Читать книгу Men at Work: Through the Roof / Taking His Measure / Watching It Go Up - Cindi Myers, Cindi Myers - Страница 9

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MARINA GUNNED the Porsche down a dirt road in Davie, Florida. She wore a very short, painted-on white jean-skirt, hand-embellished with embroidery that climbed her hips and blossomed on the small seat. The button on the fly had been imported from Morocco and the artist had signed the low-dipping waistband.

Giuseppe Zanotti had crafted her sandals, Catherine Malandrino had sculpted her clingy, belly-baring top and Bobbi Brown took responsibility for her lush lips and full, expertly lined lashes. God had given her a set of long, slim legs; her trainer had perfected them. God had not provided her highlights or her voluptuous bustline, but Marina would go to her grave swearing that He had.

She had dressed to kill and, if she did say so herself, she looked like hot sex on a stick. Ben would drop to his knees and crawl after her.

She pleasantly envisioned herself planting her bejeweled toes in the center of his forehead, so he had to suck on her spike heel. Then he’d beg her forgiveness….

The 911 sped around a last curve leading to a vast construction site that teemed with hot, sweaty, shirtless men framing out a very large building. According to Mathew Tremaine, one of those hot, sweaty, shirtless men was Ben.

She squealed the car to a halt, unbuckled her seat belt and vaulted out, her chestnut hair streaming in the wind. Several guys on the crew stopped work to stare as she strode toward them wearing her oversized Dior sunglasses. One of them whistled, one clapped a hand over his heart and another almost stepped on his tongue.

“Hello, boys.” Marina accepted a big beefy hand up onto the concrete slab and rewarded its owner with a dazzling smile. Then her gaze narrowed on a set of familiar shoulder blades about a hundred feet away.

Ben’s back was brown from the sun and rippled with muscle as he bent toward his task. Sweat ran in rivulets down his spine; dotted his neck and soaked his hair. She stood stock-still in helpless female appreciation at the way his torso segued into a narrow waist and slim hips; at the firm, well-developed backside under his leather tool belt, the long legs encased in filthy jeans.

Delgado personified power. Raw, dirty, animal force—dear God, her Ben had it in spades. No matter how angry or hurt or devastated she was, he was the kind of man a woman would lift her dress for. Hungrily. Shamelessly. Almost involuntarily—not having any real choice about it.

As if he could sense her gaze on his bare back, Ben turned, his eyes widening as he saw her. For a split second, she felt that naked, helpless feeling and she craved the scent of his skin as it moved over hers. Then he broke the spell himself.

“Go away,” he said.

Rage and frustrated love exploded inside her. “You son of a bitch!” she shrieked.

He closed his eyes, while every man on the site turned and stared, now. She didn’t care.

Relief burst within her next. He was alive, not broken and bleeding in a ditch somewhere, or unconscious from pills or booze. It was one thing for Gina Keys to tell her—and quite another for Marina to see it herself.

“How could you? How could you do this to me, Ben? I’ve been a wreck, worrying about you!”

“Marina, mi amor, get back into your car and go home. This isn’t the time or the place—”

She ran at him, her fists clenched. “A letter, you coward? How could you break up with me in a letter? You didn’t have the nerve to say it to my face?”

Marina reached him and threw a wild punch at his chest.

Ben allowed her to hit him once, then twice.

“A letter?” called one of the onlookers. “Christ, Delgado. That’s cold.”

Another guy spit on the ground. “Whoa. You let this little hottie go?”

Ben’s eyes snapped in annoyance.

She hit him again, and he grasped her wrist and held it. She threw her Chanel purse at him with the other hand, began to cry and then aimed a fist at his solar plexus. He commandeered it, too, before she made contact, staring down at her with those dark, unfathomable eyes of his.

“That’s right, Benny, you show her who’s boss,” some lowlife hollered.

“How did you find me?” Ben growled.

“What do you care?” She struggled in his grasp, all too aware that her cool, carefully calculated image had gone up in smoke. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin, smell his perspiration and the leather of his tool belt and the cool mint of his breath as he held her captive. “Let me go!”

In spite of her anger, a sexual current shot through her, a primal response to the ripped expanse of muscle, the rock-hard chest inches away from her. A mere glance from Ben could cause her nipples to ache and, at the moment, his eyes roamed over her from head to toe.

Her mouth went dry and her knees almost buckled at the look on his face: Hungry, punishing, loving—all at the same time. He looked as if he wanted to screw every inch of her—and it made her feel faint.

Another male voice called, “This little filly is on the market, Delgado?”

Ben’s mouth tightened.

“We’ll take her off your hands, buddy,” yelled another one. More whistles and catcalls ensued. A guy with three belly rolls grabbed his crotch suggestively.

