Santiago's Convenient Fiancée

by Annie O'Neil

  “We’ll all come!” Amanda hooked her arms through each of theirs as if she were Dorothy and they were all going to gaily skip off on a grand adventure, conquering evil and learning some valuable lessons about themselves along the way.

  The only delight at the end of this particular rainbow was going to be another margarita.

  * * *

  “Let’s just hope these were worth waiting for. Made by the man himself.” Santi handed over the icy goblet.

  “Ángel?”

  Saoirse’s smile broadened for the first time since her friend had made a flimsy excuse to go and speak with someone else. “Work matters.” He knew a setup when he saw one. Not that he minded. Saoirse was ticking a lot of boxes he hadn’t realized needed ticking: Unimpressed. Funny. Intelligent. Pixie-sexy. He’d never thought he had a type, but...the length of time it took to finish a margarita would be time well spent. And then he’d move on. Like he always did.

  “Mad Ron,” Santiago corrected with gravitas, body blocking a couple of people trying to get to the bar so he could hand Saoirse her fresh drink.

  He watched as she took the glass with a reverent nod.

  A Mad Ron Margarita. He hadn’t had one for years. ’Twas a thing to be cherished.

  She took a slow sip, closed her eyes, the thick goblet resting against the pink of her lower lip, and tipped her head back, visibly enjoying the sensation of the citrusy drink sliding down her throat. The tip of her tongue slipped out between her lips and added a bit of salt to the mix. Salsa music was pumping through the bar, but he was pretty sure he heard a little moan of pleasure vibrate along the length of her delicate throat. Halfway through the motion, he realized he had licked his own lips in response. He hooked a thumb in the belt buckle of his jeans and cleared his throat. Ojos de ángel.

  “Someone looks like they needed a drink.”

  “I’m not one to drown my sorrows,” Saoirse said with a hint of a prim edge to her voice, “but I am losing an amazing partner today.”

  “Joe?” He stated the obvious, but scintillating comebacks were eluding him.

  “The one and only.” She lifted up her glass to toast her invisible partner, who was no doubt holding court in one of the huge semicircular leather banquettes. “I presume that’s why you’re here.”

  He gave a vague nod. “Joe mentioned the party when we were loading up Diego.” To Saoirse, but that made it public information, right?

  She didn’t need to know he was psyching himself up to do some long overdue bridge building. Mad Ron’s wasn’t much more than a stone’s throw away from the family’s bodega and for some reason he’d gotten it into his head that a sighting of Saoirse would strengthen his resolve. Something—or someone—to strengthen the desire to stay in his hometown long enough to make amends. He’d flown back before—on leave—and not even made it this far. It was time he did more than drive by.

  “What’s your story, then?” He needed to shift focus off of himself. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Yeah.” She scanned the room, a twist of anxiety tugging at the edges of her blue eyes. The girl didn’t give up information freely. Woman, rather. There wasn’t a curve on her he wasn’t itching to caress. But she didn’t seem the type for a cheap alleyway make-out session and he was the last person on earth to offer himself up as relationship material. All the more reason to keep his hands to himself.

  “Miami suits you.”

  One of her eyebrows lifted imperiously while the rest of her facial features tried their best not to overtly dismiss him.

  He could’ve chewed the words up and spat them out in the gutter. Ridiculous space fillers. One roadside rescue and a margarita’s worth of time with this woman and it was easy enough to ascertain she wasn’t a thing like the pata sucia he’d grown up with. Dedicated clubbers who regularly saw dawn from the wrong end of the day. There was no lip liner or gloss that could improve on this woman’s mouth, let alone any of her other features. A natural beauty.

  “What makes you say Miami suits me?” she finally asked. “You think I look like a snowbird, do you?”

  “Hardly.” He laughed appreciatively. “I think we can safely say I wasn’t likening you to a geriatric. However long you’ve been here in Miami, it seems to have rubbed off on you. In a nice way,” he emphasized, smiling as her eyes skittered off again in a vain attempt to find her long-gone friend.

