He went quiet for a while, contemplating something with that deep scowl of his before he asked, “How long did you say your father’s been mayor?”
“Almost thirty years. One of my first memories was his inauguration.”
“And he still has not found another source of industry other than Drummond Oil? That is not good business. As far as I am concerned, it was your father who got your town into this position, not you. He is lucky it was me who bought Drummond Oil. If someone else had purchased it, they might not have been as…” He pulled her closer and pressed a lingering kiss into her shoulder. “…open to negotiation.”
Eva hadn’t really thought about it that way before. A little bit of the guilt she’d been feeling about getting Drummond into this mess started to subside and a wave of contentment washed over her. She leaned in closer to him, loving the way the bristles of his new beard brushed against her shoulder. He smelled like suntan lotion and beach, the exact opposite of the way he smelled when they first arrived and he took her in a frenzy of anger and reproach.
This version of Alexei, she noted, was much more into PDA than the one she used to know. Back at UTD, it had always been her initiating any displays of affection outside of the confines of their bedroom. But on South Padre Island, he was constantly surprising her with kisses or pulling her closer and a few times, even sweeping her off her feet in the playful way of lovers way younger and more carefree than themselves.
She couldn’t get over what a good time she was having with Alexei. In the months it had taken her to get over him, she had managed to convince herself that the love and companionship she thought they had shared had been a fluke. After their break-up, she’d done fieldwork hours at a Dallas shelter for domestic violence victims. How many women had she met who told her their boyfriends or husbands had also refused to talk about their past? Only for them to find out later that the secretive men had a criminal record, which they’d been hiding.
His lips moved to her neck, and he easily found its most erogenous spot, sending tingling sensations all the way down to her toes with his kisses. And she once again wondered how he had done the things he’d done and still managed to sleep at night. She also wondered how she could know herself what he’d done, what he was, what he still might be for all she knew, and still hunger for him the way she did.
The worst part of this vacation had been constantly having to stay on guard against falling back in love with him. And really, she wasn’t sure she was doing such a crack job of that.
“If you keep on kissing my neck like that, we’re going to end up breaking some of Texas’s indecency laws.“ Then, when he kept on kissing her neck anyway, she asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting with Emilio at five?”
He groaned and looked at his Rolex. “Yes, we should get back. ” He turned her face toward his to give her a few more soft kisses. “But trust we will finish this after dinner.”
* * * *
Eva was unusually quiet during the ride home, Alexei noted. Albeit, they spent most of the return trip on a Vespa—Eva had seen the scooter on their third day there and insisted on renting one. She’d expressed so much enthusiasm for tooling around on the back of it with him, Alexei had arranged to have one purchased and delivered to the hotel for their everyday use. The truth was, Alexei liked having Eva hugged up against his back everywhere they went together. She had a way of laying her face on his shoulder that made it feel like she was happy to be there with him as opposed to compelled.
She usually said one or two things while they were on the scooter even if it was just to point out a restaurant or activity they might enjoy the next day. Even though it had been Alexei who commanded they spend two weeks together, so far they’d gone kiteboarding, windsurfing, dolphin watching, night clubbing, and even driving along the beach in all-terrain buggies, all at Eva’s request. And to his surprise, Alexei had enjoyed everything. He only ever went to vacation destinations on business, and it had never occurred to him to bother with such touristy activities.
But Eva acted more like someone who had truly missed out on doing these type of things, and she seemed determined to vacation just as hard as some of the younger college students the island was known to attract. This made him wonder about Aaron. Did he never take her anywhere? Why would she be so dedicated to him if he couldn’t even provide her with something as simple as an in-state beach vacation?
It would have been different if Eva hadn’t left him because he didn’t have enough money. But seeing as she had, it made her attachment to this Aaron, who was apparently not rich and definitely not satisfying her sexual needs, all the more confusing.
He was once again hit with the urge to break his promise to Eva and get a full dossier on this man. But he tamped it down, knowing there would be no need. His publicist had more than come through on the publicity angle. She’d expanded upon his original idea by not only pitching an entire South Padre story to her Dallas media contacts, but keeping on the photog so he could covertly take pictures of Alexei and Eva all over the island. She’d manage to get the Dallas Times to run a special feature in their travel section on South Padre Island from the point of view of a Russian billionaire, vacationing there with his Texas-born lover. So Alexei didn’t have to seek this Aaron out, because their relationship would be blown to pieces in less than seven days, when the Dallas Times piece ran, letting her boyfriend know exactly where she had been and who she had been with when she said she was in the Bahamas with Layla. In less than a week, this boyfriend would no longer be in Eva’s picture.
Still, her sudden quiet disturbed him. Was she thinking about Aaron? Wishing she were on South Padre with him instead of her Russian ex? The thought of her having sex with another man after she left in two days caused his heart to beat faster with jealous anger.
“What would you like to do tomorrow?” he asked, just to get his own mind off the subject of her and Aaron.
She wrapped both her hands around his large one, an affectionate habit she’d picked back up over the last few days. It bothered him that it felt so natural and that he liked when she took his hand like this, as if they were still really together.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s our last full day, so maybe you should pick. I’ve been kind of monopolizing all our out-of-bed time with stuff I wanted to do.”
“I do not mind,” he said. “Your version of vacation is much better than my version of vacation.”