“Like your peaches for the Georgia peaches.”
“Exactly.”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Give me your portfolio.”
She complied, dying a thousand deaths as he flipped his way through the pages. Even the most professional shots were no substitute for the touch and feel of jewelry. Something that looked great on paper could be an absolute disaster in person if the craftsmanship was rough-edged, if a bracelet was unbalanced so it constantly shifted around the wrist, if earrings dragged painfully on the earlobes.
He finally raised his gaze. “I like how they look.”
“Thank you.” She knew it wasn’t more than qualified approval.
“But…”
Ah, there it was. She’d been expecting that but throughout his appraisal. He would have been a fool to agree to anything without seeing the jewelry in person, and she hoped he would consent to that.
“I want my assistant Raoul to meet with us. He is the one in charge of dealing directly with the designers once I have made my decisions, and he and I both need to see more samples than your peaches. Although they are fine.” He smiled at her. “You have an interesting combination of style—classic American, yet with a definite Latin-American cosmopolitan flair that might appeal to many of our clients.”
“Thank you.” Inwardly, Ashley was elated. Enric got it—he really did. When she sketched a design, Ashley considered what either she or Tisha liked. It looked as if she’d nailed that part of it.
“Call my office this afternoon and ask to speak to Raoul to set up a meeting. We will make arrangements for the secure transport of your jewelry.”
“Wonderful.” Ashley beamed at him. Yay—she didn’t have to drive across Palm Beach with her jewelry case shoved under her dirty laundry and hope she didn’t get carjacked.
Enric checked his unsurprisingly lovely thin gold watch. “I hate to end our lunch, but I must go to another appointment.”
Ashley fell all over herself reassuring him and let him guide her out of the restaurant. “I’ll be in touch with Raoul.” As soon as she got to her car, she’d be on that phone.
“Remind him not to schedule it in conflict with the polo tournament. I may be traveling for business, but my accountant doesn’t have to know I get a little pleasure on the side, eh?” He guffawed again.
Ashley offered her hand, and he squeezed it, surprising her by coming in for a kiss on the cheek. Despite his affectionate nature, she didn’t get any sexual vibes from him, and she would know, growing up in the Latin touchy-feely culture. “Until we meet again, señorita.” He stepped into the backseat of a shiny black livery car waiting for him and drove away.
Ashley walked very calmly around the corner, out of sight of the French restaurant, and jumped up and down in excitement. Oh, wouldn’t Beck be excited for her news? But no, she couldn’t tell him yet. What if Enric rejected her at their next meeting and she had to confess to Beck that she had failed? Better not say anything until her name was on a contract. Besides, she had the voice of Mama Rodríguez in the back of her head, warning her not to count her chickens before they hatched.
So first, she would dazzle Enric and his assistant, negotiate a wonderful contract and then treat Beck to the fanciest dinner he’d ever eaten. Then he would see her as his equal, someone who didn’t need to scrape along, beg or borrow. Then, maybe then, she could finally be someone.
9
“ASHLEY? It’s Beck. Do you have any plans for today?”
Not unless he counted watching her hamster run around in his purple-glitter plastic exercise ball. Oh, and waiting by the phone for Enric Bruguera’s assistant Raoul to get back to her with a meeting date. Raoul had said Enric had been invited on an overnight yacht trip and would be out of touch for at least the next day. Short of renting a boat and tracking Enric, or stalking him, as the law might consider it, she was free for the day. “No, I didn’t have any plans.”
“My practice was canceled, so I hope you can spend the day with me.”
“What did you have in mind?” She had several ideas that involved a cool swim in his pool and something hot at poolside.
“Not that.” He sounded amused.
“Really?”
“All right, yes, that, but not yet.” He cleared his throat. “Give me directions to your place and I’ll pick you up.”
