“When are you going to move? How long is it until one of the gang members in your neighborhood takes a knife to your face instead of your car?”
She slapped his arm. “My neighborhood is fine. I have a security system, and I know my neighbors. Not a gang-banger among them. I bet this happened while my car was parked overnight at the beach.”
“Why were you at the beach all night?”
“None of your business.” She wasn’t about to tell him where she really was, and she didn’t have to give him her cover story, either. She didn’t want him hanging Cole out of any windows.
“I love you, Javi. You’re an asshole, but I love you.”
“Love you too.”
* * * *
Cole stayed in Hector’s office for five minutes before his hard-on went down. After that, he was ready to say his good-byes to Alana’s parents and head back to the hotel. He could swear that he could smell Alana’s scent when the air conditioner kicked on. What was wrong with him?
Deep down he knew why Javier didn’t think that he was worthy of his sister. He was trash, just like Beth had said when he presented a ring in front of both their families. She’d actually laughed. He was a smart guy, ambitious. He put himself through college by joining the Navy, killed it enough in training to become a SEAL, and served his country with honor and distinction. When he’d returned—his career cut short by an insurgent’s stray bullet—he still wasn’t good enough.
And even though he’d graduated at the top of his class from Wharton—ahead of Javier—and made good money in a stable industry, he wasn’t a good bet. He was still trailer trash. Good enough for fun, not for the long haul.
Cole didn’t blame his ex for breaking him. Maybe he was just built that way—all faulty parts. He hadn’t really been good at relationships before he’d left. Nobody who grew up with an abusive jackass of a father and a drunken mess of a mama would be. He was wired for survival, not fat lazy happiness in a mansion on top of a hill. But he’d been able to deal with it—first through football, and then through the military. Until that was gone, and all he had was work and picking up girls.
He and Javier had become fast friends because they were both competitive. About everything. Who could get the hottest girl, who could push the limits the furthest. For a time, it was enough. He supposed that his recent bout of restlessness was a sign that his no-strings-just-flings lifestyle wasn’t working for him anymore. And that was the very reason he wasn’t good enough for the only woman who’d gotten his attention, who he really wanted since Beth.
Life was a motherfucker sometimes.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, and got up to leave. There was no use in thinking about it in a room without bourbon.
He hoped to make a silent farewell, but Javier stopped him in the hall. He wasn’t in the mood to see anyone, least of all him.
“You wanted to warn me to stay away from your sister some more?”
“Dude. You gotta understand. Alana might seem like a hardass, but she’s really sensitive. Not your kind of girl,” Javier said.
“Sure, whatever, man. Are we on for tomorrow?”
“About that.” Cole hoped that it wouldn’t involve being his friend’s wing man. He wasn’t in the mood for anything other than what Alana was serving up. “I need a favor.”
Cole breathed a sigh of relief. “Anything, man.”
“Can you check on Alana’s security system? I think some neighborhood kids were messing with her car.”
The fact that Javi didn’t understand that cyber security did not involve installing security systems could work to his advantage. It would give him a chance to see her again, persuade her to his way of thinking on a fling. “What do I get in return?”
“My undying friendship.”
“What if she seduces me? I’m sort of irresistible.”
“Fuck you,” said his demented friend before Cole walked away.
A few minutes later, he received a text from Javier with Alana’s home address.
Chapter 6
Alana pulled her car into the garage and finally let out the sigh she’d been holding in since before lunch. She couldn’t recall anything about her trip home except that she got there. She might have stayed in the car for five minutes, or an hour. But the silence, the absence of client calls coming in while her idiot brother did God-knows-what all afternoon, was more relaxing than a deep tissue massage.
She finally got out of the car. When she saw Cole standing on her driveway, she jumped.
“What are you doing here?”
At least he had the courtesy of looking sheepish about scaring her. It was a good look on him. Of course, the cocky I-just-made-you-come look was just as good. Better.
He rushed over and picked up her keys and briefcase at the same time she bent over to retrieve her things.
He smelled like clean man, which reminded her that she probably smelled like a zoo. After running around all day to keep clients happy and get her brother to sign SEC filings just in time to overnight them to New York, she knew her silk blouse had to have pit stains.
But when she looked at him, he wasn’t focused on her armpits, or even her face. He was looking down her gaping blouse. She straightened up too fast and got a head rush that reminded her that she’d eaten an energy bar for lunch.
Cole stood up too, and steadied her with his hands on her upper arms. As warm as she’d been in her car, his touched heated her even more. The contact radiated through her whole body from his huge hands. Who had hands that big?
She had to focus on her goals for the night. Go inside. Turn off the phone. Cry in the shower. Apply wine and sleep. Standard operating procedure these days. The stress of doing her work plus her brother’s was making everything about survival—even if it wasn’t healthy.
According to her mother, she should be out, enjoying her life. Not as long as she was almost single-handedly keeping all the fund’s investors happy. That wasn’t supposed to be her job. That was supposed to be fun, charming, whip-smart Javi’s job. Instead, she was scraping bimbos out of his bed just to get him to sign forms required by federal law. If she didn’t love him, she’d want to murder him on a regular basis.
