Rachel sighed. “I’ll try. I’ll text you and let you know what Sophie is up for. Okay?”
As her sister walked away, Olivia sat down on the love seat. She’d already said too much tonight. The best thing she could do was give her sisters some space.
Fifteen minutes later, Rachel texted:
Sophie’s asleep. Zoe is on the phone with Joaquin and frankly, I’m exhausted. I think it would be best if we call it a night and start fresh with the brunch tomorrow morning.
I’m sorry I ruined the night. I feel so bad.
Not your fault. I think the reality of the wedding is finally hitting Sophie. She’ll be fine tomorrow.
Olivia wasn’t mad; she was frustrated. This wasn’t the way tonight was supposed to turn out—her sister in tears and the evening going up in flames.
Okay, maybe she was a little bit irritated. Why had they pushed her? Why had she been so weak as to give in? Sophie’d get over it. They’d be fine, but she needed to stay away until they all cooled off.
Olivia texted her again:
I’ll be up after I get something to eat. Want me to bring you something?
Thanks, but no. I’m going to talk to Matteo and then I’ll call it a night. Are you okay? Do you just want to come up to the suite and order room service?
It dawned on Olivia that her married sisters missed their husbands. Melancholy pushed at Olivia’s heart. As she looked up from her phone, thinking about how to answer, she caught Alejandro Mendoza looking at her. This time she didn’t look away.
She had plenty of drinks in front of her and a reservation for dinner for four that was about to become dinner for two. Olivia texted: I’m fine.
And she was about to get a whole lot better.
*
Alejandro couldn’t hear what the Fortune Robinson sisters were talking about on the other side of the bar, but one minute they’d been toasting, raising their Fuzzy Handcuffs high, and the next it looked like they were arguing.
He shouldn’t have been watching them. They were out for a girls’ night, which appeared innocent enough, but what man in his right mind could’ve kept his eyes off such a collection of beauties? They were like magnets. He couldn’t help but steal glances their way. His brothers were lucky men. Sophie would soon be married. What about Olivia? No doubt he’d meet the fortunate dude who’d claimed her heart at the wedding.
They’d seemed oblivious to him even as one by one they’d gotten up and left the party. First, Sophie left looking upset, followed by Zoe looking concerned. And finally Rachel, looking like a mother hen.
Olivia was the only one who remained. She’d been sitting alone for a solid five minutes staring at the tray of drinks the bartender had delivered shortly before the mass exodus. Maybe her sisters were coming back? Maybe she could use some company until they did. Alejandro stood, slid his phone into his shirt pocket and went over to Olivia.
“Is the party over already?” he asked.
She blinked up at him as if he’d startled her out of deep thought—or deep, stubborn brooding, based on her irritated expression. That full bottom lip of hers stuck out a little more than he remembered from when he saw her at his brothers’ weddings.
As she gazed up at him, she pulled it between her teeth for a pensive moment before she spoke.
“May I ask you a question, Alejandro?” She slurred her words ever so slightly.
“Sure.”
“Do you believe in love?”
“Is that a trick question?” He laughed and cocked his right brow in a way that always seemed to get him out of tight spots and trick questions like this one.
Answering questions about love qualified as a very tight spot, because the last thing he wanted to do right now was get into a debate about affairs of the heart with a woman who’d had too many Fuzzy Handcuffs. In his experience, drunk women pondering love were usually vulnerable women, especially when their sisters were all married or in the process of getting hitched.
“No, it’s not a trick question,” Olivia said. “In fact, it’s a fairly straightforward yes-or-no query. You either believe in love or you don’t. So what’s it going to be, Alejandro? Yes or no?”
Wow. Olivia Fortune Robinson was a force. An intense force. And he could see that she wasn’t going to let him off the hook without a satisfactory answer. The problem was, he didn’t want to talk about love.
He’d been a believer once—but that was a long time ago. Another lifetime ago, when things were a lot simpler. So simple, in fact, that he’d never had to ponder love’s existence. He’d just had to feel; he’d simply had to be.
He hadn’t thought about love for a very long time. It had been even longer since he’d felt any emotion even remotely resembling it. In fact, these days he didn’t feel anything. But he definitely didn’t want to conjure ghosts from the past, because they haunted him randomly even without an invitation.
“You’re not going to answer me, are you?” Olivia said.
He smiled to lighten the mood. “That’s some heavy pondering for such a festive occasion. Where did everybody go? And more important, are you going to drink all those Fuzzy Handcuffs all by yourself? Because if your sisters left you to your own devices, what kind of gentleman would I be to let you drink alone?”
She gestured with an unsteady wave of her hand.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m used to drinking alone.” She grimaced. “And even though I might be a little tipsy, I’m not so drunk that I don’t realize how pathetic that just sounded. Please, sit down and save me from myself.”
“If you insist,” he said and lowered himself onto the cowhide-patterned love seat that was set perpendicular to her chair. As he made himself comfortable, she shifted her body so that she was angled in his direction and crossed one long, lean, tanned leg over the other.
Damn.
