Chapter 12
Later that night, Joaquin rapped his knuckles on the door to the butler’s quarters. It swung open an inch to reveal one bright blue eye. He lifted the plate holding a slab of chocolate cake in its line of vision without saying a word.
The gap between door and jamb widened in an instant.
His butler frowned at him, her brows almost meeting over her small straight nose. “More chocolate cake?”
“For you. And I thought it was carob.”
“And I notice there are two forks.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
Joaquin leaned his shoulder against the jamb. “You didn’t eat much of your other slice. I didn’t want to chance any of this piece going to waste.”
“Why are you here, Joaquin?”
He hesitated, frowning, as his gaze ran over her figure. “Are those pajamas?”
She glanced down at the light cotton garments, designed like something a little boy might wear. “What else would they be?”
“I’ve never seen anything like them. They’re printed with teapots and—” he leaned closer “—are those flying pieces of toast?”
Sara’s cheeks turned pink. “The set is a present from Emmaline.”
“Cute. So can I come in?”
“Joaquin, your mother and Martin…”
“It will only take a few minutes.” He’d talked with the older couple and then Essie, only to realize he wouldn’t sleep unless he spoke with Sara too. “Please.”
On a sigh, she stepped back. The space was lowly lit by a lamp on the bureau. He moved inside and slipped the plate onto the small table beside the bed. As he glanced at the turned down sheets, a wave of exhaustion washed over him. Was it only last night that they’d rolled around there?
Suddenly, it was too much effort to cross to the loveseat or even continue standing, so he dropped to the edge of the mattress. Sara stayed where she was, and he took a closer look at her. Was that unhappiness lurking in those big blue eyes? “You seemed off earlier. Is something the matter?”
She blinked, then looked away. “You seemed off, too.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s why I’m here. To explain myself.”
“Oh?”
He patted the bed beside him. “Sit down.”
Her approach was wary. Her perch on the mattress hesitant.
“I’m not going to pounce,” he said, then smiled. “Yet.”
She didn’t smile back.
He sighed. “Okay. I wasn’t at my best today because at the end of the month it’s the fifteenth anniversary.”
Her eyes widened and her body stilled. “Of…?”
“Felipe’s death.” He tried to keep his tone matter-of-fact. “Usually…usually it’s a hard time of year for me.”
“Joaquin.” Sara slid closer and put her hand over his. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Usually my old buddy Mick Hastings and I get together for a couple of days and drink ourselves into numbness. Our way of coping.”
Sara squeezed his hand. “But?”
“But this year Mick isn’t coming. I got the phone call this morning, right before Renata and Martin arrived.”
“Oh, dear.” She hesitated, then shifted, drawing one knee onto the mattress to better face him. “When that day comes, even if Mick isn’t here, you don’t have to be alone.”
Her sympathetic gaze felt like a comfort he didn’t deserve. Closing his eyes, he fell back onto the bed. God, he was tired. “Based on my behavior today, I think we all might agree I’m better alone, actually.”
“Your mother—”
“I apologized to her.”
“Did you?”
“She didn’t deserve what I said. I usually keep myself on a tight leash when it comes to Renata, but tonight…”
“I think she feels remorse for the past.”
“Yeah, she does. And dredging up old hurts won’t change what happened. But I think she’s changed. Essie made me see that. Not only did she tell me our mother regrets that she left Felipe and me, but then there’s Essie herself. Despite her little tantrum at the dinner table—”
“Teenager stuff.”
“Yeah. I talked to her, too. She thinks Zachary wants to break up, which is why she was so keen on getting to see him.”
“Oh, poor Essie.”
“I think she’ll survive no matter what happens. She’s a resilient kid, and Renata and Martin have her back. I can tell now that I’ve seen them together.”
“I agree.”
Joaquin opened his eyes to see Sara stretched on the bed, too, elbow propped on the mattress, head in her hand.
