Tempting Isabel (Paradise South #1) (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

S
he rolled her
eyes as she declined the phone call, the third one that morning—and the sun was hardly up yet.

As her hard rock playlist resumed, she inhaled the ocean air to clear her lungs and her head and got back to it. Working her
guilt-riddled
excitement and confusion and nagging sorrow out through the tightening muscles in her back and arms, she pushed those jumbled emotions down and out through the long red mop handle. Each back and forth along the already clean tile floor made her feel like she was doing something. Making a difference. In control.

Hah.
What a ridiculous cosmic joke.

Just like the farce of a legal battle that had ended at three minutes after six in the evening last night. After ten infinite months, her mother’s siblings and the chauvinistic Mexican legal estate process had lost, and the official transfer went through. Isabel Angelica Ruiz was now the sole owner of her
abuelo’s
seaside condo situated far south of town.

And God, it was surreal. A dream, really.
My far off sanctuary
. Just too crazy to think the words, let alone say them, or else, poof! Like everything else good in her life, it’d be gone. Just like that. Just like Sebastian, her soul mate, her one true love.

She dipped the mop head into the sudsy bucket and continued to pummel the hell out of the tile floor. Because if she just thrusted hard enough, she’d annihilate all the guilt and the hurt with just that mop and soapy water and her
always-earnest
elbow grease.

If only.

*

He woke up panicked, short of breath, pulse sprinting. The bad dream that had startled him awake leaked into his consciousness, some version of the Bangkok hotel scene again. Same confusion, same void.

Yeah, the lingering void,
as goddamn
expected
.

The one difference this time, he wasn’t alone.

The two bar beauties weren’t stirring. Even with how cold the room was while their bare bodies lay completely uncovered, they remained deep in sleep.

He sat up to get a look at the bedside clock.
Shit!
The condo closing—one of the two reasons that had brought him to Vallarta. No way he’d be late for this. He’d waited too long as it was.

He crawled to the foot of the bed and touched the toe of the redhead, her slender arm dangling over the edge of the mattress in deep, lazy sleep.

“Hey…time to wake up.” He paused three beats. “Hey, hello…I’ve got to go, ladies.”

Zack stood up and stretched then shook his head at the tangle of beauties. Gazing at them he wondered why he didn’t feel sated on any level, because he definitely should have. He knew any man on the planet would have.

But instead, he felt slightly sick to his stomach, to add to the same throbbing headache he’d had the night before. He went and grabbed an antacid, an aspirin, and a Super B from his toiletry kit, and came back to the bedside.

“Girls…it’s time! Up and at ’em!”

He imagined the
would-be
words of his buddies, his attorney and his brother. Any of them would have died to be in his shoes right then, staring down at those magnificent female forms he had fucked the hell out of all night long. “Lifelong lucky streak,” they’d say. Just like that prick at the bar last night.

Lucky streak, my ass
. They had no idea. What about his father ditching him, leaving him to care for his brother and mother, only a damn kid himself for fuck’s sake. Yeah, they had no idea what Zack James had been through. And what he’d overcome to reach his current heights.

He continued to stare at the naked beauties still rolled in the sheets of the grand
king-size
bed, their limbs entwined like a delicious abstract painting.

Damn
it.
It would’ve helped if he could remember either of their names.
J&T
—shit! He did remember that although last night’s motivation had been to prove that shady dickhead at the bar wrong, the girls had definitely made out. And he got off once, a decent release from his very real jet lag.

But none of it mattered. His efforts hadn’t done anything to stop the droning lull inside. Why the hell was his gut still filled with this cavernous void?

He shook his head. Just pathetic. A goddamn walking, talking, fucking cliché. What was this? A bout of conscience…or guilt maybe? Fucking depression, like his mother? Or some psychosomatic bullshit? Was he looking too deep? Maybe it was nothing more than sheer
world-weary
boredom.

