by Olivia Gates
His throat tightened. “What you do will make a difference in those children’s psyches. I just throw my money and weight around, but I never made a child’s day better in person. Truth is, I never even interacted with one, until Diego today.”
“But without your ‘money and weight,’ we wouldn’t have the places and projects to offer any children anything.”
“So we complement each other.” She snuggled deeper into his chest, nodded. “We already knew that, just not how completely we do.”
Raising her face, her smile and gaze caressed him. “But you must now know everything about me since I sprouted my first baby teeth. And I know nothing about you.”
He rose on one elbow. “What do you need to know?”
“Tell me about your family.”
He’d been prepared with a fabricated history. But he couldn’t bear more lies between them than necessary. He’d tell her the truth—a carefully edited version of it.
“My parents divorced when I was ten. My mother remarried two years later and had three more children, two girls and a boy. My father remarried much later, and had two children, a girl and a boy. I exited their lives early and never reentered it. I sort of watch them from afar, keep my distance.”
“Is this what you want?”
“With my kind of life, with what I’ve been involved in, they were better off with me as far away as possible. When it became feasible for me to approach again, I still felt it wasn’t in their best interests for me to disrupt their lives.”
“How can you say that? I’m certain they’d love to have you be an integral part of their lives.”
He tickled her, trying to inject lightness into what was suddenly oppressively serious. “Who’s being biased?”
She grinned impishly, then turned back to seriousness at once. “But I really do imagine they would choose to be as close as possible to you if you gave them the choice.”
The talons in his throat sank a little deeper at her conviction. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
He expected her to probe this vagueness, but she only exhaled. “As long as you’re sure that it’s for the best. But even if it is, I still hate to think you’ve exiled yourself from your family. That you’ve chosen to be alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’m part of a...brotherhood, if you will.”
“One of them is that terror you have for a partner, huh?”
He guffawed at her wary-feline expression. “He was an addition to our brotherhood. He used to be my mentor.”
“He thinks he’s your father. Or your ‘Big Brother.’”
He laughed harder as she made the quotes gesture. “You’re uncanny. You analyze everything with such absolute accuracy.”
“He didn’t need analysis. He knocked me over the head with his ‘shining qualities.’” Another quote gesture.
“I assure you he hasn’t gotten and won’t get away with it. But speaking of family...I insulted your father almost as much as Richard did you.”
“Oh, no, there’s just no comparison. My father almost didn’t notice you, as anxious as he was about me.”
“I would still like to apologize. Will you please set up a proper meeting?”
A still look came into her eyes. “You want to meet him...as my father or as a potential partner?”
“Can’t I meet him as both?”
She grimaced. “You know where I stand on this issue.”
“Why don’t you let me handle this?”
“I’ve never been as miserable as I was last night, and I don’t want to risk something like that happening again.”
“It won’t. I promise.”
The troubled look that gripped her face almost made him tell her to forget it. But before he could say anything, she nodded, then nestled back into him.
As he received her into his embrace, that trust he craved, which she was bestowing on him in full again, weighed on him. It didn’t feel like a privilege anymore but a responsibility.
One he ultimately had to betray.
Seven
The meeting with Ferreira took place the very next afternoon. During lunch hour so it would be brief, at Eliana’s request.
Rafael picked Casa de Feijoada, a busy spot in the posh beachside Ipanema district, a mile away from Eliana’s place, and Ferreira’s offices, for their convenience. The restaurant was cozy, with a tropical, rattan-walled look and family-style table service. He came a bit early to arrange a table on the beach and order the lunch courses in advance so no unnecessary delays would occur during their hour-long meeting. They arrived at one o’clock sharp, and Eliana greeted him with the same ardent kiss with which she’d said goodbye when he’d left her apartment at 2:00 a.m.
Though she’d confided that she’d told her father everything, so he must have an idea how things stood between them, he glimpsed a spurt of anxiety in Ferreira’s eyes as he witnessed that intimacy. But like the gentleman everyone believed him to be, the impeccably dressed and behaved Ferreira made no comment. Not on that nor on Rafael’s offensive behavior during the last ball, nor his no-shows in the previous ones.
From then on, they settled down to the smooth flowing lunch courses. Apart from the effort Rafael expended to sit across from Ferreira—the man he’d once loved as an uncle and who’d betrayed him in the most unspeakable way—pretending this was their first real meeting, nothing of note happened.
Ironically, the man who’d been trying to meet him for the past two months didn’t seem to care that Rafael possibly held his professional future in his hands, only that he might affect his daughter’s adversely. Ferreira spent the entire lunch watching them interact, saying little. He never once broached the subject of the partnership. The only questions her father asked him were when Eliana went to the ladies’ room: oblique ones probing his intentions and warning him against toying with her. In turn, Rafael as indirectly let Ferreira know that where Eliana was concerned, they were on the same page. She came first to him, too.
