Nacho Figueras Presents (7 page)

E
nzo smiled politely as a young redheaded woman in a tight black dress questioned him about polo. They had nominally been looking at the same giant painting of a hair dryer, though really, Enzo had been watching Noni stand next to her mother and a tall handsome man with shaggy blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

The man was a little closer to Noni than Enzo was comfortable with.

“Isn't it awfully dangerous, working with horses like you do?” said the redhead. She leaned close and Enzo smelled cigarettes and an overly sweet, fruity perfume.

“It can be sometimes,” he said, leaning away.

He glanced at Antonia, noticing that her cheeks were flushed a bright red and her eyes were fixed on the floor. The blond man laughed, and Noni's shoulder hunched. She looked miserable.

The redhead tracked his gaze.

“Oh,” she said, “Jacob Van Dyke. It is sort of amazing that he's here, don't you think?”

He turned to her. “Why?”

She shrugged and swept her hand around, indicating the paintings in front of them. “Well, these are all right, I guess, but they certainly aren't up to his standards. I mean, I heard he was this close to a MacArthur fellowship last year.”

He looked back at him. “What kind of art does he make?”

She laughed, surprised. “You don't know? He's a sculptor. Metalwork, mainly.”

Enzo nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off him. “Does he live in New York?”

“No,” she said, “he's based in Berlin.”

The bearded man had stepped even closer to Noni and was talking intently to her. She continued to look away from him, and when he reached out and touched her shoulder, Enzo watched her flinch.

That was enough.

“Will you excuse me, please?”

He was halfway across the room before the woman could answer.

He made his way through the crowd, slipping in next to Antonia and taking her arm.

She turned and looked at him, and he saw that old trapped and feral look in her eyes that he'd once known so well.

“Are you all right,
querida
?” he murmured.

Benny broke in before Noni could answer. “Enzo, this is Jacob Van Dyke,” she said. “He's an old friend of Antonia's.”

Noni flushed an even deeper red. Jacob stuck out his hand.

Enzo gazed at him for a moment and then slowly took his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

Jacob squeezed, flashing a lupine smile and dazzlingly white teeth. “You as well,” he said in return. He looked at Noni. “How do you two know each other?”

Benny cut in again. “They work together.” She shot Jacob a knowing look. “For the Del Campos.”

Jacob shook his head. “More horse people, eh? I still can't believe you're doing smithy work, Noni. What a waste of talent.”

“That's exactly what I just said!” crowed Benny.

Antonia turned to Enzo. “I'm not feeling well,” she announced. “I think we should go back to the hotel.”

Benny's smile froze on her face and she gave Noni a searching look. “Oh? You're at the same hotel?”

Antonia looked her mother right in the eyes. “Sharing a room, actually. At the St. Regis.”

Benny's face flushed in a way that strongly reminded Enzo of Noni right before she lost her temper.

Jacob suddenly looked at Enzo with a new light of consideration in his eyes.

Noni kissed her mother briefly on the cheek. “Good night, Mom. Congratulations on the show.” Her eyes flicked to Jacob and she gave him a barely perceptible nod. “Jacob.”

“It was so good seeing you, Noni,” said Jacob as he closed the space between them and pulled her in for a hug. Enzo took note of the way Antonia stiffly endured it, not even pretending to hug him back.

Jacob finally let her go. “We'll see each other soon, okay? Who knows, maybe I'll make it up to the Hamptons.”

Antonia didn't respond. Just took Enzo's hand and led him out of the gallery.

N
oni was silent on the cab ride back to the hotel. She kept her eyes on the window, her body slightly turned away from Enzo. She didn't want him to look her in the face.

He rested a warm hand on her knee. “Antonia,” he said.

She bit her lip. Enzo calling her by her proper name felt like an insurmountable distance had just sprung up between them.

“It's not what you think,” she said hoarsely. She turned her body toward him but didn't meet his gaze.

He waited.

“He didn't beat me. Or mistreat me. He's not a terrible person. He just…” She flicked her eyes up to Enzo's. “He just left.”

Enzo nodded. “You loved him.” It wasn't a question.

She laughed. Even to her own ears the sound was forced and harsh. “I don't know. I thought I did. He took…I felt like he took everything from me when he left. I thought I would die without him.”

“But you didn't,” said Enzo softly.

“But I didn't,” she agreed. “Thanks to Alejandro and Sebastian and”—her voice was shy—“you.”

He smiled at her.

She took his hand. “Let's not talk about it, okay? We only have one more night in the city. I'm not going to ruin it thinking about him.” She shook her head. “Or my mother, for that matter.”

“Your mother…” He laughed. “I do not think she liked me.”

