by Aria Ford
“Why aren’t you calling Tom then?”
“I can answer that,” Sam, all-smile still, ripped his staring from Ofélia.
Atlas smoothed his brows and cleared his mind of the quick, poisonous thought on the discovery that Sam liked her. He’d never thought anything malicious towards the door man before.
Sam, in all his stilted creepiness, was the rare creature in San Diego’s liveliest district that spent his Fridays and Saturdays at home all night, without companion. Like Atlas. In that way, he saw the other man as a kindred spirit of sorts.
Most of all he didn’t and shouldn’t care who liked Ofélia Espinosa. But Atlas was starting to think he did.
No way. Not going there.
“He left earlier, at around,” Sam consulted his desk, his computer screen tuned to the time stamps of departures and arrivals in the building. Atlas joined him for that few seconds to give himself some breathing and thinking space from Ofélia.
Sam was right. Tom had cleared through at two a.m. and he’d yet to show his sorry excuse of a hide –
Idiot.
“He has something that I really need.” Ofélia said again, prompting Atlas to look at her. She was re-adjusting the bag in her hands.
“Since you’re a friend,” and boy, did he use that word lightly, “he’d pick up his cell?” The implication of his line of questioning should be clear: If she was a friend then he wouldn’t have to play middle-man to whatever history Tom had with her.
Rather than responding, Ofélia was gnawing her lips, eyes heavenward, and the pretty picture of suspicion. Atlas drilled his stare through her, waiting for her to gather her thoughts, chew that plump lip of hers and give him an answer.
He tried a different tactic. “Is it urgent? Can you wait until he returns?” he resisted adding ‘whenever’. Tom was hardly reliable.
“Yes.” Ofelia bobbed her head once, meekly.
So much for trying to keep her in the dark…
She must have known that might not be happening anytime soon. One time Tom left and returned from a cross-national trip a week later. Atlas answered a call then from a nearby animal shelter to free Tom’s cat from its prison. At least when he had fish, he’d overfed them to death when he pulled this kind of crap.
The longer he watched this Ofélia, the more Atlas knew he was going to regret what he said.
Biting his tongue, he said, “Then it’s a good thing I have his spare key.”
That brightened Ofélia’s smile. “Thank you, Mr. Neville. Gracias! You cannot believe how this saves me.”
Atlas nodded curtly, turning back towards the lifts. The sooner he gave her what she wanted, the sooner Tom – and Ofélia could stop haunting him.
She thanked him again when the lift doors swung open. At least it was making one of them happy.
Sam called his goodbye out after them. He’d never done more than glance up from his screen and sometimes the occasional nod – just who was Ofélia Espinosa to change a man’s personality just like that.
As he opened his front door, and let her through, Atlas promised he wouldn’t go the way of Sam and his lovesickness.
“This looks just like Thomas’ place.”
So she’d seen Tom’s place?
Atlas tried not to let the effect of that comment or his subsequent thought show in his reply. Last thing he wanted to do was stomp his foot and list out all the ways he was not anything like his kid brother. That and every unit had the same interior blueprint.
It was a most trying task.
Luckily he found the spare and met her in front of his den’s fourth and topmost vista. She didn’t readily acknowledge him, awe having morphed her features to the sight before them. Atlas tried to see what she was seeing.
The courtyard square and the pool below: The social scene for all the gossipers who spun those tales about Sam and anyone else to pass time. No one was out there now, given the early hour but also likely sleeping off their partying like Tom, wherever he was…
Either way Atlas hated to interrupt her. She looked even cuter like that.
“I have the key. Let’s go.”
His words timed with his doorbell.
Atlas strode to the door and checked the front-door camera. He froze for a second and then forced himself to press the speaker button.
“Mr. Montero, Mr. and Mrs. Oriol, you’re early. Would you mind waiting a moment?”
The group on his door step acquiesced cheerfully; not that he strayed for long to study their smiling faces. He had bigger problems.