That seemed to disturb Ferreira instead of reassure him. He considered Rafael’s statement an exaggeration, since the sum total of their liaison had taken place over three days. But when Rafael told him that the power of their connection had dispensed with the usual stages needed to reach their current level of involvement, Ferreira finally relaxed. Though he’d evidently never thought Rafael was capable of forging such a connection, from what he’d heard about him, he confessed that he knew how it could be that way from intimate experience. It had been the same between him and Eliana’s mother. They’d married a week after meeting and had lived ecstatically ever after—until aggressive pancreatic cancer had taken her from him.
On Eliana’s return, the conversation turned to anecdotes about Eliana’s mother, and her half brothers and their mother. Ferreira had had two extreme opposites in the marriage department. The first one when his father had arranged his marriage to his partner’s daughter and the battlefield that marriage had turned into. Then the marriage to the love of his life, which had started with love at first sight and had ended with him living in her memory and for their daughter.
The lunch ran thirty minutes longer than the agreed on hour before Ferreira rose to leave. As Rafael shook his hand, the man gave him a pointed look. Don’t hurt my daughter was the gist of the volumes it spoke. His answering look said I would never hurt her. He hoped the but I’ll hurt you...bad part went unsaid.
The moment her father disappeared, Eliana dragged Rafael by his tie and planted a hot kiss on his lips.
Starving for her already, he moved to deepen it, and she pulled away, chuckling, eyes heavy with hunger. “I shouldn’t be kissing you after I just binged on that feijoada. Rinsing my mouth can’t begin to counteract its garlicky goodness.”
Brazil’s national dish was indeed an antisocial stew. This restaurant tha
t proclaimed itself the meal’s house was lauded by Cariocas, Rio’s residents, as serving the best feijoada in Rio. Even after he’d ordered their best meal, he hadn’t expected the giant pot of meats swimming in saucy black beans they’d gotten. The tureen had been piled high with smoked and peppery sausages, carne seca ham and an assortment of other pork cuts. He was glad he remembered to tell them not to serve the pig’s ears, tail and tongue.
He pulled her back against him, claiming her lips. “Having binged on the same pungent bomb, all I taste is your sweetness.” Another savoring kiss. “And the tartness of acai and maracuja and dragon fruit from that Amazonian fruit smoothie.”
She suddenly yelped, pulling back once again. “You always scorch me, but now you literally do. Those deadly malagueta peppers you gobbled are still lacing your lips and tongue.” Licking the burning away, she smiled. “Thank you.”
He pressed his lips as if to secure her kisses there. “What for?”
“For being so nice to my father.”
“He’s a nice man.”
He didn’t even have to lie. Apart from the sadness he glimpsed in Ferreira’s eyes—which Eliana said had been there since her mother’s death—and his wariness of how the power Rafael wielded would affect his daughter’s well-being, Ferreira was apparently the kind and agreeable man he remembered. The evil he’d committed against him had carved no visible telltale signs on his visage.
Eliana sighed. “I actually think you didn’t like him much, but you were still extremely nice to him. So thank you.”
Deus. Those instincts of hers continued to prove sharper than he’d even thought. He’d thought he’d been seamless.
Before he could say something to alleviate her suspicion, she added, “But it’s expected on a first meeting with my wary father hen. He spent lunch watching your every move. And you’re a man who suffers no monitoring or judgment.”
Relieved she’d found a benign reason for the hostility she’d felt from him, he exhaled. “It’s only natural he’d be worried about how fast things developed between us. I think I ended up allaying his anxiety.”
“I know.” She smiled up at the waitress, who put the bill before him. “Why do you think I went to the ladies’ room?”
“And there I thought you didn’t have a wily bone in your body.” He grinned as he got out his credit card.
She chuckled. “No wiliness involved, I assure you. I was instructed to do so. On the way, Daddy begged me to give him any chance to be alone with you. He claimed there was no way he could ‘read’ you as long as I was around. He also begged me not to be my shockingly candid self while he’s around.” She shot him a devilish look. “I did manage not to say things like, ‘Don’t worry about Rafael seducing me, Daddy. I spent a whole night slithering all over him and begging him to have sex with me, and he was the one who held back and reprimanded me about my language, too!’”
Rafael threw his head back on a guffaw. “It’s a good thing you exercised some self-control. You would have given him a heart attack.”
Her laugh tinkled like crystal. “I did give him a minor one with that kiss when we first came in. The poor man always bragged he was the only man he knew whose daughter never gave him any nightmares about boyfriends, since I never had any. Then I go and get all mixed up with someone who’s as much trouble as ten thousand men put together.”
“So I’m all his postponed nightmares come all at once.”
And she didn’t know how literally true that was.
“Exactly.” She laughed, her gemlike eyes radiating mischief and joy in Rio’s midday sun. Entranced as he gazed into them, he threw some bills down, and she giggled harder. “That tip could make you a partner in this restaurant.”
“The food and service were impeccable. They earned it.”