“You don’t mind coming here?” Please mind, please mind. Ashley looked around her apartment and grimaced. Her breakfast dishes were still on the coffee table, her clean laundry was busy wrinkling in a basket and, to top it all off, she had all of her jewelry designs and several samples scattered on her tiny dining table. Hence the dishes on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“No, in fact, I’d like to see where you live.”
Oh, well, the dishes could go in the sink and the laundry basket in the closet. “Nothing fancy, but you’re more than welcome.”
“Great.” His voice was much more cheerful. “Where do I go?”
“It’s not the greatest part of town,” she warned him once she’d given him her address.
He laughed. “If you saw some of the places where Diego and I hang out when we travel to South America, you wouldn’t even bother warning me.”
“Like to live on the edge, huh?” she teased.
“Don’t you?”
She started to say, “No, of course not,” and reconsidered. Since her shop had turned into the equivalent of a nine-hundred-square-foot ashtray, she had been forced to leap off one ledge after another. Or really, she had chosen to leap rather than surrender her dream. “I suppose I do.” Huh. Who would have thought?
BECK FOUND her apartment building easily with his GPS unit and pulled into the spot marked for visitors. Ashley lived in a Florida-pink, older stucco building that looked to have about a dozen units. He found the front buzzer and smiled at an elderly lady watering tomatoes on her ground-floor patio. She gave him a suspicious glance until Ashley’s voice came over the intercom. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Beck.”
“Come up—I’m on the third floor, apartment 3A.”
The door buzzed and he climbed the stairs to the white door marked 3A.
He lifted his hand to knock and overheard her cooing at someone. “Now, Teddy, don’t be like that. You have plenty to keep you busy and I won’t be gone all day.”
Teddy? Jealousy curled in his belly, ugly and shocking. He’d only met Ashley a few days previously. She’d obviously had a life before and would again once he left for his next tournament. But he could have sworn she had no boyfriend. Was Teddy a hopeful candidate?
Teddy was obviously giving her an earful since Beck didn’t hear her reply for several seconds. “Teddy, that is enough. I don’t like it when you pout. I’ll take you out again when I get home.”
Beck raised his hand and knocked on her door.
“Just a minute,” she called. He sensed her checking the peephole and heard her open several locks.
“Beck!” She gave him a welcome smile. He searched for any hint of nervousness or guilt and found none.
“Hi, Ashley.” He gave her a kiss. “I heard you talking to Teddy.” Better to get it out in the open instead of stewing about it.
“Oh. You heard that?” She did look embarrassed and his heart sank. He even took a casual glance around her apartment for signs of male inhabitants, but couldn’t find any.
“I suppose I should introduce you two, but I have to tell you, Teddy doesn’t like men.”
Didn’t like the competition, huh?
He squared his shoulders. “Is Teddy here right now?”
She gave him a weird look. “Sure. Where else would he be? He lives with me.”
Oh, shit. Beck couldn’t believe how much that hurt. “I think the three of us should have a little chat.”
Ashley bit her lip. “I don’t know if he’ll have much to say.”
“Well, I definitely do.”
“If you insist.” Her mouth pressed into a tight lin
e, Ashley walked into her living room. Despite Beck’s growing unease, he couldn’t help noticing how her hips swayed under her mint-green dress. Beck looked around, but there was nobody sitting on her white couch. She stopped at a small yellow-metal cage sitting on a white wicker table.
“Teddy?” She tapped the bars. “Come here, sweet pea.” A roly-poly black-and-white rodent waddled out from a small cardboard box set in the cage and grabbed the bars with two tiny pink paws. Ashley sprang the latch and lifted Teddy into her hands, nuzzling his fur. “Who’s my good boy, huh?”
“He’s Teddy?” Beck hadn’t had that same wind-knocked-out feeling since he’d last fallen off his horse.
“I’d let you hold him, but as I said before, Teddy doesn’t like men.” She broke into a wide grin. “He’s also somewhat taciturn.” What Beck had mistaken for anxiety had actually been Ashley trying not to laugh her ass off at him.
