The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) (9 page)

Sara repeated the words. “Stick close to the kid. I’ll be over this infatuation in no time.”

And on that note, she said goodbye to her friend and started off down the beach in the direction of Nueva Vida, a new lightness to her steps.

Charlie was on to something, Sara decided, by labeling her interest in Joaquin an infatuation. She didn’t actually know the man in any real sense, right? So of course she was experiencing nothing more than an inconsequential, nothing-to-worry-about fleeting fixation. It was a crush, a simple crush. Superficial. Like a scratch, one that would close by the end of the day.

To make matters even better, soon after Sara arrived back at the house, Essie unwittingly cooperated in her role as buffer. The teen planted herself on one of the stools in the kitchen while Sara set about making a vegetable soup for lunch by chopping garlic, onion, carrots, and asparagus.

As the girl settled, Sara paused to smile at her. “Did you sleep well? Did you get enough to eat for breakfast?” The food she’d left out had been demolished.

“Oh, sure.” Essie planted an elbow on the countertop and her small chin in her hand. “Thanks.”

Sara’s peripheral vision registered movement, and she turned her head to see Joaquin mounting the steps from the beach to the deck, a newspaper under his arm. Dressed in lightweight wrinkled khakis and a white T-shirt, he stretched out on a lounge chair and began reading. Objectively, he was beyond handsome, his features even and etched, his tall body masculine and muscled.

No wonder he kindled that little fire in her belly, she thought.

No wonder she could imagine herself snuggled beside him on the cushions, her cheek nestled in the cup where his shoulder met his chest and her fingers spider-walking along the taut skin over his ribs as she tried to distract him from the latest business news. He’d send her a mock-annoyed glance first, and then he’d sigh, fold up the paper, and toss it to the side.

His gaze would cut to her face again. “What?” he’d demand, but he’d be smiling.

“I’m bored,” Essie declared.

Sara started, yanked out of her fantasy by the girl. Oh God, she wasn’t supposed to be mooning over the man! She was supposed to be keeping her lusty feelings on a tight leash!

Thankful for being pulled from the dangerous direction of her thoughts, she re-focused on Essie. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

The teen shrugged. “I’m bored.”

Bored?
Sara thought.
Try growing up in a small, rural town with grandparents watching and waiting for you to get into trouble.
“Aren’t your friends coming over?”

“Pretty soon,” Essie acknowledged, then stifled a large yawn with the palm of her hand.

“Do you have schoolwork that needs to get done? You could take care of that while you wait.”

The teen shook her head. “School’s on a break. I go to this year-round, girls-only, nunnery kind of place. It’s like my parents have something against a true summer vacation, not to mention my normal adolescent development. It’s wrong to separate the sexes, you know. There are studies.”

Sara wanted to laugh at Essie’s grandly aggrieved tone, though separating the sexes wasn’t such a terrible idea, to her mind. She cast a glance out the windows to check on Joaquin again, even though she shouldn’t. Yes, it was his physique that fascinated her, she concluded. All those long bones and interesting ripples would affect any woman.

Clearing her throat, she returned her attention to the teen. “You’re not allowed to date, then?”

“Oh, I have a boyfriend.” The girl picked up a lock of her long dark hair and closely inspected the ends. Her nails were painted like slices of watermelon. Green at the tips with pink centers complete with tiny black seeds. “His name is Zachary.”

“Is he coming over today?” That might be a worry. If Essie had a “boyfriend” without her parents’ approval, they likely wouldn’t want him visiting here.

“No. He’s on a break from his school, too, and he couldn’t get out of the family vacation—visiting relatives for a couple of weeks.”

“Ah.” Despite her best intentions, Sara’s gaze wandered out the window again.

“You keep staring at my brother,” Essie observed. “Is there something wrong?”

“Oh.” Sara gave a guilty start, and her gaze swiveled back to the girl. “Oh no, sorry. I’m just, you know, enjoying the view.”

At Essie’s smirk, she hastened to add, “Of the ocean.”

The teen let her get away with that, thank God. Reminding herself her captivation with Joaquin was due to that superficial crush, the one that was like a mere scratch, shallow and small, Sara turned toward the pantry to gather up the vegetable broth and spices.

