LITMIR.BIZ

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than most of the kids he dealt with on a regular basis. He liked her fresh, open acceptance of life. She was like a small version of Laura.

      And she didn’t half remind him of Natalie as well.

      But he hadn’t gone to say hi only to Jamii. He’d missed spending Friday night with Natalie in his bed. Two nights he’d spent with her now, and somehow last night, without her, he’d felt far more alone than he usually did.

      Maybe it was because he had worked late, then come home to see the light on in Laura’s apartment, to know they were up there—he could even hear Jamii’s giggle—and he’d wanted to go up as well.

      He hadn’t, of course. No way. No point. Bad idea.

      Instead he’d worked on one of his arguments for a case he was in conference about next week. But out of his window he’d kept noticing the light in Laura’s apartment.

      And then he’d noticed when it went off.

      She’d gone to bed. And dear God, he wanted to be there with her. He wanted to spend the night making love to her, then holding her, watching her fall asleep in his arms.

      She had once.

      No one ever had before. He couldn’t remember a single woman he’d slept with who had settled against him that way, who’d snuggled close and shut her eyes and simply trusted him like that.

      Natalie had because Natalie was not like the women he had affairs with, or noninvolved relationships with. Or whatever you called these liaisons that had everything to do with physical needs and nothing to do with the heart.

      Natalie, like her mother, had everything to do with the heart.

      He shouldn’t have slept with her. And at the same time he said that, he knew he could hardly wait to do it again.

      Was that why he’d sought them out today? Was that why he’d stayed?

      He twisted in his bed, sprawled and shifted and punched his pillow and tried to answer that.

      But he couldn’t come up with a good answer. Not one that his lawyer’s mind would admit or accept. He always enjoyed seeing Jamii. But it was less Jamii’s company than Natalie’s that he’d been angling for. Just having her there, watching and listening while he and Jamii were talking had felt—he punched the pillow again—right, somehow.

      And, of course, he was glad he’d stayed when he discovered Jamii’s fear of the water. He knew paralyzing fear. He’d had it himself. What his grandmother had done for him was something he’d always been grateful for. It seemed a small enough thing to share it with Natalie’s niece.

      And whether Natalie knew it or not, Christo knew that her niece had overcome her fear only in part because of his confidence in her. It was also having Natalie there. Natalie was the one Jamii knew, the one she loved and trusted. He told Jamii the story. He helped her. But he could not have done it alone.

      She needed the love and acceptance of her family as well.

      He wasn’t sure Natalie understood that. But maybe she did. She was Laura’s daughter.

      Dear God. He couldn’t believe he was sleeping with Laura’s daughter.

      He was going to have to stop. Soon.

      But not yet.

      Natalie opened the door almost before he knocked the next morning. “I have a tremendous favor to ask.”

      “Oh? That sounds promising.” Christo grinned. “Wash your back? Make slow, sweet love to you?”

      “I wish,” Natalie said frankly. “I wonder if you would watch Jamii.”

      He blinked. “I said I’d take her swimming.”

      “Yes, but I figured I’d go, too,” Natalie said. “So you wouldn’t be watching her precisely. I would be. But I— we—the business—has a job I need to do.”

      Christo’s eyes narrowed. “You need to be somebody’s wife?”

      Natalie nodded. “Somebody’s hostess in this case. One of our best clients is having a group of business colleagues out on his yacht. He was expecting Rosalie to do the honors. But Rosalie, I’m sorry to say, got food poisoning last night. Sophy just called me this morning.”

      “And Sophy can’t do it because—”

      “Because she gets seasick. I’m it, I’m afraid. I can see if Harry’s mother would mind having Jamii for the day. Jamii likes Harry and vice-versa, but—”

      “No,” Christo said, surprising himself. “I’ll take her.”

      “You’re a saint,” Natalie said and threw her arms around him. She kissed him, stunned him, really, that a swift simple kiss could have that much power.

      She shouldn’t have asked him. She didn’t know what else to do.

      And he could have said no.

      She was surprised he hadn’t.

      Natalie took her cell phone with her. “Call me,” she said, “if you have any problems. Dan and Kelly should be back by suppertime. They know you’re taking over for me. I rang them this morning. They say they’ll take you to dinner instead of me. It was part of the deal,” she explained.

      “They don’t need to feed me dinner,” Christo said promptly.

      But he’d said no to coming out with her and Jamii on Saturday, too, and look what had happened that day.

      “Whatever you want,” she told him.

      “You,” he said.

      Natalie was holding on to that thought.

      She’d been afraid, after last night’s unconsummated ending, that he might want to be finished with her already. She would not have been surprised if he’d called today and said he couldn’t make it.

      But he’d come. He’d even flirted a little. So their affair had lived another day. She wondered if she should notch them on a bedpost. Though even as she thought it, she knew she shouldn’t be facetious. She was riding high now. But she was riding for a fall, and she knew it.

      “Believe,” her mother always told her. “Trust. Hope.”

      “And you’ll get kicked in the teeth,” her more realistic daughter had countered after her father’s defection.

      “You don’t believe that,” Laura had chided her.

      And Natalie knew she didn’t. So she’d just keep believing, trusting and hoping that maybe someday Christo would realize he loved her, too.

      It might not have been his ideal day, but spending it with Jamii Ross taught Christo a lot more about her aunt Natalie.

      He learned she could play the piano, but she never liked to practice. He learned she liked spinach and artichokes but hated kale and brussels sprouts. He learned she had always wanted to travel, to see different places, but she hadn’t got to go yet.

      “Except to Mexico,” Jamii said. “She went with us last year to Cabo.”

      He learned she had been the co-leader of Jamii’s Brownie troop last year and would have done it again this year, but she had to work too many hours with her new job and she was really, really busy.

      “Too busy to even have a boyfriend,” Jamii reported, as she concentrated on building a turret for their sand castle.

      “Was she?” Christo didn’t examine too closely why he was glad to hear it.

      “Do you have a girlfriend?” Jamii asked him.

      “I—”

      “’Cause if you don’t, maybe you could have Aunt Nat.”

      “Tempting,” Christo said.

      He didn’t let himself

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