“It was lovely. But then it didn’t have to be. Just being with you would make anything wonderful.”
He knew she meant every word. She was the first woman, the first person, who’d ever told him everything she felt, no games. And it was intoxicating.
“I also want to thank you for not talking business.”
“I want to discuss a few things with you before I bring up anything with him. I have reports, but I want what only an insider would know.”
“Let it go altogether, okay? Even my father didn’t bring up business. Now that he saw us together, I believe he won’t.”
“I know he has big problems, Eliana.”
Dismay flooded her eyes. “I guess it was too much to hope that you of all people wouldn’t find out. But we’re working on a resolution, and I’m hopeful we’ll soon have it.”
“I know a partnership with me would help resurrect his business. Even if I don’t give it to him, I still want to help.” He did intend to save her father’s business, for her, to preserve her legacy. He’d seen Ferreira’s will, and she was his only beneficiary. No matter what he felt about her father, he wouldn’t let her inherit an ailing enterprise. He buried his lips in her palm. “Let me help.”
She caressed his cheek, hand trembling as it was singed by his passion, her gaze softening with gratitude. “It doesn’t matter if you can help, it’s enough you want to.”
“I can do anything, remember?”
“Oh, yes, you can.” Her smile was tenderness itself. Then suddenly she pushed her chair back and stood up.
He rose at once. “Where are you going?”
“Back to work. Then to the orphanage.” She grinned as she reached for her coat. “As you already know.”
He helped her on with the coat that matched the deep royal-blue dress he’d spent much of the lunch hour fantasizing about ripping off her.
She hooked her purse across her body. “See you at my place later? Or would you rather I come to yours?”
“I’ll come to you. And I don’t want you driving on that road alone again, so whenever you want to come to my place, I’ll pick you up. Eight o’clock?”
“Make it nine.” Her smile lit up the whole world as she walked into his arms and met him halfway in a kiss that had the whole restaurant watching.
After she left, some men gave him the thumbs-up. One was giving him two.
Mock bowing to them, he walked out into the hubbub of Rio’s midday congestion. Cariocas filled the streets as they did every hour of the day. Anyone coming to Rio came for its laid-back beach culture as much as its breathtaking landscapes and abundant tourist attractions. And everyone got the impression the Cariocas were on perpetual vacation.
He breathed deep of the ocean breeze and the unique scents of this city he’d spent his formative years in. It was strange how alien he felt here. His kidnapping had truly cut all the ties he had with his past, with the being he’d been.
But Rio was still the place he’d been taken from, and it was where he’d returned to enact the vengeance he’d waited for almost a quarter of a century. Three quarters of his life.
Then in three days, Eliana had turned his world upside down and shifted his priorities.
But his plans were only postponed, not cancelled. He would still punish her father.
Just not before he secured her.
* * *
At eight o’clock sharp, that Amazonian parrot she had for a bell burst into song.
Ellie flew to the door, heart soaring as she snatched it open, expecting to see Rafael. He was there. Only not alone.
“Please meet my boor of a partner, Richard Graves.”
Her heart plummeted as she leveled her eyes on that menace, before turning her scowl on Rafael. “You shouldn’t be walking around with him so blithely. Without a leash, too.”
Rafael laughed. “I promise you I have him well in hand. Invite us in, querida.”
“No.”
Rafael’s smile tried to coax her. “Not even now that he got what h
e deserves?” He shoved Graves forward.
Graves rolled his eyes, moved into the light of her foyer and showed her the right side of his face. It was a swollen deep purple beneath the beard he now sported. After he’d given her a good look, he stepped back, resettled that harsh gaze on her.
She blinked dazedly up at Rafael. “You hit him?”
“You think I’d do anything less once I found out what he’d done? What he’d said to you?”
She turned her gaze to Graves. “You told him about propositioning me, huh?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly, a realization hit her, made her turn anxiously back to Rafael. “Is that how you hurt your hand?”
Rafael nodded. “You think anything less than his concrete jaw can break my bones?”
She gaped at him. “Your hand is really broken?”
“I do have fissures in two metacarpal bones.”
She dragged him inside, heart squeezing as she feathered anxious touches over his splint. “God—and I made fun of your injury! I thought it was a sprain or something and you were only teasing me.”
“No teasing.” Graves walked in without invitation and closed the door behind him. “Under your thrall, he went and broke his hand. After I spent years teaching him how to fight without ever injuring himself. Terrible student.” A mirthless laugh. “And he didn’t even get his boo-boo kissed for his trouble.”
She took Rafael down on the couch with her and glared up at Graves. “Oh, he will now. And then he’ll get everything kissed. Anything that hasn’t already been, that is.”
At Graves’s raised eyebrows, Rafael turned to him with a triumphant smile. “For the record, I didn’t employ your generously imparted techniques because I just wanted to hurt you. And myself. I was the one who gave you the impression you can be rude to Eliana when I walked away from her.”