Ben silenced them with a look and loomed over her protectively. “Damn it, Marina, why did you come here?” He released her wrists and shook her gently by the shoulders. Then his mouth crushed hers and his arms wrapped around her as if he’d never let her go.

All thoughts of killing him flew out of her head as she helplessly kissed him back. He lifted her, she wrapped her legs around him. Before she knew it, they were off the concrete slab in a hail of lewd, encouraging cheers and Ben was striding toward the construction trailer with her.

She forgot about power, about dignity, about hurt. She couldn’t care less about his dirt or his sweat or his ripe male odor. All that mattered was him plastered against her, his lips to her lips, his chest to her chest, his sex to her sex.

The bulge in his jeans pressed into the scrap of lingerie at the heart of her, and she almost came before they got to the trailer door.

Frigid, artificial air washed over her as he wrenched it open, stumbled up the steps and inside and locked the door behind them. Then he set her on top of a battered vertical filing cabinet, rucked up her skirt and tore off her panties.

His face pressed between her thighs, his tongue pushed in side her and she screamed helplessly. He didn’t stop when she convulsed and beat her heels on his back, just pulled her forward, settling his big hands under her buttocks and feasting on her until she came again and again and finally begged him to stop.

He pulled her skimpy top and bra down around her waist and devoured her breasts, suckling the tips until she thought she’d die of needing him inside her.

He tore open his fly, freed the hard, heavy length of him and scooped her up again. Then he drove into her with a primal groan.

She spasmed around him again immediately, colors bursting behind her eyelids, while he drove harder, faster, deeper, sliding against her flesh until the tensing of his muscles, the guttural groan, the last mighty thrust told her he’d come, too.

“Dios mío, Marina. Dios mío. Te amo.” One hand still supported her bottom, one clasped her to him.

Just hearing his words almost made her come again, all by herself. He loved her. He loved her… Everything was going to be okay. This was all just a big mistake, an emotional reaction on his part.

They collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily, Marina calm and blissful. “Whose trailer is this?” she asked.

“The foreman’s. He’s at a meeting, lucky for us.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.

“Neither did I.”

“I was going to cut you off for the next five years.”

He sat up; was silent. Pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“Ben tell me—what are you doing here?”

“What does it look like? I’m working construction.”

“Why did you leave me that letter and disappear? When are you coming home?”

Ben sucked in a breath and got to his feet, six foot two of naked, sweaty sex-god. His abs were like steel; his biceps as big around as her thighs. He pulled up his boxers and jeans without a word.

Marina sat up, pulled down her skirt and narrowed her eyes on him. Surely, his body language wasn’t telling her what she thought it was? “Ben? You are coming home?”

He sighed wearily. “It’s all in the letter, querida. What else do you want me to say?”

She began to shake. “You can’t mean that stuff.”

He folded his arms across his naked torso and raised his stubborn chin. “I mean every word of that stuff, as you call it. I will not get married until I can take care of my wife. And right now I don’t have two cents to rub together.”

“Ben, this doesn’t make sense. We love each other. I have millions of dollars—you don’t need to have those two cents! I don’t need to be taken care of. What’s mine is yours, baby, you know that… I didn’t even ask you to sign a prenup. I wouldn’t!”

His voice emerged deadly calm and quiet. “I am not a parasite. I will not live off of my wife.”

“Ben, be reasonable. If our situations were reversed, I would take help from my fiancé when I needed it!”

He held up a hand. “No.”

“Marriage is about love, not finances. It’s about being there for each other—”

“Marina, this discussion is over. I will not take your money. I will not take your charity.”

“Then call it a loan, if you have to! Just don’t leave me, don’t hurt me like this, please, Ben. I love you…” She began to cry again, to her shame.

“Come here, mi corazón.” He pulled her up off the floor and gathered her into his arms. “Shh. Shh, Marina. Te amo, never doubt that. I love you. But I will not let you make me less of a man.”

“I’m not doing any such thing!”

“Not intentionally, mi vida.”

“Not at all! Please, don’t be so pigheaded, so stupid—”

He pushed her away but held her by the shoulders. His eyes went dark and cold and his tone hardened. “Don’t you ever call my integrity stupid. You’re lucky I’m not some vividor who will move in on you and wallow in your money, use you, rob you blind.”

She stared at him through still-streaming eyes. “Oh, I’m lucky, am I? Because I’ve had the good fortune to fall in love with a man who puts his pride ahead of everything else? A man who is such a coward that he leaves me in a letter—”

“Goddamn it, Marina! I couldn’t face you, and that’s the truth. I didn’t want to see you cry. Beg. Debase yourself—”

She gasped. Then she drew back her hand and slapped him, hard. Right across his arrogant, prideful, stubborn, macho cheek.

Ben stared at her.

