Читать книгу Lessons From A Latin Lover - Anne McAllister, Anne McAllister - Страница 6

THE TROUBLE with blinding flashes of inspiration, Molly McGillivray decided as she scowled into the innards of the ancient Jeep she was removing the carburetor from, was that they were never in one’s comfort zone.

If they were, of course, they wouldn’t be blinding flashes of brilliance. They would be “ho hum, yes, of course” notions that one would have thought of long ago.

The other trouble with blinding flashes of inspiration was that, once you thought of them, they wouldn’t go away.

They were so outrageous, so perverse, so downright awful that you couldn’t forget them!

They nagged and pestered and generally haunted you all the livelong day.

Like today.

Ever since her longtime fiancé, Carson Sawyer had come home last month, Molly had been wracking her brain for some subtle way to make him wake up and remember that they were, in fact, engaged.

Well, not exactly remember. She knew Carson remembered. It was handy to remember. Having a fiancée allowed him to keep his attention on business and kept the fortune hunters at bay. It was “useful” to be engaged, he’d once told her cheerfully. And back then she’d been quite happy to agree.

It had been useful to her, too.

But that was then. Enough was enough. They’d been engaged for years. It was time to do something about it—like get married.

Try telling Carson that.

Actually she had tried. But Carson’s mobile phone had rung the first time she’d broached the subject. And he’d had an emergency appointment another time. And the last time he’d been home, well, he certainly hadn’t noticed what she wanted him to notice—that they weren’t getting any younger, that everyone else was married and having kids and it was time they did, too.

She didn’t suppose things like starting a family were high on his list of priorities. She remembered well enough what her brother Hugh had said when she’d asked him what had attracted him to Syd, his wife.

“Sex,” he’d said.

Syd had punched him.

“She’s a great housekeeper, too,” he’d added with a grin, dodging a second blow and then circling around to catch her in an embrace. “But I think it was mostly how unbelievably sexy she was.” He’d nuzzled her ear. “Still is,” he’d added with a wink, reaching down to pat her four-month-pregnant belly. Syd had rolled her eyes, but the light of love had been in them, and Molly knew the feeling was mutual.

It was true, Molly realized. Sex did play a part. A big part. And her sister-in-law had sex appeal in spades. Sydney had probably been born with a come-hither look in her eyes. Molly figured she’d been born with safety lenses over hers so she wouldn’t get grit in them when she worked on engines which she did every day as the mechanic at Fly Guy Island Charters, the business she owned with Hugh.

Molly loved the business. She loved the engines. But men didn’t notice women who worked on engines. Not as women, anyway.

And they certainly didn’t have sexual fantasies about a woman who could take apart a carburetor and put it back together with no pieces left over. They didn’t want to take her to bed and make hot sweet love to her. They didn’t want to set a wedding date.

It didn’t even occur to them. To him. To Carson.

So she needed help. She needed to get his attention. To appeal to him on the same basic elemental level that Syd had appealed to Hugh. She needed to become a sexy, alluring woman.

Something of a stretch, she thought grimly, when she was generally covered in motor oil and wearing her brother Hugh’s T-shirts and steel-toed boots.

But she was willing to work. She just didn’t know where to start.

Or she hadn’t.

Until last night.

Last night she’d gone to the Grouper, the island’s most “happening” watering hole and had sat at one of the tables by the wall, watching the “happenings”—all the flirting and teasing and male-female innuendo stuff—trying to get an idea of how to do it. From a distance she didn’t have a clue.

All she’d seen was who was at the center of it all—Joaquin Santiago.

Of course.

Molly grappled with the carburetor a little more fiercely than was absolutely necessary, her jaw bunching as she remembered the moment the idea had entered her head.

She’d been sipping a beer and watching God’s gift to women, until recently one of Spain’s most important exports to the soccer world, Joaquin Santiago, assessing the females who were attempting to charm him. An accident had ended his career just months ago, and according to her other brother, Lachlan, he was still feeling the effects of it. Molly, watching him, couldn’t see it had left any lasting effects at all.

It certainly hadn’t done anything to dim his legendary appeal—or charm.

He smiled at this one, chatted with that one, flirted with them, one and all. And then something happened. One woman appeared to catch his attention. Molly saw him straighten, zero in. His wicked grin flashed. The devil-may-care glint in his eye was evident clear across the room as he focused on that one woman and cut her out of the crowd.

