One Classic Latin Lover, Please Read online

  Tierney couldn’t help but grin as she heard the strains of one of her favorite tango compositions, John Powell’s “Assassin’s Tango,” wafting through the highfalutin reception hall her mother had rented for Tierney’s bridal shower. Alec had thought of everything, and Tierney’s grin widened to smile. Oh, how she loved her brother—and his clever ideas.

  Tierney giggled as the classic Latin lover her brother had sent to her began to lead her in the tango. Oh, it wasn’t a difficult tango by any means, but it was purely provocative and delicious! As they danced, Tierney couldn’t keep from smiling up at her partner. He was so perfect! And although it was obvious he was not a professional ballroom dancer (much to Tierney’s relief), he did own exceptional rhythm, style, and strength. Yep, this guy was oozing masculinity, virility, and power.

  “Where did Alec find you?” Tierney asked as they continued to dance—as goose bumps continued to erupt over her arms and legs, her neck, her back.

  “Silencio, querida ama,” the man breathed, however—gazing into her eyes with an expression of desire. “We dance now. We’ll make love after.”

  Tierney giggled as the Latin lover Alec had sent to her reached down, taking hold of the back of her right knee with his hand. Tugging until she bent her leg, the Latin lover then slowly pulled her knee to his waist and leaned her back into a dramatic dip as he softly blew his warm breath over her throat and neck.

  Tierney was simultaneously thrilled to the tips of her toes and amused at her brother’s very thoughtful, very clever gift. She tried to ignore the lingering goose bumps on her body and the deepening regret that Dillon had never thrilled her the way this stranger was thrilling her at that moment.

  “Now see here, young man!” Tierney heard her mother begin. But she didn’t finish her interruption of Tierney’s dream tango with Alec’s gift. For at that very moment, the doors leading to an adjoining reception hall opened, revealing a troupe of twenty or more handsome, tuxedo-clad men.

  “Ladies…your Latin lovers have arrived!” one man announced. “Please join us for the tango!”

  Tierney watched, smiling as the men then invaded the room—each taking the arm of one or two bridal shower guests and leading them into the other reception area. “Assassin’s Tango” began once more, and all the bridal shower guests were then so caught up in either tangoing with a would-be Latin lover man or waiting their turn to tango that Tierney and Alec’s classic Latin lover gift were completely forgotten—left all alone.

  “I do have a message from Alec,” Tierney’s Latin-fantasy-come-true began once the doors to the adjoining room had been closed to ensure privacy.

  Tierney looked up into the classically handsome face of Alec’s gift, smiled, and said, “I’m sure you do…but I just have to thank you first.” The man grinned as she continued. “I don’t know how Alec talked you into this, or how much he paid you or whatever. But thank you. You truly did put a very bright spot in what has otherwise been an awfully dark day for me.”

  The classic Latin lover smiled, gently caressing Tierney’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Well, I hope so,” he said. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead and began to slowly sway with her again. “Will you dance with me once more…before I deliver Alec’s message?”

  Tierney smiled. “Of course,” she giggled as he pulled her against him and began to dance a much simpler tango. After all, what woman in her right mind would ever refuse to dance with this man?

  The classic Latin lover danced with Tierney for quite some time, holding her close against his warm, muscular body. Tierney felt an odd euphoria wash over her, an elation that seemed to numb her fears—all her worries, regrets, and concerns—until all that remained to her consciousness was the sense of protection she felt while being held in the strong arms of the handsome stranger. The moments seemed timeless—unhurried—and Tierney wished it could last forever, that she could remain dancing with her classic Latin lover, remain in his arms, and never have to leave, never have to marry Dillon.

  “So,” the Latin lover began, however, “first of all, let me assure you that I’m a close friend of Alec’s…not some stranger he hired.”

  Tierney looked up at him then, wondering how long her eyes had been closed, her head resting against his firm pectoral muscle. “Oh, well, that actually makes me feel better…that he knows you, I mean.” She smiled up at him and grinned.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “It’s important to Alec that you know he didn’t send a stranger to deliver his message.” He paused and frowned a little, adding, “And it’s important to me that you know it.”

