Mendoza's Secret Fortune (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country)

by Marie Ferrarella

  Matteo felt contrite. He should have known that Rachel wouldn’t do anything to either compromise his integrity or embarrass the hell out of him in any way.

  Mentally he apologized to her, silently promising to make amends.

  “Now I do,” he admitted. “I have to confess that when I’m around you, I have a tendency to forget a lot of other details—like how to breathe,” he said, lowering his voice just for a moment.

  She was not about to allow herself to get carried away with that imagery. It would be all too easy to do that, and she had to remain grounded, she reminded herself. After all, she wasn’t exactly the best judge of character, now, was she? She’d thought the world of her father—and look how wrong she’d been about that.

  So she made light of what Matteo had just told her. “You could try writing that in a dark, indelible marker on the inside of your wrist. That way you won’t ever forget—and accidentally wind up asphyxiating.”

  He glanced at his wrist, as if momentarily considering her suggestion and envisioning something being written there.

  “Indelible marker, huh? I think I’ll just take my chances with my memory,” Matteo said.

  There was amusement in her eyes. “Just trying to help. You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about,” she reminded him.

  “We can get to it after dinner,” he told her, nodding at the bag he had taken from her.

  Rachel looked at him knowingly—and somewhat amused, as well. “You know you’re just stalling, right?”

  Matteo made no attempt to deny it. “Yes, but in the best possible way,” he said glibly.

  Mentally he crossed his fingers and hoped that she would understand and agree with his assessment once she knew what he wanted to tell her.

  Rachel sighed with a touch of drama. “Wendy was right.”

  Maybe he should get to know Wendy better, at least while he was still in Horseback Hollow. She seemed to have considerable influence with Rachel. “Right about what?”

  “She said that Mendoza men require a lot of patience.” Taking the large bag back, she put it on the floor of the passenger side in her vehicle, then turned toward Matteo. “We’ll each drive our own cars. You can follow me.”

  She told him that just in case he’d forgotten how to get to her apartment. She knew how easily bruised male egos became when asking for directions. Some would rather wander around endlessly than admit they needed help.

  “To the ends of the earth,” Matteo told her willingly.

  “To guest parking at my complex will be good enough,” she quipped, grinning as she thought over his words.

  “Consider it done,” Matteo told her.

  His car was parked two rows behind hers. Moving quickly, he hurried over to it now and started it immediately, pumping the accelerator to give it extra gas. The car all but roared in response, ready to tear out of the parking lot like the proverbial bat out of hell.

  That made two of them, Matteo thought.

  He couldn’t stop smiling all the way over to her place.

  * * *

  “Looks like Wendy had the chef pack a little bit of everything that was on tonight’s menu,” Rachel told Matteo, peeking into the bag once they were inside her apartment. She smiled as she looked up at him. “I guess she thinks maybe you’re in need of some fattening up.”

  He laughed shortly, helping Rachel unpack the various small containers and placing them on her kitchen counter for the time being.

  “That makes it sound like I’m a Thanksgiving turkey that needs to gain some weight in order to make an acceptable meal.”

  “Not to worry,” she told him, patting his face before moving to open the cupboard. “Nobody’s going to be pulling on your drumstick.”

  “Well, there go all my plans for the evening,” Matteo said, snapping his fingers.

  “Those were all your plans?” she asked, amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  He looked at her significantly. He could feel his temperature rising just looking at her. “Well, most of them, at any rate,” he joked.

  They were both skirting around the real reason for his being here. She grew serious. “So what was it that you had to tell me?”

  “Eating first, remember?” Matteo reminded her, taking down some of her dishes so they could empty the different containers and place them all on her table for a sit-down meal.

  “Boy, you certainly know how to draw something out, don’t you?” Rachel marveled, although she made no effort to get him to say whatever it was he wanted to tell her now. If it turned out to be something she didn’t want to hear, she could definitely wait to have it out in the open.

  “Think of it as a cliff-hanger,” Matteo suggested, getting out her utensils. “Except people aren’t hanging onto a ledge by their fingertips,” he said when she looked at him quizzically. “It’s more of an emotional cliffhanger.”

  “If you say so,” Rachel murmured. Looking around, she checked to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to put out anything Wendy had sent home with her.

  Now who’s stalling? she silently asked herself.

  Satisfied that everything was out, she gestured for Matteo to take a seat. “Everything looks so good,” she observed, still standing next to the table, “I honestly don’t know where to start.”

  “I do,” he told her.

  “Where?” she asked, curious as to what out of the entire spread appealed to him most. She turned to look at him.

  That was when he kissed her, softly brushing his lips against hers, sending her heart racing wildly.

  “Does that answer your question?” he asked in a low tone.

  His words seemed to dance along her skin.

