Lessons from a Latin Lover

by Anne McAllister

  Joaquin shook his head. “Don’t know ’em.”

  “They’re two wonderful old men, but they’re kind of shy. They make toys that Carin sells in her shop. But a long time ago, they were fishermen. And when Carson’s father died, they came back and fished with Carson. They helped him until he got on his feet. He’s never forgotten.”

  Molly smiled reflectively as she slipped off the shawl she’d wrapped around her shoulders. A serious amount of bare, tanned skin was suddenly on view.

  Had Carson kissed it? Deliberately Joaquin looked away, picking up his whiskey glass and taking a swallow. It burned, but not as much as the need to know was burning him.

  “So that’s where you were? All night?”

  She hesitated. “That’s where,” she said. There was something in her tone that held a suggestion of “want to make something of it?”

  He let out his breath slowly. “So how’s the seduction coming?” he asked, doing his best to sound casual.

  Molly hesitated a second, then toed her sandals off. “It’s coming along.”

  She didn’t look at him, just shoved the sandals over next to the door, then yawned and stretched. “It’s been a long day,” she said, heading for the stairs. “I’m going to turn in.”

  Joaquin stayed where he was and watched her go, letting his eyes feast on the gentle curves of her body as she climbed the steps. When she’d disappeared into the hall, he lifted his glass and thanked the heavens.

  If the seduction was “coming along,” she and Carson hadn’t made it to bed yet.

  As a teacher maybe that made him a failure.

  As a man Joaquin was vastly relieved.

  SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT between Carson and her.

  Molly lay in bed, staring up into the darkness, and tried to figure it out. But she couldn’t put her finger on it, though she tried.

  Of course, she was behaving differently. She was flirtier, more touchy-feely, more attentive than she usually was when Carson came home.

  But Carson was different, too. He had been edgier all evening. Less easygoing. More distracted, as if he had something on his mind. Which was not unusual because Carson always had things on his mind. But this was different. And though he was distracted, he was oddly more watchful, too. Several times she’d caught him studying her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  Was it her new haircut? she wondered. Was it her new wardrobe? Was it the way she stayed closer to him when they were out?

  How much of his changing could be traced to hers? And how much was he simply changing on his own.

  Molly didn’t know. And she didn’t know how to find out.

  It wasn’t like fixing an engine, where you could test something, being fairly certain that other things weren’t changing while you were doing it.

  With people, there were way too many variables.

  She wondered if getting him the room at the Moonstone had been a mistake. Would it not have been smarter, regardless of what Joaquin claimed, to have him right across the hall? It certainly hadn’t been smart to have Joaquin right across the hall. Not in terms of her peace of mind, at least!

  But Carson had seemed pleased. “It will be easier that way.”

  “Easier?”

  “For business. I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow with the Wilsons. And we’re leaving early to look at those condos on Eleuthera. I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”

  She knew he and Tom Wilson from the Lodge were doing some business while he was home, and Carson was never far from his mobile phone and whatever project he was developing. But she’d hoped for a little undivided attention.

  It didn’t happen.

  They’d taken Carson’s luggage to the Moonstone, then had gone downstairs for a drink in the bar, where Carson had run into several old friends back for the homecoming weekend. He and Molly had joined them for a swim and an impromptu volleyball game. Then their “dinner for two” at Beaches turned into “dinner for nine” when they ran into people they knew there, too.

  After that he’d suggested they go see Euclid and Erasmus.

  Molly loved the two old men almost as much as Carson did. And she’d been happy to go see them. Happier, in fact, than if she’d had to watch Joaquin all evening. But it would have been nice to practice a few techniques on Carson.

  So far as far as she’d got was his admiring her haircut and one of her new dresses.

  She sighed. The seduction was “coming along,” as she’d told Joaquin. But it wasn’t coming along very fast.

  When she’d kissed him good-night tonight, she’d deliberately tried to make it the same sort of kiss Joaquin had given her last night. She started slowly, gently, tenderly, moving her mouth over his. Then she eased closer and, when she felt his lips part, she traced them with her tongue. It felt calculated. Not passionate. It felt studied. Not hungry.

  And for the longest time she felt no response. There was no pounding heart against hers. There was no answering pressure.

  It was as if he wasn’t there.

  And then, all at once, he was. Suddenly something in Carson snapped and he took over, deepening the kiss without any help from her. His fingers dove into her hair and he kissed her long and hard and almost, it seemed, desperately.

  Startled by his sudden intensity, Molly pulled back and stared into his dark, unreadable gaze.

  His lips twisted briefly, then he opened his mouth as if he were going to say something. Say what? She held her breath.

  Abruptly he closed his mouth again and, for a second, his eyes, too. He let out a long slow breath and opened them again.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” His voice was low and level, with a hint of tautness in it, as if something were being left unsaid.

  Molly nodded. “Good night,” she’d whispered, and watched him go before she went into the house where, it turned out, Joaquin was waiting to jump down her throat.

  “How was her seduction coming?” he’d asked her.

  Fine. Maybe.