  “Okay,” Tierney said. Anxiety was beginning to rise in her—for she already sensed what message Alec meant to convey.

  “Run, Tierney,” the man said. “Alec just wants you to run. Don’t marry this guy. You’re not in love with him and—”

  Tierney stopped dancing and attempted to push herself out of the Latin lover’s arms. But the man tightened his grip at her hand and waist.

  “Wait for the man you want…the man you need,” the stranger said. He was frowning, his expression entirely serious.

  “Alec knows the pressure I’m under from my mother and—” she began.

  “It’s your life, Tierney. It should be your choice who you marry,” he continued, however. “Don’t be forced into making the most important decision you’ll ever make by your mom, who just wants you to marry this guy because his family is wealthy and well connected.”

  “But he p-proposed to me,” Tierney stammered. “Dillon proposed to me, and he wouldn’t have if…I can’t just blow that, can I?”

  “Yeah, you can,” the Latin lover assured her.

  She was going to ask him why Alec hadn’t come himself to deliver his message—the message she already knew. Tierney and Alec had spent hours on the phone, Alec trying to persuade Tierney not to marry for simply practical reasons.

  “Alec says to remind you that you’re a passionate girl,” the Latin lover said, interrupting Tierney’s thoughts. “He says that this Dillon guy is a dud…wouldn’t know passion if it jumped up and bit him in the—”

  “I know what Alec thinks of Dillon,” Tierney interrupted. “He’s told me a million times.”

  The Latin lover exhaled a breath of frustration. He was growing impatient with delivering Alec’s message—or perhaps he was growing impatient with wasting his time with Tierney.

  Almost frantically, for she did not want to inconvenience him any further, Tierney tried once more to push herself from his arms. This time he let her go.

  “Are you in love with this guy?” the Latin lover asked.

  “He’s a very kind man,” Tierney answered, folding her arms across her chest. She was rattled, confused, and utterly undone.

  “I didn’t ask you if he’s a nice guy. I asked you if you’re in love with him,” the Latin lover stipulated.

  Tierney paused—felt tears welling in her eyes. “My parents have already spent so much money on this wedding…on the invitations, the travel arrangements. My mother would burst in to flames if I didn’t…if I didn’t…”

  “The fact that you even mentioned the money and your mother’s reaction tell me that you’ve already been considering—”

  “I can’t just…I can’t just walk away!” Tierney exclaimed as a sudden desperation to escape enveloped. It was indeed a desperation to escape she was feeling—but not a desperation to escape Alec’s bridal shower gift of a classic Latin lover. Suddenly all Tierney could think about was running from her mother, from Dillon, and from the only home and life she’d ever known.

  “No, you can’t,” the Latin lover said. Reaching out, he took hold of her arms—held her firmly as he stared down at her. “That’s why Alec told me to tell you to run.”

  “B-But…I…”

  “He’s waiting for you,” the Latin lover said. When Tierney frowned with confusion (for so many emotions and thoughts were racing through her, she was finding it difficult to focus on anything but
the Latin lover’s gorgeous face), he continued, “At the McDonald’s you guys used to sneak off to in high school. Alec is waiting there to meet you…and he’s got everything worked out. So run, Tierney. Just run.”

  Tierney shook her head. “It’s not as easy as you think.”

  The handsome man looked toward the closed doors that led to the other reception room. “Those guys will keep your mom and all your friends in there for at least thirty minutes. That’s plenty of time for you to get out of here, call your soon-to-be ex-fiancé, and break it off…and get to the McDonald’s to meet your brother.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Tierney whispered.

  “It is that easy,” the Latin lover assured her.

  “But what if Dillon…what if…I mean, he proposed to me,” Tierney stammered. “What if he’s the one I’m supposed to marry…or the only one that ever wants to marry me?”

  “He’s not the one you’re supposed to marry,” he answered. “Alec knows it, and you know it.” He smiled and shook his head, adding, “Hell, I don’t even know you, and I know it!”

