Full Circle (14 page)

She bit back a smile and nodded. “Okay, sure.
You could put it that way.”

He shifted position on the pool deck. “Yeah,
I’m not your stereotypical rich kid. I was brought up with a strong
work ethic. My parents never flashed their money around, and they
imparted the same values in me. I can afford the finer things, and
I enjoy the finer things, but I don’t flaunt them.”

“Until now.” Amusement tickled her
expression.

“Okay,” he said with a roll of his eyes, “so
I’ve flaunted them in the last few days.”

She held up her hand with her index finger
and thumb a half-inch apart. “Just a little.”

“Maybe a tad.” He lifted her hand to his
mouth and kissed the back. “But only because I have reason to now.”
After a brief pause to impart she was his reason, he continued.
“So, when my grandfather passed, he left half his fortune to my
mother, and the other half to me.”

“What about his other grandchildren? Weren’t
there others?”

“I’m it. Uncle Franco’s wife and two children
were, unfortunately, killed in the car crash with him, and I’m an
only child.” He glanced down at their joined hands. “You’d think
that since he was Italian he’d have had a massive brood of kids who
all had massive broods of their own, but he didn’t. I’m the last.
At least until . . .” He met her gaze. “Until I have
kids of my own.”

From the way her lashes lowered and she
leaned a little closer to him, he could tell she knew he intended
to have kids with her.

“Do you want to have children?” Since they
were getting to know one another better, he might as well ask a
question or two of his own and determine just how open she was to
the idea.

She shyly hid her face. “Yes.”

“With me?”

She blinked and met his gaze again, biting
her lower lip and slipping her leg back into the water. “Yes.”

It was the perfect moment. Moonlit, intimate,
romantic.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for.
The one he knew would come during this trip. The perfect moment to
propose. He should go inside and get the ring
and . . .

He sighed, curling his hand around the back
of her head and tucking her face against his chest as he kissed her
hair. Instead of rushing back to the bedroom for the ring, he
remained rooted in place, holding her, eyes closed, the breeze
cooling his skin.

He should propose this very moment. Not wait
another second. And yet, he just couldn’t. Maybe another moment
would present itself. A better moment.

They’d just decided they wanted kids
together, but he had yet to ask her to marry him. Talk about
putting the cart before the horse.

“So . . . you haven’t really
answered my question.” She lifted her head but remained angled
toward him. Her feet teased his feet in the cool water.

“You mean, exactly how much money do I have?”
Tonight had been revelatory. It felt good to get things out in the
open.

“Yes.” The single syllable lilted
suggestively, as if she didn’t want to come off pushy.

He smiled. “Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

He chuckled. “Enough that we’ll never have to
want for anything.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

He brushed her foot with his and linked their
fingers together. “Grandpa left me twenty-five million, which I
gained access to when I was twenty-one.” He glanced askance at her
with a conspiratorial dip of his head. “Grandfather was adamant
about making me wait until I was mature enough to understand the
responsibility of having that much money. But he needn’t have
worried.” He playfully rubbed his shoulder against hers. “Except
for those eighteen months after Carol left, I was very responsible,
even from a young age. I wasn’t the type to burn through millions
of dollars just because I could. When I turned twenty-one, I
aggressively invested and turned twenty-five million, plus the
interest it had earned waiting for me to come of age, into
forty-five by the time I was thirty years old. I think I’m sitting
right at forty-nine million now.”

Karma’s cheeks grew more luminous in the
moonlight as if the color had drained from her face. “That’s a lot
of money.”

“Like I said, enough to never want for
anything.”

She blinked several times and turned toward
the ocean.

He remained silent, intuitively understanding
she needed a time-out to digest this new bit of information.

Finally, she turned back toward him. “What do
you plan to do with all that money?”

“I plan to start my own business
someday.”

“What kind of business?”

“I haven’t decided. At one time, I thought
I’d take over the dance studio, but now I realize that’s someone
else’s dream, not mine.” And it wasn’t his dream anymore because
Carol’s duplicity had killed that part of his life, as well. “I’m a
good consultant, so that’s a frontrunner. But consulting is a
competitive field, and I’m just not sure my heart’s in it. I want
to love what I do, not just be good at it.”

They sat in silence for a couple minutes,
their legs lazily kicking in the water.

It was nice to finally open up. To even the
playing field and share more of himself with Karma when he already
knew so much about her. The only other person he’d ever come close
to doing that with was Carol, but even she didn’t know the things
about him Karma knew, mostly because she’d been the cause of them.
Or at least the catalyst. He never would have met Nina and fallen
into a pit of hell had Carol not left him the way she did.

Then again, he wouldn’t have discovered all
the fetishes he’d come to enjoy, either. Talk about a Catch-22.

But Carol had known about his money. She had
all but been a part of the family, even before he’d met her. His
parents had known her for two years before bringing her into their
studio, so there hadn’t been much she didn’t know by the time he
started dating her.

Even so, like Karma, she’d never come across
as a gold digger. Whatever problems they’d had in their
relationship hadn’t been created by his money. The fact she’d ended
up not marrying him confirmed as much. It was her one and only
saving grace. A gold digger would have seen the marriage through
then divorced him later and taken half his shit. Carol hadn’t done
that.

She’d never even moved in with him,
explaining she wanted to wait until after they were married to move
in together and not just “shack up” because he could afford it.
Which never really made sense, if he was being honest. In
hindsight, that should have been his first sign she was having
doubts about marrying him.

Then again, hindsight
was
twenty-twenty.

“Move in with me,” he blurted, breaking the
silence.

Karma’s head whipped around. “What?”

He pulled his legs out of the water and
turned toward her. “I’ve already been hunting for a place of my
own. Why don’t we make it a place for us? You and me. Our own
place, together.”

