The Tycoon's Red Hot Marriage Merger (12 page)

“You think she can win?”

“The technology is state of the art, and she can sail twice the speed of wind. With the right helmsman and team, she’s a strong contender,” Cassandra said. “I was going to…”
give her to my fiancé, Peter.
She stopped mid-sentence. Why bring Peter up now? He’d been part of an engineered engagement. And had it not been for Peter’s affair, she might have married the wrong man for all the wrong reasons. “The
Barracuda’
s yours to command if you want to race.” Now she would give her dream and her vision to the right man. Marco.

“Who else knows about the catamaran?”

“My design team and my father. I’ve maintained a strict code of silence throughout the testing trials,” Cassandra said. “You want to take the helm in July?”

“I have a boat, but no crew,” Marco said.

“Recruit one at the reception.”

“There are benefits to marrying a genius,” Marco said. “Contact your mother. Tell her to add the following people to her invitation list.” He rattled off the names of top regatta veteran racers.

Her stomach did a nervous flip. Though excited about recruiting a crew for the
Barracuda
, Cassandra no longer cared about fitting into the very society he wanted to impress. Once, all she had wanted to do was save her company and gain her father’s approval, but now she only wanted Marco.

“I’ll take care of it when we get back to the cove. But first I want to enjoy every remaining minute I have left in this paradise.” And pray that keeping her mind occupied with the thrill of preparing for the Platinum Cup would drown her anxiety about facing her peers back in Key West in a few weeks.

Cassandra turned on the engine, and turned the wheel. His arousal pressed against her bottom, and the helm’s wheel slipped through her hands.

“So do I,” he answered. “But this is just the beginning.”

She leaned her head into his shoulder, loving the way she fit. “I know,” she said. Only Cassandra hoped it wasn’t a false start.

###

An hour after they had returned to Marco’s cove’s villa and had made love—for she refused to think about it any other way regardless of Marco’s continued insistence to call it great sex—Cassandra slipped into a periwinkle blue sundress, the color a soft contrast to her sun tinted skin. After cinching in her waist with a skinny tan belt, she slipped on her simple beaded flat sandals and walked over to Marco.

“You like it?” she asked, then swished the full skirt’s hem around her legs.

He gave her an appreciative glance. “I like who’s wearing it.” Marco buttoned his white flowing shirt, leaving the tail out of his linen slacks and exposing enough skin to make Cassandra’s mouth water. “But I’d rather see what you’ve got on underneath.”

“You said you never miss this festival.” She picked up her yellow striped straw tote and pulled out a travel size bottle of her new favorite perfume. “And I’m excited to go.” Cassandra spritzed the scent onto her wrists.

“There’s always a first time,” he said, closing the distance between them and brushing her loose hair from her shoulders. “What do you say? Want to skip the festival?”

Shivers traveled up and down her spine. His affection and desire brought a warm feeling into her heart. For the first time ever, Cassandra truly belonged. Sure the people at the club and in her parents’ circles tolerated her, but had it not been for her family’s elite shipbuilding reputation that world wouldn’t have opened its doors for her. And now that prestige would assure Marco a place in that society though she had traded the Nelson name for Delgado. No one would shun Marco or Cassandra now that her family had accepted him along with the money and power driving Marco’s marriage bargain.

She tucked her perfume back in her bag, and wondered why Marco had chosen to make it a point to attend this particular village’s annual festival. He never did anything without reason. And this village, whatever he said or however nonchalant he was about it, was on his radar because it had to be important to him.

She was sure of it.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re missing one thing.” He pulled a small jeweler’s box out of his pant pocket. “Something to bring out the color in your eyes.”

Cassandra took the velvet box and opened it to find a teardrop sapphire necklace inside. “It’s gorgeous,” she said, lifting it out and draping it across her fingers. The gem dangled at the end of a row of silver floral petals, which were fused to a delicate chain. “Could you?”

“
Si
,” he said, unclasping it.

She turned from him and he brought it round her neck. The sapphire nestled above her cleavage when he finished clasping it. “Thank you.”

“It’s simple, elegant, and beautiful,” he said. “Just like you. Now let’s visit my village.”

His compliment made her toes curl and his gleaming green eyes made her veins thrum with anticipation. He’d also raised her curiosity levels to a higher mast. “So on top of owning a multi-billion corporation, you’ve got a village in your portfolio?” she asked.

“In a way.” Marco stilled her questions with his mouth, but by the time he finished kissing her, she hadn’t forgotten them.

Thirty minutes later, the late afternoon sun’s rays warmed Cassandra’s skin, but it was Marco’s solicitous hand on the small of her back that heated her to the center of her very being. Still, she longed for more than a mutually respectful—albeit super sexy—partnership.

She thought she had entered into a rational arrangement when she’d proposed, but now she
felt
. Everything inside her yearned for so much more. The depth of her feelings for Marco hit her with the intensity of a sail catching hurricane force winds. She’d gone and done something incredibly stupid. She had begun to fall in love with her husband.

Cassandra sensed a shift in the way he regarded her while they approached the village’s town square, which was so different from the bustling metropolis of Mar del Plata—like she had stepped back in time, to a simpler era. She slanted him a sidelong glance and regarded his beautiful and handsome profile. Even the scar slashing his cheek, now a whiter contrast slicing his golden skin, gave him a rakish appeal that had her itching to touch his cheek.

Tension. A tick in the base of his jaw and his temple belied his feigned ease. Her reaction to this village meant something to Marco. Cassandra looked left, right, and ahead, taking in the sights and sounds. “It’s wonderful,” she said when they reached the square. “How did you find this place?”