If he’d been a weaker man he might have reached out and run a hand up the tempting expanse, past where skin disappeared under that sexy little black slip of a thing that was riding a little too high on her toned thighs—not in a trashy way, because there wasn’t a trashy thing about her. Olivia Fortune Robinson seemed to have mastered the art of classy-sexy, which was a very beautiful fine line to walk.
And he was also treading a very fine line, because Olivia Fortune Robinson was so very off-limits, since she was practically family.
He lifted a drink off the tray and handed it to her, then he took one for himself and raised it to hers. She looked him square in the eyes as they clinked glasses.
“You know, they say you’ll have seven years of bad sex if you don’t look the person you’re toasting in the eyes as you say cheers,” she said.
“I guess that means we’ll have good sex,” he said, still holding her gaze.
“Will we?” She sipped her drink.
He knew she was baiting him and he also knew she was probably drunker than she realized. The drinks were more powerful than they looked. The kind that went down easily and, before you knew it, knocked you flat on your ass. Probably not so dissimilar from the effect that Olivia Fortune Robinson had on men.
“Are you hungry?” Olivia asked.
“For food? Or did you have something else in mind?”
She tilted her head to the side. “You’re a naughty boy, aren’t you, Alejandro?”
Her words were unwavering and unabashed.
He shrugged.
“I made a dinner reservation for four at the Driskill Grill,” she said. “It seems my sisters can’t make it. The only thing worse than drinking alone is dining alone in a fancy restaurant. What do you say, Alejandro? Will you let me take you to dinner?”
“That depends on what you expect in return,” he said. “Are you going to feed me and then try to take advantage of me?”
“Absolutely.”
This was fun. Much more fun than poring over facts and figures of the Hummingbird Ridge purchase.
When he was fresh out of college, would he have found bantering with a clever woman
preferable to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the details that would make his hard-won business dream a reality? Then again, he hadn’t eaten and he was starving.
“In that case,” he said, “how can I refuse?”
He knocked back the last of his drink. It was a lot stronger that it appeared.
“Good,” Olivia said, handing him another drink from the tray. “The reservation isn’t until eight o’clock. We have time to finish our cocktails.”
They clinked glasses, locking gazes again before they sipped and settled into an uncomfortable silence. Alejandro was way too aware of how damn sexy she looked in that black dress, too intent on that full mouth that kept commanding his attention, speaking to the most primal needs in him.
He didn’t do well with silence.
“Is this your favorite kind of drink?” he asked.
“Me? No. I’m all about champagne. This drink was made especially for the brides-to-be.”
“I don’t mean to be nosy, but is everything okay with your sisters?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure they’re fine. That reminds me. You didn’t answer my question. Do you believe in love? I’m guessing you do. Because what else would possess you to tattoo a woman’s name on your arm? Who is Anna?”
Reflexively, his right hand found his left forearm, covered the ornate script.
“Anna was someone who made me know that love is very real. But I also learned that love can be a total SOB, too.”
Olivia leaned in. “You said ‘was.’ So I’m guessing that Anna is no longer in the picture?”
The curtain of dread that always closed around him when he remembered Anna started falling. “No, she is no longer in the picture.”
That’s all he was going to say. He was opening his mouth to change the subject when Olivia got up from her chair and sat down next to him on the love seat.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” she slurred. “People accuse me of a lot of things, but no one can ever say I go after another woman’s man. You don’t have a girlfriend who isn’t named Anna, do you, Alejandro?”
He shook his head. His gaze fell to her lips. She was sitting enticingly close to him. Suddenly, the room temperature seemed to spike.
“Good,” she slurred again as she slid her arms around his neck. “Because I’m going to kiss you. You don’t mind if I kiss you, do you, Alejandro?”
Before the words hell no could pass his lips, her lips closed over his and smothered the reply.
At first, the kiss was surprisingly gentle, tentative. She tasted like the cocktails they’d been drinking and fresh summer berries and something else he hadn’t realized he’d been craving for a very long time. When she opened her mouth wider, inviting him in, passion took over and the gentle kiss morphed into wild, ravenous need, feeding a hunger that he didn’t realize was consuming him. He reveled in it, wallowed in it, until it blocked out everything else.
She moved against him, sliding her hands over his shoulders and down his back.
A rush of hot need surged through him. His hands followed the outline of her curves until he cupped her bottom and pulled her closer. Damn. She felt good. Keeping one hand on her, he found the hem of her dress with his other and dipped his fingertips beneath the silky barrier that stood between them.
When she moaned into their kiss, he wanted to pull her onto his lap.
But she was drunk and they were in the bar of the hotel where her sister was getting married next weekend. He had enough of his wits about him to know that if she wasn’t in the shackles of too many Fuzzy Handcuffs, she probably wouldn’t be doing this. She’d probably be mortified tomorrow.
“Alejandro, take me to your room.” Her words were hot on his neck and his body was saying Let’s go. Now.
But he couldn’t. And not for lack of want or interest. It just wasn’t right. Not when she was like this.
He stood up and gently tugged her to her feet.
“What’s your room number?”
Copyright © 2017 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781488014253
Her Kind of Doctor
Copyright © 2017 by Stella Bagwell
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