The other reason he was in Vallarta was to play Best Man at his kid brother’s wedding. But the wrench in his psyche couldn’t have had anything to do with that. He was happy for Darren. The thought made the corners of Zack’s mouth lift—a first in literally days.

Marriage wasn’t in the cards for Zack, but for his brother, he couldn’t have been more relieved that their parents hadn’t annihilated the institution of holy matrimony for both the James boys. Thankfully, Darren was too young to remember much of the devastating split. And so his kid brother, untainted, found a girl—
the
girl—and if anyone could settle down with one woman for life, it’d be Darren.

But for Zack, his unattached lifestyle was the way. At least it had been, damn it. He’d relished the pure, unadulterated freedom of being a filthy fucking rich bachelor. And just as he reminded himself that he’d been made for the fast life, the blonde moaned and stretched. Yeah, he was meant for
this
, he thought, watching her bright blue eyes highlighted by her smudged black eyeliner glare savagely at him at the foot of the bed.

*

Mopped into a corner, she was trapped against a
catch-all
box of her
abuelo’s
keepsakes, there just collecting dust.

She took a swig of water then hoisted the heavy box up onto the kitchen counter. There, teetering on top of the pile of random things, she noticed a framed black and white photo of her grandparents. She’d never met her grandmother, but God, the woman was beautiful. It was obvious that her
abuelo
thought so too. She took the frame off the top of the precarious pile to study it more closely—and to save herself the very likely mess on the floor. And, God, broken glass to boot!—never a good sign. The last thing she needed was a bad omen on her first morning in her new home.
Please,
Jesus
.

She wiped the dust layer off the glass and smiled at the looks of depth and serenity her grandparents had for each other. Sweet, familiar. That was the kind of love, selfless and unending, that she and Sebastian had shared.

A surge of burning pain traveled up her spine. Knowing that type of adoration had ever even existed was heart ripping. It was so rare after all to see two truly connected souls, even with how many couples she works with in her
day-to
-day. God, ignorance would have been such bliss, if she’d just never known it in the first place. But she had— and she’d never know it again, at least, not for herself.

She flipped the photo frame over, wedged it deep and safe inside the box, and then shoved the entire heaping thing into the center of the counter.

Get back to it, Isa.
She gripped the mop again and hit the volume control on her phone three times, tricking her lingering tears to halt in their tracks.
Now scrub, damn
it.

Her new and
far-off
home had to be her focus.

And her career—despite its admitted and torturous irony.

Yes, despite her propensity for breakages, mishaps and the like, she was an expert at strategizing and planning successful destination weddings in her coastal hometown of Puerto Vallarta. And she loved the work, again, even with the
in-her
-face pain of it.

And she’d had no reason to consider herself a masochist when she’d accepted the opportunity at nineteen. She’d been naive then, engaged to Sebastian in a whirlwind of magical bliss. But now, after losing her true love and two arranged fiancés after that, her remaining family continually asked Isabel why she kept doing such excruciating work.

It was torture, yes, but it was what made her feel anything anymore. It combatted the chilling numbness in her heart. It was her
self-punishment
. And now it was decidedly her realized purpose: helping tie the bonds of love for other hopeful souls while fate kept her from tying her own. Fate’s cruel joke was her
test-turned
-mission.

So now her new home and her work were her life, and she was reconciled to that fact.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, it got hot, almost sweltering. With the lack of air conditioning, the summer heat knocking at May’s door, and her deep angry effort at that clean start, she knotted her hair in a bun and tied up her
sweat-soaked
top to just below her bust line. Cooler, better
.
She looked down and grinned—her in a crop tank and panties? Yes. In
her
place, not a soul around for the first time in her life—hell yes!

Half-naked
freedom!

And why the hell not? Her condo complex was even empty of vacationers until October, and her direct neighbors had up and left—when her
abuelo
died, rumor of her moving in had circulated like wildfire.

