Fernando - Bad Boy Love (Bad Boy Love Series Book 1) (2 page)

Gwen Cohen sat at the meeting table, trying desperately to concentrate on her job. Which, she reminded herself, was the only reason this hot man was in her office to begin with. He was under a court order to meet with his assigned probation officer every week.

And that would be me
.

He was an offender, not dating material. Not even fantasy material. And she had no business being attracted to him. Unfortunately, her libido wasn’t listening. Her body didn’t care how inappropriate lusting after Fernando was, or the fact that it was illegal for her to have any kind of a relationship with someone under her supervision.

Even if it weren’t illegal, it would only lead to heartbreak. Fernando was anything but boyfriend material.
He belongs to a street gang, for crying out loud. Get a grip on yourself, girl.

But then he smiled at her, and all her resolves disappeared into thin air. Heat pooled in her stomach, and she licked her lips. His boyish smile touched her deep down in her soul. How could such a breathtaking smile belong to a common criminal? Right now, sitting in front of her, with his expressive brown eyes and black hair falling haphazardly over his forehead, he looked like an honest, upstanding young man. If she’d met him on the street, or at a coffee shop, she’d have never guessed he was on probation for armed robbery.

When calling him into the meeting room, she’d gotten a good view on how well his faded blue jeans molded to his ass and thick thighs. He wore his black leather jacket open and the black t-shirt underneath stretched over his broad chest. The v-neck exposed just a hint of unbelievably sexy olive skin.

She looked down, closely inspecting the file in front of her, but the letters were dancing around. So much for trying to calm her raging hormones. When she raised her head again, she skipped over his chest and looked straight into his eyes, but that was a mistake as well. More heat shot through her, and she prayed he wouldn’t notice the rush of blood to her cheeks.

His black hair was slightly too long, brushing the neck of his t-shirt, and tousling across his forehead, beneath which were chocolate brown eyes. Eyes full of intrigue and so deep, she wanted to get lost in them. These weren’t the eyes of a cocky young man, but were full of…history. Pain. Love. Determination. The eyes of a man. A man she wanted to get to know.

What did I just say? Oh yes. The reminder about showing up for our meetings.

Gwen pulled a checklist from the manila folder and grabbed a pen. Doing her best to neither look at his muscled chest nor at his eyes or mouth, she started going down the list.

“Have you ever taken drugs?”

“No.”

Gwen hesitated for a split second, and her jaw almost fell to the floor when he shrugged out of his leather jacket and held both arms out for her inspection. His strong hands hovered inches away from her and would touch her if she gave in to the urge of leaning toward him. She swallowed a sudden rush of saliva and concentrated on the sight of his bare arms, the toned biceps bulging above the indent of his elbows.

As far as she was concerned, his skin was perfect. A shade of tanned olive, with every vein clearly visible and so smooth she wanted to experience it with her own fingers. No signs of drug usage by injection.

She leaned forward slightly, careful not to touch his outstretched fingertips, peering at his arms and caught a whiff of his masculine scent. He was all male, both in looks and smell, and she had to resist the urge to grab his strong hands and wrap them around her waist. She could already feel how his long and capable fingers would skim over her skin, just a barely there touch, with a hint of strength that was impossible to ignore.

Her breath sped up, and she turned her gaze away, shaking her head briefly as she tried to remember where she was, who he was, and what her relationship with him was supposed to be.

He’s an offender. You are his court appointed probation officer. End of story.

“You satisfied that I’m not a junkie?” he asked, his question bringing her back to the present.

“That’s not proof,” she answered, her voice a bit husky and she inwardly grimaced. “You could be hiding needle holes in some other places that aren’t as obvious. A lot of junkies do that.”

He flashed her a panty-melting smile and lowered his voice to a seductive whisper, “You want me to strip so you can check out some of those other ‘not so obvious’ places?”

Her face flamed, and she shook her head. His words had put a vision in her mind she had trouble dispelling. While she would love nothing more than to dwell on that vision, she had a career to defend. Grabbing her position of authority as a shield, she swallowed and confronted him with a frown on her face. “Flirting with me is inappropriate.”

Fernando looked contrite and apologized. “Sorry, miss.”

But Gwen wasn’t fooled for a moment. His brown eyes sparkled with a devilish glee and she mentally groaned.

Great, he totally knows I’m attracted to him.

Clearing her throat, she continued down the checklist. “So, what kind of jobs could you do?”

“Isn’t that your job? To help me figure that out?” He’d said it with the stubborn demeanor of a teenager. Normally, she wouldn’t let an offender get away with this attitude, but her attraction to him was too strong to put up a fight. So she simply nodded and scanned his file.

Fernando had no high school diploma and no formal work experience to speak of. Getting him any kind of decent job would prove to be extremely hard. She reached for a sheet of current job offers and handed it to him, careful to avoid touching his fingertips in the process. Her hand was still tingling from his handshake several minutes earlier.

“That is a list of current job offers. Some, but not all of the offers on that list are from companies that are willing to hire people on probation, or who have had trouble in the past and are trying to straighten out their lives. Do you need some help deciding which job might be a good fit for you?”

Fernando looked at the list and then shook his head. “Nah. I can handle it.”

Gwen highly doubted that statement was true. He’d never held a job in his life, and she figured he’d never applied for one either. He had no experience to fall back on, and yet, he was acting as if getting a job was as easy as waking up in the morning. Typical macho behavior.

He left a few minutes later, and her heart rate finally dropped to a normal level again. She shouldn’t be having any kind of feelings for Fernando, but the attraction she felt for him was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was impossible to ignore.