  Tierney studied the man a moment. Oh, he was too beautiful to be true! Surely he wasn’t just a friend of Alec’s. He had to be an actor or something.

  “You must think I’m the biggest idiot,” Tierney whispered, suddenly very embarrassed by everything Alec had obviously told his friend. “Alec can be such a creep sometimes,” she mumbled as she blushed with humiliation and looked away from Alec’s messenger.

  Tierney looked up, however, when she felt the man’s grip tighten on her arms—felt him pulling her body toward his again.

  “No,” he said. “I think you’re a people-pleaser…and that maybe you need a little bit more to convince you than just Alec’s stupid idea of sending a message.”

  Unexpectedly, Tierney was rendered breathless as the Latin lover reached out with one hand, taking hold of her chin as his free arm wrapped around her body, pulling it flush with his own.

  She should slap him! She should totally slap him! But instead, all Tierney could do was watch as the most incredibly sexy pair of lips she’d ever seen moved closer and closer to hers—until the Latin lover’s face was so close to hers that she had to close her eyes.

  The gentle beginning of the kiss rendered Tierney weak in the Latin lover’s arms. But the manner in which the kiss erupted into an intense, fiery barter of passion took her breath away! Burning, moist, and driven like no kiss Tierney had ever experienced, Alec’s friend—a total stranger—evoked more positive emotion, more strength in determination, and more physical desire in Tierney than she’d ever imagined she possessed!

  In that instant, as the handsome Latin lover bathed her in euphoria, Tierney realized that Alec was right. She realized that she was right! To settle for poor, sweet Dillon when such a pent‑up need for true love, affection, and attraction was simmering inside her would be not only wrong for herself but utterly unfair to Dillon.

  As the Latin lover Alec had sent to her ground one last wet, fevered kiss to Tierney’s accepting mouth, one word echoed in her mind. Run!

  Pushing herself from the Latin lover’s arms and brushing tears from her cheeks, tears of mingled joy and fear, Tierney stood staring at the man—stunned at what it had taken for her to see into her own soul.

  Then, as if nothing had happened between them—the sultry tango, the exchange of information from Alec, or the sweltering, scandalous kiss—the purely gorgeous man sent to be her classic Latin lover for one sweet, bliss-filled half an hour simply said, “Run.”

  Yet Tierney paused—not for wondering whether calling off her wedding to Dillon were the right thing to do but because of him. She paused, wanting to take in the very last vision she would ever have of the mysterious Latin lover her brother had sent to her. She could still sense the taste of his kiss on her tongue; her lips still tingled with the feel of his pressed to them.

  “Run, Tierney,” he repeated. “Now!”

  And then, with the haunting strains of the violin in “Assassin’s Tango” echoing through the reception hall, Tierney O’Brien turned and ran.

  C hapter Two

  If there were one thing in all her life Tierney O’Brien would never forget, it was the classic Latin lover her older brother, Alec, had sent to her bridal shower. The nameless, tormentingly handsome, tuxedo-donning Latin lover had indeed done the job Alec had sent him to do: he’d convinced Tierney to bring her wedding to Dillon Hawthorne to a stiff and unalterable halt. If there were another thing Tierney O’Brien would never forget, it was the near nuclear fallout that followed.

  Oh, she’d escaped well enough. Tierney had taken the gorgeous Latin lover’s advice (that is, Alec’s advice) and hightailed it out of the reception hall where her bridal shower was being held. Racing to her car, she didn’t stop—simply drove to Dillon’s office and explained that she couldn’t marry him and why. Tierney hadn’t waited for Dillon to argue but rather forced the three-carat diamond solitaire engagement ring he’d given her into the palm of his hand, turned, and fled.

  The very instant she was out of Dillon’s office and driving toward the McDonald’s she and Alec haunted as teenagers, Tierney began to feel the magnificent wave of relief one feels when a good and right decision has been made.

  However, just as Alec had warned as he’d sat with Tierney enjoying a fine McDonald’s supersized number one, good and correct decisions didn’t always come with complementary good and correct consequences. And though Tierney had expected her mother’s shrieking in anger, her father’s silent sighs of wishing her mother weren’t shrieking with anger, and the questioning from every venue she could imagine, she hadn’t expected the cruel ostracizing from her friends and associates.