That face. Those bright eyes, the lush mouth. He reached over to stroke her cheek. “Which brings me to you. I shouldn’t have insisted you be part of that dinner.”
“It’s all right.”
“It made you uncomfortable. I never want to make you uncomfortable.” He caressed her soft skin again. “Who knew I needed a butler?” he mused aloud.
“Patrick.”
He smiled. “You’re funny.” An emotion rolled through him that he couldn’t name, and he had to touch her again. “Let me…” His fingers drew down her neck to linger where her pulse beat. It thrummed against his fingertips, and he saw a flush turn her face a lovely pink. Suddenly, he wasn’t so tired.
Suddenly, he had other wants besides sleep.
“Let me take you to bed, Sara.”
“We can’t have sex with your parents in the house,” she declared, clearly flustered by the idea.
He smiled. How he enjoyed a flustered butler. His finger traced the tailored lapel of her adorable pajamas, prim, like he knew she wasn’t once he got her naked. “I don’t want to have sex. Instead let me make…” What was the best way to say it?
With a gentle push, he took her to her back and then rolled on top of her. “Let me make sweet with you, Sara.”
“Joaquin…”
But it wasn’t a protest or a refusal, because she threaded her fingers in his hair and drew down his head so they could kiss.
And kiss they did. Sweet, as he’d promised, and as if they had all the time in the world. As if kisses were an end unto themselves.
She must have just bathed because her skin was fresh with that special Sara-scent. He buried his nose against her throat and breathed her in, the fragrance soothing him. Her touch tended to his raw emotions, and he hoped he returned the favor, his hands gentle and slow. As he undressed her, he cherished each new section of skin bared to him—the slope of her breasts, the ticklish skin over her ribs, that place between her navel and her mons.
He lingered there, spreading kisses from hipbone to hipbone and watched while she undulated, clearly enjoying his attentions.
Then she flipped him to his back and it was her turn to undress and explore, but without the urgency of their other couplings. She played with his hands, inspecting each finger and rubbing them against her lips as if memorizing his texture and his taste.
In the quiet of the night, between the kisses and sighs, Joaquin became aware of the sound of the ocean’s waves. In the past weeks he’d become accustomed to their constant noise, from the crash when the surf was high to their gentle shush, like tonight, when they tossed themselves gently but relentlessly against the sand.
His desire for her matched that persistent rhythm. It beat in his blood but didn’t hurry him, and as her breathing sped up, he slowed his hands. She was under him again, and he cruised his lips over her jaw and to her ear and down her neck.
Her nipples were beaded and stiff, and he suckled them with a soft, insistent suction, until her breath hitched and her legs wound around his hips. His cock bathed in the heated wetness between her thighs and a bolt of lust shot through him but he ignored it to slide down her body and feast on that soft flesh.
She cried out as he slid two fingers inside her velvety grip, and he lapped at her clit as he stroked inside her, steady but tender.
He could do this forever, he thought, hold her in his hands and feel the
rising pleasure in her body. When her breath caught and she jerked like a fish trying to get free of a line, he gripped her tighter but lightened his strokes in order to sustain the bliss that heated her skin and made her fingers strangle the sheets.
At her final orgasmic twitch, he freed himself from her to grab a condom from the drawer in the bedside table. She watched him roll it down his heavy shaft, and her eyes on him made it ache and throb. He traced her features with his gaze and looked at the picture she made, laid out like a prize.
“You’re so lovely,” he said. “You take my breath.”
But his heart was still beating and his cock was still alive, and he made a place for himself inside her—slow slow slow—until he was balls-deep in her blistering, mind-blowing heat. She tightened her interior muscles, clenching him like a fist, and he moaned.
“You’re trying to make me mad,” he accused.
Her only answer was a smile that prodded his lust to new heights. But he didn’t heed its urge to rut. Instead, he again took his direction from the waves and pushed in and pulled out, pushed in and pulled out, like the night would never give way to dawn, like the world would never end, like they should be joined for millennium.
