Lessons from a Latin Lover Read online

  “That you wanted to marry him and have his babies,” Joaquin said darkly.

  “Sort of. I wanted to get married and have kids. Carson was my fiancé. Who else was I supposed to be thinking about?”

  “Me,” he said, pure arrogance.

  She laughed. “I was,” she admitted. “Not at first. But it didn’t take long.”

  “You wanted him. You were crying when he left.”

  “For all the dreams we’d had as kids that would never be. But mostly I was crying because of you.”

  “Me?” He wasn’t arrogant now, only shocked.

  “I loved you and that was about as hopeless as it could get!”

  “Hopeless?” He was beyond shocked now and into thunderstruck.

  “You weren’t ever getting married.”

  “Who said that?” he demanded.

  “You did. Lots of times.”

  “Oh.” He had the grace to flush. “Well, that was then. That was when groupies and Mama’s perfect Santiago brides were the only candidates. You can’t blame me for not wanting them.”

  “And now?”

  Joaquin shook his head. His eyes glistened and his smile was equal parts tender and bemused. “Now I love you, and I’d go down on one knee—if I wasn’t already sitting on the floor—and I’d ask you to marry me.”

  Molly stared at him. “Really?”

  “Really.” He grinned at her, then pressed a gentle kiss to the bump on her forehead. He would kiss all her bumps and bruises for years to come if only she would let him. “Do you need a lesson in how to answer that question, Ms. McGillivray?”

  Slowly, smiling, laughing, crying, Molly shook her head.

  “There is only one answer to that question, amor mio. And the answer is yes.” And she took his face between her grease-spattered hands and gave him forever in her kiss.

  THERE WERE three hammocks strung among the palm trees overlooking Pelican Cay’s pink sand beach. There was a barefoot pregnant woman swaying gently in each.

  “This is the life,” Fiona said, sipping pineapple soda and stretching lazily as she smiled across at her sisters-in-law.

  “You can say that,” Sydney groaned. “You aren’t as big as a whale.” She patted her considerable belly. “Nor are you being kicked to death by a legion of battling Scots.”

  “Not a legion,” Molly corrected from her own hammock where she had been lying ever since the dinner her husband and brothers had cooked. “You’re only having two.”

  Boys, the ultrasound had showed. Boys who would be named Alastair and Iain when they arrived sometime in the next six weeks. Hugh had already announced that he was taking Syd to the mainland soon, not wanting to take any risks if the babies should come early.

  “Life is a risk,” Syd had argued, but the look Hugh had given her said this was one battle she wasn’t going to win. Now she rubbed at a sudden foot-shaped bulge kicking out from her abdomen, then rolled onto her side to look at Molly, her gaze narrowing. “What do you mean, ‘only’?”

  Trust Syd. All her years in business had taught her to hear and probe the meaning of every single word. Molly wriggled a little in the hammock, still a little shell-shocked herself at the news she’d got this afternoon at her own ultrasound. “We’re having three.”

  “Three?” Both Fiona and Syd struggled up and gaped at her.

  “You’re joking.” Fiona said. “Tell me you’re joking. For your sake, you’d better be joking!”

  “She’s not joking.” Joaquin came down the steps from the broad front porch of the house they’d built over the past year, scooped his wife up into his arms and smiled down at her with a look of such love that Molly felt a lump grow in her throat. It was a look she never got tired of, just as she would never tire of the man.

  “Three?” Hugh said with a wary grin. “Is this another one of those ‘anything they can do I can do better’ things?” He reached out and ruffled his sister’s short hair.

  “If it is,” Lachlan said with the voice of weary experience, “they’ll soon have triple the number of sleepless nights. Lucky them,” he added with a grin. He reached down and hauled a sand-eating redheaded toddler into his arms, rubbing noses with him and grinning. “But they’ll grow out of it. You sleep through the night now, don’t you, Dunc, ol’ buddy?”

  Duncan giggled and gurgled and pulled his father’s hair, bouncing in his arms and saying, “Da! Dad! ’Wim!”

  Lachlan understood at once. “Sure we’ll go swimming. And you, my lady?” he asked holding out a hand to Fiona, who let him haul her to her feet and slid an arm around his waist.

  “Coming?” Lachlan asked the rest of them.

  “Absolutely.” Syd held out her hands to Hugh. “Water is the one place where being a whale isn’t a disadvantage.”

  “You’re the most beautiful whale in the world,” Hugh vowed. When he had her on her feet and steady, he pressed two kisses to her belly and one to her lips, then turned to Joaquin and Molly. “What about you? You guys coming?”

  “Of course.” Molly started to roll out of the hammock, determined to do everything as long as her body was still her own.

  “Not now,” Joaquin said, waving them away.

  “You’re not going to get all overprotective and pesky now, are you?” Molly challenged him, turning her attention from her brothers and their wives to the man she loved.

  “What do you think?”

  She rolled her eyes and grinned impishly. “I think you’ll be bossy and dictatorial and never give me a minute’s peace for the next six months.”

  “How perceptive of you, querida.” A grin slashed across his face. Then just as abruptly it vanished. “Three babies,” he murmured. “Tres niños.” He wiped a hand over his face. “Terrifying.”

  Molly took a deep breath. “It is,” she agreed. “But exciting.”

  “Yeah, but are we up for it?” he wondered.

  “We are.” Molly was positive. She laced her fingers through his, then leaned up to kiss him. It was a scorching kiss. By the time she was done, even the tips of his ears were red. “See? I couldn’t do that eighteen months ago, could I?”

  He made a strangled noise.

  She laughed. “So, there is no end to the things we can learn if we put our minds to them. Come on. Let’s swim while we still have time for each other.”

  She tried to tow him toward the water, but found herself scooped up into his arms and carried instead.

  “We will always have time for each other, querida,” he promised her. “And as for what Lachlan said, I figure we’re already old hands at that.”

  Molly blinked. “Old hands?”

  Joaquin grinned and kissed her lingeringly as he reminded her, “We’ve already had some very enjoyable sleepless nights.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5898-7

  LESSONS FROM A LATIN LOVER

  First North American Publication 2005.

  Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Schenck.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.eHarlequin.com

  cAllister, Lessons from a Latin Lover