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Even if she was now a woman in a position of power, men still seemed to think her a simpleton—someone whose only real attribute was to look good. So what if she looked good? What if she liked dressing nicely and wearing heels?
Though in the past she would have never gotten caught wearing feminine clothes, now she seemed to revel in it. Maybe to some degree she enjoyed seeing men unable to help themselves and thus inviting themselves at the end of her gun. Maybe it was all a test to see who passed and who failed—and sheknewthey would all fail.
Since Sergio, Noelle simply found that shehatedthat type of overbearing machismo that relegated women to only one position—whores.
“I always hope they learn their lessons, but then it happens again.”
“As women, I don’t think we’re ever going to see the end of it. I can say for sure I’ve never met a man who hasn’t leered at me.”
“Except your Romeo,” Noelle wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Lucero blushed, averting her gaze.
“He was…different. But I was also too young for him to think of me as anything but a friend. He couldn’t have seen me as a woman.”
“Sixteen is not that young,” Noelle said pensively, thinking of her own situation. She’d fallen for Blue around that age, too, and though in the beginning it had been an idealized version of love, soon the sexual thoughts had followed—and they’d never left her mind since. “You never told me how old he was.”
“He was twenty,” Lucero whispered, almost as if ashamed.
“Twenty? And you think that’s too old?” Noelle blinked. “You were offered to Sergio, who is a grandpa compared to that,” she felt compelled to add.
Her own Blue was slightly older than that and she’d never thought of their age difference as an impediment except in his eyes—since she knew he would never cavort with an underage girl.
“It wasn’t just his age. He was so smart and knowledgeable about everything that I felt even younger when I was talking to him,” Lucero shrugged dejectedly.
Noelle nodded thoughtfully. She could understand why Lucero would have thought him to be so much older considering Lucero was painfully naive at twenty. She probably would have been much more innocent at sixteen than Noelle had been at the same age.
“You said he’d been kidnapped by Sergio?”
Lucero nodded.
“Yes, El Señor was holding him for ransom. At least that’s what he told me; that his family was very rich and it wasn’t the first time it had happened to him. But El Señor asked for an outrageous amount of money and his family didn’t seem willing to pay the price,” Lucero swallowed hard.
Noelle nodded sympathetically.
“Tell me more,” she said as she scooted closer to Lucero. “You never talk about him. What did he look like? What did he do for a living?”
“He…” she trailed off, her brows pinched in a frown. “He had dark hair.”
“And?”
“Dark eyes.”
“That’s it?” Noelle blinked.
“It’s been years,” Lucero admitted, ashamed. “Although I try to hang on to the image of him, I find that it slips a little one day at a time.”
“I’m sorry,” Noelle put her arm across Lucero’s shoulders.
She was in a similar situation as she found that the more time passed, the more Blue’s face blurred in her mind. And she was terrified of it. No matter how much she tried to hold onto his face as she’d last seen him, sometimes she wondered if she remembered him right—if her memory wasn’t fading with each passing day until at one point she wouldn’t recognize him even if he stood in front of her.
No!
That would never happen!
Noelle refused to believe that she could evernotrecognize him. Even if her sight faded. Even if she lost all her senses, she knew she would be able to tell him apart from a crowd.
“He must have a family by now,” Lucero continued. “I know there’s no point in hanging onto the idea of him, but…”
