The Disobedient Virgin - The Ramirez Brides 03

by Sandra Marton

  The Disobedient Virgin

  The Ramirez Brides 03

  Sandra Marton

  Summary

  Catarina Mendes is young, innocent and rich. Jake Ramirez is handsome, worldly, rich... and now he's Cat's guardian. He's supposed to protect her from unscrupulous men and find her a good, solid Brazilian husband. Once Jake does that, Cat will inherit the fortune her parents left her... and Jake will finally learn the identity of his two half-brothers. There's only one problem. Cat's a virgin, and Jake wants her. Can he resist taking what the innocent Cat offers before he finds her a suitable husband?

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE day Jake Ramirez’s life turned upside down began like any other.

  He rose at six, had his first cup of strong black coffee while he scanned the New York Times, drank his second after he’d shaved and showered. A few minutes after seven, dressed in a dark gray suit, white shirt and navy tie, he took the private elevator from his Fifth Avenue

  duplex to the marble lobby.

  His black Mercedes waited at the curb. The driver had been with him a long time and knew better than to leap from the car to open and close the door for his boss. Jake had homes on both coasts and was rumored to own half the skyscrapers in Manhattan, but old habits died hard.

  People who worked for Jake Ramirez were not his servants.

  “Morning, Ramirez.”

  “Good morning, Dario.”

  His driver pulled into traffic. As always, Jake spent a couple of minutes engaging him in small talk. Would the Jets win Sunday’s game? Had his eldest daughter won the part she’d tried out for in the school play? Then, also as always, Dario raised the privacy partition, Jake took out his cell phone and started his day.

  First, a call to his office. He had a breakfast meeting at the Stock Exchange but he wanted to touch base with his P.A. Belle was almost as much a workaholic as he was; she might already be at her desk.

  Not today, though. Jake left a message on her answering machine as the car headed downtown. It saved time, and time was a precious commodity when you headed something the size of Ramirez Enterprises.

  Calls to people he was currently doing business with came next. Jake took no notes—he had a prodigious memory—as he reassured one, questioned another, told a third he’d fly out at the end of the week to deal personally with a developing problem.

  The cell phone rang before he could dial again. Jake checked the incoming number as he brought the phone to his ear.

  “Good morning, Belle.”

  “Good morning, Ramirez. I thought I’d better remind you that it’s Vickers’s birthday.”

  Jake closed his eyes. Hell. He’d forgotten all about it, despite the hints Samantha had been dropping—hints about diamond solitaires, though he’d made it clear enough that wasn’t on the agenda.

  “Right. Well, phone the—”

  “Florist. I already did. Two dozen roses. Red.”

  “Fine, fine. And phone—”

  “Tiffany’s. They’ll deliver a sapphire bracelet at noon.”

  “Sapphire?”

  “ Vickers has blue eyes,” Belle said, so crisply that he could almost hear the unspoken reprimand within the simple words. Wouldn’t it be nice if he paid attention to such things? He never did, though. After a while, beautiful women were all the same. “I made you an eight-thirty dinner reservation at Sebastian’s. A booth in the front room, of course.”

  “Of course,” Jake said, smiling. “And you did all that this morning?” He flashed a look at his watch. “I didn’t think anybody was open at this hour.”

  “They’re all open for you,” Belle said dryly. “Just in case you don’t want Sebastian’s, I made back-up reservations at Leonie’s. Tell me which you prefer and I’ll cancel the other.”

  “What’s Sebastian’s?”

  “It’s new. No mention of it yet in the papers. It’s in the meat-packing district. The buzz is that Madonna was spotted there last week.” Belle paused. “ Vickers will like it.”

  Jake grinned. Was there a hint of distaste in his P.A.’s tone? He suspected she didn’t approve of Samantha Vickers. His mother didn’t, either, even though—maybe especially since—she’d only seen Sam on the T.V., sashaying down the runway in the Emmeline’s Lingerie primetime special, wearing little more than a garter belt, a thong, a wisp of lace, a pair of stiletto heels and a look that said she couldn’t be tamed unless you had a very, very large…whip.

