Page 21 of Caught Up In You (Indigo Royal Resort)
“Sure!” Josef said, handing his bag of gear to his sister. “Hey, Mr. Cruz, would you like to come to dinner? Lena, what’s for dinner?”
Cullen wasn’t sure he heard the little guy correctly, until he looked over at Leona who had frozen in her tracks. He could tell by her body language that she was trying not to snap at her brother over asking such a question.
“I’m sure Mr. Cruz has plans, buddy,” she started. “And that’s the kind of thing you need to run by Mom first.”
“It was her idea! She said if I wanted to invite him for dinner, I could!” he answered her. Turning back toward Cullen
, he looked at him with a hopeful gleam in his eye. “So, do you…want to come to dinner? Please don’t say you have plans!”
Cullen looked back up at Leona. He knew she hated the idea of him joining her family at their home, but that really only made him want to do it more. After all, he didn’t want to be rude and not accept such a gracious invitation.
“I don’t have plans, actually, and I would love to join you all,” he answered Josef, giving him another high five. He could feel Leona’s glare on him, but he didn’t care in the least. Standing back up, he turned to her and said, “Shall we just take the town car?”
Chapter Ten
The excitement that flashed in Josef’s eyes when Cullen suggested that he could ride in the town car with him if he’d like was explosive. It was almost as if someone had told him he’d signed a professional contract and was going to be able to play football for a living. For a moment, Leona thought that he might actually bust out of his own skin from all the adrenaline pumping through his body over the offer. She hated to be the bad guy in the situation, but there was no way she was letting Josef get into a car with that man. It was bad enough he had her brother’s undivided attention all day long this week—she didn’t need him trying to pry information out of him on the jaunt home.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea, Jo-bro,” she said. “Let Mr. Cruz have some time to decompress from the day.”
“It’s not a problem,” Cullen said, looking right at her, talking over Josef. “I offered.”
“Yeah, he offered!” Josef mimicked.
“That is very kind of you, Mr. Cruz, but if it’s all the same, I would prefer to drive him home myself,” she said very politely, hoping it masked her annoyance. She would not let him bully her here in front of her brother. It was one thing to tout his power at the resort where he was a paying guest, but it was another entirely to act that way here and now.
“But Lena!” Josef interjected, obviously embarrassed that she was acting this way in front of his hero.
“It’s okay, Josef, if that is what your sister wants, then that is the way we shall do it,” he said, crouching down until he was about eye level with him. “What did we talk about the other morning? You always respect those in authority, right? Whether it’s parents or coaches or teachers…”
“Even if you don’t agree with them,” Josef finished the mantra. He slumped his shoulders slightly in resignation, but only for a second.
Damn it, Leona thought. Cullen is good at this shit…
She’d been so wrapped up in her own battle with him—and in not wanting Josef to get caught up in the spell that was Cruz’s presence—that she hadn’t taken even a moment to consider that maybe he’d actually be a good influence on him. All she had known was that this was a “skills clinic,” whatever exactly that was supposed to be. When she’d heard him talk about what they had been doing, it was all running and kicking the ball and playing the game. There hadn’t been any mention of learning about respect and all that. Although now that she thought about it, learning about teamwork and respect were all things that were probably required of a good player, but they were still not things she had come to associate with Cullen Cruz.
Ushering her brother into the car, she motioned for Cruz to follow her to La Hacienda. Trying to remain calm as she drove, hoping that Josef didn’t see how nervous she was, she wished she could call Drea and word vomit right about now. Cullen Cruz was coming to dinner at her house. He was about to meet her parents and see how her family lived, and that filled her with more anxiety than she knew how to deal with.
It wasn’t that she was embarrassed by her family or their house. Quite the opposite. She was proud, damn proud even, to be a Filipe. Her parents were good people who had raised her to be a strong, smart, independent woman. Prior to his stroke, her father had been the best mechanic on the island, with the ability to fix just about anything, and her mother had been with the police department as a dispatcher for more than twenty-five years now. It was a well-known fact that many of the local law enforcement officers considered Anna to be like another mother to them and that the department would be lost without her. Her parents had worked very hard to provide for Leona while she was growing up, and still did so for Josef.
But Leona still knew what her family looked like to people like Cullen Cruz. To all the exceptionally wealthy people who showed up for a couple of weeks a year to their vacation homes and acted like they owned the island. They looked “underprivileged” and “needy,” rather than simply a working-class family. It didn’t matter how they viewed themselves or that the only reason money was important to them was to keep the roof over their heads and food on the table. Now Cruz would have another thing to look down on her for.
What upset her the most is not that he would look down at her—although that idea didn’t exactly sit well with her—but that she worried it would have an effect on how he viewed Josef. Of course he probably already knew that Josef was at the camp on a scholarship. For all she knew, he was only coming to dinner to see just how poor they were.
She pulled into the drive, parking behind her mom’s sedan, not worrying about blocking her in since she’d leave to go back to the resort before her mom’s next shift in the morning. The town car pulled up against the curb and Cullen hopped out, saying something to his driver about calling him when he was ready to head back to the Indigo Royal. Josef bounded toward Cullen, his excitement returning and his annoyance with Leona seemingly forgotten now that they were here.
“Welcome to La Hacienda!” Josef said as Cullen strode closer to them.
He looked around and took in the place slowly, making the hairs on her arms stand up. He looked so damn sexy standing there, all lean muscle and raw strength. The athletic shorts he was wearing hung low on his hips and hit just above his knees, hiding those tree-trunk thighs but showing off the incredible curves of his calves. His T-shirt was stretched across his pecs and his shirtsleeves clung to his upper arms like they were holding on for dear life. She was pretty sure she would not have to try very hard to rip that shirt from his body, but she couldn’t allow herself to be thinking such things right now. Her focus belonged on surviving this meal.
“Your house has a name?” Cullen asked Josef. “That’s pretty slick.”
“Lena named it!”
Cullen turned to look at her, as if she would be able to dispense some wisdom or fantastical story as to where the name came from. “I thought it was funny when I was younger. It just means home in Spanish,” she offered.
“I am aware. I’m fluent,” he replied.
“Seriously?” she said, amazed.
