The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) (6 page)

Okay, maybe he was the one who sounded priggish now.

“Perhaps it’s an honor system,” she said.

Yeah, he
had
sounded priggish. “Look, I never went to an elementary school,” he offered by way of excusing himself. “I never participated in anything like this.”

She remained silent. Expectant.

“We—I—had tutors. More of a homeschool situation. Dad dragged me to auditions all over L.A.” Felipe’s auditions, mostly. But Joaquin was expected to go along for the ride.

“You were on TV? In movies?”

“Nothing you’d know. Or nothing you’d remember.” While his father had been grooming him to be a second star in the family, it had all imploded before Joaquin made it beyond a commercial or two, a couple of episode credits as “Sassy Neighbor Kid,” and that one brief appearance on the big screen.

“And now I’m a businessman,” he continued. “Charity fun run record-keeping is out of my realm of expertise.”

Sara gave a short nod.

How did she do it? Without a word or change in expression she managed to communicate disapproval. Did they teach that at the fancy butler academy?

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s possible I need to get out of the office on a regular basis,” he muttered.

She strolled forward. “Your assistant says you need to take more vacations.”

“What?” Joaquin hurried to catch up.

“He’s a chatterer—you must be aware of that. During one of our discussions after he hired me, he said you worked too hard and didn’t enjoy yourself or other people enough.”

Frowning, Joaquin forked a hand through his hair. “I can’t wait to analyze Patrick to
his
butler some day. I’ll point out he’s a loudmouth busybody in order to compensate for some truly off-putting psychotic disorder…do you happen to know of any?”

That got him the real smile. It hit him like sunshine beaming from behind a cloud, and the sunshine was already beaming from the cloudless sky, hot on his shoulders. This extra ray of heat jolted through him, and he had to force himself not to reach out and yank her rosebud mouth to his.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be quite so miffed with him,” Sara said. “As your butler, it’s my duty to find ways to make your life easier. I didn’t look askance at the offered information.”

Askance.
How could that single word in that crisp voice so twist his crank?

He caught her shoulder, turned her to him. “You say that kind of thing in that tone on purpose,” he accused softly. “You want me to do something we’ll both regret.”

The butler froze in his hold for a moment, then stepped back.

Good.

“Regret?” she echoed.

As she repeated the word, they came back to him in a sudden rush. The fucking regrets. The ones that had haunted him for fifteen years and made him a man best suited to stay in an office and stay away from his family and other people, too. The fucking regrets that crawled out of their grave in May until at the end of the month he and Mick could together silently bury them for another year.

It’s too soon
, he thought, as they crowded around him, blocking the sun and making it hard to breathe.
I’m not ready to confront them yet.

“Joaquin?” From far away came Sara’s voice.

Her cool hand brushed his forearm, and at the touch the ghosts evaporated.
Pop
. Gone. Of course he knew they’d be back.

“Joaquin?”

He blinked, taking in her upturned face. She’d tugged the sunglasses down her nose so he could see the concern in her beautiful eyes. The desire to kiss her had moved off. The need to hold her against him had not.

“You’re here!”

Once again, their moment was interrupted by a six-year-old.

“Thanks, kid,” he said under his breath, and dredged up a smile for Wells, his gratitude sincere. “How are you? Ready to run?”

“Yep. The first graders go next.”

With the boy leading, they drew nearer to the makeshift track. Little kids of the same small size bunched near the parents handing out waters—apparently the starting line.

“Hydrate,” Sara advised, handing him one of the paper cups.

“Don’t start too fast,” Joaquin added. “Save some energy for later.”

The other butler, Charlie, stayed with the standing parents, but he and Sara took seats among some other spectators, a few feet away and a safe distance from a water balloon toss. They watched the little boy jog around the oblong, his face serious.

“I’m glad to know he doesn’t have a shitty father,” Joaquin said.

“Your dad…?”

“Selfish. Stupid. 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.”

