by Stacy Gail
“Exactly.” His lips nuzzled into her disheveled hair. “That’s the point of communicating like that, sweetness. Honesty, sharing. Trust. You’ve got to trust your partner to really be open and say exactly what you mean. You get it now?”
“I get that hearing myself say all those things made me tingle in all the right places.”
“Good.” The hand at her ass trailed lightly over the curve of her cheek, drawing random patterns with the tips of his fingers, as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her, even now. “My next lesson, Oral 201, is going to be about what I’d like for you to do to me, and telling you how it feels when you do it. Think you can handle it?”
Damn it, there went the tingling again. “When can we begin?”
At that, Steele burst out laughing.
Chapter Nineteen
“At least you didn’t get banned from the car wash for lewd behavior. That’s something.”
Essie sent Carla a desert-dry look via the mirror in her miniscule bathroom, into which she, Carla and Mooch the cat were all crammed. A week earlier, Mooch had become her de facto pet when Thor abruptly moved out of the building, leaving a note behind for the super that explained he was leaving the cat “to the chick downstairs.”
In just one peace-filled, no-drumming week, Mooch had become a different animal. He’d become social and chatty, and sought snuggles every few minutes from her. His alarmingly skinny body was at last starting to fill out, and he was no longer losing clumps of fur or hiding in dark corners.
Amazing, how the removal of stress could make the quality of life skyrocket.
“I can’t believe you’re still talking about that.” Essie fastened a pair of glittery topaz and gold chandelier earrings to her lobes, then checked her makeup. Somewhere along the way—probably around the time Steele had called her beautiful—she had made peace with her looks, to the point where even she had to admit she didn’t look half-bad. “That’s old news, my friend.”
“Yeah, but since Steele’s been away for a week on business, it’s the only interesting news around. Tell me again about when he spanked you.”
“Who knew that beneath that sweet mommy exterior or yours beat the heart of a perv?”
“Girlie, I’m not the one who hung her bra out on a side view mirror for all the world to see, so I’m obviously not the only perv in this bathroom.”
“Mooch, you gonna let her talk about you like that?” Essie addressed the cat sitting alertly on the lowered toilet seat, his still-scraggly tail curled neatly around his feet.
“Don’t put pressure on that sickly looking thing, he’ll go totally bald.” Carla’s voice might have dripped with disdain, but the hand she smoothed over Mooch’s head was gentle and got him purring at first contact. “At least tell me you and Steele have had fun sexting and sending each other naughty pictures while he’s been away.”
“I would, but I’ve got to get going.” Essie checked her watch before heading out of the bathroom. “Sunday night means dinner at the Santiago house and woe to whoever rolls in late. Come on, I’m kicking you out.”
“Some friend you are.” But Carla was smiling as Essie herded her toward the door. “At least tell me when your guy’s coming back. Me and my dirty mind need more stories of Essie and Steele’s Excellent Public Sex Adventures.”
Oy. “One, I don’t know. He just told me to look for him on the news during the U.N. summit in New York, and then he told me that if I did see him, he should be fired for doing a crappy job of being discreet security. And two, it’s not about having public sex, because we’re not exhibitionists. We just happen to be in public when the mood to have sex strikes. See the difference?”
“Nope, but whatever helps you get through the day works for me.” With a laugh, Carla waved as she opened her apartment door. “Tell Mama and Papa Santiago hi for me, and tell Twist and Nick I still think they’re hot.”
“I’m sure their wives will appreciate that just as much as Patrick would.” Shaking her head, Essie checked to make sure Mooch had food and water before securing her apartment, and in fifteen minutes she was driving along her parents’ quiet street in Humboldt Park. The residential street was lined with cars every Sunday, and not just because she and her two brothers and their respective families amassed for dinner. Humboldt Park had a large Puerto Rican population and, like the Santiagos, family and tradition were all-important in the close-knit community. That was something she had missed when she had been living in Austin. Texas had a hell of a lot going for it, but every big city was just that—big. The whole freaking state was much too vast and sprawling for neighborhoods like Humboldt Park to exist.
