by Olivia Gates
A kindred feeling toward her swept him almost as powerfully as the one he’d felt toward Mauricio, if different in texture.
It seemed his weakness for Isabella extended to those who shared her blood. He might have a genetic predisposition to let anyone with her DNA influence his thoughts and steer his actions.
Marta tugged him again, and this time he let her lead him inside.
As they entered a family room at the center of a home right out of a syrupy family sitcom, she said, “Mauri never opens the door, either. I don’t know why he did this time.”
He pursed his lips as he sat on a huge floral couch that jarred him with its gaiety, considering the austerity he was used to. “He probably sensed that I’m the one to defend his home against invading alien armies...before he even saw me.”
She spluttered, causing his own lips to twitch. He’d already known she wouldn’t be offended when he poked fun at her, would relish his caustic humor.
Beaming, the eyes he was learning to read held something he didn’t wish to translate. “You can joke about it, but you can actually be right. Mauri is an extremely...sensitive boy. There have been a lot of instances when he realized things he shouldn’t or felt things before they happened.”
Before he decided what to think, let alone formulate an answer, she clasped hands beneath her chin. “Now let me offer you something to drink. And you’ll stay for dinner, yes?”
“Maybe Isabella won’t want to have me.”
“I want to have you for dinner. Mauri wants that, too. Bella can’t say no to either of us. So you’re safe.”
Admitting that it was easier to decimate a squad of armed-to-the-teeth black ops operatives unarmed than resist this tiny woman, he surrendered. “Tea, please. If you have any.”
“Bella has us stocked on every kind of tea on earth. It’s the only thing she drinks.”
It had been him who’d started her drinking tea, addicted her to it as per her admission. So she hadn’t stopped. Just as she hadn’t been able to stop her addiction to him.
He inhaled deeply, suppressing the acutely sensory memories that flooded his mind. “Earl Grey. Hot.”
Clapping her hands, Marta rushed away. “Coming right up.”
As she receded, Richard finally made a conscious comparison between her and her daughter.
She was much shorter and smaller, and her complexion, eyes and hair were darker. There were similarities in their features, but it was clear Isabella had taken after another relative, probably her father or someone from her father’s side.
Marta was also different in other ways. Though she’d evidently lived a troubled life, she seemed more carefree, more optimistic than Isabella, even younger in spirit. If he’d ever imagined having an older sister, he would have probably wished for someone exactly like her.
He frowned at the strange idea, shaking it off. And all other distractions fell off with it, releasing his mind, letting it crash in the wreckage-filled abyss of reality.
Isabella had given birth to his son.
She’d been pregnant as she’d run for her life.
When had she found out? Before or after she’d fled?
If before, she would have had to run anyway to hide another betrayal from Burton. Or would she have aborted Mauricio, if he hadn’t suspected her, to avoid his wrath?
That was a moot question. She’d had Mauricio, so she’d either discovered her pregnancy just as she’d run or afterward.
But why had she kept him? Had she wanted his child? Or had it all been about Mauricio himself? Had she wanted him?
That she’d had him proved it. Whatever she’d felt when she’d discovered her pregnancy, whatever dangers had been present, her desire to have him had trumped it all.
But she’d been on the run and pregnant, and hadn’t considered asking him for help. Even before she’d realized he’d been the cause of her predicament.
So why? If she hadn’t hated him then, why hadn’t she run from Burton to him? He’d waited for her to, had left all channels open hoping she would. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, she hadn’t.
But if she had, and had told him about Mauricio, what would he have done? He had no idea.
He still had no idea. What to think, let alone what to do.
And here he was, after an explosive reunion with her that had plunged him right back into the one addiction of his life, sitting in her land of overwhelming domesticity, waiting for her mother to bring him tea and her son his portfolio. Not only had every single plan he’d had coming here been vaporized, every other one in his life had been, too.
What the blistering bloody hell would he do now?
What could he do?
Nothing. That was what. Nothing but sit back and observe, and make decisions as he went along. For the first time in a quarter of a century he wasn’t steering everything and everyone wherever he wished. All his calculations had gone to hell the moment he’d laid eyes on her again. He expected them to remain there for the foreseeable future.
Making peace with that conclusion, he looked around the place. Murdock had said it had been turnkey, so he couldn’t use it to judge anything about her or who she’d become.
Or maybe he could. She had chosen the finished product after all. It indicated this was what she wanted for herself, for her family now. The total opposite of what she’d had when she’d been with Burton, a fifty-bedroom mansion with two ballrooms and an attached garage for thirty cars. The demotion to a six-bedroom house with street parking was quite drastic. At most, he estimated this place to rent for six thousand a month, and to sell for a couple of million. While this neighborhood, though elegant, could as well be a row of hovels next to the outrageous hundred-acre estate of her former residence.
So was this what she wanted? An undistinguished upper-middle-class life? A safe, comfortable neighborhood for her family with good public schools for her child? Had she really changed her life so completely around? It appeared so.
And it appeared it had all been for Mauricio.
