From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride (10 page)

“With the difference that Bruce Wayne advertises his philanthropy. I can’t even bear the word.”

Her eyes grew thoughtful, the warmth he’d been sorely missing flooding back in them. “So you don’t like considering what you do philanthropy?”

“I just have the means to achieve things. So I do.”

“And you hide your altruism while you leak info about a criminal past and affiliations. You want the world to learn about your lethal edge but not your gooey center, huh?”

He swung her around to her squealing delight, grinned down widely at her. “See? You read me like no one ever has.” Putting her back on her feet, he probed, “But how did
you
know about Casa do Sol? Did you investigate them, too?”

“No. I just made visits everywhere, and they were the only ones I felt...good about.”

“So again your instincts proved infallible. You read everyone, not just me. It’s
your
superpower.”

“It never felt like a good thing. It leaves me with precious few people in my life.”

“You only need a few who
are
precious.” He squeezed her tighter. “Though I’d rather you only need me.”

The flush that flooded her face was adorable. Before he commented on her paradoxical shyness—given that she hadn’t batted an eye while asking him to have sex—he realized his hand was hurting like hell. He’d been using it as if nothing was wrong with it.

He raised it up. “Aren’t you going to ask about my hand?”

A stubborn look came into her eyes. “No.”

“You don’t care that I broke it?”

“Are you going to take me now?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t care.”

He guffawed as she stuck her nose up at him. He’d never laughed that way, so elated and unfettered.

Still laughing, he swept her up, and his heart boomed at the way she clung to him, fitting into his every emptiness. The memory of her earlier rejection jolted through him, making him gather her tighter. He was never letting her recede from him again.

In her bedroom, another place full of her mementos, he laid her down on the burgundy comforter and came down half over her. She wriggled beneath him until she’d brought him fully over her, pulling him into an all-body hug.

He rose on one arm, the pain in his loins becoming agony. “You’ll blow all my fuses.”

She arched up into him. “Serves you right.”

“It wouldn’t serve
you
right.”

She giggled, clung harder and brought him down between her thighs.

He groaned. “I was right. You are an enchantress.”

“I was wrong. You’re not a sorcerer. That sort of implies a level of benevolence. You’re pure evil.”

At once laughing at her pout and grunting in pain, he rolled off her. It was unheard of for him to defer having anything he wanted. But doing so with her was the most pleasurable thing he’d ever experienced.

If anyone had told him last night he’d be lying side by side with her in her bed, just to hold her and talk, when he’d never hungered for anything as much as he hungered for her, he would have thought them insane. But now, he couldn’t imagine anything better as she slipped her limbs into the exact places where he needed them, holding on with the exact intensity he craved.

Sighing after she’d settled into him as if she’d been doing so all their lives, he reached over her and picked a frame off her crowded bedside table.

The photo was of a woman and a little girl, both grinning unreservedly at the photographer, throwing their arms wide as if to embrace him and the life they loved with him. The object of their all-out affection was obviously her father.

A pang twisted in his gut at yet another proof of the depth of emotions she had for that man.

Banishing Ferreira from his thoughts, he focused on this piece of her past, another detail bringing him closer to her.

“You got a lot from her.”

She nodded, threading her fingers through his hair. “I also got a lot from my father.”

After seeing them together, he hated to admit that was true. But then, on the outside, the man was a perfect specimen. Rafael was certain that on the inside Eliana hadn’t been tainted by any trace of his weaknesses and evils.

“Whatever you got, wherever you got it, you became this one-of-a-kind amalgam.”

She gave an adorable little snort. “Did you go to the University of Extravagant Descriptions? Then got a PhD in hyperbolic metaphors?”

“Hush. I have all that vocabulary that I never found use for. You’re getting the benefit of it all.”

“Whether I like it or not, huh?”

He tugged a thick tress. “Oh, you like it.”

A sigh clasped her even closer against him. “Yes.”

He kissed her forehead. “Do you remember her?”

Her eyes became suddenly turbid. “Everyone thinks that I couldn’t possibly remember all that I do about her, since I was just three when she died, and that what I think are my memories are just from what Daddy kept telling me about her as I grew up. But I do remember her. Very well. Too well sometimes.”

He feathered kisses all over her face, needing to take away the raw edge of memories. “Is this why you give so much of your life to orphans?” Almost every weekend, and after work almost every day. “Because you feel like one, and you feel her loss so keenly?”