  He couldn’t help himself. As much as the crowded bar would allow, he took advantage of her divided attention to take a luxurious head-to-toe scan of her tomboyish ensemble. Blond hair gone nearly white with the sun. Half pixie, half mermaid, he was guessing by the bikini tan lines ribboning across her collarbones. Sun-kissed shoulders. A bit freckled. Her body-skimming T-backed tank top swept along the curve of her waist. That was all he could make out as the rest of her curves were mostly hidden by a baggy overalls dress thingy. Something a girl who wasn’t on the lookout for a boyfriend would wear. Even so, the shortish skirt showed off a pair of athletic legs. Flip-flops rather than heels. No surprise there. He had his own stash of flip-flops. They were de rigueur in Miami. Her toenails were painted an unforgiving jet black. Interesting. Her natural coloring would’ve suited pastels to a T. It was almost as if she was fighting her own, very feminine, genetic makeup.

  “Stop your gawking, would you?” she muttered, flip-flopped feet shifting uncomfortably as the crowd jostled and moved around them. “I’m not so good at taking all these American compliments.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “That was an American compliment, was it? What would an Irish person say?”

  “Oh...” She ran a finger along her full bottom lip as she thought and for the second time that night Santi felt envious. It was too easy to imagine using his own finger taking that journey, lips descending on hers to explore and taste, salt, lime—Focus. F-O-C-U-S.

  “They probably wouldn’t say anything nice at all,” she said with a huge grin. “Just something dispirited about the weather. ‘The rain’s not rotted your boots yet, then?’ Or, ‘What on God’s green earth have you done, moving to Ireland when you’ve got the whole of America and the sunshine and the crunchy peanut butter and heaven knows what else when all we’ve got is too much poetry about getting in the peat before the rains set in and not a single pot of gold at the end of one of blessed rainbow...’”

  Her eyes caught with his. The sharp shock of connection hit him again. A connection Saoirse broke so quickly he wondered for an instant if he’d imagined it. Her eyes were so alive, Santi felt he could practically see the memories of her homeland hit her one by one until...hmm...a not-so-nice memory clouded the rest of the good ones out. Pity. She all but lit up from within when she smiled.

  “You know—” he tried to give her an out “—they say one of the true tests of becoming a local is surviving a hurricane. Have you been here long enough to go through a season?” He cringed at his own lack of finesse. This was a massive flunk-out in the charm-the-flip-flops-off-the-lady school of making a good impression. He near enough checked his T-shirt for a pocket guard and a row of tidily stashed writing utensils.

  “Arrived in the middle of one,” she shot back triumphantly, blissfully unaware of his internal fistfight. “The plane nearly had to be diverted.”

  “But you obviously made it through the storm.”

  “Something like that.”

  Another cloud of emotion colored the pure sea blue of her eyes.

  And...three strikes...you’re out!

  Her tone said what her eyes had already told him. They were done now.

  She raised her glass with a thanks-for-the-drink lift of the chin. No words necessary for that universal gesture.

  See you later, pal. Better luck next time.

  And then she disappeared into the thick of the crowd.

  Santi looked down at his own drink,
considered taking it down in one, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to reek of booze the first time he spoke to his brothers in... he looked at his watch to tot up the years that had passed since he’d last spoken to them, proof his brain was all but addled by his run-in with the Irish Rose of Miami Beach.

  Right. He put the unfinished drink down on the bar. It was time to do this thing.

  He went out to the street and pulled on his half helmet. The one that let in the wind and the scent of the sea as he rode along the causeways to the Keys. It was his go-to journey when he needed to think and he’d been to the Keys and back more times than you could shake a stick since he’d returned to the States four months ago. He’d flown into Boston for no good reason at all. Putting off the inevitable, most likely. If he was going to do this, he wanted to do it right. Fixing fifteen years of messed-up family history wasn’t going to happen overnight. He looked up at the evening sky as if it held the answer to his unspoken question. What made reconnecting with family so hard?

