by Sabrina Sol
When he finally entered the first floor lobby of the twenty-story high rise that was home to the office of Tucker, Miller, Perez & Associates, Brandon was officially ten minutes late for his nine o’clock appointment. He stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the eighteenth floor.
Thankfully he was all alone. He leaned sideways against the elevator wall and closed his eyes. Although he’d hoped to use the next several seconds to calm down his worked up nerves, flashes of the last time he’d been in an elevator invaded his mind and worked up another part of his body. It had only been two weeks since he’d almost slept with Daisy, yet it seemed like another lifetime ago.
The elevators doors opened, saving him from having to relive it in his head for the umpteenth time.
“Good morning, Mr. Montoya. It’s so nice to see you as always,” the redhead at the reception desk purred when he walked up to her.
“It’s nice to see you, too. Is he ready for me?” For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the redhead’s name. Usually he enjoyed flirting with her, but today he just wasn’t in the mood. Maybe it was the traffic. Maybe it was everything that had happened in Puerto Rico the past two weeks.
Or maybe it’s because she’s not Daisy.
The thought seemed ridiculous. Why would he even think it?
“Look at who they let back into town.” The booming voice of his lawyer and good friend Dante Perez interrupted his thoughts. Brandon nodded to the redhead and walked over to Dante, who was standing just beyond the lobby. His friend reached out and shook his hand. “How have you been, compadre?”
“I was fine until I had to drive on the freeway. Made me miss Puerto Rico.”
“I bet. And Lorena? How is she?”
“Stubborn as always.”
“Well, she is your mother.”
“That’s what she likes to tell me. Oh, and she sends her love and wants to know when you’re going to go visit her because she knows a girl.”
They exchanged knowing looks and his friend smiled and shook his head. His mother had given up a long time ago on setting Brandon up with the nice Catholic girls she met at her church. However, she was determined to still play matchmaker for Dante, whom she insisted must be a long lost son of her favorite singer Julio Iglesias because of his dark hair, dark eyes, and year-round natural tan. Brandon always insisted his friend had no problem finding girlfriends on his own. But that didn’t deter his mother. “I’m not going to find him a girlfriend, I’m going to find him a wife!” she’d say and continue to mail random photos and phone numbers to Brandon so he could pass them along. Which he never did. Except this time, he actually considered it. His friend seemed to be in some kind of dating slump. It had been months since he’d brought a woman to the restaurant or even talked about meeting one.
Dante blamed his dry spell on work. And for right now, Brandon accepted the excuse because he had more pressing things to worry about than whether his friend was getting laid on a regular basis.
They’d reached Dante’s office and he motioned for Brandon to take a seat on one of the leather chairs next to his desk.
“Lorena is always watching out for me, isn’t she? Please tell her that I’m praying for her,” Dante said as he sat down across from him.
“I will. Thank you, my friend.”
Silence fell between them, as if neither wanted to bring up why Brandon had been forced to stop at Dante’s office before heading in to the restaurant.
Finally, Dante cleared his throat. “So…did you see it?”
“Nope. Show me.”
Brandon watched as Dante pulled a manila envelope out of his top desk drawer. He handed it to Brandon. “Who is she?”
Brandon sighed and opened the envelope. “She’s an event planner I work with sometimes. Her cousin owns Robles’ Panaderia and…son of a bitch!”
It was a hard copy of an article from one of the online tabloid websites. Brandon didn’t even look at the article and instead focused on the photo right above it. The fuzzy, yet discernible, image of him and Daisy making out in front of her hotel room door ignited a blaze of emotions within him. Desire, rage, frustration—they all boiled to the surface. The invasion of privacy was beyond reprehensible. What happened between him and Daisy that night was one of the most intimate moments that could happen between two people. And now some fucking tabloid had cheapened it.
In the two years since the restaurant had been featured on a few national TV shows, he’d been the target of more than one paparazzi attack. He usually didn’t care when he was met with a barrage of flashes after leaving a nightclub. If people were talking about him, they were talking about the restaurant, too. And the women on his arm enjoyed the attention. Hell, some of them probably dated him just for the chance of being photographed.
But this was different. Daisy was different. And he felt violated for her.
He couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. He shoved it back into the envelope and tossed it back to Dante. “Who took it?”
“The editor wouldn’t tell me. The article’s source is a hotel employee so I got my hands on employment and social security records and there’s one name that stands out.”
“Who is it?”
“Felipe Campos.”
“Fuck!” Brandon roared and stood up, unable to contain his rage any longer. Felipe Campos was a piece of shit former employee who’d swindled the restaurant—and Alex—then sued for wrongful termination when they let him go. “It has to be him. But how? I mean I would’ve seen…” Then it hit him—Daisy’s warning that someone had been watching them in the hallway.
“I’m actually surprised he didn’t contact you or me first,” Dante said. “You’d think he’d try to get you to pay him for the photos.”
Brandon shook his head. “No. This was about revenge. When the judge threw out his lawsuit, he threatened that he’d find a way to get back at me. This way, he gets some money out of it, too.”
