Diego had vowed to keep an eye on her, and he would. He would steer the lady from the L.A. Post in the right direction. Rafael depended on him for such things, and Diego never let him down.
*
IT WAS NEARLY FIVE O’CLOCK when he was done talking about income from residuals with the legal hacks at Freeman, Barr. He felt drained from the effort of concentrating on business while one region of his brain clung stubbornly to thoughts of Sandra Garcia.
His preoccupation with her wasn’t merely a result of healthy male attraction. Something about the woman unnerved him. Her uncompromising gaze, maybe. The doubt shading her smile. The grip of her hand when he’d shaken it. The glint in her eyes that seemed to say, “I’m going to get you.”
He wished there was nothing about him for her to get. No revelations, no sordid truths, no past.
Once again he made a pilgrimage to the window and gazed out. He spotted her three stories below him, peeking through the windshield of his car.
He cursed under his breath, then moved across the thick brown carpet to the storage room and locked the door. Then he locked his desk, locked the kitchenette and stormed out of the office.
Carlotta was diligently hammering at the keyboard of her computer. “Where are you going?” she asked. Although she wasn’t much older than Rafael, Carlotta had the starchy bearing of an Old-World duenna. She clucked at Rafael like a mother hen, insisted on tidying up his office even though he paid a janitorial service to do that, and constantly demanded an accounting of where he was going and whom he was with. One of these days he expected her to ground him for breaking curfew.
He smiled. “Out.”
“Did you finish reading—”
“I’ll finish later.” He kissed her cheek, the way he used to kiss his mother’s cheek when he was a kid, on his way out the door in search of fun and trouble. “I promise.”
“Tracy said those contracts—”
“I promise.” He held up his hand as if he were taking an oath, or else trying to ward off Carlotta’s reprimands. Still smiling, he backed out of her office, then turned and raced to the elevator. He had to get to the parking lot before Sandra Garcia disappeared.
An evening breeze, tangy with citrus, tempered the air. He moved in long, quiet strides down the walk, past the visitor’s parking area to the lot his office overlooked. She was still there, alone, lurking near his car.
“Looking for something?” he asked, his tone cool and dry.
She flinched and straightened up. “This car is magnificent,” she said. “Is it yours?”
“Yes.” He shouldn’t let her enthusiasm for his classic Thunderbird sway him. It was probably some sort of journalistic tactic: she assumed that if she made a fuss over his car, he would open up to her.
“What model year is it?” she asked.
“Fifty-seven.”
“It’s glorious.” She circled the car slowly, admiring its polished white veneer and elaborate chrome from all angles. “If I had money to burn, I’d burn it on one of these.”
She’s playing with you, he warned himself. But the game seemed harmless enough. “What do you drive?”
She shrugged, and the strap of her leather tote bag slid down to the bend in her elbow. “That maroon car,” she said, pointing out a Japanese sedan no more than a couple of years old. “It’s terribly practical,” she added, her grin indicating she didn’t think much of practicality.
“I’ve got a terribly practical car at home,” he told her. It wasn’t like him to volunteer information, but his owning two cars wasn’t exactly front-page news. “It gets me through all kinds of weather.”
“How terribly practical,” she said, then laughed.
Her laughter surprised him. It was lush and throaty, perilously sexy. He kept his smile in place and his body perfectly still. Not in a million years would he let her know the effect she had on him.
“Can I interest you in a drink?” she asked.
Oh, God. That sultry laugh and those astonishing brown eyes, and now she was asking him out for a drink. A weaker man wouldn’t even think before accepting.
Rafael wasn’t weak. He thought.
“I’d like to talk to you,” she said forthrightly, as if anxious to remind him of what this was all about. “I know you’re busy, Mr. Perez, so I won’t take too much of your time.”
Perhaps it would be best to get this over with right at the start. He could set limits, point out the boundaries, let her know that he had no intention of opening up to her.
“There’s a cantina a block from here,” he said. “We can walk.”
She sent a final, lustful look at his car, and he decided he was glad he hadn’t offered to drive. He didn’t want to earn points with her. He sensed she was the sort who’d get suspicious if an interview subject acted too nice.
Side by side, they strolled to the front gate. The guard nodded silently to Rafael, who returned the nod and stepped aside to let Sandra precede him out. Cars streamed down the street; workers trickled out of the spark-plug factory across the way. They were mostly young men, Latinos, low-wage laborers. More than a few of them had applied for work at Aztec Sun. People in these parts knew that Rafael Perez understood where they were coming from because he’d come from the same place himself, and that if they could get a job with him, he would teach them what they needed to know and pay them enough to live comfortably.
Not that he considered himself a hero—or aspired to be one. Even with a beautiful woman like Sandra Garcia beside him, he didn’t want anyone looking up to him. Adulation had never been what he was after.
Some of the factory workers liked to patronize Cesar’s, but mostly it was an Aztec Sun hang-out. The small, dark tavern was still fairly empty at this early hour. In a while, though, it would be teeming with his techies—carpenters, electricians, camera operators. Rafael himself had trained most of them. He’d learned the business by working his way through it, which made him a better instructor than any film school professor with a theory-stuffed brain.
