by Annie O'Neil
“They’re still rooting for him after what he did?”
“They...” Saoirse pushed the bowl of smashed avocado away and began chopping tomatoes into itsy-bitsy cubes. “They want their little girl back.”
“But I thought you and Tom were going to live in America.”
“Yeah, sure, but—I don’t know. I suppose they played along but were convinced once we had children we’d come back. And now they’re not so sure anymore.” She gave Amanda a quick glance before returning to work. “I’m not the Saoirse I was nine months ago, am I? I mean, if you’d told me then I was going to have short, sun-bleached hair, would be driving an ambulance and going to racing school, not to mention marrying a superhot doctor I’ll have to pretend I haven’t pictured naked just to stay in Miami, I would have told you that you were stark raving—”
“You’ve pictured me naked?”
Santi appeared in the open French doors that led to her tiny backyard, holding a barbecue in his hands. It made his biceps stand out that perfect amount of sexy.
It was far too easy to picture Santi naked. Or wrapped only in a towel, little droplets of shower water still clinging to his—
She clenched the edge of the counter to disguise her knee-wobble.
“Yeah, right, hombre! In your dreams.”
Even blind people would have the hots for Santi. His scent was every bit as scrumptious as his aesthetics.
“Where do you want this thing?” Santi’s satisfied grin proved he knew she was telling porky-pies.
“Wherever there’s space. It’s not as if I’ve got acres of land to choose from.”
“Better than the two-by-four balcony off my sad excuse of an apartment.”
“The place you’re giving up, right?” Amanda chimed in, reminding them both they had agreed to live in Saoirse’s not-very-large bungalow by the sea.
“Yes, ma’am.” Santi returned to the French doors, gave Amanda a salute then leaned against the door frame, the sun outlining him as if he was heaven sent. His eyes scanned Saoirse’s sparsely decorated bungalow. She hadn’t really bothered nesting in the few months she’d lived here. Too much of a risk given the circumstances. She chose to call the minimalist look beach chic.
“Nice zebra rug.” The look he threw her was a bit more Tarzan than she could bear. It was far too easy to imagine whipping up a dress out of the faux hide and swinging through the jungle to some treetop love nest.
“It’s fake.” Saoirse looked away. Just like their marriage would be.
“As discussed,” Santi continued, oblivious to her all-too-real ogling, “I’m happy to move in tonight if you like.”
“Sounds good.” Amanda answered for her, then noticed her friend’s fastidious muteness. “Right, Murph?”
“Yes, fine. Sure. Whatever’s convenient.” Chop, chop, chop.
“Wow!” Santi said drily, slipping one of her breakfast bar stools between his legs without so much as a toe-rise. “Don’t get excited or anything, mi amor.”
Saoirse tore her eyes away from him and reduced the tomato pieces to pulp.
Tall, sexy, straddled motorcycles and bar stools like a seasoned cowboy... The man was ticking so many boxes it was unreal! Not for the first time she wished she could meet his parents. See who had crafted this living statue of perfection. But, she reminded herself as she accidentally sliced into her finger with a yelp, if she could meet his parents Santi most likely wouldn’t be all messed up and willing to marry her. Only a man with issues up the wazoo would be playing along with this nutty plan.
“Hey.” Santi reached across and pulled her finger out of her mouth. “Let me have a look at that.”
“Aw...” Amanda sighed. “Look at the two of you, all lovey-dovey.”
“Hardly.” Saoirse tugged her hand out of Santi’s. “It’s a microscopic cut. I think I’ll survive.”
“You tink so, do ya?”
“Don’t mock my accent, I won’t mock yours.”
“I am not the one with the accent, missy. Just remember who’s got the US passport in this scenario.”
Santi received a glowering look in return.
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Make sure you wash that finger thoroughly,” Santi cautioned, completely unrepentant. “And put a bandage on it. Plaster. Whatever you call them.”
“For heaven’s sake, you’d think I was lyin’ on the floor, bleedin’ to death, the way you’re carrying on.”
