Her worst enemy is the one man she can't resist.
Maria Martinez thought it was a dream come true when Ritchie Perez - a sweet and sexy guy she met volunteering at a soup kitchen - took her delinquent little brother Joey under his wing. But her drea...
Maria got off the elevator and stepped onto the polished floor of the law firm's lobby. She was hoping to catch Richie in the office, since her call had gone directly to voicemail. The least they could do was come up with a plan of action for when Joey got home from school today.
The receptionist looked up and smiled. "Miss Martinez, I'm sorry, Mr. Perez isn't in the office. Was he expecting you?"
Just then Jonathon walked past the large conference room behind the reception desk and saw her.
Йой! Нажаль, це зображення не відповідає нашим правилам. Щоб продовжити публікацію, будь ласка, видаліть його або завантажте інше.
"Maria – come on back if you have a minute. I want to show you something."
She followed him down the hallway uncertainly. "I wanted to say thank you for placing that bid. It was way over the top." After all, it wasn't his fault Ritchie had pressured him to pay an outrageous sum for her painting. The least she could do was be gracious.
He glanced back over his shoulder. "Worth every penny. Here we are," he said, gesturing her into an office that was as spacious as Ritchie's, with an equally stunning view of the Miami skyline. But that's where the similarity ended. He came from old money, and she'd expected old-style elegance. Instead, everything was sleek and modern. The surface on his oval desk shown like polished ebony. She stepped in and turned and...there it was. It the midst of all the stylized furnishings and spectacular views, her painting was the focal point.
"I came in last night to hang it. I know the logical place would have been on the wall behind my desk. But I wanted to be about to look at it while I'm working."
"I'm..." Speechless, she thought.
"What, didn't you think I was going to put it up in here? Frankly, I spend more time at the office than at home, so this was the best place for it. And it reminds me what my reward is for working this hard."
"It reminds you?" She sounded like an idiot, parroting his words.
"That in ten minutes, I can be there," he said, gesturing to the painting. "On my boat."
"Oh." It was starting to become clearer to her now. "My painting reminds you of your boat. That's why you wanted it."
Jonathon looked at her and chuckled. "You seriously don't know?"
"Know what?"
"Maria, that painting doesn't remind me of my boat. It is my boat." He walked closer to the painting. "And that splash of color you captured in a red windbreaker at the helm is me."
What? It was actually Jonathon's boat? She made a conscious effort not to stare at him with her mouth hanging open.
"I had no idea. What are the odds that when I was sitting on the shoreline with my sketchpad, it would be your sailboat cutting across Biscayne Bay?"
He laughed again. "Pretty good odds, at least, if you listen to my partners. Sometimes they accuse me of spending more time on that boat than anything else."
