Miles (The Casanova Club Book 5) Read online

  Miles

  Casanova Club #5

  Ali Parker

  BrixBaxter Publishing

  Contents

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  Description

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

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  About the Author

  Copyright

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  Description

  Miles Stewart.

  Handsome. Sweet. And incredibly talented behind a camera.

  He’s the fourth Casanova Bachelor on my parade of hot and wealthy suitors and I’m going to spend all of my time with him on a tropical island in the South Pacific.

  Any girl would be lucky to be in my shoes. Or rather, my sandals.

  The guilt I feel at not being able to truly appreciate my surroundings or my luck for being with such a good man for the month of April is crippling. And try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about one thing:

  The rugged cowboy boot wearing hunk that follows me in my dreams and my waking hours.

  Wyatt brewer is still heavy on my heart.

  But day by day Miles is breaking down my halls and leading me toward healing. His gentle touch is exactly what I need in the aftermath of heartbreak, fire, and smoke, and there is no better place to open myself up again than in this tropical paradise.

  But things are never that easy.

  Miles needs me when he suffers a devastating loss and I need to keep myself together for him. He deserves at least that.

  My heart has already been torn in all directions.

  What’s one more tear?

  Introduction

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  Chapter 1

  Miles

  Sweat ran down the back of my neck to soak into the linen of my white, short-sleeved button up as I flipped through the role of pictures on my digital camera.

  It had been a long, sweltering, hot afternoon in Cuba’s capital. I’d left my resort half an hour before dawn to make sure I was in the city with plenty of time to capture some incredible shots of the sun cresting over the colonial architecture in hues of baby blues, pinks, yellows, and bright greens. By the time the sunlight hit the streets, the city was coming to life, and neon-colored cars were rolling by, leaving streaks of color in the frames of some of my shots.

  I didn’t mind.

  It captured the jovial atmosphere of Havana in an honest way, and if my boss back at National Geographic didn’t like it, he could stick it where the sun don’t shine and send a different photographer in my place to capture the more mundane stills.

  I doubted he would cut me loose.

  My work exceeded most, if not all, of the other photographers at National Geographic by a landslide. That was why I was lucky enough to get put up at the best hotels and resorts whenever I traveled for work, which was usually two times per month.

  I dragged the back of my hand across my upper lip to wipe away beads of sweat and looked up when the bartender paused at my end of the bar and nodded at my empty beer glass.

  “Otra cerveza, señor?”

  I wasn’t fluent in Spanish by any means, but I knew enough to put two and two together and conclude he had asked if I wanted another beer.

  “Sí.” I nodded.

  The bartender, a stout man with a beer belly, black hair, and a thick and perfectly trimmed mustache, went about pouring me another beer from the tap and slid it across the oak bar toward me.

  I lifted it in thanks. “Gracias.”

  The beer trickled down my throat and temporarily cooled me from the inside out.

  Havana was hot as hell in April. By the time eleven in the morning rolled around and I was halfway through my shoot, temperatures had already exceeded eighty-five degrees, and I had to stop in a convenience store to buy two giant bottles of water to get me through the rest of the day.

  I’d earned these couple of beers.

  Over the course of the hour, which brought the time to eight o’clock in the evening, locals began streaming in and filling the place up. Tables were piled high with local dishes like empanadas, pastelitos, boliche, and cocido de garbanzos—chickpea stew. Since I arrived in Havana last week, the latter had become my favorite meal. If ordered from the right place, there was just the right amount of spice to get you sweating and help cool you off in the heat.

  While several people had beers, many ordered sodas, which seemed to be one of the most popular cold beverages for locals. Over the course of the day, almost everyone seemed to be drinking coffee around the clock.

  By the time I finished my second beer, I was gearing up to head back to the resort. The evening had cooled off some, and my sweat had dried to my skin, leaving it feeling tight and tacky, and I ached for a cold shower back at the hotel. My hair was thick with grit, and the complimentary tea tree mini bottles of shampoo sitting on the ledge of the shower were calling my name.

  But so was a pretty, dark-haired girl sitting at a table near the entrance to the patio.

  Her back was toward me, but she’d been casting looks my way for at least fifteen minutes, and the other women she was with kept giggling and averting their gaze whenever I caught them looking at me.

  I stood out like a sore thumb. The attention wasn’t a surprise.

  I often received responses like this from women in my travels.

  And from men, too.

