She shivered in primal, feminine response to the smooth touch of his lips, and impulsively stroked her fingers down his face. “You didn’t see your father before he died?” she asked quietly.
His eyes darkened with emotion. “No,” he said, and this time when he kissed the back of her hand, he did so lingeringly, holding her gaze. Her temperature jacked up; how did he do this to her?
The moment when he spread her hand open so her palm cupped his jaw, it felt like it was just them. Nobody else in the restaurant, the hotel, the world.
“You’d never abandon your father,” he murmured as he held her gaze trapped, pressing her palm against his face. “I admire that.”
Her chest moved as if pulled by an invisible string toward him. Had she ever received a more flattering compliment? His pain streaked through her as though she’d adopted it as hers, and she ached to make him feel better, to take the darkness away from his eyes, to kiss him…kiss him all over.
She stroked his rough jaw with her fingers instead, unable to stop herself. “Perhaps he knew you loved him, and he understood you kept to your pride, like he did,” she suggested.
“Marcos? Love? He wouldn’t know love if it trampled him,” Marissa scoffed and frowned at Marcos, then sobered up when he swiveled around to send her a chilling look. “It’s my fault anyway. That you left. I’ve paid dearly for my mistake, I guarantee it,” she added.
He didn’t reply. His gaze had dropped to where his thumb stroked the back of Virginia’s hand again, distracting her from the conversation that ensued. He seemed to prefer that touch above anything else. He kept stroking, caressing, moving her hand places. He put it, with his, over his thigh, or tucked it under his arm. Longing speared through her every single time he moved it according to his will. He genuinely seemed to…want it. Was he pretending? When his eyes came to hers, there was such warmth and heat there…. Was he pretending that, too?
Marissa mentioned Allende, and Marcos, prepared for the discussion, immediately answered. His voice stroked down Virginia’s spine every time he spoke. Her reaction was the same: a shudder, a quiver, a pang. And she didn’t want it to be. She didn’t want to have a reaction, she shouldn’t.
While the waiter set down their meals, she thought of her father, of how many times he’d disappointed and angered her, and she thought of how hurt she’d have to be in order not to see him again. Sometimes she’d wanted to leave, to pretend he didn’t exist to her, and those times, she would feel like the worst sort of daughter for entertaining those thoughts.
Marcos wasn’t a heartless man. He stuck by his brother no matter what he did. My brother is a person, Allende is not, he’d told her. But his father had been a person, too. What had he done to Marcos to warrant such anger?
She had her answer fifteen minutes later, after she’d eaten the most spicy chile relleno on the continent and swallowed five full glasses of water to prove it. She excused herself to the baño and was about to return to the table when she heard Marissa’s plea from the nearby table filter into the narrow corridor. “Marcos…if you’d only give me a chance…”
“I’m here to discuss Allende. Not your romps in my father’s bed.”
“Marcos, I was young, and he was so…so powerful, so interested in me in a way you never were. You were never asking me to marry you, never!”
He didn’t answer that. Virginia hadn’t realized she stood frozen until a waiter came to ask if she was all right. She nodded, but couldn’t make her legs start for the table yet. Her chest hurt so acutely she thought someone had just pulled out her lungs. Marissa Galvez and Marcos. So it was because of a woman, because of her, that Marcos had never spoken again to his father?
“You never once told me if you cared for me, while he…he cared. He wanted me more than anything.” Marissa trailed off as if she’d noticed Marcos wasn’t interested in her conversation. “So who is this woman? She’s a little simple for you—no?”
He laughed, genuinely laughed. “Virginia? Simple?”
Virginia heard her answering whisper, too low to discern, and then she heard his, also too low, and something horrible went through her, blinding her eyes, sinking its claws into her. She remembered how difficult it was as a little girl to cope with the w
hispers.
The father is always gambling…they say he’s crazy…
Now they talked about her. Not about her father. About her. She didn’t hear what he said, or what she said, only felt the pain and humiliation slicing through her. Her father had put her in this position once more. No. She’d put herself in it. Pretending to be lovers with a man she truly, desperately wanted…and then looking the fool in front of someone she was sure had really been his lover.
Jealousy swelled and rose in her. She had no right to feel it, had never been promised anything, and yet she did feel it. Their kiss yesterday had been glorified in her mind and she’d begun to wishfully think Marcos had wanted to be with her this week. Silly. She’d even told herself she might like sharing his bed for a week.
She felt winded and strangely stiff when she reached the table. She sat quietly. She focused on dessert, tried to taste and enjoy, and yet her anger mounted, as if she really were his lover, as if she had anything to claim of him.
When he reached for her hand, it took all her effort, it took her every memory of having gone to beg him for help that evening, not to pull it away.
If she weren’t sitting she’d be kicking herself for being so easy. She sucked in air then held it as he guided that hand to his mouth and grazed her knuckles with his lips.
Her racing heart begged for more, but Marcos’s kiss was less obvious than last night, more like a whisper on her skin. Every grazing kiss he gave each knuckle felt like a stroke in her core.
A slap in the face.
They say her father’s crazy…
By all means, Virginia would pull her hand away in a few seconds. She just wanted…more. More hot breath and warm lips on the back of her hand. More fire between her legs. A place so hot and moist it could only be cooled by—Something moved.
His phone.