  Rachel didn’t say a word, didn’t trust her voice not to crack. Instead, she just nodded her head, her hastily gathered-up ponytail swishing to and fro to some inner rhythmic tune that only she was privy to.

  When she could finally speak again, she uttered only a single word: “Yes.” It was another couple of minutes before she could give voice to what she was thinking. “But when we finish eating dinner, you have to tell me what it is you wanted to tell me back in the restaurant. Do we have a deal?” she asked, putting out her hand to Matteo.

  He enveloped it in his and shook it. “We have a deal,” he agreed.

  * * *

  It seemed to Rachel that he was taking an inordinate amount of time finishing his meal.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but Matteo seemed to be chewing far slower than a man of his age and energy should be able to.

  “It’s because of what you have to tell me, isn’t it?” she finally asked. All through the meal, she’d ignored the elephant in the room, but now it was time to do something with the animal.

  “What is?” he asked innocently.

  “The way you’re eating your dinner,” she said, gesturing at his plate. “You’re practically chewing in slow motion.”

  “Chewing too quickly results in people choking on their food.” He was teasing her now—and maybe stalling just a little. If she took what he had to say badly, then it was all over. This was for all the marbles—or nothing at all.

  “No chance of that happening,” she assured him. And then, after giving the matter another few moments, she told him, “It’s okay.”

  Now he actually was confused. “What is?”

  “You don’t have to tell me what you wanted to say earlier today.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she held her hand up, wanting him to hear her out completely before making up his mind or saying anything.

  “If you’ve decided that you’d rather keep whatever it was to yourself, that’s okay. I understand. I wouldn’t want you to—”

  “I love you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her
eyes widened as she stared at Matteo across the table in utter disbelief. She was positive that she had imagined the whole thing, or at the very least, misheard him. Both sounded far more plausible to her than the words she’d heard coming from him.

  Still, she had to ask, had to be sure. “What did you say?”

  Matteo enunciated each word clearly as he repeated, “I love you.”

  The three words shimmered in the air between them like carefully cut prisms in the morning sun. Matteo held his breath, watching her face, waiting to see her reaction.

  Praying.

  He had just risked absolutely everything. Had he made a complete fool of himself—or had he just won the biggest prize of his life?

  Stunned, for a moment, Rachel couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. And then, afraid to allow herself to be swept up in what could turn out to be an impossible fantasy, she protested, “How can you love me? You don’t even know me.”

  They had a difference of opinion on that, Matteo thought. “I know all I need to know.”

  “No, you don’t,” she told him in a voice so quiet it unsettled him.

  “All right,” he said, bracing himself. “Then tell me.” He sincerely doubted that anything she had to say would change how he felt about her.

  But she shook her head. Her father was still a very raw spot for her. Maybe someday it wouldn’t be, but that day wasn’t now.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Rachel was really making this difficult, he thought. Once or twice during their conversations within the past week or so, he’d gotten the feeling that she was hiding something. But given the woman he had come to know, he’d decided to shrug it off. After all, just how bad could it be?

  However, the look on her face now gave him pause. He might as well get a couple of things cleared up and out of the way.

  “Did you kill someone?” he asked Rachel out of the blue.

  The question caught her completely off guard. “No, of course not.”

  “Then it can’t be that bad,” he concluded. The look in her eyes told him he was wrong in his assessment. He took into account who he was dealing with. Rachel had a tendency to magnify her own flaws. “Look, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, things we wouldn’t exactly want to become public knowledge.

  “But the important thing is that we get beyond it. That we learn from whatever we did in the past and become better people because of it. You’re working as an intern at the Foundation—you’re doing good work. That’s the part that counts.”

  She wasn’t convinced. He could see it. “Okay, what did you do that was so bad?” he coaxed her. “Steal someone’s boyfriend? Cheat on your college entrance exams? Drive a getaway car? Come on, Rachel, you have to get it off your chest so that you can start healing.”

  Rachel’s head jerked up at the mention of the getaway car, stunned and a little indignant.

  “No, I didn’t drive a getaway car,” she cried, horrified that he could even think something like that about her.

  “See, that’s my point exactly. You’re not so bad,” he told her, lightly caressing her face.

  That was a matter of opinion, she thought. Looking back, she definitely didn’t like the younger version of herself, the woman she had been five years ago.

  “I was self-centered and petty and shallow,” she told him.

  He was not taken aback. “It’s called being an adolescent,” he told her.

  “And that doesn’t bother you, knowing that I was like that?”

  Matteo laughed, thinking that she was adorable—and that, more likely than not, she was going to save him from becoming cynical and withdrawn.

  “Nope. The only important thing is that you’re none of those things now,” he answered.

  They had gone out on only a handful of dates. How could he possibly think he knew her well enough to say something so flattering about her character?

