The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4)

by Christie Ridgway

  Damn her easy ability to blush! “Not because it’s any of my business,” she hastened to say. “Or because I’m…I’m interested particularly. But in order to have foodstuffs on hand that might appeal to her. Yogurts, say, or almond milk if that’s the type she favors. If she prefers Dijon mustard or a heartier sort.”

  “Foodstuffs. Dijon mustard,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I haven’t had time for the kind of relationship where I learn a lady’s favorite condiments.”

  “No?” The comment led her to think of the kind of relationships he did find time to enjoy. Sexual, of course. But would he opt for hot, fast rolls in the dark, or did he work off his stress in long, lazy sessions accompanied by candlelight?

  “No,” he said now, and then stroked the stubble of whiskers on his chin, the light scrubbing sound of it like a tickle down her spine.

  Her belly tightened and her inner thighs went weak.

  “It’s been a while,” Joaquin continued, “since I’ve had any kind of…interaction.”

  The devil made her do it. Some force, anyway, took over so that while she cast an innocent look his way, her mouth opened and she said, “Aphrodisiacs then? Should I stock up on oysters and pomegranates?”

  He stilled. The air between them electrified.

  “Oh, Bad Sara,” he whispered. “Very Bad Sara.”

  “Sir?” See, that devil was still driving her because the word came out pert and way, way too innocent.

  “I don’t need a substance to enhance my libido, I assure you. I only need…”

  As she quivered under his regard, he reached out his hand to toy with her hair again. More rose petals? Tucking a strand behind her ear, his fingertip traced the curve, leaving behind a fiery burn.

  Sara licked her dry lips. “You only need…?”

  His gaze fastened on her mouth. She held her breath.

  “What I need is—”

  Joaquin didn’t finish, because a shout came from the direction of the beach.

  “Sara!”

  She jolted back, tripping over her own feet so her employer had to grip her elbow to keep her upright.

  “Sara!” A young voice hailed her again.

  Her eyes jumped from Joaquin to the six-year-old boy running up the steps that led from the sand to the stretch of grass surrounding the deck. His bare feet slid to a stop before her and he looked to the man who was holding her arm then back at her.

  “Hello, Wells.” She beamed at the boy as she slid from Joaquin’s hold. Thank God for the timely interruption. “How are you today?”

  “Hungry.”

  “I heard that,” Sara’s friend Charlie said, coming up behind the child, a small pair of flip flops in her hand. “You had a snack before we left the house, which is a ten-minute walk.” Charlie appeared as unruffled as always, though there was curiosity in the glance she cast Joaquin’s way.

  Sara decided introductions were in immediate order. “Mr. Weatherford,” she said, turning to him. “Please let me introduce you to my friend Charlotte Emerson. Charlie, Mr. Weatherford is the owner of Nueva Vida.”

  They shook hands, Joaquin murmuring, “Please call me Joaquin.” Then Sara explained Charlie was butler for another home down the beach.

  Then Charlie took over. “Joaquin, this is Wells Archer. Wells, say hello to Mr. Weatherford.”

  They exchanged solemn man-to-boy handshakes.

  Then Wells returned to his usual small-child exuberance. “I have the day off! Charlie’s watching me because Laura’s on vacation! There’s a fun run this weekend at my school!”

  “That sounds quite exciting,” Sara said, then glanced at her friend. “Laura’s on vacation?”

  “Laura went home to visit her family,” Charlie said.

  The other woman’s expression gave nothing else away, but Sara could fill in the blanks. Laura, the nanny, had flaked out again, leaving Charlie to pick up the slack.

  Of course her friend could handle anything thrown her way, but Wells’ dad, Ethan Archer, didn’t need even the smallest of further upheavals in his life. He’d lost his beloved wife to cancer, and single parenthood had hit him hard. According to Charlie, he worried about his kid’s well-being at an almost-OCD level.

  Though loving his son wasn’t a fault in anyone’s eyes.

  And Wells seemed to be adjusting okay. Now he pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket, carefully peeling it open to show it was a form. He had a stubby pencil, too.