Traditional Latin music played, and couples danced in tandem with the earthy rhythms to the beat. Children dashed in and out of the storefronts, laughter and the rise of impassioned conversations greeted her senses.

He twirled her into his arms and danced her to the village square’s center. “My mother was born here,” he said. “She never went back after she had me, but social services did look for her family after they found my birth certificate.”

Her heart stampeded against her breastbone. “And no one claimed you?” she asked.

“They never had a chance,” he said. “My father found me first.”

Chapter Ten

Cassandra gasped, and her fingers flew to her parted lips. “Do they know who you are?” she asked, while a pair of boys raced around them and rushed toward the gelato restaurant where the stout owner had stepped out with free samples.

A couple hurried after the school aged children, darting between the dancers in the street, calling the boys’ names. A burning sensation fired behind his breastbone. How often had he wondered what it would be like to have parents who cared about his welfare? “
Si
,” he said. “They know I am Marco Fernandez Delgado.” And that he had paid for the church’s restoration along with other improvements like the freshly painted storefronts lining the village’s street.

The music changed its rhythm, and Cassandra matched his increased pace. “But do they know whoyou really are, Marco?” she asked. “Do they know that they may be related to you? That they might have raised you as their own son?”

Outside the town center, families dotted the expansive lawn that surrounded the gazebo where the band played. Mothers cradled their babies and fathers played bocce ball with their sons. Young lovers walked hand in hand down the sidewalks, and elderly couples sat at wrought iron tables drinking Espresso and eating pastries.

Flames flickered along his nerves. He could have been one of them, been a part of a community instead of an outcast in his father’s
estancia
. “No.” Marco turned away from the view and executed a quick series of steps, wanting to stop the questions, wanting to distract Cassandra with anything that would overshadow her curiosity. “I wouldn’t be able to help them if I had grown up here—in poverty and relying on the ocean for my living.” Nothing could change the past, so he focused on the here and the now with an eye toward the future.

Money mattered. Power mattered. Passion mattered. But love and security? They had been temporary, easily stolen ideals. And Marco was no idealist. Not anymore.

“But—”

Marco pressed his mouth against hers, stopping her and losing himself in the sensation of her soft lips before his world tilted and he lost his grip on his reality. A reality that didn’t have room for walks down memory lane. Though Cassandra’s openness had already caused him to lower his guard. Which had been why he wanted share this place and a piece of his background.

She tasted sweet, like his favorite dessert. Already she had captivated him with her addictive, unique feminine flavors. And man, her sighs and the delicious way her body responded to the simplest physical connection made him crave more. He wanted so much more that he had allowed her hot combination of sexy and smart and sensitivity to unearth a side of himself that he had long buried.

Her nipples pebbled against his chest and he deepened his kiss. Knowing how turned on he could make her, gave Marco a reprieve from his thoughts. And anchored him. He’d brought Cassandra to the village because he wanted her to know what kind of family she had married into. That she had accepted his history only cemented their arrangement. A permanent bargain that would lead to making babies and creating a dynasty that surpassed his roots and his father’s legacy.

The music’s tempo slowed and he ended their kiss long enough to gaze into her indigo eyes. Tiny sparks in her irises reflected the lights that the villagers had draped from the trees and from light pole to light pole. He swayed with her, holding her waist, and reading more than passion in her gaze.

She rested her head against his shoulder. “Did your mother learn to dance here?”

Awareness charged between them. But something deeper, more compelling than his physical attraction to Cassandra, made his throat ache. He swallowed hard to push down the unwelcome emotion. “She left when she was eighteen and stopped returning after she had me.”

“I wish she would have.” Cassandra placed her hand on his chest and peered up at him through her lush, black lashes. “For your sake.”

His heart sounded like a gong in his ears. She cared, and that unnerved him. “Traditional values run strong here and she would have been ostracized,” Marco said. And any ridiculous ideas about what kind of life he might have had should his people have known about him scattered. “My mother was better off running the dance studio in Buenos Aires than if she had returned here.” He dipped Cassandra with one arm to break away from her tender touch, holding her suspended mere inches from the cobblestone road.

Her long dark hair tumbled below her and onto the ground. He could see the swell of her breasts rising and falling rapidly, but she didn’t break eye contact. “Do any of your relatives live here now?” she asked. “I mean you could have grandparents, uncles, aunts, even cousins living here. Did you even try to find them and tell them about your connection?”

Spots flashed in his vision. Cassandra had latched onto his background with the tenacity of a shark going in for the kill. “I didn’t even know about this village until I came across the information in my father’s papers.” He pulled her up and snapped her into his chest, then shifted her left and right of his hips in a seductive dance sequence. “I hired a private investigator three years ago, but there’s no one left other than my mother’s sister. She left shortly after my mother.” He sent a hand signal to the maestro to up the music’s tempo.

The rhythm accelerated and the horns sounded louder, more frantic. He twisted Cassandra round and round, his legs moving between her bare thighs. In the rush of movement, she matched his steps and continued their conversation without pausing to catch her breath.

“Did you look for your aunt?”

He moved behind her and swayed his pelvis against Cassandra’s bottom. She felt perfect. So right. “
Si
, but I never found her,” Marco said, running his hand down her bare arm until he twined her fingers through his, fully aroused.

“Are you still trying to find her?” she asked, and glanced at him over her right shoulder.

“Of course.” He raised her arm high above her head, then twirled her round to face him before dancing them to the edge of the cordoned off square. “But finding my family isn’t a priority.” No. He only wanted to lose himself in Cassandra and forget everything he had dredged up.