family-style table service. He came a bit early to arrange a table on the beach and order the lunch courses in advance so no unnecessary delays would occur during their hour-long meeting. They arrived at one o’clock sharp, and Eliana greeted him with the same ardent kiss with which she’d said goodbye when he’d left her apartment at 2:00 a.m.
Though she’d confided that she’d told her father everything, so he must have an idea how things stood between them, he glimpsed a spurt of anxiety in Ferreira’s eyes as he witnessed that intimacy. But like the gentleman everyone believed him to be, the impeccably dressed and behaved Ferreira made no comment. Not on that nor on Rafael’s offensive behavior during the last ball, nor his no-shows in the previous ones.
From then on, they settled down to the smooth flowing lunch courses. Apart from the effort Rafael expended to sit across from Ferreira—the man he’d once loved as an uncle and who’d betrayed him in the most unspeakable way—pretending this was their first real meeting, nothing of note happened.
Ironically, the man who’d been trying to meet him for the past two months didn’t seem to care that Rafael possibly held his professional future in his hands, only that he might affect his daughter’s adversely. Ferreira spent the entire lunch watching them interact, saying little. He never once broached the subject of the partnership. The only questions her father asked him were when Eliana went to the ladies’ room: oblique ones probing his intentions and warning him against toying with her. In turn, Rafael as indirectly let Ferreira know that where Eliana was concerned, they were on the same page. She came first to him, too.
That seemed to disturb Ferreira instead of reassure him. He considered Rafael’s statement an exaggeration, since the sum total of their liaison had taken place over three days. But when Rafael told him that the power of their connection had dispensed with the usual stages needed to reach their current level of involvement, Ferreira finally relaxed. Though he’d evidently never thought Rafael was capable of forging such a connection, from what he’d heard about him, he confessed that he knew how it could be that way from intimate experience. It had been the same between him and Eliana’s mother. They’d married a week after meeting and had lived ecstatically ever after—until aggressive pancreatic cancer had taken her from him.
On Eliana’s return, the conversation turned to anecdotes about Eliana’s mother, and her half brothers and their mother. Ferreira had had two extreme opposites in the marriage department. The first one when his father had arranged his marriage to his partner’s daughter and the battlefield that marriage had turned into. Then the marriage to the love of his life, which had started with love at first sight and had ended with him living in her memory and for their daughter.
The lunch ran thirty minutes longer than the agreed on hour before Ferreira rose to leave. As Rafael shook his hand, the man gave him a pointed look. Don’t hurt my daughter was the gist of the volumes it spoke. His answering look said I would never hurt her. He hoped the but I’ll hurt you...bad part went unsaid.
The moment her father disappeared, Eliana dragged Rafael by his tie and planted a hot kiss on his lips.
Starving for her already, he moved to deepen it, and she pulled away, chuckling, eyes heavy with hunger. “I shouldn’t be kissing you after I just binged on that feijoada. Rinsing my mouth can’t begin to counteract its garlicky goodness.”
Brazil’s national dish was indeed an antisocial stew. This restaurant that proclaimed itself the meal’s house was lauded by Cariocas, Rio’s residents, as serving the best feijoada in Rio. Even after he’d ordered their best meal, he hadn’t expected the giant pot of meats swimming in saucy black beans they’d gotten. The tureen had been piled high with smoked and peppery sausages, carne seca ham and an assortment of other pork cuts. He was glad he remembered to tell them not to serve the pig’s ears, tail and tongue.
He pulled her back against him, claiming her lips. “Having binged on the same pungent bomb, all I taste is your sweetness.” Another savoring kiss. “And the tartness of acai and maracuja and dragon fruit from that Amazonian fruit smoothie.”
She suddenly yelped, pulling back once again. “You always scorch me, but now you literally do. Those deadly malagueta peppers you gobbled are still lacing your lips and tongue.” Licking the burning away, she smiled. “Thank you.”
He pressed his lips as if to secure her kisses there. “What for?”
“For being so nice to my father.”
“He’s a nice man.”
He didn’t even have to lie. Apart from the sadness he glimpsed in Ferreira’s eyes—which Eliana said had been there since her mother’s death—and his wariness of how the power Rafael wielded would affect his daughter’s well-being, Ferreira was apparently the kind and agreeable man he remembered. The evil he’d committed against him had carved no visible telltale signs on his visage.
Eliana sighed. “I actually think you didn’t like him much, but you were still extremely nice to him. So thank you.”
Deus. Those instincts of hers continued to prove sharper than he’d even thought. He’d thought he’d been seamless.
Before he could say something to alleviate her suspicion, she added, “But it’s expected on a first meeting with my wary father hen. He spent lunch watching your every move. And you’re a man who suffers no monitoring or judgment.”
Relieved she’d found a benign reason for the hostility she’d felt from him, he exhaled. “It’s only natural he’d be worried about how fast things developed between us. I think I ended up allaying his anxiety.”
“I know.” She smiled up at the waitress, who put the bill before him. “Why do you think I went to the ladies’ room?”
“And there I thought you didn’t have a wily bone in your body.” He grinned as he got out his credit card.
She chuckled. “No wiliness involved, I assure you. I was instructed to do so. On the way, Daddy begged me to give him any chance to be alone with you. He claimed there was no way he could ‘read’ you as long as I was around. He also begged me not to be my shockingly candid self while he’s around.” She shot him a devilish look. “I did manage not to say things like, ‘Don’t worry about Rafael seducing me, Daddy. I spent a whole night slithering all over him and begging him to have sex with me, and he was the one who held back and reprimanded me about my language, too!’”
Rafael threw his head back on a guffaw. “It’s a good thing you exercised some self-control. You would have given him a heart attack.”
Her laugh tinkled like crystal. “I did give him a minor one with that kiss when we first came in. The poor man always bragged he was the only man he knew whose daughter never gave him any nightmares about boyfriends, since I never had any. Then I go and get all mixed up with someone who’s as much trouble as ten thousand men put together.”
“So I’m all his postponed nightmares come all at once.”
And she didn’t know how literally true that was.
“Exactly.” She laughed, her gemlike eyes radiating mischief and joy in Rio’s midday sun. Entranced as he gazed into them, he threw some bills down, and she giggled harder. “That tip could make you a partner in this restaurant.”
“The food and service were impeccable. They earned it.”
“It was lovely. But then it didn’t