But of course they were human after all, and it was Sara who proved it. She began rising to each of his strokes, tipping her hips to take more of him, and when her breaths were harsh in his ear he slid his hand between their bodies and found that hard, wet trigger at the top of her sex.
A short caress, another, and then she was on her way again, her body latching onto his cock to take it with her on the ride. He shuddered as he came, staring into those eyes that had amazed him from the beginning. The blue of trust, loyalty, peace.
Whether or not he deserved those things, he wanted them.
Afterward, contentment settled over him as they lay close together sharing a pillow. Exhaustion joined next and his eyelids felt as if weights were attached to each lash. “I’ll get up in a minute,” he murmured. “I know you don’t want me here.”
“Never that,” she whispered.
Smiling, he found her hand and brought it to his lips. “You know what I mean.”
He heard her sigh, but wasn’t sure if it was a happy sound or a sad one.
“I’m really sorry for earlier, you know,” he murmured, sleep tugging at him hard. “At the table. I usually have better control.”
But he’d done his best to fix things, and now well-being flowed through him. He couldn’t remember a time when it warmed him like tonight. He kissed Sara’s fingers again, letting his body roll out on the tide of sleep.
Beside him, Sara stirred. Her fingers slipped from his loosening hold. She turned to her side, her backside just brushing his hip, then she drew up legs, then she flipped onto her back again.
“Can’t get comfortable?” he said in his mind, but it came out slurred and drowsy. “Cn g cmbl?”
She didn’t answer, probably figuring he was halfway to dreamland, which was true. But when she stirred again, he tried rousing himself. “Whatzit?”
Damn, still sounding half-drunk.
“Sump on your min?”
Her reply sounded like a half-stifled giggle.
“Jus say out loud,” he advised, from his place somewhere on a cloud. “Then ull sleep.” His cloud drifted farther above the bed as he felt Sara tuck herself close to him again. He breathed, steady and slow, and her head settled onto his chest.
Though he wanted to curl his arm around her, it was too heavy to lift.
“Joaquin Weatherford,” she said, her voice barely penetrating the edges of his sleep. “I’m afraid I’m in love with you.”
Her whisper might have come from the dream about to snatch him away, but his heart stuttered, telling him that wasn’t so. He didn’t move, waiting for the phrase to jolt him with alarm, to galvanize him into movement, to send some joking response from his mouth so she’d know he didn’t believe a word she’d said.
Instead, pleasure poured through him and he rode the feeling into a deep, deep slumber.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Emmaline said to Sara, her hands around her latté cup while her gaze scanned the tables at the beachside café. “When I see Mr. Curry arrive—I’m supposed to recognize him by his white shirt, khaki pants, and the fact that he’s carrying today’s paper—I’ll pop up and we’ll find another table.”
“I’m happy to wait with you. It’s my day off,” Sara answered. And of course she’d been glad to have a real reason to leave the house early that morning. Joaquin had left her bed sometime in the night, and she was in no way eager to face him today.
For some foolish reason she’d told him she was in love with him.
Though she’d been certain he was sleeping, why had she risked the whisper?
Sara sighed. She knew why. Lying next to Joaquin, replete, she’d been willing to chance it because she’d wanted to say the words out loud, if only the one time. If only while he lay in that near-comatose state.
But now she worried he might somehow pull the memory from the dream banks of his sleep. Or that he’d read on her face the truth.
Emmaline tucked her dark hair behind her ears. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”
Sara focused on her friend, ready to be distracted from her own unease. “Because you’re a step away from getting a job you need.”
“True. Funds are running very low, and my success with scratch-off lottery tickets isn’t keeping up with the cost of living.”
A lottery win was what had funded Emmaline’s tuition to the Continental Butler Academy. She’d been backpacking around Europe for a few years, scraping together travel money through au pair jobs and teaching English. When a providential gamble on the Irish Lotto had garnered her a modest windfall, she’d told Charlie and Sara she’d heeded an impulse and applied to the butler school. Free spirit Emmaline was big on impulse—and lucky hunch-heeding.