That homey sentimentality sank in nice and deep as she headed up the walkway to her parents’ sturdy, century-old Federal-style house, complete with its decorative widow’s walk and arched Palladian window over the front door set dead center in the house’s no-nonsense, rectangular front. As she approached, that front door suddenly flung open, and a tiny ball of energy with the trademark Santiago thick curling black hair appeared.
“Aunt Essie, Aunt Essie, you’re here!”
“My Maya, my Maya, you’re here too!” Their greeting was always the same, and with a laugh Essie braced herself for her four-year-old niece to launch herself into her arms. “Oof! You’re almost getting too big for me to catch, monkey. Will you still love me even when I can’t pick you up anymore?”
“I’ll always love you.” Maya planted a smacking kiss on her cheek before giving her a bright smile. “Fritzi was a bad girl today.”
“Oh, no.” Well aware that Maya blamed her toddler sister for everything under the sun, Essie tried to keep her face neutral as she headed inside, still carrying her niece. “What happened?”
“Fritzi pushed a chair over to the fridge during naptime ‘cause she wanted some grape juice, and she spilled it all inside the fridge ‘cause it was really heavy, and she made everything purple and soggy.”
“Fritzi did all that, huh?” Essie looked into the Santiago dark eyes and could only smile when her heart clenched with love. “She’s not yet two years old, but she did all that without any help? Maybe you were there just to make sure she didn’t fall off the chair and get hurt?”
Maya nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I was there, and I told her ‘no, no, no, Fritzi.’ But she was bad, and now there’s no more grape juice. ‘Cause of Fritzi.”
“You should have seen it. It looked like a purple tsunami had hit the inside of the fridge.” Her older brother Nick appeared in the entryway, taller and lighter than Twist and more wiry in build. Like all of Lynette Santiago’s children, Nick had been named after a Dickens character, Nicholas Nickleby. Since both Nick and Twist had gotten what Essie considered to be cool names from awesome characters, she would go to her grave feeling like she’d gotten the short end of the stick in the name department.
“A purple tsunami? Sounds destructive, in a delightfully colorful sort of way.” With one last cuddle, she handed Maya over to Nick, who settled his oldest comfortably on his hip. “This is getting serious. Something needs to be done about that wild child, Fritzi.”
“Something’s been done at our house, something that’s going to bring the whole blaming thing to an end.” Though Essie could see the amusement in her brother’s eyes, the severe look he cobbled together to level at Maya made the little girl hide from it by tucking her face into his neck. “We’ve got the house hooked up with security cameras, which means that whoever pulls something bad, we can now see who the culprit really is. Didn’t we, Maya?”
“Yes, Daddy.” It was so tearful Essie couldn’t see how Nick managed to not melt on the spot. She was prevented from asking how he did it when Nick’s wife Kara suddenly appeared along with Angel to announce that it was time to get washed up for dinner.
As always, it was a chaotic, noisy affair with nine people gathered around a table built to comfortably seat six. Kara helped alleviate the pressure by keeping the laid back and gentle-natured Fritzi on her lap. A
ngel was tiny, so she saved space as well, but facts were facts—they’d achieved critical mass around her parents’ dining room table. If even one more person joined them—much less the likes of a massive frame like Steele’s—they’d have to stack people on each other’s laps.
As Essie sat down to a mouth-watering meal of slow-cooked chicken fricassee, seasoned rice and beans, tostones—fried sliced plantains—and a tangy cucumber, avocado and red and orange cherry tomato salad, she tried to keep herself from imagining Steele sitting down to a Santiago Sunday meal. But it was almost impossible to keep her mind from picturing how it would be. Twist and Angel were tucked side by side, clearly happy they had to sit so close together they couldn’t help but touch. Nick and Kara were on either side of Maya, with a contented Fritzi curled up on her mother’s lap. The four were such an obvious single unit of togetherness, it filled her own heart with yearning. Even her parents, who took their usual places at either end of the table, had that unmistakable air of harmony that Essie had always wanted to find for herself.