  “We’re getting pledges for the run,” he said to Sara. “And the money we make is so we can buy new balls and stuff for a school in Mexico.”

  “A worthy cause,” Sara said, understanding where this was going. “Is it possible that a friend, say, like me, might sponsor you during this event?”

  “Sponsor me?” Wells repeated. “You mean pay me for each lap I run?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s why I’m here!” Wells said, as if struck by the serendipity of her offer presaging his specific request. Smiling, he bounced on his bare heels and shoved the pencil and paper toward Sara. “You put in your name and the amount.”

  He studied the form when she handed it back and Sara looked to her butler friend. “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

  “No, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  They both glanced toward Joaquin, just as Wells thrust the paper at the man. “Do you want to pay too?” he asked.

  Charlie and Sara squawked at the same time.

  “Wells, no,” Charlie then said, with an apologetic look for Sara. “You don’t ask a stranger.”

  But Joaquin already had paper and pencil in hand. “We’ve been introduced, so I’m no stranger. And I’ll be happy to do my part for a good cause.”

  Sara and Charlie shared another look. But what could you do? They watched as Sara’s employer completed filling out his pledge.

  Then Charlie took the little boy’s hand. “Off we go, Wells. Say thank you.”

  “Thank you!” Then, just as they reached the steps to the beach, he spun. “I almost forgot,” he said to Sara. “You can come watch.”

  “Oh. Well…”

  “It’s a carnival and everything. At the school.”

  A crowd. People. Sara fought her grimace. There might be someone there who would recognize her. “I don’t think—”

  “My dad can’t come,” Wells said. “He has business. But you can be with Charlie.”

  Sara shifted her gaze to her friend, who gave a little shrug. “I’m sure we can keep you from too much…sun.” A hat she meant. Big sunglasses. A shirt with the collar propped up to her ears.

  The idea still seemed dangerous, but Wells appeared so hopeful, Sara found herself nodding. “Sure, kiddo. I’ll come watch.”

  Wells grinned, fully exposing the gap where one of his front teeth should be. Then, clearly aware he was on a roll, his gaze slid to Joaquin. “You too. You can watch me run.”

  “Uh… I don’t know…”

  “My dad can’t come. My mom’s dead.”

  “Wells,” Charlie and Sara said together.

  The boy was adjusting okay with the exception of his propensity to announce My mom’s dead, at the drop of a hat—or when he wanted to get his way. Charlie reported he’d thrown that out at the ice cream store, the toy emporium in town, and sometimes when he was told it was time for bed.

  “What?” Wells said, looking at the two women. “It’s true. My dad can’t come. My mom’s dead.”

  Charlie gazed down on her charge, her usual cool only slightly flustered around the edges. “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll be there.”

  They all three turned their stares on Joaquin.

  “What’s the big deal?” he continued. “I’ll be there.”

  “Cool!” Wells decreed.

  “But someone will have to tell me where I’m going,” Joaquin said.

  The boy waved a hand in the air as he tugged Charlie down the steps in the direction of home. “Bring Sara.
She’ll tell you where.”

  “Good idea,” Joaquin replied, then wandered away into the house.

  Sara stood where she was, hoping she wasn’t gaping like a fish washed up on the shore. But she felt as breathless. As out of her element.

  Because instead of drawing that sure line between herself and her employer, she’d just been set up by a six-year-old. On something that sounded alarmingly like a date.

  Chapter 3

  In the detached five-car garage at Nueva Vida, Joaquin watched Sara halt on the way to the passenger side of his car to stare at the driver side of hers.

  “My mirror,” she exclaimed, staring at the now-fixed device. He’d noticed it dangling at an odd angle that morning. “Did you fix it?”

  There wasn’t much to see of her facial expression, due to the deep brim of her hat and her oversized sunglasses. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t. Apparently someone bumped into it in the parking lot at the market yesterday afternoon.”

  He shrugged. “I just applied some epoxy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It was nothing.”

