Carrera's Bride

“Well, don’t blame me,” she said with dancing eyes. “I almost never seduce men on dark balconies.”

He scowled. She had a quick mind and a quirky sense of humor. It didn’t make things easier. She appealed to him powerfully. But he was at a point in his life when he couldn’t afford attachments of any sort, especially her sort. She was more vulnerable than she might think. What he had to do might put her in the path of danger, if he kept her around. And he was in a bad place to start looking for romance.

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind being seduced,” he said. “But I’m not available.”

She felt embarrassed. She stepped back, flushing. “Sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t think…!”

“Don’t look like that,” he said harshly. He turned away from the embarrassment. “Come on. I’ll have Smith drive you back.”

“I could get a cab,” she said, wrapping the tatters of her pride around her like an invisible cloak.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said, his voice curt.

Delia couldn’t hide her discomfort at the thought of enduring the drive back to Nassau in the company of Mr. Smith.

“Surely you aren’t afraid of him?” Marcus drawled softly. “You aren’t afraid of me, and I’m worse than Smith in a lot of ways.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Are you, really?” she asked in all honesty.

He chuckled in spite of himself. “You don’t know anything about me,” he murmured as he studied her with indulgent amusement. “That’s kind of nice,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s been a long time since anybody was as comfortable with me as you seem to be.”

“Now you’re making me nervous,” she told him.

He smiled. It was a rare, genuine smile. “Not very, apparently.”

She moved a little closer, tingling all over as she approached him. He made her hungry. She gazed up at him. “I think I’ve got it figured out, anyway.”

“Have you now?”

“You’re Mr. Smith’s boss,” she said.

He pursed his lips and started to speak.

“You’re a bouncer,” she concluded before he could get the words out.

He was actually dumbfounded. He just stared at her with growing amazement.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said firmly. “Somebody has to keep the peace in a place like this. Actually, my father was a deputy sheriff. I wasn’t even born until after he died, so I don’t remember him. But we still have his gun and gunbelt, and the deputy sheriff’s badge he wore.”

“How did he die?” he asked abstractly.

“He made a routine traffic stop,” she said quietly. “The man was an escaped murderer.”

“Tough.”

She nodded. “Mom was left with me and Barb, although Barb was sixteen at the time, almost seventeen.” She sighed. “Barb is beautiful and brainy. She married Barney, who’s worth millions, and she’s been deliriously happy ever since.”

“So it’s just you and your mother at home,” he guessed.

She grimaced. “My mother died last month of stomach cancer,” she said. “It’s why I’m here. Barb thought I needed a break, so she and Barney squared it with my boss at the dry cleaner—I do alterations for them—and then they dragged me on a plane. I hope I still have a job when I go home. Nobody seems to understand how hard it is to get work in a small town. I have monthly bills to pay and hardly any savings, so my job is very important.” She smiled ruefully. “Barb doesn’t understand jobs. She married Barney just out of high school, when I was two years old, so she’s never worked.”

“Lucky Barb.” He watched the expressions play on her delicate features. “I guess Barb helped when your mother was so sick?”

She nodded. “She paid all Mama’s medical and drug bills, and even for a nurse to stay with her in the daytime while I worked. We’d never have made it without her.”

“Did she do any of the nursing?”

“She came and stayed with us for the last few months of mother’s life,” she said quietly. “She and Barney decided that it was going to be too much for me, so they even got nurses to do the night shift. But mostly it was Barb who nursed her, until she died. Mother didn’t want me with her. Barb and Mom were very close—it wasn’t like that with Mother and me. She didn’t like me very much,” she added bluntly.

He revised his opinion of the older sister. She’d done her part.

“Are you close, you and your sister?”

She laughed. “We’re closer than mother and daughter, really. Barb is terrific. It’s just that she thinks I can’t walk unless she’s telling me how to do it. She’s sixteen years older than me.”

“That’s a hell of an age difference,” he pointed out.

“Tell me about it. Barb’s so much older that I must seem more like a child than an adult to her.”

He scowled. “How old was your mother when you were born?”

“Forty-eight,” she laughed. “She said I was a miracle baby.”

“Mmmm,” he said absently.

“How old was your mother when you were born?” she asked curiously.

He chuckled. “Sixteen. In the old days, and in the old country,” he drawled, bending closer, “women married young. She and my father were betrothed by their families. They only saw each other in company of a dueña, and they were married in the church. The first time they kissed each other was on their wedding day, or so my father always said.”

She looked puzzled at the Spanish word he’d used for chaperone. “I thought you were Italian,” she blurted out.

He shook his head. “My parents were from the south of Spain. I’m a first-generation American.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

He nodded. “But I read it better than I speak it. My parents wanted me and my brother to speak English well, so that we’d fit in better than they did.”

She smiled, understanding. She moved slowly back into the office and he followed, closing the sliding door onto the balcony.

“I’ll ride with you to your hotel,” he said after a minute. He picked up the phone and told someone to take over for him while he drove into Nassau and back.

She took one last look at the beautiful black and white quilt in its frame on the wall. “That really is majestic,” she remarked.

“Thanks. I’d love to see some of your work.”

She grimaced. “I don’t even have photos of it, like you do,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I may get down to Texas one of these days,” he said offhandedly.