Page 15 of Just One More Night

“Tell me about this place,” she said, jumping up lightly to sit on the counter as he moved around the kitchen, assembling a simple meal of savory pancakes, a Romanian staple his grandmother had always made him when he’d visited her. “This villa. The art on the walls, the air of old-school elegance mixed in with all these modern lines... None of this seems to go hand-in-hand with an alleyway in Budapest.”

“I think you would call thislayers, no?”

“Are we naming all these layers?”

He glanced over at her, but she didn’t look avid in any way. Just... Interested.

In him.

Not what he could do for her. Not what she could get. Just him and whatever story he might tell.

It felt like a new kind of magic. He remembered he’d called her a witch, and it fit.

Stefan cleared his throat. “My father was a hard man. When I tell you this as a Romanian, you must understand that I do not mean hard in any American sense. I mean the real thing. A real kind of hardness that went deep inside him. He should not have married, but then, even monsters get lonely. After my mother died he stopped pretending to be a father, not that he had ever taken to the role. He was a jailer. I meanhard, you understand.” He moved his shoulders to do something about the tension in them, not sure why he was telling her this story. There was a reason he wasn’t much for sharing. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. “It was a relief to escape him when I joined the army. But then, the army takes all men and makes them hard. I think this is true everywhere. Afterward, I found other ways to fight. And learned to live by my own laws.”

“Meaning outside everyone else’s laws.”

He nodded. “But my grandmother left Romania a long time ago and settled in Old Town. Far away from her troublesome son-in-law and her memories of the daughter she lost. I visited her here in Prague as a boy. And I bought this house early in my...career, let us call it. Maybe as a monument to her. I always knew that someday I would retire here.”

“You don’t look old enough to retire.”

“The kind of business I was in...” Stefan shrugged. “If you are lucky enough to retire, you do it young. Or not at all.”

For a while she didn’t say anything, and he finished preparing the meal. He brought a stack of the savory pancakes over on a plate that he set down on the counter next to her, and then stood there himself, watching her as she ate. Eating himself, until it felt as if that, too, was a kind of sensual act.

Simply being with her was a sensual act.

He was going to have to find a way to get used to it.

And for more thanone night—but he did not intend to argue that with her. Not when there were far more interesting ways to make the same point.

“You still have not told me how you ended up in Budapest.” He shook his head. “Did you travel the world, finding dark alleys to wander down alone?”

She paused in the act of licking her fingers and smiled at him. “As a matter fact, I did.”

“You were a backpacker.”

“Yes, though I always traveled a bit more lightly than proper backpackers. If I needed something I would buy it or borrow it. And then when I didn’t need it anymore, I’d gift it to someone else. I didn’t tote around a mobile office or anything. I just had my phone.”

“And who funded all this aimless wandering?”

“If I didn’t have money, I worked.” She took another bite of her meal and chewed happily, then smiled when she swallowed. “Budapest was a stop along the way, though I didn’t really have a destination in mind. I’ve never been one for itineraries. I was thinking that I was going to head back toward Australia, to keep the summer going, but then you happened.”

He liked that. “As if I am some storm?”

“I didn’t see the point of traveling anymore when all I wanted to do was come here.” That almost sounded like a confession, but she looked so casual that Stefan thought he must have misunderstood. “So I went back to New York instead, where I’ve been living with my sister ever since.”

“Is your sister like you?”

“Bristol? Oh no. No, not at all.” Indy laughed. Almost too hard, in his mind. “She’s a very serious person, like you. She finds me... Delightfully trying.”

“But what is it youdo? You must do something. Everyone does.”

She lifted her chin, and though her voice stayed light when she answered him, her gaze was not. “I thought I told you. I do whatever makes me money and if I don’t feel like doing it anymore, I don’t.”

“Indiana.” He sounded severe, but he didn’t modify his tone. “That is playtime. Not real life.”

She sighed. “Everybody says that. A lot, actually. But none of them are particularly happy, are they? So why would I listen to them?”