Sun In The South

Two

Vasquez's house was in a towering streamlined building, centralized where the action in the metropolitan was.

In one of the giant boxed-windows out of the countless ones on this building was the erected frame of the lawyer—hands folded over her chest, and she was looking straight ahead, into the night, the deep ends of this part of the city. Beautiful wasn't the word. It had to be Electrifying.

Golden lights stood out, Malls stood tall, even hotels dominated houses in number. There was a lot to San Agustin than her neighborhood, Primavera. It was sensibly populated. And she was enjoying the view of the elite circumambulating it.

As Vasquez's voice became more audible, Yvonne's senses came back to the condo apartment. Vasquez was talking to his daughter's nanny. And Yvonne didn't want to pay attention to it, because the said daughter wasn't even in the house. She'd overheard the Mayor asking the nanny why his ex-wife didn't call to tell him she'd be taking their daughter away for the weekend.

All that was of no importance to her, she was training herself to be the nicest person that had ever walked the face of the earth when Esteban would finally realize she'd been waiting for him patiently. He hadn't said a word to her. The ride here wasn't awkward, it was just unexpectedly quiet, and getting to realize his house was even quieter, she felt more at ease.

"I'm really sorry, lawyer." The polished voice echoed in her ears. Lawyer? As Yvonne turned to see him, she could only huff in silent amusement, thinking of when he'd finally be a gentleman and ask for her name.

Vasquez dropped his jacket on a rack and began to come up to her. On his way, he stopped to pick a drink and drinking glasses for two. Yvonne was nervous and watching his every move closely. "What's your favorite?" He got to her and asked, passing her one of the glasses in his light grip.

Her eyes went from the Jameson Spirit bottle—as he filled her glass—to his eyes in a split second. "Jameson."

A bloody lie. Did she even know the peculiar taste? She loved beer a lot, but wouldn't have dared to say that to a love interest.

"You're fascinating, Christ. Can I get the name? I need to be hit by some more fascinating things."

She giggled at his choice of words. Resourceful was the term for it. "Yvonne Perez," she said gingerly.

Nodding in full fascination, Vasquez went straight to pouring drink for himself, gesticulating right after to the two barstools near a round table just close by. "So, Yvonne, how many cases have you won?"

His question gave her an insight on how this meeting could play out. Work talk, politics talk, family talk and then s*x.

She smiled as she lowered her drink from her lips and followed after him. "The more realistic question should be how many cases I have not won, because then I'd be able to count that."

Before Esteban plopped on the stool, he corked his brows, assessing her confidence that was borderline arrogance. "You don't say."

"I do say."

They both laughed.

In no time, they were comfortably seated and staring each other in the eyes with deliberate affinity as questions raided their minds. This time, Yvonne went first. "How old is your daughter?"

"Sixteen and notorious."

She giggled. "Sounds like every teenager. I bet you were worse at your age, Mayor." She said the mayor with an undertone of flattery.

"You're more daunting than I thought when I first saw you at the event." His eyes ran down her face and stopped on her cleavage before he brought them back to her eyes. "Who did you come for?"

The question was an innocent one, but because Yvonne had ulterior motives, she could only see it as an attack. She cleared her throat, awkwardness washing through her. "I came for a client. And I came with a colleague."

"Must be the guy I saw you talking to. The former or the latter?"

She knew it was Javier. As a matter of fact, that was the only person she knew there. "The latter. His name is Javier Torres."

"What kind of lawyers are you both?"

"CDL," she gestured at herself with pride and then continued, "Javier is a Contract attorney."

Esteban gave a satisfactory nod. "I'm highly intrigued."

Was he, or it was simply convenient to say?

He downed his drink in a few seconds as his eyes hovered all over the body of his subject. As he was noting her simple yet elegant glory, her charisma, he was going over what exactly he wanted to do with her, a lawyer. He found her attractive, no doubt. But messing around with her - even for a little while this one time - was a dead-end street he couldn't afford to get lost in.

"Yvonne," he mentioned and then took a few seconds to summon the rest of his words. "Are you the kind of woman to get locked on a man, or the type that will pick a prey, predate him and then move on?"

She was liking his use of words. The man was definitely a reader, he didn't speak like the average politician, no. They all tried conversed with sense, even when they sounded like idiots. It made her smile that this one sounded like a guru and was a guru.

In fact, everything about him was making her regret that her sole purpose of this drama was to use him for as long as she could. She wished her feelings could be more genuine than she was forcing it. Not that her heart was tied to another, she just wasn't in love with the Mayor, and she was entirely certain he wanted to use her too, else, why would he have asked for her intention?

