“Who says we’re good friends?” Rafael joked. “I hate his guts.”
“Yeah, right,” Diego scoffed. He located a plastic ashtray, pulled out a cigarette and ignited it with a flourish. “I’ve saved his butt more times than you can count.”
Diego had saved Rafael’s butt only one time that really mattered, and to relate that incident to Sandra would be to invite disaster. She’d hear about the violence, the gangs, the past Rafael had worked so hard to outgrow.
It was safer just to agree with Diego. “Millions of times, amigo. Don’t worry. I keep a tally.”
“That’s why I love him,” Diego confided to Sandra. “He keeps tallies. He can calculate to the third decimal exactly how much he owes me.”
“There must be some things you guys fight about,” Sandra said, her smile a reflection of their good-natured teasing.
“Yeah. My salary,” Diego announced.
Rafael played along. “I pay you too much.”
“Like hell.”
“Come on!” Sandra broke in. Her smile grew, shimmering with a warmth that squeezed something tight inside him. Something not carnal but... affectionate. Tender. Something that made him wish he could let down his guard and really, truly laugh with her.
“We fought once,” Diego told her. Rafael shook his head, wishing he could stop this before it went further, but Diego kept at it. “Man, what a fight that was.”
“Tell me about it.” She turned to Rafael, her eyes round with curiosity.
He wondered how much of this was going to end up in her article. She hadn’t reached for her pad and pen, but he wouldn’t put it past her to memorize everything he and Diego were telling her. “It was over my sister,” he said in a tone dark enough to remind her that his sister was the subject that had led to their kiss in the alley.
A flush of pink caressed her cheeks as she met Rafael’s gaze. “The nun?”
“She’s a nun now,” Diego said, grinning wolfishly. “Back then she wasn’t.”
Rafael didn’t share Diego’s amusement. “She was sixteen.”
“She was a beautiful woman.”
“She was a little girl.”
“Uh-oh,” Sandra murmured, visibly wrestling with a laugh. “Should I duck?”
“No blows this time,” Rafael promised. “I whipped his ass last time. I think he learned his lesson.”
“All I did was take her for a drive.”
“You took her for a ride,” Rafael differentiated. “You took my sweet little sister, who had no interest in you, and you got her in your car and tried to have your way with her.”
“And she said no.”
“She wanted to be a nun. Why would any sane man try to make a pass at a nun?”
“She wasn’t a nun yet,” Diego defended himself. Although he didn’t lose his smile, his face grew red, not like the delicate flush that had skimmed Sandra’s face but a real red, part anger and part humiliation. Almost as soon as the blush appeared it subsided, and he let out a laugh. “You see,” he told Sandra, “Rafael’s sister Rosa was the most beautiful girl in the world. Still is, if you ask me. It’s not like I was the only boy in the neighborhood who had a crush on her.”
“You were the only one who tried to put the moves on her.”
“And you beat the shit out of me for it.”
“You deserved every punch, my friend.”
“He broke my nose,” Diego lamented.
“It healed very nicely,” Sandra reassured him.
“Maybe my nose healed,” said Diego, “but not my heart. It’s still broken. I still carry a torch for that magnificent woman.” He pressed his hand to his heart and gave a melodramatic sigh.
Rafael rolled his eyes. “What a performance. I ought to cast you in my next movie.”
“Only if I get to pick my costar.”
“Who would you pick?”
Diego’s gaze wandered over Sandra for such a long time Rafael felt the urge to break the bastard’s nose again. “Why, Sister Rosa, of course,” Diego said, his eyes still on Sandra.
“Diego, you’re a pig,” she scolded. “Rafael, you’re an overprotective big brother. Both of you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“If that’s what you think, put it in your article,” Rafael challenged her.
Her mouth was half the distance to a smile when her gaze locked onto his. Even though he was staring into her eyes, he was aware of her lips, full and dewy and slightly curved. He was aware of the angles of her cheekbones, the sharp edge of her chin, her hands once again restless in her lap, as if she were looking for something to hold onto.
