Page 16 of South Beach Bodyguards

“No.”

“Then what were you talking about?”

“She said that maybe coffee would take away the sour look on my boyfriend’s face. I told her you’re not my boyfriend, but my stepbrother, and she said then I don’t have to put up with you and I should find a nice Cuban boy who isn’t the size of a giant.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. “I’m not your stepbrother.”

Isabel snorted. “No, I suppose you’re not. We’re actually nothing to each other.”

That made me feel bad. “I didn’t say that. We’ve just never had a chance to get to know each other or anything.”

She gave me a long, searching stare that made me uncomfortable. “It really doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

That answer made me even more tense. I picked up my cup and took a sip. “It matters,” I said, shortly.

But she just shrugged.

Fortunately there was no traffic, because it was a quiet car ride. Isabel stared out the window as we drove over the causeway and rather than looking over at her every three seconds like I really wanted to do, I forced myself to concentrate on the highway stretch in front of me.

When we got to the Gables and to my former house, I felt a wave of nostalgia, which was ridiculous. So it was the house I’d grown up in. It wasn’t like it was jam packed with great memories and wonderful dinners and holiday family gatherings. After my mother left, my father let it go to shit on the inside, though he did pay to maintain the exterior. But the inside was still the same dated sixties remodel that had slapped midcentury modern on top of 1920s Spanish architecture. It was a bad combo, but Mickey had stopped caring. Mostly I had been alone in the house growing up and it had been a hell of a party pad in high school, because there was nothing to ruin. It was a dusty relic with lots of square footage.

Out of respect for Isabel, I had her let us in the house with her key, even though I had a key too still. Mickey had never changed the locks. But she did look up at me apologetically.

“This must be strange for you,” she said. “My mom said this is the house you grew up in.”

It was my time to shrug. “It’s just a house.” Not a fucking symbol of my whole shitty childhood. Because that would be dramatic and stupid. “Your mom has done a nice job with it,” I said as we went inside, because she had. It was clean, for one thing. “I stayed here when Kim and Mickey were in Europe and you were visiting your dad.”

“My mom loves to decorate.” Isabel went into the living room and stopped at the bottom of the tile stairs that went to the bedrooms. “Why do I suddenly feel nervous to be in my own house?”

Because she’d been assaulted in it. Or because it felt odd to have me in it. One or the other. “You were at the bottom of these steps knocked out cold, so that might have something to do with it.”

“Did it occur to anyone I just fell down the stairs? I’m not exactly grace personified. I take after my father, not my mother.”

She went up the stairs and I followed her, because that was my job. “I seriously doubt you tripped all on your own and fell down six stairs and landed in just the right position to knock yourself unconscious. Give yourself a twisted ankle or a bruise on your ass, sure. But not knock yourself out.”

“You don’t know how klutzy I am. I fell off the stage at my ballet recital when I was seven. That was the end of my mom’s dreams of me being a professional dancer.”

“Your mom wanted you to be a stripper?” Unbidden, images of Isabel naked, those luscious thighs wrapped around a pole, popped into my head. It immediately morphed into her giving me a private lap dance and I hated myself for mentally going there, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had seen things I couldn’t unsee and it was messing with my head.

“No!” She glared at me over her shoulder. “She didn’t want men ogling me. She wanted me to be a ballerina. Though I have to say, there are times I envy my mother for having been so confident that she was able to take her talent for dance and make money from it. I’ve seen video footage and she was good at it- her style was more burlesque than shock value. I could never been virtually naked in front of strangers. I’m too self-conscious. Not to mention, I have my dad’s looks, not hers. She has always been beautiful.”

I pried my eyes away from her ass, hovering in front of me as she took the stairs, and tried to process what she was saying. Self-conscious? The night before she had been anything but self-conscious. In fact, she had seemed to crave nudity. Or Julia had anyway. Was her personality really that split? Was Isabel repressed but deep down inside her she had a wild woman raring to go? It seemed a little nuts. A lot nuts.

If I were a nice guy, I wouldn’t call her out on it. I respected women and normally I did consider myself a decent human being with moral boundaries. But the fact that she could say any of that with a straight face after I had told her she kept taking her clothes off, and after yanking her T-shirt off in front of me an hour earlier, was ridiculous.

“I have seen every inch of you naked,” I told her. “Without any hesitation on your part. So maybe you don’t give yourself enough credit. Maybe inside you there lurks a secret stripper.”

In the doorway of a bedroom- my old bedroom- she whirled around. “I highly doubt it. I wasn’t in control of my actions.”

I raised my eyebrows and gave her a smirk. “You looked pretty damn in control to me. Especially when you bent over my kitchen counter and gave my beer bottle a rim job.”

Her cheeks bloomed pink. “I did not!”

“The hell you didn’t.” Then because I was feeling moody and selfish and horny as hell, I added, “You have a very talented tongue. And a cute little birthmark on your thigh.”

She hunched her shoulders forward and crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t make fun of me. Please.”

That surprised me. “I’m not making fun of you. I’m just trying to figure out who you are, Isabel. You seemed shy and quiet the few times I’ve met you, but last night you were anything but.”

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