  The question was: Did she want it to?

  CHAPTER TEN

  SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE of the sleepless night, she faced the answer.

  It was no.

  She had loved Carson Sawyer for most of her life. In many ways she loved him still. But what they shared was not the sort of love she saw between Lachlan and Fiona or Hugh and Sydney.

  She and Carson cared for each other. They had been friends, pals, buddies, mates—whatever you wanted to call it—for years. They’d even done their share of adolescent groping back in the days when they hadn’t had their hormones under control. But it had never been very memorable. And they’d tended in recent years to find excuses to do other things when if they’d felt any kind of passion for each other, they’d have been falling over each other in their haste to make love.

  They’d never had to fight for control. They’d never had to battle their own inclinations, their own desire.

  They’d always found reasons to wait.

  And when she had finally found a reason not to wait any longer, it was her wish for a home and family of her own and not her passion for Carson that had prompted her to make a move. She had even doubted that such intense passion even existed.

  How about that? Two mistakes for the price of one.

  Because, heaven help her, Molly knew now that passion existed. In the past days she had felt herself in the thrall of it, had known its power, its depth, its demand.

  She also knew that the man who had inspired it didn’t love her. Joaquin Santiago had—at her express request—taught her how to use all her feminine wiles to seduce the man she was engaged to. And instead she had foolishly, stupidly and entirely unwittingly fallen in love with him.

  Now what?

  In the best of all possible worlds, she would go to Carson tonight and tell him how she felt. He would agree that they were better off as friends than they ever would be married to each other. And then Joaquin would ride in on his white charger and sweep her off her feet, propose to her,
and they would live happily ever after.

  Well, a girl could dream.

  Or she could if she ever managed to fall asleep.

  FOR YEARS soccer had been his life. Now at least it was providing him a measure of distraction and a bit of sanity. Without the tournament, Joaquin didn’t know how he would have got through the day.

  Molly was up and gone before he rose at seven. He had lain awake for hours thinking about her in the room across the hall, feeling a mixture of relief that she was there and annoyance that she wasn’t in his bed. Finally sometime about dawn he’d fallen asleep from the sheer recent lack of it.

  When his alarm went off only a couple of hours later, he’d felt groggy and stupid and out of sorts, which was nothing compared to how out of sorts he felt when he opened the door to see hers wide open and her bed empty and neatly made.

  She had gone with Carson already?

  The thought had made him slightly sick. Get over it, he had told himself sharply. She’s not yours. She never has been. She never will be.

  He had soaked his head under the cold water in the shower, had shuddered madly and felt worse. Then he’d dragged himself off to the pitch to take his mind off her by focusing on soccer.

  It worked. It was habit. Muscle memory. Pattern repetition. All of the above. Whatever, the games consumed him. As long as he was focused on the match, he didn’t think about what Molly was doing with Carson.

  The only time his concentration wavered was in midafter-noon just after halftime of the middle game when he thought he spotted her in the crowd. He looked for her again, looked for Carson, too, because seeing them both there would mean they weren’t in bed someplace. But he never saw Carson, and he didn’t see Molly again.

  Maybe he hadn’t seen her in the first place. Maybe he’d only wished it.

  It was his good luck, he realized later, that by winning, the Pelicans kept having to play more games. They kept him busy all day, playing three by the end of the afternoon. They were completely exhausted, but they were through to the semifinals, having won them all.

  “Nine o’clock sharp, be here,” Lachlan told them all as they lay on the ground, exhausted. They groaned. But he grinned at them. “You guys were dynamite today.”

  The groans turned to grins. “We were awesome,” Marcus said with considerable satisfaction. “Totally.”

  “Tomorrow you can say that,” Lachlan told him. “If you win. Now go on home and get some rest. Don’t party all night.”

  “No fear,” Lorenzo mumbled. “Jus’ gonna go home an’ catch some zzz’s.”

  The boys and their families and most of the rest of the spectators wandered off. Joaquin studied the throngs of people but he didn’t see Molly.

  “Lose something?” Lachlan asked him.

  Quickly Joaquin shook his head. “No. Just wondering where my folks are. Haven’t seen them all day.”

  “They were here,” Lachlan said. “You were too consumed to notice. They left while you were helping Trevor work out his muscle spasm. Said they had a reservation for dinner at Beaches at eight and you can join them there.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t want to go to Beaches. He didn’t want to have to sit and make small talk with his parents and Marianela and her mother all the while wondering how successful Molly was being in her seduction of Carson Sawyer.

  “Have fun,” Lachlan said cheerfully. He pushed himself up and leaned on his crutches. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said with a wink.

  FORTUNATELY, emulating Lachlan’s behavior gave Joaquin a fairly large latitude when it came to deciding how to act. Not that he had any clue how Lachlan would act when it came time to watch Molly get ready to go out for her big formal date with Carson.

  She was already home when he got there. He could hear the shower running upstairs. He pretty desperately needed a shower himself. He might not have played those three soccer matches today, but he had certainly exerted himself coaching. He was grimy and he was sweaty, and he debated going up and knocking on the door and asking her if she wanted to share.

