember?” Xavier teased.
Leonidas led the way down an interior stairway. “Ms. Sinner, you are in here,” he said in his thick accent. He opened a stateroom door for her. “Mr. Saint, you are across the hall here. Mr. and Mrs. Sinner are awaiting you aft on the upper deck.”
Waverly thanked him and ducked through her door.
Xavier ignored his room and followed Waverly into hers. It was spacious for boat living. The queen-sized bed buried under ivory linens had a curved, padded headboard that reached the ceiling. A long window offered a sea level view over the built-in dresser. The floor was some kind of zebrawood. An attached bath was accessed through a door next to the bed. Two built-in wardrobes and another dresser framed a flat screen TV on the wall opposite the bed and a silk upholstered couch took up most of the space on the interior wall.