Like a cutting horse with a cow, Molly thought, having seen some Texans doing exactly that last weekend on the television.

As Molly watched, Joaquin’s gaze locked with the woman’s. They’d smiled. Flirted. They’d moved closer together as they talked. The others didn’t leave, but it became clear they were a couple. Joaquin’s hand lifted as he gestured. The grin flashed again, and when his hand came down it was on the woman’s arm. She moved in closer.

Molly watched intently. Two tourists moved between her and the unfolding drama. She leaned sideways, practically tipping off the bar stool to get a better look. But it wasn’t fifteen minutes until Joaquin and that night’s conquest—or had she conquered him? Molly wondered—left the bar together.

Back to the Moonstone, undoubtedly, where she would share his bed.

Molly gave the wrench a vicious twist, and the nut came off and clanked to the floor. “Damn it!”

She scrabbled after it. Got it. Then pulled back and came up too soon, banged her head. She saw stars—and a vision of Joaquin with last night’s blonde in his arms.

The night before that it had been a brunette. In the last week, Molly could recall half a dozen women she’d seen him with. Obviously, the man was a sex god.

But just as obviously, the women had something, too. What?

What caused a man to single one out? Hone in on her?

Want her?

Ask him, her idiot brain had suggested. Right there in the middle of the Grouper the notion had come to her, and had almost knocked her on her butt.

Yeah, right, she’d countered her own idiocy. Just walk up to the playboy of the Western World and ask him what he finds appealing about any given woman.

For him they only had to be breathing.

But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. Joaquin had standards. He had his pick of women, and he only chose certain ones.

“I’d take his leftovers,” Hugh had said once in his pre-Syd days.

Ask him, the voice persisted.

Molly snorted again, just thinking about it. Joaquin Santiago didn’t even know she was alive.

Well, he knew. He was one of her brother Lachlan’s best friends in the world. He’d been in and out of her life ever since he and Lachlan had played soccer together in Italy when he was nineteen. Years later he’d come to Lachlan’s wedding and to Hugh’s, bringing a different, equally gorgeous, French model to each. He’d been charming to everyone, even Molly, giving her a taste of the Santiago charm as he’d asked to be introduced.

“Introduced?” Hugh had goggled. “That’s Molly! In a dress.”

It had been almost funny to see the unflappably debonair Santiago looking momentarily nonplussed as he’d had to admit he hadn’t recognized Lachlan’s sister wearing one of her friend Carin Campbell’s outfits.

“Dab a little engine grease on your nose, Mol’,” Hugh had suggested cheerfully. “Then he’ll know you.”

“Shut up.” She’d laughed because she hadn’t cared what the likes of a playboy like Joaquin Santiago thought of her. Still didn’t.

She’d refused to dance with him then. She didn’t want to talk to him now. But clearly he knew what men found sexy and alluring in a woman. He knew what made a man sit up and take notice. He knew what made him sit up and take notice.

Ask him, that irritating little voice in her head plagued her again.

But still she resisted. It would be too awful, too humiliating. How girly was it to admit you didn’t even know how to act like a girl? Molly shuddered at the thought. She hated admitting any weakness. She’d spent her life determined to keep up with her two older brothers, and damn it, she had. Anything they could do, she could do better.

Almost.

There were some things, she was beginning to realize, that they would never have to do, blast their miserable hides.

She finished disassembling the carburetor and plunked the pieces in a pan of cleaner to soak. Surely she could come up with a better idea before Carson came home again.

It wasn’t like he would be here anytime soon. She had assumed he would come to the Pelican Cay Homecoming Festival this month. It was going to be a big deal. It had been Syd’s idea almost from the start. Working with Lachlan and Lord David Grantham, she had come up with a way of bringing ex-islanders home and enticing tourists to the island for a weekend of fun and revelry. Everyone on the island had got behind the plan, and Molly had thought Carson’s return would be a given. But when she’d mentioned it, he’d shaken his head.

“Can’t. Got to go to Ireland.”

She’d smiled and done her best to hide her disappointment, telling herself he needed to do his job, and that it wasn’t important. There would be time for them. Hadn’t he just recently bought that big house in Savannah he was planning to restore? Didn’t that mean he was thinking about marriage and family?

Maybe she didn’t need to do anything to entice him.

Carson was a dark horse, after all. He kept his own counsel and did his own thing in his own time. No one else from Pelican Cay had gone from a poor fisherman’s son to a multimillionaire in twelve short years. Carson had because he had always known what he wanted to do.

