* * *
A few hours later, Max finally got his grandmother on the phone. Lola had always been hard to pin down—his grandfather, Rogelio, had been trying for decades. She’d dumped Rogelio and stayed in Cuba when the rest of the family had moved to Florida thirty-five years ago. Only recently had she moved to the States after some of her property had been destroyed by a tropical storm. His sister, Laura, had made the uncomfortable discovery that not only had their grandmother moved to be closer to her grandchildren, but she had apparently moved on from her grudge against Rogelio.
They were back together, and love was in the air for Lola. Driven by her failure to stop her daughter from marrying the wrong man, she wanted all her grandchildren settled.
But—problem was—Max had no intention of cooperating. Although it was nearly impossible to resist Lola’s machinations when she had her mind set, he would try his very hardest to be firm with her.
“Max!” Lola sounded excited to hear from him when she finally picked up her phone. “You never call me. What’s going on?”
The wily old lady knew exactly what was going on. Crafty Abuela. “Letty is very pretty.”
“I knew you would like her.”
“That’s not what I said, Abuela.”
“But she seemed so sweet over e-mail—”
“Over e-mail because you tricked her into thinking she had a job.” Even beyond his attraction and his desire to tamp it down by making her his employee, he’d seen the desperation in her gaze when she’d thought he would send her away. “That wasn’t nice or fair to her.”
“Of course, it’s fair if you get your act together and woo her.”
“Not going to happen, Abuela.” He sighed, not wanting to share the whole truth with Lola, but unwilling to welch on his deal with Letty. “And I can’t really afford her.”
“Not a problem. I am paying for it.” She paused for thanks. When Max didn’t respond, she said. “Fine. Rogelio will pay for it.”
Max laughed. “This kind of makes you some sort of a pimp. Why can’t you just stay out of my life?”
Lola muttered a cavalcade of curses under her breath, beyond even Max’s fluency in Spanish. But he caught “stubborn” and “stupid” in there a few times, so he had an idea of what she thought of him right then.
“Listen, I understand where you’re going here, but we’ve had this discussion.” His grandmother had failed to grasp how serious he was about staying single. She thought she could wave her magic wand and make his whole childhood okay. She didn’t see him as a man walking a tightrope of tenuous success that could snap at any moment.
Unlike Laura, Max had accepted Lola’s return without hesitation because he’d understood why she’d ended her marriage. He’d never understand why she’d started one in the first place. And while he didn’t understand why she’d return to a man who would cheat on her and tear away her pride by moving to the U.S. to be with the woman he’d cheated on her with, she could do whatever she wanted. But Lola needed to grasp the seriousness of his commitment to bachelorhood. “I have no intention of marrying. Ever. I’m assuming you only sent her so that I would sully her virtue in unspeakable ways.”
“You will do no such thing, Maximillano Rogelio Hernandez Delgado.” The full name meant he was in much more trouble than he’d thought.
“Then, you need to understand that you will be paying Letty for her assistant services for the next two weeks.” He could feel his grandmother’s delight at her tactical win over the phone. “And only her assistant services.”
“At least you’ll get that mess of a studio cleaned up.” Lola abruptly hung up the phone.
Max barely kept himself from throwing the infernal machine across the studio. With his luck, he’d never find it again. He really did need someone like Letty to help him organize.
As he stalked around the perimeter of the room, he wasn’t sure what was in many of the piles. Before his mother had gone into rehab and his parents’ divorce, he’d been able to compartmentalize who he was as an adult and who he’d been as a child. Now that his family seemed to be airing old grievances and ripping off bandages from festering wounds, he found himself distracted and unable to create anything.
This was a problem because he had a show in a month. And very few completed pieces ready for it. Just piles of shit and messy sketches. It was his very first big show at an important gallery, and the first time he would have a success to shove in his father’s face. Instead of relying on his father’s noblesse oblige, he’d be able to pay his own way. This show was the one chance he had to get completely out from under his father’s thumb, and he was fucking it up.
As usual, his timing was impeccable, because his father had been hinting about money troubles since his mother had left him and gotten clean. Max knew that his gravy train—as pricey a gravy train as it was—was about to end.
In fact, the first time he’d felt any inspiration at all was when Letty had walked through the door. Her lush curves and bright eyes had sparked more than lust in him, and he resented it greatly. Even agitated by the strange situation, there was something about her that had centered and focused him. As though just by being there, he couldn’t look away from her.
For a few moments, he had really thought she’d come from the agency to model, but it hadn’t been the time of his appointment.
An appointment he cancelled before sitting down and imagining Letty’s curves on paper.
Chapter 3
When she walked into his studio the next day, Max didn’t tell her to take off her clothes. This would have been a relief, but for the way he looked at her over the rim of his steaming coffee cup. Like she was a dangerous animal that he needed to keep an eye on.
His reaction to her confused her, but it also made her curious. She’d never been one to romanticize the fucked-up origin stories of the artists she worked with. She was sensible, no nonsense. Got the job done without complaint. Because she was “nothing to look at,” her mother had always emphasized the need to make herself useful. So, she got more chores than her more attractive sister, Elena. Wouldn’t have happened if a guy had been interested in going out with her on a Friday night. Wouldn’t have been stuck scrubbing floors and organizing her mother’s closet, then.
And, even though she didn’t really believe her mother’s barbs about her appearance anymore, the habit of staying busy and useful had stuck.
“Do you have any more of that?” The caffeine would be a blessing, since sleep hadn’t come last night. She’d tossed and turned in partial excitement about her victory in getting him to agree to hire her. Lies. The excitement that hadn’t let her sleep was the kind between her legs. He’d wanted to see her naked. To draw her. And she didn’t know how she was supposed to forget that. It was impossible to get out of her head. As soon as she thought about him drawing her, thoughts of his hands against her skin sparked her libido back to life. Made it come alive in the first place.
“Aren’t the assistants supposed to get the coffee?” He shocked her by winking. Yesterday, she’d thought the wry twist of his lips was as emotive as he got. But today, when he smiled and winked at her over coffee, the skin around his eyes actually crinkled. His face was so beautiful when he smiled that she nearly lost her breath.
“I’m not that kind of assistant.”
He blew over the top of his coffee, and she couldn’t help but imagine his open lips against her skin. Simon had never stayed until morning so she could taste coffee on his lips. She’d never really wanted him to, but wondered how that would feel with Max. What would it be like to be with someone who didn’t need a bottle of wine just to tolerate fucking her?
“Back here.” When he motioned for her to follow and turned to walk into another room, she hesitated. How could she just go when