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Tempest in a teacup.
Santiago James-Ibarra looked down at Katrin, peacefully asleep in his guest bedroom. The old saying he’d picked up while living in Canada had never been more appropriately applied because when this tempest named Katherine Alesander-Casey woke up and pieced together how she had arrived in this bed, there would be holy hell to pay.
This could turn into a very messy international incident if not handled correctly.
Madarikatua, Santiago cursed in his native Basque tongue. He did not need this big headache.
Asleep, Katrin looked innocent, completely incapable of unleashing the maelstrom of righteous indignation he knew would come while she beat a path to the closest Canadian Consulate General if he let her. She was a court-appointed child supervisor, taken across several international lines with her young charge, his nephew in tow. This situation was the exact reason she was appointed supervisor in the first place, to prevent his brother Malik from taking Tariq away from his mother—the very thing he’d just done.
Santiago gritted his back teeth and pulled out his satellite cell phone. He was now an accomplice, thanks to his brother. He tapped in a coded series of numbers to disrupt his villa’s Wi-Fi service. The last thing he needed was for Katrin to wake up, panic, and send out some kind of social media distress call before he could reason with her. He tapped out a quick text message to Sandra Deskes, his lead administrator and head of his PR damage-control team.
Progress?
Sandra: All arranged.
Ona. Good. He closed his phone, completely confident in Sandra’s diplomatic abilities. Raymond Sinclair, the Canadian consular general, was now tucked away, vacationing with his mistress at one of Santiago’s exclusive luxury villas in Ibiza. The arrogant peacock had been hounding him for an invite for the past year. Now, he had it, and Santiago leverage, should things—he glanced at Katrin—go badly. Sinclair would not want his wife knowing about this impromptu "business trip." Not that Ibarra would ever betray another man's personal business, but—he grimaced—he had his own family’s honor to protect right now.
He turned as Dora, his main housekeeper, entered the room with a stack of towels and linens. He nodded dismissively toward the soft leather armchair beside the bed but did not miss the woman's curious look of derision before she set down the towels and silently left, leaving an air of judgment in her wake. Katrin’s presence in his home had raised every eyebrow of his staff, not to mention how much it piqued his family’s curiosity. They were all mad with fiendish interest in who he had actually not only brought home but put into this family heirloom bed.
He would have to deal with them. Soon. They were already descending on him like a pack of cackling teenage girls. Their hysteria rivalled the paparazzi. He’d already had to beat back his uncles, the lot of them worse than the women with their questions, assumptions, and annoyingly nosy comments. Admittedly, he’d never brought a woman home to his villa, let alone into this bed in the guestroom, so he couldn’t exactly blame their inquisitiveness. However, it was not reason enough to behave like jackals lying in wait for him to show up at their txoko, their traditional men’s club and gastronomic society, so they could interrogate him instead of cooking and eating and singing as tradition dictated.
Santiago stood and went to the door in time to see his father’s oldest sister stride through the courtyard, her sharp eyes darting up the stairs toward him. She smirked as he tracked her accusing walk through the garden and down the stone stairs that led to the kitchen.
The balance of aunts and cousins were not so easy to stare down. They were gathering in the kitchens, their excited chatter easily heard as far as the southern vineyards.
Damn Malik and his ill-fated scheme.
Normally, Santiago came home alone, ready to relax and settle back into the old Basque ways he loved. His country was timeless, traditional and slow, three things he treasured and missed when away. Over the past year, he’d only been back a handful of times, and as a rule, he entertained his chosen women away from his family, in his penthouse atop Ibarra Plaza Hotel in Donostia. He would arrive at his flagship hotel and unwind with an experienced lover who not only knew how to relax him but could emotionally and publically detach from any media interest while she enjoyed his wealth and luxury at the top of the world in his penthouse. Her presence gave the tabloids their fill of senseless gossip and speculation about him while he escaped, alone, to his family villa in peace, his lover the perfect, evasive distraction for the paparazzi.
He never brought women here as a rule into the thick of his Ibarra clan.
Santiago’s eyes trailed over Katrin’s quiet form nestled within his most expensive Egyptian cotton sheets. Dora and the other women had twisted her thick mass of black curly hair into a braid that lay over her bare shoulder and rested atop the covers. He didn’t know where they got the white, sleeveless nightgown she wore, but the deep V-neck cut and fitted bodice ended all of his wondering of how full her breasts really were beneath the armor-like shirts she normally wore. Now, they were laid out in temptation, along with her hourglass figure, outlined in the sheets, that was made for a man’s eyes and hands, her hips perfect for bearing children.
A year ago, when she arrived at Malik’s mansion, dressed in a business suit stiff enough to stand on its own, he saw right through her court-appointed watchdog persona to the sensuous woman she tried to conceal. He wanted to tell her that nothing could hide genetics or her physical nature, that no matter how conservatively she dressed, her naturally curved body was made to fit a man’s hands. Why fight it?
He looked down when she moved beneath the sheets as if sensing his thoughts. His body flared in reaction. He should be used to this, his body’s reflexive response to her, but it still irritated him. So much so that he’d given up in defeat; battling his own physical reaction and compulsion toward her was pointless, like a levee trying to contain a Category 5 hurricane. Now, he just controlled and managed it, forcing his mind to respite elsewhere until the waves of lust for her body passed. Normally it worked, when he was thousands of miles away from there, on security duty in his brother’s home in another country. However, right now, she was in his house, in this hand-carved beds, half-naked and vulnerable. He shifted against the tension growing in his pants.
"I see she stirs, Xanti."
Santiago turned to see Dr. Segura enter the guest room. It had been a while since he'd heard anyone use his familiar nickname. He nodded to the doctor and stepped back to give the older man space as he leaned over Katrin with a stethoscope.
"Her color is better. Some sun when she wakes will be necessary. But rest, too. She is exhausted." Segura lifted his hand from her forehead. "Provide plenty of fluids. Water. Fresh fruit. It will also help to flush any remains of the sedative."
Santiago cut his eyes to the doctor, silently quieting the other man.
Segura stilled. "You said she does not speak Euskara."
They both watched her eyelids flutter. "She doesn’t." Santiago took out his phone and paced back and forth while he called his cousin, instructing him to bring his nephew up to the room. "But I suspect she comprehends more than she lets on."
Both men watched as Katherine opened her eyes and blinked at the ceiling for a long moment before she bolted up and curled into the pillows, her eyes alive and filled with confused anger. She glared at Segura and jammed a trembling finger toward the older man’s chest. "Don’t touch me."
Santiago lifted the corner of his mouth and turned off his phone. The tempest has woken.
*****