When Cole started to rub her arms in a comforting gesture, her angry thoughts about her brother slipped away.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Alana pasted a smile on her face. There was no use complaining about her brother to his best friend. They palled around and drank together. Picked up women who looked like strippers and didn’t know better than to fall for a wad of cash and a smile. She couldn’t forget that, no matter how hot Cole made her with just a look.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
His rich laughter made her nipples tighten and her stomach clench. She wanted to cover her chest with her jacket, but he kept his hold on her arms. She looked up at his face, and sure enough, his focus was still on her chest. That was the reminder she needed. He was a dog.
“Eyes up here, buddy.”
“I never could help wanting what I can’t have,” he said.
“Who said you can’t have it?” He raised his eyebrows in response. “Javi told you to stay away from me, but Javi doesn’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m not going to be your walk on the wild side, darlin’.”
“You already are.”
He shook his head and made eye contact. That was almost even worse. His stupid eyes were twinkling; his hands were so hot against her skin, it felt like he was branding her with his touch. And she would definitely have pit stains when he let her go.
He stopped touching her, and she let out a breath. He started laughing, and the tightening in her lower belly got worse. She slipped out from between him and the car and made her way to the door. Being in such close proximity must have made her extra clumsy because she dropped her keys again on the stoop.
Before she could reach down and pick them up, Cole’s arm came ar
ound her waist, and his head went under her arm. Now he was going to smell as well as see her pit stains. She had to get in the house.
Cole unlocked her door and went in before her. The alarm beeped and she walked over to the panel to examine it.
“Javi had that installed for my abuela.” She disarmed the system, and pulled her blouse away from her skin to let some of the air conditioning touch her skin.
His gaze dipped to her chest for just a second, and it made her smile.
“But you keep it armed?”
“Yeah, I mean I love this place, but like any neighborhood in a big city, it’s got crime.”
“Weird crime, too.”
“Huh?” Her puzzled expression elicited another laugh from him. Now that they were inside her air-conditioned living room, her nipples were probably twice as hard as they’d been outside. To Cole’s credit, his gaze only dipped for a second.
“There’s a chicken nailed to one of the trees on your street. Not a sign of a safe neighborhood.”
It was Alana’s turn to laugh. “That’s just Mrs. Rodriguez. She practices Santeria.”
“Voodoo is supposed to make me feel better about animal cruelty?”
“Mrs. Rodriguez’s sincerely held religious beliefs are a less valid reason for killing a chicken than the wings I saw you murdering from the buffet yesterday?”
“Yes. That’s some intense shit for the children in the neighborhood. You noticed what I was eating yesterday?”
She ignored him. Of course she noticed what he’d eaten yesterday. You couldn’t avoid someone you weren’t watching. Right then, she wondered why she’d avoided him. His laid-back sense of humor was almost as good as the hot bath she was going to take as soon as he left.
“You didn’t take a picture of the chicken, did you?” The look on his face almost made her break, but this was too much fun. “If you take a picture of the dead chicken, you’re cursed.”
She started laughing, and her stomach growled at the same time. She was so far past hungry that her body needed to remind her that she needed food.
Cole wrinkled his brow. “How about I take you to eat?”
“I thought you were here to check out the damage on my car? And why are you doing that instead of my brother?”
“I was, but I obviously need to make sure you’re fed, too. Your brother said something about being busy.”
Her brother was really busy neck deep in club girls. “I can feed myself.”
Her growing anger was tamped down by his grin. “Of course you can. But you shouldn’t have to. And what if I just want the pleasure of your company? Your brother was supposed to play host, but he seems to have abandoned me.”
Maybe he did want to hang out with her. She hadn’t had this much fun talking to a man—or anyone really—for a long time. She wanted to spend a little more time with him, and not even because she wanted to lick him all over. After all, she couldn’t let him think the Hernandez family didn’t take hospitality seriously.
She’d never admit it to him, but she really liked that he’d come over to take a look at her car instead of having it towed to a repair shop without her permission and leaving a suitable rental car. That was a slippery slope that her father and brother had started on years before.
“You want to go someplace fancy downtown?” he asked, probably assuming she was spoiled because her parents were successful.
“No. A day like today needs croquetas and Dominican beer.”
“Where can we get those?”
“Just a few blocks down. We can walk.”
Cole looked out the front window, his expression wary.
“Are you afraid the chicken’s going to get you?” She loved that he was a little freaked out. Something about this warrior harboring fear of being cursed by an eighty-year-old woman’s ritual delighted her. She guessed she liked the contrast.
“Nah—”
Her exasperated sigh cut him off. Her father and brother had a weird fascination with safety that made them want to lock her and Carla up behind gates in high rises. This was the one thing she’d stood her ground on. She might eat a shit sandwich every day at work, but she wouldn’t leave her abuela’s house without a good reason.
