THE BIG MOVE (Miami Hearts Book 2) (6 page)

              Was it wrong that I would have fun doing it? Should it hurt instead? Should I loathe it? Why did it have to be horrible?

              Hadn’t I been through enough? Couldn’t I at least enjoy myself for this date … this escort service?

              “That’s right,” I finally said, smiling at Xander and taking a half step backward. We were still close, but there was now room to breathe a little easier. “I’m in charge. Where’s your car?”

              “The black one, there,” he said, pointing. “The end of the row.”

              I mashed my finger on the keyless entry button on the key fob and was rewarded with a chirping sound and a flash of lights from the car in question. It was nice — nicer than any car I’d probably ever own — and it even looked like …

              “Is this a convertible?” I demanded. “Does the top open up?”

              “Sure enough,” Xander drawled, amused at my intensity.

              “Why isn’t the top down now?” I asked, almost angry for some reason.

              “I tend to like to park it all closed up,” he explained. “Gives people a little less incentive to jack it.”

              “Oh.” I twirled the keys on my finger. “But you ride with the top down all the time, right?” It seemed like the most logical thing to do, after all. If a person invested the money in a convertible, that person better have the wind in his hair at every opportunity.

              “Honestly, no,” Xander said, a little sadly. “I used to, especially when I first got it. But the woman who used to ride with me in it didn’t like to muss her hair when the top was down. Then I got into a horrible habit of always having it up — in anticipation of that.”

              I stopped dead in my tracks and ran my hands through my hair furiously. I shook it out, banging my head a little bit, and looked defiantly up at Xander.

              “Do I still look beautiful?” I asked him, daring him to tell me otherwise. I knew for a fact that I’d crapped up my hair — so intricately coiffed to impress men inside the club. Outside, it was going to be another matter, I was swiftly discovering.

              “If possible, even more ravishing,” he said, staring at me, making particular eye contact with my lips. I knew he was thinking about kissing me again, and the thought made me suppress a shiver.

              “Then I’m going to get behind the wheel of your amazing convertible, and you’re going to tell me exactly which button to push to put that fucking top down.”

              As we walked around either side of the car, I had to hide an incredulous laugh behind my hand. What was the matter with me? Why was I so vehement about this damn car? Yes, it was a really nice ride. No, I’d never ridden in one before. No, I couldn’t quite believe that the first time I’d actually ride in one, I’d be the one driving it.

              But it was perhaps the sadness in Xander’s voice that had propelled me to action. He’d so obviously bought this car to enjoy it with someone, and that someone had let him down. It made me sad just to think about, and I was bound and determined to make him forget about whoever she was.

              Within a few minutes, I was spoiled completely rotten, the wind tousling my hair as we sped down the street. Xander laughed at my obvious joy, and I was surprised to realize that I was happier than I’d been in months — the happiest, probably, since Antonio had been gone. And all it had taken was a spin in a convertible. Why was life so simple sometimes and so complicated otherwise?

              Out of breath and stopped at a red light, I cocked my head to regard Xander. He’d ditched his tie and rolled up his sleeves, but he was still in really nice clothes.

              “Do you think that maybe you’d like to slip into something a little more comfortable?” I asked. “We can stop by your house or wherever so you can change, too.”

              Xander winced a little. “I’ve set up residence in a hotel, I’m afraid,” he said. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m perfectly comfortable. Do your thing.”

              Whatever had happened, Xander had been exiled from his home. That was terrible — to lose the physical location of home and the person you thought of as home in one fell swoop. I was getting more curious by the minute to find out what had happened to this man, but I was also getting more determined to take his mind as far away from that pain as possible. It was too close to my own pain, too close to losing Antonio and giving up the things we shared one by one to try to reunite with him once more.

              Right now, I just couldn’t think of Antonio. It wasn’t fair to either of us. It wasn’t fair to Xander. If I was going to do this thing, I was going to take it all the way. I didn’t want to half-ass it and lose out on a dime I could’ve earned if I’d put my all into it. It wasn’t worth it just to do it halfway.

              I wheeled in to a parking lot and pulled into an open spot. I reached for the button to put the convertible’s roof back into place, but Xander captured my hand.

              “You know what?” he asked, smiling. “I’m feeling a little bit stronger in faith today. Leave it open. The car needs to be aired out, anyway. It gets too stuffy when the roof’s on for too long.”

              I smiled at him and we both got out of the car.

              “Welcome to the first stop in our date today,” I announced, holding my arms out grandly. We’d arrived at a green, rolling park, a slice of an oasis in the middle of the city. When I’d first gotten to Miami with Antonio, it had been the tall buildings that impressed me the most, the marvels of human engineering. But the longer I stayed here, the more I appreciated the surprising pops of green throughout the concrete and steel and glass that glittered in the hot sun.

              “I like very much where this is going,” Xander said, looking around at the park.

              “You have no idea where this is going,” I teased him, laughing. “You probably won’t be thanking me later. But first, a quick bite for lunch.”

              It was the middle of the week, so there weren’t many people around. That was all the better for the hot dog stand. We got our meals quickly and piping hot, both piled high with fixings. Nearly every bench in the park was empty, but I wandered to a grassy knoll, kicking my sandals off in favor of feeling the blades of grass beneath my bare feet.

              “Here’s perfect,” I sighed, settling down on the grass and taking the first bite of my hot dog. “You know, you should’ve changed. I don’t want you to stain your nice clothes.”