A long pause ensued, then Sara cleared her throat. “My parents had a whirlwind romance when he and a mate came to the States for vacation. In five days they were married, in seven they were back in London, and she found a job at a neighboring estate. Nine months later, I came along. Four years following that, she left my dad after their umpteenth argument. Then she caught a terrible case of pneumonia and died. ”

She paused. “I’ve never been sure which made my father more miserable, the guilt and the grief or the fact that he’d loved her in the first place.”

Joaquin took a few moments to let what she’d related sink in. “I’m not clear on the moral of our stories,” he mused, staring at what he could see of her face in profile, the clean line of her nose, the puff of her lips, the determined curve of her chin. “Which have our experiences taught us to distrust? Passion? Love? Marriage?”

“Take your pick.”

Joaquin found he couldn’t like her casual pessimism. Didn’t women usually see romance through rose-colored lenses? And he disliked more that he’d drawn that cynicism from her himself with all his talk of his family circumstances and unconventional childhood. What the hell had gotten into him to speak of it?

He was a private man with an aversion to sharing, which had been pointed out to him by a woman he’d been seeing a couple of years before. They’d planned a getaway to Aspen, and she’d suggested they take one bag for convenience.

Uh, no
.

He hadn’t wanted even their shoes to split a single space. Something about their soles intermingling…too intimate.

But he’d willingly, almost unconsciously, just unburdened himself to Sara and…and he realized he felt fine about it. Joaquin blinked, acknowledging it was true. He felt lighter, a state he’d hoped for as they’d set off for the school.

Sneaking another look at Sara, though, he frowned. If he’d drawn down her mood in exchange, that didn’t seem right.

Shit
, he thought.
You’re no better with a butler than you are with any other kind of human being.

As he pondered some way to make it up to her, a voice yelled “Incoming!” and an object hurtled their way. Before he had time to move, block, or protect, it caught Sara straight in the face, taking her to her back.

Joaquin’s heart slammed into his ribs. “God,” he said, twisting to lean over her. “Are you all right?”

She lay supine and silent on the grass, her cap tumbled nearby, her sunglasses—though still covering her eyes—askew. Water ran down her face, and shreds of pink plastic balloon littered her chest like pieces of torn flesh.

His gut clenched. “
Sara
!”

Finally, she moved, one hand reaching up to rip the shades away. Then her lips curved and she was laughing, really laughing, and in his relief Joaquin laughed, too.

So hard, that he bent over, his body curving closer to Sara’s.

It brought their mouths nearer as well, and then he was kissing the butler, tasting sunshine and fresh water and the forbidden.

And he felt lighter still…but not one jot less lecherous.

During dinner preparation, Sara put her game face on, determined to show Joaquin the afternoon hadn’t caused any tectonic shift in their butler-employer relationship.

It was just a kiss.

She’d been laughing at the absurdity of a water balloon in the face, and he’d leaned over, blocking the sun so that the only thing between her and the sky was a Joaquin-shaped shadow. Then his lips had brushed hers, and she’d gone serious in a hurry.

The flavor of mint and heat and man had riveted her. Without thinking she’d opened her lips and allowed her tongue to sweep along his to get a better sample of it.

At the memory, her face burned. Not just because of her boldness, but because of Joaquin’s reaction to it. He’d instantly straightened, then jumped to his feet, murmuring something about finding a paper towel. When he’d come back, he’d had Charlie in tow. They’d remained a threesome until Wells finished his run to make it a foursome.

Not long after, her employer had made up an excuse to leave—she supposed it was an excuse, anyway—and asked Charlie to give Sara a ride home.

She’d returned to an empty house. Not knowing any different, she’d assumed he’d make it back for dinner.

“So chicken and dumplings it is,” she said, looking toward the windows.

The fog had rolled in, wrapping the house in a gray cocoon. Tiny drops of water rolled like baby tears down the glass.

Mimicking her mood.

But there’s no reason to feel low, she tried reassuring herself again. It was merely the smallest graze of one mouth against another. Just a kiss.