My, my, wasn’t Beckett Winston Emery quite the macho man? Jealous of a freaking hamster. And a teddy-bear hamster, no less. “Oh, go ahead and laugh,” he said crossly.
She burst into laughter, the hamster bouncing in her hands. She plopped him into a purple plastic ball and he immediately ran away, probably to get away from the large grumpy male human.
“Oh, Beck, the look on your face. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that you think I have men crawling out of the woodwork.”
He grimaced. “I am sorry.” She’d already said she wasn’t seeing other men, and she’d never done anything to indicate differently. “I…don’t know what else to say.” He rubbed his face.
She gave him a considering look. “What kind of women have you known, Beckett Emery?”
Her question immediately triggered images of certain women from his past. Lucia, the Argentinian woman who hadn’t told him she’d been engaged to a family friend practically since birth. Inga, who had claimed she and her husband had an “open” marriage—the husband Beck hadn’t known about until after he’d slept with Inga. Diana, who had slipped into Diego’s hotel room in Montevideo wearing nothing but a silk robe and a smile after Beck had unexpectedly been called back to the States for a family crisis. Even Diego, not particularly known for his sexual reticence, had been offended on his behalf and booted her into the hall.
“I see.”
He jolted to the present, realizing Ashley was staring at him thoughtfully. “I…I…”
“The rich are different from you and me. Well, me, anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
She waved a hand. “We are all products of our experience. As for me, Teddy is the only male I can really trust.”
Beck jumped slightly as the hamster ball clattered onto the kitchen tiles. “Why?”
“You don’t want to know.” She turned her back to him and followed Teddy.
“What if I do want to know?”
She turned to face him, her blue eyes hard for the first time since they’d met. “Okay. My father left us when I was six and my mother spent a couple of years auditioning replacements before taking off with one of them when I was nine.”
Beck winced. “Who raised you?”
“Letitia’s parents. We lived in the same building and they took me in—even going through the adoption application so it could be official. Otherwise I would have been sent to live with strangers.”
He pulled her into his arms. His own mother might have been a tad rigid in her child-raising beliefs, but a strong sense of duty had accompanied those beliefs. “Where is your mother now?”
She shrugged. “She contacted me again when I was a teenager but I was happy with Letitia and her family.”
Beck noticed how Ashley didn’t refer to them as her own family.
“My mother remarried a few years ago and lives in Jacksonville. Her new husband is a retired accountant and is completely dazzled by her, so they get along fine.”
“You dazzle me, Ashley.” He brushed his lips over hers. “To come out of a childhood like yours as kind and good as you are…”
She shook her head. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, Beck. I don’t deserve that.”
Yes, she did, but he wouldn’t press the point, sensing she wanted to change the subject. She followed Teddy into the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Oh, um…” He was having a hard time thinking straight as the revelations about her dreadful childhood churned in his head. “How about some water?”
She poked her head around the corner. “Beck, you daredevil, you. Do you want to be really reckless and have some ice cubes?”
Moving quickly, he grabbed her around the waist and growled into her neck. She giggled and swatted at him. “If you give me any ice cubes, I’ll drop them down your shirt. What say you tuck Teddy in his hut and go put on some jeans?”
“Jeans?” She made a face. “It’s too hot for jeans.” She was wearing one of the pretty sundresses that flattered her blond hair and tanned shoulders.
“Jeans,” he repeated. “And a pair of good sturdy shoes.” Like practically every other woman in south Florida, she was wearing flip-flops.
She gave him a suspicious stare. “Did your groom quit and you need me to clean your stables?”
He caught her wrists. “Would I do that to your pretty hands?”
Instead of oohing at his compliment, she laughed again. “Have you looked at my hands lately?”
Of course he had—her hands as they moved over his chest, his belly, his back…he was getting distracted by happy memories and certain parts of him were getting happy, too. He took a deep breath.
