without once again succumbing to lust.
More succumbing wasn’t wise. His purpose in Malibu wasn’t to start an affair with a woman whose paycheck he signed.
Well, that Patrick signed.
On Joaquin’s behalf.
Still…it was a degree of separation, right?
Joaquin glanced over his shoulder to see efficient Sara gathering their mugs and the cookies. If she left, he’d miss her cooking. But fending for himself had been his way of life long before now. After their mother went away, their father would throw packets of cheese and crackers and handfuls of candy bars into the room he shared with Felipe as if they were bones for the family dogs.
They’d made do on processed foods and each other’s companionship.
Until Felipe had found other people and developed other needs.
Shit. He hoped Renata wasn’t on his doorstep to report another “sighting.”
How many times would he have to remind her his brother was dead? That Joaquin had held Felipe in his arms as he took his last breath?
With his hand on the front door, he paused, gathering his resolve and his good sense. Okay. Fine. He’d get rid of Renata, and then he’d tell Sara she should resign.
The tempting butler would be out of his life.
His world would be woman-free. And uncomplicated by personal relationships—the kind he was careful to avoid because he wasn’t any good at them.
It was a relief, really, to think of the serenity he’d find without the beautiful—and God yes, so tempting—blonde moving about the house.
But first he must dispense with the unexpected visitor.
With that thought foremost in his brain, he turned the knob and flung open the door only to stare at the figure revealed by the porch light.
The petite, dark-haired person squealed and then launched herself into his arms.
Joaquin’s hands automatically came up to pat the air around her as she squeezed. Then she bounced away and smiled up at him. “Surprise, Big Brother! It’s me! I’ve come to stay!”
Fifteen minutes later he found Sara in one of the guest rooms, in the process of slipping a pink dress onto a hanger. She hung it beside a dozen others on the closet pole. He glanced at the near-full suitcase open on a luggage rack beside the bed.
“Where’s Essie? And how many clothes did she bring?”
“She went to the kitchen to find a snack. I offered to make her one, but she said she wanted to help herself. As to how many clothes…” Sara shrugged. “I haven’t yet unzipped the third suitcase.”
Groaning, Joaquin crossed to the easy chair in the corner of the room. He dropped into it and forked both hands through his hair. “I don’t know what happened.”
But of course he knew what happened. He’d been unable to say no to that face. Staring down at his half-sister, he’d been staggered by how much she looked like Felipe. A feminine version, of course, but his brother’s features were clearly stamped on Essie. It had been a couple of years since he’d seen her last, and then she’d been a chubby-cheeked imp with a mouthful of braces and spiky bangs that she’d cut herself, to Renata’s dismay. Now, near grown-up, Essie had the lustrous, long dark hair of their mother and the fine bones and warm brown eyes of Felipe.
He’d had a non-threatening, pretty kind of handsomeness, an almost androgynous look that served him well to his slavering audience of young girls.
Though Joaquin wasn’t dissimilar from his brother in appearance, his extra height and bigger build—even though he was two years younger—had always made him feel less like his brother’s doppelganger and more like his brother’s bodyguard.
Joaquin had failed in that role, too.
“I checked with our mother,” he told Sara now. “She’s fine with it since the girlfriend’s family Essie was supposed to be staying with had to fly out to visit an ailing grandma in Colorado. Renata and Martin are at their Mexican villa for the next three weeks, and Essie swears she’ll ‘expire of ennui’ if made to go there.”
“Your sister didn’t want to check with you first before driving over?” The butler efficiently clipped a pair of jeans onto another hanger. “What if you hadn’t been home?”
“A lack of impulse control clearly runs in our family,” he said drily.
Sara shot him a quick look over her shoulder, giving him a view of the flush high on her cheekbones. “And how’d she get the passcode?”
“We’re a sneaky lot as well,” he replied, shrugging. “Though for years Renata has kept all the family passwords and key codes in plain sight on