He led Sandra to a booth near the back. The lamp above the table shed a dim amber light that layered her skin with gold. He gave himself a stern reminder of who she was and what she was after.
A story. His story.
A waitress materialized at the table. “Hey, Raf.”
He acknowledged her with a nod, then turned back to Sandra. “What would you like?”
“I don’t know…”
“Two beers,” he ordered for her. “Dos Equis Gold.”
The waitress departed. Rafael settled against the red vinyl seat, waiting for Sandra to light into him for his presumptuousness.
She only smiled. “I like Dos Equis.”
“Good.”
Her eyes were uncannily dark in the cantina’s gloom. She studied him with disarming confidence, then reached into her tote and pulled out a small recorder. “I hope you don’t mind if I record our conversation,” she said. “It’s for accuracy, to back up my notes—”
“No recording,” he said, reaching across the table and covering the machine with his hand. Without planning to, he covered her hand as well. Her knuckles were angular, her skin cool and smooth, like marble arching up into his palm.
He didn’t let go right away. Perhaps holding her hand immobile would intimidate her. It would let her know he was more powerful than she was, not someone she could mess with. Besides, her hand felt good against his, strong and graceful, capable. Feminine. He found he didn’t want to let go, ever.
She discreetly slid it out from under his and tucked the recorder back into her bag. As pleased as he was to see her put the machine away, he regretted losing the physical contact.
“The only reason for taping our interview,” she explained, “is so I can make sure I’ve got your words right. Sometimes when I’m writing fast, I—”
“No writing,” he said, halting her before she had her notepad out of her bag. “No interview.”
His touch might not have gotten a rise out
of her, but his words did. She arched her eyebrows, turning her eyes round and bright. “What do you mean, no interview?”
“We’re talking. Nothing more.”
The waitress appeared with their beers and a bowl of taco chips hot from the griddle and glistening with a sheen of oil. Rafael waved her off, then poured Sandra’s beer into her glass for her. She waited until he’d poured his own before taking a sip. “I was hoping we could get started—”
“You’re very beautiful,” he said.
Her glass in midair, she paused. This time her brows dipped, and she tilted her head slightly. “So what?”
He grinned. No false modesty on her part, no indignation, no warning that he ought to act like a professional. Sandra Garcia was clearly not going to let him rattle her.
His interest was piqued. “I don’t talk to reporters,” he said. “I don’t talk to people I don’t know.”
A faint smile skimmed her lips. “Okay,” she conceded, lowering her glass and leaning back in her seat. “Why don’t you ask me questions, instead?”
Fine with him. He wanted to control the discussion. But then he realized that by permitting him to control it, she was the one in control. She’d yielded nothing.
Her cleverness only sharpened his interest. “You’re not from the neighborhood, are you,” he said.
“If you mean East L.A., no. I live in Westwood.”
“Westwood.” Rich people lived in Westwood. “You grew up there?”
She shook her head. “Up north, in Berkeley. My family still lives there.”
He absorbed that with a nod. There were so many things he wanted to ask her, so many things he had no business asking her. Like how a young journalist could afford to live in Westwood, how a Chicana happened to grow up in Berkeley, how come she had no accent, how come she had so much poise. Why she was here, what she wanted from him, whether her self-confidence evaporated the minute she stepped out of her career and became a woman—or whether she was just as self-confident in bed, in a man’s arms.
“Berkeley,” he said. “College town.”
“I regret to say your movies aren’t very popular with the university set.”
“Don’t regret it. I like my market just fine.” He drank some beer, his eyes never leaving her. If he couldn’t intimidate her, he might as well try to make friends with her. “How did your folks wind up so far north? It’s a long way from the border.”
“I’m a long way from the border,” she told him. “My grandparents came to California when they were young. My family’s been here for a couple of generations.”
“Ah.”
“My folks own a restaurant. Alessandra’s. That’s my grandmother’s name. I was named after her, sort of.”
“So how come you’re not up at Alessandra’s in Berkeley, frying tortillas with your family?”
Her smile widened, a crescent of white teeth against her tawny complexion. “They wanted something better for me. They sacrificed so I could attend private school and college. After all that education, they wouldn’t want me to wind up frying tortillas for a living.”
Private school. Rafael struggled to think of anyone he knew who’d gone to private school. Maybe some of the bankers he had to work with, or Tracy Hester, his attorney. No one with his skin color.
He took another long drink of beer, his gaze locked onto Sandra as he tilted back his glass. Private school. College. And now she lived in Westwood. Rafael didn’t doubt that he could buy and sell her and her Americanized restaurant-owning family many times over. But that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that he was a punk from the barrio who had walked too close to the fire too many times. He was a thirty-five year old millionaire who’d skirted the flames and felt the heat and still wore the scars.
Those scars were exactly what a reporter like Sandra Garcia would be looking for. It was her job as much as making movies was his job.
But those scars were his history, his truth. He didn’t deny them, but he didn’t trade on them. And he sure as hell didn’t want Sandra Garcia publicizing them. He wasn’t going to be the next freak out of Hollywood, the next feature story in the tabloids. He wasn’t going to have his life turned into a scandal, a morality tale for people to thumb through while they were waiting to pay for their groceries.