And he’d simply gone out and done it. He hadn’t talked about it.

Perhaps next time he came, he wouldn’t talk about marriage, either, he’d just bring a license and they’d get hitched.

Or perhaps he’d be as distracted as ever, Molly thought wearily.

The phone rang. She had gunk on her hands and let the answering machine get it. Whoever wanted to schedule a flight could leave a message and Hugh could call them when he got back.

“Mol’? Sorry I missed you. Thought you’d be there.”

Oh, God! She stumbled across the room and punched the speaker button with her elbow. “Carson? Hi! I’m here! I’ve got oil, er…” She didn’t need to spell it out for him. “Never mind. How are you? Where are you?”

“In Miami. Just got a break in a meeting. Just wanted to say I ran into a couple of islanders last night and we got to talking. Got a little homesick.” There was a catch in his voice that made Molly smile.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Missed it. Missed you,” he said gruffly. “God, it’s so damn hectic all the time. The business. The house. Stuff…We never really got to talk last time I was home.”

Molly’s heart kicked over. “No,” she said carefully. “But I knew you were busy.”

“I was. Still am,” he said. “But some things are more important, you know?”

“I know.”

“Good. So I just wanted to let you know I’ve rescheduled Ireland. I’ll be there for homecoming.”

Molly grinned. “You will?”

“Yep. And we can talk and— Oh, hell. Gotta run.”

“Carson—”

“Not now, Mol’. Can’t talk. Sorenson’s off the phone. I’ve gotta go. We will, though. Promise. See you next Saturday.” There was a click and Molly stood staring at the dead phone.

Outside she could hear the Pelican Youth Soccer team yelling as they practiced and her brother Lachlan shouted out instructions for a drill. Inside she could hear the pounding of the blood in her ears.

Carson was coming home!

A surge of hope shot through her, followed at once by the tempering memory of his promise that they were “going to talk.”

Fine. Good. She wanted to talk. But she and Carson had been talking for years. That’s pretty much all they had ever done beside some dreaming and some kissing and some teenage groping and fooling around. Everything else had been set aside because Carson had been far too busy.

And because he’d never been especially inclined to make love to a woman who smelled like engine oil and wore steel-toed boots? Molly wondered.

Well, she could get rid of the smell and buy a new pair of shoes.

And then what?

Joaquin Santiago would know, her irritating little voice reminded her.

And yes, that was true. He would. But she did not want to ask him!

OF ALL THE PLACES ON EARTH Joaquin Santiago had been—and he’d done his share of moving around in more than a dozen years of playing professional soccer—he had always liked Pelican Cay best.

He’d first visited the tiny Caribbean island at age nineteen when he’d come to spend a holiday with his soccer teammate Lachlan’s family. It had seemed an idyllic lazy paradise to a boy born and bred in the hustle and bustle of Barcelona. It had been his bolt-hole ever since, the perfect getaway from the demands of his fast-paced frenetic lifestyle.

Not that he hadn’t loved that lifestyle, too. In those days he’d sat on the beach, relishing the quiet, yet always aware, whenever he’d stared east toward the horizon, that it was out there—his fame, his fortune, his “fantastic foot” which had made him one of the most feared strikers in football.

No longer.

For the past four weeks he had tried not to even look at the horizon. He knew what it held: nothing. It was empty. Distant. Barren. Bleak.

He had no future.

People hadn’t forgotten him yet. It had only been five months, after all, since he’d been at the top of his game. Five months, one week and five days. If he thought about it, he could have come close to the number of hours since his accident, since he’d leaped up to head a ball at the same time as Yevgeny Pomasanov.

He’d hit the ball. Pomasanov’s head had hit his. And his career had ended—just like that.

It was ridiculous. He still couldn’t believe it. God only knew how many times he’d been hit in the head before Pomasanov’s blow. Thousands, no doubt. It meant nothing, was an occupational hazard.

But this time it had been different. This time when he’d attempted to get up he couldn’t. His arms, his legs didn’t respond. He felt nothing. Couldn’t move!

His brain still told his body what to do. But it was as if the connection had been severed. Unreal. Unthinkable!

He was young. In his prime! Soccer was his life!

But life as he’d known it for thirty-three years was over. They’d taken him off the field on a stretcher in a neck brace. For four days he’d lain in the hospital, paralyzed, motionless, as doctors hovered and poked and prodded. He’d felt nothing but an occasional tingling sensation and a desperate sense of panic.