“I don’t know him at all, you know,” Essie said.

Sara turned to the girl. “You mean…”

“My brother. It’s why I wanted to come. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Well…” Sara didn’t know what to say. Not talking about one’s employer behind his back was front-and-center in the Continental Butler Academy textbook. “I’ve only been working for him a short time myself.”
I don’t know him at all either. He’s just this shallow cut—crush—that I’m suffering from.

“He’s very good at running his business, my dad says that.”

“Mmm.” No surprise there, since he could afford this magnificent Malibu estate.

“My mother says he runs through women.”

Sara flicked a glance out the glass. Well, of course he was successful with the opposite sex too, thanks to everything that had tickled her own usually languid libido.

“Mom worries about the numbers, but since she’s on Hubby Three, it seems a tad hypocritical to me.”

At the teen’s world-weary tone, Sara’s heart squeezed. So young to sound so cynical.

“But she feels worse about leaving Joaquin with his crappy dad.”

I can’t blame my mother for leaving him. In the end, he drove his car drunk into a tree. The only good deed he ever accomplished was not taking someone else out with him that night.

He’d said that in the same offhand and world-weary voice as his sister’s.

Those words had a new poignancy now. Then, she and Joaquin had been the newest of acquaintances—albeit he’d been the man who’d agreed to make a pledge for a little boy’s fun run and to attend it as well. But now, she knew him better. He also had the conscience to put on the physical brakes to a very ill-advised liaison. He had the kindness to allow his little sister a chance to get to know him.

No.
No!

She had to put the brakes on this…this…deeper understanding of the man.

He wasn’t supposed to become a three-dimensional person to Sara. To leash her feelings, to maintain a professional distance, he had to be…be… She snuck a gaze out the glass again. What was the term? Beefcake. Joaquin had to be a hot body and a handsome face to her. A man she could easily get over. A small scratch, healed by morning.

“And then there’s our older brother,” Essie continued, clearly not aware of Sara’s unease. “Everyone figures it has to affect Joaquin, big-time.”

It has to affect Joaquin, big-time.
Resignation fell heavily on Sara’s shoulders as her mouth opened. She shouldn’t ask, she shouldn’t want to know more, but the question was already tripping off her tongue. “Your older brother?”

“Uh-huh.” Essie spun the seat of her stool to look at the man on the deck. “He died in Joaquin’s arms.”

Sara sucked in a sharp breath.
What?
Before she could form a second question, Essie jumped from her stool, her gaze trained on her cell phone. “They’re here!”

And as the girl ran for the front door, presumably to allow in her friends through the gate, the butler felt that shallow scratch, that emblem of her “crush,” break wide open.
He died in Joaquin’s arms.

It even bled a little.

Damn. Sara suspected the wound wouldn’t be healed by morning.

And when it finally did, she worried it might leave a scar.

Chapter 5

Joaquin didn’t know three teenagers could make so much noise. Essie turned out to be a nonstop talker, while her friends Lulu—a tiny creature with an explosion of red curls—and RJ—a beanpole of a boy—constantly punctuated her monologue with loud exclamations.

Oh my God!

Not ever!

I don’t believe it!

They’d made a camp of sorts on the beach with colorful towels and low-slung chairs. From somewhere Sara had found them a basket of teen beach toys—a paddle tennis set, a soft football, and a Frisbee. She’d directed them to a storage shed where they’d located a pair of two-person pedal boats that they’d lugged down to the sand.

The surf was flat enough today—just small ankle-washers—that they’d be able to paddle around in the ocean almost as if it were a lake.

For now the trio seemed content to laze in their chairs and check their phones…to the accompaniment of Essie’s endless chatter.

On the deck overlooking their encampment, Joaquin settled on a lounger beneath an umbrella. Its shade and his sunglasses gave him a fair fight against the glare as he studied business reports on his tablet.

There were a few other beachgoers in the distance and seagulls swooping and shrieking, but he tuned it all out as he focused on the latest dispatches from Patrick. He was frowning over a press release when he felt eyes on him.

He glanced up to find Essie standing in front of him, her arms akimbo.

“Yes?” he asked, wary.

Beneath a messy bun on the top of her head, her big brown eyes studied him.

