Natalya tilts her head. The glow from the house lights outline her silhouette, leaving her face dark. He can’t read her expression.
“The paperwork. What’s it for?” he asks more specifically.
“Guardianship of Julian and Marcus. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
He raises bent arms. “No!”
“But you said on the phone . . .” She stalls.
“I said what?” He moves a step closer.
She frowns and takes a deep, shaky breath. “Jeez, this is confusing. I was talking about Carlos, not you. It’s that every time I look at you, I see . . . him.”
While today is the first time he’s seen her in person, she’s been around him for years. The reconstructive surgery to his face helped Aimee separate him from Carlos in her mind, but to Natalya, he looks identical to the man she loved.
Her shoulders bow and chin lowers. “This is so weird.”
He slides his hands into his pockets and ducks his head to look up at her. “If it helps any, I’m floating in that same boat.” Seeing her is like seeing a character from a novel come to life. He’s read so much about her. Knows numerous intimate details, such as why she wears scars on her lower belly and that she hurt as much as the women her father left behind when he traversed the globe.
His eyes have slowly adjusted to the night sky and he sees a flash of white appear when she quickly smiles. A light breeze ruffles her skirt and he’s quite taken with how beautiful she is. His body has made love to her. His hands have touched every secret fold. And his mouth has worshipped every feminine curve.
His mind, though, can’t recall a damn second of it, and strangely, James regrets that.
Natalya gathers her hair, gives it a twist, and drops it over her shoulder. “Let me rephrase so this isn’t confusing to either of us. Carlos didn’t want his sons raised around the Donato family. He didn’t trust them, and that includes you. He was also convinced you wouldn’t want to be burdened with two kids you didn’t ask for. He asked me to assume legal guardianship. He told me he was going to give you an ‘out clause’”—she air-quoted—“by writing in his journal that I would take your kids should you not want to raise them. When you called and said you want me to watch your sons—”
“Not indefinitely.” He slices a hand outward in the space between them. “Maybe just a week or two, if that. But let’s get back to Carlos. There’s one thing we can agree upon, and that’s my family. I don’t trust my brothers anywhere near my sons.”
Natalya releases a long, steady breath. She smiles gloriously. “I’m so relieved to hear that.” He now realizes why she gave him the cold reception at the airport. She thought he was unloading his sons on her.
“My mother, though, is another story.”
“Yeah.” Natalya rolls up on her toes and back. “That was a shocker. I can’t believe Carla is your mother. Should I be worried?”
He itches the back of his neck, then his elbow. “I can handle her. The boys don’t know about her, and I’m not sure how they’ll handle the news.” He takes the empty bottles from Natalya and motions for her to follow him back to the house. Mosquitoes are biting. “They’re already mad at me because I’m not their real dad. How do you think they’ll feel when they learn the old lady next door that bought them ice cream and churros isn’t who they thought she was either?”
“I can’t say, but Señora Carla loved your sons, which means your mother loves her grandsons. We take risks and do things we can’t necessarily explain for those we love.”
Natalya’s statement couldn’t be truer. James has been guilty of that on more than one occasion. He feels like a hypocrite when he says, “But she lied to them.”
“That bothers you.”
“Immensely.” Because he lied to Aimee for years about his family, and look where that got him. He yanks a hibiscus flower off the bush they pass and twirls the stem. “You?”
“Yes, but . . . I understand why she did what she did. Carlos wouldn’t have let her near them had she told him the truth. I also don’t think she visited just to see them.”
“No?” He spins the flower stem.
“She spent most of her time with you, James. She was there to see you. You’re her son, a son she thought had died. I assume Thomas eventually got around to telling her about you. Can you imagine how she felt?”
“They aren’t talking. Not regularly, not like they used to.”
“No surprise there.”
A breeze moves between them, ripe with rain and heavy with salt. Natalya stops near the bottom step of the stairs that lead up to the lanai. She turns to him. “I assume you love your sons since you aren’t giving them to me.”
“Unconditionally.”
“I told Carlos you would.” She briefly smiles, then absently scratches at the wood banister rail with a fingernail. “I remember Carlos telling me how nervous Carla was around you during her first visit to Mexico. Imagine how you’d feel learning Julian or Marcus was still alive after you buried your child’s body. That’s emotionally intense.”
She has a point. “I still don’t trust her.”
Natalya takes the flower he’s mutilating and tucks it over her ear. “Give it time. She’s your ohana, your family, and ‘family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten.’”
His mouth twitches. He tugs another flower off the bush beside his thigh. “You’re quoting Lilo & Stitch to me?”
“Very good. I’m impressed.”
“I have a six-year-old.”
“Yes, you do.” She cups his hand in hers, silently asking for the flower. He gives it to her and she tucks it over his ear. The tickle of petals across his cheekbone, the barely there touch of her fingers against sensitive skin, and her warm breath on his chin have him sharply sucking air. Sensations shoot through his body, waking him up as though he’d been hibernating for years. She looks at the flower, then at him, and smiles brilliantly. He blushes like a teenager and guilt drips through him like paint spooling off the tip of a brush.
Aside from Aimee and their frenzied, gut-wrenching parting several days ago, he hasn’t been touched or kissed by a woman in longer than he can remember. That hug with Kristen doesn’t count. It was completely platonic and quite awkward. Then there are the stiff-armed hugs he gets from Marcus, who seems to break the contact faster than he makes it. Aside from those, James hasn’t really been hugged by another human being, let alone held by a woman, in what seems to him like years.
Oxygen shuttles from his lungs. He touches the flower. “Thanks.” His voice is strained, heavy with emotion he barely understands.
This time Natalya blushes. “So . . . why are you here?”
He cocks a brow. “Vacation?”
“Why don’t I believe that?”
A gust of wind sends a chill across his skin. He suddenly feels tired, bone-weary, as though he hasn’t slept in months, which he hasn’t. He was either worrying about keeping his sons safe, or how their upheaval would affect them in the long term, or how to nurture their father-and-sons bond. He isn’t a bad guy and is tired of them treating him as such. But right now, he just wants to sleep for days. Surprisingly, here, in Hawaii, with his brothers thousands of miles away and Natalya by his side, he finally feels as though he can do so. He feels like he’s in a safe place.
It dawns on him as to the root reason he brought his sons here, and it’s much less complicated than the impulse to flee Phil until he can get his bearings or to avoid Thomas from hounding him about a three-hour time block he may never recapture. Quite simply, James came to Kauai because he had nowhere else to go. He didn’t have anyone to turn to who completely understood what was not just going on around him, but what was wrong with him. He has no one except Natalya. Maybe he can find comfort in that thought. Or, maybe he’s only seeking her friendship. He has yet to find whatever he’s looking for, but perhaps he can find it here, in paradise, with the help of a woman who is neither a stranger nor a lover, but for the moment, simply his ohana.