One Night in Havana. Preorder for 99 cents/99 pence. Release day is January 31st.
“Why, Veronica Keane.” A voice heavy with a Spanish
accent drawled from behind her. “A dive bar?” A taunting tsk. “What do we have? A slumming New Yorker?”
She stiffened and closed her eyes. She knew that
voice and its owner, Dr. Carlos Montoya, a finalist like her, competing for the
same damn grant at the biggest Cephalopoda
conference of the decade. Her heart pitter-pattered against her ribs. To
turn toward him would intimate distress, or worse yet, weakness. She wouldn’t
fail to win this grant, not when she was a final contender. “I like this funky
little place.” Sia Macario Café, smack in the center of Havana, allowed her to
observe locals and their daily lives.
“You need to eat with all the mojitos you’ve
downed.” The big tease wasn’t counting. This was her first drink, but his
rumbling, sexy timbre hinted at all kinds of dark, hot promises. She’d rubbed
shoulders with the Cuban scientist all week. This splendid specimen of Latin
male brought on a physical ache that punched low.
A flare-up stirred fear. For her own good, she
needed to resist. “I ordered camarones
enchiladas.” By now she knew the menu on the chalkboard by heart. She
tipped her head back to whiff grilled shrimp soon to arrive in sofrito sauce
with fried sweet plantains.
“The flan is good. Just like my abuela makes.”
“I bet. Your grandmother would be happy to hear
that,” she said, knowing he brought out the best in most people. Two days ago
he'd invited her and a handful of others scuba diving. The chance to ogle him
had been one of the perks. He’d worn nothing but swim trunks, his bare chest on
display. Every glistening muscle was finely etched. Not a drop of fat on him.
Since he’d not given her the time of day, she’d checked him out without him
noticing.
The hard-bodied host had led the way toward
habitats of soft-bodied creatures. To find where invertebrates lived was never
an easy task. Octopuses squeezed into narrow passages of coral for protection
and gave females a place to keep their eggs. She’d discovered the remains of a
few meals nearby.Octopuses scattered rocks and shells to help them hide.
This grant
meant so much to her and no doubt to him as well. Veronica mindlessly toyed with
the gold necklace around her neck, but anxiety crackled through her brain.
Unlike this man of action, she lacked the flamboyant personality necessary to
talk people into things. Carlos had that ability. He'd made friends with judges
on board while she’d conversed with an older woman about a box of scones made
with Cuban vanilla cream.
That day the wind had picked up to a gale force,
and this woman named Bela with Lucille Ball red hair needed help walking to her
home. The half mile down the seaside promenade, The Malecón, had provided her with time to practice
her Spanish. Turned out Bela was Carlos’s grandmother. She’d worked as a maid
when the Castro government came to power.
When private homes were nationalized, titles were handed over to the dwelling occupants.
Bela owned a crumbling home in the respected Verdado district and rented out
rooms.
What Veronica detested about Carlos was his
abnormal level of talent for schmoozing. Not that he wasn't charismatic; he
drew her like a powerful magnet with emotions hard to untangle. Why was a
self-assured woman who ran her own life thinking about a man who commanded
everyone around him?
She inhaled a breath and turned around on the
barstool, caught fast by a gut punch of Carlos Montoya in the flesh. She sighed
and surrendered to the tendrils of want sliding up between her thighs.
Tall and muscular, his lush dark hair curled to his
collar giving him a wild, roguish appearance. His face was lean and chiseled.
His mouth full and tempting. His eyes the smoky-gray of a grass fire and
fringed with black lashes as dense as paintbrushes. He smiled. A faint hint of
mockery curved his mouth, a sensual mouth she imagined to be either inviting or
cruel. Or both at the same time when he leaned over a woman with a diamond-hard
gleam in his dark eyes while she drowned with pleasure. She fought a fierce
desire to run her hand across his broad chest, tip her face upward, and…
His breath tickled her face.
Not going there. She blinked and forced her mind to
focus. Carlos Montoya was not the kind of man you lost focus around. But that image of putting her mouth
full on his and peeling away his shirt once introduced in her mind was impossible to expunge. Pointless even
to try.
He was an intimidating blend of intellect and sexy
danger. Both qualities had her leaning back against the bar’s edge. If it
weren’t for him, she’d have a chance at winning the grant.
His lips twitched. “You’re staying on one of the
cruise ships, am I right?” He rolled up the sleeves of his linen jacket to
reveal a dusting of manly hair.
”Yes." Her cabin served as her hotel room
while attending the January meetings with perfect high-seventies temperatures.
His eyes locked with hers. She willed herself to move and yet she remained
seated, clutching heat between her legs, a wetness so intense that her breath
stalled in her chest while her heart hammered faster. Soon she’d return to
freezing New York City.