  A small payback. Sure, she was employed as his live-in butler, but she clearly made an extra effort not to be intrusive, which he appreciated. Food showed up at the appropriate times in the kitchen. His drawers and hangers were populated with clean clothes. A dust mote didn’t stand a chance.

  But she kept out of his personal space. Though at times he’d heard her moving about between the refrigerator and stove and through the windows he’d spied her fussing with the outdoor plants, she didn’t plop down with him to watch TV in the evening or pass by when he was working at his computer in the upstairs office.

  So he’d fixed her side-view mirror. Carried heavy bags of mulch from her trunk to the yard upon seeing her struggling with the first one. When he’d learned the bulky garbage and recycle cans had to be wheeled up to the street, he’d insisted on doing the chore himself.

  Over the past couple of days their relationship had settled into something like a marriage…but without the sex.

  The thought of it made him sigh as they climbed into his car.

  Sara glanced over. “Are you all right?”

  “Peachy.” It came out as a grumble, which she didn’t deserve, but the truth was, no matter how inconspicuous she made herself, her presence permeated the house and his consciousness.

  He’d catch a whiff of her tantalizing perfume drifting down an empty hallway. When his hand reached for a T-shirt in his drawer, he thought of her small ones folding and smoothing the soft cotton. Eating a meal alone at the bar or the dining table, he’d stare at the empty stool beside him or at the chair across from his and he’d want to see her there, smiling at him.

  Flirting with him.

  Making him hard so that he’d scoop her up and carry her to his bed.

  But really, he didn’t want just the sex. He also craved the company.

  Which was totally fucked-up. Beyond odd. At sixteen he’d turned into a decided, dedicated loner and had been content with that status quo for the last decade-and-a-half.

  Lust must be messing with him then, he mused. Lust—that hadn’t been exorcised by showers and the slick soap found there—as well as the nagging moodiness that this month invariably brought on.

  “Which way?” he asked, as the gate leading to the highway opened. She pointed north, and he steered the car in that direction when the traffic cleared.

  “Another day in paradise,” she murmured.

  Joaquin couldn’t disagree with the comment. The usual SoCal “May Gray” had been burning off early, leaving blue skies and unfiltered sunshine. Despite that, the stretch of sand outside the back doors of Nueva Vida stayed empty, or nearly so. He supposed when summer set in that would change, as the beach was public between the mean high tide line and the water. But for now there was nothing to distract him from the company’s financial reports he insisted his assistant Patrick regularly send, or the weight of fifteen-year-old events pressing on his soul, or his butler’s alluring presence.

  “You didn’t have to come, you know,” Sara said now. “I could fashion an excuse for Wells. I’m afraid he played on your sympathies. While he did indeed lose his mother, his father dotes on him, and I’m sure the man is wallowing in paternal guilt for missing this event.”

  “I want to come.” Joaquin hoped to find it a welcome disruption—a kind of palate-cleansing that might mean he’d return to the house feeling lighter. And less lecherous.

  He took a quick, sidelong look at Sara. Not that he could complain that she dressed provocatively. Today she wore light denim pants and a flowing, gauzy white shirt. A hat nearly covered her blonde hair and shadowed her fascinating face. The dark glasses completely covered her eyes and cheekbones—though it only served to make him more aware of the pouting, rosebud mouth.

  Suppressing a groan, he returned his attention to the road just as his phone warbled, the call coming through the display on the dash. Renata, the read-out showed.

  Joaquin reached out to decline the call.

  He could feel Sara’s gaze on him.

  “Cell service is notoriously spotty in Malibu, right?” he asked.

  “The Santa Monica Mountains are well-known to interfere,” she agreed.

  “Good,” he said with satisfaction. “She’ll buy that then.”

  A minute passed before Sara spoke again. “Not chummy with Mum?”

  Not chummy with Mum. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. If Sara knew what she did to him when she poured on the Brit, she’d be booked for sessions with a dialect coach in nearby Hollywood to transform her accent to bland Yank. Those prim vowels made him crazy to untidy her, though, perversely, he’d been just as eager to strip her of wayward rose petals the other day on the deck.

