Incautious.
“Okay, I’m hiding,” Sara admitted.
She needed a breather at a neutral location where she could get her mind around the new situation. She’d needed the breather so badly, she had truly raced along the sand to have a consultation with one of her best friends.
Unflappable Charlie would make her feel better. She’d convince Sara that she could handle this development…and any forthcoming development that might crop up.
Her friend led the way into the Archers’ spacious kitchen. “Tea?” Charlie asked.
Sara nodded.
“What’s the problem?” her friend asked as she filled the kettle.
“Well…” Where to start? Sara leaned against a countertop. “My duties have…expanded.”
“Expanded?” Charlie echoed. “You mean beyond whatever extras you’re doing now that Joaquin is in residence?”
Extras. Sara felt sure Charlie didn’t put kissing her employer into that category. She cleared her throat. “His sixteen-year-old half-sister showed up last night. It seems she’s staying for a few weeks.”
“Oh? What’s she like?”
Sara shrugged. “Like sixteen, I suppose. I’m really worried she might recognize me. That gossip started in London, but it was all over the States as well.”
“Don’t I know it.” Charlie responded to the kettle’s whistle and poured boiling water into a mug already prepared with a teabag. Passing it to Sara, she pursed her lips. “But I can’t see it as a problem. You’ve cut and colored your hair. You hide beneath all those clothes. And teenagers are so self-absorbed they never see anyone but themselves, anyway.”
“I suppose.” Sara sipped at the hot liquid. “I don’t have a lot of experience with them.”
“You shouldn’t need any,” Charlie said, filling her own mug. “The butler is not in charge of children.”
Straight out of the Continental Butler Academy textbook. “Right, like you don’t always have an eagle eye on Wells.”
Charlie quickly waved that observation away. “Because of flaky Laura the nanny. Mr. Archer is coming around to the idea we have to find someone to take her place.”
Joaquin’s half-sister didn’t have a nanny or parents in the picture at the moment. “I get the feeling that Essie is left a lot on her own. I suspect she’s lonely.”
“Because?”
“The only-child thing…raised like one, anyway, with her brother being so much older. You and I both know how that can be. And don’t you worry about Wells in that regard?”
Charlie turned away. “Wells will be fine. His dad loves him enough for two parents and a whole dining table full of siblings.”
Toying with the tag on her teabag, Sara dithered about what to say next. “There’s something else…”
“I’m listening.”
“Uh…” She shot a quick glance at her friend. “I’m a tiny bit attracted to him.”
“To Mr. Archer?”
“What?” Sara jerked back, alarmed by Charlie’s shocked tone. “Of course not. Geez! Not Wells’ dad. I was talking about Joaquin.”
“Oh.” The other butler relaxed. “Joaquin. Well, he is attractive.”
Sara swallowed. “I don’t mean I find him appealing like a model in a magazine ad or a leading man in a movie. It’s a little less, you know, cerebral and more, um...visceral.”
“Oh.” Charlie seemed to take a minute to gather her thoughts. “That’s inconvenient.”
“You’re not appalled?” Sara stared into her tea. “With my history, doesn’t it seem beyond inappropriate?”
“I don’t think you can halt how you feel, Sara. We might wish we could…but it’s impossible, trust me.”
An odd note in her friend’s voice caused Sara’s gaze to jump to Charlie’s face. But she looked as calm as ever. Unflappable.
“Anyway,” the other butler continued. “It’s not as if you’d act on it, right?”
“Right,” Sara said faintly.
She couldn’t admit to it now, even though her mind instantly transported back to that interlude on the couch when she’d had Joaquin’s tongue in her mouth, and she’d shivered as his fingertips stroked her bare skin. Lost in sensation, she’d also lost all sense of propriety.
What did he do to her? How did he make her forget everything but him?
Thank goodness Joaquin had broken the kiss and pulled away. With inches of air between them, her good sense had come flooding back along with a profound sense of embarrassment. In her mind, there’d only been one recourse.