“If I feel that way when I have the best father in the world, I can’t imagine how those who’ve lost both parents, or never had anyone feel.”

The best father in the world.
The man who’d sent him to hell. But she had nothing to do with his crimes. And he’d keep her away from their fallout, whatever it took.

He forced down the bile that rose to his mouth. “Next time I see Sister Cecelia I’ll correct her.
You’re
the angel.”

Her eyes widened. “You heard her?”

“I have very, very good hearing.”

Her eyes grew heavy as they traveled down his body. “Everything about you is very,
very
good.
”

He caught her tongue in a gentle bite, sucked it inside his mouth. “I’m agonizingly thrilled you approve...as you can feel.”

He ground his hardness against her and she mewled, became even more pliant against him. His head almost burst with the urge to forget his promise and just take her as she’d asked. But he had to wait. Had to deepen her involvement until she was as dependent on him as he was on her.

Insinuating a leg between his, she pressed her knee into his erection, wringing a growling thrust from him.

She chuckled, eyes telling him she considered them equal now. “But Sister Cecelia got it right, even if at the time I wanted to tell her that fallen angel would describe you better.”

“It would. I’ve done very, very bad things in my time. I still do, when the need arises.”

Her eyes grew serious. “But not to innocents.”

It was a statement, not a question. Pride expanded inside him that she trusted him again, and saw his fundamental truth.

“No. But the law still calls what I did and do illegal.”

“The right thing to do isn’t always legal. And as long as no innocents were harmed, as long as you help them like when you crush those corrupt people to save helpless children, then
I
call what you do heroic.” She sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I wish I could do the same, but I don’t have enough power. I’m only thankful someone like you who does exists, and that you use your power this way.”

Was it possible that once he destroyed her father—if she ever realized it was him who did it and she found out the reasons why—she’d find his actions heroic? At least, excusable and understandable?

“You can’t imagine how helpless I feel most of the time.” Her pain made him want to go out destroying everything that had ever made her feel this way. “I try to reach out to as many children as I can—to provide them with someone who cares, who’s there to listen to their problems and ideas, to take part in their activities, to encourage their interests and talents. But no matter how hard I try, I always feel nothing I do is enough. Thank God for people like the sisters who do far more. But someone like you? You can do the most.”

His throat tightened. “What you do will make a difference in those children’s psyches. I just throw my money and weight around, but I never made a child’s day better in person. Truth is, I never even interacted with one, until Diego today.”

“But without your ‘money and weight,’ we wouldn’t have the places and projects to offer any children anything.”

“So we complement each other.” She snuggled deeper into his chest, nodded. “We already knew that, just not how completely we do.”

Raising her face, her smile and gaze caressed him. “But you must now know everything about me since I sprouted my first baby teeth. And I know nothing about you.”

He rose on one elbow. “What do you need to know?”

“Tell me about your family.”

He’d been prepared with a fabricated history. But he couldn’t bear more lies between them than necessary. He’d tell her the truth—a carefully edited version of it.

“My parents divorced when I was ten. My mother remarried two years later and had three more children, two girls and a boy. My father remarried much later, and had two children, a girl and a boy. I exited their lives early and never reentered it. I sort of watch them from afar, keep my distance.”

“Is this what you want?”

“With my kind of life, with what I’ve been involved in, they were better off with me as far away as possible. When it became feasible for me to approach again, I still felt it wasn’t in their best interests for me to disrupt their lives.”

“How can you say that? I’m certain they’d love to have you be an integral part of their lives.”

He tickled her, trying to inject lightness into what was suddenly oppressively serious. “Who’s being biased?”

She grinned impishly, then turned back to seriousness at once. “But I really do imagine they would choose to be as close as possible to you if you gave them the choice.”

The talons in his throat sank a little deeper at her conviction. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

He expected her to probe this vagueness, but she only exhaled. “As long as you’re sure that it’s for the best. But even if it is, I still hate to think you’ve exiled yourself from your family. That you’ve chosen to be alone.”

“I’m not alone. I’m part of a...brotherhood, if you will.”

“One of them is that terror you have for a partner, huh?”

He guffawed at her wary-feline expression. “He was an addition to our brotherhood. He used to be my mentor.”

“He thinks he’s your father. Or your ‘Big Brother.’”

He laughed harder as she made the quotes gesture. “You’re uncanny. You analyze everything with such absolute accuracy.”

“He didn’t need analysis. He knocked me over the head with his ‘shining qualities.’” Another quote gesture.