  My blond hair, coupled with my blue eyes, separated me from the herd in places like Havana. Well, in a lot of places actually. People here mostly had dark hair and skin with deep brown eyes and softer rounder features, and I was fair with sharp, square features. My height made me a target for attention as well and had I stood up along with everyone else in the place; I’d probably be at least a head taller than everyone else here.

  I was about to slide off my barstool and slip out of the bar when music started playing. The lights dimmed, casting most of the place in shadow until the twinkle lights strewn along the thatched ceiling winked to life and cast the place in a warm, soft glow.

  The girl at the table got to her feet.

  Damn, she was beautiful.

  Her curvy hips swayed from side to side as she crossed the bar and came toward me. Her eyes, lined with thick black lashes, gazed steadily at me, and she didn’t stop until she was about a foot away.

  “Hola,” she said. Her voice was sweeter than honey, and I liked how her full lips formed the word.

  “Hola,” I said, trying to sound more impressive with my language skills than I was.

  I couldn’t tell if she bought it or not. Her lips curled upward in a coy little smile, and she dropped her chin shyly. “Te gustaría bailar?”

  Damn it. Now I was lost.

  I slid my hands into the pockets of my khaki pants and chuckled. “Sorry, miss. No hablo español.”

  T
he girl swept her mane of wavy black hair over her shoulder and then held out her hand. “Would you like to dance?”

  Ah. That’s what she’d asked me. Made sense.

  Other people were getting to their feet and abandoning their tables in favor of the open space in the middle of the bar that I hadn’t even realized doubled as a dance floor in the evenings.

  Her brown eyes, so dark and deep they were almost black, flicked toward the dance floor and then back to me. “I can show you, American.”

  The people on the floor were swinging their hips and moving in rhythm to the fast-paced Latin music that swelled up inside the place. Barely a soul remained at a table, and I found myself grinning and rubbing the back of my neck. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. I’m a bit clumsy.”

  “American,” she said, like that explained everything.

  I laughed. “Yes. American.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Born and raised in Traverse City. It’s a small town in Michigan. But now I live in Washington, DC for work.”

  “You are a photographer?” she asked. Her accent was thick, and I started picking up on it the more we spoke.

  I nodded.

  The beautiful woman nodded at my camera on my hip. “May I see?”

  “Sure,” I said, unclipping the camera from my belt, turning it on, and angling in to put my shoulder to hers so I could show her the pictures. Call me paranoid, but I wasn’t going to make the mistake of handing my camera over to a local. I’d made that mistake only one time, and it ended with me losing a seven-thousand-dollar camera and all the shots I’d taken for my assignment out in Prague.

  I was still butthurt about it.

  I opened my gallery and started flicking through the pictures.

  Her eyes lit up, and she pressed a finger to the screen. “Es la Habana.” She grinned, looking up at me. Her cheeks were rosy.

  “Yes. They’re all of Havana. That’s why I’m here. To take pictures of your city.”

  “Hermoso,” she whispered.

  Beautiful.

  I lifted the camera and nodded at her. “Can I?”

  She blinked.

  “Can I take your picture?” I clarified.

  She lit up and nodded and then became suddenly anxious as she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothed out the knee-length skirt she was wearing, and fanned her cheeks.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head and taking her hand to lightly lead it away from her face. “As you are. You’re perfect.”

  She turned a magnificent shade of pink.

  I lifted the camera and stared through the viewfinder. I centered her in the shot. Behind her was the quiet city street, and on the other side were rows of multicolored buildings. A beautiful backdrop for a beautiful girl.

  I snapped the shot and then lowered the camera to show her.

  She giggled and shook her head.

  “You don’t like it?” I asked.

  She covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Don’t be shy,” I told her. “You look beautiful. Like a sunset.”

  “A sunset?” she asked, gazing up at me.

  “Yes,” I said, strapping my camera back on my hip, a look I knew was far from sexy, and then took her hand and led her onto the dance floor. “Like a sunset. Warm and bright and full of mystery. What is your name?”

  “Benita.”

  “Blessed.”

  She smiled. “You know Cuban names?”

  “I know some,” I said. “But that won’t help me learn how to dance. Show me, Benita.”

  Benita moved like a goddess. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She had the body for this. As she danced, her top, a tight black tank with thin straps, inched up her lean stomach, showing flat, tight, tanned skin. Her skirt swished around her legs as the music sped up and she and the other locals swung in unison. She took my hand and led me through the steps, and within ten or so minutes, I was starting to get the hang of it, and all the locals were getting a kick out of my clumsy big feet and my complete inability to move my hips with any sort of grace.

