“Your mother was Peruvian?” Patricia asked.
“Yeah and my father was from The States. I grew up there, but we would visit family in Lima often. Mom thought Peru began and ended with Miraflores. The furthest she would venture from her house was the Country Club, she said the rest of the country was backward.”
“She didn’t take you to see the Incan sites?” Patricia sounded outraged.
“In her whole life, she never set foot outside Lima. My mom shuddered at the thought of anything Incan. So, no, she never took us sightseeing.”
“You poor, poor man,” Patricia said, making Ed laugh.
Joe swerved the SUV into a space in front of the main entrance. A liveried doorman rushed to open the passenger door for Julia, and she automatically shrank back in her seat. Thankfully, Joe was there a second later, and the man turned to help her gran out of the car instead.
“Come on, trouble.” Joe held out a hand to help Julia out
of the car—although she clearly didn’t need the help. When she hesitated, he cocked an eyebrow.
With a sniff of disdain, she took his hand. It was a mistake. Once she was out of the car, Joe didn’t let go. Instead, he held her tight as they made their way into the building.
Everything about the English Pub, in the Country Club Hotel on Lima’s golf course, screamed middle-aged white man with money. From the polished dark wood, to the chairs that looked like thrones, right up to the chandelier lighting, it had been designed to make the patrons feel as though they were stars in a period drama about the British Empire. Julia could well imagine the potbellied men in the room thumping each other on the back with congratulations on eradicating the locals. The whole setup was as far from the culture outside the front door as it could get, and it made Julia’s skin crawl.
She felt a warm hand span the small of her back and breath against her ear. “Still glad you fought to come along?”
“Be nice,” Julia said to Joe. “Did you really want to deal with my grandmother all on your own?”
“You have a point. But if the two of you had stayed in the hotel, like I asked you to, that wouldn’t have been an issue.”
“You’d rather we were back in the hotel, alone, helpless, vulnerable?”
“You drive me crazy, woman.” And from what she could tell, he seemed to like it.
He brushed a kiss against her temple, and Julia suddenly realised that she was no longer cowering at his touch. It was disconcerting to realise she was actually becoming acclimated to him. The sneaky man was stealing under her defences with a continuous barrage of seductive touches.
“There he is!” Her gran pointed to the end of the bar, and before they could stop her, she was off stalking in the direction of the huddled men.
“Oh no.” Julia hurried after her.
Patricia turned heads as she stormed through the large room, and not solely because she was clearly furious. As usual, she was also stunning. She wore figure-hugging jeans, this time topped with a red batwing top that flowed around her, and red heeled boots to match. Julia couldn’t help but glance down at her own clothes. She was wearing another beige shapeless sack of a dress and low-heeled slip-on shoes. The shoes were comfortable, but definitely far from sexy. In fact, her sister Belinda often said she had the same taste in shoes as Queen Elizabeth. Yep, she was on a par with a woman in her nineties.
“Maybe I should get some jeans,” she mumbled.
She felt Joe’s hand flex against her back, and realised he’d heard her. “Babe, if you want jeans, get jeans. If you don’t, don’t.”
Julia bit at her bottom lip, desperate to keep the words in her head from erupting. It didn’t work. “My grandmother is sexier than I am.”
“That isn’t possible,” Joe said without breaking his stride. “Nobody is sexier than you.”
Julia tripped over her own feet at his throwaway declaration.
“You spineless bastard!”
Julia’s head snapped up in time to see her gran slap a middle-aged guy. Ed was at her back, but he didn’t do anything to interfere. In fact, he was just standing there, his arms folded and a grin on his face.
“You couldn’t have stepped in?” Joe grumbled at Ed.
Ed shrugged. “She seems to have it under control.”
Marcus Delaney was rubbing his cheek and pouting. It wasn’t a good look on him. “What the hell? Patricia, have you lost your mind?”
Patricia pointed a finger in his face. “Where is my mummy? I know you have it, you snivelling excuse for a man. Where is it?”