“Lachlan,” Molly said. “About the soccer tournament. The kids are in a single elimination tournament. Ten teams from various islands all coming here. And Lachlan is a basket case.”
“He would be,” Joaquin nodded, dragging his mind back to the moment, even if it had to do with soccer. “That’s Lachlan.”
“I’m glad, actually. It’ll keep him busy. Less time for him to be fretting about me.”
“What about you?”
“My haircut makes him nervous. How stupid is that?” Molly shook her head in despair.
Not stupid at all, Joaquin thought. But he didn’t say anything and he certainly didn’t tell her about his conversation with her brother. He picked up the wine bottle. “More?”
“No, I’m fine.” She pushed her plate aside, but she didn’t stand up or offer him a cup of coffee. Instead she smiled lazily at him.
Joaquin felt a lick of desire but controlled it. Tonight he would go slow. Tonight he would teach her step by step the dance of seduction between a man and a woman. Tipping back in his chair, he cocked his head slightly, watching her from beneath slumberous lids.
It was a deliberate move, calculated to make her aware of how a heated gaze and simple silence could heat the blood.
A bare foot slid up his leg.
“Jesus!” He jerked upright, his heart jumping, his chair banging all four feet on the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Molly was sitting up straight now, too, looking equal parts worried and chagrined. “Did I do it wrong?”
She’d done it on purpose?
He swore in Spanish and when that didn’t seem sufficient, he moved on to Catalan. And even when he was finished swearing, he could still feel the tingle from the line her toes had drawn on his calf. His heart still slammed.
“Joaquin?”
“It’s all right,” he said through his teeth. “You just…surprised me.”
“Oh. I thought—” She stopped, chewed on her lower lip, then said, “Maybe if I warned you first?”
“Warned me?” He choked out the words.
“I should have told you. I thought you wouldn’t mind if we practiced a bit.”
He was speechless. She wanted to practice running her toes up the inside of his leg? He made a strangled sound.
“Do you mind?”
And how the hell did he answer that? Don’t do anything I didn’t do. Oh, yeah, sure. No possibility Lachlan had let Molly do anything like this!
But he wasn’t Lachlan. He wasn’t Molly McGillivray’s brother. And those toes of hers were the most erotic damned toes he’d ever felt in his life.
“Go ahead,” he said tightly, and steeled himself for a heart attack.
She settled into her chair again, smiled across the table at him again. He held his breath, listened to the pound of his heart as soft tentative toes touched his calf.
Even forewarned, Joaquin wasn’t as controlled as he wanted to be. He held himself rigid and unbreathing as the toes traveled slowly up his calf, drew tiny circles on the inside of his knee, made him suck in his breath when they reached them hem of his shorts. Made him want them to move up higher.
They slid back down again.
“How was that?” Molly wanted to know.
His brain was turning to mush. All the blood that wasn’t digesting his dinner was busy pooling elsewhere.
“Terrific,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Do you think I should slide them or walk them?” She frowned as she considered this, then demonstrated.
This time the toes tickled their way up his calf onto his inner thigh. His whole leg jerked. “I think, ah—” He couldn’t think! “—the slide,” he managed, sounding as if someone had hold of his windpipe. “The slide is better.”
“You think so?” She did it again experimentally. Slid her foot lightly up his leg, reached his knee, moved her toes lightly along the inside of his thigh.
“Yesssss.” The word hissed between his teeth.
“Oh, good. Excellent. It works.” Molly looked like she’d just got a new toy. She leaned toward him eagerly. “What shall we do now?”
Joaquin knew what he wanted to do. He shut his eyes and prayed for strength. “The dishes.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“DISHES?” Molly echoed, sounding stricken.
“Dishes,” Joaquin repeated grimly, shoving back his chair and getting to his feet just a little painfully.
They did the dishes. She washed; he dried.
