And Then He Kissed Me

by Curtis, Melinda

  “Maybe you should hire her.” Mateo didn’t look up from the list of accounts on his desk.

  “It’s as exquisite as she is.” Nino picked up a small crystal bowl from Mateo’s desk and rummaged its contents of hard mints, not knowing what he was in the mood for. Since tasting Aubrey’s chocolate yesterday, he’d been restless, thinking about Cantuña’s deal with the devil and Aubrey’s innocent question about regrets.

  “Maybe you should marry her.”

  “Marry…” Nino straightened. Marriage wasn’t in his three-year business plan. That’s how long he estimated it would take to turn Caradoc Confections around. “You’re misreading my interest in Dr. Summer.”

  “So now she’s Doctor Summer.” Mateo stood and plucked the bowl from Nino’s hands, setting it out of reach. “Why aren’t you at the textile factory this afternoon?”

  “I arranged for ballroom dance lessons for Laylita’s bridal party.” He hoped he could waltz Aubrey into his bed afterward. Perhaps then he could get her out of his head.

  “I made those arrangements,” Mateo said, frowning. “You don’t have to go. Everything will go smoothly.”

  “Yes, but it was my idea.” Nino refused to let Mateo tell him what to do. “And Laylita is a family friend.”

  “And…” Mateo continued to frown.

  “And…” Nino tossed his hands. “I want to go.”

  “Because you want to dance with Dr. Summer.” It wasn’t a question. “Because you want to make sure the valet I paid to dance with her grandmother is respectful and shows her a good time.”

  Nino narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” Mateo closed the accounts log. “I needed you at the textile factory today to review the quality of the new run of eight hundred thread count fabric requested by the client we’re making sheets for. I needed you to swing by Caradoc and check on the progress being made by the cleaning crew.”

  “You could have done that.” Any of that.

  “Yes, but I needed you out of my hair.” Mateo placed his hands flat on his desktop and leaned forward. “Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.”

  They glared at each other.

  “You’re a distraction.” There was still fire in Mateo’s eyes.

  “I know.” The least Nino could do is admit it. “Aubrey is an appealing diversion.”

  “No.” Mateo ran a hand through the hair at his temples. “You’ve been distracting me since we closed the deal with Caradoc. Gone is the drive, the hunger, the will to push forward.”

  “I have not.” But even as he spoke the words, Nino acknowledged they didn’t ring true. He sat back in his chair, encountering solid wood that jolted his spine. “I admit, not having a new target of my father’s in mind slowed me down, but I have always been committed to my businesses and my employees.” Unlike his father, who had been committed to the money he could milk from them. “I am determined to turn Caradoc around.” In fact, the thought of talking to Aubrey about chocolate perked him up.

  “And then what?” Mateo held out his hands. “Where does the acquisition end and the satisfaction with life begin?”

  “This is my life,” Nino said staunchly. “And the way I choose to live it.” What had happened to Cantuña after the monks had paid him? Had he continued to build and cut corners? Or had he and his family lived happily ever after? Nino chose to believe the latter. “I will find other companies to take over.”

  “You are so blind.” Mateo’s brows lowered in disapproval. “Talk to your father. Make peace.”

  “You know that’s not possible.” Nino’s voice deepened with anger. “He doesn’t deserve forgiveness. He doesn’t deserve a place at my table or on my payroll.”

  “So stubborn.” Mateo reached into a desk drawer and produced a small, bent photograph. “This is my father. Do you want to know what kind of man he was?”

  “Yes.” Maybe then Mateo would leave Nino alone.

  “I would like to know as well.” Mateo smoothed the photograph on his desk and stared at his father’s face. “He died when I was a boy. I’d like to know if I got my knack for numbers from him. Or my blind loyalty.” He slanted a gaze Nino’s way.

  “What does your mother say?”

  “That she can’t remember, or she doesn’t know.” Mateo sighed. “I want to make him proud.”

  “He would be.” He’d gone from a factory worker barely making ends meet to Nino’s chief operations officer.