“I assure you he hasn’t gotten
and
won’t get away with it. But speaking of family...I insulted your father almost as much as Richard did you.”

“Oh, no, there’s just no comparison. My father almost didn’t notice you, as anxious as he was about me.”

“I would still like to apologize. Will you please set up a proper meeting?”

A still look came into her eyes. “You want to meet him...as my father or as a potential partner?”

“Can’t I meet him as both?”

She grimaced. “You know where I stand on this issue.”

“Why don’t you let me handle this?”

“I’ve never been as miserable as I was last night, and I don’t want to risk something like that happening again.”

“It won’t. I promise.”

The troubled look that gripped her face almost made him tell her to forget it. But before he could say anything, she nodded, then nestled back into him.

As he received her into his embrace, that trust he craved, which she was bestowing on him in full again, weighed on him. It didn’t feel like a privilege anymore but a responsibility.

One he ultimately had to betray.

Seven

T
he meeting with Ferreira took place the very next afternoon. During lunch hour so it would be brief, at Eliana’s request.

Rafael picked Casa de Feijoada, a busy spot in the posh beachside Ipanema district, a mile away from Eliana’s place, and Ferreira’s offices, for their convenience. The restaurant was cozy, with a tropical, rattan-walled look and family-style table service. He came a bit early to arrange a table on the beach and order the lunch courses in advance so no unnecessary delays would occur during their hour-long meeting. They arrived at one o’clock sharp, and Eliana greeted him with the same ardent kiss with which she’d said goodbye when he’d left her apartment at 2:00 a.m.

Though she’d confided that she’d told her father everything, so he must have an idea how things stood between them, he glimpsed a spurt of anxiety in Ferreira’s eyes as he witnessed that intimacy. But like the gentleman everyone believed him to be, the impeccably dressed and behaved Ferreira made no comment. Not on that nor on Rafael’s offensive behavior during the last ball, nor his no-shows in the previous ones.

From then on, they settled down to the smooth flowing lunch courses. Apart from the effort Rafael expended to sit across from Ferreira—the man he’d once loved as an uncle and who’d betrayed him in the most unspeakable way—pretending this was their first real meeting, nothing of note happened.

Ironically, the man who’d been trying to meet him for the past two months didn’t seem to care that Rafael possibly held his professional future in his hands, only that he might affect his daughter’s adversely. Ferreira spent the entire lunch watching them interact, saying little. He never once broached the subject of the partnership. The only questions her father asked him were when Eliana went to the ladies’ room: oblique ones probing his intentions and warning him against toying with her. In turn, Rafael as indirectly let Ferreira know that where Eliana was concerned, they were on the same page. She came first to him, too.

That seemed to disturb Ferreira instead of reassure him. He considered Rafael’s statement an exaggeration, since the sum total of their liaison had taken place over three days. But when Rafael told him that the power of their connection had dispensed with the usual stages needed to reach their current level of involvement, Ferreira finally relaxed. Though he’d evidently never thought Rafael was capable of forging such a connection, from what he’d heard about him, he confessed that he knew how it could be that way from intimate experience. It had been the same between him and Eliana’s mother. They’d married a week after meeting and had lived ecstatically ever after—until aggressive pancreatic cancer had taken her from him.

On Eliana’s return, the conversation turned to anecdotes about Eliana’s mother, and her half brothers and their mother. Ferreira had had two extreme opposites in the marriage department. The first one when his father had arranged his marriage to his partner’s daughter and the battlefield that marriage had turned into. Then the marriage to the love of his life, which had started with love at first sight and had ended with him living in her memory and for their daughter.

The lunch ran thirty minutes longer than the agreed on hour before Ferreira rose to leave. As Rafael shook his hand, the man gave him a pointed look.
Don’t hurt my daughter
was the gist of the volumes it spoke. His answering look said
I would
never
hurt her.
He hoped the
but I’ll hurt
you...
bad
part went unsaid.

The moment her father disappeared, Eliana dragged Rafael by his tie and planted a hot kiss on his lips.

Starving for her already, he moved to deepen it, and she pulled away, chuckling, eyes heavy with hunger. “I shouldn’t be kissing you after I just binged on that
feijoada.
Rinsing my mouth can’t begin to counteract its garlicky goodness.”