  Dream on, amigo, he mocked himself.

  Because he couldn’t trust himself to do anything else, he stayed resolutely downstairs even after the shower shut off and the door opened and he could hear her footsteps in the hall. His mind’s eye had no trouble imagining her wet and in a towel—or less. He shut his eyes and tried to blot it out, but that didn’t help.

  So he got up and went into the kitchen and got a beer, then banged a few cupboards making himself a sandwich, hoping that doing something would be better than sitting there fantasizing. And it might have been, if he hadn’t heard a voice on the stairs a few minutes later.

  “Joaquin?” Molly came halfway down the stairs, barefoot, wearing the dress she called her “green crayon” dress. It was every bit as spectacular in its simplicity now as it had been when she’d tried it on in the shop. It made his heart slam just to look at her. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “What?” he said warily.

  “This dress takes two.”

  He didn’t understand. “Two what?”

  “People. One to wear it and one to, um, do the tie gizmos in the back.” She turned around.

  All he could see was acres and acres of beautiful bare back. His mouth went dry.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Er,” he said.

  Dear God, he thought, and prayed for guidance. The tie “gizmos,” as she called them, were laces that criss-crossed her bare back and connected with the thin straps that were all that held the dress up. Not only that, they were all the back there was above the bottom of her shoulder blades. Had he noticed that before?

  “Could you, um, tie it for me?”

  Could he plead ignorance of basic knots? Could he say he was all thumbs? Could he ask her what the hell she was trying to do? Kill him?

  He gritted his teeth. “Come here.” He set down his beer and wiped his hand on his shorts. “My hand is cold,” he warned her.

  “Cold hands, warm heart,” she quipped, then it seemed as if all her visible skin—and there was plenty—was suffused in a rosy flush. “Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll live. Just do it. Carson’s going to be here soon.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t rather wait for him?” Joaquin bit out.

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. I think he’s worried enough about making a good impression tonight. He would want to know I was fully dressed to start out.”

  Joaquin didn’t let himself think about the “to start out” part. He just grunted and made himself focus on the narrow task in front of him. What was actually in front of him was Molly’s slender back. He took the laces and eased them through the holes, his fingers brushing her soft skin with each move.

  She shivered.

  “Sorry.” His fingers trembled. He was close enough that his breath could move the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck. He wanted to kiss her there.

  His breath hissed through his teeth in exasperation.

  “Can’t you get it?” Molly asked. She started to move away. “If it’s too much trouble—”

  “It’s fine!” He held her still. Then when he was sure she was staying put, he poked a lace through the last hole and knotted them tightly together at the top, then stepped back and dropped his hands. “There.”

  She turned and smiled. “Thank you.” But her eyes weren’t smiling.

  “You’ll be fine,” he told her gruffly. “Stop worrying.”

  “I’m not worrying.” She was a lousy liar.

  And he was a complete idiot for wanting to take her into his arms and tell her everything would be all right. So he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Is that all you need me for?”

  She blinked. Started to say something, then stopped again. Silently she nodded.

  “Fine. Have a good time, then.” His tone was brusque, impatient. He didn’t want to stand around and watch her leave with Sawyer. “I need to take a shower.” He started for the stairs.

&nb
sp; “Are you coming tonight? To the Wilsons’?”

  “I’m going out to dinner. Meeting my folks at Beaches.”

  Did she want him to watch, for God’s sake? Hell, maybe she did. Maybe she figured that if she needed pointers, she could run over and ask him, if he was there.

  She smiled and said brightly, “Well, have a good time, then.”

  “I will.”

  Not.

  HE STOPPED by Beaches on his way to the dock. His parents and Marianela and her mother were already at their table, and they looked surprised to see him in a formal dark suit and tie.

  “I can’t stay,” he said, making his excuses. “I’m sorry. I thought I could be here, but I can’t. I have…another obligation.” There was no way to explain it. He couldn’t explain it to himself.

  He just knew he had to be there—to see her triumph? To see her success?

  Was he that much of a masochist?

  Maybe. He only knew he couldn’t sit at Beaches and act polite and disinterested when the most important person in his life was seducing another man fifteen minutes away.

  His mother looked disapproving, but his father said, “If you have an obligation, you must meet it. I hope,” he added, “that we will see you in the morning, though. We are leaving tomorrow. I’ve had a fax from my colleague in New York. It has been a good holiday. But I must go home now. I have work to do.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Joaquin promised. He let his gaze include all of them, even Marianela. After all, none of this was her fault.

  Then he turned and walked swiftly out of the restaurant.

  Tom Wilson had arranged launches to bring guests from Pelican Cay to the party.

  “All you have to do is show up at the dock,” Hugh had told him an hour ago when he’d called to see if they were going. “Tell ’em you’re coming in my place. You’re welcome. I don’t go where I have to wear shoes unless they pay me.”

  Shoes were the least of Joaquin’s problems. By the time he’d made up his mind to go, he wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way.