“I know,” Lazaro said, his voice hard, his grip tight on the wheel.
Vanessa looked down at the ring on her finger and turned the phone camera on, snapping a picture of the diamond glittering in the late-afternoon sunlight.
“What would you do if you could do something else?” Lazaro asked.
She smiled. “I would take pictures.”
“Of what?”
She leaned her head back against the seat and let the soft leather ease away some of her tension. “Everything.”
“You might find the time to do that someday. Maybe not of everything, but … of some things.”
She forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile. “Maybe. Maybe when all of this gets sorted out, and things settle down in the company I’ll have time.”
“You will.”
“No one else knows that,” she said, realizing it as she spoke the words.
“That can only be a good thing. Shouldn’t a husband know things about his wife no one else knows?”
Heat made her skin prickle. “I suppose so.” That made her think of sexy things. Erotic things. Things that made her lips tingle with the memory of his kiss. “But it isn’t like we’re going to have a real marriage.”
“What will be unreal about it?” he asked.
Only the very core of the union. But of course, he didn’t seem overly concerned with that detail. “Well, we don’t love each other.”
“No.” Something about the way he said it, so matter of fact, so logical, made her chest ache. Maybe because there had been a time when she’d loved him, so much, with everything she had. It seemed like yesterday and another lifetime all at once.
She put her sunglasses on, all the better to avoid his eyes. “So that’s the part that makes it seem … not real.”
“You didn’t love that purebred you were supposed to marry.”
His choice of words made her snort. “No. I barely knew him. But I didn’t really … I tried not to think about it.”
“This is no different.”
It was different. It was different because, with Lazaro, she wanted things. Things no other man had ever made her want. At sixteen, loving him had made her feel that the whole world was open to her. As if she could do anything. Be anyone. Not just Vanessa Pickett of the Picketts of Boston.
He made her feel like that now. It was dangerous and stupid.
“I suppose it’s not.”
She looked at his profile. Strong. Masculine. Angry. She’d said something wrong again and she had no idea what.
“Is there any way you can take time away from the office?” he asked, effectively changing the subject.
“For how long?”
“A week. I’ve been doing some consulting work with a corporation in Argentina and I have to make a physical appearance this week.”
“And why do you want to take me?” she asked.
“What better way to celebrate our engagement?”
“I’m not just going to jump into bed with you. We already established that,” she said, sounding prim even to herself.
“I remember. Vividly. Although you certainly do a good impression of a woman who wants to do some jumping when I kiss you.”
“Kissing isn’t sex,” she said coldly. “You’ve always seemed to get the two confused.”
“I assure you, Vanessa, I’m not confused about any part of sex. And a kiss is not sex, I’m well aware. Not even close.”
“So don’t equate one kiss with me being ready to sleep with you.” He’d certainly made that assumption the first time she’d kissed him. “I’m not ready. I don’t sleep with men I don’t know. And if that’s the point of the trip …”
“It will look nice if I take my fiancée on a celebratory vacation. If you’re going to be a harpy you can stay here.”
She thought of the two options for her week. Staring at the four walls of her office again, or escaping to Argentina for seven days. Even if it was with Lazaro, option two was the winner. She wanted to escape. Just go for a while. Leave reality behind.
“I’ll go.”
“Bien. You and I can … get to know each other.”
Buenos Aires was electric. There was energy in everything, motion and lights and heat. Vanessa had never seen anything like it. She’d traveled quite a bit before she’d graduated from high school, but they’d been trips with her father, trips that had begun at airports in air-conditioned limousines and ended up at cloistered resort properties.
She’d never truly gotten to enjoy the culture of the country she’d been visiting. And she’d never realized how sad that was until now. Had never realized what she’d been missing.
She wished she could capture it forever. The curves of the buildings, the brick on the street, the sun-washed blue sky.
“You grew up here?” She turned to Lazaro, who was sitting next to her in the back seat of the limo, engrossed in something on his smartphone.
“We left when I was thirteen,” he said, not bothering to spare her a glance.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Sure. If you don’t go down to where I used to live. But every city has its slums.”
Vanessa’s stomach tightened. “And that’s where you’re from?”
“Does that bother you, princesa?”
“No. Yes. Only in the sense that I don’t like to think of you … of anyone, living like that.”
“It’s reality,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know.” She did. But it was sort of a hollow, half-realized knowledge.
“It’s where I’m from. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much despair to have a husband who comes from nothing. As your father is so fond of saying, class can’t be bought.”
“I’ve never cared, Lazaro. Never.”
“That isn’t how I remember it.”
“How do you remember it? Because I remember risking my father’s wrath to speak to you whenever I got the chance, and I don’t think I ever treated you like a second-class citizen. In fact, I pretty much remember my entire sixteen-year-old world revolving around you.”
The limo pulled up the curb in front of a stretch of tall, white, connected buildings. “My penthouse is here,” Lazaro said.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I like it,” she said, opening her own door and getting out without waiting for Lazaro.
She liked it, and she was glad to be done with the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about what an idiot she’d been for him back in her angsty teenage days. And she really didn’t want him guessing just how close she was to being an idiot for him now.
Lazaro Marino was as hard as concrete and just as loving. The last thing she wanted was to cultivate feelings for him. She’d had her heart broken by him before. Granted, at sixteen, everything felt fatal, and she was sure that whatever it was she’d felt for him was more infatuation than anything else. But still, she had