Brazil’s national dish was indeed an antisocial stew. This restaurant that proclaimed itself the meal’s house was lauded by Cariocas, Rio’s residents, as serving the best
feijoada
in Rio. Even after he’d ordered their best meal, he hadn’t expected the giant pot of meats swimming in saucy black beans they’d gotten. The tureen had been piled high with smoked and peppery sausages,
carne seca
ham and an assortment of other pork cuts. He was glad he remembered to tell them not to serve the pig’s ears, tail and tongue.

He pulled her back against him, claiming her lips. “Having binged on the same pungent bomb, all I taste is your sweetness.” Another savoring kiss. “And the tartness of acai and
maracuja
and dragon fruit from that Amazonian fruit smoothie.”

She suddenly yelped, pulling back once again. “You always scorch me, but now you literally do. Those deadly
malagueta
peppers you gobbled are still lacing your lips and tongue.” Licking the burning away, she smiled. “Thank you.”

He pressed his lips as if to secure her kisses there. “What for?”

“For being so nice to my father.”

“He’s a nice man.”

He didn’t even have to lie. Apart from the sadness he glimpsed in Ferreira’s eyes—which Eliana said had been there since her mother’s death—and his wariness of how the power Rafael wielded would affect his daughter’s well-being, Ferreira was apparently the kind and agreeable man he remembered. The evil he’d committed against him had carved no visible telltale signs on his visage.

Eliana sighed. “I actually think you didn’t like him much, but you were still extremely nice to him. So thank you.”

Deus.
Those instincts of hers continued to prove sharper than he’d even thought. He’d thought he’d been seamless.

Before he could say something to alleviate her suspicion, she added, “But it’s expected on a first meeting with my wary father hen. He spent lunch watching your every move. And you’re a man who suffers no monitoring or judgment.”

Relieved she’d found a benign reason for the hostility she’d felt from him, he exhaled. “It’s only natural he’d be worried about how fast things developed between us. I think I ended up allaying his anxiety.”

“I know.” She smiled up at the waitress, who put the bill before him. “Why do you think I went to the ladies’ room?”

“And there I thought you didn’t have a wily bone in your body.” He grinned as he got out his credit card.

She chuckled. “No wiliness involved, I assure you. I was instructed to do so. On the way, Daddy begged me to give him any chance to be alone with you. He claimed there was no way he could ‘read’ you as long as I was around. He also begged me not to be my shockingly candid self while he’s around.” She shot him a devilish look. “I did manage not to say things like, ‘Don’t worry about Rafael seducing me, Daddy. I spent a whole night slithering all over him and begging him to have sex with me, and he was the one who held back and reprimanded me about my language, too!’”

Rafael threw his head back on a guffaw. “It’s a good thing you exercised some self-control. You would have given him a heart attack.”

Her laugh tinkled like crystal. “I did give him a minor one with that kiss when we first came in. The poor man always bragged he was the only man he knew whose daughter never gave him any nightmares about boyfriends, since I never had any. Then I go and get all mixed up with someone who’s as much trouble as ten thousand men put together.”

“So I’m all his postponed nightmares come all at once.”

And she didn’t know how literally true that was.

“Exactly.” She laughed, her gemlike eyes radiating mischief and joy in Rio’s midday sun. Entranced as he gazed into them, he threw some bills down, and she giggled harder. “That tip could make you a partner in this restaurant.”

“The food and service were impeccable. They earned it.”

“It
was
lovely. But then it didn’t have to be. Just being with you would make anything wonderful.”

He knew she meant every word. She was the first woman, the first person, who’d ever told him everything she felt, no games. And it was intoxicating.

“I also want to thank you for not talking business.”

“I want to discuss a few things with you before I bring up anything with him. I have reports, but I want what only an insider would know.”

“Let it go altogether, okay? Even my father didn’t bring up business. Now that he saw us together, I believe he won’t.”

“I know he has big problems, Eliana.”

Dismay flooded her eyes. “I guess it was too much to hope that you of all people wouldn’t find out. But we’re working on a resolution, and I’m hopeful we’ll soon have it.”

“I know a partnership with me would help resurrect his business. Even if I don’t give it to him, I still want to help.” He did intend to save her father’s business, for her, to preserve her legacy. He’d seen Ferreira’s will, and she was his only beneficiary. No matter what he felt about her father, he wouldn’t let her inherit an ailing enterprise. He buried his lips in her palm. “Let me help.”

She caressed his cheek, hand trembling as it was singed by his passion, her gaze softening with gratitude. “It doesn’t matter if you can help, it’s enough you want to.”

