Santiago's Convenient Fiancée. Annie O'Neil

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      He could’ve chewed the words up and spat them out in the gutter. Ridiculous space fillers. One roadside rescue and a margarita’s worth of time with this woman and it was easy enough to ascertain she wasn’t a thing like the pata sucia he’d grown up with. Dedicated clubbers who regularly saw dawn from the wrong end of the day. There was no lip liner or gloss that could improve on this woman’s mouth, let alone any of her other features. A natural beauty.

      “What makes you say Miami suits me?” she finally asked. “You think I look like a snowbird, do you?”

      “Hardly.” He laughed appreciatively. “I think we can safely say I wasn’t likening you to a geriatric. However long you’ve been here in Miami, it seems to have rubbed off on you. In a nice way,” he emphasized, smiling as her eyes skittered off again in a vain attempt to find her long-gone friend.

      He couldn’t help himself. As much as the crowded bar would allow, he took advantage of her divided attention to take a luxurious head-to-toe scan of her tomboyish ensemble. Blond hair gone nearly white with the sun. Half pixie, half mermaid, he was guessing by the bikini tan lines ribboning across her collarbones. Sun-kissed shoulders. A bit freckled. Her body-skimming T-backed tank top swept along the curve of her waist. That was all he could make out as the rest of her curves were mostly hidden by a baggy overalls dress thingy. Something a girl who wasn’t on the lookout for a boyfriend would wear. Even so, the shortish skirt showed off a pair of athletic legs. Flip-flops rather than heels. No surprise there. He had his own stash of flip-flops. They were de rigueur in Miami. Her toenails were painted an unforgiving jet black. Interesting. Her natural coloring would’ve suited pastels to a T. It was almost as if she was fighting her own, very feminine, genetic makeup.

      “Stop your gawking, would you?” she muttered, flip-flopped feet shifting uncomfortably as the crowd jostled and moved around them. “I’m not so good at taking all these American compliments.”

      He threw back his head and laughed. “That was an American compliment, was it? What would an Irish person say?”

      “Oh...” She ran a finger along her full bottom lip as she thought and for the second time that night Santi felt envious. It was too easy to imagine using his own finger taking that journey, lips descending on hers to explore and taste, salt, lime—Focus. F-O-C-U-S.

      “They probably wouldn’t say anything nice at all,” she said with a huge grin. “Just something dispirited about the weather. ‘The rain’s not rotted your boots yet, then?’ Or, ‘What on God’s green earth have you done, moving to Ireland when you’ve got the whole of America and the sunshine and the crunchy peanut butter and heaven knows what else when all we’ve got is too much poetry about getting in the peat before the rains set in and not a single pot of gold at the end of one of blessed rainbow...’”

      Her eyes caught with his. The sharp shock of connection hit him again. A connection Saoirse broke so quickly he wondered for an instant if he’d imagined it. Her eyes were so alive, Santi felt he could practically see the memories of her homeland hit her one by one until...hmm...a not-so-nice memory clouded the rest of the good ones out. Pity. She all but lit up from within when she smiled.

      “You know—” he tried to give her an out “—they say one of the true tests of becoming a local is surviving a hurricane. Have you been here long enough to go through a season?” He cringed at his own lack of finesse. This was a massive flunk-out in the charm-the-flip-flops-off-the-lady school of making a good impression. He near enough checked his T-shirt for a pocket guard and a row of tidily stashed writing utensils.

      “Arrived in the middle of one,” she shot back triumphantly, blissfully unaware of his internal fistfight. “The plane nearly had to be diverted.”

      “But you obviously made it through the storm.”

      “Something like that.”

      Another cloud of emotion colored the pure sea blue of her eyes.

      And...three strikes...you’re out!

      Her tone said what her eyes had already told him. They were done now.

      She raised her glass with a thanks-for-the-drink lift of the chin. No words necessary for that universal gesture.

      See you later, pal. Better luck next time.

      And then she disappeared into the thick of the crowd.

      Santi looked down at his own drink, considered taking it down in one, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to reek of booze the first time he spoke to his brothers in... he looked at his watch to tot up the years that had passed since he’d last spoken to them, proof his brain was all but addled by his run-in with the Irish Rose of Miami Beach.

      Right. He put the unfinished drink down on the bar. It was time to do this thing.

      He went out to the street and pulled on his half helmet. The one that let in the wind and the scent of the sea as he rode along the causeways to the Keys. It was his go-to journey when he needed to think and he’d been to the Keys and back more times than you could shake a stick since he’d returned to the States four months ago. He’d flown into Boston for no good reason at all. Putting off the inevitable, most likely. If he was going to do this, he wanted to do it right. Fixing fifteen years of messed-up family history wasn’t going to happen overnight. He looked up at the evening sky as if it held the answer to his unspoken question. What made reconnecting with family so hard?

      He swung his leg over his bike, the strong thrust of his foot bringing the Beast to life with a satisfying roar of the engine. The Beast and he had steadily worked their way down the coast, picking up paramedic shifts here and there as he went. He could’ve walked straight into any ER he chose after all the frontline doctoring conflict zone after conflict zone had demanded of him. But “downgrading” to a paramedic had fit right. He wanted the raw immediacy being first on the scene required. A penance for everything he hadn’t set right when he should’ve.

      What kind of man abandoned his kid brother when he needed him the most? Left his older brothers in the lurch when they’d been doing the best they could with a bad situation?

      A boy who’d been loaded with too much responsibility? Or a plain old coward?

      Time to see if a decade-plus of being a Marine had made an actual man out of him.

      He shifted gears again and headed toward Little Heliconia. The neighborhood he’d been born and raised in held more of his demons than anywhere else in the world. And he’d seen some hellholes in his time.

      Santi reached the familiar corner, leather boots connecting with the ground as he debated whether or not to make the turn. A horn sounded behind him and he fought the urge to kickstand his bike and give the impatient driver a little lesson in common courtesy. Waiting two seconds wasn’t going to kill anyone. His heart caught for a moment.

      At least, not in this scenario.

      He sucked in a deep breath, flicked on his blinker and took his bike into a low dip, knee stopping just shy of the asphalt as he rounded the corner.

      The lights were on in the back alleyway, but he couldn’t see anyone. He turned off the ignition a couple of doors down from the one he knew like the back of his hand, pulled off his helmet and let the night sounds settle around him. The chirrup of tree frogs and steady hum of the crickets kept cadence with the wash and СКАЧАТЬ