He made his mind up right then and there: Diego would take care of the reporter from the Post. He would give her his press releases and keep her out of Rafael’s way, out of his sight. He’d show her the studio, get her to hype White Angel, and then get rid of her.
If he didn’t…
Rafael stared into Sandra’s exotic face and understood how easy it would be to succumb to her, how easy to expose himself, scars and all. He was rich and successful, but she was too self-assured to let his status daunt her.
No matter how much Rafael tried to intimidate Sandra Garcia, she intimidated him more. She was the strong one. All he could do was try his damnedest to protect himself.
*
HE WAS HIDING SOMETHING.
She wasn’t sure what. But she’d been a reporter long enough to trust her intuition. And in Rafael Perez’s case, her intuition was sending signals she couldn’t ignore.
It was more than just intuition, of course. More than just signals he was sending. She’d gotten looks from him. Assessing looks, searing looks, challenging looks.
Seductive looks.
Diego Salazar was classically handsome—but while Sandra liked classic cars like Rafael’s magnificent Thunderbird, she didn’t necessarily like classic looks in a man. Rafael Perez was much more than handsome. He appeared hungry, wary, charismatic, guarded yet aggressive. When he stared at her, she felt as if he were searching for her weaknesses, determined to exploit them—although she couldn’t imagine how he would, or why.
His blunt compliment about her alleged beauty was exactly the sort of attack she had to defend against. Evidently he thought he could flatter her into submission. He couldn’t—although she had to admit that never before had a man with such raw sex appeal told her she was beautiful.
Around them the air vibrated with the din of voices as more workers arrived at the cantina for some after-work refreshment. A few people approached Rafael to say hello, but although he smiled at them, his expression wasn’t inviting, and they hastily retreated, leaving him and Sandra alone in the island of golden light that illuminated their table.
“Anything else you want to know about me?” she inquired, not because she particularly enjoyed talking about herself, but because she wanted Rafael to trust her.
He drank his beer quietly, his dark eyes never leaving her. “What do you hope to get from writing about me?” he asked, his tone as dark as his gaze.
“A paycheck,” she joked, knowing as she spoke that that wasn’t the entire truth. She wanted to something more from Rafael—she wasn’t sure what, but something more. No great journalism prize rode on a human-interest profile of a Hispanic entrepreneur. No muckraking revelations from this story would make the world a better place. Yet when a man refused to answer a reporter’s questions, when he denied the use of a recorder, he had secrets. And Sandra, like any reporter, came to life in the face of secrets.
Or maybe it was Rafael’s mysterious eyes that brought her to life. Maybe it was the pressure of his hand against hers when he’d pushed away her recorder, the hard surface of his palm against her knuckles, the heat of his grip. Maybe what she was after had less to do with eking a story out of this assignment than finding out why Rafael Perez’s touch triggered such an odd sensation in her belly, in her thighs, along her spine, in the shuddering beat of her heart.
Why in God’s name was she responding to him? He wasn’t the first good-looking man she’d ever met. He wasn’t the most pleasant. In all honesty, she liked his mint-condition sports car better than she liked him.
“Did you grow up in East L.A.?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual—as if that might prevent him from realizing she was interviewing him.<
br />
He wasn’t fooled. “Where I grew up is none of your business.”
“It is my business,” she argued, growing impatient. “I’m here to do a story about you and your studio. How am I supposed to—”
“Let me tell you something,” he murmured. His hands flexed around his glass, his fingers strong and brown. “You want to write about White Angel, fine. You want to write about Melanie Greer, the studio, Diego Salazar, any of that—fine. But a man is entitled to his privacy.”
“What about my readers? They want to know how you managed to start a studio from scratch and turn it into a thriving enterprise.”
“Hard work,” he told her. “Perseverence. Ambition.”
“Clichés,” she chided him.
“If I’d stumbled in another direction, I would have become a doctor. Or a janitor. Or a guy on the line at the factory across the street. This is how things worked out. Put that in your article. It’s enough to satisfy your readers.”
He was trying to close her out, and in a perverse way she appreciated his bluntness. But more than before, more than what her instincts had told her, she was certain that who Rafael Perez was and how he’d succeeded was an outgrowth of something much more complicated and compelling than this is how things worked out.
“What do you mean when you say you stumbled?” she asked.
His face shut down, as if an iron security gate had dropped across it. His eyes grew cold; his mouth lost its hint of a smile. He tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the table and rose. “We’re done,” he said, even though Sandra still had more than half her beer left.
She considered objecting, but decided that would be counterproductive. She wasn’t going to learn Rafael Perez’s secrets by confronting him directly. She would have to investigate quietly, discreetly—and hope that when she was done digging she would have unearthed something worth her efforts.
For now, however, he was calling the shots. If he said they were done, they were done.
They strolled in silence down the sidewalk to the studio’s main entry. In front of the factory that shared the block with Aztec Sun, they waited while a few cars breezed past. Then Rafael cupped his hand around her elbow and escorted her across the street to the gate.
Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set Page 38