Chapter 22
The cavernous church and the smell of flowers and incense sparked a sense of déjà vu in Jonah. He hadn’t been to a wedding since he was a kid. He’d declined invitations from friends back home and the guys from college. But he liked how the voices echoed off the walls of the sanctuary to make a kind of music.
He sat in the back pew again, his hands sweating and his feet itching. Lola looked at him from the front of the church every so often, as if she was making sure he was still there. He was surprised she hadn’t brought a cattle prod to make sure he stayed. He wouldn’t be shocked if Lola encouraged a shotgun wedding if she thought he was being stupid.
His head jerked back when Hector sat next to him and didn’t shove a pistol in his still-aching ribcage. “I would have thought you’d leave town by now.”
“No, sir.” Jonah looked toward the exits, making sure he had a clean getaway if this got ugly like last night. He was less afraid of some warlords than he was of Hector right now.
“I thought that was your MO.” Hector had a lot of balls for someone fifty pounds smaller than him.
Jonah scooted away from the other man. “You don’t know the whole story.”
“I don’t, and I’m sorry for hitting you.”
“You embarrassed Carla.” Jonah was having trouble keeping his voice low. “She hates being embarrassed.”
Hector inclined his head. “Well, you do know something about my daughter.”
“I know a lot of things about her.” Jonah turned on the pew so he was facing Hector, who raised one eyebrow. “I know she is terrified of letting you and her mother down. I know she’s compassionate and kind. She’s the most organized person I’ve ever met. I know I care about her more than I should after the amount of time I’ve spent with her.” Jonah wanted to tell Hector that he loved Carla, that he would do anything for her and his baby. But he wanted to tell Carla that first.
“Are you prepared to stay here in Miami to be with her?”
Jonah tightened his jaw. “That’s up to Carla.”
“Why aren’t you telling her that?”
Because he was sitting next to her father—her father with a mean right hook. “The wedding’s about to start.”
“Eh, the priest was late yesterday. The maid of honor can be late today. Go find her and make things up.”
“She said she doesn’t even like me.”
“My own wife doesn’t like me half the time.” Hector laughed at himself. “She loves me, and she wants to kill me.”
“So your whole family is crazy?”
“That’s why I wanted to kick the shit out of you, why I threatened you.”
“Because you are crazy?”
Hector made like he was going to punch him in the arm, and Jonah flinched. “No, because I saw the way she looked at you. I’ve tried to control my children’s choices too much. And she’s my baby—I don’t have favorites—but she’s the one I’ve worried about the most. I just snapped.”
“I’m sure half a bottle of scotch didn’t help.”
“Go find her...”
Jonah was up before Hector finished his sentence. By the time he got to the vestibule of the church, where all the bridesmaids and Mrs. Hernandez were waiting, he still hadn’t figured out what he was going to say.
Carla stood between her sister and Maya, gorgeous in a pastel dress. She looked beautiful and fresh. She was perfect, and she was looking at him like she wanted him to be there. Just then, he realized that he’d been afraid she would change her mind all along. He was in love with her. It was crazy—maybe he was crazy—maybe just crazy enough to be part of her family.
“Princess, we have to talk.”
* * * *
“I’ve got to get my sister married.” Carla’s heart beat so fast she was sure she was having a heart attack when she saw Jonah standing in the doorway to the sanctuary. She never thought she’d get to see him looking at her like was right now again. And she was full—her heart, her head. So many things she wanted to say to him were poised to spill out, but this wasn’t the right time for that.
Alana pushed her arm. “Go talk to him in the bride’s room.”
“But this is your day.” Carla kept looking at Jonah while she said it. He looked delicious in a suit. Even better than if he was in jeans and a T-shirt. “I thought you were going to leave.”
“We’ve got to talk about that, princess.”
“Go.” This time her sister used the not-to-be-argued-with voice.
Carla walked over to Jonah, and grabbed his hand. When he smiled at her, something inside snapped loose. She yanked his hand, and he followed.
She took him to the bride’s room, and he closed the door behind them. He leaned on it as though he was afraid she’d try to run.
“I do like you.” She wanted to get that out of the way first.
“You do? Why’d you say you didn’t last night?”
“This was all moving so fast. You were there with my family, and then Geoff was there. I was overwhelmed.” She looked down at the white bouquet in her hands. “I wanted my dad to stop hitting you. I was tired, nauseous, overwhelmed.”
“Who cares if it’s fast if it’s right?” He moved to her, kneeling down.
“You’re not going to propose, are you?” She didn’t want him to do that because she’d know it was out of obligation.
“No.” He shook his head and pulled the flowers out of her hands, set them aside on a table. Her heartbeat quickened, and she brushed his hair back with her fingers. “Not now.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“I was about to get on a plane when Lola showed up.”
“Oh, God. She didn’t threaten you, too?”