The sports pages and tabloids had been full of speculation. Would he move again? Would he walk? Would he play?

Of course he would. He had to!

Life had always been about soccer. Soccer was what had saved him from having to spend his life in the mind-dulling Santiago family business. Of course he knew that one day it would be his destiny, but not right away. Not yet!

He loved soccer. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

So the morning that the tingling sensations in his fingers and toes actually led to his moving them, he’d breathed an enormous sigh of relief. If he could move, he could come back.

It was just a matter of time. After all, he’d been hurt before. Three years ago he’d lost his spleen as a result of a motorcycle accident. He’d nearly died from loss of blood before the injury was discovered. But he’d recovered from that. He’d come back. And this time would be no different.

He’d worked his tail off. He’d done everything the docs told him to—and more. He’d rehabbed until he was sure he was as fit as ever. It had taken him four months. Then, a month ago, he’d walked into the training room and said to the docs, the trainers, the team owners, “I’m back. I’m as good as new. I can do everything I ever did.”

And he went out onto the pitch and showed them.

They had watched politely. And then, to his amazement, they had shaken their heads. “You’ve recovered wonderfully,” they agreed. “But you can’t play soccer. It’s too risky.”

“What?” He’d stared at them, disbelieving.

“Spinal stenosis—” the congenital narrowing of the spine that had contributed to his paralysis and which they had discovered while treating him “—is nothing to mess around with. Next time you might not recover feeling at all.”

“How do you know there will be a next time?” he’d demanded.

They’d just looked at him. “How do you know there won’t?”

He’d argued. Damn it, he’d had to argue!

But in the end, it was the insurance companies who carried the day. They wouldn’t insure him. It all came down to liability. Joaquin Santiago was too big a risk for any team.

Ergo, he couldn’t play.

His world collapsed. He felt fine. He felt fit. He felt gutted. His father expected him to come back to Barcelona and get on with life.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Martin Santiago had said. “You just need something to do. A job,” he’d added pointedly, “which has been waiting for you for fourteen years.”

But Joaquin couldn’t face it. Not yet.

“Take your time,” his old teammate Lachlan McGillivray advised. “I know it feels like the end of the world. It felt like it to me when I retired. You get over it,” he promised. “You just need some space while you find something else to do with your life.”

Easy for Lachlan to say. Lachlan had long ago found something he wanted to do. He’d begun buying property and rebuilding and restoring old buildings, turning them into a series of one-of-a-kind small elegant inns across the Caribbean. Since retirement he’d made his home here on Pelican Cay where he’d married a local girl and had a baby son. His future, even out of soccer, was of his own making.

Joaquin’s was not.

His future had always been a given. Soccer had given him a reprieve, but his life had been foreordained since birth. Santiago men went into the family business. It was as simple as that. For the past five generations all of them had devoted their lives to the company Joaquin’s great-grandfather, for whom he’d been named, had begun.

Since there had been telephones, the Santiagos had been involved in communications. The company had evolved with the times, and now had its corporate fingers in a lot of pies. It was thriving, growing, facing daily challenges.

“Santiago men always faced the challenge,” Martin was fond of saying.

Joaquin would, too. He knew that. His father expected it. So did he. Martin had been tolerant of the years Joaquin had spent playing soccer only because he was a strong vigorous man in good health who didn’t need his only son and heir trying to take over before he was ready.

“So you play a while,” his father had said, waving a hand dismissively.

But it had always been understood between them that when Joaquin’s soccer-playing days were over, Santiagos was waiting and real life would start.

Joaquin was no fool. He’d always known he wouldn’t play forever. He’d accepted that.

But that had been when “real life” was somewhere in the future. Not now.

Not yet.

But with one blow yet had become now. His father and the business were waiting. His mother with her lineup of prospective brides—more “real life”—was waiting.

But he couldn’t face it.

He had been back in Barcelona two days when he knew he needed more time.

“I just need to get my head together,” he’d told his father. “I need a little space before I start.”

“Space? You’ve had four months!” Martin sputtered.

But his mother, Ana, the more patient of his parents, had taken his side. She’d patted his hand and said to his father, “Give him time, Martin. A month. Two. What’s the difference after we have waited all these years. He needs to grieve for what he has lost.”

