“Stay here with me and you can have all the cherimoya you can eat.”
Our conversation had been the easy kind that casual acquaintances had with one another. His last comment, though, had been uttered with what sounded very much like sincerity. As if he had truly meant it.
Stay here with me . . .
I did what any woman who wasn’t sure if the man she was speaking to was joking or not would do. I laughed and withdrew my hand from his light grasp. “Wow, if you’re an example of that famous Latin charm, no wonder it’s, well . . . famous.”
He held my gaze. “Will you consider it?”
“What?” I needed him to say it, in case I was mistaken.
“Staying here with me.”
I blew out a breath. “You’re kidding.”
“I do not kid,” Roberto said with grave sincerity. “I ask that you think about it.”
The idea that he was serious—that he meant it—was overwhelming. “Why? You hardly know me. I hardly know you.”
“I know that you are like me, and that I have been alone all my life until now, as have you. I know that our chemistry is alike, a small miracle to me.” He grazed his thumb lightly over the back of my hand, sparking that strange surge of energy between us again. “It does not sound as if you have much to return to: no job, no family, no close lovers or friends. You have been alone all your life, like me, and I have never felt anything like this before with another woman. It would be criminal, as you say, not to taste this, explore it . . . savor it.”
Oh my. For someone who had never been attracted to a woman before, he was very, very good—smooth and suave and tantalizingly seductive.
My hand crept up automatically in a nervous gesture to touch the necklace I had always worn. “My necklace,” I said, reminded of its loss. “What happened to my necklace? I know I was wearing it when I fell. I always wear it.”
“Do you?” he asked curiously.
“Yes, it was the only thing I had when they found me abandoned as an infant on the doorsteps of an orphanage.”
“So you have had it ever since you were a child?”
“Yes, it’s the only thing I have from my mother. Please tell me you have it.”
He nodded, and I felt a surge of relief well up within me. “Oh, thank God. I would have been devastated if I had lost it.”
“It looked valuable, so I put it in my safe for safekeeping and forgot about it until you reminded me. I shall go get it. No, stay here. Allow me to bring it to you.”
My joy, when he returned, turned to puzzlement. The item he laid carefully down on the table was a necklace all right, but one I had never seen before. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Your necklace. The one that you were wearing when you fell and hit your head.”
“But the necklace I’ve always worn is just a simple cross. This . . . I don’t recognize it.” I looked down at an exquisite cameo, the likeness of a man carved upon its ivory surface with scroll-like writing framing the rim. The bottom was engraved with the fierce image of a stylized dragon. As I ran my finger over the engraving, the present world hazed over and the man whose likeness was carved onto the cameo was looking at me. His eyes were a deep, rich chocolate brown.
“The dragon denotes my lineage and is the crest of our family line. Will you wear this?” he asked.
With an abrupt wrench, I returned back to present reality.
“What’s the matter?” Roberto asked, grasping both my hands.
I was shaking, trembling.
“I don’t know. I think . . . I remembered something—someone. The man who gave me this necklace. He said the dragon denoted his lineage, his family line.”
“Who was he?” Roberto demanded.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Roberto stared at the cameo image as if by sheer will he could make it impart its secrets to him.
Picking up the bright silver chain, I examined the scrolled writing more closely to see if it might jar loose some more memory.
“That does not hurt you?” Roberto asked, sounding odd.
“What?”
“The silver chain you are holding.”
“No? Why should it?” I asked.
He gazed at my fingers holding the delicate chain. When I continued to simply hold it with no sign of discomfort, he pushed his chair back and stood. “How interesting,” he murmured. “Do you remember anything else?”
“No. Nothing else,” I said, disappointed and highly perturbed. Who was that strange man with the dark chocolate eyes? And why was I wearing the necklace he had given me instead of the silver cross that meant so much to me? Could he have been the fourth man my landlord had mentioned? The one he described as average looking?
“Lisa,” Roberto said, drawing my attention back to him, “we have mentioned that we are alike, you and I, but have tiptoed around the matter. I think it time to lay our cards on the table. I shall go first. I heal unusually fast like you do,” he said, gesturing to the fading bruises on my arm. “I am also faster and stronger than anyone else I know. I can hear things other people cannot hear, and see things from a great distance away that other people cannot see.”
I felt as if my heart stilled for a moment as he said aloud the secrets I had kept from others all my life.
“What about you?” he asked softly.
As my heart regained its rhythm and thumped loudly in the silence, I realized something else I had not noticed till now. Roberto’s heartbeat was beating as slow as mine, at around fifty beats per minute. Most heartbeats ranged from sixty to a hundred beats per minute. Another shared oddity between us.
“Me, too,” I whispered, intimidated even now by speaking of these things aloud. “Ever since puberty I’ve been faster and stronger than other people, my senses—hearing, seeing, smell—all sharper, more acute.”
“But this.” He gestured to the silver chain I still held in my hand. “This does not hurt you or weaken you in any way?”
“No. Why should it?”
He searched my eyes as if he would glimpse all their secrets. “No reason,” he said, sitting back down.
I blew out a breath, feeling a curious relief from unburdening myself. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. You’re just like me.” Hesitantly, shyly, I laid my left hand over his chest to feel his unusually slower heartbeat. “Your heart even beats slower, like mine.”
He held himself very still beneath my touch.
“What?” I asked. “Why are you grinning and looking at me like that?”
“Because it is the first time you have voluntarily touched me.”
I drew back my hand, flustered. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No, do not apologize. I like it very much when you touch me. Why are you staring at me like that?”
The words left my mouth before I had a chance to think. “Because when you smile you go from being remarkably handsome to almost irresistible.” I felt my cheeks grow warm. “Did I just say that out loud?”
Roberto laughed, and the sound of his laughter was as compelling and tantalizing as the rest of him. “Yes, to my great enjoyment. I shall endeavor to smile more for you, my sweet Lisa,” he said, reaching for my hand.
I drew back, my gaze dropping to the necklace that lay between us. “No . . . I’m sorry. You make flirting so easy, so fun, and I admit to a powerfully strong attraction to you . . . but I don’t remember the last few months of my life. I don’t know if there might be someone else I’m committed to, unlikely though that may be.”
“You do not wear a wedding or engagement ring,” Roberto observed carefully.
“No.” I looked down at my bare fingers. “I don’t.”
Gently he lifted my chin until our eyes met again. “Then count me in the running.”
“Of what?”
“A suitor, like this other man you remember may be.”
“More likely he was just a new friend I had made, or perhaps a neighbor or a coworker.”
“There you go again, denigrating yourself.”
“With good reason. I know I’m not beautiful. I’m just a very plain-looking woman.”