One Night to Risk It All

by Katherine Garbera

  Honestly, that was all he had time for, but something about Marielle made him feel lighter, made him feel...stronger. Like he could conquer anything.

  It could be because it had been more than a year since he’d gotten laid, but he wasn’t convinced.

  “Are you coming?” she asked, leaning around the door frame from the bathroom.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, jumping off the bed and heading toward her.

  It seemed like it might be her and not just sex. But then, one night wasn’t going to change his life. His mom might be a big believer in fate, but he’d never seen its proof in his life.

  He showered with Marielle, taking his time to wash her, making sure he explored all the places on her body that he might have missed when he’d made love to her earlier. They did it again in the shower and then dried off and curled up in the big king-size bed in the guesthouse. He held her in his arms as she slept and watched her. Tomorrow everything would be different. The holidays weren’t officially over until January 2, but he had a session at the simulation track and if this was going to be the year he unseated the current champion, then this night was all he’d have with her.

  He watched the clock and held her, pretending for a moment that things were different, but as much as he enjoyed having her in his arms, he knew that he wanted something more from life. He wanted the title of champion, and these emotions she stirred in him would distract him from his goal. Something he couldn’t allow.

  Besides, if they were really fated to be together, then she’d come back into his life at another time.

  He drifted off to sleep just before dawn and only woke when his alarm went off at ten in the morning. Marielle rolled over and looked up at him from under tousled hair. “Why is your alarm going off?”

  “I have a family breakfast. Do you want to come with me and meet the gang?” he asked. “Scarlet will be there.”

  “Yes, I think I would. I better dash out to my car and grab my overnight bag so I have something to wear other than last night’s dress,” she said.

  “Why do you have an overnight bag in your car?” he asked.

  “Just in case. I liked to be prepared. If I get too tipsy to drive, I can always stay at Scarlet’s,” she said as she got out of bed and stretched before pulling on her dress.

  “I like that dress,” he said.

  “I do too, but it’s really better for nighttime,” she said.

  “Agreed. Which car is yours? I’ll get your bag,” he said. She told him, and he went out to retrieve it.

  They got dressed together, which was fun. He wanted her again, but he didn’t want to give in to the craving, so he forced himself to make do with a kiss and held her hand as they walked to the main house. But as they entered the house, they didn’t exactly receive the warmest of greetings.

  “Oh my God. Who invited her?” Bianca said, standing up from her seat as they entered the enormous living area. There was anger in her voice. Inigo wasn’t sure who Bianca was referring to at first but noticed she was staring at Marielle.

  “What’s going on?” he asked his sister.

  “I should be asking you that. What are you doing with Jose’s mistress?”

  Three

  Bianca... Jose’s ex-wife was here? She hadn’t seen the woman in more than five years, and she’d worked hard to put that horrible day out of her mind. The moment she’d discovered her lover Jose was married had been one of the worst in her life. Seeing Bianca now, all the guilt and shame came rushing back. There was something akin to hatred in the pregnant woman’s eyes, and the look on Inigo’s face made it clear he wasn’t too pleased to find out she had this connection to his family.

  To be fair, she’d had no idea who Inigo was when she’d slept with him, but now seeing him next to Bianca, she put the pieces together. They were obviously related. And she now vaguely remembered that Jose had mentioned he had a protégé he thought would do great things in Formula One. Was it Inigo?

  “I guess I should be going,” she said.

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Bianca said. “Who even invited you?”

  “I’m Scarlet’s friend,” Marielle said.

  She knew that the woman had cause to be upset with her, but she wasn’t the only one to blame. Jose had told Marielle he was divorced, and she had been stupid enough to believe him. She soon realized it wasn’t his only lie when she’d caught him in bed with another woman—a woman he’d been seeing for years. She’d felt like a fool, falling in love with another woman’s husband. Seeing Bianca brought back all of those feelings of self-loathing that she’d hoped she’d moved beyond.

  “Scarlet’s my sister-in-law,” Bianca replied.

  Of course she was. “Honestly, I had no idea that you would be here. That part of my life was over ages ago, and I’m not proud of my role in what was going on in your marriage.”

  More people were entering the room, including Inigo’s parents, and then Scarlet and her assistant, Billi Sampson, came in. Marielle looked at her friend, who was visibly pregnant and still looked very sleepy.

  “Scarlet, thank you for inviting me last night. I’m afraid I have to run this morning, but I’ll be in touch later,” Marielle said, walking out of the room.

  Inigo didn’t try to follow her, which was probably for the best. He had been fun last night, just what she needed to distract her from her own problems. But obviously neither of them had intended for it to be the beginning of a relationship.

  Yeah, right.

  But she knew that it was over. There was no way she could have any kind of relationship—not that she was looking for one—with the brother of the woman whose husband she’d slept with.

  Ugh.

  Her mom was always going on about reaping what she sowed, and damn, this was a pretty rotten crop to reap. But this trouble was of her own making. When she thought back to the woman she’d been when she was twenty-one, she cringed. She’d been so shallow. So into her own pleasure and her own life that she had been unable to see past Jose’s lies to the family that she was hurting. It wasn’t that she was so much wiser at twenty-six, but damn, she was a little smarter when it came to men. Or at least she’d thought she was.

