A Gentleman's Kiss Romance Collection

by Ginny Aiken

  Rissa swallowed hard. “The one and only. I had no idea she—they’d be here.”

  “Would you’ve backed out if you’d known?”

  She worried her bottom lip. Would she have run out on her friends? “I’d never do that, no matter how difficult my parents are.”

  Ty reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Even if you had, you’re not alone, you know.”

  Rissa felt her friend’s love as a special gift, the Father’s warm blessing. “Thanks. I know you guys are here for me, and I know the Lord will see me through tonight.”

  “Amen,” he said.

  As she rosined her bow, she heard a hiss to her left.

  “Pssst!” her mother called again. “Marisita, over here.”

  When she turned and made herself smile, her mother pressed one of the wheelchair controls and propelled herself near. Rissa saw Eva’s eyes narrow and Tristan’s jaw jut forth. Ty took a protective step forward.

  Love bubbled up for her three friends. “It’s okay, guys,” she murmured. Then, turning to Adela, she said, “Hola, Mamá. I had no idea you’d be here tonight.”

  “Of course we’re here. We know Rodrigo and Estersita Altamonte since university in Havana. We couldn’t miss Sarita’s wedding.”

  Adela seemed calmer than she had earlier in the week. Perhaps her new prescription was helping. Rissa hoped so. She knew the toll the unrelenting pain had taken on her mother—and the family—over the years.

  She smiled tentatively. “I hope you enjoy the pieces we’ve chosen. We’re doing some of the mellow old danzones you like so much.”

  “Ah, sí. The music your father and I loved so much when we were novios, before we married.” A dreamy expression softened Adela’s features. Rissa breathed a prayer of thanksgiving and felt her friends’ tension ease.

  Then Papá approached. “Come, Adela, we must take our place at the table. It takes some doing to arrange your wheelchair so that no one jostles you.”

  Mamá’s features hardened. “Sí, Francisco. Vamos ya. Marissa, I wish you’d open your eyes. Why you must to play that great masculine thing, I no understand. The harp, niña, the harp you should play. You’re my daughter and the great Brigitte Cardoza’s granddaughter.”

  Rissa winced. She hadn’t escaped this encounter unscathed. She lowered her head to keep her feelings to herself and watched her father propel the wheelchair to the opposite side of the room. As she blinked to keep the tears from melting her mascara, she saw Eva put her treasured violin on the floor.

  “I’m so sorry,” her friend whispered, wrapping her arm around Rissa’s shoulders. “I’m sorry for her suffering and for the misery she spreads as a result. The Lord knows your heart, Ris. He knows you want to praise Him with your music, and you do. A quartet—we—couldn’t perform without a bass. Besides, you can always play your marimba instead. Not that I want you to abandon us for some percussion ensemble or anything, but you do have that, too.”

  A cross between a sob and a giggle escaped Rissa’s lips. “Don’t even mention the marimba in the same room where Mamá might overhear. You should hear what she says about ‘cacophonous percussion things.’”

  Eva came around and gripped Rissa’s forearms. “Just answer one question: Are you doing God’s will?”

  The two friends had hashed out this point frequently since college-roommate days. Rissa shrugged. “I believe with all my heart that I am, but it’s just … well, she’s my mother.”

  “And He’s your Father in heaven. With God beside you, no one can stand against you, remember?”

  She nodded and donned a weak little smile. “I’m okay.” At Eva’s roll of the eyes and Tristan’s snort, she added, “No, really, I am. Let’s do what the Altamontes hired us to do. Let’s play.”

  As Eva retrieved her violin, Rissa squared her shoulders and settled Bertha in the curve of her shoulder. She drew her bow, poised to glide it over the thick strings that enriched the sound of the other instruments, and looked at the glad-handers in the receiving line.

  She gasped. “Great, just what I needed.”

  “What’s that?” Ty asked.

  “Look who just arrived.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Mm-hmm. The slimy shark-cum-kennel-owner himself.”

  And dressed to the nines. This was the Jason Easton she pictured as she drove to SilkWood the other day. Polished, impeccably groomed, his evening whites in gleaming contrast to his tanned face, his blue eyes shining with intelligence and shrewdness. This was the man who worked for the wealthiest and most unsavory present here tonight.

