Mendoza's Secret Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  * * *

  She lost track of time.

  They rode their horses along a well-cleared road. It was framed by tall trees on both sides. The sense of peacefulness was irresistible, and she felt both enthusiastic and contented at the same time.

  Before she realized it, the sun had completely receded, calling it a day and allowing the full moon to take over.

  “Okay, I think it’s time to show you that surprise,” he said, reining in his horse and dismounting.

  She’d almost forgotten about that. “I’m game if you are,” she told him, getting off her horse.

  Matteo tied his horse’s reins to a low-hanging branch on a nearby tree, then took the reins from her horse and did the same.

  Rachel wiped her hands on her back pockets and asked, “Need any help?”

  He did, Matteo thought, but it wasn’t anything that she could help him with. His pulse was just going to have to stop racing on its own.

  “No, but thanks for offering,” he replied, setting the basket on the ground. He flipped back the top and took out the classic red-checked tablecloth. Two small but bright battery-powered lanterns followed.

  As Rachel stood to one side, watching, he went on to get what she thought was a rather impressive picnic dinner for them: fried chicken, biscuits with butter and two servings of fresh fruit. “Dinner is served,” he told her.

  She didn’t sit down at first. Instead, she took it all in. This, she thought, had taken a lot of effort. When had he had the time to throw it all together? She’d agreed to go out with him only a couple of hours ago.

  “Very impressive,” she told him. “Where did you fly the chicken in from?” She assumed that was what he’d done since he was a pilot like his father, and making cargo drops appeared to be his main source of income.

  You’re assuming things again, that little voice in her head chided her.

  What he said in response to her question confirmed she was wrong. “I didn’t.”

  “You bought the fried chicken locally,” she concluded.

  “No,” he told her, giving her a coated paper dinner plate that looked prettier than some of the real plates she had seen. “I fried it locally.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure she was following him. “Come again?”

  He said it as simply as he could. “I made the chicken.”

  She looked from the tempting pile of fried chicken pieces to Matteo and then back again. She furrowed her brow in disbelief. “Did you make the biscuits, too?”

  His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Biscuits, too,” he repeated.

  Her eyes swept over everything one more time. It all looked too perfect. Most men were not this detail-oriented—unless they were professional chefs, and this man was not a professional chef.

  “You’re kidding,” she breathed.

  Matteo slowly shook his head, then replied, “Not that I’m aware of.” Pausing, he took in her expression. “You look surprised.”

  “I am,” she admitted. “I didn’t think that bachelors knew how to cook. Especially city bachelors.” Which was what he was, coming from Miami and all, she thought. “It’s far too easy to pick up the phone and order takeout than to stand over a hot stove, fooling around with measuring spoons.”

  “Easy,” Matteo agreed. “But doing it that way—calling for takeout—lacks a certain feeling of accomplishment. Although, to be completely honest, I have to admit that I’m a big fan of eating out. They have some truly amazing restaurants back in Miami.” Temporarily warming to his subject—and recalling favorite meals—he told her with enthusiasm, “Any kind of food you can name, there’s a restaurant that specializes in making it.

  “I also got to sample my fair share of different kinds of cuisines in some of the cities around the world while I was an airline pilot,” he told her, putting a couple of drumsticks on his plate.

  She’d thought he just flew cargo. Working for the airlines broadened his base. “Oh, like your Dad.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rachel could hear the pride in his voice when he acknowledged that.

  “If you like eating out so much,” she said, “how did you learn how to cook?” It sounded as if he’d had a busy life. When would he have had the time to take cooking lessons?

  “By watching my mom.” A fond look slipped over his face. It completely captivated Rachel. “She was an absolutely amazing cook. And she never followed any recipes. She just did everything purely by instinct.”

  Rachel liked that. Liked the fact that Matteo wasn’t embarrassed to learn how to cook or to credit his mother for it. He had no way of knowing that he had just gone up several notches in her book. But he had.

  “Is your mother still in Miami?” she asked casually, wondering what the woman was like.

  Matteo’s face darkened just for an instant before he answered her question. “No. My mother died a few years ago.”

  She heard the pain in his voice, even though he didn’t say anything more on the subject.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Matteo.” Rachel placed her hand over his in a sign of sympathy and comfort. “That must have been so terrible for you and your family.”

  Taking a deep breath, Matteo shrugged, trying to shed both the feeling and what he assumed was her pity. He didn’t want to dwell on the subject any longer.

  “Yeah, well, that’s all part of life, I guess.” And then, just like that, he changed the subject. “I took a chance with the chicken,” he admitted. When she looked at him, puzzled, he explained, “Not everybody likes fried chicken.”

  He had to be hanging around different circles than she did, Rachel thought.

  “Well, I never met anyone who didn’t like fried chicken. Speaking of which, this has to be just about the very best fried chicken I’ve ever had.” It was crisp and golden, light and definitely not greasy—and there was a certain flavor to it that she couldn’t put her finger on, but it was very different than the standard fried chicken. She’d bet on it. “What did you use?” she wanted to know.

