It had been her ass, frankly.
Curvy, tight, and encased in form-fitting sweatpants. There was probably some fancy name for pants like that so women wouldn’t feel like they were dressing down too much. But they were really just sexy sweatpants. Her rich, dark hair was gathered back in a half-braid, half-ponytail thing and fell to just beneath her shoulder blades, a thick rope of brown silk that reminded him of the rich soil of the family vineyard.
But it was the ass that had him tracking her with his eyes as she rolled up to the front desk. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to bounce quarters off of it, but he could certainly imagine what it would look like to have this woman bending over to take his cock from behind. That was a damned more attractive vision than flinging loose change at her butt.
There was no time to strike up a conversation and see what she was about, whether she’d be interested in a quick fling or a few casual dates every few months when he traveled here from his home in Napa Valley to oversee operations at his grandparents’ vineyard. She might not even be Chilean. Probably not, in fact, if she was staying at the hotel.
But the set of her shoulders was tight even under the jacket she’d been wearing, as if she were under some intense stress.
Join the club.
He watched her roll an unbelievably tiny suitcase forward. It was June in Chile. Wintertime. If she was a tourist, it seemed like she was roughing it—which was hard to imagine about someone checking into the Ritz.
He thought he saw her check him out, but since she was standing to his side, he couldn’t tell for sure. And then they were both at the counter, anyway, and he’d had to focus on getting a room. It was too far to drive back to the vineyard for the night, and he had to get out on tomorrow’s flight or he’d miss the big shipment into their warehouse in California. With Papi having just retired and Rosa, Hilda, and Delia all heavily pregnant at the same time, he was pulling double duty in the family business to make sure everything got done right.
His friends often teased him for having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but even though Komarov Enterprises had already boasted several vineyards and a bustling import business, he worked like a dog to maintain and grow what they’d had. His great-grandparents had started with a small vineyard when they’d first left Russia to settle in Chile, and each successive generation had added their own stamp. Even though he’d been born and raised in California, he took pride in his Chilean heritage and worked hard to maintain ties here. Bruno had added an investment firm headquartered here in Santiago to the family portfolio and was now looking at acquiring in the technology and renewable energy space in both countries.
But all that hard work meant he’d never had time to settle down, get married, like Mami was constantly urging him to do.
He was feeling ready now, though. At thirty-seven years old, it was time. He wanted someone to spend the rest of his life with. Definitely not one of the stunningly gorgeous, but incredibly vacuous women with whom he’d usually had relationships.
In that respect, anyway—the stunningly gorgeous one—the woman in sweatpants was definitely his type. Once he’d seen her face, he’d even be willing to bet that her career was modeling. Wide, plump, pink lips gave her a pouty look and complemented the light brown color of her eyes. Her nose was small and slightly upturned, and even though her skin was pale, she had no freckles as far as he could tell.
Definitely a model. A laid-back, sweatpants-wearing, tight-ass-flaunting model. He’d wanted to fuck her into the next decade.
Until they’d started fighting over the last remaining hotel room, and he realized just how wrong he was about his assumptions. She was not a delicate flower. Nor, in fact, like anything he’d ever encountered. She’d jinxed him, for God’s sake. Did little kids even do that anymore? And then she’d battled him, gave as good as she got, and when he’d finally trumped her with his loyalty card, she had accepted it with grace and goodwill.
He had been ashamed of himself, both for his assumptions about her and his reaction to the surprise of realizing that, just because she was beautiful didn’t mean she had an empty personality like so many of the women he dated. Because that’s what his nasty behavior had been about—he was bristling at the unexpected. This woman was a knockout, had a sharp mind and a sharp tongue, but she accepted defeat with poise.