She looked back at Sanchez and discovered an odd expression on his face. It took her a moment to place it. Then, when she did, she couldn’t help but laugh a second time. Softly, again, but not sadly.
They’d been speaking in English, as Ruy always preferred. He said that was to improve his command of the language. Sharon knew that for a little lie. Sanchez, an old seducer, would take any advantage he could get. Better to fumble a bit with the intended seducee’s language—perhaps she’d find the accent charming—than to place oneself in the dreaded position of an instructor.
It was the word relationship that had confused him, she realized. How delightful. She’d have to remember that. Confusing Ruy Sanchez was an accomplishment. Not like climbing Everest, maybe, but perhaps up there with climbing the Matterhorn.
He understood the word itself, of course. But Europeans of this day and age—the Spanish, for a certainty—simply did not think of people in terms of their “relationship.” The word was at once too broad and too individual. They thought in terms of specific relationships. Class, status, age, whatever. Behind that American concept lay centuries of technical and industrial advance and the social looseness that came with it. A world where custom and tradition had lost its firm grip needed that individual substitute. In the world of Ruy Sanchez, it fit about as well as a square peg in a round hole.
A glimmer of understanding came to her, then. Just a glimmer.
“What do you want from me, Ruy?” Sharon looked down at herself. Once again, she slapped her thighs. “Besides this, I mean? Or is there anything else?”
Even covered by the rich material of her gown, the sound was distinctly meaty. Not surprising—the thighs strained at the fabric just as the breasts did. No one would ever mistake Sharon Nichols for a Vogue model. Still, it was the sound of firm flesh, not flab.
She looked back up at Sanchez, challenging him with her dark eyes. “What do you want? Or is it impossible for you to even think that straightforwardly? Do you always need to fit yourself—and me—into categories? Like ‘conquest’?”
She looked over at a settee nearby. “I swear, I’m almost—not quite—ready to march over there and spread my legs just so you can get it out of your system.” She brought her gaze back to him. “We’ve got a term for that, by the way. Americans, I mean. It’s called a ‘mercy fuck.’ But it’s usually something bestowed on boys.”
To her surprise, he did not bridle at all under the implied insult. True, he stroked his mustachios; but, with Ruy Sanchez, that was a given. As well ask a rooster not to crow at dawn; or a tomcat not to prowl at night.
When he took the fingers away, there was a smile there. A sad one, she thought.
“Do not ask, Dona Sharon. The answer is . . . impossible.” His square shoulders seemed to get squarer still. “I shall no longer attempt my—ah—courtesies. Although—” His eyes flicked to the settee. “—should you reconsider at any point . . .”
The humor, Sharon realized, was simply a cover for sadness. Why?
The realization came to her almost like the proverbial thunderclap. It was all she could do not to clap her hand over her mouth in shock and surprise.
He wants to PROPOSE? He’s old enough to be my father! That was quite literally true—Ruy Sanchez and James Nichols were almost exactly the same age. An old goat is one thing, but . . .
Another realization came to her, then. Not like a bolt from the blue, but welling up from underneath. There had always been something about Ruy Sanchez that had struck an odd chord with her. She’d called it “twinkly,” she remembered. For the first time, she understood what it was.
Ruy Sanchez reminded Sharon of her father. The two men were so different in so many ways that she’d never thought of it before. But now . . .
She rose and went to stand by the window. Yes. Two men born and raised in a society’s underbelly who had clawed their way out of it. Yet, beneath the smoothly polished exterior, always retained something of that primal origin. Including the sheer testosterone ferocity that served some men in such places as their shield and sword.