“Here’s a burn scar from my soldering iron, here’s a puncture wound where a wire went about an inch deep into my thumb, and various dings and scratches.”
He obediently checked and did see some lighter marks, but they only enhanced her instead of marring her. “If we’re comparing scars, here’s where I had pins put in my wrist after I fell off my pony, here’s where my thumbnail fell off after a pony crushed my hand between its rump and the stable wall.” He didn’t mention the various fractured fingers and a couple of concussions that would have split his head open if he hadn’t been wearing his helmet. Anything that involved large mammals running at high speed was high risk; at least the sport no longer used enemies’ severed heads as polo balls.
“I guess we all have our scars, don’t we?” She gave him a sad smile, and he wanted to wrap her in his arms to keep anything bad from ever happening to her again.
“Jeans.” He knew she would push him away if he tried to comfort her, so he winked at her and nodded at the hallway presumably leading to her bedroom.
“Fine.” She stashed Teddy in his cage and headed down the hall.
He wandered to the hamster hut and eyeballed the little rodent, who bared his surprisingly large teeth. “So, Teddy, I guess you and I will have to look after Ashley, huh?”
The hamster scurried into his little den, leaving Beck talking to thin, cedar-scented air.
“Slacker. I guess it’ll be just me.” Beck waited for the cold chill to run along his spine, and when it didn’t, he shrugged. “Beck and Ashley.” He grinned to himself. That had a nice ring to it.
“AHA! You are going to make me clean the stables.” Ashley purposely injected cheer into her voice as Beck pulled up to a stable, its long ivory-colored building gleaming in the sun. White fences extended from each end and Ashley spotted several horses grazing in the morning sun. There was an ebony-black mother and her foal, the foal kicking its hooves as it played in the thick green grass.
“Good exercise. Even us rich guys grow up shoveling manure with the best of them. Besides, I’m taking you for a ride. Since you’re a guest, I won’t make you do stable chores. Mimi manages the place and believe me, her stable hands work hard.”
“Beck, I’ve only been on a horse a couple times. I don’t think I can manage the kind of horse you’re used to.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Trust me.” He jumped out of the truck
and opened the door for her. “I haven’t lost a student yet.”
She took his hand and climbed out. Again with the trust thing. He guided her across the gravel parking lot and into the stable. It was smaller than the facility at the polo club, but just as clean and well-maintained.
Ashley heard the voices of children. “Oh, so you give children lessons, too?” They probably had some tamer horses as well.
“Children and adults both. Mimi and I adapt the lessons as needed.”
“Oh, right.” She didn’t understand what he really meant until she saw a woman pushing a boy in a wheelchair, and an older girl with Down syndrome following her dad, she assumed. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Oh.”
She stared at Beck. He gave her a small smile and waited for her reaction to the children. Again she wondered what kind of woman he was used to. Someone who had been repulsed by the sweet little faces in front of her? Someone who had thought it was a waste of time for a highly skilled polo player to teach riding to disabled children?
That kind of woman was a serious bitch.
“I think this is a lovely idea. The kids must really enjoy being up so high on the horses.”
He immediately relaxed and grinned. “Oh, they do.”
Ashley relaxed, too. She had passed an important test by approving of Beck’s volunteer work. And how could she not? The stable hand pushed the boy’s wheelchair up a ramp next to which a spotted pony waited patiently, held in place by a woman riding instructor.
The boy let out a brief howl, but was quickly soothed by the stable hand. His mother stood to the side, giving him a brave smile, but Ashley could see her white knuckles from where she stood.
They settled the boy into a complicated saddle on top of the pony and guided him into a slow walk. His panicked expression was quickly replaced by sheer elation. “Mom! Look!” His speech was harsh but his joy was unmistakable.
Ashley grabbed Beck’s hand and held on tight. “This is a great thing to do. Are you a donor, too?”
Knowing the Score Page 9