back, he said, “Come along, Dom.”
Dolores glowered at J.J., so much so that he felt his cousin’s hostility as if it were a viable thing. “You asked this woman to marry you and you have told no one here about her? I find that very strange.”
Emilio cleared his throat, then said hastily. “Miguel told me about Miss Blair, but he swore me to secrecy. Otherwise, you know I would have told you.”
“Dolores, don’t be upset with Emilio,” Miguel said, falling hurriedly into the act that he would have to perpetuate for the next few weeks. “I met Jennifer on my trip to Miami. She is a friend of Dom’s and he introduced us. We had a whirlwind romance and I—” The words caught in his throat. Lying about loving a woman was something he’d never done. “We fell in love and I asked her to marry me. But we agreed that she would wait to give me an answer, that we would put some time and distance between us to make sure what we felt was…real love.”
Skewering J.J. with her cynical gaze, Dolores came toward her. Dolores knew Miguel the way a sister knows her brother, so convincing her that he was in love with this American woman would not be easy.
“You have decided that you love Miguel and wish to be his wife?” Dolores asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” J.J. replied, keeping her phony smile in place.
Emilio wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders and hugged her to him. “Then congratulations are in order, are they not? We should ask Ramona to bring in champagne…er…uh…and sparkling cider for you, my sweet.”
“I did not know we had a cousin in Miami.” Naturally, the ever-skeptical Dolores was not convinced that J.J. and Dom were genuine. His cousin’s feminine instincts had warned her that something wasn’t quite right about the situation, that something was rotten in Nava tonight.
“He is my cousin, not yours.” When Miguel tightened his hold around J.J.’s waist, he realized that his actions had told her that he was tense, that already the lies were bothering him. “He is from the other side of the family. The son of one of Papá Tomas’s cousins.”
“Hmm…” Dolores glanced from Dom to J.J. “Have you had dinner?”
A collective sigh permeated the room. Miguel loosened his tenacious hold about J.J.’s waist. Dolores’s cordiality did not mean she had accepted these strangers on face value, but it did mean she was giving them the benefit of the doubt and would allow them to prove themselves to her.
“As a matter of fact, we haven’t.” Dom went around the room, shaking hands and making nice. When he paused by the chair where the elegant redhead sat, the woman stopped glaring daggers at J.J. and smiled at Dom.
“And who is this enchanting creature?” Dom asked.
Not waiting for a proper introduction, she spoke for herself, “I am Zita Fuentes and am I delighted to make your acquaintance, Señor Shea.” She cut Miguel to the quick with a withering glare.
“If you all will entertain Dom, I need a moment alone with Jennifer.” Not giving anyone a chance to halt him by word or action, Miguel grasped J.J.’s arm and all but dragged her out of the dining room.
Once outside in the hall, she jerked free and stopped dead still. “Do not ever pull that Me-Tarzan-You-Jane routine with me again.”
Totally exasperated with this woman, Miguel groaned. “Lower your voice. Sound carries in this old house, especially in the hallways.”
She looked him square in the eye and said softly, “Then let’s go somewhere more private. We should set up the ground rules for this charade immediately. That way, we’ll both know where we stand and what to expect from the other person.”
“Agreed. Come with me.”
He did not touch her again; instead he allowed her to fall into step beside him as he led her away from the dining room. A few minutes later, he opened the massive double doors to the mahogany-paneled library with bookcases on three sides that reached to the top of the fourteen-foot ceiling.
“Would you care to sit, Ms. Blair?” He indicated one of the two leather chairs flanking the fireplace, in which a warm blaze emitted delicious heat on this unseasonably cool October evening. Here in Mocorito the temperatures seldom dropped below the high sixties.
“I’ll stand.” She tilted her chin defiantly.
Wonderful, Miguel thought. He was dealing with a hotheaded little feminist. How was it possible that a woman could look like a beautiful young Elizabeth Taylor and be a ball-bashing women’s libber? He had encountered numerous women such as this during the years he had spent in the United States, but none had been as lovely as Ms. Blair. And none had been assigned to him as his bodyguard; nor had they played the part of his fiancée for several weeks.
“Suit yourself,” Miguel told her.
“I usually do.”
Miguel huffed.
“First thing you should know is that there will be no sex between us while we’re playing lovers.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest, as if it to make a point.
Point duly noted. And her large, full breasts were duly noted, also. “Of course,” he replied. “No sex.”
“In public, I will play the part of a dutiful, obedient fiancée, a woman totally besotted with you. But in private, I will be myself. Understand?”
“Yes, I understand. And I will do the same. In public, I will be your adoring future husband.”
“In matters of your security, my word is law,” she told him. “You will make that clear to Emilio Lopez and Roberto Aznar. Neither they nor you will question my authority in that area.”
“I assumed Mr. Shea would—”
“Dom is here to do an internal investigation and to act as my backup. I am completely in charge of you.”
Miguel groaned silently as the image of this lovely creature dominating him in a very intimate way flashed through his mind, sending arousal signals to his lower anatomy. Willing his traitorous body under control, he nodded, then said, “I am not accustomed to taking orders from a woman.”
“Well, ‘el presidente,’you’d better get used to taking orders from this woman.” She tapped herself in the middle of her chest. “Because until you take the oath of office and we unearth the people behind the plot to kill you, I’m going to be your worst nightmare.”
Bristling at her derogatory use of the title, he glowered at her. “Meaning?”
She smiled. “Meaning you’re going to obey me, not the other way around. When I say jump, you ask, how high?”
Enough of this nonsense, he told himself. Who did this arrogant, cocksure woman think she was? Miguel Cesar Ramirez had spent his life proving to himself and the world around him that he was a man of integrity and self-assurance, a leader and not a follower. He was on the verge of being elected the president of Mocorito, a country where the majority of women knew their place.
“You overstep your authority, Ms. Blair. You have not been assigned to this job to issue me orders.You are here to watch over