“You don’t think I should resign?” she asked Charlie now.
“You can’t afford to,” her friend said, always practical. “You know that.”
“I know that.” She sighed.
And Joaquin didn’t want her to leave her post, either. He’d been clearly alarmed at the thought of taking sole charge of his younger sister, exposing a vulnerability she’d found both amusing and…well, cute. God! Didn’t that just spell more trouble?
She sighed again.
“Sara.”
“Hmm?” She looked up to meet her friend’s eyes.
“It’s going to be okay. You can handle this—the attraction to Joaquin.”
“I can?”
“Yes, and I’m going to tell you how.”
That’s what was so great about Charlie. She made plans. She stuck to them.
“Go ahead,” Sara urged.
“You’re going to muster your best composed butler demeanor and keep your feelings on a tight leash.”
“Best composed butler demeanor,” Sara repeated. “Feelings on a tight leash.”
“And you’re going to always maintain a professional distance.”
“Always maintain a professional distance.”
But hadn’t she done that very thing until the moment when she wasn’t distant from him? Until she found herself lips-to-lips, her blood running hot and crazy through her veins, every notion of self-preservation washed away in a flood of desire?
“And now that I think of it,” Charlie continued, “the arrival of his sister works to your benefit.”
“Yes?” That sounded hopeful.
“She’s the perfect buffer.” Charlie pointed her forefinger at Sara. “You stick close to the kid, and she’ll stay between you and her brother. You’ll be over this infatuation in no time.”
Sara repeated the words. “Stick close to the kid. I’ll be over this infatuation in no time.”
And on that note, she said goodbye to her friend and started off down the beach in the direction of Nueva Vida, a new lightness to her steps.
Charlie was on to something, Sara decided, by labeling her interest in Joaquin an infatuation. She didn’t actually know the man in any real sense, right? So of course she was experiencing nothing more than an inconsequential, nothing-to-worry-about fleeting fixation. It was a crush, a simple crush. Superficial. Like a scratch, one that would close by the end of the day.
To make matters even better, soon after Sara arrived back at the house, Essie unwittingly cooperated in her role as buffer. The teen planted herself on one of the stools in the kitchen while Sara set about making a vegetable soup for lunch by chopping garlic, onion, carrots, and asparagus.
As the girl settled, Sara paused to smile at her. “Did you sleep well? Did you get enough to eat for breakfast?” The food she’d left out had been demolished.
“Oh, sure.” Essie planted an elbow on the countertop and her small chin in her hand. “Thanks.”
Sara’s peripheral vision registered movement, and she turned her head to see Joaquin mounting the steps from the beach to the deck, a newspaper under his arm. Dressed in lightweight wrinkled khakis and a white T-shirt, he stretched out on a lounge chair and began reading. Objectively, he was beyond handsome, his features even and etched, his tall body masculine and muscled.
No wonder he kindled that little fire in her belly, she thought.
No wonder she could imagine herself snuggled beside him on
the cushions, her cheek nestled in the cup where his shoulder met his chest and her fingers spider-walking along the taut skin over his ribs as she tried to distract him from the latest business news. He’d send her a mock-annoyed glance first, and then he’d sigh, fold up the paper, and toss it to the side.
His gaze would cut to her face again. “What?” he’d demand, but he’d be smiling.
“I’m bored,” Essie declared.
Sara started, yanked out of her fantasy by the girl. Oh God, she wasn’t supposed to be mooning over the man! She was supposed to be keeping her lusty feelings on a tight leash!
Thankful for being pulled from the dangerous direction of her thoughts, she re-focused on Essie. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
The teen shrugged. “I’m bored.”
Bored? Sara thought. Try growing up in a small, rural town with grandparents watching and waiting for you to get into trouble. “Aren’t your friends coming over?”
“Pretty soon,” Essie acknowledged, then stifled a large yawn with the palm of her hand.
“Do you have schoolwork that needs to get done? You could take care of that while you wait.”
