Burn: A South Beach Bodyguards Book (8 page)

My parents weren’t exempted from any of that, and it was like discovering Santa isn’t real. It shattered my perception of my world, of the people entrusted with teaching me morality. I didn’t understand it then, couldn’t articulate it at four years old, but it was the day I found my own moral compass.

Apparently Isabel had her own moral compass as well. “I’m pretty sure Kim does.” Like my mother, she was a former stripper, though obviously that didn’t make her a bad person, I just meant that she had seen a thing or two in her time. I liked Kim a lot. I knew that after she retired from dancing, she had worked high-end retail sales to support herself and Isabel. I also knew that she was more than happy to never have to work again, and who the fuck could blame her for that?

A year with Mickey had given her a healthy nest egg and a house.

The house I’d grown up in. Which pissed me off, I could admit it. That house should be mine. Not because I wanted it, but because it was my right. My due. At the very least Mickey should have asked me how I felt about him giving it to Kim, and offered it to me first. But no, he’d seen that house as a convenient way to hide some money, not as a sentimental place where he had raised his only child.

Yep. An asshole.

Who still got under my skin.

“What makes you think she knows?”

“She knows where the money is kept.”

“What money?”

I didn’t feel like explaining everything to her. I found a parking spot in front of Starbucks. I swung into it, ignoring the car honking behind me when I paused to parallel park. “The money.”

“That clears it right up.”

I started to get out of the car, but she sat there like she wasn’t planning to get out of the car. “You have to come with me,” I told her.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“And I don’t care how you feel.” I slammed my door shut and stomped around to hers. I was tired and hungry and I needed caffeine. I was pissed at my father and I was worried about Isabel’s safety and her health. She still didn’t seem right in the head after the incident and I was afraid that somehow someone would get the jump on me and kill her. It was really damn annoying that I had no clue what any of this was about. I yanked her door open. “Get out.”

Her eyes widened and her bottom lip trembled. Tears rose in her eyes. “Fine. God.”

Fuck, she was tearing up like she was going to legitimately cry. Fuck, fuck, and fuck. “Don’t cry.” But it didn’t sound kind or reassuring. It sounded bossy and dickheaded.

“I’m not!” She got out of the car, and shoved past me to the sidewalk. She stood there, waiting, her arms over her chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and it didn’t sound brimming with sincerity, even though I meant it. I was just never good at conveying emotions.

She was silent, just going into the coffeeshop when I held the door open for her. She didn’t acknowledge me at all while we waited in line, but after I ordered my coffee, and the cashier addressed her in Spanish, she answered in kind and they ended up having a five minute conversation I didn’t understand, though I was pretty sure it was about me, given that the older woman behind the counter kept pointing to me and laughing. One day I was going to learn Spanish for real, instead of the few phrases that I had mastered. It had taken me forever during my teen years to figure out that the little old ladies in the grocery store weren’t asking me to move out of the way, but were asking me to get things down off of top shelves. I was mortified when at eighteen a friend told me when we were in the store what a woman was saying. I realized I had spent at least three years shifting away when women spoke to me, which was the exact opposite of what they had wanted.

“Do you know her?” I asked Isabel after I paid and we moved down to the pickup area.

“No.”

“Then what were you talking about?”

“She said that maybe coffee would take away the sour look on my boyfriend’s face. I told her you’re not my boyfriend, but my stepbrother, and she said then I don’t have to put up with you and I should find a nice Cuban boy who isn’t the size of a giant.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. “I’m not your stepbrother.”

Isabel snorted. “No, I suppose you’re not. We’re actually nothing to each other.”

That made me feel bad. “I didn’t say that. We’ve just never had a chance to get to know each other or anything.”

She gave me a long, searching stare that made me uncomfortable. “It really doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

That answer made me even more tense. I picked up my cup and took a sip. “It matters,” I said, shortly.

But she just shrugged.

Fortunately there was no traffic, because it was a quiet car ride. Isabel stared out the window as we drove over the causeway and rather than looking over at her every three seconds like I really wanted to do, I forced myself to concentrate on the highway stretch in front of me.

When we got to the Gables and to my former house, I felt a wave of nostalgia, which was ridiculous. So it was the house I’d grown up in. It wasn’t like it was jam packed with great memories and wonderful dinners and holiday family gatherings. After my mother left, my father let it go to shit on the inside, though he did pay to maintain the exterior. But the inside was still the same dated sixties remodel that had slapped midcentury modern on top of 1920s Spanish architecture. It was a bad combo, but Mickey had stopped caring. Mostly I had been alone in the house growing up and it had been a hell of a party pad in high school, because there was nothing to ruin. It was a dusty relic with lots of square footage.

Out of respect for Isabel, I had her let us in the house with her key, even though I had a key too still. Mickey had never changed the locks. But she did look up at me apologetically.

“This must be strange for you,” she said. “My mom said this is the house you grew up in.”

It was my time to shrug. “It’s just a house.” Not a fucking symbol of my whole shitty childhood. Because that would be dramatic and stupid. “Your mom has done a nice job with it,” I said as we went inside, because she had. It was clean, for one thing. “I stayed here when Kim and Mickey were in Europe and you were visiting your dad.”

“My mom loves to decorate.” Isabel went into the living room and stopped at the bottom of the tile stairs that went to the bedrooms. “Why do I suddenly feel nervous to be in my own house?”

