Her Latin Lover (Contemporary Romance) (3 page)

She didn’t know why, but just looking at him made her hungry, not for food, but for sex. She took a deep breath and walked towards him.

“Hello. I don’t think we were properly introduced last night. My name’s Mary Delaney.” Mary held out her hand. She felt her words to be out of place. It was as if she was speaking from the wrong script in a play, but what else was she meant to say? She could hardly go up to this stranger and say “I find you wildly attractive, let’s go upstairs and jump into bed together!” Mary had never had a one-night-stand before in her life and she wasn’t going to start having them now, especially not out here in a dangerous, foreign country. And also, there was Nick to consider. He might be a complete pain, but he was still her boyfriend.

“Don Paulo de Castile,” he said slightly nodding his head and taking her hand lightly in his so that her palm was facing downwards. Mary half expected him to kiss it. He didn’t, but nor did he let go. Still holding her hand, he led her to a chair by a small table in the corner of the room. Mary sat down. She could see Señor Marcos looking at her from the reception desk. She moved her chair around, so that her back was to the creepy hotel owner. Don Paulo hadn’t yet sat down; he was calling out in Spanish to the young woman behind the bar. He went over to the bar and collected their drinks. The bar service in the hotel was as bad as everything else in it. He placed a brandy and a large beer on the table and sat down opposite Mary.

“How did you know I wanted a beer?” she asked.

“I presumed that was what you liked. It was what you were drinking last night.” He spoke perfect English, but with a slight accent, in a thick, deep voice.

“Well, that’s rather presumptuous of you. Maybe I would like something different tonight.” Mary hated men who did things like ordering off the menu in restaurants without asking the other person what they wanted first.

“I am so sorry. What would you like to drink?”

Mary actually really wanted the cold beer in front of her, but out of principle felt compelled to order something else. Plus, she didn’t think that drinking on an empty stomach was a good idea, especially when your drinking companion was a desperately attractive man. “I’ll have an orange juice please.”

“Not a good idea in the evening. They say that orange juice for breakfast is like gold, for lunch it is like silver, but for dinner it is like lead.”

“I’ll have a coffee then.”

“It is not good to drink coffee before dinner and the coffee here is not very good,” he said leaning in so that he could whisper it to her in a conspiratorial way. Mary could smell rich, heavy cologne on his skin like musk. She thought again about sex.

“Let me order you some guava juice.” He called out to the woman behind the bar. “Now that is a good drink to have before a meal.”

Mary couldn’t believe that she had just let him tell her what she could and could not have to drink and that he had ended up ordering for her again. However, he had done it in such a way that she didn’t feel like arguing with him and accepted the glass of juice when he placed it in front of her. She had to admit that it did taste very good.

“Now, where shall we go for dinner? Have you tried the food here? Like their coffee, it is not very good either,” he said, again leaning in towards so that he would not be overheard, even though the woman at the bar spoke no English. “There is a very good restaurant in a nearby village. It’s not far, about twenty minutes away. We can go in my car.”

Mary was about to say yes, when it dawned on her that she had no idea who this man was. No matter how attractive he might be, she knew that getting into a car with him and driving off into the jungles of South America was not a good idea. And also, why had Señor Marcos said that he had paid her room bill? She asked him about it.

“Don’t worry about that,” he replied, “and don’t worry about dinner. I will pay for that too.”

“Why?”

“Because you are now my responsibility. I will look after you.”

“I can look after myself, thank you.”

“I’m sorry, but no, you can’t. Señor Kingsley has left. He lost all his money at poker last night. Between you and me, he is not a very good poker player.”

Mary could believe that. Nick was much too rash and hasty to be good at cards and she had seen him lose before when he had played with friends at college. However, Nick liked to be where the action was. If people were playing football, he played football, if they were skiing, he skied, if they were bungee jumping, he jumped off bridges with them. There was nothing he wouldn’t try or do, including poker. However, he only ever played for very light stakes, a few coins here and there, and last night it had seemed to Mary that the stakes were very low, nothing more than a few pesos on the table, no more than the cost of a couple of beers. She couldn’t believe that Nick, no matter how bad a card player he was, could have lost more than $50.