And he cursed himself for a fool the whole time. Why the hell wasn’t he taking her to bed? Stripping off that delightful dress? Running his toes up her thigh? Discovering the secrets of her body? Making hot sweet passionate love to her?
It was obviously what she was angling for. There was no question that it was what he wanted!
Still, he couldn’t do it.
No, correction. He could do it. Hell, yes, he could!
But he wouldn’t do it, damn this idiotic perverse streak of honorable behavior he hadn’t even known he had. Because that was what it was, he thought, banging the dishes into the cupboard with controlled fury. He couldn’t make love to her when she didn’t know what she was doing.
She didn’t know, or she wouldn’t be winding him up this way, wouldn’t be teasing and tempting and all but throwing herself at him, then discussing it as if it were strategy for winning a game!
It didn’t matter that he saw seduction in exactly those terms. This wasn’t seduction! This was—
His fists clenched in the dish towel. His hands strangled it. His mind grappled with forming the word.
Love?
It took him ages to get it out. As four-letter words went, it wasn’t one that generally sprang to his lips. He had trouble even bending his mind around it. In fact his mind rejected it, said, Don’t be ridiculous. And probably he was being— Probably it was nothing more than his fevered brain in the heat of the moment, trying to rationalize the irrationalizable.
It was just that he’d never not gone to bed with a willing woman. Not one he wanted to go to bed with, anyway.
It was perverse. It was infuriating. It was unnatural!
He flung the dish towel on the counter even as the dishes in the drainer piled up. “I have to go.”
Beside him Molly hunched her shoulders and kept on washing. “Go, then.” She didn’t look his way.
“Damn it, Molly, you can’t just cold-bloodedly make a man want you!”
“Apparently not,” she said bitterly.
Was she blinking back tears? Joaquin clenched his fists to keep from reaching for her, wrapping her in his arms. Dios mio, what if he made her cry?
“¡Lo siento! No te llores. Don’t cry! I’m sorry, Molly. ¡De veras! Honest! I just can’t—we can’t! I just…need to go.”
She whirled to face him, her cheeks scarlet. “Then damn it to hell, just go! Get out of here!” And she shoved past him and ran up the stairs. A second later her bedroom door slammed so hard the dishes rattled on the shelves.
He just stood there in the silent aftermath, wanting to go after her, wanting to make it better, knowing damned well that if he did, he would only make it worse.
Silently he stared at the dishes left in the drainer, then picked up the dish towel again. He could dry them, he supposed. But, like everything else tonight, it might be smarter to leave them unfinished.
Lachlan never did them, he thought with grim humor as his friend’s words echoed in his head. He tossed the towel on the counter, turned and walked out of the house.
Don’t do anything I didn’t do. He could hear the words now as he went down the steps. He could see Lachlan’s wry grin as he’d said them. But more clearly he could see Molly’s furious tear-streaked face.
His mouth twisted. Don’t do anything I didn’t do.
“Don’t worry,” he said bitterly as he let himself out the gate. “I didn’t.”
HE NEEDED TO FIND a woman. A willing, eager, no-strings-attached woman. A woman who didn’t try to seduce him while
she had her sights set on marrying another man.
One night of unconditional sex and he’d be fine, Joaquin assured himself. Words like love wouldn’t even occur to him. And they sure as hell wouldn’t come wrapped in a package like Molly McGillivray.
A man on a mission, he headed straight for the Grouper, grabbed a cold beer from Michael, the bartender, and surveyed the crop of available women with an eye toward plucking the most appealing and taking her back to his room as soon as possible.
One of them, a British girl called Charlotte, seemed to feel the same way. She caught his eye—or he caught hers—halfway across the room. It was easy enough to pick up his beer and saunter her way. Easier still to make small talk with her, discover she knew exactly who he was—“that footballer they call the Casanova of the pitch.” She giggled, batted her lashes and ran a finger down his cheek.
Her touch was not nearly as tempting as Molly’s toes had been, in fact it did nothing at all. But sometimes these things took time, he told himself, conveniently forgetting that they never had before.