Maybe because it was my house. Or because she’d been assaulted in it. One or the other. “You were at the bottom of these steps knocked out cold, so that might have something to do with it.”

“Did it occur to anyone I just fell down the stairs? I’m not exactly grace personified. I take after my father, not my mother.”

She went up the stairs and I followed her, because that was my job. “I seriously doubt you tripped all on your own and fell down six stairs and landed in just the right position to knock yourself unconscious. Give yourself a twisted ankle or a bruise on your ass, sure. But not knock yourself out.”

“You don’t know how klutzy I am. I fell off the stage at my ballet recital when I was seven. That was the end of my mom’s dreams of me being a professional dancer.”

“Your mom wanted you to be a stripper?” Unbidden, images of Isabel naked, those luscious thighs wrapped around a pole, popped into my head. It immediately morphed into her giving me a private lap dance and I hated myself for mentally going there, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had seen things I couldn’t unsee and it was messing with my head.

“No!” She glared at me over her shoulder. “She didn’t want men ogling me. She wanted me to be a ballerina. Though I have to say, there are times I envy my mother for having been so confident that she was able to take her talent for dance and make money from it. I’ve seen video footage and she was good at it- her style was more burlesque than shock value. I could never been virtually naked in front of strangers. I’m too self-conscious. Not to mention, I have my dad’s looks, not hers. She has always been beautiful.”

I pried my eyes away from her ass, hovering in front of me as she took the stairs, and tried to process what she was saying. Self-conscious? The night before she had been anything but self-conscious. In fact, she had seemed to crave nudity. Or Julia had anyway. Was her personality really that split? Was Isabel repressed but deep down inside her she had a wild woman raring to go? It seemed a little nuts. A lot nuts.

If I were a nice guy, I wouldn’t call her out on it. I respected women and normally I did consider myself a decent human being with moral boundaries. But the fact that she could say any of that with a straight face after I had told her she kept taking her clothes off, and after yanking her T-shirt off in front of me an hour earlier, was ridiculous.

“I have seen every inch of you naked,” I told her. “Without any hesitation on your part. So maybe you don’t give yourself enough credit. Maybe inside you there lurks a secret stripper.”

In the doorway of a bedroom- my old bedroom- she whirled around. “I highly doubt it. I wasn’t in control of my actions.”

I raised my eyebrows and gave her a smirk. “You looked pretty damn in control to me. Especially when you bent over my kitchen counter and gave my beer bottle a rim job.”

Her cheeks bloomed pink. “I did not!”

“The hell you didn’t.” Then because I was feeling moody and selfish and horny as hell, I added, “You have a very talented tongue. And a cute little birthmark on your thigh.”

She hunched her shoulders forward and crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t make fun of me. Please.”

That surprised me. “I’m not making fun of you. I’m just trying to figure out who you are, Isabel. You seemed shy and quiet the few times I’ve met you, but last night you were anything but.”

“I had a head injury.”

“I don’t think a head injury makes someone want to be sexy.” I glanced down at her full lips, wondering what they would taste like. “I think you should let Julia out to play more often. Maybe merge the two of you together. And for the record, you’re just as beautiful as your mother.”

I expected further blushing and demurring. But she just met my stare, nostrils flaring. “You just told me to keep my clothes on back at your apartment. Which is it? Do you want sexy Julia or shy Isabel?”

The truth was, I wanted both. I wanted a merger, just like I’d suggested. I wanted Julia to stroll around my apartment naked and do amazing things with her mouth, and I wanted sweet Isabel to show concern for me, have a conversation with me. It was the perfect combination if I were looking for a girlfriend, which I wasn’t.

I didn’t know how to do a real relationship and if I attempted it, I was going to fuck it up, and I could never do that to Isabel. She deserved a good dude, some college guy, who had a future that didn’t involve guns and bullshit and questionable money shifting. She deserved a guy who didn’t look like a Russian thug in a Rocky movie, and who was a good hugger. Because she basically walked around looking like she needed a hug.

That wasn’t me. So no matter what my dick was saying, I had to make my stance clear. “I don’t want either one. That’s not my point.”

It sounded harsher than I meant it to, and her face made that clear.

Her mouth dropped open.

I wanted to apologize, but I stopped myself. If I did, I would end up awkward hugging her, and then because I felt awkward and because she was so short and cute and sexy I would kiss her. Then suddenly I’d have her on the bed and I would take her, all of her, then I would bolt post-sex and be cold and remote and she would be hurt.

So I kept my fucking mouth shut.

Hurt her a little now or a lot later. I’d stick with hurt her a little.

I stared up at Ryan, my neck cramping. In my fantasies about Ryan I seemed to have shrunk him down in size a little. He was huge. I’d also made him a little less of a prick. He was blunt. And maybe I overly sensitive, but he didn’t seem to think much about my feelings.

“If you don’t want me, either one of me, then mind your own business.” It didn’t sound sassy, like I intended. My voice just sounded shaky and hurt. So I turned and continued into my room. I wished Ryan would just wait downstairs for me and not stand there in the doorway, watching. Judging.

There was no telling what was going on in his head, because his face was a stoic mask. I had only seen him break that expression once when I thought I had perceived lust in his eyes, but now I wasn’t even sure. I had probably just imagined it because that’s what I wanted.