Sara asked, as if sensing he was about to go down for the count.
“No.” Maybe he could slide into unconsciousness and stay there until Mick arrived at the end of the month. “I might be out for a while,” he warned the butler. “Don’t worry about me.”
She hovered near the door. “But that’s my job, sir. I’m here to be at your service.”
He put up a hand. “Joaquin. Not ‘sir.’”
Her reluctance was palpable, but then she inclined her head. “As you wish. I’m here to be at your service, Joaquin.”
That slight Brit edge to her accent made his name sound…different. “Thank you, Sara.”
“Have a good rest.” She started to move over the threshold.
Some unnamed impulse opened his mouth for him. “Wait…” he said, then hesitated. Oh, what the hell? “Would you mind taking off your cap? I feel like I should be calling you by Hat Brim instead of your name.”
Her already perfect posture seemed to go more erect. A moment passed. Then, slowly, she reached up to pull her cap from her head. The hand came down slowly too, the khaki canvas shielding her face for another few seconds. In that small interval of time, Joaquin’s belly tightened, just as it did in the last anticipatory moment before a woman dropped her clothes to reveal herself naked to him for the first time.
Her arm dropped to her side, cap clutched in her fingers.
In a self-conscious move, her other hand fluffed her short, platinum-blond hair, lifting the longer layers at her crown.
While he stared at the sweet face below it.
It was wide at the forehead, eyes, and cheekbones, the kitten-shape tapering to a small chin with a shallow cleft. The mouth was small too, but rosy and full. Kissable.
And those blue eyes, as blue as summer sky or a peacock feather or the marble his big brother had once found in the dirt and given to Joaquin after polishing it on his T-shirt.
The blue of trust, loyalty, peace.
All the things he sometimes thought he didn’t deserve and believed he’d never find.
Joaquin turned away from those eyes. He heard the soft click of the door as she closed it behind her.
But once unclothed and between the sheets he couldn’t rid himself of Sara’s image so easily. His tired body had found new vigor from somewhere and sent it all to his cock. It throbbed and ached, as hard as it had ever been, even though his libido had seemed as depleted as the rest of him when he’d landed at LAX that afternoon.
Shit.
He ran the heel of his hand down the length of it, feeling an echo of pleasure along his spine. But he couldn’t drum up the inclination or additional energy to take himself in hand.
Something told him he wouldn’t find it satisfying anyhow.
Chapter 2
The smell of bacon woke him.
He shifted in the bed, disoriented by his bare skin rubbing against soft cotton. Sleeping naked was reserved for sleeping with lovers. The rest of the time he wore pajama bottoms—silk, one of the pairs given to him by his mother for each birthday, Christmas, and Easter.
His hand groped at the space next to him, but he found no nubile female form or any residual warmth left by one.
But the bacon scent was unmistakable, so who was—
Sara. The butler.
Unless Patrick had hired him a fryer of bacon too.
Yawning so hard his jaw cracked, Joaquin pulled himself from the bed and searched through the dresser drawers—the ones he’d been too tired to paw through earlier for pajama bottoms. Once dressed in boxers, jeans, and a T-shirt, he padded, barefoot, in search of the source of that smell.
It had his belly gnawing on its own lining.
The hallway was shadowed, and his internal clock told him a few hours had passed. So it was…six-thirty, seven o’clock in the evening? Light up ahead drew him toward a downward staircase, and he paused at the top of it, struck hard by the view.
Wow.
He understood more of the house’s layout now. From that side door, he’d entered into what was actually the second story, with bedrooms and bathrooms and a den and media room that he’d spied through gaping doorways. The open gallery leading to the stairs told the rest of the story. Below him was the main living area of the house—that he suspected he would have seen first had he come through the front entry. It was a large, open-concept space—so large he couldn’t see all of it from here.
But he could see the view.
Windows