  “But I’ll never know, will I?” Mateo slid the photograph back into the desk drawer. “You want to make your father proud, too.”

  Nino scowled. “I want nothing from my father. Nothing.”

  Mateo removed a mint from the bowl and slid it across the desk to Nino. “You won. He’s a broken man. What did you expect to hear from him when he signed over Caradoc Confections to you?”

  “I don’t know.” And he hadn’t known the day the deal was closed either.

  “You wanted him to say he was wrong, that he was sorry, that he was proud of you.” Mateo’s voice had lost the edge of anger. “You’d worked for most of your life to make him see you as an equal.”

  Nino scoffed, but could work up no argument.

  “It was like a movie with an unsatisfactory ending.”

  Mateo’s words trickled into Nino’s ears, oozed into his chest, tugged at his heart and whispered, “Si.”

  Nino didn’t want to agree. The scowl returned. “I don’t need anyone’s good opinion.”

  Instead of arguing, Mateo sat back, lacing his fingers over his chest. “What do you think your father would say about your interaction with Dr. Summer?”

  “Bravo,” Nino murmured. It was just the kind of action his father would take. The thought sickened him. “My time with Aubrey is above reproach.” The words came out thick and slow, like hard syrup that shouldn’t be poured on pancakes.

  “You and I both know that isn’t true.” Mateo smirked. “You are hunting Dr. Summer as if she has the key to the castle you’ve been unable to conquer. She is the first woman you’ve had to chase after in years. Maybe ever.”

  “She has something...Something I…” Nino cast about for the words, but it was no use. The syrup had clogged his throat with lies he was telling himself.

  But sometimes lies are all you have, especially when you don’t want to admit having regrets.

  “Dr. Summer has something you don’t have today, something you might want to seek instead.” Mateo touched the handle of the desk drawer where he’d put the photograph of his father. “Honor.”

  Nino’s chin jutted of its own accord and he refused to give Mateo’s comment legitimacy by commenting. “Enough.”

  Mateo sat back in his desk chair, pointing at the bowl of mints. “Women are like this crystal bowl. Their hearts are easily broken.” He pointed at Nino. “You, my friend, are going to break Dr. Summer’s heart, because you want to possess her, not love her.”

  Nino stood, unable to taint the sainted air Mateo was breathing. “You’re too honorable for your own good.”

  “Like Dr. Summer and her colorful grandmother.”

  Rather than think of Aubrey, Nino latched onto the image of Dotty in her wig. The old woman was one of a kind. She reveled in life. She deserved her moment in the sun with someone who’d love her for who she was.

  And who will love me?

  Nino stumbled over the chair leg in his haste to get to the door.

  Love? Love made men weak. Nino didn’t need to be loved by anyone but his mother and his abuela.

  Aubrey’s face came to mind, so determined, so passionate. The man she chose to love would be lucky.

  But it wouldn’t be him, because he had no regrets and–as Mateo had pointed out–no honor.

  Nino opened the door and breathed air that wasn’t any easier to suck in.

  Nino closed the door behind him and paused, collecting himself.

  A man who’d been sitting on a couch in the corner stood and moved in front of
Nino. He was the same height, the same build. Only the silver hair was different.

  Nino almost turned back around to berate Mateo, who knew everything that went on in this hotel, including who passed through its doors. Instead, he said simply, “Father.”

  “I must talk with you,” Nino’s father said.

  “We have nothing to say to each other. If you need money–” And how could he after receiving a payday just two months ago? “–please contact your bank for a loan.” Nino tried to move past him.

  His father caught his arm.

  Nino stared him down until he was released.

  “I have something you need to know.” The years had been unkind to Marcos Alfaro Senior. He was Mateo’s age, but his hair was almost pure silver and the wrinkles in his face were deep creases that marked every betrayal, every bad decision, every dishonorable move.

  Part of Nino wanted to walk out. Part of him wanted to listen. If this had been Mateo facing his father, he would listen. If it had been Aubrey facing her father, she would listen. Nino couldn’t think of anyone who’d tell him he’d done the right thing by walking out, not even his mother. “You have two minutes.” And the clock had started thirty seconds earlier. He turned to Mateo’s receptionist. “Sofia, please take a break for two minutes.”

