Dell closed her eyes momentarily with relief that the girl seemed unharmed and could even manage a joke. Dios protégé tontas. God protects fools. The saying fit — she should never have let the girls get so far ahead. Becky fussed as Dell bent to examine a scratch on Amy’s arm.
“No es nada,” Amy assured her. “Nothing — it doesn’t even hurt.”
Dell frowned. “We’ll put stuff on it from the first aid kit anyway.” She motioned the girls in the direction of their umbrellas. “Let’s go, girls.”
“Let me take Becky for a while. She must be heavy by now.” Jovi grinned teasingly at her when she hesitated. “Come on, Dell. Fork over the kid. I’ve proved I’m harmless, haven’t I?”
Dell surrendered the toddler, and they started back up the beach toward the hotel. Trudging through the sand required some effort, Dell acknowledged, glad Jovi had offered to help her with Becky.
“You’re good with little ones,” she noted, catching up with them. “Have you had a lot of practice?”
“Pure instinct,” he boasted with a wink, but the sight of him carrying the little girl so tenderly brought a lump to her throat. She slowed and turned back to the girls, determined to maintain her composure even in the face of exhaustion and unwelcome emotion. She wouldn’t think about how sweetly Becky nestled against Jovi, pulling his hair when he didn’t answer a question quickly enough, then surrendering to sleep and letting her little head fall to his shoulder.
Dell had splurged on a suite at the King’s Palm; she knew the beachfront hotel was pricey, but the girls deserved something truly special. The King’s Palm featured rooms just yards away from the beach, a truly appealing feature to girls who were getting their first look at the ocean.
The rooms were elegant, and the girls were delighted with the spaciousness and vivid décor of the suite. After spending so much time in the salty gulf water, they were all exhausted, and took turns trying to stay awake long enough to shower and change for dinner.
Dell had claimed one of the three bedrooms for Becky and herself, and she showered and dressed while the toddler napped on the huge bed. Aimlessly, she wandered out to the balcony and leaned on the railing, watching the beach, still full of sunbathers and swimmers enjoying the late summer light. The breeze blew in off the water, warm and strong, wrapping the gauzy turquoise material of her dress around her and pulling at her upswept hair.
She closed her eyes in contentment. She loved the ranch, and wouldn’t change it for even a beachfront home. But she hadn’t allowed herself a change of scenery for much too long. And she couldn’t have chosen better company.
The door opened, and Jovi stepped out to join her. He’d changed from his trunks and cotton T-shirt to a crisp cotton dress shirt with slacks, and his hair gleamed darkly, still wet from the shower, apparently. Aftershave swirled around on the evening breeze, mingling with her own perfume.
“We have a problem,” he announced, and then held up a quick, reassuring hand when she jerked upright. “Not a major one, though. Minor. Very minor.”
She arched a brow at him. “Minor? You ruined my solitude and my utter lack of interest in moving for something minor?”
“Sorry.” He was completely unrepentant, though, and just smiled at her complaint. “The girls have decided they’re too hungry to wait for food, and too tired to go out.”
“Which means?” Dell prodded.
“They want pizza. It could be here in half an hour, and they wouldn’t have to get up except to answer the door.” He shrugged. “Selina said so,” he added. “And we know who’s really in charge, right? I told them you — we — wanted to take them out to a really nice restaurant. They weren’t particularly interested.”
“But they could have pizza at home,” she protested.
“They’re teenagers. Well, except Becky, who might not wake up to eat anyway. They can’t have too much pizza.”
Dell thought it over and nodded slowly. She really didn’t want pizza, and hadn’t dressed so carefully to sit on the sofa in the living area and stain her clothing with grease and tomato sauce. Still, if the girls were set on staying in the room, she supposed it wasn’t fair to force them out to an unfamiliar restaurant with food they might not enjoy.
“Let’s go call,” she said, determined not to let her disappointment show. They went back in and found the three lying on the carpet, shoeless, and laughing uproariously at cartoons they must have seen a million times before.
