There is disapproval on his face again and I find his manner of speaking intriguing.
Rich, formal, gentleman, I list in my head as I stare at his manicured hands. Then I add jaded to the list. There’s also something else about him, something that I can’t put my finger on yet. I make a note of that. It’s a little discouraging since my thesis is based on the notion that an intuitive person can peg someone on the first meeting. However, our first meeting isn’t over yet and I return my attention to him.
“I was so tired when I got here that I barely remember walking through the house,” I admit to him. “It doesn’t surprise me that I left the door open.”
“Well, that’s understandable,” Luca answers. “Jet lag is miserable. But do be more careful. You are in a strange place.”
“So you’ve said,” I nod, slightly impatient with the safety lecture. I’m a grown woman. I know how to take care of myself. “Now will you kill the spider or do I need to call my landlord?”
Luca smiles and the room brightens once again.
Interesting, both that this man’s mood can change the atmosphere in my entire bedroom and that his mood changes so quickly. Should I add mercurial to the list?
I hold off on that one as he raises an eyebrow at me.
“You’d really call your landlord this late after business hours for an insect?”
I eye the spider. “That is not an insect,” I tell him. “That’s a monster. I’ve been told that I’m always welcome to call him in an emergency. I’d say this qualifies.”
Luca chuckles and shakes his head.
“I hate to kill something that isn’t hurting us,” he tells me. “Let’s find a jar. A large jar.”
I shake my head and slip out to the kitchen, bringing him back a large canning jar that I found beneath the sink. I hand it to him and he quickly scoops the large spider into the jar, then covers it with his hand, unafraid.
I shudder on his behalf as I watch the long hairy legs twitching against his palm.
“How do you stand that?” I demand as I trail him to the back door. He walks a few feet into the night and releases the spider into the grass. It quickly scurries away into the darkness although I’m sure it will find its way back into my house soon enough.
“It wasn’t going to hurt me,” he told me. “Because I wasn’t hurting it. That’s usually how nature works.”
“Not so,” I counter. “Not always. I’m sure that a gazelle hunted by a lion would beg to differ with you.”
Luca’s lip twitches. “Lucky for us, this isn’t the Serengeti. If you don’t provoke something here, you will generally be left alone.”
I smile. “Well, good. I’m not in the habit of provoking people. Unless they are lying on my couch, anyway.”
Luca’s eyebrows raise again. “Pardon?”
I laugh when I realize what I must have sounded like. “I’m a psychiatrist. Almost. I’m here for the summer to finish my dissertation. People pay me to probe at their secrets.”
Luca seems interested now. I add unafraid to his list. People are generally a little put off when I tell them what I do which is why I like to get it out of the way right off the bat. It’s like they are afraid that I will dissect their brains during casual conversation. And in all honesty, I sort of do. It’s an occupational hazard. I can’t turn it on and off.
“You’re a psychiatrist?”
I nod. “Are you afraid?”
It was a joke. But he pauses for a moment before he smiles.
“Very, very afraid.”
There is electricity between us. And I’m not sure if it is because he’s so very handsome or if it is simply because he is a strange man standing in my bedroom. Either way, I can feel it and I smile.
“You should be.”
He smiles back, a guarded smile. “Noted.”
Luca hands me the jar back and when he does, his hand brushes mine. His touch is feather light but I can feel exactly where our skin comes into contact and it feels as though I will have a permanent impression of his fingers on my own. My eyes dart up and meet his, which are a turbulent black, full of charged energy.
Our gazes lock and I am speechless, utterly engrossed in the power of this moment. I’ve never been so instantly attracted to a man. I don’t know if it is simply a by-product of my jetlag or if it is real.
However, I don’t get a chance to ponder it. Out of my periphery, I notice a movement out of the corner of my eye and glancing down, I find that the spider, probably disoriented from this whole ordeal, is scurrying back across the lawn and is aimed directly at my feet.
It is moving fast and I barely have time to gasp or scream before Luca’s foot slams down upon it with a sickening crunch.
Its long broken legs stick out from under the sole of his running shoe as I stare at him uncertainly.
“I thought you said it wasn’t going to hurt me? That we shouldn’t kill it because it meant no harm?”
Luca shrugs. “I changed my mind.”
And something about this moment and his words and his nonchalant attitude sends goose bumps forming up and down my arms, although I don’t know why. I’m shocked that he killed it, but it was just a spider. An insect. But it somehow seems strange. Five minutes ago, he was dead set against hurting it and then he turned around and killed it without a second thought.
I think I should add mercurial after all.
I glance at his face and now it seems as though shadows have passed over it, thunderous and dark. I inhale sharply as I watch him gracefully wipe his shoe off in the grass. He’s lithe and muscular, like a lion, and I suddenly realize that a jungle cat is exactly what he reminds me of. He is sleek and powerful and masculine.
Dangerous.
The word pops unbidden into my mind and I try to shake it off.
He killed a spider, not a person or a puppy. I have no basis for thinking that he is dangerous. But as he turns his eyes toward me, there is something there, something in the dark depths that I can’t define, something dangerous.
And so I reluctantly add it to his list. This is just my first impression after all. It remains to be seen if my instinct has any validity whatsoever. I can just as easily take it off the list as I put it on. I look up to find him staring at me with his dark and fathomless eyes. Those are eyes that a person could lose themselves in.