The teen shook her head. “School’s on a break. I go to this year-round, girls-only, nunnery kind of place. It’s like my parents have something against a true summer vacation, not to mention my normal adolescent development. It’s wrong to separate the sexes, you know. There are studies.”
Sara wanted to laugh at Essie’s grandly aggrieved tone, though separating the sexes wasn’t such a terrible idea, to her mind. She cast a glance out the windows to check on Joaquin again, even though she shouldn’t. Yes, it was his physique that fascinated her, she concluded. All those long bones and interesting ripples would affect any woman.
Clearing her throat, she returned her attention to the teen. “You’re not allowed to date, then?”
“Oh, I have a boyfriend.” The girl picked up a lock of her long dark hair and closely inspected the ends. Her nails were painted like slices of watermelon. Green at the tips with pink centers complete with tiny black seeds. “His name is Zachary.”
“Is he coming over today?” That might be a worry. If Essie had a “boyfriend” without her parents’ approval, they likely wouldn’t want him visiting here.
“No. He’s on a break from his school, too, and he couldn’t get out of the family vacation—visiting relatives for a couple of weeks.”
“Ah.” Despite her best intentions, Sara’s gaze wandered out the window again.
“You keep staring at my brother,” Essie observed. “Is there something wrong?”
“Oh.” Sara gave a guilty start, and her gaze swiveled back to the girl. “Oh no, sorry. I’m just, you know, enjoying the view.”
At Essie’s smirk, she hastened to add, “Of the ocean.”
The teen let her get away with that, thank God. Reminding herself her captivation with Joaquin was due to that superficial crush, the one that was like a mere scratch, shallow and small, Sara turned toward the pantry to gather up the vegetable broth and spices.
“I don’t know him at all, you know,” Essie said.
Sara turned to the girl. “You mean…”
“My brother. It’s why I wanted to come. I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Well…” Sara didn’t know what to say. Not talking about one’s employer behind his back was front-and-center in the Continental Butler Academy textbook. “I’ve only been working for him a short time myself.” I don’t know him at all either. He’s just this shallow cut—crush—that I’m suffering from.
“He’s very good at running his business, my dad says that.”
“Mmm.” No surprise there, since he could afford this magnificent Malibu estate.
“My mother says he runs through women.”
Sara flicked a glance out the glass. Well, of course he was successful with the opposite sex too, thanks to everything that had tickled her own usually languid libido.
“Mom worries about the numbers, but since she’s on Hubby Three, it seems a tad hypocritical to me.”
At the teen’s world-weary tone, Sara’s heart squeezed. So young to sound so cynical.
“But she feels worse about leaving Joaquin with his crappy dad.”
I can’t blame my mother for leaving him. In the end, he drove his car drunk into a tree. The only good deed he ever accomplished was not taking someone else out with him that night.
He’d said that in the same offhand and world-weary voice as his sister’s.
Those words had a new poignancy now. Then, she and Joaquin had been the newest of acquaintances—albeit he’d been the man who’d agreed to make a pledge for a little boy’s fun run and to attend it as well. But now, she knew him better. He also had the conscience to put on the physical brakes to a very ill-advised liaison. He had the kindness to allow his little sister a chance to get to know him.
No. No!
She had to put the brakes on this…this…deeper understanding of the man.
He wasn’t supposed to become a three-dimensional person to Sara. To leash her feelings, to maintain a professional distance, he had to be…be… She snuck a gaze out the glass again. What was the term? Beefcake. Joaquin had to be a hot body and a handsome face to her. A man she could easily get over. A small scratch, healed by morning.
“And then there’s our older brother,” Essie continued, clearly not aware of Sara’s unease. “Everyone figures it has to affect Joaquin, big-time.”
It has to affect Joaquin, big-time. Resignation fell heavily on Sara’s shoulders as her mouth opened. She shouldn’t ask, she shouldn’t want to know more, but the question was already tripping off her tongue. “Your older brother?”