Mauricio. A son he hadn’t known he had for seven years.
He couldn’t get an actual grip on that. The shock of discovering Mauricio’s existence would only deepen with time.
Almost as shocking had been Mauricio’s and his grandmother’s behavior with him. He couldn’t rationalize, let alone cope with their instant acceptance. No one had ever reacted to him that way. He scared people on sight. At least awed them. He made the most hardened thugs wary, even before they knew who he really was and what he was capable of. So how had they taken to him so immediately?
Then it all happened at once. The sound of china rattling on a tray heralded Marta’s approach. Stampeding feet down the stairs indicated Mauricio’s. And the front door was opening.
Isabella.
The others, so focused on him as they rejoined him, missed her arrival until she entered the room. He held her eyes—her glorious, murderous eyes—as Mauricio foisted his precious load in his hands before hurtling himself at her. Her mother greeted her with as much joy. Isabella had eyes only for him.
If looks could kill, he would be a riddled corpse by now.
Mauricio fell over himself to fill her in on their whole meeting, word for word. Marta scolded her lovingly for never bringing Richard up. And though Isabella had brought her deadly displeasure with him under control and gave them a face he’d never seen—one of vivacious delight at being home—they seemed to realize that wasn’t what she felt about his presence.
Not about to risk her spoiling their dinner plans, as Richard had intimated she might, Marta preempted her by announcing they’d have dinner at once and have tea later.
He had to give it to Isabella. All through what turned out to be an exceptional dinner, crafted to perfection by Marta, she somehow held back from doing what he could feel her seething to do: hurl a fork into his eye.
Along with discovering what superb home-cooked Colombian food tasted like, he found out the answer to a question he’d fume
d over just last night. How a dinner could last four hours.
This one lasted even longer. And not because Isabella’s younger sister, Amelia, and her two children arrived middinner and extended the proceedings. That was the usual leisurely rhythm in this household. Something he was amazed to find he couldn’t only tolerate, but enjoy. The experience was totally alien, but he still navigated it as if he had dinner with a household of women and children every night.
And like Mauricio and Marta, the newcomers immediately treated him as if they’d known him forever. Minutes after their arrival, he learned that Amelia’s husband was finishing a contract in Argentina and would join them in the States next year. Until then, they were staying with big sister Isabella. As they had almost since the children were born.
Having grown up in a subdued household with a military father and a conservative mother, he had no idea how loud and lively a family could be. But it did seem everyone was more gregarious than usual on his account. Probably because an adult male presence was a rarity in their lives. The only other male in the family was Isabella’s younger brother who lived abroad. But no matter how many men they’d been exposed to, they’d never seen anything like him. Everyone was so intrigued and awed by him and thrilled to have him.
Everyone but Isabella, of course. But she ignored him with such ingenuity, no one but him realized she hadn’t given him one word or look all through dinner, even avoiding answering his direct questions without appearing to snub him.
He ate as much as all of them put together, to Marta’s delight, who said she’d finally found someone with an appetite to do her efforts justice. When he said it was only expected, since he could probably house them all in his body, she laughed and was only happy her culinary artwork wouldn’t have to be reduced, again, to the status of shunned leftovers.
After dinner they retired to the family room and he was served his promised Earl Grey. Mauricio solemnly told him he’d have to postpone showing him his drawings. He didn’t trust the younger children to respect his works of art, and they wouldn’t have the peace needed to discuss them anyway.
The evening progressed for another hour with everyone asking him a thousand questions, hanging on every word of his answers, laughing readily at his every witticism.
He sat there feeling like a sprawling lion after a satisfying meal, with a pride of lionesses lounging around him and cubs crawling all over him.
Then Mauricio and the younger children, Diego and Benita, started yawning. Marta and Amelia took them to bed, leaving Richard alone with Isabella for the first time.
Without turning her head toward him, just her baleful gaze, she seethed, “You’ll get up now, and you’ll get the hell out of here. And you will never come back.”
Sighing in satisfaction that she’d finally talked to him, even to slash him before evicting him, he only sat forward to pour himself another cup of tea.
He settled back even more comfortably, slanting her a challenging glance. “Are you going to make me?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.” Her usually velvety voice was a serrated blade. “I got my family out of a country full of thugs like you, and I am never letting one near them again.”
Now, that piqued his interest. But direct questioning now wouldn’t get her to elaborate. He had to get what he wanted indirectly, by giving her more chances to flog him.
“Thugs like me? What kind do you think I am?”
“I can extrapolate well enough.”
“Shoot.”
“If only I could. Right between your snake eyes.”
This took him by such surprise he threw his head back and laughed. “If only you knew.”
As if his merriment was the last straw, she turned to him, her body rigid with rage. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that I was once code-named Cobra. So your assessment of my reptilian attributes is quite accurate.”
