“I just need to get my head together,” he’d told his father. “I need a little space before I start.”
“Space? You’ve had four months!” Martin sputtered.
But his mother, Ana, the more patient of his parents, had taken his side. She’d patted his hand and said to his father, “Give him time, Martin. A month. Two. What’s the difference after we have waited all these years. He needs to grieve for what he has lost.”
His father had been skeptical, but in the end he’d agreed. “We will be waiting, though,” he’d said giving Joaquin a stern, expectant look.
And Joaquin had nodded. “I know. I’ll be here.”
“Of course he will,” his mother had said. “And then we will all be happy and Santiagos will be waiting and—” she’d kissed his cheek “—finally you will get around to giving me those grandchildren I’ve been waiting for!”
That was the other half of his future—getting a mother for the inevitable Santiago offspring.
His mother had shaken her head with bemused tolerance at all the groupies who’d trailed after him during his soccer career. She didn’t take them seriously. They were silly and transitory.
None of them would become “the Santiago Bride.” She knew that. So did Joaquin.
“Time enough for you to find the right woman when you are done playing games,” she’d always said.
Something else to look forward to, he thought grimly now as he lay on the chaise longue on the small balcony outside his room at Lachlan’s trendy Moonstone Inn and tried not to think about it.
He’d been here over three weeks now, every day trying to psyche himself up for his new life.
He wasn’t there yet.
Listlessly he picked up the book he’d been trying to read for the past hour. Lachlan’s wife, Fiona, had told him he’d love it.
“It’s a real page turner,” she’d assured him. But he’d been on the same one now for what seemed like a week. The words made no sense.
Weary, he lifted his gaze and stared across the water at the empty horizon.
“You read?” The sudden sound of an astonished female voice made him jump.
He turned his head and saw Lachlan’s grubby sister, Molly, standing on the balcony of the room next door.
He lifted a brow. “Are they keeping engines in the guest rooms now?”
Molly was the mechanic at Fly Guy, Hugh McGillivray’s island charter service. She was also a pilot, occasionally taking charters when Hugh was otherwise committed, but most of the time she was eyebrows deep in some greasy engine on a plane, boat, helicopter or motor vehicle.
Not, Joaquin thought, your average girly girl.
Probably the only one in the world who didn’t even own a dress! A fact he had learned when he hadn’t recognized her at Lachlan’s wedding because she’d actually been wearing one. A borrowed one. But he hadn’t known it at the time. He’d thought she was simply a fresh female face. She certainly hadn’t looked like herself. On the contrary, she’d looked…pretty. Sexy.
Approachable. For once.
His mistake.
He’d felt foolish for not realizing who she was, but he’d got past it and had attempted to redeem himself by asking her to dance.
“Dance?” She’d stared at him, sounding incredulous. “With you?”
“I don’t normally ask women to dance with someone else,” he’d said stiffly.
She’d laughed, but it had been a forced laugh. And then she’d shaken her head. “Well, thanks, but no thanks. Don’t put yourself out.” And she’d turned away to talk to someone else!
Cheeky brat.
And the only woman who had ever turned him down.
Not that he gave a damn. There were far more fish in the sea. He hadn’t spared her another thought. And he’d barely seen her since he’d been back. Oh, maybe they’d been in the same social gathering a handful of times because he was Lachlan’s friend and she was Lachlan’s sister.
But she was usually far too preoccupied with her engines even to deign to speak to him. And he had no desire to talk to her. He considered ignoring her now. And he might have, but at the moment even grubby tomboy Molly McGillivray was more welcome than his own dark thoughts.
“What are you doing over there?” he asked her.
“Suzette asked me to put some flowers in the room.”
Lachlan’s office manager and second in command, was all spit-and-polish efficiency. Joaquin couldn’t imagine she’d let Molly—wearing her grimy work shorts, faded orange T-shirt, and oil-streaked bandanna wrapped around her forehead to tame a riot of coppery curls—anywhere near one of the Moonstone’s pristine guest rooms. “Good thing she didn’t ask you to bring clean towels.” He grinned at the flash of green fire in Molly’s eyes, then when something else seemed to flicker in them, he added, “Lo siento. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t see Suzette sending you like—” he waved a hand in the direction of her grease-stained clothes “—that.”
“I was coming up, anyway,” Molly said stiffly.
“Oh.” He expected she’d do whatever it was she’d come up for and leave, but she didn’t. She stood there, so deep in thought she was making faces as she stared at him.
He frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.” She hesitated, then glanced toward the door that led from his balcony into his room. “Is she gone?”
“Is who gone?”
“The flavor of the night. Whoever you brought back with you last night.”
Joaquin stared at her. “What do you know about who I brought back with me last night?” he asked.
In point of fact he hadn’t brought anyone back. He’d considered it. He’d even gone so far as to leave the Grouper with a pretty blonde tourist from Germany. But she’d giggled too much. He’d walked on the beach with her, then remembered a “pressing phone call” he needed to wait for. She’d offered to wait with him, “to keep him busy while he was waiting,” she’d said with several more giggles. But he’d declined.
“I don’t know anything about her,” Molly said. “I just didn’t want her to come waltzing out in the middle of—” she broke off.
Joaquin lifted a brow. “In the middle of…?” He gave her an expectant look.
She made more faces. Then she shifted from one foot to the other and seemed to almost balance on her toes. She reminded him of Lachlan poised in goal, anticipating, ready.
For what?
No clue. She seemed to be poised on the brink of some great statement which she somehow couldn’t manage to get out. Well, if it had anything to do with disapproval of how he lived his life, she could take her opinions and stuff them!
“I need to talk to you,” she blurted at last. Her face was red, and not entirely from the sun, Joaquin didn’t think. Curious.
“Talk to me? About what?”
More faces. She balled her fingers into fists. “It’s complicated,” she said at last. She didn’t look at him.
“Complicated how?”
“Look,” she said fiercely with another suspicious glance at the door. “Is she in there or not?”
“There’s no one in my room,” Joaquin told her. He rose lazily and stood looking at her. “So if you’d