  I couldn’t think of a better way to end my time in Havana.

  It had been a good week, but it had passed all too quickly, and what was waiting for me back home was causing a bit of stress.

  April was my month to spend with Piper James. The girl who had been on my mind for the last three months and who was solely responsible for my last few nights of restless sleep.

  There was no way to know what to expect out of this month.

  I’d never spent one-on-one time like this with one woman before. I was a traveler for work. I was used to the quick connections, like the one I was presently making with Benita, and I was even more used to getting up the following morning, getting on a plane, and leaving that behind.

  No strings attached. No emotions. No worries.

  Clean and simple.

  But this was a different ballgame entirely.

  What if Piper and I hated each other?

  What was worse, what if we fell for each other?

  When I threw my name in the hat to be one of the Casanova Bachelors, I never expected to be chosen, let alone make it to the final twelve and be one of the men who was in the running to win a stranger’s heart. But here I was. Next up on the roster and feeling terribly unprepared for the time ahead.

  I didn’t have time for a relationship. I liked my life the way it was. Fast-paced and unpredictable.

  Benita swirled around me in a billowing rush of colorful skirts. I caught her hand and spun her into me, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her to me. She rolled her hips, rubbing her ass against my groin, and I swept her hair away from her neck to rest my chin there.

  She smelled like pineapples and coconut.

  Yes. This was much more my speed.

  I spun Benita away, and her joyful laughter rose up toward the twinkling lights above our heads.

  Chapter 2

  Piper

  My flight from Austin landed in JFK Airport after midnight. My exhaustion wasn’t just due to the time, but due to the copious amount of tears I’d shed over the duration of the flight.

  The flight attendants had taken pity on me and brought me extra blankets and pillows and a little package of tissues. Their kindness was appreciated, but I was so embarrassed to be crying in front of so many people.

  I missed Wyatt.

  Leaving him behind was, thus far, the hardest thing I had to do since joining the Casanova Club, and all I wanted to do was get back on a plane and fly to Austin so I could walk up his gravel drive to the farmhouse and meet him upstairs, where he’d be sleeping in the bedroom.

  Or he’d be awake, staring at the ceiling, hurting just as badly as I was.

  I hung my head as I trudged through the airport to go to baggage claim. I had to wait about fifteen minutes before the carousel spat out the first few pieces of luggage, which began their slow laps around the belt. By one in the morning, I had my bag, and I was making my way outside to catch a cab back to my and Janie’s apartment.

  All I wanted was a cup of tea, a BLT sandwich, and my cozy fleece pajamas.

  There was nothing more comforting than that.

  But first I had to endure the half-hour ride with a stranger through the city.

  “Piper!”

  I turned and looked down the sidewalk and saw nobody.

  “Piper!”

  I spun the other way.

  And cutting through the throngs of people, toting their luggage, looking just as defeated as me, came Janie herself.

  Her arms were stretched out in front of her as she rushed toward me. I almost cried out of joy when she threw herself into me and gathered me up in a big, familiar, tight hug.

  I buried my face in her shoulder and hugged her back. “It’s so good to see you,” I said.

  She gave me another squeeze before pulling away and cupping my cheeks in her hands. Janie knew me better than anyone, and I knew I had seconds before she figured out how
broken I felt. She stroked my cheeks with her thumbs. “Let’s get you home, okay?”

  I nodded but didn’t speak. My throat was tight, and I was fighting a compulsive tremble of my bottom lip, and I knew if I crumbled now and gave into my sadness, I wouldn’t be able to put myself back together.

  Janie took one of my bags and slung it over her shoulder. Then she took my hand in hers and pulled me along the sidewalk behind her.

  Like the rule breaker she was, she’d parked in front of the pickup and drop-off section of the terminal. Taxi cabs honked, and other people in their cars flipped us the bird as she popped her trunk and loaded my luggage in.

  I was immune to their disapproval. My mind was still on him.

  On his barn. Or lack of a barn. It was nothing but a pile of charred rubble sitting on his property now.

  Janie slammed her trunk. “Get in, Pipes. Let’s get out of here before I have to beat one of these clowns for their lack of patience.”

  We got in her car. She started the engine and pulled out into traffic, earning herself a couple of more honks from strangers. Janie was unflustered by them, and she drove away from the airport.

  Neither of us said anything for the first five or so minutes. Then she put her hand on my knee. “It’s so good to see you, babe. This has felt like the longest month without you out of them all so far.”