  “Your name has been linked with hers in the paper but you’ve never brought her here,” Sarah Reece had told him. “I figured this was my chance to get a look at her.”

  He never brought any of the women he dated to his mother’s condo, Jake had thought, but he’d wisely kept silent.

  “That outfit Vickers was wearing…” Pink had swept into his mother’s cheeks. Jake had done all he could not to roll his eyes. Sometimes, he thought Sarah was a throwback to an earlier time. She was so prim. So proper. He loved her for it, but he really wasn’t in the mood for where he knew the conversation was heading. “Joaquim, it’s time you settled down. All these young women you date…I know the world has changed, but—”

  “But, you’d like me to find a nice, old-fashioned girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “Marry her.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Have a houseful of kids, a dog, trade the Porsche and the Mercedes for a station wagon and a van—”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” his mother said, and Jake had put his arms around her, assured her that he wasn’t, that he’d do all those things some day.

  But not yet.

  Not yet, when the city, when the world, was brimming with Samanthas. More to the point, not when building his empire was still the most important thing in Jake’s life.

  “If you don’t like Sebastian’s or Leonie’s,” Belle said, dragging his thoughts into the present, “I can call that French place on—”

  “Sebastian’s is fine. What would I do without you, Bellissima?”

  “Cross your wires again, probably, and get your face on Page Six by sending roses to a woman you stopped seeing a month before.”

  “Once,” Jake said. “I only did that once.”

  “Once was enough,” Belle said, with the crisp assurance of a woman who’d been with her boss since he’d made his first million. “All right, then. After your breakfast appointment, you have a meeting with—”

  “I know.”

  “And late lunch at Gracie Mansion with the Mayor.”

  “Belle,” Jake said with a touch of amused impatience, “have I ever forgotten a business appointment? Now, is there anything new?”

  “No. Wait…Kelsey just brought me something from the reception desk.”

  “What is it?”

  “A large padded envelope. She says it was hand-delivered.”

  “Well, open it.”

  “I already did. There’s a letter inside, sealed, and—”

  “And it smells of perfume.” Jake sighed. Some women were persistent, even though he always made his intentions, or lack of them, clear. “Just toss it.”

  “No perfume. In fact, it’s quite formal-looking. Heavy vellum, no return address…but it says ‘confidencial’ as well as ‘private.”’

  Jake frowned. Belle wasn’t a latina but she’d pronounced the word con-fee-den-see-al so clearly that he could almost see the non-English spelling.

  “Spanish?”

  “I suppose. The postmark says ‘Brasil’.”

  “Then it’s Portuguese,” Jake said, his frown deepening. Who’d be sending him a confidential letter from Brazil? He’d done some business in Argentin
a, but he’d never even been to Brazil.

  “And there’s something else,” Belle said. “A box. A small white one, the kind you’d get at a jeweler’s. Shall I open both the letter and the box, Ramirez?”

  Belle had been with him a very long time, and he had few secrets from her, but a gut feeling was suddenly telling him to be cautious. He’d had made his fortune following his instincts. Why deny them now?

  “No, that’s all right. Just put both of them on my desk. I’ll deal with them later.”

  And undoubtedly discover that the letter was a clever advertisement for a time share in Rio and that the box held a small gift to encourage his interest, Jake thought cynically as he ended the call.

  Sometimes, having money was a pain in the ass.

  His day went well.

  The president of the Stock Exchange was amenable to Jake taking a seat on the board, the Mayor liked his idea for a spring fund-raising event for the city’s ever-expanding homeless population, and the head of the Arab conglomerate that owned a building on Park Avenue Jake wanted to buy had finally decided the price he’d offered was acceptable.

  Samantha phoned him twice, first to thank him for the flowers, and then for the bracelet and to tell him they’d been invited to a house party in Connecticut the next weekend.

