The Disobedient Virgin - The Ramirez Brides 03

by Sandra Marton

  Physically, mentally, emotionally.

  Did a man’s kiss always do that to a woman? If it did—and she had no reason to think otherwise—who knew what would happen if a man really made love to her? Would she turn into an obedient slave? Weren’t there ways to prevent that? Couldn’t you ward off that devastating meltdown?

  No way was she going to wait until she was locked in marriage to find the answers. She needed them now, long before she had to deal with the intricacies of wedlock.

  Jake would teach her. She’d learn all she could from him.

  Not that she’d let things go All The Way. She knew what that was, more or less. Jake had asked if they’d talked about sex in Health Class and she’d said no, they hadn’t, which wasn’t exactly true. Sister Angelica had mentioned the word once, said it was a Wife’s Duty and crossed herself.

  She’d never been more specific than that.

  One of the girls had been a lot more specific, whispering things late at night that Catarina had never quite believed were physically possible.

  Jake could teach her. Not everything, but enough. She would not go into marriage completely uninformed.

  She glanced at him again.

  Of course there were probably other factors to consider. Jake was good-looking. Very. And he was young. Being made love to by a man like him would probably be different than being made love to by one who was old or ugly—like that fat businessman across the aisle, snoring away in happy oblivion, or the attorney, Estes, with his skinny little moustache and a bunch of white hairs growing out of his ears.

  Catarina shuddered.

  No. She couldn’t count on the man Jake chose for her looking like him. She couldn’t count on lying beside him at night and having the delicious freedom to touch him, find out where that silky arrow of hair on his flat belly went after it vanished under the waistband of his trousers…

  “Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for arrival.”

  Catarina sat up straight.

  Arrival indeed, she thought, and emptied her mind of everything but the one thing that mattered.

  Survival.

  Rio was big and, even on a rainy day, cheerful.

  New York was grey, cold, and as cheerless as a tomb.

  Maybe it was the press of traffic. The crowded sidewalks. The tall buildings leaning in. Maybe it was because every other woman she saw—make that every woman she saw—was dressed in black. Chic black, but black nevertheless.

  Jake’s apartment was on Fifth Avenue

  , across from a huge stretch of green.

  “Central Park,” he said, when she all but pasted her nose to the taxi window.

  She wanted to ask him why this was called Fifth Avenue

  instead of Park, since Park didn’t face anything close to grass and Fifth did. She wanted to ask him, too, where the favelas were located. Surely there were poor people living in this city.

  But she didn’t. It was bad enough he’d caught her gawking at the scenery. He thought she was a country mouse. A childish country mouse. Why feed into that if she could avoid it?

  His apartment was in a tall building facing the park. Gargoyles peered from the cornices and looked down at the street. The doorman greeted him by name and touched his cap politely at the sight of her. The elevator starter did the same before inserting a key into a slot.

  A paneled and carpeted car whisked them up to the top floor.

  To the top two floors. Jake’s apartment was a huge duplex with a breathtaking view. He led her down a long hall to a bedroom and connecting bath he said would be hers, and she was happy to see the rooms overlooked the park, too. The trees far below were gaunt and leafless, but she didn’t mind. There was something elegant about them, like monochrome sketches that matched the gray city sky.

  Catarina had never seen such luxury or even imagined it. Her parents’ home had been handsome, but this was opulent. It occurred to her that she had no idea how much money it took to live this way—to live any way, for that matter—or how much she had inherited, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

  “I suggest you unpack,” Jake said briskly, “and take a nap. Anna’s not here—”

  “Anna?”

  He nodded. “But she knew we were coming. I phoned this morning. She’ll have prepared something for dinner.”

  He had a wife? A mistress? And he’d kissed her? Another thing to learn about men. Though on this subject at least Catarina had already heard. Brazilian men were not known for fidelity.

  Apparently, neither were Americans.

  “She has no objections to me staying here?”

  “Why would she?”

  Why, indeed? Jake was the man. The boss. And if it troubled her at all that he belonged to another woman that was just plain stupid. It was only that if he had a wife, that would spoil her plans.

  Her guardian, even the Brazilian she’d marry, might not think much of fidelity, but she did.

  “No reason,” Catarina said politely. “I just wasn’t aware of your customs.”

  “My customs?”

  “Your cultural customs. Regarding marriage.”

  He stared at her blankly. Then his mouth twitched. “You think Anna’s my wife?”

  “Is she your mistress?”

  He came toward her slowly, his eyes locked to hers. She wanted to back up, but showing weakness would, she knew, be a mistake.

  “I kissed you this morning.”

  Her heart thudded. “Did you?” She shrugged. “I suppose you did, but I can hardly re—”

  He caught her by the shoulders, bent to her and kissed her again. Another lesson, Cat told herself, before she stopped thinking.

  His mouth was warm. Soft against hers. She felt the tip of his tongue at the seam of her lips and she made an inadvertent little sound, the barest whisper, but it was all he needed to take the kiss deeper. She made the sound again, something that was part moan, part sigh, and Jake groaned, cupped her face with his hands, tilted her head back and angled his mouth over hers until she knew she’d fall if she didn’t reach up, grasp his shirt, bunch it in her fists…

  “Do you remember now?”

