Tempting Isabel (Paradise South #1) (8 page)

CHAPTER 9

T
wo weeks had
passed since she had met and left Zack in his extravagant penthouse suite.

And those same two weeks had gone by with no sign or word from Roberto, like she had asked for, but regretted at the same time. She missed calling him, sharing her day with him, and being distracted by the details of his day. She definitely missed her devoted friend, just not the obsessed version.

She hadn’t been out of her house since that night, except for a mandatory client meeting and one weekend event. She’d worked from home otherwise.

And it being the height of wedding season, she was slammed anyway. She
puppet-mastered
from her desk in her bedroom, windows open, floor fan on. To her dismay, she didn’t even have time to enjoy her back deck at all, but hey, she could at least hear the rolling tide coming in. And she’d taken to traipsing around her sanctuary
near-naked
, enjoying
ocean-breeze
kisses and unadulterated freedom.

And she wasn’t a total hermit. Her brother, Ray, stopped by once, and so did Celeste—thankfully a quickie, on the way to grab the girls from dance class. Every few days she’d spoken to Lucinda and also to her brother Antonio, whose limo company she hired for all of her events.

Basically, though, she stuck to her plan, keeping to herself. Safe and sound for all.

But the quiet hours of her day allowed her mind to wander. And where her thoughts went, and who they rested on, were far from healthy. Dangerous waters, those piercing,
bottle-green
eyes. Zack.
Asshole.

His stories had made her laugh until she cried, and his touch had sent such sensations through her, she could still feel the remnant vibrations. All of it swarmed her brain. His scent of man and that intoxicating cologne, and oh, his body,
all-encompassing
and surrounding her. The steadiness and security she felt when around him—intangible, but it lingered just the same. Zack and that entire night hadn’t faded from her senses, but neither had the memory, the wakeup call written on the bathroom mirror.

The doorbell rang and snapped her out of her trance.

“It’s me, love. Let me in to your paradise by the sea!”

Louder than a timeshare hawker,
Lucinda
.

An hour early, Lucinda!
Isabel threw on clothes and ran to the door.

Lucinda stood a towering
six-foot
-one. A
French-Canadian
cougar with a deep and husky voice. One could peg her a
chain-smoking
drag queen, but she was neither.

She was, however, the founder of the most successful wedding and event planning company in Vallarta, with too many
A-listers
under her belt to count. Extremely dedicated, she lived and breathed work, and would do practically anything for a client in the name of revenue, which was what made Golden Rings the biggest and best, the woman’s pride and joy. Lucinda’s baby.

And how had “Isabel the Walking Curse” landed a job with the great Lucinda Carlyle? It just so happened that Lucinda had been the dearest friend of Isabel’s late mother, Yesinia Ruiz. And as a favor to Yesinia, and despite Isabel’s
accident-prone
existence, Lucinda had given the youngest Ruiz a chance and the training to become a wedding and event coordinator with Lucinda’s
foreigner-focused
company. Yes, another singular blessing, one that Isabel knew better than to think too hard on or take for granted, lest she jinx it.
And
poof!

Isabel quickly earned the title “protégé” for being, as her mentor stated in all introductions to new wedding clients, “deeply loyal, a relentlessly hard worker, bilingual and brilliant,
hyper-focused
and the deepest believer in true, unadulterated love.” It was the script Lucinda went by, and, Isabel felt, an authentic sentiment. Yes, Lucinda was a true blessing, and Isabel wouldn’t disappoint the woman, not for anything in the world.

“Ready to talk
nitty-gritty
, love?” Lucinda was an hour early for their meeting to discuss the Rine/James wedding, the
biggest-ticket
affair her boss had ever entrusted Isabel with. And Lucinda was never early. Isabel nodded, eager to calm the woman’s nerves, having prepared all the details her boss would want.

The woman came in and threw herself on Isabel’s sofa, lying on it Cleopatra style. “Oh, before we start, love, pour me a vodka, would you? On the rocks.”

“Of course.”
And alcohol…just before noon…an additional way to
unwind.