  His father wasted more of his allocated time waiting for Sofia to gather her cigarettes and leave. “I’m worried about you.”

  Nino scoffed in disbelief. “I could have used your worry thirty years ago, not today.”

  “I made a mistake.” Something about the slant of wrinkles around his father’s dark eyes implied sincerity. “A woman…Stella…She made me think the only way to keep my fortune was to take advantage of everyone. My business partner. My wife. You.”

  Nino tried not to give away anything he was feeling. Not the righteous confirmation of his father’s avarice. Not the still-sharp pain of his father’s abandonment. Not the surprise at his father’s confession. The situation muted him.

  “I succumbed to greed. I made light of love for the pleasures of the flesh. I wallowed in the emptiness of luxury.”

  All true. Nino continued to say nothing. To stand tall and remain stoic.

  “And now…I see you traveling down the same path,” his father said simply, honestly, humbly. “Unable to know when you’ve had your fill, when to be satisfied with what you have in hand, when to stop preying on the weak simply because you can.”

  There was more truth to his words than Nino wanted to admit, because admitting it would mean he was the Cantuña Aubrey saw, not the Cantuña he’d admired for years.

  “I married your mother through unido.” The common-law commitment ceremony unique to Ecuador. “And Stella convinced me it wasn’t a valid union since most countries do not acknowledge it as legal.”

  Nino found his voice. Anger surged, directed at his father. “So, I’m a bastard now?”

  “You’re missing the point.” His father raised his voice, sharpened his tone. “My hunger for success…My pride…It made me susceptible to the whispers of a woman who wanted only luxury out of life. I convinced myself I had no family and that taking every dollar in my business and my personal accounts affected only me, not you or even Pedro.” His business partner.

  “We are not alike.” The anger inside Nino was like an earthquake, shaking his foundation. “You fled the country with the contents of your family’s bank account. You left a woman you promised to love. You took your company’s payroll. Pedro’s paycheck. You betrayed the people who worked for you. You put your needs first and that led to your downfall.” Nino tried to move past the wretch that was his father, but the older man moved to block his path.

  “You judge me?” His father was just as angry. “We are the same. You have convinced yourself the rules don’t apply to you.”

  Nino was breathing hard, shaking his head, trying to keep from shuddering like a cornered dog on the streets preparing to lunge for freedom. He pointed to the door. “You’ve gotten your payout, now get out.”

  His father didn’t budge. “What happens next, Nino? Will you continue to take over companies of those who slight you? Or will you be satisfied with the dynasty you have built?”

  It was the same line of questioning Mateo had been making.

  “A dynasty?” A dynasty implied family ties. A wife. Children. A boy with thick black hair and Aubrey’s kind eyes. A girl with soft brown hair and her father’s competitive spirit. How could Nino earn such a prize when he couldn’t shake the need to steal a woman’s intellectual property, ruin her good name, put the livelihoods of the people she represented at risk? Nino felt sick. He needed air. He needed out. “Your time is up.”

  He darted through the door and took long strides toward his elegant lobby, reminding himself of all the luxuries his success had given him without hurting anyone who didn’t need to be taught a lesson.

  And Aubrey?

  His steps faltered.

  We are the same.

  Except he and his father weren’t. His father had regrets.

  “You are proud now.” His father was old and beaten. He scurried behind Nino like a rat anticipating crumbs. “High and mighty. But power and money…They corrupt.”

  “You would know.” Nino half turned, glaring at his father. “Stop hanging around my businesses. Stop trying to talk to me about honor and principles, pretending you’ve finally found some. I have my own code. I won’t give you a job or an allowance. I have no need of you.” He’d proven that when he’d made his first fortune. He’d prove it again when Caradoc Confections became a world class chocolate company.

  “I’ll be here if you change your mind. Everyone needs someone,” his father called.