“What? I’m not allowed to care if my beloved fiancée has been injured?”
“Not with a Cheshire-cat grin the size of the Atlantic Ocean on your face, no!”
“I think I’ll just run out to the store and grab some more lemonade before James arrives,” Amanda said none too subtly, not that Saoirse or Santi showed any signs of breaking away from their standoff to bid her a fond farewell.
When the door clicked shut, Santi relaxed his pose, patting the stool beside him. “C’mere. I want to talk to you.”
“Can’t. I’m busy.” Saoirse made a quick show of chopping things.
“Murph!” Santi growled. “Take a pew! Now.”
Saoirse let the knife clatter to the counter, grabbed a paper towel to wrap around her bleeding finger and stomped over to the breakfast bar stool. It was suddenly annoying that she had to clamber onto the thing, unlike Santi’s smooth move. Her height was not to her advantage.
“Right, then. What’s got the hornets’ nest all stirred up today? I thought we’d agreed to do this thing.”
Saoirse bridled. Was the man bereft of human emotions? Who just agreed willy-nilly to marry a virtual stranger? No strings. No nooky. No running a finger along the outline of the mouth she could hardly stop staring at.
“We did agree,” she finally conceded. “And I’m grateful to you and everything, but...” What if I fall in love with you? I can’t do unrequited love. I can’t do love.
“Are you worried about me staying here with you? Cramping your style?”
“No,” she answered, too quickly.
“From what I understand, it’s important we make a show of having built a life together before we tie the knot, and what did you say we have—about two or three months?”
She nodded, her insides all but shriveling up with mortification.
“So...couples fall in love at first sight all the time. Right?”
Saoirse squirmed. She wasn’t in love with Santi—she hardly knew the guy—but there was a connection. A chemistry that was getting harder to squelch. And chasing up a disaster of a nonwedding with an unrequited marriage of con-visa-enience? No, thank you! She’d rather get deported.
Santi took her hand in his and gave it a little rub with his thumb before inspecting her finger as he spoke. It felt nice. Too nice. She feigned indifference as she listened.
“It’s a question of practicalities, right?”
“Of course,” she agreed in her fake happy voice.
Indifference wasn’t working.
She pulled her finger out of his hand and wrapped it in a fresh paper towel. Whenever he touched her she felt all zingy, and zingy was not practical.
“Point A—” Santi tried a new tack, his voice the height of military efficiency. “I live in a place that’s easy enough to give up. You have a lease for the next three months, if I’m not mistaken. It makes sense for me to come here and I promise I won’t take up much shelf space in the bathroom, all right?”
Saoirse nodded, rather unsuccessfully fighting the arrival of a sting of tears. She closed her eyes and tipped her chin up. Why was this so hard?
She felt Santi’s crooked index finger swipe at another tear, hardly a challenge now that they were freely tumbling down her cheeks.
“Amor, don’t.” He gently pulled her off her stool and tugged her into hi
s arms. “Don’t cry.”
In his arms, she felt safer than she could have imagined. Free to cry, free to feel the push and shove of conflicting emotions. If this—this connection she felt—was real, she could imagine wanting to marry him in a heartbeat. And that was a problem.
Saoirse trembled when she felt his hands cup her face. Don’t mess this up now... This is your chance to make at least one of your dreams come true.
She forced herself to open her eyes to meet his. The gold flecks amid the chicory darkness of his irises made him appear more leonine than ever before. A proud Latino man, earthily aware of his physical prowess. There was heat in his gaze. A muscle twitched in his jaw. The cut of his cheekbones all but drew pointy arrows to his full, sensual mouth. She flushed when she realized she’d been licking her lips.
She searched for answers to the parade of questions goose-stepping through her mind. Nothing useful presented itself. Just a single sentence repeating itself over and over... I want to kiss you.
“Is it your ex?” Santi asked. Her eyes were still firmly planted on his lips. “Do you want to patch things up with him? Is that it?”
