by Joss Wood
Alec groaned. Their sister would be a lot more persistent. Even though she was a year younger than the two of them, she’d always had a way of getting what she wanted from all of the Velasquez men.
“I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about this,” Alec said. “It’s Scarlet. I can’t stop thinking about her but I can’t contact her because she thinks I’m you. If I say, ‘Hey, I was pretending to be my brother,’ I don’t think she’s going to want to see me again.”
There, he’d said it. And saying it out loud made him realize how ridiculous the entire thing was. He and Mo were thirty years old, almost thirty-one. The time for switching places with his twin had long passed.
Mo clapped Alec’s shoulder.
“That is a tough one. But if I learned anything from my relationship with Hadley, it’s that if you want a woman badly enough, you go after her. Apologize for your mistakes, tell her the truth and then tell her how you feel.”
“Ugh. That’s a lot of telling.”
“Maybe you could write an app that would do it for you,” Mo said sarcastically.
“Screw you.”
But Alec felt better after talking to Mo. Maybe he would call Scarlet or even take the jet to New York and see her. It wouldn’t hurt. And then he’d have an idea if this obsession was simply because she was out of reach or if it was something else.
* * *
When they finally arrived in Cole’s Hill, Siobahn decided to stay at the house but Scarlet was eager to find Mauricio right away and talk to him about the pregnancy. She had Lulu in the large bag that she carried her in when they were in a new place and Billie by her side as they drove into town for coffee.
She wasn’t sure what kind of man he was; after all they’d spent only one night together and they’d both been drinking and dancing and laughing. When she’d woken up the next morning, he’d been gone, and she didn’t blame him after she’d seen the paparazzi pictures from the night before that had ended up on TMZ.
Her life wasn’t for everyone, but she’d gotten used to it. Tara used to say they’d been born a goldfish bowl and like good little guppies they’d learned how to preen for the press. There were times when Scarlet wished for a simpler, less public life, but to be honest she loved it most days.
In this town, though, no one seemed to pay her the least bit of attention. She could get used to this. When she stopped into the coffee shop to get her coconut milk latte, everyone left her alone.
“Do you know the Velasquez family?” Scarlet causally asked the barista after ordering.
“Everyone knows them. They’re legends in Cole’s Hill. I think they’ll all be out at the new polo grounds today. I don’t follow the sport but there’s a former professional scheduled to play today... Dee, do you remember his name?” the barista asked the woman at the espresso machine.
“Bartolome Figueras. He’s also a model. Oh, my, he’s good-looking,” Dee said.
“He is,” Scarlet agreed. She had met him and his sister at a polo match in Bridgehampton earlier in the summer. She might even have his number. “I love polo. Do you think that we could attend the match?” Scarlet said, turning to Billie, who smiled.
“I’m sure you could. They’ve been doing monthly matches to raise money for a housing charity that Mauricio Velasquez runs,” the barista said. She pushed a button on her register and some receipt paper came out. She ripped it off and jotted down a website.
“I think you can get all of the information from here,” she said, handing the paper to Scarlet. “Have fun.”
When they had their orders, Scarlet and Billie walked out of the coffee shop toward the parking lot.
“That was surprisingly easy,” Billie said.
“It was. Let’s go home and get changed. I bet Siobahn will want to join us,” Scarlet said.
“I don’t know about that. She’s sort of in a funk this morning.”
Scarlet stopped walking and turned to her assistant. Billie had been picking up the slack the last few days, looking after Siobahn for her while Scarlet had been trying to figure out this pregnancy thing. She hadn’t mentioned the test results to anyone, even Billie. Only she and Dr. Patel knew.
“I should have stopped in to see her. I’m sorry I’ve been so focused on finding Mauricio.”
“It’s okay. I’m just saying I don’t know if you’re going to be able to persuade her to come with you to the polo match.”
“Fair enough,” Scarlet said.
They went back to the house. While Billie tracked down contact info for Bartolome Figueras’s assistant and texted her to put their names on the VIP list, Scarlet talked with Siobahn. She wasn’t in the mood to leave the house, so Scarlet left Lulu with her.
The polo grounds were busy when they arrived. Billie went to see if she could find out where the stables were. Scarlet moved through the crowds, searching the men who were dressed in traditional polo shirts and jodhpurs, scanning for the one she’d spent the night with.
She saw Bart first, and heard his sister Zaria’s laughter. Scarlet smiled at the sound of it. The Argentinean heiress had a big, bold laugh that matched her personality. Scarlet headed toward them, then noticed Mauricio Velasquez was standing in the same group. He had his arm around a very pretty woman with thick dark curly hair that hung to the middle of her back. She watched them for a minute. Maybe she was his sister. But then he bent to kiss the woman, and not in a sisterly way.
Scarlet had never in her life been a timid person, and seeing the father of her unborn child kiss another woman made her angry. For a split second she realized she’d had a little fantasy of some sort of perfect rendezvous where they’d instantly agree to spend the rest of their lives together.
It was as if she’d forgotten she was an O’Malley and that kind of thing wasn’t in the cards for her. She didn’t do commitment. She wasn’t programmed for long term. She’d seen what that had done to her mother, who couldn’t handle being left by Scarlet’s father as he’d moved on to someone younger, hotter and a little bit wilder.
Tara had been the same as their father, living fast and hard and burning bright for such a short time. But Scarlet had been confused, caught between two opposites. On the one hand, she had the dream of having the perfect family that at times she saw in old pictures of the O’Malleys taken when she was a child. And then there was the reality that she had never been responsible for anyone but herself.
O’Malleys were better when they only had to look out for themselves. It was what they were the best at...that and doing something outrageous and creating scandal.
Plastering a smile on her face, she strode determinedly toward the group, forcing herself not to look at the woman or Mauricio again. Instead she’d just play it cool and pretend she was here to see Bart. But as she got closer, she couldn’t prevent her gaze from straying to Mauricio.
He was still handsome—damn him. For a brief second she wondered if there was a world where the Velasquez good would balance out her O’Malley bad. She’d heard nothing but good things about the Velasquez family and how close knit they were.
And it had created a longing inside her for the family that she’d never had and had always been a little curious about. Even though she wasn’t built for commitment, it might be nice to be a part of this kind of thing for real.
“Scarlet,” Bart said in his wonderfully accented English. “What a surprise! I’m glad you’re here. Please meet my friends Mauricio Velasquez and his fiancée, Hadley Everton.”
Fiancée?
What the hell?
She turned toward the man she thought she knew and noticed the set of his shoulders and the scar on his eyebrow. The man she’d slept with didn’t have that. What the hell was going on?
“Hello, Mauricio,” she said. “I believe we’ve met. At that gala in Houston.”
“Well, actually—” Mauricio began.
She turned to face the man and was struck speechless. He was a mirror image of Mauricio. He had a twin? In that moment, Scarlet realized that in true O’Malley fashion this situation had gone from bad to worse. A baby scare from a one-night stand? Sure, it happened. But learning that her baby daddy was an impostor, a virtual stranger whom she knew nothing about... Well, that was the old O’Malley bad luck.
Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Garbera
ISBN-13: 9781488046926
Second Chance Temptation
Copyright © 2019 by Joss Wood
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