This thought made her lean forward, inclining her body in a way that she was almost resting on his shoulder and her lips were near his left ear. "I am a woman who loves to dance to the tunes of the men I pick until I'm bored of their music, Esteban." Then she sat upright again. She didn't wait until he was done processing her words, though a wry smile was already on his face as she looked around and said, "I didn't know Mayors stayed in condo apartments?"

Esteban chuckled. "Let's say I'm not the kind of mayor you've heard about."

"Hm." She tsk'd. "You're modest?"

"Nah." He leaned in, similar to the way that she did earlier. Lowering his tone to a mere whisper, he said, "I'm an extremely extravagant man who loves the facade of simplicity."

"You're confusing."

"That's the thing," Esteban maintained his low tone. "The more you think about it, the less it makes sense to you."

Yvonne moved away from him, terror and desire passing over her face in equal proportions. Esteban got up and followed her with slow steps until her back was against the counter.

"I don't bite." He smirked. "But I do something worse, I—"

The ringing phone cut him off and pulled him away from the tension-filled position he'd put the lawyer. His eyes went over the living room until he found the vibrating phone on the table. "It's yours. Could be your colleague, you should answer it."

Javier wouldn't call her now, no, he would want, more than anything, for her to be deep in Vasquez's mattress at the moment and not taking his calls. It couldn't be Lawson, not a chance. Maybe it was Charissa. It had to be her.

Yvonne paced to the phone and picked it up. It indeed was her daughter. "Hello, baby. How are you?" She started with a seductive look on her face and then indicated she needed somewhere private to talk.

Vasquez pointed at the sliding door leading to the balcony. It was private enough. As she stepped away, he rolled his eyes but didn't take them off her back view.

Every gesture she made, such as like leaning over the balustrade, walking the short length of the balcony and gesticulating in that political way, carried Vasquez on.

At this moment, he had ideas of what he would love to do to Yvonne, and having s*x with her wasn't exactly top-three on the list. He was a bit glad he hadn't taken it far on the counter few seconds ago. He didn't even know her last name.

Okay, she'd told him, but he couldn't remember, which was equally bad.

He went through these thoughts looking at her hair being carried carelessly by the wind. Regarding her now without the thought of obscene things, he saw more than a sexy, blond woman with an upright and bold physique. He saw a caring woman.

It wasn't strange for him to feel this way, because as a matter of fact, Monica Ramon, his ex wife, only recently took from him the ability to idolize a woman the way he normally did. He now saw Monica of all people in a derogatory way and thought it'd be impossible for him to ever see women differently. Being married for ten years and waking up to the realization that a woman could literally blindfold a man for that long was the bombshell.

It was too soon to say Yvonne seemed different, but he felt that way. He liked the way she talked with unnecessary arrogance, and, at the same time, liked that she saw him as terror and still desired him.

Vasquez didn't even know when he got up and moved towards the closed door. Now, he could hear her voice. It was low but audible, she was telling the person on the other end of the phone to be careful with whoever the said person was.

He listened more and watched even more for a couple more minutes until Yvonne said an I love you, hung up, took a deep breath and turned around.

Their eyes met yet Esteban didn't waver. It was definitely awkward for her to ask him for privacy and for him to still show up near the place he'd offered her, but Esteban didn't look like he cared being tagged a creep at this point.

He stared and stared. Thank goodness looks couldn't literally move a person or he'd have thrown Yvonne over the balcony.

Her submissive stance took over as soon as she slid the door open to come back in. She didn't ask anything, even though she deep down wanted to know why he'd come to listen to her conversation and what he heard.

"I'll honestly never get women," Vasquez eventually uttered after few moments of stillness. Frankly, it was too soon to think she was different from Monica. "You follow a man to his house only to come have a long talk with another..."

Yvonne let the usual confusion she'd been experiencing here invade her more.

"...you f**k me in your head and an hour later, you're calling another man baby," he sniggered. "Isn't that the most interesting thing I've learned about you tonight."

"Another man?" Yvonne almost laughed this time around. "That was my daughter."

Vasquez's expression didn't change, not at all. It was actually hard to get a broken man— that'd been left with cracks from his ex-wife—to believe plain truth. Because Yvonne didn't know much about he and his ex-wife's dilemma, she was upset about his approach.

Seriously? He didn't even know her and was already having insecurity problems?

"You have a daughter?" Vasquez nodded, more certain that women were catastrophic. "Inte-rest-ing."

This was the moment Yvonne understood the problem. She'd told him her name, her profession and even talked about her colleague, but she'd forgotten to mention the most important thing in her life. The reason she couldn't afford to lose the company, go broke and homeless. The reason she couldn't let her nudes be on the media. The reason she was here.

"You don't even know if I like mothers."