  “I’ll have to check my calendar and see if I’m free,” he told her, even though he already knew that he was. He wasn’t a big fan of house parties. Too many people wanting things from him—the men sidling up to him with false smiles, the women groping him under the table at dinner. But Sam enjoyed them and, at just three weeks into their affair, pleasing her was less a burden than he knew it would eventually become.

  Jake was nothing if not a realist. His childhood on the mean streets of the South Bronx had ensured that.

  Dario dropped him at his office a few minutes before seven in the evening. He was running late but he always made a point of stopping there at the end of the day if he was in town. It was an old habit, a need to make sure nothing had turned up that needed his personal or immediate attention.

  Everyone was gone, even Belle. Jake’s footsteps echoed against the marble floor as he made his way past the reception area, down a couple of corridors to his own private domain. He switched on the lights, illuminating a room three times the size of the apartment where he’d grown up, and crossed the Aubusson carpet to his desk.

  He scanned the page of notes Belle had left him, scribbled a couple of comments in the margins, then reached for the phone to call Sam and tell her he’d be a little late. His gaze fell on the vellum envelope and the small white box that lay next to it. In all the events of the day, he’d forgotten about them.

  He picked up the box. What would it contain? he wondered with amusement. He’d received unsolicited gifts from upscale marketers before, everything from leather-bound appointment books to sterling silver key rings. This was most likely a key ring; the box was too small to hold a book.

  Jake put it down and reached for the envelope. There were the words ‘private’ and ‘confidencial,’ just as Belle had described, along with the Brazilian postmark. He raised the envelope to his nose. Belle had been right about that, too. No smell whatsoever, except, he thought wryly, for a whiff of self-importance.

  As offers for time shares went, this one was definitely aimed at the top.

  He slit the envelope with a letter-opener and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. The letterhead read “Javier Estes & Associados, OAB, Rio de Janeiro,” but the letter itself was in English.

  Dear Ramirez

  My name is Javier Estes. I am the senior partner at the legal firm of Javier Estes & Associates…

  A couple of lines later, Jake sank into his chair. The enormous room seemed suddenly small and airless.

  Everything he’d grown up believing was false.

  The father he’d grown up venerating had not existed.

  He was not the son of a poor Hispanic boy who’d died a hero in a vicious, unheralded war in the jungles of South America. According to the letter in Jake’s hand, he was the son of a wealthy Brazilian who’d died in bed just a few months ago.

  The attorney’s words spelled out a brutal story. Thirty-one years before, during a trip to New York, Enrique Ramirez had engaged in a brief affair with Sarah Reece. He’d gotten her pregnant, gone back to Brazil and never contacted her again.

  Jake was the fruit of that union.

  There was more, things even more impossible than that heart-stopping revelation, but Jake wouldn’t bother with them now. He couldn’t; it was too much. Instead, he reread the part of the letter that made a lie of everything he believed in, everything his mother had told him.

  His gaze dropped to the last paragraph.

  In the final months of his life, my client regretted the errors of his youth and sought to make amends to those he had wronged. In accordance with his wishes, I enclose a small token of his concern for your mother. Please give it to her on Senhor Ramirez’s behalf.

  Jake scooped up the unopened box, almost crushed it in his fist. Twenty minutes later, jaw set, mouth a grim line, he marched through the lobby of his mother’s apartment building on Sutton Place

  . The doorman began to greet him but Jake didn’t break stride as he headed for the elevator.

  “Don’t announce me,” he said.

  He had a key to his mother’s apartment but he didn’t use it. Instead, he stabbed the bell hard enough to damn near shove it through the jamb. He saw the peephole slide aside and then the door swung open.

  “Joaquim,” his mother said happily. Her smile faded. “Joaquim? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know, Mother,” Jake said coldly. “You tell me.”