  He swung his leg over his bike, the strong thrust of his foot bringing the Beast to life with a satisfying roar of the engine. The Beast and he had steadily worked their way down the coast, picking up paramedic shifts here and there as he went. He could’ve walked straight into any ER he chose after all the frontline doctoring conflict zone after conflict zone had demanded of him. But “downgrading” to a paramedic had fit right. He wanted the raw immediacy being first on the scene required. A penance for everything he hadn’t set right when he should’ve.

  What kind of man abandoned his kid brother when he needed him the most? Left his older brothers in the lurch when they’d been doing the best they could with a bad situation?

  A boy who’d been loaded with too much responsibility? Or a plain old coward?

  Time to see if a decade-plus of being a Marine had made an actual man out of him.

  He shifted gears again and headed toward Little Heliconia. The neighborhood he’d been born and raised in held more of his demons than anywhere else in the world. And he’d seen some hellholes in his time.

  Santi reached the familiar corner, leather boots connecting with the ground as he debated whether or not to make the turn. A horn sounded behind him and he fought the urge to kickstand his bike and give the impatient driver a little lesson in common courtesy. Waiting two seconds wasn’t going to kill anyone. His heart caught for a moment.

  At least, not in this scenario.

  He sucked in a deep breath, flicked on his blinker and took his bike into a low dip, knee stopping just shy of the asphalt as he rounded the corner.

  The lights were on in the back alleyway, but he couldn’t see anyone. He turned off the ignition a couple of doors down from the one he knew like the back of his hand, pulled off his helmet and let the night sounds settle around him. The chirrup of tree frogs and steady hum of the crickets kept cadence with the wash and ebb of the waves just a couple of blocks away, but the thud and thump of his heart won out. He’d driven past about twenty times since he’d been back. This was the first time he’d stopped.

  “Ay! Dante! Don’t forget to put orange soda on the list this time, pero. We’re out.”

  Santi’s spine stiffened as he heard his older brother give the admonishment. Rafe’s words had always held more bark than bite and it didn’t look like much had changed. The sound of his voice transported him right back to the time and place when everything had changed. He couldn’t even remember why they’d all been in the shop. There had been nothing unusual in it. But the command to get down on the ground had been a first. In less than a minute the “perfect family” had been irrevocably altered.

  “Not my fault this time, Rafe. Blame it on la fea!”

  Santi stifled a guffaw. Still calling each other “the ugly one,” were they?

  “You boys! Stop your bickering and get back to work. I don’t want to be here all night.”

  “Don’t worry, Carmelita. We’ll get you back home in time for your favorite soaps.”

  “No seas tonto,” Carmelita shot back, appearing at the back doorway as she spoke over her shoulder. “I know how to record things now on my thingamajig. I’m every bit as modern as you boys.” She cracked a small area rug out into the empty space of the alley, a cloud of dust left billowing in the pool of streetlight with barely a chance to settle before she was in and out of the doorway with another one. Her efficiency had seen them through the darkest days of their lives. She may not have been blood—but she was all the family they’d had after that day.

  “Carmelita, give me those. I can finish up.”

  Santi froze when his little brother appeared alongside their adoptive auntie, then he slowly leaned back on the seat of his bike as if the darkness could envelop him more than it already had.

  Carmelita clasped Alejandro’s stubbled chin in one of her chubby hands and gave it a loving shake, then patted his cheek as if he were a toddler. “You’re a good boy, Alejandro, but I’m not an old woman yet. You already work too hard at that hospital of yours. All of you boys do.”

  Alejandro clucked away her talking-to and wordlessly took the next mat and gave it a sharp shake.

  Santi felt a sting hit him at the back of his throat. His lungs constricted against the strain of trying to swallow back the sour twist of emotion fighting to get out.

  Alejandro had changed. Hardly surprising given the last time Santi had seen him he’d been in his midteens. His little brother was a man now. About the same height—six feet with an inch or two more for good measure. He’d been a good-looking kid and the same held true about the man standing not twenty yards away. No thanks to him. He’d bailed when his brother had needed him most. And from the looks of things, he’d done more than all right without him.