“No, but she talked some sense into me.” He laced his fingers through hers. “She made me realize that I’d been hiding from feeling anything for anyone for a long time.”
“Since Katie.” Her stomach dropped. Maybe he was here to say good-bye. Maybe he was going to tell her that he wanted to keep on hiding. She wasn’t sure she could take that. “I don’t want to force you to be with me—with us.”
“I want to be with you.” He looked up at her, and her limbs tingled. “I want to be with both of you.” He touched her stomach.
Carla’s knees went melty and she sank down to the floor with him. He kissed her, hard, flooding her body with relief. She pulled back to say, “Just don’t touch my hair, okay?”
He laughed, and it was dark and lusty. “How much time do we have before we get busted by a priest?”
“Ten minutes?” She kissed his jaw and his throat, leaving trails of her lipstick. She didn’t care. The whole church full of people here—the same ones who had gossiped about her getting dumped—could see her makeup smeared. She needed him right now.
She unbuttoned Jonah’s shirt, needing his warm flesh, his smell against her. He lost the jacket before pulling up her dress. He grasped her thighs, and she ached to feel him inside her. When he cupped her breasts, and kissed her right above the line of her dress, she sighed.
“We’re in a church.”
“I know.” She drew back slightly, worried that this crossed a line for him, even though he wasn’t super-Catholic anymore. “Does that bother you?”
“No. Not touching you for over twelve hours bothers me. God might strike me dead, but I’ll die happy.”
He groaned when she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled the tails out of his pants, and she realized that she must have yanked on his cock. She put her hand over him, and he rocked into her palm.
“Even if you didn’t like me, I’d still want you.”
“I like you. I’m afraid I’ve caught feelings for you.”
He palmed her silk panties, laced his finger though the side to touch her. “Even if you didn’t like me, I could get you this wet. I would make you come until you caught feelings for me.”
“What else would you do?”
With the other hand, the one that wasn’t nudging at her entrance, he pulled down both straps of her dress. “I’d worship you here,” he said, before running his tongue around her nipples. She yanked at his belt, but he moved his hips away to stop her. “Just let me make you come. Let me.”
“You should know that I’m a terrible listener.” She pulled his belt loose and slipped the button from his fly with two fingers. “And I’m really horny because I didn’t get my morning sex.”
“That’s your fault. You said you didn’t like me.” He ran his teeth over one nipple as she was pulling down his zipper.
“Totally my fault, but are you complaining?” She pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees and gave his bare cock a hard stroke.
“I’m not going to complain when your hand’s on my dick.” He pulled his hands free of her panties and laid her down on the floor.
“We’re in a church. This is filthy. We’re going to hell, for sure.” He grunted, somehow maneuvering the dress up so it wouldn’t get too wrinkled. She found his cock again and stroked until he was cursing.
“We weren’t already going to hell for fucking in your great aunt’s kitchen?” He had a point.
He slid inside her, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets. Her mouth opened and closed until he found her with another kiss and started to move inside her. When he finally released her so they could both breathe, she whispered, “Yes, yes, yes,” on each stroke.
“I was in hell before I met you.” How could he talk right now? “Alone, and I thought I liked that.”
She grabbed his face and made him look at her. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone.”
“You like me?” His mouth curled into that filthy smile again, and he fucked her harder, deeper, until she was almost without words.
But not quite. Everything in her centered on the feelings unfolding in her chest and her center. Jonah was inside of her, and he’d burrowed his way in the moment he’d opened her aunt’s front door in Havana, when he carried her down the street, when he’d trusted her with the worst thing that had happened to him. The awesome power of knowing she could hurt this giant man with her words made her want to say how she felt out loud. “I love you.”
She was afraid he would stop when she said that, but she couldn’t keep the words in. He didn’t. If anything, it spurred him on. They were both incoherent. She was sure she’d leave bruises to rival the ones from his fight last night, but she needed him to be marked as surely as she was.
Her orgasm came by surprise, and he put his hand over her mouth so she could yell into it. He went over seconds later, his face contorting into pleasure.
He kissed her just as she started giggling. She stopped when he pulled back with a serious look on his face. “I love you too, princess.”
“Good.”
* * * *
Carla’s mother had gotten the waiting guests enough champagne while they were waiting that, if any of them noticed her looking disheveled, none of them said anything. When she walked up the aisle behind Maya, Jonah was sitting in the front pew, with Lola.
Her great aunt winked and waggled her eyebrows, which almost caused Carla to lose her composure. During the entire mass, she and Jonah snuck looks at each other.
Two months ago, she’d had no future. She was the one nobody wanted—no real job, no love, no idea what to do. She went to Cuba thinking she could at least get the job right.
She hadn’t.
Instead, she had something better.
When Jonah pulled her out on the dance floor at the reception, she wasn’t looking at everyone else, wondering what they thought of her. She was looking at him.
And when he kissed her, she had everything.