Sara reached across the table to pat her friend’s hand. “It’s going to be okay. You said you’re sure his sister liked you in her interview. That’s why she passed on your name to her brother.”
“Yes.” Emmaline blew out a breath. “Apparently he’s some genius tech guy who needs help picking out his suits and ties as well as tending to his household needs. Actually, she said what he really requires is a wife, and I said I could be all that without the inconvenience of a wedding or the embarrassment of getting naked.”
Sara’s brows shot high. “Embarrassment? I never heard you say you think sex is embarrassing.”
Her friend waved that away. “You know what I mean. Like when that guy with great potential you take home at midnight can’t bring it between the sheets and you wonder if it’s you. Then it’s embarrassing to look at your own reflection in the mirror the next morning.”
“Emmaline—”
“I’ve given up on sex altogether, actually. Because for all my good fortune when it comes to the lottery, I have terrible luck when it comes to men.” The other woman grimaced. “I’m nervous babbling. Tell me about you. What’s going on at Nueva Vida?”
Sara leaned back in her chair. “The potted plumeria by the front entrance is starting to bloom—the flowers smell wonderful. And I patched and re-painted one wall in the laundry room that the workmen dinged when they installed the dryer.”
Emmaline tilted her head. “You love the place.”
“Is it so obvious?”
Smiling, Emmaline nodded. “And what’s new with the handsome master of the house?”
“Oh. Well.” Sara stared down at her coffee. “He’s kind to his sister. His mother and he are coming to a new understanding.”
“You like and respect him.”
“Yes,” said Sara, latching on to that. “Like and respect.”
“Hmm.” Emmaline tapped her index finger against her chin. “Can I venture to guess you might even be a trifle…fond of him?”
“Sure.” Why not? “Fond is a good word.”
“Ah-hah!” her fri
end said, triumphant. “I knew it! We’re speaking in euphemisms again! Like Charlie, you’re in—”
“Emmaline,” Sara said, hushed but urgent. “Um, khaki pants, white shirt, and a newspaper just arrived on the patio.”
“You’re only trying to get out of admitting—”
“And he’s clearly looking for someone.”
“No fooling?” Emmaline’s body tensed, then she glanced over her shoulder. Her head whipped back, her eyes wide and almost panicked. “That can’t be him. Sara, that can’t be him.”
“Um, why not?”
“Because that would mean Lady Luck is having a big ol’ laugh at my expense. Is he going away?”
Sara shook her head. “What’s the problem?” The thirtyish man was strikingly handsome if somewhat rumpled, with blue eyes, dark hair, and a day’s worth of stubble.
Emmaline put her head in her hand. “He’s the guy I told you about. The great potential, but no follow through once I brought him home. We struck up a conversation while waiting for missing luggage at the airport the night I arrived in L.A.”
“He’s coming this way, Em.”
“God, oh God.” She squeezed shut her eyes for several seconds, then opened them again to glance downward. “Since there’s no hole in the floor at my feet, I guess I’ll just have to face him.”
“You can do it,” Sara encouraged.
Sucking in a breath, her friend squared her shoulders and stood, turning just as Great Potential arrived at their table.
He stared at the brunette—something ninety-nine percent of the population did because of her eye-catching beauty—but in his gaze was no recognition at all.
Emmaline shot Sara a swift look. Do you see what I’m seeing?
With a little nod, Sara stood too, her coffee cup in hand. “Maybe your luck with men is turning around,” she murmured and strolled away just as Emmaline shot out her hand in Mr. Curry’s direction.
Later, after Sara had spent some time working the soil in Carol Madigan’s garden space, she returned to Nueva Vida. Seeing no one around, she washed and dried two loads of her own personal laundry then stood at the counter beside the appliances to fold the garments, contemplating the two texts Emmaline had sent earlier.
The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) Page 18