Selina looked up when they came into the room and then clambered to her feet, her face glowing.
“We’re having a blast,” she announced promptly, and then gaped a little at Dell.
“You look beautiful,” she gasped, and the other two girls turned around to gape, too. “Even Jovi looks super nice,” Selina added.
“Thanks,” Dell said, replying for them both, and Jovi smiled at the girls and sent them a quick wink.
“Our pizza party clothes,” he explained with a grin.
Selina smiled back, but then suddenly frowned.
“Gee, you probably didn’t want to stay here and eat,” she realized, flushing a little. “I’m sorry. We can go out — ”
“Don’t be silly,” Dell said quickly. “Pizza’s fine. We want you to enjoy yourselves, after all.”
“Can’t eat pizza like that,” Amy declared, pushing herself up to her knees and surveying them. “You know what I think, Selina?”
Selina turned to look curiously at Amy. “What?” she demanded.
“We eat pizza, but they go out and eat. Somewhere really elegante and romantico. With candles and stuff, just like in the movies.” She grinned at them. “Just don’t stay out too late and get in trouble.”
“Cool, Amy,” Selina beamed with pleasure. “Awesome. Y’all get a break. We get pizza. We can babysit — no danger, right?” She looked around the regal accommodations again, still in obvious awe at her surroundings.
Dell frowned. The idea of going out to dinner with Jovi was tempting. But she could hardly leave these troubled girls and a toddler alone in this unfamiliar place.
Selina was waiting for her answer, her face full of hope and excitement. Amy and Michelle were waiting, too, hanging on her words. Besides her, Jovi shifted his weight and laid a hand on her arm.
“Hey, we’re not babies here,” Amy pointed out, and Michelle nodded.
“Aren’t you and Rosa always telling us to grow up — to learn to make our own choices and figure out stuff by ourselves? What’s wrong with us choosing tonight?”
“What about it, Dell?” he asked, his voice husky. “A dinner date for us, and pizza for the girls? Then I could hand feed you squid.”
The girls laughed at the face Dell made, but sobered when she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Selina seemed the most upset by her refusal. “Dell, we really wouldn’t do anything wrong,” she insisted. “I used to babysit.”
“It isn’t that,” Dell protested quickly, recognizing Selina considered her answer a sign of distrust. “Look, I know that the three of you could be trusted. And you’d take good care of Becky. But I don’t like leaving you alone in a strange place — ”
“There really isn’t much danger,” Jovi said thoughtfully. “We could stay until the pizza came and then eat in the hotel restaurant. We’ll leave my door locked from the inside, and lock the connecting door. They could lock this door, and we’d be come right back after dinner.” He didn’t say it, but she could almost hear him thinking it. We could show we trust them. She turned to confront him but found herself unable to argue with his unspoken logic.
“All right,” she conceded, and was a little surprised when Selina hugged her with uncharacteristic affection.
“This is so cool,” the girl chortled. “Bring on the pizza! Have fun.” She released Dell and headed toward the door,
pulling it open with a flourish.
Dell laughed, but walked over and shut the door. “Not so fast, young lady,” she protested. “After the pizza comes, okay?”
“Sure.” Selina hugged her again then bounced over to fall on the sofa. “But I’m calling for food right away. Some of us are in a hurry to feed our faces.” Amy and Michelle crowded around her, telling her what to order, and, smiling, Dell slipped into her room to check on Becky. The toddler was still sleeping soundly, her little hands closed into fists as she slumbered.
Dell bent down and brushed a kiss on her cheek, then turned to find Jovi in the doorway, watching her with a bemused expression. She thought she saw tenderness in his eyes and in the half smile touching his lips. But she saw something else, too, the trace of an emotion she couldn’t identify. Suspicion? Melancholy?