“Come here, please.” Atlas waved Ofélia over. Ignoring her questions, he led her down the short hall, past the powder and guest rooms to the master.
His bedroom.
For a moment Atlas indulged the realization he hadn’t had a woman in his room for over six months, and that he had completely other thoughts when bringing Ofélia in his innermost sanctuary.
“Stay here. Un momento. Okay?” he hoped his Spanish wasn’t crap; he needed Ofélia on the same page with him, and quick.
He had his future waiting on the other side of his front door – Atlas didn’t want, or need Ofélia to be the deciding factor of whether he made his longest dream come true.
Atlas had everything under control far before they’d known of each other’s existence and one weird twist to his otherwise well-managed day wasn’t going to derail nearly two months of wooing these VIP guests waiting on him.
So why couldn’t he shake off this uncharacteristic, foreboding vibe when he thought of her?
Why couldn’t she stop thinking about the washroom?
Ofélia crossed her legs, and then uncrossed and re-crossed them. She kept this up for another five minutes and then shot up off the end of Atlas Neville’s bed.
Dios!
She ran to the adjoining en suite, pushed through the wall of woodsy, masculine body spray on entry, and did her business. Surprised by the spritz of water on her bottom, Ofélia regarded the technology built into the fancy toilet.
She’d figured Thomas was rich – knew he was rich. And very insensible, she shook her head, the usual guilt creeping through her and the self-loathing following not too far off.
Washing up in the sink, Ofélia splashed the cool water over her face and around her warm neck. San Diego’s temperatures didn’t blush in comparison to the heat wave back home in Aguascalientes.
Heat aside, nothing beat being home, though it lately felt less like a home and more like a prison. And the trade from that home-prison to the metropolitan heaven in south California cost her nothing save her dignity.
Thomas, on the other hand, forked over thousands to the scam of the bridal agency working out of north-central Mexican city. Her actual trip of twelve hours plus transfer cost less than a tenth of that.
There it was again. A pang of guilt.
And then the pang of self-disgust.
Faucet off, she curled her hands around the marble sink counter.
“Ofélia Perdita Espinosa, you have nothing to worry for,” her reflection stared back, brow pinched, mouth thin, and nothing that visualized that self-affirmation statement.
Instead she looked like the worn-care mail-order bride she was, paid in full, shipped and delivered to the doorstep of a stranger she’d been matched to through the bridal agents.
She talked to Thomas once, and the agency had kept her in dim lighting, ‘to play up her features’ they said. More like ensure she wouldn’t scare off this big-money client.
It worked.
Thomas Neville took the bite and he got a rude awakening when her profile proclaiming her to be a five-six, one-thirty didn’t add up to her actual five-three, one-seventy figure.
Also she most definitely didn’t have gray eyes – the only thing the agency had been honest of was her hair color, her home city and her age, the latter because she was on the better side of her thirties.
Ofélia turned her back to the mirror, staring blindly at small painting on the wall opposite, half-
wondering where that farm in the fields of gold, red and orange autumn was located.
All she had to do was remember why she’d signed up to be a fake bride. Coming to San Diego to find her little brother, Jesús and hopefully bring him home with her, back to the people who love and care for him.
Missing for three weeks now, Ofélia had had enough. She couldn’t keep up the pretense with her mother about having spoken with Jesús, of his being too busy with his college studies in San Diego, when in reality Ofélia hadn’t heard back from him following their last messages.
A popular social media contributor, Jesús’ last status update on his blog was another comedy segment. Of course, Ofélia wasn’t laughing this time. She’d stopped laughing after the first twenty-four hours of her last checking-in.
“Stupid boy,” she muttered to the twenty-one-year-old phantom in her mind’s eye. To think she’d envied him at one point; craved the freedom he’d gotten with his full-ride scholarship to some fancy university in this city. Now all she wanted was to bring son and mother together. It might be one of the last wishes their madré requested of them. “Stupid boy, where are you?”
