brow beetled. “Why not?”
“It’s just not up to my standards. I’d be slumming.” He kept a straight face as he met her gaze.
“Slumming?” she said, her tone incredulous. “I beg your pardon?”
“No need.”
She made a strangled noise, and he grinned at her. “I’m feeling very egalitarian today, though. I might be willing to have a cup of coffee with you, even though you come from such a no-account family.”
Her mouth worked for a moment and then she laughed. His gamble had paid off: Kate did have a hidden sense of humor. “I’m so flattered.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. So, caffeine? We have fifteen minutes before statistics class.” He put a hand on her back to steer her forward, but she stiffened immediately. Apparently Ms. Spinney didn’t like to be touched. Alejandro removed his hand and she took a deep breath. Interesting.
They walked across the street to a little coffee house, where he discovered that Kate liked her coffee black, just like he did. She pulled a wallet out of her beat-up bag and tried to pay for hers.
“No, no,” he said. “I’ll get this.”
“You don’t have to buy my coffee.”
“I want to.”
“No, really—”
“I am buying your coffee, Kate,” he said with finality. He didn’t care if, as a Spinney, she probably had a personal net worth bigger than the entire tax base of Peru. He stepped in front of her and put five dollars on the counter. Then he looked down at her little toe, poking out of its loafer. He winked at her. “You need to save your money for new shoes.”
Her mouth opened and closed, and then a tide of red washed over her face. “I can afford new shoes. I just happen to like these. They’re comfortable. Broken in.”
“Is that what you call it?” From his superior height, Alejo noticed that one ear poked out of her untidy curls, and even the tip of it was red. “Because you may have noticed that your little piggy, there, is well on its way to the market.”
Her lips twitched in spite of her obvious embarrassment. “No, you’ve got it wrong. Remember, it’s the big toe that goes to market. The little one runs all the way home.”
“Right, I’d forgotten. Well, the poor little guy has a ways to go, if he’s running the whole distance back to Boston.” He handed her one of the paper cups of coffee.
“Thank you. And he just ran away from Boston, so he’s not likely to be running back there anytime soon. But I appreciate your concern.” She took a sip of the coffee, her eyes glinting very green in the morning sunlight.
Alejandro eyed her over the rim of his own cup, as he drank some. “And why did he run away? How did he end up in Miami, of all places?”
His teasing had relaxed her some, since she blew out a breath and said, “Well, the other nine toes in the family shoe were cramping his style a bit. So the little piggy skipped off to business school as far away as possible.” She gave him a wobbly smile.
She was so…adorably uptight. Alejandro wondered what it took for Kate Spinney to relax. He wondered if she relaxed in bed, and what that fragile body looked like naked. Athletic, he guessed.
She seemed edgy just talking in the abstract about her family. So he changed the subject. “Well, some of us are glad that the little piggy ended up here in Miami. She’s awfully cute.”
Red washed over her face again. “I think you gave her a sex change,” she said dryly. “And I’ve been warned about smooth-talking Latin men like you.”
It was his turn to stiffen. “I’m half Peruvian, half American,” Alejandro said. “And we smooth talkers don’t like to be referred to as Latin. We’re from individual countries, and don’t appreciate them being lumped all together.”
“Sorry.”
“About calling me a smooth talker, or a Latin?”
“A Latin.”
He smiled. “That’s okay. You didn’t know.”
“You are a smooth talker.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Why, thank you. I do other things smoothly, too, mi corazon.”
“And a flirt.”
Alejandro found a table and pulled out a chair for her. “I stand accused of terrible crimes. I’m guessing they don’t flirt at Harvard?”
She sat down gingerly, almost suspiciously.
“No, of course not,” he said, deliberately provoking her. “Yankees don’t know how to flirt.”
“We do, too—”
“Well, then, Ms. Spinney, I hereby challenge you to a flirt-off.”
She snorted into her coffee cup. “A flirt-off?”
He nodded. “Yes. And if I win, you have to buy a new pair of shoes—shoes of my choice.”
“What if I win?”
“You won’t. I’m a professional.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Like I said, it’s not going to happen. So you really shouldn’t worry your pretty little head over it, Kate,” he said, doing his best to wind her up.
“As we’ve discussed, my pretty little head,” she replied in ominous tones, “is Harvard-educated and dislikes patronizing men.” But she softened the statement with a reluctant smile.
“Maybe so, but you don’t have the slightest idea how to flirt. Flirting requires charm, and you’re no southern belle. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Her green eyes narrowed at him. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say things that are insulting and then turn them around?”
“We smooth-talking Latins just have a way with words.” Alejandro grinned at her, loving the outraged expression on her face. She looked very sexy when outraged. In fact, if she were to ditch the awful pants and unspeakable loafers and sit there barefoot in just the shirt…maybe unbutton it a few more inches so that it hung off one shoulder….
Kate looked at her watch. “We have to get back. We’re going to be late.”
“That’s another thing you’ll have to learn about, now that you live in Miami. Living on Latin time, la hora latina. We are always late. Without exception.”
“That drives me crazy. It’s so rude!”
“You’ll have to get used to it, if you’re going to hang out with me, amorcito.”
“What