His father had been skeptical, but in the end he’d agreed. “We will be waiting, though,” he’d said giving Joaquin a stern, expectant look.

And Joaquin had nodded. “I know. I’ll be here.”

“Of course he will,” his mother had said. “And then we will all be happy and Santiagos will be waiting and—” she’d kissed his cheek “—finally you will get around to giving me those grandchildren I’ve been waiting for!”

That was the other half of his future—getting a mother for the inevitable Santiago offspring.

His mother had shaken her head with bemused tolerance at all the groupies who’d trailed after him during his soccer career. She didn’t take them seriously. They were silly and transitory.

None of them would become “the Santiago Bride.” She knew that. So did Joaquin.

“Time enough for you to find the right woman when you are done playing games,” she’d always said.

Something else to look forward to, he thought grimly now as he lay on the chaise longue on the small balcony outside his room at Lachlan’s trendy Moonstone Inn and tried not to think about it.

He’d been here over three weeks now, every day trying to psyche himself up for his new life.

He wasn’t there yet.

Listlessly he picked up the book he’d been trying to read for the past hour. Lachlan’s wife, Fiona, had told him he’d love it.

“It’s a real page turner,” she’d assured him. But he’d been on the same one now for what seemed like a week. The words made no sense.

Weary, he lifted his gaze and stared across the water at the empty horizon.

“You read?” The sudden sound of an astonished female voice made him jump.

He turned his head and saw Lachlan’s grubby sister, Molly, standing on the balcony of the room next door.

He lifted a brow. “Are they keeping engines in the guest rooms now?”

Molly was the mechanic at Fly Guy, Hugh McGillivray’s island charter service. She was also a pilot, occasionally taking charters when Hugh was otherwise committed, but most of the time she was eyebrows deep in some greasy engine on a plane, boat, helicopter or motor vehicle.

Not, Joaquin thought, your average girly girl.

Probably the only one in the world who didn’t even own a dress! A fact he had learned when he hadn’t recognized her at Lachlan’s wedding because she’d actually been wearing one. A borrowed one. But he hadn’t known it at the time. He’d thought she was simply a fresh female face. She certainly hadn’t looked like herself. On the contrary, she’d looked…pretty. Sexy.

Approachable. For once.

His mistake.

He’d felt foolish for not realizing who she was, but he’d got past it and had attempted to redeem himself by asking her to dance.

“Dance?” She’d stared at him, sounding incredulous. “With you?”

“I don’t normally ask women to dance with someone else,” he’d said stiffly.

She’d laughed, but it had been a forced laugh. And then she’d shaken her head. “Well, thanks, but no thanks. Don’t put yourself out.” And she’d turned away to talk to someone else!

Cheeky brat.

And the only woman who had ever turned him down.

Not that he gave a damn. There were far more fish in the sea. He hadn’t spared her another thought. And he’d barely seen her since he’d been back. Oh, maybe they’d been in the same social gathering a handful of times because he was Lachlan’s friend and she was Lachlan’s sister.

But she was usually far too preoccupied with her engines even to deign to speak to him. And he had no desire to talk to her. He considered ignoring her now. And he might have, but at the moment even grubby tomboy Molly McGillivray was more welcome than his own dark thoughts.

“What are you doing over there?” he asked her.

“Suzette asked me to put some flowers in the room.”

Lachlan’s office manager and second in command, was all spit-and-polish efficiency. Joaquin couldn’t imagine she’d let Molly—wearing her grimy work shorts, faded orange T-shirt, and oil-streaked bandanna wrapped around her forehead to tame a riot of coppery curls—anywhere near one of the Moonstone’s pristine guest rooms. “Good thing she didn’t ask you to bring clean towels.” He grinned at the flash of green fire in Molly’s eyes, then when something else seemed to flicker in them, he added, “Lo siento. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t see Suzette sending you like—” he waved a hand in the direction of her grease-stained clothes “—that.”

“I was coming up, anyway,” Molly said stiffly.

“Oh.” He expected she’d do whatever it was she’d come up for and leave, but she didn’t. She stood there, so deep in thought she was making faces as she stared at him.

He frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” She hesitated, then glanced toward the door that led from his balcony into his room. “Is she gone?”

“Is who gone?”

“The flavor of the night. Whoever you brought back with you last night.”

Joaquin stared at her. “What do you know about who I brought back with me last night?” he asked.

