Iris—he didn’t really like thinking of Iris—but while Iris thought nothing, apparently, of blowing Paul, she had been a fragile lover with him, always making little sounds to signal her fear of being broken in two, or her displeasure with particular positions.
Rachel, on the other hand, was eager to try almost anything, reveling in the most intimate of acts, encouraging him with her voice and her body. His orgasms were seismic, like a meteorite crashing to earth, and that just made him want her all the more. So when she asked him what he was thinking, he felt himself get a bit red-faced. “What, wasn’t I listening with proper discernment?” he asked with a lopsided smile.
“No, you weren’t listening at all,” she said, playfully splashing him. “I asked you how you liked America, and you just grinned,” she said as she pushed herself up and reached over the edge of the tub for the champagne bottle.
“I adore America,” he said.
“Really?” she asked as she hoisted the champagne over the side of the tub and refreshed one of the four glass tumblers the corporate flat boasted. “I’ve known some Europeans who don’t care for it.”
“That’s what they say,” Flynn said, holding his glass out to be refilled. “They like to hate America, when really, this is where they’d all like to be. As for myself, I’m not afraid to say it—I like America, and I adore at least one American.”
Rachel smiled prettily and leaned up again. Flynn languidly watched her breasts rise from the water and float there as she put the bottle away. “And I like the U.K.,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s funny, isn’t it? We’re so compatible in so many ways.”
“Refreshing,” Flynn agreed, and chuckled when he stuck his big toe in between her legs and Rachel gave a little squeal. But her eyes lit up with pleasure, and she shifted slightly, forcing his toe to slip deeper between her legs.
“You’re a shameless tart, you know that,” he said, grinning wickedly.
“It’s all your fault, Mr. Oliver. A man is not supposed to know about toes . . . So if you like it, do you think you’ll stay?”
“If the rest of me is permitted to join the toe.”
“I meant,” Rachel giggled, “do you think you’ll stay in America?”
That stopped his toe’s exploration cold. Of course he’d thought of it, but he’d come to no satisfactory conclusion for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was his uncertainty of how Rachel fit into the museum scheme.
But he forced a smile to his face and shrugged his shoulders behind a sip of champagne. “I couldn’t rightly say, love. Why, have you an offer for me?”
She laughed as she idly made a mountain of bubbles between them. “Maybe.” she said diffidently. “I just wondered. Not that I’m expecting anything, you know, but . . .”
As her voice trailed off, Flynn sensed something, and put his glass aside, sat up, leaning forward to see her over the mountain of bubbles. “But . . . ?”
She looked up; the intense expression in her blue-green eyes pierced him clean through, so much that he almost reared back. An uneasiness cropped up in the pit of his belly, a certain signal of danger, but he held her gaze nonetheless—
“But . . . I am falling . . . have fallen . . . in love with you.”
The pronouncement so stunned Flynn that for a moment, he could not move, could not so much as draw a breath. He felt like a sodding idiot, an inexperienced fool. How could he have not seen this coming?
“Rachel,” he started calmly and quietly, but saw instantly that it was too late to salvage the moment, for she had seen and heard his hesitation and took it to mean her feelings were unrequited. Only nothing could have been further from the truth, really, and he was desperate to know how to say so without giving everything away, months worth of work, as she sank back against the edge of the tub, sliding down and down until the water was up to her chin, her face almost crimson.
“But hey, don’t let that get to you,” she said with a very uneasy laugh before he could muddle his way through this excruciatingly unpleasant moment. “I’m the type to fall in love with just about anyone,” she said, and he could hear the anxiety in her chuckle. “People, animals, plants,” she added with another panicked laugh. “I even had a bike once that I fell in love with. I named him Arthur—after King Arthur, of course—and I rode him around the grounds, round and round. But I was like, twelve or something, way too old to be in love with a bike.”
When Flynn didn’t laugh, she suddenly shot up out of the water, sent some of it slopping over the sides in her haste to get up. Flynn tried to reach for her, but she backed away from him, stood there naked with dozens of rivulets of soapy water running down her body. “Food, too. Remember chocolate? Now that’s love. And movies. I’ve seen Braveheart about ten times, did I tell you that? I love that movie.”