  The man to whom she’d contracted to entrust Soraya for three weeks—in a moment of utter discombobulation, of course. The man who, just by his mere presence, made her heart beat a little faster, her cheeks burn a little warmer, and her senses perk a little livelier.

  The man she expected would prove himself unequal to caring for a kennel full of dogs, but thanks to his legal knowledge, would get away unscathed by his incompetence.

  Chapter 3

  Upon entering the ballroom for the Altamonte– Echeverría wedding reception, Jase spied the gleam of rose gold in an unforgettable waterfall of hair. He’d never expected to see Rissa Ortíz at this Miami society wedding, but after one glimpse of those almost waist-long waves, no one could mistake her for anyone else.

  Then he noticed the massive instrument in her embrace. Hmm … so she wasn’t a model or an actress after all. He’d heard of the Classical Strings Quartet, and he’d attended events where they’d performed, but he’d never taken note of the musicians. Now he wished he had. He might have met her when he could have made a better impression on the ethereally beautiful woman.

  Rissa displayed a mixture of dramatic contrasts. Her exquisite delicacy belied her strength—it took an abundance to handle a full-size upright bass. And while she looked as though she belonged in an illustration of woodland beings with her willowy frame and old-master coloring, she grounded herself in precision, as her exacting focus on time and schedules testified.

  She’d caught him off guard at the kennels, and after she left, his senses reeled hours later with her jasmine scent and feminine loveliness. Now, witnessing yet another of her facets, he found himself flat-out intrigued.

  And attracted.

  To his dismay, the kind of woman who’d make him a logical partner never appealed to him, yet the much-prejudiced Rissa Ortíz drew at him more than any of the earlier inappropriate candidates.

  Lord, help. Show me a suitable woman so that I can set aside this attraction to one who hates me because of my former job.

  Jase donned a smile and congratulated the Altamontes and the Echeverrías, both families longtime clients of his father and friends of his parents. Then he spotted his law-school mentor, the frail and gray Dr. Pierpont, holding court near a floor-to-ceiling window, and joined the debate on the more esoteric points of habeas corpus. He snagged scrumptious seafood and Cuban delicacies the wait service offered on silver trays. He drank geranium-scented iced tea seemingly by the bucketful. He smiled, nodded, shook hands, and chatted.

  But he couldn’t evict the musician from his thoughts.

  Conceding the futility of his efforts, Jase leaned on a fluted column and watched Rissa and her fellow performers. He noted the camaraderie between the foursome, their obvious love and respect.

  He envied them. He had nothing similar in his life.

  Then Rissa’s posture changed. The fluidity of her movements and the poise she displayed, even while kneeling at Mahadi’s birthing, vanished. With jerky spurts of motion, she tuned her instrument, head lowered close to the bass’s bridge. When she looked back up at the gathered guests, a chill grimace replaced her smile.

  He followed her gaze. “So that’s who you are, lovely Rissa.”

  The still-famous former harpist, Adela Ortíz, whirred her motorized wheelchair to Rissa’s side. Mother and daughter shared a resemblance, but Rissa looked most like her legendary grandmother, Brigitte Cardoza, th
e height by which all harpists were measured since the 1940s. Even Adela never reached Brigitte’s level of mastery, and many said that failure still fueled her burning bitterness. Her career, cut short by a fall down the marble steps of a European opera house, never fulfilled its promise.

  Whatever mother and daughter, now joined by Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Francisco Ortíz, were discussing couldn’t be pleasant—at least not for Rissa. She grew pale, drew in sharp breaths, winced, and then finally, when the professor wheeled his wife away, lowered her head again, letting the spectacular cascade of curls hide her face.

  Jase had the distinct impression she wept.

  Something impelled him toward her, the urgency significant. Despite the three concerned musicians converging upon her, he kept on. As he approached, she smiled weakly at her friends, squared her shoulders, leaned her head back, and shook the wealth of hair away from the bass. She then drew her bow, poised to perform.

  Admiration filled him.

