Carrera's Bride

She smiled. “That would be nice.”

He glanced back at her. “It might not be, when you know more about me,” he said, and he was suddenly very solemn.

“That isn’t likely.”

“You’re an optimist. I’m not.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she teased.

He chuckled as he opened the door to let her out into the hall.

Mr. Smith was waiting beside a huge black super stretch limousine in front of the hotel and nightclub.

Delia actually gasped. “You can’t mean to drive me back in that!” she exclaimed. “Your boss will fire you!”

“Unlikely,” Marcus said, with a speaking glance at Smith, who was trying not to laugh out loud. “Get in.”

She whistled softly as she slid onto the leather seat and moved to the center, to give him room to get in.

Smith closed the back door and went to the driver’s seat.

Delia was stagestruck. She looked around wide-eyed, fascinated by the luxurious interior. “You could go bowling in here!”

“It’s nice when you’re ferrying around a crowd of tourists,” he stated. “Want something to drink?”

He indicated the bar, where a bottle of champagne and several bottles of beer and soft drinks were chilling in ice.

She shook her head. “No, thanks. Is that television?!” she added, indicating a flat screen just in front of her near the ceiling.

“Satellite television, satellite radio, CD player, phone…”

“It’s incredible,” she said softly. “Just incredible!”

“Your sister’s married to a millionaire,” he pointed out. “Don’t you get to ride in limos?”

She shook her head. “There wouldn’t be any need for her to drive down to Jacobsville in one. They fly to San Antonio and rent a car. At home, they’ve got a Jaguar sports car.”

“I thought you might visit her and ride in limos,” he teased.

“In New York?” she asked. She shook her head. “We’d usually go down to Galveston together for vacation on the beach. I’ve never been to New York, and since Barney travels so much and Barb goes with him, they’re rarely home. I don’t even go up to San Antonio unless I have to, when I buy supplies. I’m very much at home in the little house I shared with Mama. We have a handful of chickens and a dog named Sam.”

“Who’s looking after them?”

“A neighbor,” she said. “Although, Sam’s being boarded. He’s bad to get in the road. You have to watch him constantly.”

“What breed is he?”

She smiled. “He’s a German shepherd—black with brown markings. I’ve had him for eight years. He’s a sweetie.”

“Any cats?”

She shook her head. “Mama was allergic. We couldn’t even have Sam in the house.”

Smith was pulling out into the main road that led over the bridge to Nassau. Marcus leaned back against the soft leather of the seat. “I’ve never seen a chicken close up, except on television,” he remarked.

She grinned. “Come to Texas and I’ll let you pet one.”

“You can pet a chicken?”

“Of course you can,” she said, laughing.

He liked the sound of her laughter. It had been a long time since he’d done much of that. His life was lonely and dangerous, and he had a natural suspicion of people. He’d seen women who looked like virginal innocents roll a man and take everything he had.

“Why were you at the club in the first place?” he asked unexpectedly.

She sighed. “Because Fred said he wanted to talk some business with the manager of the casino and we might as well go there as anyplace else on the island. But he got cold feet and started drinking.” She was oblivious to the look on Marcus’s leonine face. “He’s mixed up in something illegal, I think, and there are some people he’s dealing with who want to hurt him.” She bit her lip as she looked up at Marcus. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. The owner of the casino’s your boss, right?”

“Sort of,” he confessed.

“Well, Fred kept throwing back hard liquor until he could hardly stand up. I wanted to go back to my hotel by then, because he was getting really out of hand. I had to fend him off in the taxi, and when we got to the club, I was going to go inside and call a taxi to take me back. But Fred got angry when I said that, and reminded me that he’d bought me an expensive dinner. He said I owed him a little fun,” she added coldly. She grasped her purse tight in her hands and glanced at Marcus. “I guess I’ve led a pretty sheltered life until now. Do men really expect a woman to have sex with them just because they buy her a meal? Because if that’s the way of it, I’m buying my own dinners from now on!”

Her expression amused him. He laughed softly. “Well, I can only speak for myself, but I’ve never considered a steak currency for sex.”

She smiled in spite of her irritation. “It shows that I don’t date much, huh?” she said matter-of-factly. “Even after I was in high school, I had to fight Barb and mother to get to go out with a man. Mother would call Barb if anyone asked me on a date. They said men were devious and they’d say all sorts of things to get you into bed with them, and then they’d leave you pregnant and desert you.” She shook her head. “God knows where they got those ideas. Barb married Barney just after high school graduation, and Mother didn’t go out with anybody at all after Daddy died.”

“She didn’t?” he asked abruptly, surprised.

“She was sort of old-fashioned, I guess. She said she and Daddy were so happy together that any other man she dated would fall short of that perfection. So she spent her time doing charity work and raising me.”

“I didn’t think there were any women like that left in the world,” he said honestly.

“What was your mother like?”

He smiled slowly. “She was the kind of woman who kissed cuts and bruises and made homemade cookies for her kids. She worked herself half to death to give us the things we had to have for school,” he added, his face taut.

“Was she pretty?”

“What a question. Why?”

“Well, you’re very good-looking,” she said, and then flushed as she realized she might be overstepping boundaries.

He chuckled. “Thanks. I think you look pretty good, too.”

“Oh, I’m plain,” she replied. “I don’t have any illusions about being beautiful. But I can cook, and I’m a fair seamstress.”

He reached out and touched a loose strand of her blond hair, contemplating the high coiffure she wore it in. “How long is your hair?” he asked suddenly.

“It’s to my waist in back,” she said self-consciously. “My boss at the dry cleaner where I do alterations says I look like Alice in Wonderland with it down, so I keep it in a bun or a ponytail most of the time.”