He gave her an encouraging wink even as he said, “That’s just tabloid journalism. You know what they’re like.”
Charlotte gave another giggle. “My mum always says, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“Does she?” Joaquin settled on a bar stool and tried to muster up some enthusiasm.
“Oh, yes.” Charlotte gave a seductive little wiggle that gave him a view of several more inches of bare thigh. “I’ve been wondering if it’s true.” Big blue eyes met his.
Charlotte could have flirted for England, and he was feeling reckless enough to go along with it. She was staying at the Moonstone, too. And she was—amazing, wasn’t it?—very happy to walk back with him when he was ready to leave.
They climbed the stairs to their rooms together.
In minutes, he thought, he could have her naked in his bed.
It had absolutely no appeal. He gave his head a hard shake. Dear God, what was wrong with him tonight?
“I think I’m getting sick,” he muttered.
“Oooh, poor darling,” she put a hand on his forehead. “You should go to bed.” There was a purr in her voice. It meant she didn’t expect him to go there alone.
“You’re right. I should,” Joaquin said. He stuck his key in the door and opened it. “Good night.”
Charlotte stared, nonplussed. “Good night?” she squeaked.
He nodded. Then because none of it was her fault, he gave her a bleak smile. “Thanks for coming back with me. I appreciate it.”
“I could come in with you,” she suggested. “Put a cool washcloth on your forehead. Make you feel better.”
His mouth twisted. “Gracias, no. I don’t think that’ll fix it.”
A cold shower and soaking his head didn’t fix it either. Drowning himself might. He considered it. He considered a lot of things—none of which made any sense and all of which had to do with a certain redhead he couldn’t get out of his mind. And he was just about ready to stalk back across the island and let her have her wicked way with him when the phone rang.
He snatched it up, hoping against hope that it was Molly, though God knew why she would call him. He was the one who walked out on her. “H’lo?”
“Ah, mi hijo. Bueno. ¿Te vas bien?”
Joaquin nearly dropped the phone. “Papa?” He squinted at his watch. “It’s—” he did a quick mental calculation “—five in the morning. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong, mi hijo. And it is not five in the morning. It is eleven, same as you. We are in New York.”
“New York?”
“Which you would know,” Martin Santiago went on smoothly, “if you had read the papers I sent you. Or if you’d called your mother more often.”
“I’ve been…busy.” And in no mood to read papers about the business even though he’d spent the month trying to come to terms with going into it.
“What are you doing in New York?” he asked his father.
“I will tell you later,” Martin said. “In person.”
“You want me to come to New York?”
“No, no,” his father said cheerfully. “We are coming to Pelican Cay.”
“What?”
“To have a little holiday, sí? And to complicate your life.” His father laughed.
“To complicate—”
“You always told us what a wonderful place it is!” Martin went on. “Lachlan, too. Remember how he always invites us to visit.”
Joaquin remembered, but even as he did, his mind reeled. “You mean soon? It’s really a madhouse right now, Papa. They’re having a homecoming celebration, like an island fiesta. There’s a lot going on. Way too many people. Not a good time for a holiday. I’ll be home soon and—”
“We know all about the fiesta. Your mother read about it on the internet. A wonderful thing the internet, sí?”
“Sí,” Joaquin said dully. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a little island, Papa. There are only a few places to stay.”
“We stay with Lachlan.”
“With Lachlan? Lachlan invited you?”
Mr. Don’t Do Anything I Didn’t Do? By God, Joaquin would kill him!
“No, no. Not Lachlan. Fiona invited us! Such a lovely girl. So friendly.”
“Yeah, real friendly,” Joaquin agreed wearily.
“Your mother talked to her this afternoon when Lachlan was at soccer practice. She says he has a team.” His father sounded jovial and tolerantly amused at a grown man still involved in what he’d always considered a child’s game. But it was okay for Lachlan to do it. Lachlan wasn’t his son, wasn’t expected to go into the family business.
