by Annie O'Neil
“A shower would be lovely,” she said. Much more primly than she’d intended, but there were lines that were not to be crossed.
And one did not think saucy thoughts about the man who was effectively her captor when living in his home. That was the rule. And she was sticking to it.
* * *
Diego had half a mind to scoop Isla up, carry her the handful of remaining stairs up to his own suite and show her just how satisfying a shower could be.
But he was in his family home and his mother—back when she had cared about such things—had taught him to be respectful of women. That, and he already knew that one hot, soapy shower would only be the start of things. Which was why it was better not to start anything at all.
Visiting medical staff. Tourists looking for a holiday fling. Anyone with a guaranteed departure date. That was what he was interested in.
Isla has a guaranteed departure date.
“Allow me to show you to your room.”
She nodded, caught his eye just before he turned away, and in that instant he saw a flash of fear.
A feeling of defensiveness tugged at his chest. He wouldn’t hurt her. Ever. This was his sanctuary. He loved it here. Valued it. The handful of flings he’d had most certainly hadn’t been conducted here, in the family home. This was not a place where he brought people—and yet here he was, guiding in his bride. A woman he’d known half as long as he’d been married to her. Less than a sum total of twenty-four hours. Didn’t that speak to the fact that he should never even think of laying a hand on her?
She’s not here by choice.
“Oh! Señor Diego.” The family’s long-term housekeeper, Carmela, bustled out of the room he was about to show Isla to. “The room is fixed as you requested. Who was it you were—?”
She stopped abruptly as her eyes lit on Isla. In the blink of an eye her dark gaze took in Isla’s scrubs. The blood stains. The shadows under her eyes. The tension in her shoulders. The ring on her finger.
A stranger wouldn’t have noticed, but Carmela had known him since he was a boy, and he watched as she registered the peculiarity of the situation and chalked it up to Noche Blanca.
Ever resilient, and prepared to wage resistance against the men who had brought violence to her homeland, Carmela popped on a warm smile and turned her attention fully toward Diego. “What can I do to help?”
Diego could have hugged her. Carmela’s loyalty to his family ran in her veins. He knew he could count on her to roll with the... Well, not with the punches, exactly. No one had died. On either side. He had a reluctant bride, and he wasn’t exactly dancing with joy either, but big picture? It was a good day.
Bigger picture? He’d figure out a way to deal with Axl. He usually did.
Immediate picture? He needed to look after his wife.
Isla was visibly wilting. Exhaustion was beginning to set in to her slight frame as the clarity of her aqua eyes became shadowed with fatigue. But seeing she wasn’t completely alone with him in the house seemed to have given her a sense of comfort.
In Spanish he asked the housekeeper, “Would you mind showing Señora Vasquez her room?”
Carmela didn’t arch her eyebrows or suck in a sharp breath. Nor did she comment on the fact that this had been his mother’s room. Or that he had addressed the stranger standing on the external balcony as his wife. Instead she did what she always did—treated him like the son she’d never had.
She glared at him as Isla approached the doorway to the suite. “Que?” She switched to English. “You’re just going to let the poor girl walk across the threshold?”
Isla’s eyes popped wide open even as Diego narrowed his, only just managing to stem a laugh.
If he was going to come home married and expect Carmela to play along then she was going to call a few shots.
“Of course not.” He held out a hand to Isla. “Mi amor?”
“What the—?”
“Do you remember when I told you we take marriage seriously here?”
Before she could ask another question Diego swept her into his arms and carried her across the threshold into a room he’d not stepped foot in for over five years.
She wasn’t pushing him away. Or struggling to jump out of his arms. So he strode into the room and headed toward the—
Everything had changed.
He’d expected a... Well, a mausoleum wouldn’t be the exact word he would’ve chosen... But Carmela had clearly taken matters into her own hands long before he’d sent her a text message to “freshen up the second master suite”.
“I think you’re going a bit overboard on the newlywed thing,” Isla whisper-growled.
He looked down at her and smiled. “What? You don’t like being carried around?”
Her cheeks pinked up. “Not so much.”
A devil lit on his shoulder. “Enough to protest...or not so much that you’d refuse me carrying you to your bed?”
She pursed her lips at him. “I think I can manage on my own, thank you very much.”
He feigned a short gasp of woe. “Carmela will be very disappointed in me.”
“Yes, well...”
She began to wriggle enough for him to concede that it was probably time to put her down.
“I think you probably could’ve introduced us a bit more...truthfully. That would’ve been a good way to start. I have a name. A job. A purpose in life other than being your...your...arm candy.”
“Carmela understands the situation.”
“What?” she whipped round to look at the door, which had discreetly been shut by Carmela. “Have you told her? How many people know, exactly?”
“You, me, your father and Carmela.”
“And the whole of Noche Blanca?” She stared at him. “Right? That’s what this whole charade was for, wasn’t it? For Noche Blanca? Making sure my father was safe.”
