Jackie Braun - The Billionaire's Bride

“Viuda,” Marnie said finally, pressing a hand to her heart as she uttered the Spanish word for widow.

“Ah,” the woman replied, brown eyes melting with sympathy. It was the last thing Marnie wanted right now. She had enough of that in Chance Harbor. After Hal’s death, it was as if her name had changed from Marnie LaRue to Marnie Poor Thing.

“I need…” She flipped through pages. “Tranquilidad.”

“Si, si,” the woman bobbed her head.

Half an hour later, Marnie was back in her car and trying to follow the crude map the woman’s husband had drawn for her. His English had been only slightly better than Marnie’s Spanish, which obviously wasn’t saying much. But he’d assured her that the small house of his abuela, which Marnie thought meant grandmother, was quiet and secluded and overlooked the Pacific.

It sounded perfect. The homeowner had moved in with family. She was too old to live alone any longer, the man had told Marnie. As the road opened up and her beachfront accommodations for the extended weekend came into view, Marnie thought she understood why.

She no longer felt guilty about the ridiculously low sum she’d paid to rent the place. It was little more than a shack built just back from the large boulders that dotted the beach, with rooms haphazardly tacked on at various angles to the original structure. A hundred yards down the beach, she spied another home. This one was a little more reputable-looking, but any hope she’d held out that it might be the place was dashed when she spied the black Jeep Wrangler parked outside.

It was only four days, she reminded herself. Then she took in the incredible view and decided the panoramic of the Pacific more than made up for any shortcomings in her accommodations. What did it matter where she slept or took her meals as long as she got to wake up to that?

Marnie had always loved the water. Even after Hal’s drowning death in Lake Superior, she’d continued to find being near it peaceful, restorative—essential even. Something about its vast size and rhythm soothed her, even on days when the lake’s surface was puckered with waves.

The ocean, so much bigger than even the greatest of the Great Lakes, had that soothing rhythm as well. She parked the car and walked to where the water churned white at shore. Seabirds swooped and called overhead, and even though it was only about seventy degrees, the air was heavy and seemed warmer thanks to a salty humidity that had her licking her lips to see if she could taste it. She could.

A storm was coming. Farther out, dark clouds were gathering, roiling in hues of purple and gray on the horizon. She should unpack her belongings. At the very least, she should unload the groceries she’d purchased at the market in town. But she tucked the keys in the front pocket of her shorts, tugged off her sandals and walked to where her feet flirted with the surf.

Now, here she was.

La Playa de la Pisada. Footprint Beach. That was the name of the small village she’d stumbled across. As Marnie added her own footprints to the sand, she knew coming here had been a good idea.

An hour later, as the first fat drops of rain turned into a torrent, she revised her opinion. The roof leaked, big time. The electricity was iffy, shutting off with a threatening sizzle with every gust of wind. So far it kept sputtering back on a few moments later, but she wasn’t sure how long her luck would hold. All of this was small potatoes compared to the roommate she’d discovered living in the primitive bathroom. Marnie had shrieked with unholy abandon when she’d spied the small scaly critter and then slammed the door closed. It could stay there. She didn’t need a bathroom.

¿Donde esta el baño?

The phrase came back to her, as did the memory of the man who’d uttered it. What was his story? she wondered, telling herself it was simple curiosity that had her recalling his Brad Pitt jaw line and impossibly blue eyes. He wasn’t a local, at least not originally. American like her and maybe, like her, he’d come seeking peace and quiet.

The electricity sizzled off again, but at least the rain was letting up some. Marnie decided she could do without the quiet part just now. She hopped over mud puddles on the way to her car and cranked up the volume on the stereo. The humble bungalow didn’t have a radio let alone a compact disk player.

As Marvin Gaye sang of sexual healing, Marnie went back inside to unpack her belongings. The knock on the open door a few minutes later startled her as she stacked a few canned goods in the cupboard. When she turned, the man from the café stood just outside in the drizzle. While his lips had twitched with laughter at their last meeting, this time they were drawn into a tight line.

“Just who in the hell are you?” he asked abruptly, stepping over the threshold.

The electricity came back on then, the overhead light in the kitchen flickering to life as if sparked by his mere presence.

At five-ten, Marnie wasn’t what anyone would classify as petite. She was in good enough shape to have tone to her muscles, but she was no body builder. What she was at this moment, she realized as fear pooled in the pit of her stomach, was a lone female in a foreign country with no telephone service and far enough from civilization that no one would hear her scream. So, she picked up the first object she could find—one of her sandals—and, summoning up some bravado, brandished it in the man’s handsome face.

“I suggest you stay away from me.”

He blinked in surprise, raising a hand to shove damp sandy hair back from his eyes.

“You’re threatening me with a shoe?”

“It’s got a heel and I’m not afraid to use it,” she bluffed in a deadly serious tone even though she knew there was nothing lethal about the sandal’s cork wedge.

“Who are you?” he asked again, this time seeming more baffled than angry.

“A woman who doesn’t want to be messed with, amigo.” Fear took a distant second to irritation as she stepped forward, poked a finger into the brick wall of his chest and challenged, “Who are you?”

“I think you know.”

“J.T.,” Marnie replied, repeating the initials the man gave her during their last encounter.

“Yes, J.T.,” he drawled. “Now, who sent you?”

“Sent me?”

“Whom do you work for?”

“I work for myself,” Marnie replied.

It was true, sort of. She was a waitress and sometimes manager at her family’s tavern, and, as her family could attest, no one told her what to do.

But I could be doing more, a little voice hummed. She lifted her chin and ignored it.

“So, you’re a freelancer.”

Blinking slowly, she regarded the man. She had no clue what he was blathering on about, but she lowered the shoe. If he’d planned to assault her, surely he would have done so by now without playing twenty questions first.

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” she asked in exasperation.

Before he could answer, the critter in the bathroom thumped against the door.

“What the devil?”

J.T. stepped around Marnie in the small kitchen and headed toward the equally miniscule adjoining room that probably served as the home’s main gathering place, although at the moment it had no furnishings. He pointed to the closed door at the far end of the room.

“What do you have in there?”

“No idea. I opened the bathroom door and there it was. I wasn’t going to evict it.”

Marnie smiled at J.T., ready to forgive him for his rudeness now that she had determined he was quite harmless: annoying, arrogant and appallingly short on manners, but harmless nonetheless.

She was still smiling when she asked, “Maybe you could, um, convince it to go outside?”