  “I make my own bread crumbs,” he admitted.

  She stared at him. “God, but you’re enterprising.” Her bread crumbs came out of a container labeled Seasoned Bread Crumbs.

  “It’s a secret recipe,” he told her, his dark eyes dancing. “But I guess I can trust you. I grind up seasoned garlic croutons, soda crackers and some almonds. Then I mix them all together. Each piece of chicken gets a few drops of extra-virgin olive oil to coat it. Then I dip both sides of the piece in the bread crumbs. After that, the only thing left is the frying.” Matteo smiled. “No big deal.”

  “Well, it tastes like a big deal once it gets to your tongue,” she told him. “Your mother would be very proud of you.”

  The words had no sooner left her mouth than she realized that perhaps he didn’t want the conversation to go back in that direction. He had all but closed up a minute ago, right after he had mentioned his mother’s passing.

  Raising her eyes to his, Rachel glanced at him rather hesitantly. To her relief, rather than looking extremely sad again, Matteo had a small smile on his face. Granted, it was etched with sorrow, but it still qualified as a smile.

  “Thanks,” he told her. “It means a lot to me to hear that.”

  Even though he knew Rachel had no idea what his mother would have thought, the idea that his mother would have been proud of him for something so simple as cooking a meal bolstered him.

  It occurred to Matteo, as he looked into Rachel’s face, that his mother would have liked this woman.

  Perhaps even as much as he did.

  Chapter Seven

  In general, Matteo wasn’t a man who was given to impulsive behavior. That was more Cisco’s department. For his part, Matteo was a man who thought things out, who weighed things very carefully before making any sort of de
cision. If Cisco was the fast-moving hare of the famed Aesop’s fable, Matteo was the tortoise. Slow and steady, always with his eye on the distant prize.

  But just this once, Matteo allowed impulse to rule him. Just this once, he put himself in Cisco’s shoes and asked himself what his brother would do in a case like this—feeling like this.

  Maybe he needed to take a page out of Cisco’s book. After all, Cisco was the one who had the girls all clamoring for his attention as far back as Matteo could remember. Cisco was the one who never, ever lacked for female companionship.

  And Cisco didn’t sit around waiting for things to happen. He made things happen.

  Maybe it was time that he did the same, Matteo thought as desire continued to swirl through him, growing larger and more intense.

  With that last thought uppermost in his mind, Matteo cupped Rachel’s chin in his hand ever so lightly, tilted her head back and brushed his lips against hers without so much as a whispered preamble or a hint of a warning.

  One second they were talking. The next he was seizing the moment and kissing her.

  Her lips were incredibly sweet, tasting of the strawberry she had just consumed and her very own unique and tempting flavor. Matteo felt awe and excitement at the same time.

  Her scent filled his head, and her taste filled his soul, tempting him. Making him long for things he knew he shouldn’t be longing for, not at this point.

  It was too soon.

  Unlike Cisco, he wasn’t the love-’em-and-leave-’em type. That, to him, was the very definition of irresponsibility. To Matteo, family was everything. And he would not accidentally create any new members until after the proper steps had been taken. Caution, he silently argued, could only be thrown to the wind so far before a man’s moral fiber wound up being sacrificed.

  That wasn’t him.

  And yet...

  And yet she made him ache so badly. Made him want to do and be things that he normally wasn’t.

  * * *

  Rachel had to remind herself to breathe.

  This was not as good as she thought it might be—it was better.

  Miles better.

  So much better that she thought perhaps this was what some people referred to when they talked about having an out-of-body experience, because heaven knew, her consciousness had definitely gone somewhere these past few minutes.

  Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around Matteo’s neck, cleaving the upper part of her body to his, her heart racing so madly she thought it might very well burst.

  And when it was over, when Matteo pulled his lips from hers, she almost cried out. Part of her wanted to stop him from moving back. She wanted to keep the moment going indefinitely so that she could lose herself in his kiss until both their boundaries were blurred and she didn’t know where hers ended and his began.

  She felt as if she was free-falling through space.

  It wasn’t realistic and she knew it, but just for this small interlude of time, she had parted company with reality.

  Happily-ever-after fairy tales were more her speed right now.

  When he drew his head back, there was an apology automatically hovering on Matteo’s lips. But one look at Rachel’s face and something told him that it wasn’t necessary to apologize. The exact opposite was true. That if he apologized, he would be in effect ruining something perfect.

  Something they both treasured in their own unique way.

  With effort, Matteo reined in both his thoughts and his growing desires. He told himself he needed to know more about her as a person. This magnetic pull he was experiencing had to have more than just physicality at its core. He wanted to have feelings for the total person, not just the sexy intern/hostess whose presence ignited his soul.

  “Does your family live here in Horseback Hollow?” he asked her. Maybe it was a lame question, but it was a start.

  The question, coming out of the blue, caught her off guard. Why was he asking that now?

