Iona felt the tension in her stomach ease at the girl’s open expression. ‘From a little shop in Edinburgh.’
‘What’s your accent? It’s way cool?’
‘Scottish.’
‘Awesome, like Braveheart.’
Iona grinned back. At last, an American who knew a little about her homeland—even if it was based on Hollywood folklore. ‘Uh-huh. Among other things.’
‘Do the men really wear skirts there?’
‘Kilts,’ she corrected. ‘And yes, sometimes, although usually only for special occasions. They can be a bit draughty.’
Zane tightened his arm round her shoulders. ‘Enough with the questions. Iona’s from Scotland, not the moon.’
‘If you think I’m bad, wait till you introduce her to the family. Forget questions, it’s going to be the Mexican Inquisition.’ Maricruz sent Iona a conspiratorial smile. ‘Zane never brings dates to family events.’
The startling announcement had the bees buzzing back to life in Iona’s stomach.
‘You are gonna be the hot topic of conversation for months,’ the girl added.
‘We need to go get some food,’ Zane cut in. ‘We’ll see you later, Maricruz,’ he said, deliberately steering them away from the inquisitive teen.
‘I’ll save the next waltz for you,’ she called after Zane before being swallowed up again into the gaggle of teenage girls preening by the pool.
‘That’s not true, is it?’ Iona whispered above the music from the Mariachi band. She’d just started to feel a tiny bit more relaxed about coming, and now this?
Taking her hand, Zane led her around the edge of the dancers towards a long table laden with food. He passed her a china plate and a cloth napkin. ‘Let’s grab some food before it goes—and then get out of here.’
‘I’m serious, Zane. I’m not really the first date who’s ever met your family, am I?’ she asked, holding the plate limply as he proceeded to heap it with food from the tureens.
‘Ignore Maricruz—she’s teasing you.’
‘That’s not an answer,’ she countered.
He sent her a deliberately sexy smile, and her heartbeat skipped into her throat. ‘I don’t bring dates because I don’t usually come to these things if I can avoid them.’
‘Why would you want to avoid them?’ she asked, the panic replaced by confusion. Maybe the party was a little overwhelming, for a stranger. But he wasn’t a stranger, he was part of this family and, from what she’d seen so far, everyone seemed very warm and welcoming.
He scooped up a generous helping of a fragrant rice and chicken dish. ‘Because I usually have a lot of other stuff I’d rather be doing, like tonight,’ he said, those striking blue eyes promising all sorts of heady excitement later in the evening.
The heat that was never far from the surface flared to life. ‘I see.’
He chuckled, the sound rich and confidently male. Then leaned close, and let his lips linger over the sensitive spot below her ear. ‘Now stop asking dumb questions and eat your arroz con pollo so we can get out of here.’
As it turned out, getting away from Zane’s family was easier said than done. Before the two of them had managed to finish the delicious banquet leftovers, they had already been accosted by a parade of his relatives.
The succession of tias and tios, primos and primas ranging in age from teens to pensionable age whose names and places in the Montoya family tree Iona would need a wall chart to keep straight soon began to blur into one. But two things became obvious very quickly—every one of them was overjoyed to see Zane at the party, and Zane was a lot less than overjoyed to be there.
After close to twenty minutes of non-stop introductions, Iona was exhausted from all the attention they’d received—but also enthralled by Zane’s close-knit and affectionate family, and his place within it. Why was he so tense and uncommunicative with people that obviously loved and cared for him?
Both questions she planned to ask him, the minute they managed to escape from their latest interrogator—his statuesque Tia Carmen, who if Iona’s memory was correct was married to Zane’s uncle, Carlos.
When Carmen finally paused for a breath, Zane grasped Iona’s hand and butted in. ‘We need to go, Carmen. I’ll see you around.’
Carmen’s mouth opened, as if she wanted to say more, but Zane was already dragging Iona away.
‘Shouldn’t we stay a little longer? We’ve been here less than an hour,’ Iona asked above the swelling music as the smooth strains of a waltz began and couples flooded past them onto the dance floor.