“Oh,” she said, “don't take it personally. She has never liked anyone I've introduced her to. Including Jacob. Until now, I guess. She was all over him tonight. I wonder why?”

“He is a big deal in the art world, apparently.”

Noni wrinkled her nose. “Is he? Well, that's new. He was basically a starving artist when I knew him. If he's doing well, that would definitely raise his stock with my mom.”

“Apparently he almost won a MacArthur fellowship last year.”

Noni laughed. “Who told you that?”

“Some woman I met while looking at your mother's enormous painting of a hair dryer.”

Antonia tapped him on the arm playfully. “I saw that woman. A tall and very pretty redhead.”

He shrugged. “She smelled like cigarette smoke and overripe strawberries. It was not a good combination.”

She smiled and scooted closer to him. He pressed his face to the top of her head and inhaled. “Not like you,” he said gruffly. “You smell
rica
.”

She turned her face up toward his. “Yeah?” she said. “What does
rica
mean, exactly?”

He bent to smell her again and closed his eyes. “Delicious. You smell like heat and spice and”—his voice grew hoarse as he opened his eyes and looked directly at her—“sex,
mi corazón
. You smell so good, it's all I can do not to tear your clothes off and bury my face between your legs right here in the back of this car.”

Her breath caught, and suddenly her whole body was aflame.

He kissed her then. There was nothing skilled or nuanced about this kiss. It was just blunt, searching need. He kissed her like he was claiming her as his own. And she responded instantly, tangling her tongue against his, twining her arms around him and pressing as close as she could, melting against him, desperately trying to quiet all the feelings that were still churning inside her.

She ran her hand up his tensed thigh, feeling the bulge under his jeans. She felt his breath catch as she touched him, heard him stifle a groan of pleasure against her mouth. She broke their kiss and moved her lips to his throat, dragging her cheek along the delicious scratch of his stubble, licking and kissing, wiggling herself onto his lap.

“Ahem.” The taxi driver loudly cleared his throat. “We're here, my friends.”

Noni softly laughed and slid off Enzo's lap. “Sorry,” she murmured to the driver as Enzo ran his credit card through the machine and added a very large tip.

The driver shrugged. “Eh, I've seen worse. At least you kept your clothes on.”

The hotel room at the St. Regis was just as Enzo remembered, elegant and sexy and luxurious. The room was done in cream and gold with soft lilac accents. The bed was vast, with pristine white linens, a mountain of fluffy down pillows, and a tufted headboard made of lavender silk. A cream-colored love seat and two plush armchairs clustered around a fat lilac ottoman. The opulent drapes hid a rooftop view and filtered the late afternoon light to a dusky, golden glow. There were shapely white vases of purple roses scattered about the room, reflected in the enormous baroque gold-framed mirrors that served as the only ornamentation on the walls. The bathroom was equipped with a deep marble soaking tub that easily fit two.

Despite her scars and tattoo and tough attitude, Noni fit right into this room, thought Enzo. She was wearing wide-legged linen pants and a black silk tank top that showed off her defined arms and shoulders, but even if she had been dressed in her usual faded jeans and tattered T-shirt, her radiant beauty would have still matched the elegance of this room. She was, without a doubt, the most naturally stunning woman Enzo had ever seen.

She looked like her mother in a way, he mused. They both had the same creamy coloring and striking Nordic bone structure, but whereas Benny's big blue eyes made her seem like a generic, pretty Californian blonde, Antonia's sloe-eyed gaze was filled with sparks and fever and lent an enigmatic depth to her nearly perfect face.

He could search those eyes forever and still not know everything there was to know about this woman.

They had been inseparable this last week in Florida. He had spent every day with her at the barn, every night at her cottage. He couldn't seem to tear himself from her side. And with every passing moment, he'd begun to tentatively believe that she was right. That none of the things that had held him back from her over the years really mattered after all. That this time maybe it would be different, that he could be trusted with another woman's heart. That the world that he and Noni made together was one he could happily live in…

And now, realizing how badly she had been hurt before only made him more determined to handle her with care.

He watched her slip off her black ballet flats and turn back to him, pressing her body against his and twining her arms around his neck.

“Where were we?” she breathed.

He slid his hands over the muscular curves of her body. She was so tiny but iron-hard, made strong by all her hours working with the horses and in front of her forge, hammer in hand.

She lifted herself onto her tiptoes and kissed him feverishly, and he responded, pulling her closer, feeling her soft lips against his. He groaned and kissed her harder, feeling her twist against him in what at first he felt as desire, but then…he slowed.

There was something wrong. Something almost frantic in her response to him, something not altogether willing or natural…

She's trying to escape,
he thought,
to forget.