In point of fact he hadn’t brought anyone back. He’d considered it. He’d even gone so far as to leave the Grouper with a pretty blonde tourist from Germany. But she’d giggled too much. He’d walked on the beach with her, then remembered a “pressing phone call” he needed to wait for. She’d offered to wait with him, “to keep him busy while he was waiting,” she’d said with several more giggles. But he’d declined.

“I don’t know anything about her,” Molly said. “I just didn’t want her to come waltzing out in the middle of—” she broke off.

Joaquin lifted a brow. “In the middle of…?” He gave her an expectant look.

She made more faces. Then she shifted from one foot to the other and seemed to almost balance on her toes. She reminded him of Lachlan poised in goal, anticipating, ready.

For what?

No clue. She seemed to be poised on the brink of some great statement which she somehow couldn’t manage to get out. Well, if it had anything to do with disapproval of how he lived his life, she could take her opinions and stuff them!

“I need to talk to you,” she blurted at last. Her face was red, and not entirely from the sun, Joaquin didn’t think. Curious.

“Talk to me? About what?”

More faces. She balled her fingers into fists. “It’s complicated,” she said at last. She didn’t look at him.

“Complicated how?”

“Look,” she said fiercely with another suspicious glance at the door. “Is she in there or not?”

“There’s no one in my room,” Joaquin told her. He rose lazily and stood looking at her. “So if you’d like to go in…” he added, his voice laced with a lazy teasing innuendo.

If she could make innuendoes about his love life, he could do the same about hers.

“No!” She gulped air. “I don’t. I need—” She stopped again and looked almost anguished.

He’d never seen Molly McGillivray anguished. She’d always been cheerful and blunt and basically a sort of no-nonsense girl. “Is something wrong?” he asked her.

“No.” She took a breath. “I just…have a proposition for you.”

His eyes widened. “A proposition?”

What the hell did that mean?

“A business proposition,” Molly said. Her voice sounded raspy and she licked her lips as if they were parched. She looked hot. The Caribbean sun was baking.

“Why don’t you come over and sit down and tell me what you have in mind,” Joaquin said. Before you faint and fall off the damn balcony.

“I—all right.” She scrambled over the railing to his balcony, leaving a couple of greasy fingerprints on the white paint.

“Sit down,” Joaquin said. If she had engine grease on the seat of her shorts that was Lachlan’s problem. She was his sister, after all. “Do you want something to drink? Beer? A glass of wine? A soda?” There was a small but well-stocked refrigerator in his room.

“A beer,” Molly decided abruptly.

And before he could make a move to get one for her, she darted past him into his room and got one herself! Actually she got two and handed one to him.

“Thank you,” he said, deadpan.

She gave a jerky little nod. “My pleasure. Well, Lachlan’s actually,” she corrected herself. She twisted the cap off the beer as she paced around the small balcony, still not looking his way.

Joaquin watched, not speaking as she stopped with her back to him and stared out across the beach. Then she tipped her head back and took a long gulp of the beer before squaring narrow shoulders and turning to face him.

“I want to hire you,” she said.

“Hire me?” His gaze narrowed. He didn’t know the first thing about engines. Wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in them. Never had been. And just because Lachlan had been saying he should stay busy, that didn’t mean he needed some misguided female in steel-toed boots offering him work out of pity.

“No, thanks,” he bit out.

Molly’s fingers tightened on the beer bottle. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

“I don’t need to. I don’t know an oil pan from a tail rotor and I don’t want to.”

“I imagine even you could tell the difference between those two,” she retorted with a roll of her eyes. But then she hunched her shoulders. “It’s not that kind of work. It’s something you’re good at.”

“Not soccer,” he said flatly. “I’m not helping Lachlan with the soccer team.”

In a misguided attempt to cheer him up when he’d first arrived, Lachlan had invited him to help coach the kids’ soccer team. That was the last thing Joaquin wanted to do.

If he couldn’t play the sport he loved, he wanted nothing at all to do with it. It hurt too much to watch anyone do what he could do no longer. Especially when he was going to be doing what he didn’t want to do at all.

But Molly shook her head. “Not soccer.”

Joaquin couldn’t think of anything else he was good at. “Then what?”

Her fingers strangled the beer bottle again. She took a breath. “I need you to teach me—” another swift deep breath. And another. Hell, in a minute she’d hyperventilate! “—how to seduce a man.”