“This neighborhood is wonderful. Javi doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He needs to take care of himself and stop worrying about me. I would be perfectly safe walking over to Calle Ocho alone, in the dead of night.” That might have been a little bit of an exaggeration. There were very few places in Miami where she’d want to walk alone at night.
She wasn’t afraid to walk anywhere with him. Maybe that was a sign she should try to talk him into a whole lot no-holds-barred sex for the next week or so?
To her surprise, Cole didn’t argue with her about the neighborhood. He didn’t bring up the cars on blocks two doors down or the insolent teenagers on stoops on the next block.
He looked at her with an open expression and said, “Show me.”
* * * *
No wonder Alana felt safe in her neighborhood; she knew everyone in Little Havana. On the way to El Pub, “the only place for croquetas and beer,” she’d checked on Mrs. Diaz’s blood sugar and Mr. Herman’s ginger lilies. She greeted people in about half the storefronts on the way to the restaurant.
By the time they sat down and she ordered two Presidentes, he realized that he’d been completely wrong about her. She wasn’t some stuck-up princess at all. That didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t go two minutes without thinking of a new way to defile her, but he wasn’t sure he could keep his promise to keep his hands off if she kept surprising him.
She wasn’t one of the cold women he was used to dealing with, who only wanted him because he used to be a Navy SEAL, so they could brag to their friends about how they slept with a war hero.
This woman was warm, gracious, and the loveliest woman he’d ever set eyes on. She also slipped out of his room before he woke up. That meant that she knew what kind of guy he was: not the kind built for the long-haul. Story of his life.
While he ruminated and finished his beer in record time, Alana chatted up a few patrons. He didn’t understand what they were saying—most of their words were in Spanish—but she spoke to them in a combination of the two. He understood enough to know that she cared about the people who she talked to and they trusted her with their problems. How had he ever thought she was some spoiled brat?
Her brother had something to do with that. He couldn’t judge his friend for being an entitled jerk when he was guilty of being an asshole himself at the time—though entitled would never be a good descriptor.
By the time his bottle was empty, her fan club had moved away. He didn’t notice she was looking at him until she cleared her throat. Her brow crinkled in concern instead of irritation, and, before he could stop himself, thought that it would be nice for her to look at him like that at the end of every day.
He shook his head slightly, and put a smile on his face. He may not be the kind of guy she’d want to settle down with, but he should enjoy the company of this gorgeous, sweet, funny woman while he had the chance. Fuck whatever Javi said.
“Sorry to bore you.”
“I wasn’t bored. You’re different here.”
She cocked her head to the side and her hair floated against her shoulder. While he’d checked out her car, she’d gone into her house to change. He normally didn’t notice what a woman was wearing beyond how much effort it would take for him to take it off. But Alana, sitting there in a black tank top that made her look like his bad girl next door fantasy come to life, caused him to rethink his views on fashion.
“You seem to be having fun, for one thing.”
She leaned over, and said, “I have fun with my family.” His mouth went dry, and his hunger disappeared when he saw that she wasn’t wearing a bra. No wonder a couple of those old dudes had lingered. A sensation that he barely remembered settled in his gut—jealousy. It was ludicrous
. Why was he jealous of a couple of senior citizens seeing a little bit of skin? She didn’t belong to him.
Probably best not to think about it. “Doesn’t seem like it. Carla’s a princess, your dad doesn’t see that you’re carrying everybody’s water, and Javi takes advantage of your pure soul.”
“You know better than anyone that my soul’s not pure.” His jeans suddenly felt uncomfortable at the sound of her husky voice.
Thank goodness the food showed up. Maybe he could focus on that instead of the next time he’d get inside her—and he would get inside her—for about five minutes. Besides, when he saw and smelled everything she’d ordered, it reminded him that he hadn’t eaten much during the day. He wasn’t used to vacationing by himself, so he’d slept late and run on the beach.
He helped himself to something that looked fried. Then, he bit into the best thing he’d ever tasted, besides Alana. “What is this?”
“Croquetas? Just fried mashed potatoes with ham inside.” Her smile was smug.
“You know the way to a Southern boy’s heart, don’t you?”
That aroused a blush and she suddenly seemed to be very focused on her beer and fried plaintains. She shrugged. “Everyone loves fried potatoes with ham. It’s not just a Southern thing.”
While they ate, he discovered another one of Alana’s increasing list of fantastic qualities. She was easy to talk to. Without even thinking about it, he found himself telling her about Dorchester, his dad, and the fact that his mom had been drunk and absent. He didn’t tell her about Beth, but he’d wanted to. There was something about her that made him want to spill his secrets. But he’d stopped because he didn’t want her to look at him with pity—or maybe he was afraid that Alana would see the same reasons why he wasn’t good enough.
And, for once, thinking about his family didn’t make him sad. But that was all about the company. She laughed when he told her about all the trouble he used to get into with his hooligan friends.
He usually didn’t get all poetic about particular features on a woman, but her eyes were transfixing. They sparkled and danced when he was talking to her. And they got all smoky and lazy after she came.
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