It dawned on him that only a fool would challenge Sandra Garcia. She wasn’t the sort who would back away from a dare.
He’d wanted to lead her to safety—his safety. He’d wanted to present himself as the good neighbor, the upstanding citizen, the successful producer. He wouldn’t have minded if her article in the L.A. Post helped to get a positive buzz going about White Angel.
Would she write a nice tame profile of the head of Aztec Sun?
Or would she think only of the way he’d taken her in the alley and kissed her into submission? Would she think of the power he had over her—and the power she had over him?
“I’m afraid I have to be going,” she said, rising to her feet.
Rafael and Diego stood as well. Diego leaped across the booth to the door and sent Rafael an obsequious look. “I’ll see her to her car.”
“Fine.” Fine that Sandra wouldn’t once again be roaming about the studio unattended. Fine that Rafael wouldn’t have to be alone with her, alone with the temptation.
Joining Diego at the door, Sandra continued to gaze at Rafael. “I might have to come back again.”
“You’ll do what you have to do,” he said.
Her gaze merged with his for an instant, and he experienced a rush of hunger for her much like the insatiable hunger he’d felt in the alley outside Cesar’s. Much, he imagined, like the insatiable hunger he would be suffering from all night long.
He watched her leave with Diego, then let out a long, weary breath. She would do what she had to do, and he would do what he had to do—which was to stop wanting her, to stop allowing his soul to be stirred by the glowing darkness of her eyes, the proud strength in her body, the tantalizing curve of her lips.
And make sure her reporting didn’t stray from the positive story of Aztec Sun, of course. That was the most important thing: not his attraction to the woman, not his memory of the way she had filled his arms, the way her mouth had molded to his and her body had pressed against his and her sighs had stroked his nerve endings. All that mattered was Aztec Sun.
Chapter Six
SANDRA SHUT THE DOOR OF HER APARTMENT, clicked the dead-bolt into place, and shuddered.
She wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to drive herself home without getting into an accident. She had no memory of the traffic, no consciousness of having accelerated or braked or steered the car. She didn’t recall having turned on the air conditioner, yet she felt chilled.
Until she thought about Rafael. Then she felt hot. Overheated. Feverish and restless and painfully aware of how alone she was, how alone she’d been since Rafael had commented—practically accused, really—that she would do what she had to do. She’d made her departure soon after, because at that very moment the one thing she’d had to do was get away from him.
If anyone had ever numbered the rules by which ethical journalists were supposed to operate, certainly rule number one would have been: Never sacrifice your objectivity. A good journalist had to view her story with utter dispassion. She had to avoid involvement.
But one kiss from Rafael Perez...one angry, lovely kiss...
Of course she wasn’t involved with him, except to the extent any reporter was involved with her subject. She wasn’t involved with the tall, leanly muscled man with the stark brown eyes and the demanding mouth, the broad, hard shoulders and the arms that could imprison her, that had imprisone
d her. Rafael Perez was merely someone she had to write an article about.
Merely? Nothing about him was mere.
She wanted to be able to think only about his easy camaraderie with Diego Salazar. She wanted to focus on their banter, their shared history, their amiable bickering about Rafael’s sister Rosa and their willingness to include Sandra in their laughter.
She could focus on those safe, pleasant aspects of Rafael, the unexpectedly sweet playfulness he’d revealed in the tech booth—until she remembered his kiss.
In an alley, for God’s sake. He’d dragged her into a dark, hot, spooky alley and devoured her like a snake devouring a mouse.
Cursing under her breath, she shoved away from the door and marched into the kitchen. Usually the uncluttered white of the room, from the gleaming appliances to the spotless counters to the cool hexagonal white tiles on the floor, brightened her spirits. But tonight the room glared, hurting her eyes. Tonight everything was out of focus, out of kilter.
