Mail Order Bride Book 1
CHAPTER ONE
No one ever talked to Atlas Neville unless they had something to say. He didn’t wish it differently either. People were complicated; fickle and complicated.
Unlike the latest buyer agency agreements on his desk just then, people could be swayed, moving from friend to foe, foe to friend at the snap of a finger. Sure, a contract could go sour, too – but at least a broken contract could be taken through the legal system, squeezed of every cent’s worth and shucked off once and for all.
Emotions, unfortunately, were not to be treated in kind. Otherwise Atlas would try to get along with more people.
Try being the imperative word. He rarely got along with anyone for long. If they didn’t drop him, he walked away first. And he usually walked away first.
“Mr. Neville,” the door man, Samuel, beamed, his heavy Spanish accent rumbling through the lobby.
He wanted to walk away now. Atlas slowed his long-legged gait; at first he wanted to get this over with, and now intrigue shook his original intent.
Intrigue and Sam’s smile.
Before meeting Sam, Atlas counted himself up there with scrooge, the Grinch, Trump and any of those guys whose rare smiles broke the creepy scales.
A big, scarred, tattooed man, some of the rumors traveling the condos involved tales of how the doorman was an incognito ex-gang member on the run from his bloody past south of the border. The truth was far more boring.
Born and raised in San Diego, Sam was just an ink-loving hulking guy who happened to be the survivor of a terrible car accident.
See, that’s why Atlas disliked people – why he kept his neighbors at an arm’s length away. Heck, they probably called him the Ghost of apartment 404.
A smile played the corners of Atlas’ mouth, but he let it slip on greeting Sam with a quiet nod. Quiet because he was studying the woman in front of the large doorman.
Easily the prettiest girl he’d seen the whole weekend he played shut-in again; at least the prettiest girl who looked as close to being all-natural in San Diego’s Centre City.
No collagen implants, fake tan or botox on this girl.
An exotic beauty, Latina by the looks of it, she clutched a bulging duffel before her, the weight straining her bare arms.
Of a complexion reminiscent of warmed caramel, her black hair rested in gently teased waves over the shoulders of her simple, gray halter top. Hers were long tresses that he’d guess came down to her mid-back if she did a spin for him, and what a spin it would be.
Long, thick legs shot out of her thigh-cropped jeans, and Atlas couldn’t pull from doing an up-down of her assets. She probably had a fat butt to match her wide hips, slimmer waist and the big breasts straining her top. He locked on to her dark eyes, finding she’d been assessing him too.
He couldn’t read her expression. She stared, her mouth a glossed line.
There was a tiny part of him that wondered what she’d have to be thinking to look that way. But not near enough for him to care beyond whatever Sam had to say to call him down.
Besides the likelihood he’d see her again was slim to none. First, she didn’t dress like any of Neville & Co.’s wealthy clientele, and Atlas knew a tourist when he saw one; she was, in that sense, the very epitome of why he appreciated his introverted qualities.
“What’s up, Sam?”
“I’m not the one that wanted to talk to you, Mr. Neville.”
Atlas followed Sam’s wide, weird grin to the woman.
“Mr. Neville? You are Thomas’ brother?” she had an accent like Sam’s, only softer; it made her slightly broken English almost musical.
“I am. Atlas Neville, pleasure.”
Her smile was beautiful. It lit up her eyes in ways that made the deep brown irises sparkle with an inner warmth, and there’s the faint laughing lines touching the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“Genial! I mean, that’s wonderful!” Laughing off the mistake, she held out her hand.
Atlas accepted her offer and instantly dropped his gaze to their connection and tilted his head at the response from his gut. His stomach looping, swirling, dancing, he thought back to his scant breakfast briefly and then tuned into what she was saying.
“I’m Ofélia Espinosa,” pointing a finger to the ceiling, she continued, “Your brother, Thomas, has something precioso – precious belonging to me in his room.”
“Tom has something of yours?” she’s nodding and Atlas sent a fair share of silent curses in his half-brother’s way, wherever the idiot was.
One thing was clear, once more Tom wasn’t around to clean up his mess, solve his problem, and take his adult responsibilities seriously.
What a freaking surprise.
And why did it irk him every time she said Tom’s name that way, like he was something special.
Relax and pick your battles.
Pick his battles, huh? Sure, he was capable of that – a master of it, in fact.
“Why aren’t you calling Tom then?”
“I can answer that,” Sam, all-smile still, ripped his staring from Ofélia.
Atlas smoothed his brows and cleared his mind of the quick, poisonous thought on the discovery that Sam liked her. He’d never thought anything malicious towards the door man before.