  He stepped into the foyer, elbowed the door closed and thrust the envelope at her. He watched her look at it, heard her soft intake of breath as she read the postmark. Her eyes flashed to his.

  “Read it,” he snapped.

  Sarah nodded. Her hands, her entire body, trembled. Who would write to her son from Brazil? Who would write something that would make her son so furious?

  Who? she thought, as her long-buried secret rose like a wraith from the distant past and revealed itself in black ink on creamy vellum.

  Sarah read the letter. She looked up, searching desperately for the right words, the ones that would ease the anger, the pain in her boy’s eyes.

  “Joaquim. It was all a long time ago…”

  Jake thrust a small white box at her. “He sent this for you.”

  Sarah stared at the box. “I don’t—I can’t imagine—Joaquim, please, you must listen—”

  “Open it!”

  She did. An emerald ring winked up at her, its heart as cold as her own. A card was tucked alongside.

  For Sarah, it read. My beautiful dove.

  Sarah Reece looked up at her son. And fainted.

  She was on the sofa when she came to, a cold cloth on her brow. Joaquim squatted beside her.

  “Are you all right?” he said. His tone was still chilly but there was, at least, concern in his eyes.

  She nodded. “I’m fine.” He held out a hand as she started to sit up and she took it, not because she needed the support but because she was afraid of losing her son.

  A muscle bunched in his jaw. “It’s true, then.”

  She swallowed dryly. “Yes.”

  “My father wasn’t a soldier.”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t die a hero’s death.”

  “No,” Sarah said, her voice soft and shaky.

  “And,” Jake said, his mouth twisting, “it sure as hell wasn’t a sweet, romantic love story interrupted by war.”

  “I was young. Painfully young. I’d been raised in a very strict home and—and I knew little about the world. I know this is difficult for you but you have to understand, Joaquim—”

  “Do not call me that,” Jake snapped. “My name is Jake.”

  “Joaquim—”

  “It’s Jake, dam
n it! I’m American, not Brazilian.”

  “Jake.” The name tasted foreign on Sarah’s tongue. “Son, please try and understand. I met your father—-”

  “Call him Enrique. Or Ramirez. But whatever you do don’t refer to him ever again as my father.”

  “I was working in a shop. He came in to buy something. He was handsome and charming, and I—”

  “You slept with him,” Jake said coldly, “and he left you when he learned you were carrying his bastard.”

  “No!” Sarah rose to her feet. “He never knew.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you tell him?”

  Jake’s eyes held a glimmer of hope. Sarah knew what he wanted to hear, something romantic about her not wanting to burden Enrique with the truth, but she’d lied enough. She’d buried herself in lies years ago.

  “I couldn’t,” she said quietly. “By the time I realized I was carrying a child, your—Enrique was gone.”

  “And you had no way to reach him,” Jake said bitterly.

  “None.” This was the final humiliation. “The only thing I had to remember him by was you, Joaq—you, Jake. And I loved you, always, with all my heart.”

  “You lied to me,” he said tonelessly. “My whole damned life has been a lie. All that crap about honoring the memory of my old man, the hero—”

  “Would you rather I’d told you the truth?”

  She had a point, but Jake wasn’t in the mood to concede it. “You didn’t have to embroider it the way you did.”

  “At first, it was enough to let you think your father was dead, but things changed. You were seventeen, you were running with a bad crowd—and then you got into serious trouble.” Her voice took on a touch of anger. “I did what I had to, to keep you from prison.”

  Jake stared at his mother. She looked as if she’d aged a decade in the last few minutes.

  “I did what I thought best,” she said.

  In his heart, he knew that. Right or wrong, what she’d done was for him. By the time he was seventeen, he hadn’t given a damn about anything. He hated school, hated the slum they lived in, hated the bleak future that swallowed everyone he knew.

  He’d “borrowed” a Cadillac, taken it joy-riding. To impress his friends? To impress himself? To this day, he didn’t know the answer. All he knew was that after he was caught, his mother had worked miracles.