“He also lost something much more valuable than money,” Don Paulo continued. “He lost you.” He gave her a long intense look before he pulled out a paper napkin from his pocket and carefully unfolded it. It was a cheap bar napkin, like the one that Nick had left in the safe, only Nick had written something slightly different on this one. In his large, flowery handwriting Mary read, “Ownership of Mary Delaney passed from Nicholas Kinsley to Don Paulo de Castile.” Nick’s unmistakable signature, with the big curly N and K, was underneath.

“He lost at poker. I didn’t. You’re mine.”

“I don’t believe this. Nick, you bastard, you’ve gone and done it this time!” Mary said to no one in particular. She stood up so quickly that she knocked over the table, spilling the brandy, beer and guava juice everywhere. Don Paulo leapt up as well and narrowly avoided getting his immaculate clothes wet. Without looking at him, Mary stormed out of the bar, crossed the reception area in two giant strides and ran upstairs. Don Paulo did not follow her. Instead, he sat at the bar and ordered a fresh drink.

Chapter 3

Don Paulo sat at the bar for several hours drinking his one single brandy. The evening had not gone at all as he had planned. He had expected her to come up to him in the bar and yell at him, stamp her feet and maybe even slap him across the face, like some of the local women would’ve done if they’d found out that someone had won them in a poker game. Instead, she had arrived beautifully dressed, introduced herself and sat down with him as if they were on a date. Don Paulo couldn’t believe his luck. He thought that perhaps Mary was pleased about the situation. It was quite possible. After all, who would want to be with a man like Señor Kingsley who cared so little about his beautiful girlfriend that he was willing to gamble her away to a complete stranger in a drunken game of cards? And Mary was very beautiful.

When he had first seen her, as she walked into the back room of the bar, she had taken his breath away. She was so fragile and ethereal, with her tiny hands, short elf-like hair and large golden eyes, and yet somehow so familiar that, for a moment, he thought that she was a spirit from another world. The Native Americans, including some of the farmers that worked for him, believed in these spirits.

The local people said that everything had its own spirit which had to be respected and cared for. These spirits were neither good nor bad, but they could act against you if you angered them, so all around his land, Don Paulo would find small offerings that were left to placate the spirits, or secret signs placed on the ground to keep them happy. If a tree was cut down, a small marking would be made in the soil to keep the other tree spirits happy. If an animal was slaughtered, he would hear the butcher mumbling incantations to put the spirit of the animal to rest and prevent it from coming back to haunt him. The same butcher and wood cutter would also be seen every Sunday and Saints Day at the village churches, lighting candles and reciting their rosaries. The local people saw no contradiction in their beliefs in spirits and their belief in Christianity. To them, the God of the Catholic Church was one of many spirits, albeit the most powerful one, the Great Spirit, that must be kept happy above all others; otherwise the crops would fail, animals would get sick and if the Great Spirit was really angry, people would die.

Don Paulo was not a Native American and did not believe in these things. However, he didn’t disrespect them either, so when he found markings on his land, he walked around them and when he heard his workers uttering strange incantations in words that he didn’t understand, he didn’t stop them either. However, when Mary walked into the back room of the bar, Don Paulo wondered for a moment if he had been wrong all along and if such spirits really did exist. Before she came in, it had been an average Saturday night, sitting with some of the local men, playing cards for a few pesos and drinking his one single brandy. The only difference so far had been that some foolish Englishman had come in and was intent on joining their card game.

Every so often a foreigner turned up in Corazon, trying to find what they liked to call the “real South America”. They usually stayed no more than a night or two, once they found out that the real South America was not as interesting or as exotic as they had hoped. Don Paulo had seen no harm in letting this foreigner join them and allowed him to pull up a chair and take part in the game.