A light knock drew her from her intense contemplation of her life and art, and how she’d like to be anyone, go anywhere without the burdens she’d carried for half a decade.
“Si?” she stepped around Atlas who gave her room to pass into his bedroom.
Thomas was a good-looking man, but his brother was something else entirely. God had been very kind to Atlas. Brown-green eyes framed a sharp, long nose, his blue-black hair shaved on the sides, sat on top of his head like a wild mane, and the longer strands brushing his wide brow.
Paler than most of San Diegans she’d encountered, Atlas also dressed like he was entirely oblivious to the heat wave outside his home’s polished windows.
A long-sleeved, dark purple shirt and black dress pants covered a slim, athletic build. Standing close like this again, Ofélia noted he was close to eye level in her platform sneakers, and without the shoes she’d likely come to his clean-shaven, dimpled chin.
He definitely was a curioso creature.
Even if it didn’t make sense for him to dress as he did in the comfort of his home, she could forgive his choice in house wear as the A/C in his apartment, like Thomas’, was powerful. When she looked at it that way, her halter and shorts were not suitable for this new environment.
Ofélia shivered at that thought, her body awakening to the chill hanging in the room.
Yes, Atlas was handsome, but he was also not in any different position to her than his brother was and even if she’d started to forget Thomas’ face, replacing it with this scowling man before her.
“Sorry.” The apology came naturally. She’d made no plans to use his washroom, but the other option was wetting his bed or floor. But Ofélia might as well have not said anything for all Atlas cared; he continued to glower, and if anything the corners of his thin mouth drooped.
“Is something wrong?”
An unnamed emotion crossed his features, and his mouth parted with it. Then it snapped close and opened for his command. “Come with me, please.”
At least he’d said ‘please’. Ofélia could be so-so with her English; she knew bad manners when she heard them, and Atlas had thus far been coolly polite if not a bit callous. She could particularly see the barrier erected around him.
Only a kindred spirit could.
Shaking that thought free, Ofélia concentrated on keeping one foot after the other. Atlas’ strides were long but measured, and he always remained in an arm’s reach from her, as he had when he led her to his room to help her retrieve her purse from Thomas’.
She knew she was indebted to him, but she wasn’t expecting to entertain.
His guests sat a little straighter on Atlas’ re-entry, and their curiosity alighted on her. Ofélia acknowledged the older man, and the younger couple holding hands with a nod.
She guessed that this was why he’d pulled her away in a rush. Ofélia understood how it must have looked, and she knew exactly what she looked like and it took a lot of courage to resist sinking behind Atlas for cover.
“Mr. Montero, and Mrs. and Mr. Oriol, may I introduce my fiancée, Ofélia Espinosa.” Bringing her around, Atlas dropped his hand to her waist, his palm splayed over the side of her fluttering belly. Ofélia stared at him, catching his narrowing gaze and clearing her head just enough to assess these guests of his.
Their smiles were so wide, Ofélia’s tension ebbed a fraction in the face of their genuine happiness for Atlas’ stunning, and dishonest, proclamation.
Ofélia would have continued gapping if Atlas – her fiancé – didn’t nudge her.
“Sweetheart, say ‘hello’.”
“It’s a pleasure, señors Montero and Oriol, and señora Oriol,” Ofélia switched to Spanish, earning warmer smiles.
“The pleasure is all mine, señorita Ofélia,” the beautiful, voluptuous Latina turned her smile to Ofélia, and switching to Spanish also, she asked, “Where are you from originally?”
“Aguascalientes. And you, señora?”
They continued back and forth in Spanish for a bit longer and then at Atlas’ secreted sliding and squeezing over her hipbone, Ofélia switched to English with her latest response.
“T-Two months?” she floundered, looking to Atlas. He seemed to catch on to what Agata had asked of their falsified relationship history.
“Yes, just about two months.” His gaze was that of a lover’s, long and relentless if there wasn’t the world to consider but the two of them. Ofélia decided she’d like to be looked at like that more, if not by Atlas by a mystery man, her príncipe.