He gently pulled away and looked down at her; indeed, there was a desperate agitation in her ebony eyes that sent an icy shiver up his spine.

“
Niña
,” he said softly, not wanting to spook her further, “let's slow down a bit, eh? No need to rush. Why don't you go take a nice hot bath, and I will call room service and order us some dinner. We can eat here and never need to leave the room at all tonight if we don't care to.”

He did not think he imagined the ghost of relief that passed over her face.

“Yes, okay,” she said, biting her lip. She leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. “That sounds nice.”

“What would you like for dinner?” he asked as she retreated to the bathroom.

“Surprise me,” she called over her shoulder, and then shut the door between them with a quiet little click.

He over-ordered, somehow hoping that crab salad and roasted chicken, risotto with wild mushrooms, smoked baby beets and goat cheese, a kale Caesar salad, chocolate and lemon tartlets, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée would soothe whatever it was that was making Noni ache so badly.

He hadn't spent this kind of money—on the hotel room, the cabs, room service—for ages, and it felt odd but not entirely unpleasant. He could afford it. The Del Campos paid him very well, and besides the monthly allowance he sent home to his mother, his expenses were low. He had savings, and he certainly didn't mind splurging when it came to Antonia.

Still, he thought, he could never keep up this kind of lifestyle in any kind of permanent way. And wasn't that what Noni would expect? Maybe she hadn't grown up with this kind of luxury like the rest of the Del Campo children had, but there was less than a month until she came of age and inherited her third of the estate. Wouldn't she want this kind of life all the time once she could afford it?

But, he thought to himself as the room service waiter wheeled in their dinner on a multitiered cart, it would be different with her. He knew that Antonia would never want him to leave the horses, and he knew that she would always work with the ponies, too.

Then again, he reminded himself, she wanted to play on the team. That was something altogether different than being one of the barn staff. And what would her brothers think? Their little sister getting involved with their
piloto
?

He tipped the waiter as he left, then knocked softly on the bathroom door.

“
Niña
,” he said, “our dinner is here, and I'm afraid I got a bit carried away. Not even you will be able to eat so much.”

He leaned closer, listening to the soft hush of running water. “Noni?” he called.

No answer.

He knocked harder. Still no answer.

He tried the door. It was locked. His heart beat a little faster.

“Antonia?”

Nothing.

“Antonia, I am coming in!”

He threw himself against the door, and it flew open with a crash. Noni was hunched in the bath, the water running, her face in her hands, her long blond hair bedraggled, the ends floating in the water around her, her whole body in a spasm of sobs.

Enzo froze. He had never seen her like this before. Even at her worst, at her darkest. She had been angry, she had been distant, fierce, lashing out at anyone in her way, but he had never seen her so purely sad.

“Noni,” he breathed.

She brought her knees up out of the water and hugged them to her chest, ducking her face down out of sight.

“
Que te pasa mi reina
” he said, and without thinking, he got into the water with her, pulling her toward him.

She looked up, shocked out of her misery. “Wha-what are you doing?”

He looked down. Socks (thank God he'd removed his shoes earlier), jeans, his button-down shirt, all soaked. Fully dressed, in the bath.

He didn't care. She needed him.

Her face was red and swollen, but she laughed through her tears. “Are you crazy?”

“Tell me what's wrong,” he said huskily.

The smile vanished from her face. She shook her head and closed her eyes.

“I'm sorry, but I can't talk about it,” she said softly. “I just…can't.”

He touched her face, smoothed the wet hair back from her eyes. “You said he never harmed you. What did he do, then? This seems so much more than a broken heart. How can he still have this hold on you?”

Her bottom lip trembled. She opened her eyes and looked at him, tears clinging to her long lashes. “Maybe you were right before,” she whispered, “when you said that this was a mistake.”

He reared back as if she had hit him. He felt a red-hot pain rush through his chest at her words.

“What do you mean?”

She looked away and swallowed. “I just mean…maybe you were right. We're from two different worlds. We were so good as friends—maybe it was stupid of us to jeopardize what we had…”

Suddenly, Enzo was sick with jealousy. He could barely see straight. He pushed back and away from her, sloshing water over the sides of the tub.

“Because of that man?” he said. His voice shook. “You see him and suddenly we are a mistake?”

“No,” she said, “no, not like that. I mean, yes, some of it is seeing him, but—”

Enzo stood up, water streaming down him as he climbed out of the tub. “That's enough,” he said. “I don't need to hear any more.”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes stricken. “Enzo.”

He waited.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

She closed her eyes; a sob started to shudder through her body. “Just go,” she said. “It's better if you go.”

He left while her eyes were still closed.