Emery
An hour later, all the stuff Kaya and I had packed at my house was on the Cruz side of the wall and had been put away. The job of getting it over was made even easier by Mateo joining in to help. After everything was dealt with, we all went our separate ways to change into our bathing suits.
I walked outside at the same time Alejandro and Kaya did. The three of us were setting our towels on loungers—Elvis, of course, had taken up residence on the one I’d chosen two seconds after I picked it— when my attention was diverted to Rafael as he came out onto the patio and began making his way toward us. Clad in red swim shorts and a pair of aviators, he looked good enough to eat. His body was far, far hotter than I’d realized, and that was nuts because I’d already been drooling over it. A nearly naked Rafe was nearly too much. I was damn glad that I had sunglasses and my floppy sun hat on to hide my reaction—or at least I hoped they did because even though his eyes were covered, I swore I could feel the heat of his gaze caressing my skin.
Then again, I thought, he might have been looking at me because it was unavoidable, and I don’t mean that in a conceited way at all. My bikini, floppy hat and sunglasses were all bright yellow, which made me the exact opposite of unnoticeable. I didn’t even care if all the yellow made me look like a goof—I liked bright colors. Always had, always would.
The closer he got to me, the more intense my reaction to him was. Although I might’ve been somewhat hidden beneath the big brim of the hat and behind those sunglasses, my nipples hardened as desire unlike any I’d ever experienced raced through my veins.
I came back to earth when Kaya leaned into me to murmur, “Am I going to have to hose you two off?”
My fingers twisted together nervously as I turned toward her to whisper, “Is it that obvious that I think he’s hot?”
She lifted her sunglasses away from her eyes just long enough for me to be able to see her dubious expression before she dropped them back into place. “It’s not one-sided,” she murmured. “And on that note, we need girl talk ASAP.”
I had just enough time to nod before Rafe was upon us with Mateo, Ava, and Diego right behind him. One of the coolest features of the area were the cabanas. On one side of the pool was a large cabana with four overhead fans, a mister system and six double-sized loungers that had the plushest outdoor cushioning I’d ever seen. We all assembled there, choosing to forgo the two other, smaller, cabana areas which each housed dual loungers. I’d been to lavish spas that were less luxurious than the backyard of Casa Cruz.
Alejandro and Kaya had chosen loungers next to each other, and I wasn’t unhappy when Rafe picked the one next to mine. I wanted to think he’d chosen the spot because it was closest to me, but with Elvis cawing at him in a way that clearly said sit near me, I couldn’t be sure.
“Little buddy, are you ditching me now?” Kaya whined. “I’m not getting many Elvis-snuggles when Mommy and Rafe are around.”
He answered back with a series of caws before he quickly jumped off the lounger and went over to sit with her.
From his position on the lounger next to Rafael, Diego leaned forward and got my attention. “I never realized peacocks could have so much personality. I’d swear he understood every word.”
“Personality for days,” I agreed.
“Haven’t known him long, but from what I can see he likes to be with his people. Will he follow you into the pool?”
I shook my head. “From time to time he’ll dive in, but only if he knows Kaya or I can pull him right out. Because peacocks don’t have webbed feet, swimming doesn’t come naturally to them. Other than standing in the zero entry area, I think he’ll steer clear of the water in favor of walking around the edge and playing lifeguard, a job he takes very seriously.”
“For his crew, yeah. He’d probably watch me drown,” Dio said.
“Stop whining, you big baby,” Rafe teased. “Besides, I think he’s thawing toward you. He isn’t even giving you the evil eye right now and he hasn’t been since you walked out here.”
I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth nature of the ribbing that went on with the brothers. After a few more minutes of conversation, we all began making our way to the pool. Kaya, Alejandro and Ava took up residence on three of the lounge chairs that were in the ocean-style entry to the pool, while Mateo and Dio announced they were going to head into the garage to blow up some rafts and floats. Rafe stayed close, walking with Elvis as we made our way to the pool. With the sexy Spaniard so close to me, cooling off in the water wasn’t just an option—it was mandatory. After setting my hat and sunglasses on the side, I raced to the deep end, took a deep breath, and dove in.