  No more hookups with men whose last names I don’t know, she thought. Yeah, let’s make that rule one for the new year.

  The engine of her Corvette roared to life. She put the car in Reverse and spun out on the gravel drive as she tried to get away from the house and all the people inside it. But there wasn’t a car that had rolled off the assembly line that would go fast enough to take her away from herself.

  She had that way of doing this more often than she wanted to. She knew it wasn’t her fault—how in the world had she ended up at a party with Jose’s ex-wife? That was never supposed to happen. She’d followed the teachings of a well-being guru, who had advised her to write a letter apologizing. The guru had said that would bring forgiveness from the universe.

  Marielle thought she needed a refund, because all she could see as she raced down the road was the look on Bianca’s face as she’d recognized her, and it certainly hadn’t resembled forgiveness.

  She pulled into the drive that led to her family’s mansion and slowed the car, fumbling on the visor for the garage door opener. She parked the ’Vette next to her father’s classic Porsche and sat there for a minute, realizing that she was on the edge of tears.

  She took a deep breath, fumbling in her purse for her phone and that meditation app that her brother had gifted her for Christmas. She opened it and closed her eyes, listening to the soothing voice and pretending the heat on her cheeks was the sunshine the app’s moderator was talking about and not tears.

  But in her heart the truth was strong, and she knew that she hadn’t forgiven herself for those long-ago mistakes. Thank God she hadn’t run into Jose’s son. The little boy his wife had been pregnant with w
hile he’d been telling Marielle that she was his soul mate. If she’d been older...

  Or not as dumb, she thought.

  This wasn’t working. She dashed her hand over her cheeks and turned off the car, getting out and standing there for a minute. She smelled cigarette smoke and looked up to see her eldest brother, Darian, standing there watching her. “I wasn’t spying, just giving you space.”

  “Thanks,” she said, walking over to him and taking the cigarette from his hand, dropping it on the ground and putting it out with the toe of her shoe.

  “You’re supposed to be quitting.”

  “I know. I didn’t take a drag, I was just holding it,” he said. “What’s up with you?”

  “Ran into one of my past mistakes this morning. It’s hitting me harder than I expected,” she said.

  “Why? You know you’re not that woman anymore,” he said.

  Why?

  She shrugged, but Inigo’s face danced through her mind. She’d liked him. He’d been fun, and he’d made her feel like she was enough.

  * * *

  “What were you doing with her?” Bianca asked as she and Inigo watched Marielle drive away.

  “She’s the girl...the one I told you about last night,” he said, trying to put together the two images he had in his head. Jose’s mistress had always seemed someone cold and calculating. While he had never seen his brother-in-law with the woman, he had assumed that she’d manipulated Jose into the affair. Jose had been his idol. Inigo had wanted to be Jose when he grew up. But this...

  Marielle hadn’t seemed like the type of woman...who would what? he asked himself. Cheat? Have sex with a man? She’d been fun, and he hadn’t thought of anything but the heat between the two of them. He had put it down to a year’s worth of celibacy, but honestly she was hot and sexy and he had wanted her again this morning. Maybe that was what had caused Jose to cheat.

  “Her? Couldn’t you have picked anyone else?” Bianca asked.

  Inigo’s heart was breaking at the pain and humiliation he heard in his sister’s voice.

  “I had no idea who she was to you, Bia.”

  “Fair enough. But I never want to see her again,” Bianca said. Just then Derek Caruthers entered the room, rushing to his wife’s side.

  “Bianca, are you okay? I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you.”

  “It’s fine. I’m glad we’re leaving this morning. I’m ready to get back home,” she said. “I never thought I’d see her again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Scarlet said. “I had no idea you two knew each other or the circumstances. Did you know?”

  She pivoted on her husband, Alec, who just wrapped his arm around her and hugged her close. “Of course I knew he’d had an affair with Marielle. I didn’t know you knew her.”

  Inigo just walked out of the room. He was angry. All of the emotions that he’d felt when Jose had died, and he’d learned the truth, came back. He knew that wasn’t a healthy space for him to be in and ignored his father’s calls and his brothers as he first walked and then ran back to the guesthouse where he was staying. He changed into his running gear and left the house through the glass doors that led to the beach. He was vaguely aware that it was cold, and a light rainy snow was falling, but he didn’t feel any of it.

  He only heard the pounding of his feet on the pavement of the path that was empty on this wintry January morning. He concentrated on each step, trying not to allow any thoughts in his head, but it was hard to keep them out.

  He had always had a gift for attracting relationships that were toxic, but this had to totally take the cake. He’d found the one woman in the world he really couldn’t be with. It would destroy his family if he was with her.

  And yeah, it had been a fun hookup, but there was another part of him that wondered if this was his way of making sure that nothing distracted him from racing. From winning. He’d always been the kind of athlete that pushed everything aside to win. And he was close to being the champion, which had been his one goal since he’d started in the Formula One junior program at fourteen.

