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“His office, miss. You may wait on the patio while I inform him you’re here.” He glanced down at the beach tote in her hand. “Feel free to take a swim if you’d like. Mr. Contreras is taking an important phone call at the moment. He may be a while.”
“Sure, no problem. Thanks.”Fester.
“Would you like some refreshments while you wait?” he asked over his shoulder as he led the way toward the back.
Rena didn’t need the guided tour, since she’d been exploring a lot during her stays and had mapped out just about every square inch of the place, but she followed along without comment. “I’m good. No need to go to the trouble for little ole me.”
“No trouble at all, miss. It’s my job.” Crossing through the kitchen, he paused in front of the double, paneled patio doors to flip the locks and open the way. Beyond, the terra-cotta patio exuded warmth and a welcoming vibe. Beyond that, the crystal-clear blue water of the fifty-foot lap pool complete with waterfall and round Jacuzzi outfitting either end beckoned as well.
Passing by Fester, Rena selected one of the dozen or so deck loungers and set her bag down beside it. Then she stripped off the sundress she’d put on over her bathing suit, revealing a scanty two-piece that she was confident would turn Manuel’s head and raise more than just an eyebrow.
After a few minutes, Fester appeared with a pitcher of what looked like iced tea and a bowl of purple grapes, and then disappeared back into the house as quietly as he’d come.
Rena easily ignored the offerings, content to soak up a little sun. She was hoping for a shade darker than the last time she’d laid out, but it was a carefully choreographed dance that could easily result in a fire-engine red burn, ruining weeks of hard work.
She was a truly delicate flower, she thought, laughing at her own joke.
Closing her eyes and tilting her head back, she wiped her thoughts clear in favor of enjoying the finer things in life for as long as she could.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, Rena was waking up to a giant shadow blocking her sun. A shadow that turned out to belong to a stunning creature that was too perfect to be real, yet there she stood, a bronzed goddess that made Rena’s insecurities sit up and take notice—and pull the dress she’d removed earlier back over her body for a little extra coverage.
“You must be my dad’s…girlfriend.”
Why did that sound so dirty, as if she’d called Rena his mistress when she knew for a fact he wasn’t married. Manuel’s only wife had died years ago, leaving behind— Ahh, now she understood the animosity. “You must be Manny’s daughter. Vickie is it?”
“Victorjia,” the woman gritted out, then took a seat in the lounge beside her.
She was dressed in a flowing, lightweight coverlet in a shade of hot-orange that perfectly accented her honeyed skin tone. Rena was impossibly jealous.
“I can’t say that I know so much about you,” Rena started in a friendly tone, “but it’s nice to meet you anyway. I’m Rena, Manny’s…well, I don’t know what we are exactly. We’re just hanging out right now.”
Victorjia raised an eyebrow. “It’s weird to associate my dad with that term right now. Or to think of him dating at all.”
“Because of your mom?” Victorjia shot her a questioning look. “He doesn’t talk a lot, but he says enough to put things together,” Rena explained smoothly. Manual hadn’t said shit about anything, but a lifetime of lying had made it so the explanation rolled off her tongue like melting butter.
Victorjia looked away. “Yeah, I guess so. Not that I actually saw how they were together. He was gone before I was old enough to form memories like that, so I guess it’s not really my place to judge what he does with his private time. Can’t expect him to live like a priest,” she said with a bit of forced levity.
Rena instantly felt sorry for her, feeling the strain of their relationship regardless of not having prior knowledge of their mutual past. “I can relate when it comes to parents and their lives conflicting with your idea of how they should be conducting them,” she offered. “My mom wasn’t the kind of parent I would have chosen for myself, and my father was…absent, to put it simply.”
Victorjia glanced her way, seeming to mull over Rena’s words as if weighing their truth and sincerity. Rena waited her out, allowing her to reach her own conclusions about her. The fact was, she wasn’t here to make friends. She was here on an assignment that could and would change her life. Her only goal at this moment was to garner trust from anyone she came into contact with and hopefully pull some juicy tidbits from that would help her with the FBI’s case against Manuel, period.
“So you like my dad, huh?”
“He’s good people.”
Victorjia stared at her as if she’d just grown a second head. “Are you sure about that?”
“Well, I haven’t known him for long, but yeah, I think so. Why? You don’t agree?”
The woman looked away again, staring at the pool’s glittering surface as she sorted through her thoughts. “I think I’m in the same boat you are,” she finally said, puzzling Rena.
“You’ve known him your whole life,” Rena reasoned, genuinely confused.
“Known of him,” Victorjia corrected. “The differences are vast. I’ve only just gotten here, so what I actually know of him versus what I’m learning about him are totally different.”
“And you don’t like what you’re learning,” Rena surmised, observing the woman’s guarded body language and that reflective, distant look in her eyes as if she was waging some internal struggle. Rena knew that look; she’d seen it in the mirror many times in her life. There were things the woman wasn’t saying, which only piqued Rena’s curiosity more.
I have to get closer to her, she thought to herself, calculating the risks and rewards of becoming Manuel’s daughter’s friend. If she could gain her trust, she might be able to pull a lot more from her than she’d been able to get from her father. If she misstepped, she could find herself the enemy of two bad eggs. Victorjia said she didn’t know much about her dad personally, and while she seemed like she might be an innocent in his world, Rena wasn’t going to let down her guard and assume the woman wasn’t as bad as the FBI claimed her father to be. After all, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