“How dare you?” she asked, her voice shaking. “You call this debasement? Me, trying to talk sense into you and salvage what we have together? God doesn’t bless two people with our kind of love very often, Benjamin Delgado! And you—you want to throw it away because of money. Well, that’s sad. In fact, it’s tragic.”

“I told you that this discussion is over!” He roared the words this time, his eyes blazing.

She stamped her foot. “No, it’s not. It’s not over until I, at least, get one hell of an apology from you, Ben. You want to live a lonely life with your pride, then that’s your choice. But I deserved better than to be told you can’t afford me. I deserved a face-to-face conversation.”

Marina straightened the rest of her clothes while Ben turned away, apparently too angry to speak.

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it, you jerk? And how could you have slept with me just now when you knew you hadn’t changed your mind? You don’t think that debased me? Hell, I should charge you! What am I worth? Let’s call it five hundred bucks. I’ll take it in cash from you, right now.”

He swung around, face white, and took a step toward her. “Marina!”

She held out her hand, palm up. “C’mon. Give it to me,” she said in scathing tones.

“Stop it.”

“Oh, that’s right. How could I forget? You can’t afford me.”

She threw open the door and clattered down the trailer steps. Her face burned; her whole body burned. She ran to her car, threw open the door, fumbled her keys into the ignition and shot back down the dirt road.

In her rearview mirror, she could see Ben, still standing in the trailer’s doorway, looking stricken.

“OOOH-EEEEE, she’s one stacked little spitfire. You get some action, amigo?”

Ben stopped in his tracks and turned the full force of his glare on the pendejo lounging against a sawhorse on site. “Do not make the mistake of disrespecting my fiancée, chivo de mierda. Do you understand me?”

The guy dropped his cigarette butt in the dirt and stepped on it. “Okay, okay, man. Chill out.”

Ben stalked by him and swung himself back onto the big slab. As he approached the crew he was working with, silence fell, which told him he was the topic of their conversation, too. It didn’t improve his temper.

Why the hell had Marina come here? To torment him? To upset them both? To make a spectacle out of herself?

He thought he’d made his position crystal clear. He found nothing unreasonable about it. To marry her now would make him a gigolo. He was goddamned if he’d move into her fancy house, drive one of her spare luxury cars and be given an allowance like a ten-year-old. He’d sooner shoot himself.

It’s not a question of loving her, it’s a question of having balls. I’m a man, not a mistress! Why can’t she understand that?

Why did it make him a bad person that he had principles? That he refused to take advantage of her? Perhaps some people would consider his scruples ridiculous, but they weren’t to him.

It already bothered him greatly when she bought him clothes, and he’d refused to accept the Testarossa she’d unwisely had delivered for his last birthday. He hadn’t even opened the candy-apple-red door—he’d just called the dealer and made them pick it up again within the hour.

She’d been hurt. She hadn’t understood what it had cost him to do that. Did he appreciate the gesture? Of course. The Testarossa was his dream car. He’d drooled over the damn thing. He’d practically wanted to lick it. But he couldn’t accept it. He had his pride.

But his mindset was a lot more complex than simple pride, whatever she thought. He couldn’t explain it, not even to his own satisfaction.

When his father had lost all his money, he’d relinquished some part of himself as well as his wife and family. He’d become vulnerable and somehow…weak, which was unacceptable to Ben.

He didn’t want to be weak, suck on Marina’s money like a niño at the breast. He recoiled from the idea, even as her words came back to him. You want to live a lonely life with your pride, that’s your problem.

Ben picked up the nail gun he’d been using and tried to block out the look on her face, bitter and hurt, so hurt.

Why don’t you take up kicking puppies, man? Mugging little old ladies? Tripping kids on tricycles?

He began driving nails into wooden studs so savagely that the men around him exchanged glances and moved away.

The noise of a circular saw behind him would normally have grated on his nerves. But right now it came as a relief, drowning out the sound of Marina’s voice in his head.

Did he owe her an apology for breaking up with her in a letter? Could she be right—was he a coward? She didn’t mean physically. She meant emotionally.

But that didn’t matter—he didn’t like it. Not one bit. Delgados weren’t cowards of any sort.

Shit. Shit! Ben misfired with the nail gun, narrowly avoiding his own thumb. He drew back his booted foot and kicked a bag of concrete mix nearby.

He’d thought a letter would be simpler. Cleaner. More final. Right there in black-and-white.

It had never occurred to him that it might be cowardly. That it might upset Marina even more.

I deserved better than to be told you can’t afford me… I deserved a face-to-face conversation.

He realized now that he’d given her the equivalent of a pink slip, with no discussion. She had a right to be angry about it. Ben threw down the nail gun and stripped off his work gloves.

Oh, hell. He did owe her an apology.