“Of course I’m accurate. As for what kind of snake you are, I think you must have been Burton’s rival gangster or you’d been sent by another cartel to destroy the competition. Though your legitimate image was and remains flawless, I know what you really are. A criminal.” At his ridiculing pout, she narrowed her eyes. “Don’t bother spouting I’m a criminal, too. Take that to the law or shut up. But I’m telling you here and now, I’ll go to any lengths to make certain you never come near my family again.”
He sipped his tea, luxuriating in how fury intensified her allure. “You knew all that when you not only let me come near you, but let me be all over you and inside you.”
“When it was between us, that was one thing. Now you’ve involved my family, all rules have changed. You don’t want to find out what I’m capable of doing to protect them.”
“But I do want to find out. Recount some of the unspeakable things you did in their defense. Who knows, maybe I can be deterred after all.”
“Anything I previously did is irrelevant. What I’d do would be tailored to you. I’ll keep that a surprise.”
“Like you did with Mauricio?”
“Why would my adopted son be a surprise to you?”
That was the story she was going with?
From her immediate retort, she’d prepared that story in case he investigated her. He was sure she’d get her story straight with her mother and sister. She thought he wouldn’t be able to find the truth in the void she’d created in her past. She had every reason to believe she’d get away with it since Mauricio looked nothing like him. But he wouldn’t contest her claim, not now.
Maybe not ever.
She rose, flaying him with her antagonism. “Why did you come here in the first place?”
He drained his cup, put it on the tray and then rose to his feet. She took a step back, and he knew. She didn’t fear him coming closer, but her own reaction to his nearness.
All he wanted was to take her against the nearest wall.
Since that was out of the question in her family-infested home, he shrugged. “I came to find you, and they snared me. Your mother and son are inescapable. As you should know.”
“Yeah, right, the unstoppable Richard Graves finally met his immovable objects.”
“Very much so. Your mother and son are intractable. Your sister and her little urchins, too. What should I have done in your opinion to deter their determined attentions? Bared my fangs and snapped at them?”
“Gee, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with your opinion of them. But, yeah, one look at your real face and a swipe of your forked tongue and they would have run screaming. But you sat there purring all night like a lion ingratiating himself to a naïve, male-starved pride.”
This time he guffawed. Their unlikely situation had made her think of that parable, too. “What can I say? Your mother’s cooking can soothe even me, and your little tribe is quite...entertaining. They’re such an exemplary audience. And they’re yours, so it wasn’t in my best interests to scar them for life with the sight of my hood spread out.”
“News flash, playing nice with my family wouldn’t ingratiate you to me, since that’s the one thing I won’t forgive you for.” Before he could answer, her lips thinned. “Enough of this. Give me your word you won’t come again.”
His eyebrows rose. “You think my word is worth anything?”
“Yes.”
Heat surged in his chest. She seemed to believe that, when she shouldn’t believe he had any code of honor.
Not willing to corroborate her belief, he said, “Then, maybe you don’t know anything about me after all.”
Before she could blast him again, he brushed against her as her mother and sister walked in. He promised he’d be back in answer to their new invitation, then took his leave. The women saw him to the door and stood there until he drove away.
Isabella remained in the background. He was sure she was killing him a dozen horrific ways in her mind.
The stimulation of her murderous intentions only lasted a few blocks before reality all came crashing over him again
.
He should heed her warning, should walk away. He’d seen her, he’d had her, and after he made sure she stayed away from Rose, he should disappear from her life again.
It shouldn’t matter he felt he’d suffocate if he didn’t have more of her. It shouldn’t matter she’d had his son. A boy who provoked a thousand unknown stirrings inside him. For what would he do with those aberrant feelings?
She hadn’t told him she’d had his son, seemed bound on never letting him know. Even without knowing what he really was, she knew she mustn’t let him near a boy that age.
And she was absolutely right.
For the past seven years he hadn’t known Mauricio existed, and Mauricio hadn’t known he did.
He would keep it that way.
Six
After Richard left, her mother and sister pounced on her with questions. Isabella expended every drop of ingenuity she possessed into dodging them and validating none of their suspicions.
Those ranged from his being a suitor she wouldn’t let close for reasons they couldn’t imagine—since as did every woman on earth, they thought him a god and/or a godsend—to the truth. Her mother was the one whose eyes contained the suspicion...the hope, that he was Mauri’s biological father.
She held it together until she was in her room, prepared for bed, then collapsed on it in a mass of tremors.
So much had happened so fast in that exhilarating, nauseating and terrifying roller coaster since he’d exploded into her life last night. Now his incursion had reached inside her home and within inches of the secret she’d thought safe forever. And it scared her out of her wits.
And that was before she considered that confounding evening he’d spent with them. Every second he’d spent charming her family like the snake he’d admitted he’d been labeled as, she’d felt a breath away from screaming with aggravation and swooning with dread. At the torture’s end, she might have stood her ground, and Richard might have walked away, but she didn’t think it would end that simply. He hadn’t given his word he’d leave her family alone in his pursuit of her. And nothing involving Richard was without long-term repercussions. She was now terrified what his next blow would be and how he’d deal it.