Silently deriding herself for being overly imaginative, she smiled. “This girl’s a doll,” she told him easily. “Big eater, sound sleeper — no problems.” He stepped aside to let her back into the living room, where the girls had gone back to their cartoons. Although she didn’t quite touch him as she brushed by, heat flooded through her, and she sent him a startled look, wondering if he felt the tiny electrical charge as well. He looked at her with hot brown eyes.
Where’s my distance now? she thought, but she didn’t really want anything between them. Jovi Treviño had invited her here, intent on seduction. An affair with the man was out of the question. But she could certainly make dinner memorable for him — and for herself. An old college acquaintance claimed there wasn’t ever any harm in flirting, but she’d never acted on the impulse. Had never felt the impulse so strongly … never. The night seemed perfect for testing that theory now. Grinning, she went back to sit with the girls until the pizza came.
• • •
The waiter placed a salad in front of her, and Dell nodded at him as Jovi checked his cell phone, then turned his attention back to her. “Sorry — ”
She waved away his apology. “I know your mother hasn’t been well.”
“Thought the girls wouldn’t let us leave,” he ventured after a bite of lettuce. “Between wanting you to wear more makeup and you wanting a sentry — ”
“Not a sentry,” she protested. “I slipped a few bucks to a hotel babysitter to check on the girls a time or two, that’s all.”
“With such marvelous excuses to stick her head in,” Jovi agreed somberly. “She wanted to invite the girls to the sunrise buffet? She couldn’t remember if she’d left her name and number in case she was needed another day?”
“So I’m cautious,” she retorted, smiling. “Selina wasn’t crazy about me sending her, either, but we did have one close call — Amy falling into the gulf like that.” She picked up her wine glass, wrinkling her nose.
“Bad bouquet?” he asked, and the waiter materialized from somewhere behind them.
“The wine is bad?”
Dell bit back her laugher and shook her head. “The wine is fine,” she assured him.
“Fine,” Jovi confirmed when the waiter shot him a questioning glance.
“So what is wrong with the wine?” he asked, when someone else summoned the waiter to a nearby table.
“Nothing. I just haven’t drunk wine in — in ages. The smell — the bouquet — caught me off guard.”
“You’re pretty lowbrow for a high-class chick,” Jovi teased, and she scowled.
“I’m a rancher, remember? Nothing high class about that, right?” She poured more dressing on her lettuce, ignoring his amused glance at her drenched salad. “I don’t muck stalls in my gowns, for godssake!”
“Hmmph. You don’t muck stalls at all from what I’ve seen.” He pushed his plate away and watched her blot salad dressing off her lips. She straightened a little in her chair, and he hoped his taunt hadn’t irritated her. He knew he should probe, prod, find out who and what Dell Rosales was. He didn’t want to, though — didn’t want to hurt her, to lie to her, to think about anything but the moment. And the need.
“Shoveling manure wasn’t ever my favorite chore,” she admitted, then grinned. “Except when I could do it right in front of my mother’s guests.”
The waiter came back with their orders, giving Dell a steak and placing Jovi’s seafood platter in front of him. The smell of the grilled peppers and onions on Dell’s plate swirled around them mingling with the smell of shrimp and garlic. Hunger flared.
Then Dell shifted her legs, her foot bumping his momentarily, and he saw an entirely different kind of hunger in her dark eyes.
Or imagined it. He couldn’t tell, only watched as she cut her meat into careful bites.
“You’re not eating,” she noted as his food sat untouched. She raised her brows. “Couldn’t have been the mere mention of manure,” she teased. “I mean, you must be in it up to your ankles most days.”
In his pocket, his cell phone vibrated. Hampton? How about up to my neck? He forced himself to spear a shrimp, realizing his decision to leave DEA had been right. Agreeing to help them on the De Cordova-Rosales mess had been every kind of stupid, though, because it meant lying to Dell. More and more, he had trouble excusing himself for that.
Across the table, Dell suddenly looked troubled and embarrassed. “Sorry, did I offend you?” Subtle color stained her cheeks. “I … ” She bit her bottom lip. “Don’t date much.”