“Uh-huh.” Essie spun the seat of her stool to look at the man on the deck. “He died in Joaquin’s arms.”
Sara sucked in a sharp breath. What? Before she could form a second question, Essie jumped from her stool, her gaze trained on her cell phone. “They’re here!”
And as the girl ran for the front door, presumably to allow in her friends through the gate, the butler felt that shallow scratch, that emblem of her “crush,” break wide open. He died in Joaquin’s arms.
It even bled a little.
Damn. Sara suspected the wound wouldn’t be healed by morning.
And when it finally did, she worried it might leave a scar.
Chapter 5
Joaquin didn’t know three teenagers could make so much noise. Essie turned out to be a nonstop talker, while her friends Lulu—a tiny creature with an explosion of red curls—and RJ—a beanpole of a boy—constantly punctuated her monologue with loud exclamations.
Oh my God!
Not ever!
I don’t believe it!
They’d made a camp of sorts on the beach with colorful towels and low-slung chairs. From somewhere Sara had found them a basket of teen beach toys—a paddle tennis set, a soft football, and a Frisbee. She’d directed them to a storage shed where they’d located a pair of two-person pedal boats that they’d lugged down to the sand.
The surf was flat enough today—just small ankle-washers—that they’d be able to paddle around in the ocean almost as if it were a lake.
For now the trio seemed content to laze in their chairs and check their phones…to the accompaniment of Essie’s endless chatter.
On the deck overlooking their encampment, Joaquin settled on a lounger beneath an umbrella. Its shade and his sunglasses gave him a fair fight against the glare as he studied business reports on his tablet.
There were a few other beachgoers in the distance and seagulls swooping and shrieking, but he tuned it all out as he focused on the latest dispatches from Patrick. He was frowning over a press release when he felt eyes on him.
He glanced up to find Essie standing in front of him, her arms akimbo.
“Yes?” he asked, wary.
Beneath a messy bun on the top of her head, her big brown eyes studied him.
“What?” He ru
bbed a hand over the whiskers on his cheek. Should he have shaved?
“I’m just trying to figure you out,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day, and you haven’t looked up from your iPad. Not once. Have you considered you’re a workaholic?”
He cleared his throat and turned off the tablet. “How you do you know I wasn’t reading a book or watching a movie or…or playing Sudoku?”
Her head tilted. “Is that what you do for relaxation? Play games?”
“Uh…” From the corner of his eye, he saw Sara walk onto the deck, a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic glasses in her hand. She set them on a nearby table.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” Essie shook her head, sighed. “I suppose that means you don’t have any hobbies, either.”
“I go to the gym,” he said, hoping his tone didn’t sound defensive. “And I…” His mind went blank.
His little sister’s expression made clear she pitied him. “Joaquin…”
“No, wait.” He wracked his brain for a PG form of entertainment he could claim to have enjoyed in recent months. Patrick might remember, he thought, reaching for his phone.
Then Joaquin’s hand dropped. In recent months? Who was he kidding? He hadn’t entertained himself in any form, PG or otherwise, in the last year.
“It’s been a busy time at work,” he muttered.
“I guess,” Essie said. “But it’s not good to have that your sole focus, Big Brother. You’ll turn into a dull dog. There are studies.”
“Essie!” Lulu called from the sand, brandishing a cell phone. “You just missed a text from Zachary.”
It got the girl moving. She swung around and returned to her friends. But instead of heading straight for her phone, she swiped the squishy football out of the basket and spiked it onto RJ’s belly. The boy instantly jumped to his feet and began chasing Essie down the sand. Lulu took up the rear, laughing maniacally.
Joaquin watched them for a few moments, then slanted a glance at Sara who was rearranging cushions on the nearby sofa. “Were you ever that young?”
“I suppose,” she replied, “since I passed up sixteen more than a decade ago.” Her gaze followed the teens as they hollered and shrieked and scampered. “But I don’t believe I was ever as high-spirited.”
The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) Page 7