His jaw dropped. The beer bottle slipped from his hand.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Molly bent down and snatched the bottle off the deck, slapped it on the table, then ducked past him into the room and, returning with one of the bathroom towels, used it to blot up the beer with a gravity far exceeding the amount that had spilled.

His brain was still buzzing, wondering if it was the heat of the afternoon sun or the beer that had caused his hearing to go. “You want me to what?”

As she mopped he could see that the back of her slender neck was almost as red as her hair. And when she stood up, her face was flaming. “Never mind! Forget I said anything. It was a stupid idea!” She tried to dart past him into the room, but he hauled her up short.

She jerked her arm, but he wouldn’t let her go. “Sit down.” He still couldn’t believe it, but her behavior was making it seem more and more like his hearing wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.

“Did you say you want me to teach you to—” now he was having trouble getting his mouth around the words! “—seduce a man?”

Her shoulders lifted and her mouth twisted in one of those distasteful faces she’d been making earlier. But then she met his gaze squarely and seemed to defy him to make something of it. “Yes.” The word hissed through her teeth.

Good lord. He tried to bend his mind around it. His mind wasn’t that flexible. “Why?” he asked stupidly.

“For the usual reasons,” she snapped. “Why the hell do you think?”

He shrugged helplessly. He’d always thought he understood women very well. He sure as hell didn’t understand this one!

She sighed and squared her shoulders beneath the gargantuan T-shirt, then said evenly, “Look. It’s simple. I’m thirty-one years old.”

He was surprised. Of course she had to be, as she was only a couple of years younger than he was. But somehow he’d never thought of her as any older than when he’d first met her. She’d been about seventeen then. Still, “Thirty-one?” he echoed doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! I’m not ancient.”

“I know that,” he said quickly. “I thought…younger. You look—”

“Like a thirteen-year-old boy?” Her mouth twisted.

Yes, actually. In those clothes. Though she sure as hell hadn’t at Lachlan’s wedding in that borrowed dress. But he wasn’t going there, either. “Fine,” he said at length. “You’re thirty-one. So what? Like you said, it’s not ancient.”

“Not yet. But it’s time I got married.”

“Married?”

He’d never even seen her with a boyfriend! It wasn’t that he’d thought she might prefer women, it was that she’d never given any indication of preferring anyone at all. Some people didn’t.

“Not everyone has to get married,” he said, in case she had suddenly begun to worry about it. “Lots of people lead perfectly happy single lives.”

“You, for example,” she said tartly. “I know that. But I presume that’s because you want to.”

“Damn right.”

“So, fine. Hooray for you. But I don’t want to.”

He blinked at her vehemence. “You don’t?”

“No!” She took a quick breath, then said more moderately, “No. I don’t. As surprising as it may seem, I want a husband. I want a family. I always have.” She said the words with almost as much bluntness as he was accustomed to hearing from her. And yet they weren’t disinterested. There was an emotional edge underlying them. She sounded vulnerable.

Molly McGillivray? Vulnerable?

“Your sister wears army boots?” he’d said incredulously to Lachlan the first time he’d met her.

And Lachlan had agreed with a wince as he’d rubbed his shin. “And she knows how to use them.”

That was the Molly McGillivray he knew. Not this one.

Now he rubbed the back of his neck and tried to think. The very notion of him helping some girl with marriage on her mind boggled his. Marriage wasn’t even a word in his active vocabulary, despite his mother’s recent not-so-subtle hints.

When it came to staying power, his romances—if indeed anyone beyond tabloid journalists dared call them that—rarely lasted longer than the half life of a loaf of bread. Which was the way he liked it.

In the past three weeks, he’d flirted with dozens of women and been delighted to have them flirt with him. Someday he would doubtless marry and do his duty by the family name.

But he was in no hurry. None at all.

Besides, what did seduction have to do with marriage? Unless Molly was planning to seduce some man, then kidnap him and haul him to the altar. He gave her a narrow assessing look.

“You want me to teach you how to nab some unsuspecting tourist?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, then—”

“He’s not an unsuspecting tourist!”

“You’ve got someone in mind?”

“Of course.”

“You do?” He couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice. His mind darted to all the eligible men on the island. “Um…anyone I know?”

“I don’t think you’ve met him. We grew up together. He lives in Savannah now—and elsewhere. His name is Carson Sawyer.”

No, Joaquin hadn’t met him. But he’d heard the name. Carson Sawyer was the “local boy who made good.”

“You think we’re driven to succeed?” Lachlan had once said to him when they were working their butts off. “You should meet Carson.”