              Xander plopped down beside me, taking an even bigger bite than I had. He didn’t wait to chew and swallow before he began talking, either. “Sol, let me assure you: I give zero shits about my clothes. Erase the worries from your mind.”

              I laughed at the expression, filing it away for use at a later date.

              “So, are hot dogs regular fare for you?” Xander asked, watching me launch into mine with gusto. I realized I’d only picked it because it was the closest offering to where I wanted to go — and the cheapest. He had, of course, picked up the negligible tab, but I supposed I could’ve taken us anywhere. I didn’t want to tell him that hot dogs were regular meals. Regular meals were usually whatever I could scrape together with the least amount of time, money, and effort possible.

              “No, a rare treat,” I said, smiling as I took another nibble of mine. I’d asked for chili, cheese, and onions on the dog, which made it impossible to eat without getting dirty or keeping my dignity intact. Chili cheese hot dogs were a messy task, but one I was definitely up for. Really, I’d just picked it because it seemed like all the protein would stick with me the most, keeping the hunger pangs from gnawing at my stomach later.

              It was a strange and sad thing to be living in the same kind of poverty here in America, the land of opportunity, as what I’d endured in Honduras. But I had very important reasons for doing so.

              “I can’t imagine that you eat a lot of hot dogs,” Xander observed. “You’re too skinny for it.”

              “I can eat whatever I want,” I told him breezily. “The dancing burns everything away.”

              “Salsa dancing,” he said. “You have some pretty good moves.”

              “Thanks.” I licked chili residue from my fingers, savoring the spices.

              “Where’d you learn? Back home?”

              “Yes.” The bread was getting soggy, so I tried to pick up my pace of eating. It was hard with all this conversation Xander was trying to engage in. Couldn’t he see I was in the middle of something?

              “And where’s home for you?” he asked.

              “Cuba,” I said, barely able to get the word out after I stuffed yet another huge bite of the hot dog into my mouth. The lie was getting easier and easier each time I told it. I wondered if, someday, I’d wake up and believe it myself, forgetting about everything and everyone I’d left behind in Honduras.

              Sometimes, I felt like that would be easier.

              “Really!” Xander exclaimed, raising his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for Cuban. I’d have lost that bet.”

              “Why would you have betted in the first place?” I asked, raising my eyebrows to match the expression on his face. “Are you a betting man? Do you like to throw your money around?”

              “If I have something worth betting on,” he said, smiling and rubbing his thumb in the corner of my mouth. “You have a little chili, just there.”

              “Thanks,” I said, surprised at the intimate gesture, then my eyes popped open as he sucked the offending chili off his thumb.

              “I just wanted a taste of yours,” he said by way of explanation, his face the very picture of innocence.

              “You could’ve asked,” I said, shaking my head at him. Really! Who did that?

              “May I have a taste of what you’re having?” he asked, polite as can be.

              “Yes, you may,” I said, wondering why. He had a perfectly good hot dog to himself, piled high with relish and ketchup and mustard and onions. Both of our breaths would stink to high heaven after this, but at least neither one of us would be able to tell with the other.

              I made a move to offer him what was left of my hot dog, but he took me by the chin and kissed me again.

              Again. Barely thirty minutes into this date, or whatever it was, and I’d already been kissed twice by a man I hardly knew.

              This was something I felt like I should be complaining about, but I didn’t have a single one. I let him kiss me, let him “taste” my hot dog, and then I sampled what he was having — the mustard sharp on the tip of my tongue, the meals mingling.

              We parted lips oh-so-slowly, and I smiled against his mouth, our foreheads touching.

              “What happened to us taking this slow?” I asked softly. I didn’t know how we could take this. We apparently weren’t the type of people to take anything slow.

              “I can’t help myself, Sol,” Xander said, his fingers trailing along my jawline.

              “It’s the liquor,” I said, a grain of accusation seeping into my voice.

              “It’s not the liquor,” he said vehemently, backing away from me and holding my face in place with his hand. “Maybe the liquor’s making me a little more forward than I would normally be. Hell, I don’t know what’s normal for me anymore. But what I feel for you … I can’t explain it. The second I saw you dancing on that stage I knew I had to at least meet you. This … this is beyond expectations.”

              “What, exactly, did you expect?” I asked, almost afraid to do so.

              “For you to not even give me the time of day,” he said. “For you to ignore me. I’m so beneath you. You are a goddess.”

              I flushed. His praise was so high that it sounded almost insincere. There wasn’t anyone who could possibly believe that about me, was there? Antonio had called me his love, had always showered affection and compliments on me, but something about the way Xander was behaving was different from anything I’d ever experienced. Antonio and I had been through a lot together, sure, but the intensity had never been like this.

              Was that even fair for me to think about, though? Antonio and I had been to hell and back and to hell again. Maybe there hadn’t been time or opportunity for magic and passionate intensity. There had only been time for survival, for just eking through situations and journeys.

              It wasn’t fair, then, for me to be feeling the amount of attraction I was toward Xander. I would utilize whatever I could to make this “date” as lucrative as possible, but that would be the end of it. I wouldn’t see him again. The feelings I was having now told me that I couldn’t stay faithful to Antonio if I spent much more time with Xander.

              “What you’ve told me right now leads me to believe that you have quite a bit of liquor to work out of your system,” I said, lowering my eyes and pulling away from him forcefully. “That leads me to the next part of this date.”

              “Sol, I have to tell you, it’s not the alcohol talking,” Xander protested, reaching for me, but I took his hand on mine and shoved it back into his lap.