THIRTY

“THERE,” Matt declared back in his office. “All dressed.”

He wasn’t, but at least his extremely brief tighty-whities had been replaced by jogging shorts. Matt settled for a towel draped over his broad shoulders in lieu of a shirt, and I did my level best to ignore the water droplets speckling his tanned chest and hard biceps.

More than twenty years ago, when I first laid eyes on Matteo Allegro—shirtless, in cutoff combat fatigues, playing Frisbee with a black Lab on a Mediterranean beach—I’d found him undeniably attractive.

I was a nineteen-year-old art student at the time. He was a backpacking vagabond, a few years older, but light-years beyond me in experience, from speaking foreign tongues to sampling exotic cuisines—and exotic girls.

He’d been away from the States for over a year, and he said I felt like home.

We became friends at first, not lovers; because, at twenty-two, Matt was not a cynical playboy (not yet, anyway). Joyous and genuine, he was still filled with youthful hope and carefree laughter, along with vivid personal stories from some of the earth’s most glorious and dangerous places.

He and I might have been a one- or two-night affair, but a spinout on his motorcycle left him with a broken forearm and battered body.

Like a grounded bird, he seemed sad and lost when I found him reading at a small café. So I cheered him up by showing him—with an art student’s eye—the treasures to be found in the Vatican Museums.

By the end of it, he said I’d completely charmed him, making him laugh and think and feel. His cast had made him vulnerable. It also slowed him down, preventing him from dashing off to another part of the world, or risking his neck on paragliding, cliff diving, mountaineering, or any of the other extreme sports he loved.

And so, as the adrenaline junkie healed, we began our relationship.

When the Italian sun went down on our first night together, I drank him in like a superb espresso, wanting more and more. He wasn’t grabby or pushy. Instead, he gave me time, waiting until I’d warmed to him before using his lips and fingers to relax, excite, and surprise me.

The result of our many-splendored summer was Joy—an unexpected treasure I’ve cherished with all my heart.

I still cared deeply about the well-being of my child’s father. And like any straight woman with a heartbeat, I found Matt’s globe-trotting daring and combustible energy hard to resist. But romance with the man was a dangerous rocket. No matter how high he took me, I knew where that magnetic pull would leave me—plummeting down into a world that would consume me completely before burning me alive.

“Is that why you came here in the middle of the night, Clare?”

Matt’s tone had dropped an octave—his bedroom voice—and his eyes were melting into dark pools. “You came here just to talk? Or . . . for something else?”

As the edges of his mouth lifted in a let’s-be-bad smile, he stepped closer.

I stepped back.

“I assure you. I am not here for ‘something else.’ If you had returned my calls, I wouldn’t have come out here at all. And your secret would still be safe.”

He blew out frustrated air. “Who else knows?”

“Your mother. By the way, she says you always have a home with her.”

Matt winced. “And give up all this?”

“So why didn’t you return my calls?”

“I’m ducking the phone.” He ran the towel through his hair. “Breanne’s secretary keeps harassing me about moving my stuff out of the condo. That or gleefully informing me which privilege was canceled that day: the health club membership, the lease on the BMW, the dry cleaners, the hairdresser—” His fingers snapped. “Gone with the wind.”

“Tough break, Scarlett. Is the split that bad?”

“It’s permanent. Breanne and I are over.”