  He also felt the pain of realizing that his idol had feet of clay. That he was human and real and that he hadn’t been perfect. The cold air felt like a blade in his lungs as he continued to run, and he veered off the path and into the small town, where everything was closed. No one was out this early on New Year’s Day.

  Just him.

  Just the man who had too much on his mind and no easy way to sort it out. Should he just let Marielle go? Should he try to get vengeance for Bianca? He couldn’t help it, but that thought had entered his mind. Maybe it was that he felt she’d fooled him too. She had to know who he was. But how could she have? He’d been on a different circuit that year when Bianca had been pregnant and Jose had cheated.

  Many times Inigo had wondered if he’d still been shadowing Jose, would his brother-in-law have thought twice about cheating?

  At the end of the day, was he to blame? He’d pursued winning at any cost, and had turning his back on Bianca and Jose that year been part of the other man’s downfall?

  He had no way of knowing. Jose was dead, and Bianca had never wanted to talk about it.

  He stopped running, leaning forward to put his hands on his knees, his breath still sawing in and out of his lungs. His exhalations were loud in his head but didn’t drown out his thoughts. He could fix this. Make up for anything he might or might not have done back in the day.

  He could have Marielle and publicly dump her. Would that even bother her? She’d been a married man’s mistress.

  But even as the thought formed, he knew that it didn’t matter. She needed to know that the Velasquez family weren’t to be toyed with. The rational part of his mind warned that there was more to the story than he knew. That the “facts” he had came from the dirt that Alec had dug up on her on the internet. Most of the mistresses had been named but Marielle hadn’t been on the list.

  But he could only listen to his gut and his heart. His heart remembered the paleness of his sister’s face as she’d seen him standing next to Marielle. His gut remembered the strident tone that Marielle had used before walking out. His body remembered her twisting under him the night before.

  He could have it all. The woman he lusted after and revenge for his family.

  * * *

  Hiding at her parents’ house wasn’t ideal. The maids were in and out of her room, her mom sent a tray with lunch, and then her dad knocked on her door. And finally, Marielle faked needing to visit a friend having an emergency and left. Her brother was in the garage again when she came downstairs, and she got it. She wished her problems were as easy for the world to see as Darian standing there with an unlit cigarette. But hers were different.

  She was the one with a weakness for men and making dumb choices...could that be called addiction too?

  She left in a cloud of muddy snow as she sped away from her problems. There was a wistful sort of regret that engulfed her as she got on the Long Island Expressway and headed back toward Manhattan.

  Dang.

  This must be how Inigo felt when he was racing. There was a certain freedom from everything but the road and concentrating on the path ahead of her. Maybe she should take up driving professionally.

  As soon as the thought popped into her head, she hit an icy patch and her car hydroplaned for a minute, fishtailing wildly on the road. She took her foot off the gas as she saw her life flash before her eyes.

  Damn.

  She slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. Her hands were shaking, and her heart was racing. She didn’t want to die. She sat there. The silence in the car made her ears ring, and finally she turned on the radio. “About Last Night” was playing, so she flipped the station and heard Debussy’s “La mer.” Yeah, classical was good. Just what she needed right now.

  She dug into her purse and found her phone. Scarlet had
texted her.

  Are you okay? I wish you hadn’t left like that.

  What could she say?

  I’m not great. I’m sorry. I could tell I was freaking her out, and you know I’m not good in those situations. I hope I didn’t make things awkward for you.

  Scarlet and Siobhan had been the first women friends she’d genuinely had in years, and she hadn’t wanted to screw it up. But maybe she had. Maybe she should stop trying and just enjoy the train wreck that was usually her life.

  You didn’t. Well, it was awkward, but I feel like both of you were freaked. If you want to talk, I’m going to be in the city until Friday. Let’s have coffee...by that I mean you drink the coffee and I smell it and pretend that I’m having some.

  Marielle felt a wave of relief go through her.

  Thank you. I’d love that. I’m heading back to New York now. My parents’ house was stifling. I’m sorry again for this morning.

  I know the feeling. No problem. Can’t wait to catch up.

  She tossed the phone back into her bag before she asked for Inigo’s number. A part of her felt like she should say something to resolve the situation with him, but another part—the smarter part—knew there would be no resolution. She could keep him in her memories as a fun night. And that was all.

  Her phone rang, and she glanced at the caller ID. It was her friend Siobahn Murphy, who was the lead singer of Venus Rising. The two liked to party together, and she was always down for a good time. Just what Marielle needed at this moment.

  “Hey, girl, happy New Year,” she said as she answered the speakerphone and got back on the road.

  No more driving fast to outrun her problems. She sat in the slow lane going a respectable speed.

  “Hiya. Scar texted me,” Siobahn said. “What the hell happened?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I met this cute guy and he was funny and flirty. Even his dad was funny, encouraging him to talk to me. We kissed at midnight...it was hot,” Marielle said. More than hot. It had made her see him as more than a hookup. She had to be honest with herself. She hated the way things had ended with Inigo. But she doubted there was any way back from the current situation.