She squinted up at him as if it would change the words that had just come out of his mouth. Talk about a mood killer! Or maybe there had been no mood at all. Just a Saoirse-Santi romance mirage.
Then again...she chanced a glance at his eyes. No. It wasn’t his eyes. The man was a trained Marine. It was his tone that had caught her attention. It sounded almost... Wait a minute. Was he jealous that she might want the lying, faithless no-goodnik back in her life? Or relieved? Either way she knew the answer.
“No,” she answered solidly, not quite ready to step away from the warmth of Santi’s embrace. One of his hands was resting loosely on her waist, the other on her shoulder, occasionally moving up to her cheek to wipe away some tears. Just the size of his hands, the softness of his touch made her feel so feminine. She’d never admit it, but it felt good. Powerful, almost. The closest she’d ever get to feeling like an Amazon queen.
Leaning in to kiss him would be so easy.
Pressing her cheek into his hand to absorb some of the comfort it gave, she became aware her eyes were still unable to resist the magnetic lure of his lips. She bit down on her own lower lip, fighting the desire to go up on tippy-toe, just a little bit, and taste...
“Don’t do that,” Santi said, abruptly pulling back.
“What?”
“That...lip thing you do.”
“What lip thing?”
“There.” He pointed at her mouth. “You’re doing it right now.”
“No, I’m not!” She did a few moves to try and figure out what she’d been doing, highly aware that Santi’s hands were still touching her, almost territorially. Nerves won out over a limitless supply of sultry choices she could have made. “You mean my buck teeth overbite thing?”
“Mija. You do not have buck teeth or an overbite.” Santi’s voice was gravelly, intense. Which made her stare at his lips even more. Sensual, full lips he was dragging a tooth along.
“Well,” she huffed. “You do a lip thing, too!”
“No, I don’t!” Santi looked at her as if she had just gone directly around the bend.
“Yes.” She nodded soberly. “You do. It’s all slow-motion and sexy and, for the record, extremely distracting.”
“Oh, yeah?” Santi’s mood and voice shifted again, slamming straight out of neutral into for-bedroom-only gear. Her tummy went all swoopy, melty, lava lamp on her. Oh, no, no, no... This was the so-bad-it-was-good sort of thing she’d heard about from friends of hers who’d settled down—or just plain old settled in her case.
Her eyes were magnetically drawn to his lips.
Beware! Beware the most perfect lips in the whole of Miami.
Her breath became jagged and uncontrollable. He did the lip thing. Saoirse had no choice.
She went up on tiptoe and kissed him.
From the moment her lips touched his she didn’t have a single lucid thought. Her brain all but exploded in a vain attempt to unravel the quick-fire sensations. Heat, passion, need, longing, sweet and tangy all jumbled together in one beautiful confirmation that his lips were every bit as kissable as she’d thought they might be.
Snippets of what was actually happening were hitting her in blips of delayed replay.
Her fingers tangled in his silky, soft hair. Santi’s wide hands tugged her in tight, right at the small of her back. There was no doubting his body’s response to her now. The heated pleasure she felt when one of his hands slipped under her T-shirt elicited an undiluted moan of pleasure. He matched her move for move as if they had been made for one another. Her body’s reaction to his felt akin to hitting all hundred watts her body was capable of for the very first time.
She wanted more.
No.
She wanted it all. The whole package. The feelings. The pitter-patter of her heart. Knowing it was reciprocated. Being part of a shared love. Not some sham wedding so she wouldn’t have to live in a country where her soul had all but shriveled up and died.
She felt Santi’s kisses deepen and her willpower to shore up some sort of resistance to what was happening plummeted. This felt so real. And a little too close to everything she’d hoped for wrapped up in a too-good-to-be-true package. This sort of thing didn’t happen to her. And it wasn’t. She’d started it, Santi was just responding. She heard herself moan and with its escape her resolve to resist abandoned her completely.