The same as their back-and-forth about school and parents had just been a casual way to pass the time. It didn’t signal anything more…friendly. And knowing things about her employer—like a strained relationship with his mother, like the fact that he had a young half-sister—could help make her be a better butler for him.

A knock sounded on the nearby glass and she jumped, swallowing a little shriek. Her gaze jumped that way to find Joaquin on the other side of the sliding door, his dark hair damp from the heavy mist.

She hurried to unfasten the lock and let him in. “I didn’t know you were out there,” she said by way of apology.

“I took a long walk on the beach.”

“Let me get you a towel.” Sara moved to the laundry room and the cupboards that held stacks of extra linens.

A bemused expression had taken over his face upon her return. He took the proffered terry cloth and began rubbing it over the top of his head. “You’ll spoil me.”

“I’m doing a job.”

His hand paused. “That’s right.” Then he sniffed the air. “What smells so great?”

“Chicken and dumplings. My grandmother’s recipe.”

“The grandmother who was so strict.”

“Yes.” Sara’s eyes widened as he tossed away the towel to reach between his shoulder blades. He grabbed his T-shirt there and yanked it over his head.

Her breath caught.
Wow.

Busy businessman that he claimed to be, he must still find time to do some sort of exercise that created those broad shoulders, muscled arms, chiseled chest and abdomen.

Her belly jittered as she took in his vital, half-naked male form.

Wow
, she thought again, and the tiny hairs on her body lifted as if to seek his warmth, making her flesh prickle all over. Then the rim of her ear throbbed, insistent pulses of heat that recalled his touch there on the day the rose petals rained down.

Belatedly aware she was staring, Sara yanked her gaze off him and almost ran to the utensils drawer in the kitchen.

“The food is ready when you are. I only need to set a—”

“I’m going to change first,” Joaquin said.

By the time he returned in dry clothes, she’d arranged a single place in front of one of the stools drawn up to the island—his preferred spot to eat his meals.

Before he’d completely unfolded the napkin in his lap, she set a cold beer on the granite surface followed by a steaming plate of chicken and dumplings. He’d sampled neither when she returned from the refrigerator with the salad she’d prepared for him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Usually he dug in with relish.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“I’m not really hungry—”

“You haven’t had dinner.” He toyed with his fork then looked back at her. “Set another place, Sara.”

“Oh, I don’t think…”

“Your employer’s sick of his own company,” Joaquin said. “Consider it another duty—at least for tonight—to eat with him.”

Duty.
Her spine straightened. Duty she understood a thousand times better than whatever strange compulsion had been leading her to get friendly with him, to almost flirt with him, to taste that mouth of his with her tongue.

As she gathered more utensils, she tossed a quick glance his way and thought he looked…irritated? But his expression was smoothed out by the time she took her own stool.

At his first bite of chicken and dumplings, Joaquin released a low, deep moan of pleasure. Sara tightened her grip on her fork, admonishing herself not to squirm in her seat, even though the near-erotic sound made her thighs clench and the place between them begin to throb.

“This is really good,” he said. “Is it complicated to make?”

She shook her head, forcing her attention to her own plate as she tried ignoring her physical reaction to him. “It’s easy. Plain cooking. Comfort food.”

“Someone needs comforting?”

A flush warmed her neck and cheeks. She hadn’t thought that through—instinct had directed her choice.

“The fog,” she said lamely, shrugging one shoulder. “It just seems like the kind of evening for a warm, old-fashioned dish.”

They continued to eat, the conversation staying on the safe topic of the weather. When they’d both finished their plates—he’d helped himself to seconds—Joaquin insisted on doing the dishes.

“That’s my job,” she protested.

But he was having none of it. “Not only did you cook the dinner, I ordered you to eat it with me. At least I can clean up.”

Sara could have uttered some assurance about it being no trouble to share a meal, but that would be a lie. The entire time she’d robotically fed herself, she’d been hyper-aware of his shoulder a couple of inches away. From the corner of her eye she’d watched his long-fingered hands cut and spear his food.

She wondered what they’d be like on her.