  “No, they’re back in—someplace else,” she ended, deciding at the last moment that it served no purpose to give away too much information.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Matteo or wanted to project the image of some sort of woman of mystery. She just didn’t want him to get it in his head to look up her family on one of his piloting jaunts. Who she had been back in Austin was not who she was here in Horseback Hollow. She wanted to be judged on her own merits, not on whose daughter she was.

  “Why do you ask?” she wanted to know.

  His shrug was casual. “Just being curious,” he replied. “I have a big family, and we’re pretty close. Always makes me wonder what everyone else’s family is like.”

  “My family’s big,” Rachel acknowledged. “But we’re not close,” she said flatly, “so it really doesn’t count all that much how big we are. There were times when we were just ten individuals under the same roof, nothing more.”

  “Ten, huh?” Matteo whistled at the number. “Well, you’ve got me beat. I’ve got only five siblings in mine. But we’re all pretty close,” he added, wondering if she would take that as a criticism about her family. He certainly didn’t mean it that way. “Gabi’s the youngest—and the only girl. When my dad was hurt in that plane crash, Gabi dropped everything and came right out to take care of him. While she was here, she wound up meeting and falling in love with Jude Fortune Jones. After my dad recovered, Gabi got married.

  “That’s why Cisco and I are out here,” he explained. “We came for her wedding.”

  She liked that about him, liked his family loyalty. She’d been at the wedding, too, but their paths had never crossed. She’d never even caught a glimpse of him. She would have remembered if she had. “She made a beautiful bride, didn’t she?”

  Matteo nodded. “Yes.”

  His little sister had made a beautiful bride. He couldn’t recall ever seeing her glow like that. He was very happy for her. At the same time, he wondered if he was ever going to have that sort of a connection with someone, the kind of connection that felt as if the other person completed him. And he couldn’t help but wonder how he and Rachel had spent the night at the same affair without meeting. Without sharing a look or a dance.

  Rachel pointed out the obvious. “And you’re still here.” It gave her an inkling of hope that perhaps he intended to stay around for a while—perhaps even permanently.

  Matteo shrugged again, lifting one shoulder carelessly, then letting it drop. “I’m not sure about Cisco’s reasons, but as for me, I thought I’d stick around for a little bit just to please the old man. Dad wants all of us to relocate here.” He smiled, recalling the blatant hints his father had dropped since he’d arrived in town. It surprised him that Cisco was actually on board with the idea of staying for a while. His brother’s primary real-estate market was back in Miami. He would have thought that Cisco would have already been on a plane headed back home. “Dad likes having family close by.”

  Rachel saw through the layers of rhetoric. “But you want to go back to Miami.”

  “That was the plan,” he admitted, looking up at the sky with its network of stars. If he looked at her, he knew he would be sorely tempted to kiss her again—and this time it might not stop there. So he looked at the sky for both their sakes.

  Was. He’d said that “was” the plan, Rachel thought, seizing on the word. Did that mean that there was a new plan in place? Or was she just indulging in a great deal of wishful thinking?

  She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t want to ask Matteo to clarify that for her. He might take her question the wrong way or misunderstand why she was asking.

  At this point, even she wasn’t exactly sure what she meant with all this wavering back and forth she was doing, especially while it was going on with these strange, intense feelings she was having that served as a backdrop for what might or mig
ht not be going on between them.

  All she knew was that she had never felt so confused before: excited and frightened all at the same time. And it was centered on this man sitting inches away from her.

  Rachel pretended to compare the lure of Miami with what Horseback Hollow had to offer. “We don’t have the kinds of restaurants or nightlife that Miami boasts,” she readily agreed. “But you certainly can’t find a more peaceful place than this town.” And right now, that was a very high priority for her.

  “Assuming I’m looking for peaceful,” Matteo pointed out.

  “Everyone looks for peaceful once in a while,” she told him. And then, thinking it over, she amended her own assessment. “Well, maybe not everyone,” she allowed. “Your brother doesn’t seem like the type who values peaceful. He seems more like someone who’s drawn to nightlife.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was just making an assessment of Cisco—or comparing his brother to him and finding him lacking. Finding him, in a word, dull.

  He’d taken second place to his brother more times than he could remember, and while it had only mildly irritated him when he was a boy, this time around, the thought really bothered him.

  Matteo began to gather up the dishes and what was left of the picnic, depositing everything rather haphazardly into the basket.

  “It’s getting late,” he announced. “I think I’d better take you home.”

  She could have sworn she’d seen something flash across his face a moment ago, a thought that didn’t sit well with him or some sort of an epiphany that had made him feel less than comfortable.

  Whatever it was, it had been abrupt, and she could feel that the mood changed instantly.

  Was it something she had unwittingly said? Or done? She didn’t have a clue, and it bothered her.

  For a moment, Rachel debated just coming out and asking him what was wrong. But that could make things even worse. In the end, she pretended nothing had happened and this was just the natural ending to a moonlight picnic.

  As he put away all the plates and utensils, she folded up the tablecloth and handed it to him. She placed the lanterns side by side in the wicker basket.