  His mouth was a breath away.

  “Yes,” she said, and hated how shaky her voice sounded. Jake might not know it yet, but he was her teacher. That was all. She had to approach this clinically. “Yes,” she said, more briskly. “I suppose I—”

  Jake’s mouth took hers again. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against him, let her feel his heat and his swift arousal. It was all to serve a purpose, he told himself. The woman had to understand she couldn’t play with him unless she wanted to get burned.

  But the flame was dangerous for him, too.

  God, the taste of her. The feel of her. She was pressed hard against him, her breasts soft against his chest, her hips tucked against his, but it wasn’t enough.

  He wanted more.

  He wanted to open her dress, bare her breasts. Cup them. Caress them. Skim his fingers over her nipples and watch her face when he did. Hear her cry out his name as he tore the dress from her shoulders, slid his hand into her panties, found that hot, sweet heart of her femininity that wept softly for him, only for him.

  Take her innocence. Her perfect innocence.

  Innocence she would bring to another man.

  Jake tore his mouth from Cat’s. She swayed in his arms. “Jake?” she whispered, and he let go of her, knotted his hands into fists before he could reach for her again, and dug them into his pockets.

  “How about now?” he said, so calmly that he wanted to applaud his performance. “Your memory any better?”

  Cat’s eyes opened. She blinked and he wondered if he’d ever seen lashes as long as hers before. Then she touched the tip of her pale pink tongue to her bottom lip, and his libido threatened to wipe out his brain.

  “I asked you a question,” he said gruffly. “Has your memory improved?”

  Her head dipped in jerky assent. “Yes.”

  “Good.�
�

  She did it again, that little thing with her tongue. Jake took a quick step back.

  “I wouldn’t have kissed you if I had a wife. Or a mistress.”

  “Why not? In Brazil—”

  “Yeah. In my country, too, sometimes. Maybe it’s an old-fashioned concept, but I’m into commitment. I mean,” he said hastily, “I’m not actually into it. Not yet. But when and if I find the right woman I won’t fool around with anybody else.”

  “Is that what you’re doing with me? Fooling around?”

  Hell. How did he manage to dig himself deeper with every word?

  “I’m talking about kissing you. I wouldn’t have done it if there was anyone else.”

  Really? What about Samantha Vickers? And how come he hadn’t thought of Sam once since he’d gone to that convent?

  “So you kissed me because you’re not committed to anyone?”

  “Yes. No.” He ran his hand through his hair. Two months of this, he’d be a basket-case. “I kissed you, that’s all. A kiss is just a kiss. It isn’t always an earth-shaking event.”

  “Some of the girls said it was. And some of the books I read…”

  Catarina looked down. Jake put his hand under her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met.

  “Some of what books?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Come on, Cat. What books?”

  She turned a pale pink. “The girls who went home for weekends, you know, sometimes they brought back books.”

  Lady Chatterley’s Lover? The Story of O? Jake narrowed his eyes. “And?”

  “And in those books…”

  “What books, damn it?”

  “Romance novels. In some of them kisses were—they were special.”

  “Ah. Romance novels.” He let out a sigh of relief. How revealing could a romance novel be? “Yeah, well, they can be.”

  “But they don’t have to be? You mean a man can kiss a woman for no reason?”

  “No. Of course not. A man should always—he should always feel—he should want the woman to feel…”

  “Yes?” Cat said softly. “Feel what?”

  Years before, when he was just a kid, Jake and his pals had cut school on a bitterly cold winter day. They’d gone to one of the old factory piers on the Bronx River where they swam during the summer. There’d been ice on the river and he’d walked out on its frozen skin.

  “Go, Jake!” the other kids had yelled.

  And he’d gone. Five feet from shore. Ten feet. Before he’d suddenly felt the first delicate shiver of the ice under his feet.

  Suddenly the cries had been filled with terror.

  “It’s breaking up, man,” one of the kids had shouted. “Jake, Jake, the ice is breaking. Turn around. Head back!”

  He had, because doing anything else would have been insane.

  Still, there’d been that one mercurial instant when he’d hesitated, torn between the gut-loosening terror of knowing he was in danger and the indescribable high that came of flirting with it.

  That was how he felt now, looking down into Catarina Mendes’s coffee-colored eyes. How he felt as he watched the tip of her pink tongue dart out and slick over her bottom lip.

  One step forward. One touch. One more kiss…

  “Jake?”

  He dragged air into his lungs, then took a step back, away from her, away from the ice that threatened to buckle under his feet.

  “Unpack,” he said in a low growl. “Change that damned brown sack for something else. Take a nap or pace back and forth. Either is fine with me. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.” He stepped out of the room, began to shut the door, then remembered what had started this scene. “You asked me about Anna.”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s my housekeeper. Married. Her age is someplace between fifty and infinity.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. ‘Oh.’ Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” Jake said, and yanked the door shut after him.

  Except he really didn’t. Certainly not. Because the idea that his innocent ward, his convent-bred child-woman, had been baiting him, was impossible.