Carson Sawyer, last Joaquin had heard, was worth about as much as a small Mediterranean country.

And this was the man Molly had set her sights on?

Talk about aiming for the moon!

“I don’t think—”

“We’re engaged.”

“You and Carson Sawyer?” Joaquin couldn’t have disguised his shock if his life had depended on it. Tomboy Molly with all her rough edges and a hotshot, fast-track business tycoon like Carson Sawyer?

But Molly was nodding seriously. “Since I was fourteen and he was fifteen. Since he went to sea.”

“That’s—” Joaquin did the math in his head “—seventeen years ago!”

Molly shrugged. “We weren’t in any hurry. It was right. We knew it. And we both had other things to do.”

“But—”

“We were both happy,” she insisted. “It worked. For both of us. We both did what we wanted to do. But now—” she lifted her shoulders “—now it’s time.”

“To seduce him?” His mind still wasn’t that flexible.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything I said?” she demanded.

“Yes, of course. It just seems a little, um…bloodless? Cut-and-dried?” Joaquin was bilingual, but he would have had trouble with this in any language at all.

“Exactly,” Molly agreed, surprising him. Then she went on. “That’s the point. It shouldn’t be ‘bloodless.’ It should be wonderful, moving, passionate.” Molly’s voice became animated, the color rose in her cheeks again. She looked eager and alive and hopeful. And then, as quickly as it had come, her eagerness vanished and her shoulders slumped. “Only it isn’t happening.”

“It?”

“The passion. The…sex stuff.”

She didn’t want him to teach her about sex, did she? God almighty!

“He treats me like his pal. Which I am, of course,” Molly said hastily. “But he needs to see me in a new light. So I—thought maybe you could help me.”

He opened his mouth. Stood there. Stunned. Then closed it again.

“You are good at it,” Molly said firmly. “I’ve seen you. Lots of times.”

“Seen me what?” he demanded, visions of her spying on his bedroom activities making him decidedly uncomfortable.

“Pick up women. Get picked up by them. Flirt with them. You know,” she said a little desperately. “I’m not good at that stuff. But I can learn,” she added.

He looked at her doubtfully. “You want me to teach you how to seduce your boyfriend?”

“Fiancé. Why not? It’s how I learned to repair engines. It’s how I learned to fly. I went to an expert.”

“I thought Hugh taught you to fly.”

“I’m not asking Hugh to teach me how to seduce Carson! And I’m not asking Lachlan, either, so don’t even suggest it!” Abruptly Molly headed for the wall to climb over it and leave. “Never mind. Forget it. I shouldn’t have bothered. I should have known you’d think it was stupid.” She turned on him. “If you say one word—”

“I’m not saying anything.” He caught her arm again and swung her around so that she landed on the chaise and stared up at him. He stood over her, breathing hard, aware of a sudden new energy pumping through him. “Don’t be so damn quick to jump to conclusions. What do you need to know?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t be asking, would I?” Molly folded her arms across her chest. “I just want to make him look at me differently when he comes for the island homecoming. I want him to see me as a woman. He never has.”

“Never?”

“Well, not never. But not for a while. We had things to do. We didn’t want to just get married and have babies. So we got engaged. It took the pressure off.”

“It did?” Joaquin shook his head, dazed at the logic. “How?”

“I didn’t have to worry about finding a boyfriend, and he didn’t have to worry about finding a girlfriend. We had each other, but we could go ahead and do our own things. Then someday, when the time was right, we’d get married. But he’s so busy, he doesn’t remember.”

“So why haven’t you reminded him?”

“I’m not begging Carson to marry me! He’s got to want to. And he will,” she said stoutly. “I just need to make him sit up and take notice. But I don’t quite know where to start. That’s where you come in. I can pay you.”

“I don’t want your damn money!”

“Well, too bad. I’m not a charity case!”

“No. You’re a nutcase! How much time do you have to turn into a femme fatale?”

“Ten days.”

“Ten days? That’s all?”

Molly’s chin lifted. “If you’re any good, that should be long enough!”

“Or if you are,” he countered.

She didn’t flinch. Much.

They glared at each other. All he could see were her deep-green eyes, her face full of freckles, the smudge of oil on her nose and that grubby bandanna covering her forehead. For the first time in a month, he couldn’t even see the emptiness of the horizon.

“It’s a deal,” he said. “I’ll do it.”