Sam, in all his stilted creepiness, was the rare creature in San Diego’s liveliest district that spent his Fridays and Saturdays at home all night, without companion. Like Atlas. In that way, he saw the other man as a kindred spirit of sorts.
Most of all he didn’t and shouldn’t care who liked Ofélia Espinosa. But Atlas was starting to think he did.
No way. Not going there.
“He left earlier, at around,” Sam consulted his desk, his computer screen tuned to the time stamps of departures and arrivals in the building. Atlas joined him for that few seconds to give himself some breathing and thinking space from Ofélia.
Sam was right. Tom had cleared through at two a.m. and he’d yet to show his sorry excuse of a hide –
Idiot.
“He has something that I really need.” Ofélia said again, prompting Atlas to look at her. She was re-adjusting the bag in her hands.
“Since you’re a friend,” and boy, did he use that word lightly, “he’d pick up his cell?” The implication of his line of questioning should be clear: If she was a friend then he wouldn’t have to play middle-man to whatever history Tom had with her.
Rather than responding, Ofélia was gnawing her lips, eyes heavenward, and the pretty picture of suspicion. Atlas drilled his stare through her, waiting for her to gather her thoughts, chew that plump lip of hers and give him an answer.
He tried a different tactic. “Is it urgent? Can you wait until he returns?” he resisted adding ‘whenever’. Tom was hardly reliable.
“Yes.” Ofelia bobbed her head once, meekly.
So much for trying to keep her in the dark…
She must have known that might not be happening anytime soon. One time Tom left and returned from a cross-national trip a week later. Atlas answered a call then from a nearby animal shelter to free Tom’s cat from its prison. At least when he had fish, he’d overfed them to death when he pulled this kind of crap.
The longer he watched this Ofélia, the more Atlas knew he was going to regret what he said.
Biting his tongue, he said, “Then it’s a good thing I have his spare key.”
That brightened Ofélia’s smile. “Thank you, Mr. Neville. Gracias! You cannot believe how this saves me.”
Atlas nodded curtly, turning back towards the lifts. The sooner he gave her what she wanted, the sooner Tom – and Ofélia could stop haunting him.
She thanked him again when the lift doors swung open. At least it was making one of them happy.
Sam called his goodbye out after them. He’d never done more than glance up from his screen and sometimes the occasional nod – just who was Ofélia Espinosa to change a man’s personality just like that.
As he opened his front door, and let her through, Atlas promised he wouldn’t go the way of Sam and his lovesickness.
“This looks just like Thomas’ place.”
So she’d seen Tom’s place?
Atlas tried not to let the effect of that comment or his subsequent thought show in his reply. Last thing he wanted to do was stomp his foot and list out all the ways he was not anything like his kid brother. That and every unit had the same interior blueprint.
It was a most trying task.
Luckily he found the spare and met her in front of his den’s fourth and topmost vista. She didn’t readily acknowledge him, awe having morphed her features to the sight before them. Atlas tried to see what she was seeing.
The courtyard square and the pool below: The social scene for all the gossipers who spun those tales about Sam and anyone else to pass time. No one was out there now, given the early hour but also likely sleeping off their partying like Tom, wherever he was…
Either way Atlas hated to interrupt her. She looked even cuter like that.
“I have the key. Let’s go.”
His words timed with his doorbell.
Atlas strode to the door and checked the front-door camera. He froze for a second and then forced himself to press the speaker button.
“Mr. Montero, Mr. and Mrs. Oriol, you’re early. Would you mind waiting a moment?”
The group on his door step acquiesced cheerfully; not that he strayed for long to study their smiling faces. He had bigger problems.
“Come here, please.” Atlas waved Ofélia over. Ignoring her questions, he led her down the short hall, past the powder and guest rooms to the master.
His bedroom.
For a moment Atlas indulged the realization he hadn’t had a woman in his room for over six months, and that he had completely other thoughts when bringing Ofélia in his innermost sanctuary.
“Stay here. Un momento. Okay?” he hoped his Spanish wasn’t crap; he needed Ofélia on the same page with him, and quick.
He had his future waiting on the other side of his front door – Atlas didn’t want, or need Ofélia to be the deciding factor of whether he made his longest dream come true.
Atlas had everything under control far before they’d known of each other’s existence and one weird twist to his otherwise well-managed day wasn’t going to derail nearly two months of wooing these VIP guests waiting on him.
So why couldn’t he shake off this uncharacteristic, foreboding vibe when he thought of her?