“No, you didn’t offend me.” He managed a smile and another bite of food. “But the day I’m ankle-deep in manure, I’m firing everyone on the ranch, girls included.”
Hating the part of himself that was still more agent than man, he waved his fork at Dell. “So — what’s the deal with them, anyway, that you get unpaid child labor to help clean the stalls?”
“Unpaid child — oh. You’re kidding.” Dell finally took a gulp of the wine she’d picked up and put down several times, chasing it with the glass of water right next to it. “Not funny!”
“Sorry.” He winked at her. “I don’t joke much.”
“It shows!” She tore her dinner roll in half, but set it aside and leaned toward him. “The girls — remember I mentioned my friend, Patricia?”
“The judge, yes?”
“Yes. She and I went through Catholic school together from Kinder on.”
“So … she knows your family?”
“Patricia worked her way up to the bench,” Dell explained. “Her parents weren’t particularly important, but my mother didn’t object to her as much as to some of the other kids’ parents.” She paused to finish her vegetables. “Once my mother picked me up for a photo shoot for a Monterrey magazine. Came right over to Patricia’s house and took me away from her birthday party.”
Dell’s face clouded, but she shook aside old memories. “Anyhow, Patricia thought a lot of the girls she saw in court needed something besides being sent home to their folks.”
“Juvenile — ”
She snorted. “Juvenile — there’s constant overcrowding, half the kids there are hard-core — Jovi, some of the kids there are rapists and murderers. You have to know.”
He nodded. Most juvenile systems couldn’t handle the caseload, the social changes that turned innocence into cynicism and evil. Drugs were involved more often than not, whether through the absence of parents or the corruption of the kids themselves. That, he reminded himself grimly, was the crux of the matter. Why he could force himself to sit across from someone he could care about and lie. Damn drugs.
“Well, to make a long story short, Patricia thought the girls could gain from getting away from their peers for a while. And their parents.”
“So you offered to keep them?” He managed to keep the questions light. “Still, I bet you jumped through hoops to get approved.”
“Not so much. The system is overburdened, and Patricia — Judge Ovalle-Martinez — had discretion over how
to handle the girls. She just doesn’t think sending them home made sense.”
He finished his food while she talked.
“I guess knowing a judge could come in handy,” he said thoughtfully when she finished.
“How so?” she asked, drawing back a little.
He made light of the thought that had crossed his mind. “Oh, you know, speeding tickets, parking citations … ”
Across the table, though, Dell stiffened and frowned, obviously not finding the flip reply amusing.
Jerk, he scolded himself. Obviously not the right tone.
“Would you like dessert?” Their waiter was back, his expression hopeful.
Dell cast him a small smile. “No, thank you.”
“We have a wonderful flan — ”
“No,” Jovi repeated, more firmly, standing. “Dance with me?” he invited, holding out a hand.
Dell glanced at her watch. “The girls — ”
“Have your creative babysitter watching their door like a hawk,” he reminded. “Didn’t she say she woke Selina up last time she checked?”
Dell hesitated, then nodded slowly and stood. “Okay,” she agreed. “But only a few minutes.”
“A few minutes,” he agreed, taking her hand and leading her toward the floor.
Dancers on the floor were gyrating to a throbbing salsa, moving legs and bottoms seductively to the pulsing rhythm. Dell nudged Jovi in the side with her elbow as they headed toward the corner of the floor, nodding at one uninhibited couple doing their version of dirty dancing. While the woman followed the music, the man squatted and danced around her, planting frequent kisses on her rear and pelvis. Some of the onlookers clapped and encouraged with catcalls, while others looked away.
“I’m guessing we’re not going there,” Jovi murmured, ducking his head to speak into her ear as they stood aside, watching the frenzied activity.
The whisper of breath against her cheek singed her skin. She wondered why anyone would waste time in a mockery of passion when the real thing could be so subtle and unexpected. The thought drifted away as the music ended, though, and the small orchestra in the corner of the room struck up an old Spanish ballad.
Unattainable Page 10