She caved in to her body’s desires. To caress and be caressed. Explore and discover new ways of giving pleasure. Time and space and heat and light all melded into one as she felt her body blossom with sensation after sensation. Each and every one of them pure pleasure.
The sharp jangle of her phone’s text alert shot through her body just as she was weaving one bare leg around Santi’s.
They both froze, eyes wide as if the neighborhood priest had just walked in on the pair of them, clothes asunder, tousled hair, hot, heated pants of desire slowing as they let reality settle around them.
Bzzt!
Saoirse batted her hand around the counter without changing her position and finally found purchase on the phone. She brought it up to her eyes, blocking out Santi’s amused expression.
Lovers’ quarrel over? Safe to come back now? We are ten minutes away, can delay if necessary. xx A
At least it was proof Amanda hadn’t installed a secret camera anywhere.
“Amanda?” Santi asked, tipping his head out from behind the screen of her smartphone.
“Amanda.” Saoirse’s thumb tapped away at the phone, telling her to hurry up, suddenly aware how close she’d come to giving herself, body and soul, to Santi.
“Tell her the barbecue’s off,” Santi murmured, his hands slipping around her waist, trying to close the space that had opened up between them.
“No. Sorry.” She pressed a hand against his chest, forcing herself to wriggle out of his embrace, swiping a hand over her kiss-bruised lips as she did. “I think that’s probably enough of that. We made a rule. Remember?”
Rich, coming from the number one rule breaker.
She pulled her glass of iced tea along the countertop, leaving a watery pool in its wake, and took several long slurps through her pink flamingo straw. It was one of the first purchases she’d made when she’d moved here, kitting her house out with dollar-store specials, and it never failed to make her smile. She hardly noticed it now. She needed the icy tea to tamp down the flames of desire licking away at her nerve endings in wicked little flicks and quivers.
“Want some?” She held the glass out to Santi. He shook his head, eyes clouded with something she couldn’t quite read. Irritation? Or ardor?
“James and Amanda are going to be back in a few minutes, yeah?”
Saoirse nodded. Where was this going?
“And James is going to talk us through the whole process—the legal process—of putting in the forms for you to stay here and what we’ll have to prove and show, et cetera, right?”
Gulp. He wasn’t going to back out, was he? Or maybe he should. Friends only was one thing, but friends with benefits? That had red, hot and dangerous written all over it.
“Yeah.” She nodded, fingers unable to resist touching her kiss-swollen lips again. Could lips pine for someone else’s?
“Amanda and James thought this barbecue was a good way to introduce the formal factor into the proceedings. Make the whole thing a bit more relaxed.”
“Are you relaxed?” Santi’s body tensed as he spoke, evoking a jangle of nerves in her own.
“Not exactly.”
It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love but at the very least he knew he was now officially under her skin.
* * *
Santi gave his shoulders a sharp shake, eyes closed tight as he tried to clear his head of all the behind-closed-doors things he wished he was doing to Saoirse right now. She’d felt good in his arms, pressed against his body, wanting him as much as he now knew he wanted her. There was a pool of sunshine on the wide-planked wooden floor he wouldn’t mind laying her out in. Slowly...luxuriously...stripping off her tomboy gear and making it incredibly clear just how desirable he thought she was.
Válgame Dios!
What was life throwing him now? A buoy or an anvil that would shunt him straight to the bottom of the sea?
He wasn’t doing a very good job of proving he could be steady, reliable. The whole point of this exercise.
He opened his eyes, forcing his features and voice into a neutral zone the rest of him wasn’t quite yet in.
“We should be. Relaxed and happy. This is a big decision. For both of us, eh, dulzera?” He ducked his head in a vain attempt to catch Saoirse’s blue eyes with his. In his gut—hell, in his heart—he really wanted to do this for her, but only if they could both leave unscathed at the end. “I’m afraid the ball’s in your court for this one, Murph. It’s your call. If I’m not the guy for you, there’s no point in me moving in here and going through this whole charade.”