Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Yolanda

Twelve years ago

There’s one unsteady newbie in every yoga class. Just so happens my one is a six-foot-four, tanned, and toned twenty-something from the States. He’s also quite drunk.

Do I dare to put hands on him to correct his form? My palms tingle with the thought. This is what I get for initiating beach yoga mere steps from a resort bar.

To be fair, the bar is part of my family’s hotel in Puerto Rico—the one we’re desperately trying to revive after the hurricane.

What else is new?

If I had a dollar for every time La Vida Buena needed a dollar, I still wouldn’t have enough money to keep it afloat. Except, we have a chance now. A recent loan approval, along with some insurance money, could change everything. If we make the right choices.

Blond Guy falls out, kicking up sand as he catches himself by one hand. The dolphins on his board shorts frolic across his tightly muscled buttocks. Yes, I notice. It’s hard not to. Impossible really.

He heaves back up, flaring out his long arms, and nearly slapping one of the ten guests lined up on colorful yoga towels.

“Whoa. Sorry.” He grins winningly at her.

The woman’s return glare doesn’t seem very namaste. Her nose scrunches. Her disdainful gaze slides over Dolphin Board Shorts’ thickly muscled forearm and the earth-denting black barbell tattoo with Live, Love, Lift scrolled across it. Her forehead creases, as if she’s uncertain what this muscle head is doing in yoga.

In turn, he cocks his head to the side like he’s trying to figure her out.

Ay. This situation needs my help.

“Bueno, Señora Centeno. Good, Mrs. Centeno,” I tell her, automatically repeating the sentence in English. A practice my customer-oriented papi taught me long before I could even ride a bike. I quickly wipe my palms on my yoga shorts and make my move.

“Your form is shaky,” I tell Dolphin Board Shorts. Understatement. “Por favor, please, take a moment to rest in child’s pose.”

He stops his pathetic attempt at Warrior One and stares at me. “You’re beautiful.”

And you’re drunk. “Let me demonstrate.” I get down in the sand beside his yoga towel and demonstrate the resting pose, sitting on my calves and placing my forehead on the warm sand. After a second, I look back up.

Half his mouth quirks into a smile that is more than halfway to brilliant. This is a very good-looking drunk. “You’re putting me in timeout?”

I laugh, even though I really shouldn’t. Muchacho blindsided me with that humor. And with those ocean-blue eyes framed by lashes so long you’d think he’d glued them on. Pero, nothing glued on will survive the San Juan heat.

Standing, I dust sand off my shorts and try to exude inner power. Not easy. He’s about a foot taller. Which has me worried. The bigger they are the harder they fall… into someone else. This redwood could take out an entire village.

“It’s a resting pose, señor.” I gesture for him to try.

“Easton. Not sir. Sir is my dad.” He hiccups, wavers. Something vulnerable shifts into his eyes as a bone-deep sadness swims to the surface. “For now.”

Before I can process or question, he drops like a puppet whose strings were cut, thumping his sweat-soaked forehead on the mat with his arms by his feet, successfully completing a horribly misaligned child’s pose. Clumps of sand plaster his wide shoulders and white mesh tank top. It’s all I can do to keep my fingers from brushing the sand off of his otherwise perfect build.

“Ayudeme,” a student says. I turn to the women asking for help. She’s younger than everyone else on the beach, closer to my age, and dressed in a pink thong bikini. I guide her through vinyasa flow. When she gets the sequence, she smiles in gratitude. I smile back. I love this job, love teaching the joy of movement.

After giving instructions for chair pose sequence, I check on my down pupil. There’s a tear stain, still wet, that has traced a line down his cheek. My heart lurches. What was it he said about his father? For now?

Another participant falls out, landing in the sand. I move to her side, demonstrating a wider stance that might help her stay in the form.

The next fifteen minutes of the class passes without incident. Easton stays in child pose. His deep breaths indicate he’s fallen asleep, as does the fact that he doesn’t stir as I end the class.

“Gracias, thanks, for joining me today. Pero, but, remember tomorrow instead of yoga, we’ll be doing an exercise dance routine I invented called Bailarcise. My brother Mateo will be providing live drums.”

“Sí, voy.” Señora Lopez enthusiastically announces she’s going. Others chime in with the same eagerness. Mateo––with his jet-black hair, muscled physique, and blue eyes––has a huge following. He’s so different from me—I’m dramatically shorter, with a curvy body, brown eyes, and curly brown hair—that people think we’re lying when we say we’re twins.

