“Well, then, Ms. Spinney, I hereby challenge you to a flirt-off.”
She snorted into her coffee cup. “A flirt-off?”
He nodded. “Yes. And if I win, you have to buy a new pair of shoes—shoes of my choice.”
“What if I win?”
“You won’t. I’m a professional.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Like I said, it’s not going to happen. So you really shouldn’t worry your pretty little head over it, Kate,” he said, doing his best to wind her up.
“As we’ve discussed, my pretty little head,” she replied in ominous tones, “is Harvard-educated and dislikes patronizing men.” But she softened the statement with a reluctant smile.
“Maybe so, but you don’t have the slightest idea how to flirt. Flirting requires charm, and you’re no southern belle. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Her green eyes narrowed at him. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say things that are insulting and then turn them around?”
“We smooth-talking Latins just have a way with words.” Alejandro grinned at her, loving the outraged expression on her face. She looked very sexy when outraged. In fact, if she were to ditch the awful pants and unspeakable loafers and sit there barefoot in just the shirt…maybe unbutton it a few more inches so that it hung off one shoulder….
Kate looked at her watch. “We have to get back. We’re going to be late.”
“That’s another thing you’ll have to learn about, now that you live in Miami. Living on Latin time, la hora latina. We are always late. Without exception.”
“That drives me crazy. It’s so rude!”
“You’ll have to get used to it, if you’re going to hang out with me, amorcito.”
“What did you just call me? And who says I’m going to hang out with you?” But her lips twitched.
Alejandro drained his coffee and stood. He took their cups and dropped them in the trash. “I just called you little love, and of course you’re going to hang out with me. We’re going to work on the project together.”
“I haven’t agreed to that yet….”
“Well, no. But you will,” he said calmly.
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, yeah? You’re awfully sure of yourself, sport.”
He nodded. “You’re shy, Kate. I’ve watched you and you haven’t mingled much. Do you even know anyone else well enough to ask them?”
She started walking faster, her beat-up loafers making clopping noises on the pavement. The sole of her left one flapped with each step, flashing her little toe.
“Hey,” he said gently, and put a hand on her arm. She stopped, but wouldn’t look at him. “It’s not a criticism, you know.”
“Most people say I’m stuck up or standoffish. How can you say I’m shy when I told Kurtz he was wrong in front of the whole class?”
“Ah, but that’s different. It has to do with facts and figures, with intellect. You’re very sure of your brains, Kate. It’s socially that you’re inhibited.”
Her arm quivered slightly, and once again, she stepped away, creating space between them. “I appreciate your analysis, Doctor. Can I get off the couch, now?”
He had a sudden image of her lying naked on his brown leather sofa at home, wearing nothing but that little crease between her eyebrows. He wanted to get her off, all right.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said. “I’ll think about the project and let you know.” And Kate spun on her battered heel and walked quickly to the nearby ladies’ room, where he couldn’t follow her.
Alejandro tried not to stare at her ass as she pulled open the door, but failed miserably. He might be moonlighting as a manicurist right now, but he was still, after all, a man and not a rosquete.
He was also determined to work with Ms. Spinney on the marketing project. Because she intrigued and piqued him…and he knew instinctively that it was the only way to get into her baggy khaki pants.
3
KATE STARED OUT at the Atlantic Ocean from the window of her Key Biscayne condo and reveled in her loneliness. She didn’t know a soul in the high-rise, and she rather liked it that way. All her life people had known her by her name, her parentage, her family.
Here in Miami she could blend in and be anonymous. Oh, there were countless acquaintances she could call if she wanted to tap into a built-in social network, but she didn’t. She wanted to break out of the Spinney mold and just be a regular person, live a regular life.
As she watched the waves cresting on the shore, she thought about the gorgeous, slick Latin guy in her marketing class. He was funny and she half-liked him, even though he set off all kinds of warning bells in her head.
He was too good-looking, and too charming. But he was also intelligent and had unerringly taken the right tack with her. Kate was used to people tiptoeing around her family name and money; treating her with a certain amount of deference or awe—unless, of course, they came from the same type of background, in which case they didn’t give a damn.
But Alejandro had mocked her instead of deferring to her, which was refreshing, not to mention amusing. She wiggled her bare toes on the hardwood floors and glanced at her beat-up loafers. Her father would call them disgraceful and her mother wouldn’t notice. Her brother wouldn’t care. And Gerta, her parents’ housekeeper, would make her leave them in the mudroom.
You need to save your money for new shoes, Alejandro had said to her, knowing full well that she was a Spinney and that her family’s business supported entire towns. And he’d insulted Harvard. The corners of her mouth turned up. He had a nerve, didn’t he? She liked that about him. She hated people who kissed her ass.
She wasn’t sure she liked his flirting, though. And she didn’t like her body’s response to his touch. She didn’t trust him. But that was nothing new—she hadn’t been brought up to trust anyone.
“Don’t be naive,” her father had told her from the time she was ten. “You’ve been born a very wealthy little girl. People—and later, men in particular—will try to use you for your money.”
Kate watched an opportunistic seagull dive and snatch something from the water before wheeling away. She envied its freedom—but more than that, she envied that the bird knew what to do with it.
She’d created some freedom by leaving Boston and putting hundreds of miles between herself and her family, but it still felt peculiar. She did a lot of rambling on her own, felt lonely much of the time, and second-guessed her decision to leave. But it was time.
The poor little rich girl: oldest story in the book. And yet she lived it, cliché that it was. Money was supposed to create freedom, wasn’t it? Yet all too often it tied people down. Tied them to a certain lifestyle, or ways of thinking, or to a monolithic business dedicated to making more and more of the green stuff. And for what purpose? So that it could be counted, guarded, fought over, invested, lost or stolen.
Filthy lucre: that was how she’d come to think of it. Most of her family loathed each other or didn’t speak to one another for various financial reasons having to do with Spinney Industries.
Kate sat cross-legged on the floor in only her oxford shirt and underwear, staring vaguely out to sea. She was quiet for a would-be revolutionary. But as her thirtieth birthday approached, she felt an urgent need to discover the Kate side of her as opposed to the Spinney. To break some rules. To defy some conventions. She