“Sí, amorcita.”
She gave her head a sharp shake. “Please don’t call me that.”
“It’s a term of endearment. Like you might use sweetie or honey.”
“Yes. Well... I don’t really use those terms. And I think under the circumstances they are wildly inappropriate.”
Her discomfort crackled toward him as if he’d cornered her and she’d morphed into a feral cat.
No. The opposite of feral. He knew because he was the same way when cornered. It was loss of control. She didn’t like it.
Well, nor did he. It was why he’d snatched back control of a spiraling situation last night. But his knight in shining armor act had taken any sense of control away from her.
They were each trying to find a way to navigate the best path out of this mess, and he owed it to her to let her know that they were on an equal footing. That they were both on foreign territory. The only way they’d get out of this was if they worked as one unit. He huffed out a laugh. Oh, the irony. If they worked as husband and wife.
He took a step back. Gave her the space she so obviously wanted.
“What do you say we take some time to have a rest and then we’ll talk everything through? You can ask me anything. Whatever you like.”
“What if I’d like to call my government back home and tell them I’m being held under duress?”
A shot of something hot and fiery seared through his chest. “Is that what you think this is? Some sort of fun I’ve been having with you?”
She backed up and bumped into the bed. He’d frightened her. Dios! He clawed a hand through his hair, then held up his hands.
“Apologies. There’s no excuse for lashing out like that.” He dug his fingers into the back of his neck, only to feel knots on top of the knots he’d felt the night before. “Look. We are both exhausted. Why don’t we—?”
“I don’t want to sleep,” she interrupted. “I want to find out what on earth this is all about.”
She gave him a wary look.
“I need a shower. You probably do, too.”
“What? Are you saying I’m smelly now?”
Steam was virtually pouring out of her ears. Isla looked absolutely indignant.
His heart... What was his heart doing?
It was aching for her. For this insane situation. For the fear she must be feeling for her father. For... Yes, he might as well say it. For feeling imprisoned.
He had two choices here. Sit down and talk things through right now—and most likely stick his foot straight in it—or walk away, regroup, and talk it through later like a sane person.
“You smell like a spring morning.” She didn’t have to know he actually believed it.
She snorted. “I’d have to shower for a week to smell anything close to spring.”
An image flashed into his mind of silky warm water pouring through Isla’s red hair, across her pale skin, over the shifts and curves of her body. Hot blood shot due south of his hips.
Those thoughts were not helping.
“Very well, then. Do as you please.” He knew he sounded as if he was dismissing her, but he needed a shower of his own. An icy cold one. “If we meet in the courtyard in an hour, say? Carmela will bring some coffee and we’ll have a proper talk. Would that be all right?”
“Perfectly.” She gave him a crisp nod.
He turned and left so she wouldn’t see his grimace. The foreseeable future was going to be hell.
Not just because of Noche Blanca. They were a nasty irritant but they could be dealt with. The hell would be in reminding himself that he hadn’t married this woman for a single reason other than to do his version of taking control. He was showing Axl Cruz he’d met his match. That life would be different now on El Valderon. That the land he’d secretly donated to the turtle sanctuary via a shell corporation was meant to be that. A sanctuary and nothing else.
As he closed the thick cedar door behind him he felt, for the first time in a very long time, that he’d finally met someone who just might truly understand him.
And it scared the hell out of him.
* * *
As she watched Diego disappear behind the intricately carved wooden door Isla’s fatigue was overridden by her first lucid thought since the entire drama had begun.
There’s so much more to him than meets the eye.
She wanted to find out what motivated him. What insane turn of events had pushed him to take these equally mad measures. Marry a stranger to save the life of another one? Her father didn’t know Diego. Or at least he didn’t seem to.
Seeing Diego interact with the white-haired, clear-eyed housekeeper had opened up yet another side to him she hadn’t expected. He was gentle. He liked to make people happy. Carmela was obviously the housekeeper, and yet he treated her like a beloved grandmother, indulging her with that ridiculously old-fashioned carrying the bride over the threshold palaver.
How many more sides to him were there?
She’d seen Diego the hero. The surgeon. The negotiator. The groom.
A lava-hot whorl of heat swirled up from her core and lazily floated around as her fingers traced her lips again. She gave her hands a brisk rub. The kind that was meant to clear those types of thoughts from her head. He was her husband in name only. A means to an end.
And yet...
And yet nothing.
He was a man who picked up his bride and carried her into a separate bedroom then walked away. Because he was also a man of his word. He said he wouldn’t hurt her. And she believed him.
Standing here on her own was just the reminder she needed that none of this was real. It was a fiction created to get her father safely off the island.
You didn’t exactly invite him to stay and test the firmness of the mattress!