“Really? You think he’s that pissed off?”
“Come on Dante. I’ve been in Puerto Rico for two weeks. Why didn’t the story break a few days ago? No, he somehow made sure all hell would break loose when I got back to town. My sister really knows how to pick them, huh?”
“I’m trying to keep my mouth shut when it comes to your sister’s exes. But this guy gives scumbags a bad name.”
“Maybe I should’ve just paid him to get out of our lives.”
“He only would’ve come back and demanded double,” Dante explained. “Guys like this don’t disappear once they get a taste of free money.”
It still gnawed at him that he’d been the one to bring Felipe into the restaurant in the first place. The guy had everyone fooled, including Alex, in the beginning. Besides cheating on his sister, it turned out he’d also been cheating the restaurant by paying himself extra through forged invoices. When Brandon threatened to call the police, Felipe threatened to drag his sister through a sexual harassment lawsuit, since she’d technically been his boss when they had started dating. So Brandon fired him and made sure no one in the industry would ever hire him again. Felipe tried to sue him anyway. Thank God the judge had seen right through it.
“Brandon, there’s more.” Dante’s serious tone shook him out of his thoughts.
“What else could there fucking be?”
“You didn’t read the article. In it, the unnamed hotel employee supposedly has proof that you and Daisy were secretly married two weeks ago.”
He couldn’t hold in the laughter if he tried. The tension he’d been feeling just a few seconds ago evaporated. There was no way Felipe could prove he and Daisy were married.
Dante looked at him with squinty eyes. “I’m glad you find this so funny.”
Brandon caught his breath. “Sorry, man. It’s just the most ridiculous thing in the world. Me? Married? I don’t know what so-called proof Felipe has, but I can assure you there is nothing that proves I got married two weeks ago. I attended a friend’s wedding and I hooked up with
the maid of honor. End of story.”
“Really? I mean, I kind of thought it was farfetched. At least, I hoped I’d be one of the first ones to know if you decided to tie the knot.”
“Trust me, my friend,” he said, still smiling. “You would be, because I’d be calling you almost immediately to file my divorce papers.”
Dante visibly relaxed. “Well, good. I feel better now. I’m assuming you want me to call the tabloid and demand a retraction?”
“And add that if they don’t, you’ll be filing lawsuit papers tomorrow.”
“What about Daisy?”
The mention of her name stilled him. “What about her?”
“Do I need to contact her and get her to sign the standard non-disclosure agreement? Felipe may not have a story to sell, but if you two spent the night together then it’s best if we lock it down now.”
He almost laughed out loud again. Sleeping on the couch in her hotel room wasn’t exactly spending the night together. “No need. We don’t have to worry about Daisy going to the tabloids, too.”
“Are you sure?”
He was sure. There wasn’t any story to tell. At least not one that the tabloids would be interested in. “She’s a friend. No non-disclosure agreement.”
“If you think that’s best…” Dante pulled the article out of the envelope again and fed it to the shredder next to his desk.
He’d been friends with Dante too long not to notice the tone behind his words. “I do think that’s best, but it sounds like you don’t.”
Dante shrugged. “I’m just the lawyer. What do I know?”
“Spill it.”
“Look, as your lawyer I’ll give you all the legal advice I can,” he continued. “And as your friend, I’ll give you all the personal advice you’ll let me. Either way, it’s up to you whether you take it or not.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d done something without listening to Dante’s advice. And so far, everything had worked out just fine. He already owned two very successful restaurants and was working hard on a third. When it came to business, his gut of steel never steered him wrong.
In fact, if he’d listened to his gut the night of Amara’s wedding, instead of another part of his anatomy, there’d be no photo or article at all.
“Look, I get that you’re just watching out for me. But I can trust Daisy. She’s not the sort of girl who would sell me out like that. No matter what happened between us.”
Dante nodded. “I guess you’re right. Besides, she’s probably just as pissed at seeing herself plastered all over the Internet this morning.”
And that’s when Brandon’s so-called steel gut flinched.
Chapter Four
So this is what an over-steamed zucchini feels like.
Daisy walked out of The Quiet Soul yoga studio with soggy clothes and limp body parts. The twenty or so feet to her car might as well have been five hundred. When she finally made it, she flopped onto the front seat and guzzled down her third bottle of water. Yep, her first class of extreme hot yoga would definitely be her last.
She had wanted to try it ever since the studio began offering it a few weeks ago, but she usually arrived too late for the sold-out 7:30 a.m. class. Today, though, she’d set every alarm in her apartment in order to make sure she’d get up on time for the class others had described to her as “an invigorating experience.”
Invigorating? My sweat-soaked ass it is.
What a fool she had been. Yoga was already hard enough. Why on the earth had anyone wanted to make it life threatening, too?
Daisy sat behind the wheel for a few minutes trying to cool down, but it didn’t work. She needed to turn on the A/C but even reaching out to turn on the ignition seemed beyond her capabilities at that moment. Then her yoga bag buzzed with another dilemma.
It was sitting all the way across the car on the passenger seat. Getting it would involve stretching her body and she was so done with stretching.