  The music began. Rissa’s rigidity disappeared, and she shuttered her eyes, the softest, most reverent expression illuminating her features. As the lush notes of Corelli’s “Sarabande” underscored the murmur of the gathering, she gave in to her art.

  The attraction deepened. His need to know her better grew, and Jase knew that, regardless of how she felt about him at the moment, he was going to try to change her opinion.

  He wanted her to look at him with the emotion and trust she showed her friends. And, if God so willed it, he would become a part of the circle Rissa showered with love.

  After cajoling the bewildered Estér Altamonte into squeezing his place card between Rissa’s and that of some other guest relegated to the musicians’ table, Jase soaked in the quartet’s music.

  When the maître d’ announced dinner, he took his new seat and watched the quartet store the instruments. All displayed a profound respect for the magnificent tools of their trade, even Rissa, despite her struggle with the unwieldy bass. As Jase pushed his chair back to go help her, the African-American cellist assumed the onerous task. The familiarity between the two sent a foreign pang through Jase, and, to his amazement, he recognized … jealousy?

  Moments later, his tablemates approached.

  “I’m telling you, Ris, you overfeed the Beast,” her good-looking and overly helpful friend said. “My poor back suffers more each day.”

  Rissa tossed her glorious hair over her left shoulder. “And I keep telling you, Ty, you’re just a big baby.”

  The other two musicians pulled out their chairs and sat, chuckling. Ty struck a pose, one hand on Rissa’s chair back and the back of the other at his forehead. “You wound me, oh, carrottop!”

  Rissa narrowed her gaze. “Them’s fighting words, brother mine.”

  “Nah, nah, nah,” Ty chided and slipped into his chair. “We’re too mature for sibling rivalry.”

  Then Rissa noticed Jase. “You’re sitting here?”

  Her dismay rubbed him the wrong way, but he controlled his response. “That’s what the card says,” he answered. “I must congratulate you—all of you. You’ve extraordinary talent.”

  The praise pleased Rissa’s partners, but it brought a skeptical gleam to her eyes. Thank-yous rang out, hers the most muted. Turning to the other woman in the group, she made it plain she would not be furthering their acquaintance. Jase bided his time.

  Moments later, a starched and ironed waiter delivered a lobster first course. As Jase lowered his head to pray, he noticed subtle movement among the others and glanced sideways. He caught his breath. Rissa and her partners, holding hands, were about to ask a blessing over their food.

  He said, “May I join you in prayer?”

  Shocked green eyes met his. While Rissa seemed unable to speak, the viola player raised a brow. “You’re a Christian?”

  “Nearly twelve years now.”

  “Then welcome, brother. I’m Tristan Reuben. And you’re …?”

  “He’s Jason Easton, Tris,” Rissa said, rousing herself from her stupor. “The new owner of SilkWood Kennels.”

  “Aren’t you a lawyer?” Ty asked.

  “Passed the bar many years ago.”

  The other woman’s eyes darted from Rissa to Jase and back again. “I’m Eva Alono,” she said, “and Tyrone Carver’s the last of our group. Let’s pray, shall we?”

  The lobster chunks in lime butter were delicious, as the hotel’s reputation led one to expect, and the conversation remained polite. Then the last guest at the table arrived.

  Resplendent in gray swallowtails, pink shirt with white collar, sunset-orange tie, top hat in hand, and spats over shiny black shoes, the diminutive elderly dandy took the seat to Jase’s left, cresting a wave of liniment and aftershave over the lobster and lime.

  He plopped his chapeau in the center of the table in front of his plate. To Eva, he said, “Evenin’, chickadoodledee. My name’s Horatio Davenport Jones, but all my friends moniker me Wem—don’t ask me why, ‘cause after eighty-three years, I still haven’t clairivisioned the whyfore to that. Still, I’d be mighty honorized if you’d call me Wem.” He glanced at the others. “All of you, too.”

  Jase suppressed a chuckle and held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Wem. I’m Jason Easton.”

  Bushy white brows beetled together. “The advocate, eh?”

  Jase nodded.