It was soon apparent that Señor Kingsley, or “Nick” as he asked to be called, was a lousy poker player. He had some very obvious ticks. Every time he had a strong hand he would sweep his foppish blonde hair back across his forehead and then every time he was bluffing he would drink frequently from his beer glass. Don Paulo knew his own tick: it was to rub the scar on his face under his left eye. Therefore, whenever he played cards, he was always very conscious to make sure that he sat as straight and as still as possible with one hand holding the cards and the other flat on the table. However, despite Señor Kingsley’s obvious inability to play poker successfully, no one at the table ever planned to take him for more than a few dollars and perhaps a couple of rounds of drinks. That was until Mary walked in.

She had stood next to her silly boyfriend for quite sometime before Don Paulo had summoned up the strength to actually speak to her, but when he did, she fled the room, just as he made her flee the room earlier this evening when he was trying to take her out to dinner. He didn’t know why she’d left the poker game the night before, but he knew why she’d run off this evening: it was his stupid comment about her being his. What he meant to say was that she was his responsibility now that her man had left. Not that Señor Kingsley was much of a man. He didn’t even have the courage to tell Mary what he had done. He had scampered off like an embarrassed child, leaving someone else to explain the delicate situation to her; only Don Paulo had made a mess of it and scared her off again.

Señor Marcos came up to him at the bar. “Don Paulo, you have been waiting a long time for her to return. Don’t you want to go upstairs and see her?” he asked in thick local Spanish.

“No thank you, Señor. It is not right to disturb a lady in her bedroom. She is angry and upset. It is better for her to be alone to vent her rage. She will calm down and when she does, she will realise that she is hungry and come down of her own accord.” Don Paulo replied in clear, strong Spanish, mixed with a few local words and phrases.

“Maybe I could go up and get her for you?” Señor Marcos persisted.

Don Paulo was not sure if Señor Marcos was trying to be helpful, or if he was hoping to get a glimpse of the woman in a possible state of undress. He suspected the latter. However, he didn’t want to be rude to the hotel owner, who was an old friend, so he merely said, “Señor, it is not good for a person to eat dinner when they are angry. It will give them indigestion and even if it does not, eating with an angry woman will most certainly spoil my pleasure of the meal. I will wait until she is ready.”

“You are a very patient man. Personally, I would do things differently.” The hotel owner went on to explain how, if he were Don Paulo, he would race upstairs, insist that the girl come out and if she did not, he would force the door open to prove his strength (at this point, Señor Marcos flexed his puny muscles) and then he would drag her to a restaurant and make he eat steak and beans until she realised who was in charge of the situation.

“Thank you for the advice, Señor, but I think I would prefer to wait and enjoy my brandy,” Don Paulo said and he proceeded to wait quietly in the bar while Señor Marcos smoked thin, black cigarettes and the barmaid slept on a stool in the corner.

After several long, quiet hours, Mary came back downstairs. She had changed into an old pair of jeans and a light pink T-shirt that had a couple of small brown stains around the hem. She had that dishevelled, just-out-of bed look about her. Don Paulo thought she looked ravishing. He wished he could ravish her.

“Ready for dinner now?” he asked her.

“I don’t need you to escort me. I’ve already told you, I can look after myself,” she snapped back as she marched through the reception area and out into the town square.

Don Paulo put down his drink, called out something to Señor Marcos and strode after her.

The town square was lit up by several large lampposts in each corner, around which buzzed huge, feathery moths. Don Paulo could clearly see Mary walking along one side of the square, past the bottom of the church’s wide stone steps. Its great facade was covered in multi-coloured fairy lights like a giant Christmas tree. He paused and waited to see where she was going. He assumed that she would go to the bar on the other side of the square, next to the local courthouse, though it was also possible that she might be heading to one of the small cantinas that sold food late into the night. However, these were all located down dark side streets away from the centre of the town. He soon saw that his initial assumption was correct. Mary walked into the bar. With slow, easy steps, Don Paulo crossed the dusty square and followed her in.