She scanned the huge old wooden bed, the richly colored fabrics, the abundance of pillows and a headboard she could imagine clinging to while—
No. She couldn’t picture anything of the sort.
A shiver juddered down her spine. She wasn’t cold. Quite the opposite. So this was what it felt like to have someone under her skin.
Her spine straightened as yet another niggle from her past leapt to the fore.
Her ex had never given her this feeling. In a good or a bad way.
In fact, this was the first time in the past few days she had thought of him without an accompanying sense of...hurt? Betrayal?
She checked her cheeks.
No tears.
She put her hand on her heart.
No pain.
She tried to picture Kyle and...nothing.
So why had she spent a week sobbing into her pillow?
The truth shot through her like adrenaline.
She didn’t love him.
She wasn’t mourning a broken heart. She was mourning the fact that her sensible plan to get married, have a couple of children and lure her father back home to Loch Craggen had failed.
Until now.
Until Diego.
But her father was there and she was here.
How about that for irony?
The silly part of her—the one she rarely tapped into—stood up and spread her arms wide.
If her life was a musical, she suspected this would be the part where she started singing a hugely inspiring song about seeing the world through fresh eyes.
It would be quiet at first. A capella. She’d describe the mind-blowing epiphany of discovering that Kyle hadn’t driven her from her home. That there’d been no need for her to leave. That she could still hold her head high. That he was the liar and the cheat in this scenario.
But he had destroyed her ultimate goal. To lure her father back with the promise of a something...someone...he might love enough to come home for. She obviously wasn’t enough. Never had been. But grandchildren? Who could resist grandchildren?
It was all so clear now. Sobbing and bashing her pillow into submission hadn’t been heartbreak over Kyle. It had been frustration that her father had, once again, prioritized his work over her. Even when she’d come to him virtually carrying her heart in both hands, saying, Look. It’s broken. Fix it.
She’d truly believed he would fix it by throwing in the towel and agreeing to accompany her back to Loch Craggen.
Pffft. Showed her.
Turtles: One.
Isla: Nil.
Or was it one point each to Noche Blanca and the turtles? Either way it still left her at nil.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized this song of hers was going to be really long. More like an epic Nordic saga, involving travels to strange worlds, battles with evil clans, and confrontations of the totally mind-boggling variety with a drop-dead gorgeous surgeon who appeared like a Latin Poseidon in the midst of a storm.
Or a very close variation on that theme.
Diego was disarmingly attractive. Not that she’d spent all that much time noticing when her survival had been on the line, but now that it was down to just him, her and Carmela...
Oof. This was going to be a long month.
She gave the room another scan. It was completely plausible that a movie star might live here. Or a billionaire. Or both. It was the total opposite of her plain Jane bedroom back home. White walls. White sheets. White duvet cover.
The floor wasn’t white. There was that... But this room was everything hers wasn’t. Both a riot of color and the most soothing place she’d ever been.
It was huge. The size of her entire wee house back home.
The walls were a rich, buttery yellow. Naturally aged beams that looked as though they had borne witness to more than a century of Vasquez family history spanned the length of the room. There were thick teak chairs cushioned up to the h
ilt with jewel-colored pillows, set beside a set of French windows that led out to a balcony overlooking a ridiculously perfect sea view. Fresh flowers nestled in thick ceramic jugs and scented the air.
It was the type of place she’d never even thought to imagine herself visiting, let alone calling home.
This isn’t your home. This is temporary.
She pressed her eyes tight shut as she sank onto the edge of the huge bed. A large, dark wooden-framed number that could have accommodated an entire family. At the end of it was a huge wooden chest with thick cast-iron clasps. The type of chest a woman from another era might have put her trousseau in. Or her wedding dress...stored away to share with her daughter one day...
An image popped into her mind of Diego, a swarm of children and...oh, goodness...her. Right there. On the bed. With all of them. Laughing. Smiling. Tickling. Hugging.
She shoved the image to one side and brought up the much more real memory of her father waving to her as he went through Security and disappeared into the crowd.
“You can do this,” he’d whispered to her during their final hug. “You can save the turtles.”
She wasn’t one to resent an animal on the verge of extinction, but...really? It had been a much greater emotional blow than she’d imagined. Perhaps that was why she was being so snappy with Diego who, in fairness, deserved nothing but kindness for all he’d done.
She’d picked up her heart, stuffed it back into her chest and only stiffened a little bit when Diego had tried to wrap her in his arms and comfort her. In all honesty, she was frightened. Frightened to let those pent-up demons loose. Once she began to cry about the parents who’d never really valued her she wasn’t sure she’d ever stop.
A soft knock sounded on the door. “Señora? It’s me... Carmela.”
She reluctantly pushed herself away from the bed and opened the door.
Carmela came in with Isla’s bag over one shoulder and a big box that looked as if it was from an old-fashioned department store over the other.
“Señor Vasquez has asked me to bring you your things.”