  She couldn’t have been teasing him. Winding him up in hopes he’d kiss her again.

  No way. The very idea was crazy. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  Or would she?

  Jake swore, ripped off his tie, headed for the master suite at the other end of the duplex and the benefits of a long, icy shower.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT TURNED out that Anna had left a casserole alongside a bowl of rice in the fridge: strips of chicken, mushrooms and peapods in some kind of rich brown sauce.

  Five minutes in the microwave for the casserole, her accompanying note said, three minutes for the rice.

  When the meal was ready, Jake went to the foot of the wide staircase that led to the upper level of the penthouse.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he called.

  No answer.

  “Catarina? Supper’s on.”

  He heard her door open. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Fine. Excellent. That means there’s more for me.”

  He stomped back to the kitchen, burned his fingers taking the dishes from the nuker and put them on the breakfast bar. He was angry, angrier than he should have been at Cat’s assumption that he was married or at least involved with a woman.

  She had one lousy attitude about men, he thought grimly, yanking open the silverware drawer. Maybe the men she knew would fool around with one woman while they were involved with another, but—

  But what?

  His ward didn’t know any men. She didn’t know the first thing about them or how they behaved. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was responsible for finding a husband for a woman who might as well have spent her life on one of the outer moons of the planet Zongo.

  “Hell,” he muttered, and plucked a fork from the drawer. He glanced at the cupboard, gave a second’s consideration to taking down a plate, even adding a serving spoon and napkin to the counter—but why bother? He was a bachelor, having a meal alone, thanks to the unreasonably touchy temperament of his house guest.

  He was also hungry as a bear. A bear in an extremely foul mood. Add it up, and he couldn’t see any reason not to pull up a stool, poke his fork into the casserole and—

  “Don’t you know how to set a table?”

  Jake smothered a groan and let his fork clatter to the granite countertop.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry.”

  “I changed my mind.” Cat gave a delicate sniff. “That smells…not too bad.”

  “Anna would be thrilled at that wild vote of approval.”

  Footsteps padded across the tile behind him. “What is it?”

  “Something with chicken.”

  “Yes, but what? It’s definitely not the awful stuff we got at school.”

  “Then why not call it that?” Jake said sarcastically as he turned to face her. “You know. Not The Awful Stuff We—” His jaw dropped. “A better question is, what is that?”

  Cat glanced down at herself. She was wearing sweats. Well, that was what she called them. The truth was, the pants and shirt hadn’t come out quite as intended—partly because she’d cut and sewn them on the sly, and partly because sewing, as she’d already admitted, was not her strongest skill.

  “It’s a sweatsuit,” she said, with a lift of the chin that warned Jake to leave the topic alone. “Not up to New York standards, perhaps, but I like it.”

  Jake stared at her for a long minute. She’d showered. Her damp and glossy curls hung loose around her face, emphasizing its oval delicacy. The sweats were a bad joke and hung on her with room to spare. Still, he could see the thrust of her breasts beneath the cotton fabric, the roundness of her hips, the long length of her legs. Those bare toes that had turned him on before peeped out beneath the badly turned cuffs.

  He wanted to laugh
at the picture she made but he couldn’t. Not when she also looked so sweet and vulnerable.

  And incredibly, astoundingly sexy.

  He swung away, rose from the stool and went to the cupboard. He took out dishes and napkins, rummaged in the drawer for forks and knives and spoons.

  “Here,” he said brusquely, thrusting the stuff at Catarina. “Set the table.”

  “Do you mean, set the counter?”

  “Yes. Right. That’s what I meant.”

  “Because there’s a difference, you know, between the proper way to set a breakfast bar and a table. For the one, these paper napkins are fine, but for the other—”

  “Just set the damned thing,” Jake said through his teeth.

  “You don’t have to use—”

  “Obscenities. You’re wrong. I do. And if you don’t stop correcting me you’ll hear some that’ll singe your ears.”

  Catarina lifted her eyebrows but kept silent as she laid out the china, flatware and napkins. She needed to get her guardian in a better mood. Babbling silly lessons learned at school wasn’t the way to do it, but she was nervous.

  Yesterday she’d spent her first night ever in a hotel. Now she was about to spend her first night in a man’s apartment.

  And to present that man with a plan.

  She had to find a way to take back control of her life.

  Take it back? She’d never had control in the first place. The school, the sisters, Mother Elisabete, her uncle and his attorney and now Jake Ramirez…They ruled her existence.

  Now she was supposed to let that long line of regulators hand her off to a man who’d rule her, too?

  Not without a fight.

  The first glimmer of hope had come to her as she’d showered, washing her hair with a shampoo she’d found in the guest bathroom that smelled like vanilla and felt like silk. By the time she’d moved on to drying off, she’d had the start of a plan.

  She’d opened bottles and tubes, taken deep sniffs, selected one that reminded her of roses. And, as she’d rubbed it into her skin, she had suddenly known exactly how to gain her freedom.

  Actually, Jake was responsible—first talking about the differences between his culture and that of Brazil…

  Then taking her in his arms and kissing her.