  “Not me.” Nino sucked in air, trying to catch his breath. He did need people.

  Mateo.

  He needed Mateo to ground him in truth and honor.

  Mama and Abuela.

  Because their love was unconditional.

  Aubrey. I need Aubrey.

  In her arms he felt relevant and less…aimless…empty.

  He thought about her before he went to sleep at night. He thought about her when he woke up in the morning. He thought about her when he used to think about the companies he was trying to take over.

  Nino entered the smaller of the hotel’s two ballrooms, eyes seeking Aubrey, thinking…About dynasties and heritage and how he’d leave his mark on the world. Would he be remembered as the man who’d ruined his father? Or the man who’d built companies that contributed to Ecuador’s economy and would do so for decades to come?

  Is this what Mateo had wanted me to see? The future of a proud man with nothing to hide?

  A couple stood in the middle of the ringed wedding party giving out instructions. The woman was a young, lithe brunette wearing a sparkling, short pink dress. The man wore tight black pants and a flowing blue shirt. They were pairing people up. Aubrey was standing on the fringe of the crowd, probably hoping she wouldn’t have to dance.

  Dotty swayed on the dance floor in her blond wig. One of the hotel’s valets hurried in to join the expanding group, taking Dotty’s hand and kissing it.

  Dotty’s grin was wide enough to bridge a river.

  Nino drew a slow breath. Here was truth. Here was honor. In the friends in the room. In their smiles and laughter. In their trust that their relationships would not be betrayed.

  I don’t belong here.

  “Hi.” One of Aubrey’s sisters stepped in front of him before he could turn to go. “I’m Maggie. You must be Nino. Let’s give this thing a whirl.” Before Nino could beg off, she’d grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the dance floor. She wore a black tank top, black jeans, and black boots more fitting for the factory than the dance floor.

  Maggie wasn’t much taller than her grandmother, but short compared to Aubrey. She swung Nino around with strength, taking his left in her right, and proceeded to lead him in the dance steps. Technically, she had the dance moves down, but like her grand
mother, she had no rhythm, and jerked him around almost hard enough to throw his back out.

  “You’re very strong,” Nino noted, talking over the loud music, unable to shake the sour taste at the back of his throat left from his altercation with his father.

  “I’m a large animal vet.” Maggie had the same milk chocolate eyes as Aubrey, but her short hair was several shades darker. “I push before I get pushed or stomped on. Would you like to kiss me?”

  “No.” Nino jolted free.

  “Let’s switch partners,” the dance instructor in pink called out. “Rhumba is next.”

  Keeping his distance, Nino thanked Maggie and searched for Aubrey. She was standing near the wall talking with one of her twin sisters. She wore a bright yellow halter dress that fluttered above her knees. Her hair framed her face in smooth dark waves. The urge to have her by his side wrapped itself around his chest and squeezed.

  He did not want to be like his father, but he did not want to let this woman go.

  Another of Aubrey’s sisters blindsided Nino, catching his arm and whirling him around.

  “I’m Lily. I’ve always wanted to rhumba.” She wore a sleeveless peach silk blouse and matching pants, dressing like a much older woman. Her brown hair was held off the back of her neck in a neat, unimaginative bun.

  At least, Lily let him lead. But she was always a step behind him. He felt as if he was dragging her along like a life-sized rag doll. She was a weight slowing him down whereas Aubrey always had him looking up.

  The song drew to a close. Lily batted her eyes, much the way Dotty did. “Thank you for the dance.” She lowered her voice to a husky timbre. “Would you like to kiss me?”

  “No.” Nino dodged her embrace.

  “My turn.” Aubrey’s sister Violet claimed him next for the fox trot. She had some skill on the dance floor, hindered only by the occasionally loss of her high heel. By the time they finished, Violet held her shoes–shiny black pumps with sensible square heels–which she admitted were half a size too large.

  “The curse of wide feet,” Violet said with a sigh. “Shoes never fit me. Now, about that kiss…”

  Nino held her at arm’s length. “You Summer sisters shouldn’t offer to kiss men you don’t love.”