“So, Bonita,
give.” He slid onto the bar stool next to her. “What brings you down from a
lofty ship to grace us lowly Cubans with your presence?”
Bonita. Pretty lady was not an endearment
coming from the mouth curved in a taunting smile, but not a slight either. Not
with his deep, melodic voice speaking words as if he knew secrets about her.
What secrets did he know? Would he pry into her personal life? She doubted this
bad-boy college professor acknowledged boundaries.
“Just drinks and dinner.” She scrambled for
composure. “Aren’t we attending a world-class conference? I find the local
population to be friendly and kind. That’s not slumming.”
The bartender set down a saoco. “Hope you like it, senorita.”
“Gracias,” she said. “Very nice, served in a
coconut.”
“Ah, the saoco,” Carlos said. “Rum, lime juice,
sugar, and ice. The saoco,” he repeated, disbelief heavy in his words. “Um.
Wow. Once used as a tonic for prisoners of the revolution.”
“Medicinal?” She couldn’t help it. She chuckled and
sounded as if a rusty spoon had scraped her throat raw, but it was genuine. The
warm glow in its wake was welcome and needed. .
He leaned an elbow on the bar, his beer bottle with
the green-and-red Cristal label dangling between his fingers. “Be careful with
that one.” He dipped his head toward the front door as if he needed to go
somewhere soon.
That fast, the glow snuffed out. She cleared her throat and gripped the fuzzy surface of the
coconut container.
He placed a five-peso coin with a brass plug on the
counter and whirled it. The spinning motion mirrored a dizzying attraction
going on in low parts of her belly.
She cleared her wayward mind and nodded toward
artwork on the opposite wall. “I plan to buy a painting tonight.”
“Don’t buy anything unless the seller gives you a
certificate. You’ll need one to take art from Cuba. Artists deal in euros in
case you don’t have pesos.”
She’d come prepared but said, “Thanks for the
info.”
His coal-black eyes widened as he gazed from her
head down to the tiny straps around her ankles
as if she wore high heels and nothing else.
“You give off a Barbie doll image,” he replied and stood up.
“Huh?”
“Where’s Ken, anyway? Kenneth Morton. He came with
you to the talks in Antarctica. Five years ago.” He grinned, and the
mortification in her belly gave way to a longing which she had no business
feeling toward her competitor.
“Ken and I broke up.” She hesitated for a moment.
“You have a gift for remembering names. Like a salesman.”
“A person’s name is, to that person, the most
important and sweetest sound. Back then I introduced myself to Ken in the men’s
room.”
“I remember now. Didn’t you give a talk on a
specialized pigment in the octopus?”
“Ahh, si.” He splayed his fingers over his chest.
“A pigment in their blood is—”
“—called
hemocyanin. Turns their blood blue and helps them survive subfreezing
temperatures. Were you awarded something?”
“The antifreeze protein grant? No. It went to a
deep-diving photographer. He wasn’t chicken about getting lost or trapped under
the ice.”
She slid from her stool and strutted around,
jutting her chin in and out like a chicken. “Bock, bock, bock, bock, bock, begowwwwk.”
He chuckled. “Cute
chicken dance. Very cute in that skimpy black dress.”
Her cheeks heated,
and she clutched her necklace. He’d seen plenty of women in body-fitting attire. In Cuba, women wore dresses to meetings. If she'd
harnessed sexier mojo, she’d have livened up presentations. Her presentations
with an abundance of dull data went south. She slid back against her stool and clutched her purse to her stomach
as if the small satin bag could calm the nerves playing deep down kickball. She
belonged in her tidy New York office filled with computers, modems, and
research manuals. Not in this softly lit café where passion oozed from a man’s pores, and artists displayed their canvases.
Here was where Havana’s trendsetters congregated,
and Ernest Hemingway wrote about desire.
“Good luck with your
purchases, Veronica Keane.”
Okay, so they weren’t going to pretend they were
going head to head for the grant.
As if he had more to say, he grinned at her, his
perfect white teeth flashing.. “Do you find us different, like apples and
oranges?”
“What am I, an apple or an orange?”
“Hmm. You’re an apple.” He was doing that sexy
voice thing which made her brain shut down. Heady.
It started with an unexpected spark, an instant
attraction, the jolting jab of oh-I’m-feeling-something. Something like a
flashfire in her belly, but now they were talking. “Am I the apple of desire?
Want to take a bite out of me?” She pulled in a breath. Had she really said
that?
“Bonita,
do I ever.”
“Tomorrow is the final ceremony.” Would she watch
him walk to the podium to accept the grant?
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