  “How do you know that? What you just said, how do you know that I’m none of those things?” She wanted so badly for him to say something to convince her.

  “I just do,” he assured her. “I gave you a lot of excuses about why I wasn’t there this morning when you woke up, why I ran. Everything I told you was true, but the main reason I pulled that vanishing act was because I was—” and this was still difficult for him to admit out loud, but it was the truth, so he had to tell her “—well, scared.”

  “Scared?” she repeated. She couldn’t see Matteo Mendoza being afraid of anything. It just didn’t seem to fit. “Of what?”

  His mouth curved just a little. “Of you.”

  “Me?” She stared at Matteo as if he’d lost his mind. “Why would you possibly be scared of me?” For all he knew, she was a simple hostess, a fledgling intern, while he belonged to a big, loving family that backed him in any endeavor he set his mind to.

  He’d started this, so it was up to him to see it through and tell her the truth. “Because of the way you made me feel. Because I knew that I loved you. That gave you power over me,” he pointed out, “and I didn’t want you to have that power.”

  “Power?” she repeated as if it was a foreign word. “What would I want with power over you?” He had to be pulling her leg, she thought. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “What didn’t make any sense was my running out on you this morning, and I’m really, really sorry about that. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” He anticipated her protest and headed it off by saying, “And I’m not just saying it because Cisco was interested in you. You knocked me for a total loop the first moment I saw you—and that was before Cisco had ever made a play for you.”

  Rachel regarded him skeptically. It went without saying that she was extremely attracted to him, really felt something for him—which was why she knew it would hurt once he returned to Miami or moved on to wherever he was going.

  The possibility of his remaining with her never even crossed her mind. She was certain that when this interlude between them was over, she would be left behind. The very thought of Matteo going away without her once she’d opened her heart to him made her ache fiercely inside.

  “I think you should know that I don’t plan to give up,” Matteo informed her. “I’m going to keep after you until I wear you down.” There was a hint of mischief in his smile. “I just wanted to give you fair warning.” His eyes were practically dancing as he added, “How does that old saying go? All’s fair in love and war, right?”

  He knew very well what that old saying was, she thought. He knew far too much for her own good.

  “You’re going to regret this,” she warned him so solemnly, it gave him pause and had him wondering all over again about the nature of the deep, dark secret that was eating away at her.

  But Rachel would tell him when she was ready. He was confident of that. In the meantime, he was going to avail himself of her company and focus on the positive aspects rather than search for the negative ones, the way he always used to do.

  She had improved him already, Matteo realized with a smile. And she didn’t even know it.

  “The only thing I’m going to regret,” he told her, “is if you suddenly take off and vanish from my life without a trace.”

  She looked at him, startled. He’d practically described to a T what she had done to her family five years ago. It had taken her a while to make herself get in touch with her mother. Even then, their contact had been short and abrupt. She’d let her mother know that she was fine and that she was trying to find herself without relying on the aid of family money.

  It wasn’t really the truth, at least not entirely. But this way, her mother didn’t worry that she had been kidnapped or was lying dead at the bottom of some ditch. Her behavior could be written off as typically rebellious rather than something worse. In her case, a reaction to discovering
that everything she had once thought to be true was really a lie. A lie perpetuated by the father she had once worshipped and adored.

  “What?” Matteo asked in response to the look on her face. “Was that what you were planning?” he wanted to know, thinking he’d accidentally hit the nail on the head. “To vanish? It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds—and I’d look for you,” he told her. “I’d go to the ends of the earth to find you if I had to.”

  She was about to laugh that off, but something in his eyes kept her from doing that.

  Rachel looked at him for a long moment. Amid the lighter banter was a solid vein of truth. “You mean that, don’t you?” she asked. “You’d really come and look for me if I suddenly took off.”

  Matteo nodded. “Now you’re getting the picture,” he told her.

  She was silent for a moment, thinking over what he’d just said and carefully examining how that made her feel. She would have expected it to make her feel hemmed in, maybe even trapped.

  But it didn’t.

  It had a completely different effect. Matteo made her feel as if she mattered. As if he wanted to keep her safe and protected. It had been a long time since she had felt that way. It was a comforting feeling, knowing that there was someone who cared that much about her.

  She supposed she owed him something for that, for making her feel as if she was part of something, part of someone.

  So she gave him just a sliver of information.

  “My father’s estranged from his family.”

  She’d learned that much, at least, during her research into her father’s true background. For some mysterious reason, it seemed that he had turned his back on his parents and siblings and on who he really was. That was when “Gerald Robinson” was born.

  “That’s too bad,” Matteo told her, sounding as if he genuinely meant it. “According to my dad, one of his brothers is like that, won’t talk to the rest of the family for some reason, most likely because of an imagined slight he thought he’d suffered. Nobody can even remember what it was about or how it all started.