Yvonne opened her mouth and could not make anything out of her words except a stutter.

"It's fine," Vasquez said after noticing her new sangfroid was agitation. "Not everyone likes to be open about themselves even when they're curious about others—"

"It's not like that."

Vasquez balled up fists were turning white. "I'll take it however I want since you didn't deem it necessary to explain."

Swooshing, Yvonne took a spin and sat at the edge of the couch. All that was a way of buying time and she was very fast enough to think of something, because to be frank, she was starting to look undesirable to the mayor. "I love being a mother, I love my daughter, but I've faced judgment too many times to lie that the first thing that comes to my head when I meet a person is to talk about how much I love being a mother."

"That's not a good enough reason. You're a lawyer"—he eyed her deliberately—"and a very success one, from the looks of things. If the story stung back then, it shouldn't right now because you proved everyone wrong. I don't get it."

Her voice shook as she said, "The more you think about it, the less it make sense to you."

Vasquez felt that. He let a mordant smile linger on his lips as he nodded in recognition. "Okay." He finally gave up and walked back to his barstool. "On that note, I think we should call it a night."

Pride didn't let Yvonne object. Fear of losing it all couldn't let her accept it. She was unmovable and ultimately stuck on her small spot. "A night?" She asked with a hint of rejection. "A night?"

"Yes, Yvonne." He shot back sternly but calmly. "I honestly had a nice time, but I desire honesty in women, even if I'd never see them again. It's just important to me if I know who you are in and out, connect with you before I can decide what I want from you."

"Before you can sleep with me...just say the words." She shrugged her now heavy shoulders.

Vasquez scoffed in quite awe. "I tell you to meet me in my car and you ultimately think I want to sleep with you?" He laughed sarcastically. "Like I said before, I'm not one of the mayors you must have heard about."

"So why then did you bring me here? To sing kumbaya?"

Ignoring the sardonic comment, Vasquez dropped the glass in his hand, swiveled and faced her. "Are you a hussy?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Right, then you shouldn't think a man inviting you to his apartment is simply because he wants to sleep with you." His eyes glanced over the wall clock. "I'm supposed to be at an event right now...my event. But I decided to come here with you because I needed you to tell me why you wanted my attention so bad."

He got up and narrowed their distance with a few strides. "It wasn't my call, yunno? Now I'll put the question to you, was it your intention that we have s*x? Was that your reason for being there, so I'll notice a classy woman demanding my attention and have a quickie with her in my car." He squinted his eyes, dreading the answer to his next remark. "Please, tell me you're not that type of woman, Yvonne."

Why did it feel like he was actually begging her? Like he didn't want her to turn out to be a hussie. What did he care? She should have been the one having such fears.

"Say something—"

"No. No. I'm not a hussie." She rushed through her words. "And I was at the event with my colleague, really. Seeing you in person was like the icing on a cake, not that I had any intention to f**k you in my head." She giggled. "It just happened. But please, erase the notion that I called you. Last time I checked, I wasn't even looking at you when you came down to me."

A few seconds went by before Vasquez spoke up. "We could stay here all night to argue who called who, when there's only one thing I want to know, and it's what exactly you want?"

Yvonne's face fell, as well as her head as she gazed at the floor in defeat. What was this question of all questions that could fit in this moment? "I don't know."

"Okay." Then his tone took a different note. "Well, I want to f**k you. Tonight." He held a palm up for her to be calm because her agitation grew in that moment. "Maybe tomorrow night too, and the night after that. Then take you out to dinner. And f**k you afterward..." he kept making a list of nasty things he'd like to do with her. "Only if motherhood and work wouldn't restrict you from such a reckless and frivolous way of living."

Yvonne silently gasped. This was the moment; all she'd planned for tonight was staring her in the damn face, and waiting for her to grab it, but the confusion running in her was greater than desire.

Peeling her eyes off his darkening ones, she took a step away from him. "I'll think about that," she said with discipline and an overload of decency. "Doesn't sound like a bad idea, but there's a lot to consider. I'm a mother, you're a father. We're both single and reckless, people of repute. I don't want to get caught in a warp and woof. It'll be too hard to detangle."

She was playing the hard to get card now that she knew the man's intentions. There was no harm in keeping the pace of the chase at its barest maximum. The more he'd prove that he wanted her, the more she'd distance herself from him.

This would be the pace for the next week and then he'd start using money to lure her if every other thing was proving futile. Until then, she needed to keep these legs closed, because they'd be the only thing she can offer when the time would come.

"It's late, I should probably get home to my daughter," Yvonne finally said, throwing Vasquez completely off guard.

His lips moved soundlessly in slight vexatiousness, then he said without protest, "alright then, let me have you driven home."