Private Acts by Delaney Diamond Page A

the chair. She should be out of her shower already. Her trip to the market would have to be delayed today.
    He left the studio and passed by the vase of flowers on the table in the living room. Every week when she went into town, Samirah brought back fresh flowers from the flower market. Over the sofa, she’d had him frame and hang one of the colorful fabrics purchased during a trip to a different town nearby.
    When he walked into the bedroom, he could hear her off-key singing in the shower. He opened the door and went in, walking right up to the glass door before she noticed him.
    “Hey, what are you doing in here?”
    Smiling, he slid open the door. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t need any help.” He rested his shoulder against the enclosure, admiring the way the tiny streams of water raced down her back and over the curve of her pert bottom.
    “You, señor , are not here to help, and if I needed any help, I would have called you.”
    He could take her right now, he was so hard. Despite the amount of time they spent together, it never seemed to be enough. She came over every weekend, and after she went to the market for the Hills on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she spent time with him in the afternoon until she had to go back to the house to fix dinner.
    Watching her leave every Sunday evening grew harder with each passing week. He wanted to demand that she remain with him. She was entrenched in his home, and that wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to be having a good time, enjoying each other for the short period she was in the country. But now he had a hard time imagining his life without her in it.
    The intense nature of his thoughts shocked him. So much so he didn’t realize Samirah had turned off the shower and was drying off with a towel until she spoke.
    “Hey, did I lose you?” She wrapped the towel around her body and hung the shower cap inside the stall. Walking right up to him with a grin on her face, she whispered, “Earth to Miguel.”
    His heart pounded a fierce beat in his chest. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. “I’m fine. My mind wandered for a minute.” He kissed her upturned lips.
    “Want to talk about it?”
    The concern in her voice twisted through him. He wanted to reassure her, yet at the same time, he had to admit the problem that needed to be sorted out lay with him. Samirah was not the kind of woman he saw himself in a long term relationship with. Aside from the fact she would be leaving in a few weeks, he recognized that she could never truly be happy here.
    How long would it be before she got bored and moved on? The memory of her words mocked him.
    …a citizen of the world. Why would you want to stay in the same place when you can go anywhere you want?
    His throat tightened to repress the emotion churning inside him. This casual affair suddenly didn’t seem so casual. “Everything’s fine.”
    Skepticism filled her eyes. “If you want to talk, I’m all ears.” She moved into the bedroom. He watched her pick up a jar of lotion and dip in her fingers.
    Talk. Right.
    Talking solved nothing.
    He first learned that lesson at the age of fifteen when his mother had decided to move to Colombia with her first “sponsor.” He had talked to her, told her he didn’t want to go. Her response had been to tell him he could come with her or stay there. He’d stayed behind. Fortunately, he was big for his age, and he found construction work to earn money. He’d slept on couches of friends and family before he finally earned enough to get a small place of his own.
    His second lesson on talking came at the age of twenty when he fell in love with a senior at the university. He had met her through Esteban, and they’d been living together for a year when she told him she wanted to move to New York where she had family and hoped to find success with her art. By then, his sculptures were garnering national attention. He asked her to stay, promised to take care of her. She