“God, I hope he didn’t realize how attracted I was to him. The last thing he, or I, need is for him to believe there’s even the slightest possibility of us having a romantic relationship. Gwen, my girl, you have got to get ahold of yourself. No more flirting around the hot offender. None.”

She closed his folder, packed up her things to return to her office and grinned, thinking how her co-workers always teased her about her penchant for talking out loud to herself. With an internal groan, she finished her self- lecture. “Fernando Garcia is off limits, and you have no business getting involved in a romantic relationship. Not even if he was a straight shooter. Think about your career. It’s illegal. Inappropriate. And a huge abuse of power, and the moral codes of society
.”

Fernando walked into his apartment twenty minutes later to find Amada sitting on the second hand couch with a letter in her hands. The pair had been living together since their parents died more than a decade ago, leaving a fourteen-year old teenager and an eight-year old girl to fend for themselves.

He’d given up a lot to ensure his sister grew up as protected as possible and looking at her now gave him a feeling of joy inside. She’d stuck to the “right” side of the law and recently graduated from high school while working night shifts at a cleaning company.

“Hey, sis. What’s that?”

Amada looked up at him and answered his question with one of her own. “First, tell me about the meeting with your probation officer.”

Fernando grinned and sat down next to her. “She seems nice.”

“She?” Amada parroted with a raised brow.

“Yeah, she.” He made a concerted effort to school his features and thoughts from his sister. The last thing he needed was for her to find out he was attracted to Gwen.

Like you’ve ever been able to keep anything from her.

She was like a detective when it came to reading the thoughts and feelings of other people. A profiler. A trait that was more often than not very annoying, but he loved her anyway. Amada was his family. It had been just the two of them for such a long time, he had trouble remembering the time when his parents had been around.

“Enough about me. What’s the letter?”

Amada beamed at him and handed it over. “I got into the psychology program.”

Fernando took the letter and read it through before he hugged her with one arm, “Congratulations! That’s awesome. My sis will be a college grad someday.”

“It’s so exciting, isn’t it?” She hopped up and down on the couch, and Fernando chuckled, feeding off her enthusiasm.

“So, what kind of amazing things do you plan to do with your degree once you’re finished?”

Amada’s brows furrowed and her dark brown eyes – so similar to his – grew even darker as she answered, her voice growing serious. “I want a better future for myself.”

Immediate guilt stabbed into Fernando’s heart, and he swallowed. While his mind knew her words hadn’t been a commentary on his ability to provide for her, he felt guilty nonetheless. He’d given her all of his love, but when it came to material things, they’d just barely scraped by.

The memories of the first several months after their parents’ murder slapped him in the face and brought the inevitable aching to his bones. As if mourning their parents hadn’t been enough grief, things had further spiraled downward from that moment on. A distant relative had been named their legal guardian. A man they’d barely known but had grown to hate and fear very fast. Their guardian had been a drunkard, unbearable on good days and excruciatingly mean on his more frequent bad ones.

Rage speared through Fernando when his mind flashed back to the defining moment in his life. He’d come home unexpectedly and found Amada begging their guardian not to touch her
there
. He’d seen red and beaten the crap out of the man. It had been the first time Fernando had used violence to get what he wanted, and it had felt so good. Powerful. Invincible.

The next day, the asshole had moved out to live with his newest flame, showing up at their place once a month to collect his share of the child support in exchange for putting in an appearance whenever social services came around, which thankfully hadn’t been often.

Fernando had learned quickly how to use the newfound thrill of using brute force to care for himself and his sister. Always telling himself that he’d do whatever was necessary to prevent that man from coming back in their lives on a daily basis, or worse – being placed into the foster care system. The hate for that man and his drug addiction was still deeply ingrained into Fernando, even after such a long time.

Amada’s hand on his shoulder snapped him back into the present. “Thanks for taking such good care of me. Without you, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

Fernando hugged her tight, amazed as always at the way she could read his thoughts. Hearing her put into words her gratitude made the back of his eyes burn with emotion. Tears he would rather die than show her.

God, I love you, sis.

In a way, his little sister had saved him. He felt a tremendous sense of responsibility for her, which had kept him from going too far more than once, always afraid of what would become of her if he weren’t around to protect her. With her, everything had been easy. He’d always been able to make the right choices when it came to Amada, it was just the rest of his life he seemed to screw up on a regular basis.

And while he’d done many things he was ashamed of, he took a small solace in the fact that he’d never taken hard drugs, and he most certainly had never laid a hand on a woman who didn’t want him to.

“I just wish things had turned out differently,” he said more to himself. “I never got a chance.”

He still carried a grudge against the authorities that should have done a better job in caring for two orphaned children than giving custody to a man like
him
. His grudge had grown over the years and had served as a moral justification to defy their laws. If the authorities wouldn’t protect them, what right did those assholes have to expect him to play by their rules?

“You know, it’s never too late to change,” Amada said gently. “Maybe you should look at this probation time as a chance to turn over a new leaf.”

Fernando smiled down at her, loving her positive outlook on life. “Maybe.” He pulled the papers Gwen had given him from the jacket pocket and tossed them onto the wooden crates they used as a coffee table. “First, I have to get a job.”

Amada sat up and thumbed through the papers. “Want me to help you fill out these applications?”

He knew she was offering because that was what she did – trying to help him and everyone else she came in contact with. But his pride wouldn’t let his little sister help him find a job. He didn’t know why everyone thought getting a job was so difficult.

First, Gwen had thought he needed help. Now Amada? Did he look dumb as a rock? He had a plan, and it involved calling the numbers on the paper, presenting himself at the appointed time and place, and accepting the job once it was offered. He’d be a working class asshole by the end of the day.