  No one understood why Tierney had called off the wedding and broken up with Dillon—no one (save Alec, of course). Tierney’s so-called “friends” played at the pretense of understanding, for nearly two weeks. But quickly Tierney recognized that the fact she’d chosen to follow her heart instead of a trail of money, position, and social expectation was simply not acceptable to Glynnis O’Brien and her arrogant, money-grubbing circle of contacts.

  Still, Tierney had endeavored to stick it out. She’d immediately moved into the apartment Alec had secured for her on a month-to-month lease basis. She’d quit her job at the country club and gone to work for a lesser-known florist downtown. Yet it seemed everywhere she turned or looked or stepped, Tierney bumped into someone who knew she’d “left Dillon Hawthorne standing at the altar”—someone who would instantly erupt into berating her and telling her she would never amount to anything without Dillon or her parents’ money and social position.

  Even the strongest self-esteemed person could never have endured under such circumstances—perpetual criticism and negativity and urgings to remain dependent on parents or a wealthy husband—to live a life of lavish luxury instead of lingering as a hard-working, middle-class nobody.

  And so, almost a year later, on the last full weekend of October, Tierney found herself sitting on an airplane, gazing out the window as the pilot announced that Mount Rainier was visible through the windows of her side of the plane. She was running, and maybe she was a coward for running, but not according to the feelings in her heart—and not according to Alec. Alec had left home (run—sprinted, actually) two years earlier and hadn’t regretted it for a moment. He’d done his research before running (just as he’d encouraged Tierney to) and settled in what he claimed was the most beautiful spot in the whole wide US of A—Leavenworth, Washington.

  It hadn’t taken Alec long to build up his snow removal business in Leavenworth, and he’d been very successful. Far more important was the fact that he’d been very happy. Oh, it hadn’t been easy. Alec had explained to Tierney at length the struggles he’d faced—both financially and personally—but he was truly satisfied with the life he’d literally plowed out for himself. Thus, he’d encouraged Tierney to move to Leavenworth as well, admitting that the biggest reason he wanted her there was
his own selfish desire to have his little sister live close to him. But he’d also explained that Leavenworth was a friendly, wonderful, almost dreamlike place to live, even for the fact that tourism was the driving force of the city’s economic health. A small population, beautiful landscape, and the entire town center’s being modeled after a Bavarian village were all reasons Alec had fallen in love with the place—all reasons he promised Tierney would fall in love with it too.

  As the airplane circled the Sea-Tac airport in preparation for landing, Tierney smiled, admiring the marvelous colors below—Seattle in autumn. Crimson-, gold-, orange-, and even purple-leafed trees were everywhere, often mingled with the perpetually green pines that were likewise everywhere. Although the scenery was very beautiful in its prolific colors and Pacific shores mingling, the visibility of the thick humidity hanging over the landscape reminded Tierney that she was glad she would be traveling a bit east of the coastline. Leavenworth wasn’t quite so moist and gloomy all year. Yet no one in all the world would argue with the beauty of the Emerald City—of not just the trees but the vines that lined buildings, bridges, and walls along the interstate, all having changed their leaves to flaming oranges or brilliant vermilion. It was truly stunning.

  As the plane landed and taxied to the gate, Tierney’s anxieties lessened a little. Soon she’d be with Alec, and then all would be well. Alec would take care of her—if she needed taking care of, that was. Alec owned wisdom and experience, and Tierney trusted him unconditionally. Still, as she stepped through the door of the gate and into the Sea-Tac terminal airport, Tierney tried to gulp down the lump of self-doubt gathering in her throat. What if she couldn’t land the job with the florist Alec knew in Leavenworth? What if she hated the weather? After all, the only snow she’d ever known was the kind at the ski lodges her family frequented in the winter months—the ski lodges filled with waitresses and waiters, masseurs and manicurists, and all the other people who labored to ensure the comfort of the lodge patrons.