  “Well, rattle my rafters, sonny-boyo! I’ve got me a question for a legal beagle like yourself.” Plunking both elbows on the table in a sidesaddle sort of way, Wem fixed Jase with his beaming brown eyes. “D’ja think I got me a case against the ambulance chaser that refused to sue city hall for me when I stubbed my toe and tripped on one of them too-tall nuisance curbs over on Hialeah Boulevard? At night, and under one of those dim-bulbed streetlights?”

  To Jase’s relief, the well-pressed waiter arrived right then and slid before him a fragrant, golden-skinned Rock Cornish hen accompanied by asparagus soufflé and three-peppered baby corn. Wem received his lobster as well as his hen and, from his glee, would not soon return to his imagined matter of jurisprudence.

  Jase suspected that, despite the sartorial excess and advanced age, a laser dwelt in Wem’s mind. But Jase no longer practiced law.

  For the rest of the meal, Wem entertained his neighbors with tales of a long career as a jockey and greyhound breeder. Nowadays he ran a race-dog retirement home and dabbled in the market—he took a bath in the dot-com crash. Racing ran in his blood, he said, and Jase saw the man’s need to replenish his caloric output in the speed with which he inhaled vast quantities of food.

  “Now,” Wem said, “after all those years, I’ve got PETA nuts marching at my front gate, accusing me of treating my dogs like dogs. I take good care of my old-folk-dogs. Where’d they get the impresception that canines are people, too? I’ve never hurt a soul—not even a dog’s—yet.”

  The lights went out with those words. A line of waiters marched flaming Baked Alaskas through the ballroom, eliciting the guests’ appreciative oohs and aahs.

  Wem raised an interesting issue, but a wedding reception wasn’t the place to debate the topic. Jase decided to hunt down the free-spirited philosopher some other time and continue the discussion.

  As he forked up a bite of ice cream and cake dessert, Rissa asked, “Why can’t one hate animal cruelty and support good breeding practices?”

  Jase, noting that Wem, busy with his Alaska, seemed impervious to Rissa’s question, answered. “I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, but there are those who believe breeding interferes with the flow of nature and produces too many unwanted animals.”

  “Hmm …,” she said, “sounds like what the delivery guy told Paul.”

  “Paul? The delivery guy?”

  Rissa nodded. “The day I visited SilkWood, Paul was waiting for your breeding specimen. It arrived via a parcel service, and the driver made a negative comment when he realized what he’d delivered.”

  The pianist and harpist who took the quartet’s plac
e during the meal packed up their instruments as a small orchestra set up. Throughout the ballroom, chairs scraped against the polished terrazzo, indicating the end of the banquet.

  Jase stood and held a hand to Rissa. “May I?”

  To his surprise, she accepted. The warmth of those talented fingers imprinted his palm with evidence to her vibrancy.

  “Thank you,” she said with a smile.

  They turned from the table and, through the room’s enormous windows, Jase caught sight of the blazing sunset. Shards of light shone the same shade as her hair.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, tilting his head toward the west. “I’d like to enjoy it from the balcony. Care to join me?”

  Rissa hesitated. Jase tugged on her hand. After a shrug and a glance at her scattering friends, she nodded. “Miami’s sunsets are gorgeous.”

  No more than you are. The words nearly slipped from Jase’s mouth, but he managed to exert his considerable control over his tongue. This wasn’t the right moment.

  When he opened the glass door, humid evening warmth met them.

  She shivered. “I didn’t realize how chilly they keep the ballroom until right now.”

  “It is cool inside,” he commented, then grinned. “Well, as long as Horatio ‘Wem’ Davenport Jones isn’t in the vicinity, the room feels cool. He certainly spices things up.”

  An indulgent smile lit her face. “He’s an original, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t think God’s in the copy business.”

  She turned, stared at the setting sun. “You surprised me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought you knew the Lord.”

  “Why?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear her answer.

  With a deep breath and that squaring of the shoulders he recognized as a bracing, courage-giving gesture, she leaned sideways on the stucco banister and met his gaze square on.

  “Your legal triumphs don’t strike me as particularly Christian.”

  He hadn’t wanted to hear her answer. “You mean my defense of clients to the best of my ability, as required by law?”

  Green eyes blazed. “How can you defend criminals? You know they’re guilty, and you set them free to rob and steal again.”