“Sweetheart?” Atlas roused her with that big, warm hand of his over her belly, massaging her tense muscles and uncoiling more than stiffness.
Ofélia dampened the urge to moan. She was not new to this dance, had her share of boyfriends, kissing and touching, and sex – three different lovers over her thirty-one-year existence.
Only this was fake.
The most convincing fake, but fake nevertheless.
And so was his mouth slanting down and over hers. She counted the seconds – six heart-wrenching, gut-plummeting beautiful seconds on the other end of his surprisingly soft, narrow lips.
Breathless on their disconnection, Ofélia blinked at him, trying to memorize the feeling he’d invoked in her from the simple touch to the small flame raging quickly in the pit of her belly.
Atlas was addressing his guests, and she heard him answering the question of their marriage with a wish-washy ‘soon’ and their living arrangements with a ‘we love it here’; all of it lies and lies, and more lies, yet none of it penetrated her rattling heart in the cage of her ribs, quieting it once and for all since he proclaimed her his fiancée.
Ofélia finally tuned into the conversation at Agata’s prompting.
“Will your family be joining you, then, señorita? Or will the wedding take place in Aguascalientes?”
“We’re hoping to do the ceremony here,” Atlas, smooth-talker that he was proving, intervened. “And later we’ll honeymoon near Ofélia’s family. I’m ashamed to admit I have yet to meet my in-laws.”
At the mention of her family, Ofélia remembered why she was standing beside this man, allowing him to hold her like this, and the reason that brought them together in the first place.
About to say something, anything to put this craziness to a stop, she made the mistake to look at him again. Back to staring at her with those hooded eyes of his, Atlas leaned in for a more innocent smooch.
Ofélia lost her power of speech, and at such horrible timing. Atlas’ guests were more overjoyed for them, and it was really sad. Like most girls she’d dreamed of her wedding, including making the customary announcements.
In the past twenty-four hours she’d had two engagements with two Neville men and not so much a hint of a wedding from any of her exes. What a pathetic life she had to be leading, Ofélia thought, mel
ancholy swamping her.
She was in no mood to celebrate, but their guests had other plans.
“What tremendous news!” Señor Montero pushed to his feet, clapping and rubbing his meaty palms. “First my Agata, and now you, Mr. Neville,” he laughed, the sound a contagion of joy. “We must, must celebrate.”
Atlas wasn’t having any of it, his eyes said as much, and she sensed it in the covert tensing of his body.
Mr. Montero would not take refusal lightly however. There had to be a war raging in Atlas’ mind, of all the ways that this could blow up in his face, especially since these guests appeared important to him.
Well, it’s his fault. Ofélia couldn’t help the silky thought or its follow-up. He shouldn’t have lied like this and pulled me into it, too.
Defeat was not becoming in Atlas. He carried it well though. If she wasn’t against him, Ofélia would really believe his latest lie, trust that his smile was as true as his next words. “We’d be delighted to join you in celebration. We agreed to keep quiet until we could settle on a date.”
Liar, liar! You kept quiet because we aren’t ever going to get married.
“Of course, your blushing bride-to-be must come too.”
“Claro,” Atlas replied in Spanish, the charm laid on thicker no doubt to cover his annoyance. Everyone in the room except her smiled at his correct language use. When she did try at being happy it was as means of survival.
That and she remembered Atlas never got around to opening his brother’s apartment for her. And she did need her passport.
The question now was what lengths would she go through at this point, and did it involve playing a bride once more to a Neville brother?
CHAPTER TWO
“Careful!”
Atlas’ voice, along with his annoyance, floated up and in from the open balcony doors. Ofélia stepped away from emptying her bag’s contents into the empty dressing cabinet one of the female workers showed her.
She stepped out on the warm, sandstone and clutched the railing, eyes finding her fiancé easily amongst the four other men out there.
