Kimber Chin

“I’m not some damn pack mule,” Hagen Rayner groused at his petite wife.

Marie kept her smile as bland as possible. Si, the huge man was correct. He looked like a pack mule. He was weighed down with a car seat and a diaper bag and had two bottles in one big hand. He also brayed like one, continuously from the moment they entered the hotel lobby. The little woman, his green eyed wife, ignored him as he stomped around. The sweet little baby in her arms had her complete attention.

The men behind the couple had Marie’s. More specifically, one man. The big man with the gloriously thick eyebrows. She had never noticed eyebrows before but his had captivated her. That and the way his muscles rippled as he moved.

“Will you need rooms also?” she asked the men.

“Si. Uno.” The other man, some would say the more classically handsome of the two, held up a finger.

“Oh.” All happiness in Marie’s ample bosom was crushed out. One room. She looked between them, her cheeks heating. There was a couple in the village like that. “We only have double beds left.” The Rayners had reserved the last king sized bed.

Thick eyebrows slammed down. “I sleep at the compound.” His Spanish was flavored with a Belizean accent. He wasn’t from around here though. She would have noticed.

“And why aren’t we sleeping at the damn compound?” Mr. Rayner grumbled. “He is supposedly your damn friend.” His wife quietly murmured something, tilting her chin up defiantly.

The compound. It wasn’t much now, a collection of shacks erected in the jungle, but Marie had heard the owner, a Mr. Santos, planned to build a huge casa there. It would be a fortress. Because Mr. Santos had many, many enemies. “You are new.” She thought she knew all his employees.

“I am no one.”

His blunt reply communicated she was to mind her own business. Marie gave him most flirtatious smile. She did love a mystery. “I am no fool. I know you are someone.” She leaned forward, across the counter, toward him, well aware that her blouse pulled tight against her chest. It was her best asset, she had been told.

Dark eyes swept downwards and then snapped back up again. “You know nothing. You are like a bebe, playing with things you do not understand.”

A bebe? She straightened, flipping her long curls over her shoulder. “You are a man. What is there to understand?”

Read Part 2 January 13th