The pool was huge, so swimming from end to end without surfacing wasn’t possible. When I came up in the middle of the pool, I swam to the side and found Rafe was less than two feet away from me. With one hand resting on the stamped concrete that surrounded the pool, he was the definition of relaxed… and sexy. With both of us having taken our sunglasses off, we were back to making eye contact and, as I was coming to expect, it was electric.
I hopped up and sat on the submerged bench that surrounded nearly the entire pool. As I got comfortable, I started giggling when I noticed that Elvis had wandered off to be with Kaya. Looking over his shoulder to see what I was laughing about, Rafe snorted when he saw what I did—Elvis up on the back of Kaya’s lounger, with his head on her shoulder.
“Look at the little Romeo making sure she knows he loves her,” he chuckled.
“He’s very affectionate,” I agreed.
“With his ladies, yes. He chills with me and he’ll bro-out like nobody’s business, but he loves up on you and Kaya like you’re his world. Is that something all peacocks do?”
I shook my head. “No. Little man was always special, right from the beginning. We had other birds at the farm who were awesome and personable, but Elvis took that to a whole other level. Peacocks are social, and they prefer to run in a pack. He’s social too, but with us. He used to get incredibly salty when the other birds would try to get our attention. Somehow, he developed what Kaya and I call only bird syndrome, even though there were dozens more born that season. It was almost a relief to get him off the farm and into his own space.”
Rafe’s eyes were soft as he listened to me talk. “Only bird syndrome,” he repeated with a laugh. “I get it. He’s really…”
“Extra,” I provided.
“Extra special,” he corrected.
I could tell he was working up to something by the way he watched me. He ran his hand through his hair as he stared at me in silence for a few seconds before he finally spoke. “Can I ask you something?” he asked.
That sounded ominous. “Um, sure.”
“How’re you doing with all this paparazzi shit?” he asked, his voice low and his face showing concern. “You seem okay, but since I can’t read you yet, I don’t know if that’s just a front.”
I was relieved the question wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I was touched by his concern. “I’m okay. Not great, but okay. Possibly this is because I turned my cell off and haven’t checked it even once. I know what’s being said about me is all lies, so there’s that. The public wants salacious gossip, and my asshole ex is making up a story to justify his behavior.”
“His behavior?”
“Well, he, uh, kind of cheated,” I blurted.
Rafe’s jaw dropped for a quick second. “Cheated on you?”
His incredulity felt like a soothing balm. “Yep, on me,” I mumbled. “I mean, kind of.”
“Either he did, or he didn’t,” Rafe said firmly. “If he was with you and he touched another woman, he cheated.”
I cringed as I thought of Jonni on Elliot’s lap. “This is going to sound so pathetic,” I admitted. “We were together but not together, if that makes sense.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You’re going to have to give me the lowdown.”
It seemed like he was really interested, but I didn’t want to give him the whole thing if he was just being polite. “You sure?” I asked.
“Positivo,” he answered in Spanish.
I sighed and repositioned myself, wrapping my arms around my calves and setting my chin on my right knee.
“I met Elliot at my twenty-third birthday party and to be one-hundred percent honest I wasn’t interested. At all. He doggedly pursued me for months after that and somehow—I’m going to go with temporary insanity or possibly hypnosis—he wore me down. He had a whole spiel about how older men treat women better and, like an idiot, I fell for it because I was tired of going on fake dates my publicist set up. In the entire five years I’ve been in Hollywood, Elliot was one of only a small handful of men who asked me out. Of course, now I get that his pursuit wasn’t about attraction—it was about business.”
He frowned. “You mentioned earlier that you think he was working an angle to get you into his movie. That’s fucked up.”
“According to my agent—just before she fired me for quitting that awful movie—that was just him doing what he had to do to get me to sign on was just business.”