Why shouldn’t they move in together? Why
shouldn’t they find a home they could share? One with enough space
to raise a dozen children if she wanted that many.

“That’s a big step, Mark. Isn’t it too
soon?”

“It’s not soon enough, if you ask me.” He
gripped her hands, hugging them within his fists.

Once more, he thought to rush up to the
bedroom for the ring, but once more, he remained rooted in place.
Why was it so easy to discuss children and moving in together and
yet so impossible to broach the subject of getting married?

She searched his face, and then a slow smile
crept over her mouth. “Okay. Yes.” She took a steadying breath as
if she were both nervous and excited and wanted to remain calm.
“Let’s do it.”

Relief and joy rained over him. This was more
than he’d ever gotten from Carol, and it felt like validation.

“As soon as we get home, I’ll contact my
realtor and have her begin feeding me listings again.”

Karma’s hands trembled within his, but the
smile remained on her face.

“Our first house, Karma.” Everything was
falling into place better than he could have hoped. “We’re really
going to do this. This is really going to happen for us.”

And there he went, putting the cart before
the horse again. At some point, he would need to pay attention to
the horse and pull out that engagement ring. He refused to return
home without making their relationship official.

They’d gotten a lot of important subjects out
on the table tonight. Children, money, business, his past, and now
the house.

Yet the ring remained hidden out of
sight.

Chapter 7

You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help
him find it within himself.

-Galileo Galilei

On Sunday, and in need of some mental downtime to
let the seriousness of Saturday night’s conversations sink in and
mellow, Mark took Karma parasailing. Monday, he took her hiking. On
Christmas Eve, they took a helicopter tour of the island and
circled the twin peaks of Gros Piton and Petit Piton along the
southwest coast, as well as the tallest mountain on the island,
Mount Gimie, farther inland.

On Christmas, Mark chartered a yacht for a
private, twenty-four hour cruise.

Karma had never been on a yacht. The closest
she’d ever come was sitting in her dad’s fishing boat as he rowed
them toward their favorite fishing spot on Peterman Lake.

“What do you think?” Mark handed her a
cocktail glass filled with a reddish-orange concoction then eased
into the cushioned lounge chair beside her.

Squinting against the sun, she took in the
boat’s deck, which looked like something from
Lifestyles of the
Rich and Famous
, complete with a small pool and amenities that
put her apartment to shame.

“Let me put it to you this way. I never want
to go home.”

Mark laughed. “We have four more days.”

She groaned. “Only four?”

He clinked his glass to hers. “We’ll make the most of
them.”

They’d already been making the most of their
time in Saint Lucia, participating in a new activity every day. At
this point, she just wanted to relax and let the tropical sun and
surf sweep her away.

And she was ready for Mark to touch her
again. Since their conversation Saturday night, he’d given her a
lot of space. It was like he knew she needed time to work through
her feelings on everything he’d shared with her. And that was just
for the stuff he’d told her before he’d asked her to move in with
him.

And how about that? They’d only been back
together a month, and they were going to move in together.

Maybe most people—her dad included—would
think a month was too soon, but she was learning that she wasn’t
like most people, which Mark had so eloquently pointed out poolside
Saturday night.
Karma, you are anything but socially
appropriate, which is what makes you so extraordinary,
he’d
said.

She grinned at the memory then sighed as she
laid her head back against the cushion and turned her face skyward,
eyes closed.

In the days since Saturday night, she’d
absorbed everything he’d told her. And, surprisingly, most of the
worry she’d felt by the pool Saturday night had dissipated. The man
beside her was still the man she’d come to know almost two years
ago. He was still the man she’d fallen in love with. He was just
more real now. Some of the gaps of his past had been filled in,
that’s all.

But he’d withheld himself now for three days
as if he wanted to give her time to think and digest everything
he’d told her. Well, she’d had plenty of time for that. The time
for processing was over. She wanted to feel that intimate
connection with him again. The one she always felt when they made
love. His whole soul seemed to open during sex, and she relished
those moments when, for just a brief while, he lay stripped,
completely unguarded.

She sipped her fruity cocktail as she peered
at Mark from behind her sunglasses. Her drink was surprisingly
delicious. She couldn’t taste a lick of alcohol, but she knew it
was there by the way it warmed her throat on the way down. Or maybe
that was just the effect of staring at Mark. His skin was nicely
tanned after five days in the sun, which made the ridges in his
abdomen pop and the defined
V
leading into his swim trunks
practically lickable. But it was his firm pecs and carved arms and
shoulders that did Karma in. Mark had the kind of arms that, when
he held a woman, made her feel like she was really being held, and
not just held but safe.

Her gaze shot to the two attractive
waitresses who’d been waiting on them. Were they even called
waitresses on a yacht? Whatever their job titles, the way they’d
been making flirty eyes at Mark and staring at him since they’d
boarded, she would just as soon call them boat bitches.

She thought back to how Lisa had insinuated
during dinner Friday night that she was more jealous than she
wanted to admit. Okay, so maybe Lisa was right. Maybe she was a
little possessive. She’d have to work on that.

She hazarded a glance at the boat bitches eye
fucking her man.

Or not.

Taking another sip of her drink, she picked
up her sunscreen from the table beside her.

“Could you put this on my back?” She held the
bottle toward Mark.

Asking him to put sunscreen on her might have
been a barely veiled cliché, but she didn’t care. She simply wanted
Mark to know she’d had enough time to ponder their discussion and
was ready to have his hands on her again.

Beyond ready.

Because his touch was like meth. Totally
addicting. And she’d gone far too long without a hit.

She couldn’t see his eyes through his
blackout sunglasses, but from the way his mouth quirked as he took
the sunscreen from her hand, she could tell that he was piecing
together her intentions.