I help a few people shake out their colorful fringed towels and roll them up before returning to Easton. He’s still down for the count. Squatting into the soft sand beside him, I attempt to rouse him.

Gently, I put a hand against his hot, muscular back. Boom. A burst of awareness explodes through my body like the recoil from a pressure bomb. I suck in a breath. Easton gasps and jerks up from a dead sleep. I tumble on my ass like I’ve been caught groping Sleeping Beauty.

Looking around, blinking, Easton yawns, almost regally.

It shouldn’t be possible for my face to grow hotter in the San Juan sun, but it does. I could fry an egg on my embarrassment.

Like a lion roused from his Savannah sleep, he stretches his majestic body, before shaking out his golden mane.

“Legs asleep.” He pounds a fist up and down muscular, golden-tan legs. His forehead has a pink patch from where it pressed onto the mat.

“That tends to happen when you fall asleep in child’s pose.”

“Ah, see, my bad. I didn’t read the warning label on this yoga practice.”

I laugh. That’s twice he’s taken me by surprise. “You’re kind of funny, Easton.”

The haze clears from his eyes and he full out stares at me. We share a look that seems to open me up from the inside. It pours heat and possibility into a belly suddenly awash in butterflies.

Ay. He’s handsome, funny, and interested in me. That doesn’t happen all too often. Sure, I get hit on. Usually from spring breakers mistaking me for a hook-up. But the kind of attention he’s showing me seems to go deeper than I want to screw you before I head home.

It’s like… he’s reaching out for something. I wonder what. And I don’t wonder. Nope. Nose to the grindstone. That’s how I do it. And yet…

“East,” a gorgeous, dark-skinned man calls from the edge of the bar’s patio, “time’s ticking. You ready for your next shot?”

Easton flinches. He waves at his friend. “Give me a sec, Stone.”

Ay. No. I stand before he has a chance to engage with me again. One thing I’m not interested in is a man who thinks getting wasted is a marathon sport.

“Wait.” He jumps to standing. A wave of sunscreen, bourbon, and man hits me right before he starts to tumble. My hand snaps out, grabbing him by a muscled forearm. He’s heavier than he looks. I plant my feet farther apart to keep my own balance. It’s like trying to hold up a flaming marble pillar. Thick, dense, and hot.

“Sorry,” he says. “Pins and needles are stitching a sweater in in my calf.”

Funny and clever. I’d walk away, let him fall, but he’s drinking at my family’s resort, and I’ve grown up with that ironclad mantra of treating guests like family. Or actually, better than familia. We don’t tolerate drunk and falling over. So says the eye roll my cousin Haydee sends me from where she’s serving drinks around the bar.

“I’m good.” He looks down at where my hand seems to have glued itself to his arm. His eyebrows go up. I pull back as quickly as if I’d set off an alarm. A corner of his sleepy mouth twitches before he holds out his hand and full out grins at me. The sun has less warmth. “I didn’t get your name. And I assume you don’t go by Beach Yoga Teacher.”

Warily, I press my palm to his. His enormous hand closes over mine, envelopes it in warmth, like a python swallowing a mouse.

“Yolanda Vasquez.” Sweat trickles down my hairline. Time to put some cool formality between us. “Teaching is only one of my many roles as owner of La Vida Buena, the hotel where you’re drinking.”

Technically, I’m a partial owner, and not even majority owner—that title goes to my uncle. But I’m not interested in exchanging histories, only shutting this flirtation down before I do something stupid. Stupider.

My fingers still firmly caught in his paw, I get the distinct impression he would consume all of me if I let him.

I slide my hand away. The action breaks some spell. He blurts, “I’m not….” He motions his hand, like the paddle of an oar. “Just drinking here, like you said. I’m staying here, in the Suite Presidencial.”

Ay. He’s in the most expensive room we have. Haydee’s idea to charge two-thousand dollars a night. Mierda. I’m glad the hotel is making money, but this means my cousin’s plan to turn the place into a rich kids’ spring break haven is working. Which would be good, if it didn’t go directly against the plans I’ve been proposing to my uncle for four years—turning the resort into a health and wellness destination.

“Muchísimas gracias, thank you very much, for choosing La Vida Buena. Let me know if there’s anything you need to make your stay more comfortable, Easton.”

“East. Call me East.”

Not giving him a chance to engage further, I smile and glide away. I’m not trying to be rude, but he’s the exact type of person I don’t want at the resort. Him paying so much to be here jeopardizes my job tonight––trying to convince my tío to put our newfound funds into a brighter vision for La Vida Buena.

Download First Five Chapters for FREE here:  https://BookHip.com/HRCDAWQ