Rafe’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “Your agent sounds like a toxic bitch. If she hadn’t quit, I’d be here telling you to fire her ass. I’m glad you’re not too broken up over this. Smart to let it roll off you—and you’ll get another agent without any issue anyway, so fuck her.”
I shook my head. “No more agents, publicists, social media management or acting coaches. I’m done.”
He couldn’t have looked more surprised. “You’re hanging it up?”
“I am, and to be honest, I should’ve done it at the end of Bytes. Acting was never a passion for me, and it wasn’t what I saw myself doing. Someday I’ll probably thank Elliot for fucking me over—without him blowing up my world I might’ve continued going along with the agents and managers who had me booking jobs I wasn’t feeling. I see now how life gets away from you in the blink of an eye. With what’s happening now, I’ll be able to reset and do the things I want to do.”
“I think it’s great that you’re going to be able to do you, but don’t ever thank that prick for cheating on you,” he growled. “He fucked up big.”
I snickered. “I haven’t even told you the worst part.”
“It gets worse?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer because Mateo and Dio came back and tossed two small rafts and a massive float shaped like a unicorn with a rainbow tail, rainbow wings, and an impressive golden horn into the pool. Rafe laughed as he watched.
“I know it was you that ordered the unicorn, Ava! Making us look really masculine with that shit.”
She laughed and stuck her tongue out. “There’s a giant rubber ducky if you’d rather have that. Not that you’ll need it—wait ‘til you see the cool thing I ordered.”
“We are dragging that out next,” Mateo announced, “but Jandro and Rafe need to help to set it up.”
Rafe frowned as he turned to me. “We’re not done talking,” he said. “Later on, I want to circle back to this and hear everything, as long as you’re cool to discuss it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s a date,” he said as he grabbed the side of the pool and hoisted himself up.
I didn’t say anything due to my fascination with watching the drops of water that were sluicing off Rafael Cruz’s incredible body. I forgot to breathe for a few seconds as I watched several of them slide past his happy trail. Had I not been in the pool, I’d very likely have melted into a puddle.
The big thing the guys brought to the pool was a floating mat and it couldn’t have been cooler. At twenty-one feet long and six feet wide, the thing was massive. Everyone jumped in to play around on it, laughing at how preposterous it was as a pool toy. In a lake or a river, sure—but since ordinary people didn’t have pools the size of the one at the Cruz house, it was unlikely that the product had been intended for pool use. Still, we were having a blast on it. Things got even funnier when the competitive issue Ava had warned us about came up.
“I’ve got five bucks that says I can run from one side to another faster than you guys,” Dio called out.
“Make it ten,” Alejandro countered.
“I’m here for that,” Rafe answered.
“Boys, please. If we are going to do it, we do it right. Raise the pot to twenty,” Mateo chimed in.
Once they’d hammered out the details of the challenge, Mateo turned to Ava.
“I looped the stopwatch through the top of my lounger just in case. Can you take charge of timing us?”
“Always do,” she answered.
Once it was determined that she’d keep time, Ava, Kaya and I all swam to the lounge chairs in the beach entry area to watch. After spending a few seconds at the side of the pool seemingly trying to decide who to focus on, Elvis ended up coming down to where Kaya and I were, where he promptly hopped up onto the back of my lounger so he could see—and peck at—both of us.
As we watched, the guys went from doing rock, paper, scissors to determine the order before they started to hammer out the rules for the challenge.
Gesturing between the guys and the stopwatch in her hand, Ava laughed. “This is the tip of the iceberg,” she told us. “Joaquin is the worst. He’ll turn anything into a competition and they all go at it like it’s life or death.”
“Who normally wins?” I asked.
“It’s about even,” she answered, “and I hope it stays that way because if the scales tipped in favor of just one, they’d be insufferable.”
The order that had been worked out with rock, paper, scissors was Mateo, Diego, Alejandro, and Rafael.
“The first run each of us does is just for practice,” Mateo called to Ava. “You do not have to time those, Mi Tesoro.”
“Got it, honey.”
