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Rafe followed her to the water and they spent the next thirty minutes with her showing him how to get his balance on the board. Finally Emily decided he could take a turn rowing and he got about two strokes in before he fell into the warm Atlantic Ocean.
He glanced at the shore to find her standing there laughing.
“I bet it wasn’t easy for you at first,” he said as he swam back to shore with the board.
“I don’t remember. I’ve been on the water since before I could walk,” she said.
“So you grew up here?”
“Since I was three, so I think that counts, doesn’t it?”
“Pretty much. I was born in Coral Gables and grew up there,” he said.
“Florida native.”
“Well, just my generation,” he said.
He looked at her and the future suddenly didn’t seem as nebulous as it always had. The future was real and it was staring back at him with red hair and blue eyes. And that made Alma seem farther away than ever.
“Why don’t you stand on the end of my board and look studly and I’ll take you on a tour of this inlet?” she asked.
“Studly?”
“Yeah. Oh, is that an insult to your masculinity?” she teased. “I figured after that dunking you gave yourself you might like to play it safe.”
He rushed her, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her into the water. “I never play it safe, Red. And I’m not the only one who’s going to get a dunking.”
He fell backward into the water, keeping her in his arms and drenching them both. She swiveled in his arms and when they both surfaced she kissed him. One kiss led to another and Rafe realized he was having the best afternoon of his life.
He told himself it was just the relief at being away from the pressures of leading Alma and Montoro Enterprises, but his heart said his future was tied to this woman.
Eleven
Emily had felt more at ease staring down a belligerent drunk at Shady Harry’s than she did standing in the formal dining room of the Montoros’ Coral Gables mansion holding a tonic water with lime in one hand. Rafael III had turned his back on her when she entered the room with Rafe, who had been called away by Jose. He’d seemed reluctant to leave her but she’d urged him to go. She was rethinking that opinion now.
Juan Carlos looked less than pleased to actually meet her and the PR guy Geoff had muttered under his breath that she was no style icon. Well, who was? She was a real person. She wasn’t going to apologize for who she was.
Tia Isabella had been feeling well enough to be up with the family. She and her nurse were in one corner with Rafe’s sister Bella. Tia Isabella was in a wheelchair and her hands and head kept shaking because of her advanced Parkinson’s. When her nurse invited Emily over to join the women, she was grateful. Isabella had beautiful white hair and was the only one to smile at Emily and make her feel truly welcome.
“Hello, Emily,” Bella said, coming up behind her and putting her arm around her.
“Bella right? Or should I call you Lady Bella?”
“Just Bella is fine. You look like you are about to bolt.”
“I am.”
“Well, don’t. I’ve never seen Rafe like this before.”
“Like what?”
“Unsettled.”
“That’s good. He’s too sure he knows it all,” Emily said.
Bella laughed and Emily noticed that her brothers smiled at the sound. “Rafe mentioned going out on your mother’s boat...Is it a yacht?”
Emily realized that Bella was really in a different world. “No. She’s a marine biologist. Her boat is like the station wagon of the sea.”
“Did you grow up on it? Like Jacques Cousteau’s family?”
“No. She had a grant that enabled her to return to Key West every night,” Emily said.
“Sounds fascinating.”
They were called to dinner and Rafe rejoined her. “How’d it go?”
“Most of your family hate me. If they could make me disappear they would,” she said.
“They don’t hate you,” Rafe said.
“Don’t lie to me,” she retorted.
“Well, it’s not you. It’s the fact that I am putting our family’s return to Alma and the throne in a very delicate state. No one, not even me, wants that.”
Emily wanted to apologize but she couldn’t. She wasn’t sorry she was having his baby or that she’d gotten to know him. But she was sorry that they’d met now when his life wasn’t his own. And when his family would never approve of her.
* * *
The next two weeks were busy and though Rafe would be happy to stop flying back and forth between Key West and Miami, he enjoyed every second he spent with Emily.
