Lessons From A Latin Lover. Anne McAllister
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to the Grouper, but it was nothing like the way a real date with God’s gift to women would be.
So why were her palms sweating? And why was her stomach swirling? And why had she spent the last hour ransacking her closet for something attractive to wear?
It wasn’t as if something was going to miraculously materialize in her closet. Since she’d quit teaching and moved back to the island she hadn’t bought new clothes. She made do with Hugh’s and Lachlan’s cast-offs and a couple of swimsuits.
She did what she could, putting on the most respectable pair of shorts she owned—the only pair that had not been Hugh’s or Lachlan’s first—and a clean T-shirt without a beer or a junkanoo slogan on it. She even tucked it in.
It wasn’t as if she was out to impress Mr. Hotshot Latin Lover, after all. She was going with him to learn from him, not tantalize him.
He was her “teacher,” not her date.
Still, she felt a very unfamiliar unsteadiness when, at precisely seven-thirty, there came a knock on the door. Taking a quick—and she hoped, calming—breath, Molly jerked open the door.
Joaquin Santiago, in all his handsome glory, black hair flopping across his forehead, stood on her porch, shaking his head and saying mournfully, “I liked the towel better.”
Molly’s face flamed, but she said gruffly, “You almost got it. I only have shorts and T-shirts.”
“You wore a dress for Lachlan’s wedding.”
“I borrowed it from Carin, and you know it.”
“I thought you might have decided to buy one since you looked spectacular in it.”
Molly didn’t know what to say to that. She wasn’t used to having a man comment on her appearance or even, in fact, noticing her appearance. She shrugged awkwardly. “No place to wear it.”
“Maybe if you had one, Carter would think of someplace you could go.”
“Carson,” she corrected him sharply, and he smiled and nodded, and she narrowed her gaze at him, wondering if he’d given Carson the wrong name on purpose. It was hard to tell what Joaquin did on purpose—besides flirt and play soccer. And he wasn’t doing the latter anymore. “And Carson’s too busy for us to go anywhere.”
“Which we will have to change.” Joaquin offered her his arm. “Come along.”
Molly stood stock-still and looked at him, appalled. “I can’t take your arm!”
“No? ¿Por qué? Why not?”
“Because…because…” she sputtered “…everyone would think we were going out!”
“Sí. We are going out.”
“Not…like that!”
“Like what?”
“Like a…couple!”
“Tonight we are a couple.”
“We’re not! It’s lessons!”
“As in teacher and student, sí? Then you will take my arm as a part of the lesson, querida.” He smiled. The arm awaited her, raised a bit.
“I don’t—”
“Who is the teacher?” he asked her, his tone gently mocking.
She glared. “Carson wouldn’t like it.”
Totally untrue. Carson wouldn’t care at all. Carson wasn’t the least bit jealous. But Molly cared. Tongues would wag. Carson wouldn’t care about that, either. But she did. She did not want to have to explain to anyone why she was seen walking arm in arm with Joaquin Santiago.
“We can walk to the Grouper together,” she told him firmly. “But that’s all. We’re friends.”
Joaquin didn’t look convinced. But he shrugged. “Very well. If you are afraid that your reputation will suffer.”
His gallantry irritated her further. “I just don’t want people talking,” she explained.
“Perhaps you would like to walk five paces behind me?”
“Don’t be an ass. We’ll just walk together. I always walk with Carson,” she said even as she edged carefully past him down the steps.
He caught up with her and reached around her before she could open the gate and did it himself, then gave her a mocking courtly bow and waved her through. “After you.”
Molly slipped past, tempted to hurry on, but mastered her instinct to bolt and waited while he latched the gate again.
He smiled approvingly. “So,” he said. “We walk. Without touching? Do you and Carter walk without touching?”
“Carson,” she corrected through her teeth, knowing now that he was doing it on purpose. “He touches me,” she said defensively.
He often slung an arm over her shoulders or gave her a bone-crushing hug or grabbed her hand and hauled her wherever he wanted her to go. But something in her tone must have conveyed a certain hesitancy because Joaquin nodded.
“We’ll work on that,” he said. “And the clothes,” he added.
“Clothes?” Molly echoed warily.
Joaquin slanted her a grin. “It’s easier to seduce most men if they don’t think you’re one, too.”
“Very funny. But unnecessary. Carson knows I’m a woman.”
“Does he?” The question was mild but cut to the bone. And apparently realizing it, Joaquin reached out and took her hand. “The thing is, querida, you want the awareness to hit him squarely between the eyes. Men don’t understand subtlety.” He had pulled her to a stop in the middle of the road and was looking earnestly into her eyes.
The look hit her squarely between the eyes, that was for sure. Molly wetted her lips. “I can get something,” she said.
“We will go shopping.”
“You can make me a list.”
But he shook his head. “No. I have to tell you my reactions.” He started walking again, pulling her along with him, though whether he’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to be holding her hand or whether he intended to keep a grip on her so she wouldn’t run away, she didn’t know.
“Shopping where?” Molly said warily.
“Wherever you want. The boutique at the Mirabelle. Erica’s in town.”
Syd bought her clothes at Erica’s. It had lovely expensive stuff. The boutique was even pricier. Molly almost never set foot in either of them. “I don’t shop there.”
“You don’t shop.”
She lifted a defiant chin and jerked her hand out of his. “I haven’t needed to. I can. I will,” she vowed.
“And I’ll come with you.”
“Not to Erica’s!”
“Why not?”
“Because people would talk!”
He rolled his eyes. “So we’ll go to another island. We’ll go to Nassau. Or Miami.”
“Miami?”
“Why not? Surely they won’t talk in Miami.”
“No, but—”
“Stop arguing, querida,” he said and reached out and snagged her hand, this time lacing his fingers firmly through hers.
She jerked to a stop. “What are you doing?”
“Little things. Connecting things.” He met her gaze with a heavy-lidded one of his own. My God, he had beautiful eyes.
Molly