  Santi swore softly, then swore again when Alejandro turned at the sound.

  No. He couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Still too soon.

  His body went into automatic pilot, turning the key, kick-starting the bike into a roar of disparate sounds that melded into one. The engine, the quick-fire gear changes and the piercing screech of rubber twisting on tarmac couldn’t drown out his thoughts as he took the sharp turn out of the alley and without a second’s hesitation headed to the bridges so he could hit the Keys and get himself straight again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “STOP KICKING THE desk already! What’s it ever done to you?”

  Amanda smiled as she told her friend off and Saoirse pulled back her booted foot just as it was ready to connect with the ER check-in desk for another thud.

  “I’m tired of waiting. Where is this guy anyhow?”

  “Ah!” Amanda’s eyes lit up and she leaned conspiratorially across the counter. “It’s a male person, is it? Do you know if he’s single? I can’t believe you didn’t talk to that guy at Joe’s going-away party. Muy guapo. They don’t make them that handsome and available all that often, Murph. You should’ve pounced.” She did her best cat-pounce look, managing to look completely adorable in the process.

  “Enough! I’ll figure out my little problem outside work hours, thank you very much.” She pursed her lips and gave her friend a wide-eyed glare.

  “I’m just saying, beggars can’t be choosers and you had an amazing option last night...” Amanda paused for effect. “Until you bailed.”

  “I didn’t bail!” What’s so bad about bailing when all you have to offer is yourself? The self her ex couldn’t see fit to marry...on their wedding day.

  “And I’m no beggar,” she tacked on for good measure—as if it would make a grain of salt’s worth of difference to Amanda.

  “Yeah, right. Tell it to the deportation police.” Amanda pulled out her phone and scrolled through the images until she hit the one she wanted and turned it toward Saoirse.

  The calendar. As if she needed a visual aid to remind her the days were passing fa
ster than the sands of time. Or were those the same thing?

  “Three months, Murph. Three months to find some talent who is going to put a ring on that finger by the end of your course.”

  “I told you, I’m not in the market for a ring. Or a romance. None of that. It’s a green card I’m after. Nothing more.”

  “C’mon.” Her friend nudged her over the countertop. “If you’re going to marry someone so you can stay, he might as well be nice to look at and, come to think of it, there is plenty of talent right here at Seaside. Why not keep it in the family?”

  “All right! I get it!” Saoirse cut her off. “I’ve got more than enough to worry about with having to add Finding a Hottie Who Will Marry the Poor Immigrant Girl whose fiancé couldn’t be bothered to do the trick, don’t I?”

  “Like what, exactly?” Amanda asked pointedly. “What is it you have to worry about besides that?”

  “Uh...like my new partner showing up so we can get out of here and fix some people!”

  “Amanda.” A man’s voice cut across Saoirse’s. “Know anything about the head injury in cubicle three?”

  “Yes, Dr. Valentino. She’s just been brought in...”

  Amanda’s voice turned into a buzz in Saoirse’s head as she looked at the doctor standing beside her. He definitely had Latino blood running through him. The smokin’ hot variety. Tall, dark hair. Not as pitch-black as Santi’s. And the cut was crisp and clean—it would’ve suited a high-powered businessman just as well as a... What was this guy? Some sort of specialist? Something exacting anyway. The man couldn’t have been more alpha male if he tried. Not her type. He wasn’t as rakishly rebel with a cause as Santi came across with his long lean body all casual and taut at the same time. And that thick, soft ebony hair gently curling along his neck. Not that she’d been burning the details of their encounter into her mind or anything.

  She tamped down the memory and tried to pull a surreptitious sidelong glance at the immaculately dressed interloper. This chap was more gentleman than gaucho in the looks department. He had the same broad-shouldered, athletic build as her guy. Well, not her guy but...she knew what she meant. Dark brown eyes, the same rich voice that could’ve doubled for Spanish hot chocolate...