“I can do anything, remember?”

“Oh, yes, you can.” Her smile was tenderness itself. Then suddenly she pushed her chair back and stood up.

He rose at once. “Where are you going?”

“Back to work. Then to the orphanage.” She grinned as she reached for her coat. “As you already know.”

He helped her on with the coat that matched the deep royal-blue dress he’d spent much of the lunch hour fantasizing about ripping off her.

She hooked her purse across her body. “See you at my place later? Or would you rather I come to yours?”

“I’ll come to you. And I don’t want you driving on that road alone again, so whenever you want to come to my place, I’ll pick you up. Eight o’clock?”

“Make it nine.” Her smile lit up the whole world as she walked into his arms and met him halfway in a kiss that had the whole restaurant watching.

After she left, some men gave him the thumbs-up. One was giving him two.

Mock bowing to them, he walked out into the hubbub of Rio’s midday congestion. Cariocas filled the streets as they did every hour of the day. Anyone coming to Rio came for its laid-back beach culture as much as its breathtaking landscapes and abundant tourist attractions. And everyone got the impression the Cariocas were on perpetual vacation.

He breathed deep of the ocean breeze and the unique scents of this city he’d spent his formative years in. It was strange how alien he felt here. His kidnapping had truly cut all the ties he had with his past, with the being he’d been.

But Rio was still the place he’d been taken from, and it was where he’d returned to enact the vengeance he’d waited for almost a quarter of a century. Three quarters of his life.

Then in three days, Eliana had turned his world upside down and shifted his priorities.

But his plans were only postponed, not cancelled. He would still punish her father.

Just not before he secured her.

* * *

At eight o’clock sharp, that Amazonian parrot she had for a bell burst into song.

Ellie flew to the door, heart soaring as she snatched it open, expecting to see Rafael. He was there. Only not alone.

“Please meet my boor of a partner, Richard Graves.”

Her heart plummeted as she leveled her eyes on that menace, before turning her scowl on Rafael. “You shouldn’t be walking around with him so blithely. Without a leash, too.”

Rafael laughed. “I promise you I have him well in hand. Invite us in,
querida.
”

“No.”

Rafael’s smile tried to coax her. “Not even now that he got what he deserves?” He shoved Graves forward.

Graves rolled his eyes, moved into the light of her foyer and showed her the right side of his face. It was a swollen deep purple beneath the beard he now sported. After he’d given her a good look, he stepped back, resettled that harsh gaze on her.

She blinked dazedly up at Rafael. “You hit him?”

“You think I’d do anything less once I found out what he’d done? What he’d said to you?”

She turned her gaze to Graves. “You told him about propositioning me, huh?”

“Of course.”

Suddenly, a realization hit her, made her turn anxiously back to Rafael. “Is that how you hurt your hand?”

Rafael nodded. “You think anything less than his concrete jaw can break my bones?”

She gaped at him. “Your hand is really broken?”

“I do have fissures in two metacarpal bones.”

She dragged him inside, heart squeezing as she feathered anxious touches over his splint. “God—and I made fun of your injury! I thought it was a sprain or something and you were only teasing me.”

“No teasing.” Graves walked in without invitation and closed the door behind him. “Under your thrall, he went and broke his hand. After I spent years teaching him how to fight without ever injuring himself. Terrible student.” A mirthless laugh. “And he didn’t even get his boo-boo kissed for his trouble.”

She took Rafael down on the couch with her and glared up at Graves. “Oh, he will now. And then he’ll get everything kissed. Anything that hasn’t already been, that is.”

At Graves’s raised eyebrows, Rafael turned to him with a triumphant smile. “For the record, I didn’t employ your generously imparted techniques because I just wanted to hurt you. And myself. I was the one who gave you the impression you can be rude to Eliana when I walked away from her.”

“Is he always that vicious to women he thinks you’re done with? Or is he that brutal by default? Which wouldn’t surprise me. He doesn’t feel quite human to me.”

Graves turned his gaze to Rafael. “Very astute, this one. Foolishly outspoken, too. You may have to keep her.”

Rafael’s eyes ate her up. “Oh, I am keeping her.”

She mock scowled at him. “How kind of you both. But I’ve been known to keep myself, thank you. So why don’t you unstoppable forces of nature just run along and go exude charisma and testosterone all over someone else?”

Graves’s lips spread. “It really looks like you’ll have to keep her.”