In the kitchen, Isabel smirked while she got the glass for her boss’s midday drink. Then she reached into the freezer. When the entire tray of ice cubes fell onto the kitchen floor, she shook her head and cursed under her breath. She grabbed a few pieces still stuck in the tray, threw them in the glass, then carefully poured the alcohol.

Before serving it, she bent down to pick up the mess of slippery ice from the floor. While freezing her fingertips, a realization hit her and she grunted. During her time with Zack, except for her fall at his feet and her wine spill, she’d been completely
accident-free
. The entire rest of their time together, eight solid hours, had been without mishap. There had been a complete reprieve, never known to her before or since.

And Zack, on the other hand, had sworn that he was never that clumsy, never so ‘off his game.’ Only around her, he’d said. He’d been nervous like a schoolboy with her. A puff of a laugh—could he have soaked up her bad juju? His clumsy, blathering, stumbling words and his
cheesy-ass
pick-up
lines, the ones he’d explained were so out of character for him.

Why
wasn’t
it possible?

Because, what of Zack’s stellar confidence in other areas? His lips, his expert tongue, his hands, his hard steel and grinding hips, they were all anything but clumsy during their foreplay, even though it had all damn well led to nothing.

But maybe the
sweet-and
-stuttering, blushing thing was just an act to get her usually blundering ass into bed? And hell, it had almost worked!

If that was his strategy, then thank Jesus for the two pairs of melting panties on the vanity light fixture! Yeah, for a guy to snag two women in a night and have them waiting their turn for a second round the very next, he had to be slick, strategic,
sad
. Sleazy.

But, on the other hand, maybe the women he got with were all
empty-headed
bimbos who didn’t speak in the first place. Such a
sizzling-hot
catch like Zack wouldn’t even have to talk about the weather before panties were flying.

So, maybe that was it? She was the first woman he’d hit on who had anything between her ears? And maybe the brilliant
comic-clown
act was
not
an act! He
was
dumbstruck and nervous around her. Like he’d said.

Hah!

And,
oh
shit
.

Now so glad she’d left when she had, she really hoped she wouldn’t ever see him again.

At least she wanted to hope that.

She dried her hands, wiping the entire thought stream from her mind at the same time.
Back to business, Isabel. Head in the
game.

*

Isabel handed her boss the drink, then took out her tablet. Lucinda immediately got working on her buzz while Isabel pulled up her notes for the Rine/James affair.

“The event block is
Friday-Sunday
, May 30th -June 1st, but the bridal group arrives Wednesday the 28th for their bachelor and bachelorette parties, which, of course, they’re handling themselves.” Golden Rings didn’t do tacky or crude. Lucinda didn’t need the hassle, the liability, or the chance at staining the company’s reputation.

To Lucinda, reputation was everything. Isabel had learned from Lucinda how their business was hugely dependent on word of mouth. And since the real money for the Puerto Vallarta wedding industry was found in the wealthier, albeit more finicky, foreign markets, that word of mouth needed to be
far-reaching
and exemplary.

And, it so happened, that the foreign focus was perfect, no, necessary for Isabel. If Lucinda’s clientele was based on the local area instead, the woman couldn’t have kept Isabel on, no matter how close Lucinda had been to Isabel’s mother. Isabel’s locally infamous hex would have created havoc for Lucinda’s business. But their wealthy foreign clients didn’t know about Isabel’s curse, nor did they believe in such “
mumbo-jumbo
” as Lucinda lovingly called the area’s superstitions. So Lucinda only saw Isabel as an asset, always on her game. Or
striving
to be, at least.

But there was that one major reputation killer that Lucinda never hesitated to warn Isabel and the other attractive junior planners about, especially with the
liquor-driven
nature of the weddings they managed. In the name of professionalism, planners and staff could never, absolutely ever, fraternize with their guests. Isabel had watched her assistant get fired just last month, and Lucinda made sure Janine was blacklisted from all the event planning outfits up and down the Pacific coast. Beyond watching out for their own agencies, owners had to also zoom out and take care of the entire region’s reputation, or else all Pacific Coast planning companies would be out of the running for American and European wedding business.

