“How do you know Tomas?” the young man asked.
“We’re in business together.” Justin wasn’t about to pretend he had any other reason to be here. In fact, in light of his drinks with Selena he thought wooing her was going about as smoothly as the entire buying-the-marketplace deal. What was it with the Gonzalez family? Was it impossible to find a common path with them?
“Truly? My abuelito usually doesn’t do business with … wait a minute, are you Justin Stern?”
“That’s me,” he said. Great, nice to know that he already had a reputation here and he hadn’t even arrived yet.
“Oh, ho, you have some guts showing up here,” the kid said.
“I was invited, and I’m not a bad guy,” Justin told him. “I am trying to find a way to make that market viable, not to run your grandparents out.”
The kid tipped his head to the side, studying him. “I’m watching you.”
“I’m glad. Family should look out for one another. And I’m not going to take advantage of your grandparents or your family. My main concern is making money from the property we bought.”
“Is money all you care about?”
Justin shook his head. He saw Selena walking up toward the house from where they stood in the shade of a large palm tree. She’d changed from the sexy dress she had worn earlier into a pair of khaki walking shorts and a sleeveless wraparound top. She was enchanting, he thought.
He forgot about how unwelcome this guy was making him feel and focused on Selena.
“Leave him alone, Enrique. He’s not a bad guy,” Selena said as she came up to them.
“He told me the same thing,” Enrique said. “Are you sure about him?”
Selena shrugged. “Not one hundred percent but I’m getting there.”
“If we do business with your family,” Enrique said, turning to Justin, “I want to talk to you about deejaying at Luna Azul. Why do you only hire New York and LA deejays?”
Justin had very little to do with the everyday running of the nightclub he owned with his brothers. “I don’t have an answer for that but I can find out. If you send me a demo tape—”
“I don’t think Enrique wants to work for you,” Selena said.
“I’ll make my own decisions, tata,” Enrique said. He reached around Justin and hugged her. She hugged him back.
“Enrique is my little brother,” she said.
“I’m taller than you now, sis. I think that makes me your ‘big’ little brother,” Enrique said with a grin that was familiar to Justin. He’d seen it on Selena’s face a few times.
“You’ll always be my baby brother,” she said, looping her arm through Enrique’s and Justin was relegated to following the two siblings up the walk to the house.
Justin had the feeling he’d always be an outsider. Too bad his little brother wasn’t here tonight. This was exactly the type of party that Nate was better at than he was.
But he was here to achieve two things: first, to have Tomas lift the injunction against Luna Azul and second, to get Selena to be that warm, seductive woman she’d been on the beach again.
He’d pulled back for her sake, had instinctively known that she wasn’t the kind of woman who could start an affair, even a short-term one, with a man she barely knew.
But tonight he’d change all of that. He slipped his arm through Selena’s free one and she hesitated and lost her footing, glancing up at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Just making sure everyone knows who invited me to the party.”
Enrique laughed. “No one’s going to doubt that, bro. This is Selena’s welcome-home party. Did you know she hasn’t been back here since my tenth birthday?”
Why not? “No, I didn’t know that. I’m honored to have been invited to this party then.”
“Don’t forget that,” Enrique said. He dropped Selena’s arm to open the front door of the house. The air-conditioned coolness rushed out and the sounds of the party filled the lanai.
“Enrique’s in the house,” Enrique yelled and there was a round of applause.
Selena took a deep breath. “I am not sure this was my best idea.”
“I am. I want to get to know your family.”
She paused there on the step so that they were almost eye level. “Why? So you can use it to your advantage?”
“No, so I can start to understand you.”
He put his hand on the small of her back and directed her into the living room. Everyone surrounded her and welcomed her home. But standing to the side, Justin realized that Selena hesitated to be a part of them. She held a part of herself back and he wanted to know why.
Selena was amazed to see Justin actually fitting in with her family. He was standing by the grill talking to the men about baseball of all things. But then she guessed he would know a little bit about the sport thanks to his brother, the former ball player.
“What’s the matter, tata? Aren’t you enjoying your party?”
Her grandmother sat down beside her and put her arm around Selena’s shoulders. For just a minute she felt like she was twelve again and a hug from this woman could solve all of her problems. She put her head on her grandmother’s shoulder and just sat there enjoying the scent of gardenia perfume and how safe she felt at this moment.
“No, I’m not. I feel like everyone is watching me,” Selena said.
“They are. We have missed you so much since you
left.”
“I don’t want everyone to remember what happened. I’m sorry, abuelita. Did I ever tell you how sorry I
was?”
Her grandmother tucked a strand of Selena’s hair behind her ear and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “You did. Stop living in the past, that’s all done and we are better for it.”
“Better? If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be in this position with Justin Stern.”
“And you wouldn’t have met him. I’ve noticed you watching Mr. Stern.”
Selena blushed. “Given my track record with men, that should alarm you, abuelita, not make you smile.”
Her grandmother laughed. “The heart doesn’t care about the same things as the brain. My own sister Dona was in love with a gringo and our papa forbid her from seeing him and do you know what she did?”
“She ran away and married him and they lived happily ever after. Even reconciling with the family eventually,” Selena said. She’d heard this story many times but for the first time she understood what her grandmother had been trying to say to her. “Why would Aunt Dona do that? I mean living away from the family is hard.”
“She wasn’t on her own, tata, not like you in New York. That’s why I think everything has happened for a reason. A man drove you away from your family and this man,” she said, gesturing to Justin, “has brought you back to us regardless of his intention.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to see Justin as a white knight.”
“He is cute, though.”
“Abuelita, I’m not sure you should be noticing
that.”
“Why