Catarina noticed his lingering gaze, and for a moment, the air between them seemed to grow thin. The way he watched her, his eyes filled with restrained desire, made something inside her tremble.

Unbidden, her thoughts began to wander, carrying her back into the past, toward a memory that still lived far too vividly in her mind.

She remembered his parents’ beach house, the sound of the waves breaking in the distance, the scent of salt mingling with the warm evening breeze. She remembered the wa