“We are looking forward to meeting her,” Martin said. “We will see you Thursday.”
The day after tomorrow?
“Papa—”
“Hasta entonces, mi hijo.”
“¡Espérate, Papa! Wait a sec—”
But his father had hung up.
Joaquin flung himself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. His parents? Coming here? To do what? Complicate his life?
It was almost—but not quite—enough to make him forget one particular redheaded problem.
“You don’t need to complicate my life, Papa,” he muttered. It was already complicated enough.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE you agreed to let them come!”
The last time he was in Lachlan’s office, it had seemed a whole lot bigger. This morning it felt like a tiny cage—and Joaquin felt trapped.
“I was supposed to call them back and say, don’t come? After all the hospitality they’ve shown me? Besides, Fiona invited them.” Lachlan was totally unsympathetic as he leaned back in his leather desk chair while his gaze followed Joaquin pacing around the room.
“You could have said she’d made a mistake, you didn’t have any place available.”
“Which would have been a lie. Besides, it’s no big deal.”
“Not to you.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll deal with it. You can’t run forever.”
“I’m not running!”
Lachlan lifted his shoulders negligently. “Sez you. Look,” he said in a more conciliatory tone, “I know you needed time to get your head together after the accident. When I couldn’t play anymore, I needed time, too. But you’ve been here a month and you haven’t done a damn thing.”
Except nearly go to bed with your sister. Joaquin pressed his lips into a firm line.
Lachlan, unaware, shrugged unrepentantly. “Just play it cool. Show ’em around. They’ll enjoy the vacation. Besides, it’s not you they’re really interested in, anyway.”
Joaquin frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“They’re coming to see Duncan, not you!”
Joaquin groaned. “So I’ll get the grandchildren lecture.”
“They’ll be too busy enjoying him to lecture you. Besides, they’re bringing a couple of friends.”
Joaquin stopped p
acing and frowned. “What friends?”
“A couple of women your mother knows. Some widow and her daughter.”
Joaquin swore fluently. “Esperanza Delgado and the lovely Marianela.”
“The lovely Marianela?” Lachlan grinned. “Ah, the matchmaking mama’s been hard at work.”
Joaquin ground his teeth. “Looks like.”
“Well, it comes to all of us sooner or later,” Lachlan said with annoying good cheer.
“No one shoved Fiona down your throat,” Joaquin said sharply.
Lachlan shrugged. “So go find your own woman.”
The trouble was, Joaquin thought, he already had.
LIFE, MOLLY DECIDED, was a lot less complicated when you didn’t try to make it go your way, when you didn’t try to speed things up, control the outcome and thereby make a fool of yourself.
She’d made a fool of herself.
In her hare-brained Ms. Fix-It mode, she’d tried to turn her slow-moving engagement into a high-octane relationship. And she’d made a mess of it.
She went to work. She came home. She smiled if smiled at. She spoke if spoken to. And otherwise she kept a very low profile.
She deliberately stayed away from the Moonstone. And the Grouper. And any place else trendy and exciting. She didn’t need trendy and exciting. Mostly she didn’t need to run into Joaquin.
She tried not to even think about him. She was mortified every time she did! So much for trying to get him out of her system! Dear God, even now she cringed at the memory of his reaction. And her tears.
Molly McGillivray never cried!
Almost.
Well, she was never going to cry again. Not over a man. And not even the right man.
“Come home, Carson,” she whispered into the depths of the engine she was working on. “We’ll take it however you want to take it. Go as slow as you want. Just come home.”
Afterward she wondered at the timing. She’d no sooner mumbled the words than the phone rang. It never failed, she thought irritably. Whenever she got up to her elbows in engine grease, the phone always rang.
Well, let it, Molly thought irritably, plunging deeper into the engine.
“People like to talk to people, not machines,” Hugh maintained, which was probably true. “It’s the personal touch.”
Lessons from a Latin Lover Page 9