She flung her tote onto a counter, swung open the refrigerator door and stared at the contents. She wasn’t really hungry, and a beer would muddy her brain when she was desperate to think clearly. The truth was, she didn’t need a drink. What she needed was to pull herself together.
It was a story. An assignment. Chicano role model, benefactor to the community, successful movie maker who’d happened to hire a giddy blond starlet with a suspiciously runny red nose. Tall, dark and handsome executive bearing an aura of mystery—and a thousand times more sex appeal than any one man ought to have.
Never before had Sandra been swayed by the personality of a subject. Practitioners of the so-called “new journalism” liked to inject themselves into their stories, infusing their reporting with their own opinions and prejudices. Sandra had always considered that sort of journalism closer to fiction than fact. If she had a story to report on, she kept her eyes on the story, not on her relationship with it.
Shit. She had no relationship with this story. Rafael’s kiss notwithstanding, she wasn’t a part of it.
She poured herself a glass of milk and drank it, struck by the irony of what a wholesome beverage it was. Her thoughts of Rafael made her feel the opposite of wholesome. Not because kissing was a particularly wicked activity, but because a reporter kissing her subject was pretty damned stupid. If Flannagan ever so much as suspected that she’d lost her objectivity, he’d boot her ass back to Lifestyles faster than the speed of light.
She had to talk to someone who would understand, someone who would help her to unravel her tangled emotions and regain her perspective.
She reached for her phone and punched in a number. After a few rings, she heard a click as the phone was answered, and then a familiar voice: “Hello?”
“Laurel? It’s Sandra,” she said, sagging against the counter, overwhelmed with relief that her old friend was home. She and Laurel had been soulmates at the Berkeley School, two scholarship students floating like ragged flotsam in a sea of wealth and privilege. Two aspiring journalists co-editing the school newspaper, often writing most of the articles themselves. That Laurel still lived in Denver was unfortunate, but phoning her was almost as good as being with her.
“Hey, Sandra. What’s up?”
Help me, Laurel. I’m in over my head. “Have you got a minute?” she asked, not bothering to waste time with preliminaries.
Apparently, Laurel heard the urgency in Sandra’s tone. “For you, I have all the time in the world.”
“I won’t need that long,” Sandra said, then laughed faintly. “This is a minor crisis, not a major one.”
“I’m all ears.”
Sandra felt her tension ebb, the tight muscles in her neck beginning to thaw, her pulse beginning to slow. Laurel still worked in the media. She knew the ethics of their profession, and she knew how to stare down a challenge.
“I’m having a problem at work,” Sandra told her.
“Yawn,” Laurel teased.
“No, this is serious. I’m supposed to be writing a profile on this guy named Rafael Perez—”
“Is Flannagan still sticking you with all the Chicano stories?”
“Yeah.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.” Sandra sighed. “But this story... I don’t know, there could be something in it. Perez runs an independent film company. They’re producing their first big-budget movie with an Anglo star—”
“Anyone I’ve ever heard of?”
“Melanie Greer. She stars on that prime-time soap, A Touch of Madness.”
“Oh, wow, Sandra—a TV star! You’re moving up in the world.”
“Well, the problem isn’t Melanie Greer. It’s Perez,” Sandra said, then paused. It was easy enough to call him a problem. Describing the specifics of the problem—coming right out and saying the man turned her on in a way she was scarcely able to fathom—was a lot harder. Just thinking about the specifics made her pulse race again, and her breath flee her lungs.
“So,” Laurel prodded her when her silence extended beyond a minute. “What about Perez?”
Sandra swallowed. “I’ve always been level-headed, haven’t I?”
Laurel chuckled. “What? Is he a stud?”
Yes. “No. He’s, well...”
“Come on, Sandra. This is Laurel you’re talking to. Nothing you can say will surprise me.”
“He kissed me.” Hearing herself speak the words shocked her. Not because being kissed by Rafael was such a shocking thing but because the words seemed too modest to define what she and Rafael had done in the alley behind Cesar’s. Yes, he’d kissed her—but he’d done more, much more—emotionally, if not physically.