“What?” He rubbed a hand over the whiskers on his cheek. Should he have shaved?

“I’m just trying to figure you out,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day, and you haven’t looked up from your iPad. Not once. Have you considered you’re a workaholic?”

He cleared his throat and turned off the tablet. “How you do you know I wasn’t reading a book or watching a movie or…or playing Sudoku?”

Her head tilted. “Is that what you do for relaxation? Play games?”

“Uh…” From the corner of his eye, he saw Sara walk onto the deck, a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic glasses in her hand. She set them on a nearby table.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” Essie shook her head, sighed. “I suppose that means you don’t have any hobbies, either.”

“I go to the gym,” he said, hoping his tone didn’t sound defensive. “And I…” His mind went blank.

His little sister’s expression made clear she pitied him. “Joaquin…”

“No, wait.” He wracked his brain for a PG form of entertainment he could claim to have enjoyed in recent months. Patrick might remember, he thought, reaching for his phone.

Then Joaquin’s hand dropped. In recent months? Who was he kidding? He hadn’t entertained himself in any form, PG or otherwise, in the last year.

“It’s been a busy time at work,” he muttered.

“I guess,” Essie said. “But it’s not good to have that your sole focus, Big Brother. You’ll turn into a dull dog. There are studies.”

“Essie!” Lulu called from the sand, brandishing a cell phone. “You just missed a text from Zachary.”

It got the girl moving. She swung around and returned to her friends. But instead of heading straight for her phone, she swiped the squishy football out of the basket and spiked it onto RJ’s belly. The boy instantly jumped to his feet and began chasing Essie down the sand. Lulu took up the rear, laughing maniacally.

Joaquin watched them for a few moments, then slanted a glance at Sara who was rearranging cushions on the nearby sofa. “Were you ever that young?”

“I suppose,” she replied, “since I passed up sixteen more than a decade ago.” Her gaze followed the teens as they hollered and shrieked and scampered. “But I don’t believe I was ever as high-spirited.”

High-spirited.
She had her Brit on again, and he had to hold back a smile.

“Did you hear what Essie said?” He shook his head. “‘There are studies.’ The kids today. They think they know everything.”

She stepped over, looking at him from beneath raised eyebrows and with a small smile playing over her rosebud lips. “Do you want gruel for lunch, Grandpa? Something, anyway, that won’t loosen your dentures.”

“Shit.” Grimacing, Joaquin set his tablet to the side. “Did I actually say that? ‘The kids today?’ You have to swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“Well…” She crossed to the water pitcher, poured a glass, and handed it to him. “Part of being a good butler is keeping the household’s secrets. I promise your comment won’t leave this deck.”

“Thanks,” he said, toasting her with the glass. The liquid went down cool and smooth. He eyed the kids, still cavorting along the beach. “Okay, Sara, so if you weren’t particularly high-spirited, what were you like as a teen?”

“Lonely.”

He looked over to see her wince. Apparently, the word had just slipped out.

She poured her own glass of water, probably trying to regain her British aplomb. “I didn’t fit in with my high school peers. The accent, the summers spent in London. So I read a lot. Daydreamed.”

“About?”

She shrugged, then lifted her chin toward him. “What were you like?”

Casting his mind back fifteen years was like crossing an empty desert. Or maybe the desert was where he arrived after the casting back. That place—past—had been devoid of normalcy and any landmarks and checkpoints that most young people could count upon to save themselves from their wilder impulses. Joaquin’s gaze refocused on Essie and her friends, still careening on the sand in some exuberant dance of their own, the only music the muted surf and the raucous calls of the gulls.

A tame expression of youth, compared to how he, Mick, and Felipe had exercised their teenage energy.

“We drove too fast. We indulged too much. Clubs, bars, wrap parties, premiere parties, media events where the booze flowed free and anything else you wanted could be found in the hall, the bathrooms, a limo idling outside.”

“That sounds…excessive.”

There was a word for it. And Joaquin’s and Mick’s attempts to tap the brakes on the excess had been clumsy and most often too late, while Felipe had held zero interest in slowing, let alone in passing over any crazy hair or saying no to any new sensation. Joaquin’s big brother had been too busy mapping that flaming trajectory—even as it burned him out.