Actually, he absorbed with a profound sense of liberation, he wasn’t. Faustina had firmly and unequivocally ended their engagement, despite his mother’s best efforts to talk her back on board.
His mother had retired with a wet compress and a migraine tablet. He had come in here because he couldn’t go home. His house was being renovated for the bride who was now refusing to share her life with him. Driving all the way to his brother’s house to get blind drunk had felt like an unnecessary delay.
“I don’t smoke.” He dropped the empty pack and picked up his drink. “I rebelled for a year or so when I was a teen, but it seemed like a good excuse to talk with Ernesto about football and other inconsequential topics.” He was sick to death of jabbering about weddings and duty and the expected impact on the family fortune.
Her shoulders softened and her red-gold brows angled with sympathy. “I’m really sorry.” She sounded adorably sincere. “I’ll, um, give you privacy to...”
“Wallow in heartbreak? Unnecessary.” Faustina’s outburst had been the sum total of passion their marriage was likely to have borne. “I don’t want to chase you away if you’re on your break.”
“No, I’m done. I know we’re not supposed to cut through here to get to the change rooms over the garage, but I was hoping to catch Ernesto myself. He gives me a lift sometimes.”
“Are you American?” he asked.
Her strawberry blond lashes flickered in surprise, her expression growing shy. Aware.
An answering awareness teased through him, waking the wolf inside him. That starved beast had been locked inside a cave the last six months, but unexpectedly found himself free of the heavy chain he’d placed around his own neck. The sun was in his eyes, the wind was ruffling his fur and he was picking up the scent of a willing female. He was itching to romp and tumble and mate.
“Canada.” She cleared her throat. “Saskatchewan. A little town with nothing but canola fields and clouds.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“How did you wind up here?”
“I’d tell you, but I’d bore you to death.” Despite her words, a pretty smile played around her mouth and a soft blush of pleasure glowed under her skin.
“I came out here to smoke. Clearly I have a death wish.”
After a small chuckle, she cautioned, “Okay, but stop me if you feel light-headed.”
Definitely not bored, he thought with a private smile. She wasn’t merely a first cigarette years after quitting, either. To be sure he was drawing in this lighthearted flirting with avid greed, but he found himself enjoying her wit. He was genuinely intrigued by her.
“I saved up to trek around Europe with a friend, but she broke her ankle on the second day and flew home.” She folded her arms, protective or defensive, maybe. “I tagged along with some students from a hostel coming here, but a few days after we arrived, one of them stole everything I had.” She slapped a what-can-you-do? smile on it, but the tension around her eyes and mouth told him she was still upset.
He frowned. “Did you go to the police?”
“It was my fault.” She flinched with self-recrimination. “I gave him my card to get some cash for me one morning. He must have made a copy or something. Three days later he’d syphoned all of my savings and was gone. I had my passport, a bag of raisins and my hairbrush. Losing my camera gutted me the most. It was a gift and my memory card was still in it, not that I’d had the chance to fill it. It was a huge bummer.” She summed up with philosophical lightness.
“You’re a photographer?”
“Not anymore,” she asserted with disgust, then shrugged it off. “At least I had prepaid for a week at the hostel. I asked around and got on with a temp agency. I was brought in to help clean the pool house and guest cottage. Darna liked my work and asked me to stay on full-time in the big house. I’ve been saving for a ticket home ever since.”
“How much do you need?” He reached into his pocket.
“Oh, no!” She halted him, horrified. “I have enough. I just worked it out with Darna that today was my last day. She thought she would need me through the rest of June for—” She halted, wincing as she realized who she was talking to.
Rico let the awkwardness hang in the air, not to punish, but because he was finding her candor so refreshing.
“It seemed like the wedding was going to be really beautiful.” She sounded apologetic. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
He wasn’t. That was the naked truth, but he deflected by saying, “I’ve heard that Canadians apologize a lot. I didn’t believe it.”
“We do. Sorry.” She winked on that one.
Was she sorry?
Rico came back to the tap of a dirty spoon against the back of his knuckles.
Poppy had been twenty-two, disillusioned after being shortchanged on chasing her dreams, yet willing to come home to fulfill family obligations. He had understood that pressure and had confided his own reasons for going along with family expectations.
That affinity had led to a kiss and his feet had somehow carried her to the sheet-draped furniture hidden amongst the jungle of fragrant lilies.