Abena rushed around, dusting, vacuuming, and straightening.

Last night she didn’t think much about the condition of the place because she’d been annoyed Santiago invited himself up, but now she wanted everything to be perfect. As promised, he called earlier. Even better, he was on his way back and had picked up food from Patagonia. He promised her a feast, and she promised to contribute the wine.

The doorbell rang while she fluffed the last pillow. Quickly, she snapped open the curtains onto the view of the bay in the fading light—a view she never grew tired of and one of the reasons she was glad she’d won the bidding war when the property first came on the market.

The doorbell rang again and she smoothed a hand over her jeans before scurrying to the door. Santiago leaned against the jamb, his eyes and lips smiling when she swung open the door. His attire consisted of a white shirt and chinos, but he hadn’t shaved, so his face was covered in a sexy five-o’clock shadow.

She smiled back, trying to stay calm, though butterflies danced inside her stomach in a dizzying display of nerves. She couldn’t believe he’d spent the night in her condo, making love, no less. Her cheeks warmed at the memory of his firm touch and heated kisses.

Santiago held up a plastic bag stuffed with food containers. “Chef was generous. Two meals, bread, and he also threw in dessert.”

“What did you expect? You are the vice president of operations.”

He straightened with a chuckle. “My position does have its privileges.” His hand snaked around her waist, and he pulled her in for a kiss. She sighed into his mouth, savoring his lips. One hand gripped his firm biceps while the other brushed along the soft bristles on his chin.

“Well, I’m starving. Are you going to feed me or…?”

“I choose or.” His eyes glinted with mischief.

Abena laughed. Giddy. Excited. “I’m hungry. You promised to feed me, so I’m holding you to it.” She waltzed into the kitchen and he followed.

They unpacked the food, separating the dishes onto plates she took down from the cabinets. The sides consisted of lobster macaroni and cheese, haricot verts, and basil fried corn. There was grilled chicken—butterflied, flattened, seasoned to perfection and cut into two halves. Abena paired the meal with Weinart Carrascal Blanco, an Argentinean blend whose buttery and caramel flavors would pair nicely with the chicken.

They ate on the patio, same as the night before, lingering over the meal, laughing and talking like old friends. But unlike the night before, she didn’t turn on the lights. She set a votive candle in the middle of the table, which flickered gently in the wind and added an intimate ambiance to dinner.

During their conversation, she paid close attention to Santiago. Spending time with him reminded her of their initial friendship in Argentina a couple of years ago, before the complication of their mutual attraction boiled over into the night on his desk. Which, in turn, boiled over into acrimonious words yelled at each other when he visited Miami months later and found out about her engagement.

That all seemed so long ago. Not only forgotten, but forgiven. This was the Santiago she had known and been attracted to; this man who charmed both men and women as he worked a room.

Back then, despite her attraction to him, she saw him as the full representation of everything she should avoid in a man. His cavalier attitude toward sex. His dismissal of the sanctity of marriage. The fact that he could have his pick of any woman in any of their restaurants and clearly indulged.

Despite her uncharitable thoughts, he didn’t catapult to his level of responsibility in such a short time through charm alone. Santiago was known for being shrewd and no-nonsense when it came to business. Because he’d worked at various levels in the restaurant industry—from the bottom up—he understood the plight of the staff and wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and work in the trenches with them, definitely appreciated by those on the lower end of the organizational chart.

She leaned in, listening closely as he talked, and filed away every detail about him.

---

They finished the meal, and Abena dabbed her lips with a napkin. They didn’t eat it all; there was too much food for only the two of them. They did, however, put forth a valiant effort.

She sighed. “So. So. Good.”

Santiago drained his glass of wine. “You’re not full, are you? Remember, we have dessert.”

Abena groaned. “I don’t think I can.”

“I have two large slices of chocolate mousse cake, minus the gelato.” He spread his arms wide in an exaggeration of the size of the slices.

The chocolate mousse cake was absolutely delicious. Abena groaned again. “Fine, but only a few bites.”

“Right.” He laughed, obviously not believing a word she said.

They cleared the table, washed the dishes, and chose to eat dessert inside on the sofa. A floor lamp offered light as they settled on sharing, splitting one piece of cake between them. Santiago held the plate with the dessert, and they took turns eating, with two forks.

“You’re eating way more than I am,” Abena pointed out. She sat with her legs beneath her.

“If I remember correctly, you said you only wanted a few bites.” Santiago cut a hunk and shoved it into his mouth.

“Ei!” Abena cut a piece with her fork. “Just because I said it, doesn’t mean I meant it.”

“Hm. Typical woman.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny. You know you’re a chauvinist pig, right?”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

They ate in silence as she turned a question around in her head.

“Why are you frowning?” Santiago asked.

“I want to ask you something.”

“I don’t think you should ask.”

“You don’t know what the question is.”

“If you’re afraid to ask, it won’t be good.”

“It’s not bad, I promise. I’m curious about something.”

Santiago set the empty plate on the table and sat back. “Okay, you can ask your question.”

Abena took a deep breath. “You’ve slept with a lot of women, and—”

“That doesn’t sound like a question. It sounds like a statement.”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“You don’t need to. I’ve told you before, whatever you’ve heard was probably exaggerated.”

“So you haven’t slept with a lot of women?”