“I’m with you, Sandra,” Laurel goaded her after another long stretch of silence, “but you’ve got to help me out a little. What kind of kiss are we talking about? A Hollywood air-kiss?”
“No.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how erotic was it?”
“Twenty.”
Laurel whistled. “So, he’s a stud.”
“I’m investigating him, Laurel. I’m supposed to remain detached. I’m not supposed to respond to him.”
“Sandra.” Laurel sounded abruptly solemn, and sympathetic. “Pardon my French, but how long has it been since you’ve gotten laid?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Sandra argued.
“I know you, Sandra. I know what a goody-two-shoes you are. You’ve had a long dry spell, so naturally a real kiss would knock you on your ass. These things happen.”
“This isn’t about real kisses, Laurel. He kissed me as a ploy, to distract me. I’ve got to interview the guy, but he’s been avoiding me. He’s hiding things. Every time I pull out my recorder he clams up. When I ask him the most straightforward questions, he gets evasive. The kiss was only to unscrew my head.”
“He seems to have succeeded.”
“Don’t I know it,” Sandra groaned, hating her vulnerability to him. Where was her muckraking fervor now? Where was her ambition? The man had devastated her with hardly any effort.
“So, you want me to screw your head back on? Okay, Garcia, listen up.” Laurel’s tone turned brisk and instructional. “If you sense he’s hiding things, he is. You’ve got great instincts, girl. Trust them. Your instincts tell you the guy’s doing a number on you. Don’t let him get away with it. Do a number back.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is,” Laurel assured her. “You’re a reporter. You’ve got a story. Go after it. No guy is worth blowing a story over.”
Sandra let out a long, weary breath. Everything Laurel said was true: Rafael wasn’t worth risking her professional integrity over. The more exciting his kiss, the more he was likely to be hiding.
He was doing a number on her, all right. The number she’d do on him would appear in the pages of the L.A. Post—as long as she was able to resist him.
She asked how Laurel was doing, how her editor at the magazine she wrote for was treating her, how the autumn foliage
looked in Colorado where, unlike Los Angeles, the year quartered itself into genuine seasons. Then she bade her friend good-bye, disconnected the call and sighed.
On one level, talking to Laurel had helped. She no longer felt completely insane. It was true that she hadn’t had a romance in a long time. Her wild reaction to Rafael’s kiss reflected that—and it reflected the man’s uncanny skill at kissing.
Everything about their embrace in the alley had been deliberate, manipulative, Machiavellian. Rafael had played her like Santana played a guitar. The kiss was nothing more than a tactic to him. A man couldn’t create a film studio out of thin air and support fifteen churches without having a clear vision of what he wanted and a willingness to do whatever it took—including seducing a reporter—to attain his ends.
She abandoned the kitchen for the living room. The broad window that filled one wall overlooked the lights of downtown, winking white dots spattered across a dusk-lit canvas like stars that had tumbled to earth. Fifteen miles east of her, Rafael was seated in the tech booth overlooking the sound stage, reminiscing about his youth with Diego or watching Melanie Greer stagger around the set, sniffling and wiping the make-up from her raw nostrils. Or he was heading for home, his long day finally done.
He could be in his T-bird right now, roaring down the freeway, the windows open and his hair whipping his cheeks. He could be driving in a trance, as unaware of the road as she had been.
Maybe he’d been manipulating her in the alley. But when she closed her eyes, she remembered more than just the desire that had overpowered her the way his kiss had. She remembered the fire in his eyes, the flicker of uncertainty, the catch in his breath. The motion of his hips, the tension in his hands, the swell of his erection straining against the black denim of his jeans as he held her to himself.
For all his effort to rattle her, he’d managed to rattle himself, too. He’d been there with her, momentarily transported from the sounds and scents of the alley to a place where heat came not from the sun baking the air and echoing off the pavement but from inside the human heart, a heat men and women sought within each other, and touched, and shared.
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