So, she’d conquer her new home
this
way,
her
way!—with her hard rock music blasting, arms and legs and back busting ass, and loose strands of her dark locks sticking to her
sweat-kissed
and smiling face.

*

She had to remember her client meetings in town, so she paused to check her progress and the clock. Only the
filth-covered
windows and sliding glass door to go, with more than an hour to do it in. Yeah, she’d be fine. “But so much for the cleaning service, though,” she murmured to herself and the wind.

They’d obviously rushed through the place, but with just a little more effort, she’d be able to see out to the beach and the bay where some of her fondest childhood memories had been made. The children of vacationing foreigners staying at her
abuelo’s
condo complex had been her only playmates growing up, because those kids hadn’t known of the little gray cloud that followed her wherever she went.

Other than time spent at her
abuelo’s
, she grew up more or less friendless. Well, except for Roberto, a fellow outcast since second grade and loyal to the end. Oh, and her brother, Ray, only sixteen months older than her, who’d shared common interests in fashion and beauty products, so even her lack of
long-term
girlfriends hadn’t been too hard on her.
Not
really.

Anyway, Isabel didn’t blame the kids at school, the neighbors, or the folks at church—and now the majority of her own family—for their fearful distance. As far back as she could remember she’d had to struggle to keep things from breaking, falling, crashing, and crumbling around her. She wouldn’t want to be in her wake either if she were in any of their shoes.

Especially as she matured, because so did the hovering darkness. Larger incidents happened that no one could explain, except that Isabel seemed to always be at the center of them. And by adulthood, the dark nimbus cloud that was her curse burst open, breaking her heart and crumbling her soul.

She grabbed a rag and spray bottle and began cleaning the glass door from top to bottom, sunlight streaming through each new swipe—“Jesus Rays” are what she and her siblings had called them. After that first full pass, the initial layer of dirt vanished, and the room already became a different place. She even felt lighter. But how sad that her grandfather’s home had gotten so dank and filthy since he’d gone. Well, she was there now and would be sure to keep the place pristine and fresh, worthy of her sweet
abuelo’s
memory.

She sighed then stepped way back to see her progress. A crack in the lower right corner caught her eye and made her jaw clench.
Of course.
Why was every glimpse of hope met with an ill omen?

The bay breeze flooded her face from the open door, and she took it in and swallowed it back.
You know what?
S
crew it
. Because again, what control did she have anyway? If things were gonna go to hell, there was not a damn thing she could do about it, right?

So she keyed into the hard rock ballad filling the place, grabbed the spray bottle
microphone-style
with white knuckles, and made like a rock star in a music video. With the windows and slider open to the moving ocean air, her mostly bare,
sweat-soaked
skin prickled as the breeze met her. This was a literal and figurative cleansing—of her new home, of her pride and conscience, and of her past, damn it! She felt powerful. Optimistic, even. The rough,
head-banging
freedom of belting out the words to the heavens, to Fate herself, was a liberating release.

And just as she got to the raging chorus of the song, her streaming hard rock got rudely interrupted, replaced by a joyful mariachi ring tone. Her oldest sister Celeste. Calling again
.
Attempt number four.

She huffed then glared at her phone. She placed the spray bottle down, moved the mop blocking her path carefully against the wall, wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and stepped toward her phone. But as she reached for the device, she tripped over the bucket at her feet, bringing her back to reality, the reality where she had no hope and no control.
There it is, Isabel.
Fate had the control and wouldn’t dare let her forget it.

*

She got to it on the fourth ring, “Celi, hey…are you there?” Her voice as sweet as crème caramel.

“Little sister, how are you? I’ve tried you, like, a billion times!”

Ah, the
exaggeration.
“Sorry, Celi…is everything okay? The girls alright?” Her three nieces, whom she never saw anymore, had been like her surrogate children. But by her own insistence, she refused to put them at risk. She did miss them terribly, and the few photos Celeste texted her did little to fill the void.