“Is that the question you wanted to ask?’

“This is an aside to the question.”

He looked amused. “Yes, Abena, I’ve slept with a lot of women.”

“So why did you deny it?”

“I didn’t. But I suspect whatever rumors you’ve heard are much worse than the reality.”

“So if I heard you’d slept with one thousand women, I should cut that number in half?”

He tossed back his head, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down as he laughed. Her chest tightened. God, he was beautiful. And oh, how she loved to hear that laugh.

“Perhaps.” He drank more wine, the second glass he’d poured.

“Have you ever been in love?” Abena asked.

He carefully set the glass on the table beside the sofa. “Is that the question?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I’ve been in love.”

“You have?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I have to admit, I’m surprised.” And a little bit jealous of the other woman.

“Why?”

“Because of your beliefs about love and marriage. Do you remember the night you brought some paperwork over to Esteban’s house? He was at an event, and you joined me for dinner. You said love is fleeting, painful, and seldom worth the effort. Something along those lines. I never thought you’d allow yourself to fall, for anyone.”

His words had struck her as particularly poignant. While she saw him as playful and easygoing, she guessed there was much more depth to him, and a painful past he valiantly covered from prying eyes.

“I guess you’re wrong.”

“Tell me about her.” She wanted to know everything about the woman who’d managed to snare his heart. “Go ahead. Share.”

Santiago rested an elbow on the back of the sofa. “Remember my female boss, the one I worked for at the restaurant?”

“You were lovers, which I suspected the first time you told me about her.”

“Very intuitive. Her name was Romina Calderon, twenty years older, beautiful, and worldly. She broke my heart. I was young, about twenty or so when we began our affair. And I was very foolish. I thought I was in love.”

“Are you saying you weren’t?”

“No, I certainly was very much in love with her.”

“And the relationship ended because of her questionable business practices?”

“I didn’t tell you the whole story.” He paused, seeming to weigh his response. “She was engaged to the head of the company while she and I were supposed to be in an exclusive relationship.”

“Oh.” That explained his explosive reaction to her engagement to Marc. Abena didn’t think for one second he was in love with her, but the similarity of both scenarios must have been a painful reminder of his past love.

“We broke up, and she told me I was a fool. Emotional. Said I was making a mistake, putting my heart before my career.”

“Did she expect you to continue seeing her?” Abena asked, aghast.

“Probably. She was a soulless woman, but I figured it out too late. She told me she fully expected me to come crawling back.” He stared off into the distance, speaking slowly and lost in the flashback of the conversation. “I was twenty-two by then, and she reminded me of something my father told me a few years before.”

“What did he say?”

She had met his father once, in Buenos Aires. Her most vivid memory was of his nasty arrogance. The way he talked down to her and the rest of the staff, treating them as if he could barely stand to be bothered by such peons.

“He told me I would never amount to anything.”

Abena gasped. She couldn’t imagine anyone in her family saying something so awful. In fact, the members of her family were the complete opposite. They held high expectations. At times, she felt they were too lofty.

He paused. “Made me more determined than ever to prove him—and her—wrong.”

“You have proven them wrong. You’re at the top of your game in a volatile industry.”

“I have plenty of work to do. Now it’s your turn. Since you’ve admitted you didn’t love Marc, have you ever been in love?”

“I’ll tell you about my first love. I started younger than you did. At the ripe old age of twelve.”

“Of course, because women mature faster than men,” he quipped.

She giggled. “I was a hopeless romantic, I guess. His name was Kwame, and as far as I was concerned, he was the love of my life. We were going to get married and have a lot of babies. At such a young age, we didn’t do much except hold hands, but he used to walk me home from school each day. When his family moved to Accra, the capital of Ghana, I was devastated.”

“Do you think you were really in love at twelve years old?” Santiago asked.

Abena shrugged. “It felt real.”

“You kept in touch with him?”

“At first. We sent letters back and forth for a couple of years, and he came back every so often to visit family. But when I moved here, we fell out of touch.”

“Do you know what became of him?”

“No. Maybe one day I’ll find out.” Abena shrugged. “What happened to your ex?”

“Her relationship with the head of the company fell apart and they never married. That’s all I know. I haven’t heard news about her in a long time.” Santiago ran the back of one finger along her cheek. “Now that we’ve bared our souls to each other, how do you feel this evening? Physically, I mean.”

She blushed, biting her bottom lip. “Fine.”

A smile of amusement crossed his features. “You’re not sore?” he asked.

“A little. But it’s not bad.” A dull ache remained between her legs. A constant thud, like remnants of pleasure co-mingled with the unfamiliar sensation created from using parts of her body she’d never exercised before.

“Good. I wanted you to enjoy it.”

“Why?” She could imagine a million reasons why, but wanted to hear his answer.

“Because your first time should be special. And because I want you to want to do it again. With me.”

His fingertips traced along her bare arm, and her body came alive, reacting to his touch and the hunger in his pale eyes.

“I—” She didn’t want to appear too forward, but honesty seemed imperative here. When you shared your body with a man, such an intimate act surely meant the intimacy of dialogue could also be expected. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.” He answered quickly, without a moment’s hesitation.

Emboldened by the answer, Abena leaned closer and trailed her fingers down the scruff on his face. “I would like to do it again,” she said softly. “With you.”