It has to be said that watching four ridiculously gorgeous men was in no way a hardship. What made it pleasurable was observing Rafe having fun with his brothers—all while being smoking hot. Kaya and Ava seemed to be thinking similar thoughts about the situation since without any kind of discussion the three of us stood and migrated further into the pool to have a closer view. Not wanting to be left behind, Elvis also got closer, standing at the side of the pool so he’d be able to see everything.
Watching the practice runs they each did revealed that in addition to being competitive, they were all athletically blessed. Ava was closest to the side since she had one arm up and out of the water to control the stopwatch, so Elvis was all over her. It was wild to me that he’d taken to the Cruz family the way he did—except for Diego, but I was confident he’d warm up to him.
The brothers ran the length of the water mat one by one, with Alejandro in the lead after the first three were finished. I couldn’t look away as Rafe stood at the edge of the pool, ready to take his turn. He jumped on and started strong, all of us girls hooting and hollering as he raced toward the end. Apparently unable to contain his excitement, Elvis jumped down onto the mat to cheer his pal on, screeching excitedly as he did so. Proving that he had incredible reflexes, Rafe came to an abrupt stop and jumped over Elvis in order to avoid hurting him. He missed my feathered baby entirely and landed safely in the water, but when he splashed down, he was nearly on top of me. He surfaced less than six inches from me in one fluid motion, wiping the water from his face.
Even though it kept happening, I still got butterflies when our gazes connected. We stared at each other in silence for a second before he grinned and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“I feel like I was set up. Did you tell my dude to make me lose?” he asked teasingly.
I nodded as I jammed my elbow into his side playfully. “Oh no,” I joked, “you figured it out.”
Elvis cawed at us from the mat, almost like he got the joke. Surprisingly he looked right at home on said mat, probably because it basically allowed him to walk on water.
“You did me dirty,” Rafe chided.
My giggle amused Elvis. I knew this because he threw back his head and did his laugh thing as he turned away and started walking the length of the mat.
“Ava,” Dio called out, “tell us who won.”
“Not you,” she answered in a sing-song voice.
He grumbled with faux-annoyance. “Which one of these idiots went faster?”
“Jandro by nearly a whole second,” she announced.
Kaya whooped as Alejandro dove into the water and pulled her into his arms.
As we all laughed and enjoyed the pool, I tried to remember when the last time was that I’d had that much fun. I also couldn’t recall ever, at any point in my life, enjoying the way it felt to have someone touching me—and Rafe only had his arm around my shoulders. Apparently unconcerned with the questioning looks everyone was giving us, he kept his arm right where it was until we got out of the pool.
* * *
After a lunch of salad and sandwiches, Mateo and Ava left us to take an afternoon siesta while the rest of us spread out in the big cabana. After asking if anyone would mind, Diego turned the TV on, put in his airpods and settled in to watch what looked like a Spanish news channel, but I couldn’t be positive because it wasn’t like I could hear it.
Kaya and Alejandro both pulled iPads out—him to read, her to surf Pinterest for recipes. Rafe had a hardcover book about social media strategies that was so big it damn near looked like a college textbook while I had my iPad out to read the book on the care of hydrangeas that I’d been working on for about a week. With all his human companions accounted for, Elvis took up position on the empty side of my lounger, his body tucked as close into my side as he could possibly be, his feathers draped out behind him while his little head pecked away at my arms and stomach whenever he had something to say.
“He snuggles with you,” Rafael murmured. His chair was right next to mine, so I had no problem hearing him. “That can’t be normal for peacocks.”
“Whenever he gets the chance,” I confirmed. “It isn’t normal for peacocks, but it’s normal for little E. His favorite thing is to sit behind me on my outdoor sofa so his whole body is snug up against me and he can set his head on my shoulder. The little bugger loves to snuggle so much that he sneaks into my bed whenever he gets the chance.”
“He’s a damn smart bird,” Rafe said huskily.
I didn’t have to respond since Elvis chose that moment to lift his head and caw, apparently in agreement. It almost didn’t matter that I didn’t speak— the sexual tension between Rafe and I was thicker than ever.