Lorenzo banged on her door again. Yep, she was snoring. It was gone ten, and she was snoring. It sounded like a bull getting it on with a bulldozer – and he was being generous at that.
Diego sauntered past him with a smug expression on his face. “Still have no regrets?”
Lorenzo glared at him while he hooted with laughter. He thumped on the door more forcefully.
“What?!” squawked a vexed voice from inside the room.
Lorenzo took that as an invitation. He made his way into her room to find Sadie wearing a pair of heart print pajamas and an eye mask skewed over one eye.
“What time is it?” she mumbled, her one visible eye trying to focus on him.
“Past ten, I brought coffee.”
He kneeled next to the bed and allowed the fragrant smell to waft her way.
“Mmmm.”
A smile started to curl her luscious lips. She stretched her curvy body and Lorenzo bit back a lusty growl. Perfectly made up with every hair in place, she was lovely. Disheveled, she looked like a damn sex kitten. One his jaguar definitely wanted to get acquainted with. Rawr.
Sadie knocked the eye mask off her head and plucked a coffee out of his hands. She raised it to her lips and paused to inhale the aroma. She let out a near-indecent moan and took a delicate sip. He almost had to scrape his jaw off the floor for that.
Possibly lucky for him and his swelling erection, her smile soon started to morph into a frown.
“Wait, past ten, but I…”
Her eyes flickered to the alarm clock, loitering on the bedside table.
“The alarm doesn’t work,” Lorenzo told her simply.
Sadie looked dismayed, and Lorenzo’s inner jaguar almost smirked. It hadn’t worked since he gave it a short, sharp thump the previous evening when dropping her off after her short-lived escape attempt. He guessed she would try to flee at daybreak, but he didn’t really take her for a morning person.
“C’mon, time to get dressed.”
*
Sadie puffed and panted. This was not her idea of wooing or fun for that matter. Who in their right mind wanted to go for a hike?!
“How much further?” she grumbled.
Lorenzo flashed her an amused smile. “We can go as far as we like. There’s no maximum or minimum distance for a hike.”
Sadie snorted. She was pretty sure she reached her maximum distance when they got to the edge of the compound.
She spotted a handy looking rock and sat on it, glaring at Lorenzo. “Right here is a good place to stop.”
His amusement didn’t dim. “Sure.”
“I don’t tend to walk much.”
“No kidding.”
Sadie slipped off her sneaker and shook it out, dislodging the small stone that had been pissing her off for the last ten minutes. “How far have we gone? Five? Six miles?”
Lorenzo squinted into the distance for a moment. “Probably… half a mile.”
“Half a mile?!”
He rolled his shoulders. “Or maybe more like a third of a mile.”
“But… but we’ve been walking for ages!” spluttered Sadie.
Lorenzo nodded. “Yeah, but we’ve stopped about ten times since we left the compound.”
“Well… I keep getting stones in my shoes.” She shook her sneaker at him as if to prove a point. “And I thought I saw a snake…”
Lorenzo was struggling not to burst into laughter, and she gave him a sour look.
“I told you I didn’t think this was a good idea.”
She had too – he only had himself to blame if this whole hike was going badly. He had suggested a more thorough tour of the jaguar compound, and she agreed to it – thinking that getting a better lay of the land may help her escape easier. But they barely made it two steps before they were virtually besieged by his sisters-in-law and nephews. So, in spite of her objections, Lorenzo railroaded her into getting outside and going hiking. She had briefly considered that seeing what was outside the compound might be a good idea, but that thought was firmly shelved after the first stone.
“You just wanted to escape from your family. Do you think we’re safe from them all the way out here?” she asked sweetly.
Lorenzo grunted. “Not sure. If we listened hard, we could probably still hear them chattering from here.”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “What’s your problem with them anyway? They seemed friendly.”
They did too. All of them were laughing and smiling and had half a dozen questions for her.
“They are friendly,” he conceded, “but nosey.”
“Humph. Better than having no family,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She banged her shoe against the rock, hoping to rid it of any stones that may be hiding in it, waiting to pounce as soon as she started walking again.
Lorenzo stared at her, still as a statue but twice as intense.
“Okay fine, I left home at seventeen to marry a total jerk. After he ran off leaving me absolutely penniless, my few family members didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Well, apart from my cousin, Gina. Her dad married my aunt when we were ten. The marriage only lasted a couple of years, but Gina and I stayed in touch.”
Gina moved to Los Lobos a couple of years ago, and the two of them had been quite close since then. Al hadn’t liked that. Sadie hadn’t noticed over the years because she’d been too busily wrapped up in Mandy, but she didn’t really have any friends until Gina showed up. She knew other mothers and wives of Al’s friends, but she had none of her own. Getting Gina back was wonderful and alleviated a little loneliness she didn’t realize existed. However, Al hated Sadie going out with Gina, and spending time away from him to be with her. Al was pretty aggressive toward Gina about it, but luckily Gina was hardly a shrinking violet and wasn’t so easily bullied. Sadie started to realize that the reason she had no friends was that Al drove everyone away from her. He wanted her all to himself…
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Sadie shrugged. “We weren’t exactly The Brady Bunch anyway.”
“Still, family is important.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her mind wandering to Mandy.
They were quiet for a few moments, and Sadie basked in the sweet, sympathetic smile he was throwing her way. He was somewhat grouchy, and a little quiet at times, but he really was rather sweet and…
“Eek!”
Sadie caught sight of movement just to the left of Lorenzo. She threw her shoe at it and managed to hit Lorenzo on the kneecap. He didn’t flinch, though his expression returned to amusement.
“There was a snake,” she said a tad grumpily.
He looked around. “It was just the wind kicking up dust.”
“There was a snake,” she insisted, even if she wasn’t exactly sure.
He scooped up her shoe and strolled over to her. Dropping to one knee, he gently clasped her leg and carefully slipped the sneaker back on her foot.
Sadie allowed herself a girly Cinderella moment before clearing her throat and mumbling, “Thank you.”
His fingers lingered on her jean-covered calf, and she dearly wished she had opted for the shorts instead. She had a sudden urge to know what it would feel like to have his fingers caressing her bare skin. To have his flesh searing a path over hers…
“Let’s go down to town for lunch,” he murmured. “Grab a steak.”
Sadie smiled a little naughtily. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll make a scene and accuse you of kidnapping me?”
Lorenzo let out a small chuckle. It was a rich, warm sound and one that sent vibrations directly to her sex. It was a shame he didn’t laugh more. Or perhaps for her sake, it was a good thing he didn’t.
“Not really an accusation if it’s true,” he said, half teasing.
“No, I guess not. Want to take the risk?”
Their eyes met, and Sadie had a stifle a little moan at the wonderful intensity she saw in his beautiful orbs.
“Yeah, I figure it’s worth the risk.”
She had the feeling he wasn’t talking about the steak.