She was the only one at that table who was alone, and that obvious aloneness had eaten away at her soul for so long.
But she wasn’t alone anymore. Not really.
As she passed dishes around and conversation ebbed and flowed around her, she considered the possibility of inviting Steele to next week’s Sunday dinner. Normally she wouldn’t hesitate over something as trivial as a meal, but Sunday dinner at the Santiago house wasn’t just a meal. It was a statement. And what that statement said to the entire family was that they needed to expect big things in the near future. Things like togetherness. Things like a promise of something meaningful. Things like happily ever after.
Bringing someone to a Santiago Sunday dinner was never about food. It was about announcing that the family could very well be growing.
She wasn’t sure if that was where she was with Steele. She had no prior relationship history that she could compare this relationship to, but she was certain that what was happening between them was serious. Serious enough, anyway, to have sex with him in public.
And to dream of inviting him to Sunday dinner.
And to know that she was hopelessly in love with him.
Her heart fluttered in her chest. That was what always happened when she consciously thought about being in love with Steele, but subconsciously she’d been aware of it for some time. It had taken one hell of an emotional commitment for her to break through her cocoon to reach for him. That willingness to emerge into the world should have tipped her off to what was happening. He’d done everything he could to pop her out of her safe but colorless place and into the real world, and she couldn’t thank him enough for that. But in the process of luring her out, he’d lured her heart to him as well, and there was nothing she could do but be thankful it was in such protective hands.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight, honey.” Her father, Ed Santiago, took the salad bowl she passed to him, his angular face serious. “Is it because of what’s been in the news today? I know it won’t win me a seat in heaven, but I’m not going to lie—I gave a little cheer when I heard.”
She frowned. “Heard what?”
He blinked. “That sonofabitch who attacked you—Zane Hildebrandt. He got himself killed in some kind of huge prison fight. We weren’t informed of anything, so I called the detective who handled your case to see if he could confirm what I’d heard on the news. It’s legit—that good-for-nothing monster’s dead and getting exactly what he deserves in hell, God willing.”
“He’s…dead?” The strangest sensation bloomed like a quiet miracle throughout her system. It was almost as though she’d suddenly been cured of a dreadful poisoning that had infiltrated every cell of her body. That poisoning had happened years ago, and it had been a poisoning that she’d survived. But it had always been there, leaking its shadow into every part of her like a low-level toxic spill.
Now, the source of that poison had been wiped off the face of the earth. That fact would never erase the damage, but the relief of knowing Zane Hildebrandt would never again harm anyone else—or have the capacity to reach her in any conceivable way—was a relief beyond measure. It was a wonder she didn’t float right off her chair.
“If it makes me a bad person to feel almost giddy over someone’s death, then I accept the label of a bad person. I feel so light and free inside—God, there are no words.” She laughed, pressing a hand to her thudding chest. “That chapter in my life is now truly, seriously closed.”
“Of course you’re free. You’ve won this game we call life, and he’s lost, and that’s the end of that.” Her father nodded decisively, clearly pleased with her response. “Now you can start writing the next chapter of your life, where you win that fashion contest thing going on at House Of Payne, and your fashion designs will be known the world over. This is only the beginning of you realizing your true greatness, my girl. I can’t tell you how proud I am of you and everything you’ve accomplished.”
“The House Of Payne thing isn’t in the bag by a long shot, Dad,” she admonished, though his words made her heart soar all the more. “Dizzy Izz and Olivier might be a couple of flakes, but if they were good enough to make it to the finals, that means they’re good. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to shake out.”
