The Saint's Devilish Deal Read Free

for laid back Puerto Vallartans, he mused. In the height of summer restaurants were packed, the resorts filled to capacity, and taxis careened madly around the city with impatient tourists.
    What he wouldn’t give for an empty beach and a few open waves to assuage his guilt over the Napa fiasco. Not just Napa, he admitted. He should have called Esme when it was clear Constance wouldn’t. That decision didn’t sit well. Yes, he wanted the villa. He deserved it. Casa Constance was once Casa Magdalena, named for and belonging to his mother. She solid it Constance for a few pesos so that his father, Eduardo, wouldn’t develop the pristine coastal area to within an inch of its life. Soon after Magdalena had collapsed from a nervous breakdown. Magdalena lost her soul the day she sold the villa. So, yeah, he wanted it back. Not for his father. For himself.
    For his mother, Magdalena.
      But not giving Esme the chance to say goodbye to her only family wasn’t in his plan. Now he was well and truly stuck here because if they didn’t make this work Eduardo would buy it. He would win, after all these years. Santiago couldn’t let that happen. Not while his mother was still trapped by the man.
    He was getting soft. He shouldn’t care about any of this. Not about the mother who chose an abusive man over her children. Not Esme and the Napa fiasco. Certainly not the kindness Constance had shown him since that rogue wave nearly drowned him in Tahiti. He should never have come here to recover, but he had and now he was drowning in guilt just as he’d nearly drowned in the Pacific last year.
    He pushed his left shoulder down and toward his ribs, feeling the awkward pull that the doctors assured him would one day simply disappear. Santiago wasn’t so sure of that. Esme was right. He didn’t want to be in Vallarta, didn’t want to be smothered in the pain of the past—but because he’d made one mistake he couldn’t leave.
    Santiago reached his baby, a midnight blue Porsche, put the car in gear and roared out of the garage into Puerto Vallarta’s crazy summer traffic. In minutes he was at the marina, his gaze settled on Isla Magdalena. Eduardo’s private estate on the Yelapan peninsula. He could just make out the red tile roof of his mother’s prison.
    He left the car to lean against the sturdy wood of the pier, watching the house he’d escaped so often as a child. Was she inside, staring aimlessly outside as she had done then? Or in bed with a migraine, thanks to some careless word from his father? Not that it mattered. Whatever she was doing, Magdalena was a psychological prisoner of Eduardo Cruz. Living in his home, playing the perfect wife. Unable to leave because after years of mental torture she was more afraid of the outside world than the husband who belittled and abused her.
    Now, when Santiago was ready to put Puerto Vallarta in his rear view mirror, Esme was here in a buttoned up suit, with her deep brown hair scraped back in a severe twist. With her innocent eyes pleading with him to leave and stay at the same moment. If he left, Eduardo would win. If he stayed he would hurt Esme all over again.
    Either way, Santiago lost.
    He smiled as he remembered the anger in Esme’s green eyes when she refused to share the villa with him. Dios, but he had missed her fire over the past four years. Eduardo would chew her innocent heart up and serve up a processed Casa Constance as an after dinner aperitif.
    He should be angry with her, not just for disbelieving him. Anger wouldn't come. Instead a flicker of excitement licked through his blood. He could shout from Yelapa the truth about his break from the family business and Esme wouldn't believe him, but he could show her. If he played his cards right, maybe he could make up for the sins of his past.
    Santiago returned to the Porsche, and turned toward the villa. He could hear Eduardo’s voice in his head, pounding in the lesson that more was always better and never enough. He