So, for Isabel, the nightclubs and bars were safest for those intermittent distractions.
Es
todo—that’s
it.

Isabel continued running through the logistics of her
biggest-ticket
wedding ever, but glanced up from her notes when she heard the sound of clinking ice cubes. Lucinda was swirling her empty glass as she stared out at the bay, maybe listening to the sound of the high tide rushing in…or to the unimaginable and eccentric dialogue in the woman’s own extravagant mind.

Isabel could have refilled the glass, but doing so would be committing to an entire day with her boss, because the woman shouldn’t be driving sober let alone buzzed, and Isabel really didn’t want to drive the woman all the way into town. Also, she wanted to get through this monologue of a meeting and be done, as she had tons of other work to do.

“So the amenities are all opulent elegance—I am of course bending over backwards.” Lucinda knew Isabel went all out for clients. She gave her a satisfied wink. “I even have a courier making ten round trips over the border with the bride’s
must-have
Californian wedding wine, you know, since Customs doesn’t allow more than the nine liters over per run. But Amy Rine said that ‘the sky is the limit’ since her father, Daniel Rine, is footing the bill.” Her eyebrows lifted for emphasis.

Lucinda’s attention sparked to the here and now. “Ah, yes, the shipbuilding tycoon. Very nice.” She smiled while she fingered her empty glass, perhaps predicting the total invoice in her
money-happy
head. “Isabel, love…you keep clinching bigger and bigger clients and giving them what they want, and soon enough you’ll be running the show…and I’ll retire into the lap of a fine young Mexican
tamale
.” She laughed, obviously pleased with her wit and her future.

“Sounds…spectacular Lucinda. I mean, running the show, that is.” Isabel flashed a slight smile, cheeks warm.

She did relish the thought of heading up the company. After so many tragedies in her life, it was something to strive for, to look forward to. And if there’s any glimpse of a silver lining to those
heart-wrenching
incidents, it’s that no one could compete with her
through-the
-roof threshold for pain and high pressure, two inevitable components of any
high-end
destination wedding. And, also, the job’s rapid pace made her blood flow, it made her feel alive. And the fact that she was damn good at her job didn’t hurt.

“By the way, Isabel, what happened with that gorgeous American steed of a man from the Five Breezes a few weeks back? Did ya screw him? Oh God, please just tell me. Let me live vicariously through you, dear. I have needs…”

Isabel gave her boss a cockeyed smile. Lucinda was shameless.

“What? It’s for work, love. Research. Unions are our business,” Lucinda justified, guffawing and slapping her lap.

Isabel’s employer—her mentor, her sometime matchmaker, her delving, digging friend and sort of motherly
stand-in
—just never ceased to amaze her. The woman was majorly
self-centered
and
money-focused
, but Isabel got to know and
near-enjoy
Lucinda’s softer, more human side—however awkward and embarrassing, frustrating and circular the resulting conversations became.

“No. Almost…but no.” Isabel paused, regretting her use of the word “almost,” hoping it wouldn’t open a huge can of worms, with Lucinda asking for all the gory details. “He turned out to be a bit of a scumbag…but better that than some Prince Charming!” she said while avoiding eye contact—Isabel already knew what expression was held on her skeptical boss’s
sun-wrinkled
face.

“Isabel.” Lucinda shook her head, kind disappointment in her face. “I swear, Isa, you Mexicans and your superstitions…
twenty-five
years old, gorgeous, smart, and for God’s sakes, giving up on romance entirely! And what a bride you’d make…if you’d just let me find you the right man!”

“He’d need to be invincible…immortal. Maybe a vampire?” Isabel half joked. At least she kept her sense of humor. It helped her endure the same optimistic spiel by her boss almost weekly. Between Celeste, Roberto, and Lucinda, she swore she’d lose her damn mind.

And it was especially laughable hearing it from her boss all these times, because Lucinda Carlyle was very much the expert on ‘the right man.’ With three
ex-husbands
and the fourth one in process, she could write a book or four.