“Are you done with all the lines you were supposed to come up with?” Obviously listening in on their quiet conversation, Twist nudged his sister with his shoulder. “The fashion show’s less than two weeks away now, right?”
“Twelve days and counting.” And the more she thought about it, the crazier her nerves got. “I’ve got daily wear, activewear and outerwear all finished, so technically I could stop right there. But I’ve also decided to do a children’s line as well, and I’m closing in on being finished with that.” As much as she’d hated Steele being gone this past week, she’d put her alone-time to good use by polishing up her various designs. Once she’d been satisfied with that, she’d dived into a creative frenzy on her children’s line. The changeable Velcro tattoo patches to be used on onesies, shirts and outerwear had taken the most time to create, as she’d wanted to get each tattoo just right. She’d also put together a line of soft cotton long-sleeved undershirts that came in various flesh tones decorated with child-appropriate tattoo designs exclusive to the House. Her first prototype had been nabbed by Patrick, and she’d seen baby Dillon wearing it so many times already she suspected he was going to be forced to wear it until he learned how to dress himself.
Twist gave her a thumbs-up. “I know Payne. Going above and beyond is something he’s going to like, because he’s always thinking long-term. If you can show you’ve put a full-throttle effort into creating for the House, he’s going to love you forever. How many of my designs are you using for the kid stuff?”
“Who said I’m using any of your Goth stuff for the kids?” In fact, she had used a couple of his designs—a spiky-winged dragon for the boys and a black rose for the girls—but he didn’t need to know that until the show. “I did, however, use a lot of Angel’s designs.”
Angel, on the other side of Twist, leaned forward to hold her hand up for a high-five, which Essie gave her right in front of Twist’s vexed face.
“Essie, don’t tease your brother. You know his feelings are delicate.” Failing miserably at hiding a grin, her mother Lynette poured iced tea from a pitcher into her glass. “Try to include him wherever you can so he won’t feel left out.”
“Shit,” Twist muttered, and it made Essie chuckle. He said it so low it was obvious her big, tough-as-nails Goth tattooist brother didn’t want to be overheard by their mother. “My feelings are not delicate.”
Angel patted his hand. “Of course not, baby.”
“And,” Twist went on, scowling, “does everyone remember that it was my suggestion to Scout that brought Essie to the House in the first place?”
“Which is why Essie won’t forget about pushing your tattoo designs once she wins this stupid contest,” Ed put
in, unconcerned with his volatile son’s reaction. “With your tattoo designs and her fashion designs, you two will take over House Of Payne in no time. Now shut up and eat the dinner your mother slaved away to make for you.”
This contest couldn’t come to a conclusion fast enough, Essie thought on a sigh.
It was dark by the time Essie walked to where her car sat, and once she was safely locked inside it she waved a farewell to her father to show she was safe. She was just about to put on her seatbelt when she heard her text chime. Glancing up to see her father had already gone back inside, she reached for her phone, then caught her breath when her heart tried to leap out of her body.
Look up, sweetness.
“What?” Baffled, she automatically looked up through the car’s windshield. In the next second her jaw dropped when she spotted a familiar quad cab truck pulling slowly away from the curb farther down the street to roll toward her, headlights blinking.
Chapter Twenty
“Holy crap, he’s back.” She heard herself say it out loud, but she was too surprised and thrilled to note that she was now talking to herself. When Steele pulled up to where she sat and rolled his window down, she scrabbled for the window’s button to do the same, while everything inside jumped for joy at seeing him again.
Seriously, being in love made her into such a dewy-eyed sap.
“Hey there, beautiful.” Steele smiled down at her, while that rumbling voice with its alluring hint of the South made her toes curl. “Did you have a nice dinner with your folks?”
“I…yeah,” she said faintly, flabbergasted, before she realized he probably hadn’t heard her over the sound of the truck’s engine. “Dinner was great, thanks for asking. How did you know I was having dinner at my parents’ house?”