What if it’s a potential customer? You’ll kick yourself if you don’t answer.
Daisy heaved her arm toward her bag and pulled out her cell phone. “Please be someone who can bring me more water and turn on the car for me,” she groaned after seeing an unfamiliar number on the display screen.
“Hello,” she said with more energy than she felt.
“Can I speak with Daisy?” a man’s voice replied.
“This is she. How can I help you?”
“Hi Daisy. My name is Oliver and I’m doing a follow-up article to the story that ran today on the Gossip Town website about your secret wedding to L.A. Cuchara owner Brandon Montoya. Is it true he made you sign a pre-nup?”
Her phone slipped out of her grasp from either shock or her clammy hand. She quickly picked it up off her lap, wiped the sweat off with the hem of her T-shirt and put it back against her ear. “Whoa there. Who did you say you were again? What article?”
The man sighed. “I’m Oliver Jones, a reporter with the online entertainment website Gossip Town. Didn’t you see the article we ran today about you and your new husband?”
Even if she had ever heard of the site, she’d been too busy drowning in her own perspiration to go online this morning. “No, I didn’t see it. And I don’t know what you think you know, but I’m not married to Brandon Montoya.”
“I have a copy of the reservation form for the honeymoon suite at the Hotel Esperanza and a copy of the banquet and catering statement that say otherwise.”
“That was my cousin’s wedding, idiot. Of course all of the paperwork is going to have my name on it because I was the freaking wedding planner. And I’m pretty positive that nowhere on that paperwork does it say that I’m the one that got married that day, or that I married Brandon.”
“Uh-huh. I see. Can I quote you on that?”
“Yes, you can quote me on that and then you can shove that same quote right up your ass,” she yelled and hung up.
Her phone buzzed again and she swiped it to answer without looking at the number. “Call me again and I’ll show you exactly what it means to suffer for your art.”
“What art? Why are you yelling at me?”
“Amara! Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I thought you were this nasty reporter. You’ll never guess what happened.”
“People think you married Brandon.”
“People think—wait, you know?”
“Irma from next door showed me the article. Guess the party continued after we left the hotel, huh? I didn’t realize he could be so, um, handsy?”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a picture with the article, Daisy. It shows you two going at it in one of the hotel hallways.”
The satisfaction that she hadn’t been paranoid about someone watching them that night was overshadowed by her sheer embarrassment. She didn’t have to look in her rearview mirror to know that her face, already warm from the yoga, burned even redder.
Daisy covered her eyes with her free hand. “I’m sorry, Amara. I was planning on telling you. But I wanted to wait until you came back from Hawaii.”
“We’ve been back for three days and I’ve seen you for two of them. What happened? You don’t even like him!”
This conversation was making her sweat all over again. She turned on the ignition and blasted the air. “I didn’t,” she said with a sigh as she held her face close to one of the vents. “I don’t, I mean. Well, not really. But I asked him to kiss me to make stupid Luis jealous and we did some tequila shots and it’s a long story that I’d rather not go into over the phone. I’ll come over and we can talk.”
“Fine. But you might want to wait a while before heading over. There’s some guy who keeps coming in to buy coffee and pan dulce. I think he’s looking for you. Maybe he’s that reporter who called you.”
“Ugh. Maybe. All right, call me when the coast is clear.”
“Okay. So what are you going to do?”
“Right now? Well, I’m going to try to drive myself home without passing o
ut, then I’m going to wring out the clothes I’m wearing and eventually take a very long and very cold shower. Then I’m going to head over to L.A. Cuchara. Brandon is supposed to be back from Puerto Rico today, and I think it’s time for me and my new husband to have a little chat.”
Chapter Five
God, could this day get any worse?
Brandon examined the crinkled corner of his five-month-old Jaguar’s back fender and resisted the urge to utter every single curse word he knew in English and in Spanish. He was parked in the alleyway behind L.A. Cuchara, but it was lunchtime and he could see people already gathering on the sidewalk as they waited for an open table. He didn’t want to cause a scene—he’d already done that outside the bank after the other car ran into him while he was pulling out of the parking space. The other driver had the nerve to blame him for not paying attention even though the guy still clutched his phone in his hand while waving and screaming at Brandon. He’d lost it and screamed right back. It wasn’t until the police showed up that he finally calmed down.
But now after inspecting the damage up close, he became riled up all over again. What in the world had he done to deserve such a shitty day?
After leaving Dante’s office, he’d gotten a phone call from his Miami contractor saying the city planners had pulled his restaurant proposal from the agenda of the next council meeting because of “issues” that had been raised in an independent traffic study. It was just another delay in a long list of bumps and detours he’d had to deal with over the past year, trying to get final approval to start renovations on the Miami Beach property he purchased with the intention of opening up his third restaurant—Miami Cuchara.
He’d been at the bank because he’d tried to use his personal credit card last night at the airport but it was declined. Someone had stolen the account information and had been on a spending spree back in Puerto Rico. It had taken him two hours to get everything straightened out.
The car accident had been the bitter topping on a pretty fucked up day.