  Well, maybe it was the “strip her” that was the operative phrase.

  Joaquin cleared his throat. “I try to fly above my mother’s dramatics. She dumped my dad when I was seven, leaving us with him as she sought out Husband Two. Turned out her second choice was the better one, actually. George Weatherford.”

  “That’s your last name.”

  “Yeah. He adopted me when I was sixteen.” Just thinking of the man made him smile.

  Apparently Sara saw it. “You like George.”

  “Liked. He’s gone now. Two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said.

  “Me, too. George saved me,” he said lightly, though it was no hyperbole. “Saved my life. And now that he’s lost his, I run the company he left me.”

  “And your mother—”

  “She was in the process of divorcing George when I became a Weatherford and was already pregnant with the child of the man who became Marital Unit Three, Martin Nichols. It was a holy fucking mess at the time. Now she and Martin seem stable enough, and they have a high-school-age daughter, Esmerelda—Essie.” He grimaced. “You’d think that would be enough to keep my mother busy, but she’s usually in some deep dither about something.”

  Instead of commenting, Sara pointed up ahead. “That’s our turn.”

  The school was a group of one-story buildings sprawled beneath shade trees, the outside walls livened with murals of undersea scenes. Joaquin found an open spot in the parking lot, and they followed a crowd heading behind the school where there appeared to be basketball courts and expansive grass fields.

  On that short-cropped turf were a number of booths, activity centers, and parents and children. The school’s students were identifiable by their colored T-shirts that pronounced them “Daring and Caring.”

  He glanced down at his butler who was adjusting her hat lower on her head. He had pulled on a similar ball cap and also wore shades and dressed unremarkably—in blue jeans and matching blue T-shirt, with a soft-yellow Oxford thrown over it, sleeves rolled back. With the name change and the fact that he’d gone from adolescent to adult in the last fifteen years, there wasn’t much danger of being recog
nized, but he took the precaution anyway. It wouldn’t do for someone to mistake him for Felipe and report to the tabloids another sighting of his long-dead brother. That would stir Renata into the usual tear-filled, guilt-conducing scene.

  Three little girls in the school shirts and shorts ran past Joaquin and Sara, holding hands.

  “Was that you?” he asked, curious. “Did you go to a school like this one, or were you and your classmates in blazers and kilts marching by twos under the strict gaze of a starchy headmistress?”

  The corners of her mouth kicked up in her butler-smile. “I went to a regular public school in Michigan, where my maternal grandparents lived. I didn’t socialize much, though, because they were very strict.”

  Hmm, the grandparents had suspected the butler had actual bad-girl tendencies? Before he could explore that thought, she gestured toward the back field where a rudimentary track had been chalked into the grass.

  “I think that’s where we’re going.”

  When they got closer, it was hard to sort out the situation. Kids seemed to be running and walking at their own pace, but Joaquin didn’t see a finish line or anybody keeping count of the students’ laps. A group of adults hovered at one curve of the track, but they were handing out small paper cups of water, not making checkmarks on a clipboard.

  He frowned. “Who is doing a proper accounting?”

  Sara’s hat brim turned in his direction. Even though he couldn’t see the expression in her eyes behind her dark lenses, he could feel the disbelief beaming out of them.

  Okay, maybe he was the one who sounded priggish now.

  “Perhaps it’s an honor system,” she said.

  Yeah, he had sounded priggish. “Look, I never went to an elementary school,” he offered by way of excusing himself. “I never participated in anything like this.”

  She remained silent. Expectant.

  “We—I—had tutors. More of a homeschool situation. Dad dragged me to auditions all over L.A.” Felipe’s auditions, mostly. But Joaquin was expected to go along for the ride.

  “You were on TV? In movies?”

  “Nothing you’d know. Or nothing you’d remember.” While his father had been grooming him to be a second star in the family, it had all imploded before Joaquin made it beyond a commercial or two, a couple of episode credits as “Sassy Neighbor Kid,” and that one brief appearance on the big screen.