“Maybe. All I have is a theory at the moment.”
“It’s good you’re helping.”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” he qualified, opening the bottom cabinet to the left of the stove to grab a skillet. He turned the burner switch on medium, then added a squirt of cooking spray to the pan.
“Still, you’re trying. So,” Rosa said, drawing out the word, “I think this is the second time you’ve mentioned a meeting about the project in Japan. But you haven’t said much else.”
Jeremy’s hand froze as he cracked an egg against the edge of the pan.
Damn, he hadn’t intended to bring this up until he had more concrete information. No use worrying her unnecessarily.
He pulled the shell apart with his thumbs, the egg white sizzling as it hit the hot surface. “Nothing’s settled yet, but the merger between the two Japanese companies is progressing faster than either of the parties anticipated.”
“That’s—that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
He glanced over his shoulder to catch Rosa tracing the edge of her mug with a finger, her gaze trained on the motion.
Was it a good thing?
He wasn’t so sure anymore.
“For the companies involved, yes,” he answered.
Once everything was finalized, they’d be ready to move forward with the IT upgrades. That meant someone from his company, presumably him, would head to Japan to lead the project.
The problem was, he didn’t know if he wanted to go anymore. Not with Rosa suffering from this hyperemesis gravidarum. Once she got better, because, damn, she had to get better, there were a ton of baby preparations she’d need help with.
Nor did he care to be gone once the baby arrived. He wanted to be a part of the baby’s firsts. Experiencing them alongside Rosa. Not remotely via Skype or through pictures sent over the phone and email.
“If things progress, you could leave again, right?” Rosa asked.
“The project lead would go. Maybe a few others to round out the team.”
“And that’s you. The project lead, I mean.”
Technically, yes. Though he’d considered asking to be taken off even if passing up project lead might derail a potential promotion down the line.
Others in the company had moved to non-travel status when their wives were expecting or due to family health issues. His situation wasn’t any different. Other than the fact that Rosa didn’t want to get married.
“There are a few others who’d be interested in taking lead,” Jeremy said.
“But they selected you.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Don’t.” Rosa pushed back her chair, the wood legs screeching against the linoleum floor. “Think back to how excited you were when they offered you this opportunity. I remember it. I saw it on your face when you told me at Yaz’s wedding. Before . . . before this.”
She placed a hand over her belly, the long sleeves of her orange robe covering all but her fingertips. “Don’t give up something you’ve worked so hard for, because of me.” Her hand made a slow circle on her stomach, an expectant mother’s caress. “Because of us.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m serious.” That Fernandez stubbornness she rarely exhibited tilted her chin in defiance. Her hair a wild mess of waves framing her don’t-mess-with-me glare. “Nothing good can come from regrets. I refuse to be the cause of them. You deserve better. Por favor, don’t do anything rash.”
“I’m not!”
“Just, slow down. And consider what might be right in the long run. For all of us.” As quickly as it flared, Rosa’s defiance drained away, leaving disappointment in its place.
Without another word, she stood and left the kitchen.
Jeremy watched her go, stunned by the downward spiral their conversation had taken.
Damn it! Why did everything keep getting so screwed up? Why did it constantly feel like for every one step forward, they wound up taking two steps back?
Anger and frustration flashed through him and he spun back around to the stove. Only then did he register the acrid stench of burnt eggs.
Great, seemed like everything was going up in flames this morning.
Dragging the skillet to the back burner, he twisted the heat off with an annoyed jerk of his wrist.
Rosa was right about regrets. They sucked.
But she was dead wrong if she thought he had any when it came to what they shared together. He’d do whatever it took to prove that to her.
* * *
Jeremy strode quickly toward his car in the darkened parking garage near the Taylor & Millward offices, hours past when he was supposed to pick Rosa up after Poetry Club.
The afternoon had completely gotten away from him.
The noon meeting at his office had been brief. With no new progress to report concerning the Japanese company merger. Shortly after, he’d spoken on the phone with Mark Henderson at the law firm. The older man had asked him to consider coming over to the T & M building to discuss Jeremy’s theory about the identity theft problems in person.
The request wasn’t one Jeremy took lightly. And Mark knew that.
Jeremy hadn’t been to the Taylor & Millward building in years. But if he was right, Henderson needed to be aware of the cyber phishing their employees were dealing with and the very real potential that the law firm’s system may have been hacked.
After speaking with Henderson and explaining a few diagnostic options, Jeremy found himself confronted with a decision: roll up his sleeves and help, or walk away. Again.
Rosa’s advice that he find a way to make peace with the past wormed its way through his thoughts, her voice the sound of reason and encouragement whispering in his ear. So he’d listened to Mark’s plea for assistance rather than dismissing it right away.
Jeremy hadn’t anticipated that the discussion with Mark would turn into a fact-finding mission. A challenge Jeremy’s penchant for problem-solving had pounced on, the same way it had when he was a kid and he’d gotten a new erector set or, later, when he was a member of the U of I Computer Science Department’s HackIllinois team.
Once they started digging, time slipped away. Normally, Jeremy didn’t mind the hours lost in combing computer files and mining data. Except that, when he finally took a brain break and glanced at his watch, Poetry Club had already started. He’d tried to send Rosa a text message letting her know he was running late leaving the city, only to realize that his phone must have fallen out of his pocket on the drive over. Without his cell, he couldn’t send a text. Instead, he’d used an office phone to leave her a voice message, then called Yazmine to see if she could pick up Rosa.
After the way they had left things this morning, he hated not having spoken to Rosa directly. The last thing he wanted her to think was that he’d forgotten about her depending on him for a ride home.
He approached his car and clicked it unlocked. As soon as he opened the driver’s side, he spotted his phone wedged between the front seat and the door well. He quickly tugged off a leather glove to tap his screen unlock code. His gut clenched when he noted the number of missed calls and texts from Rosa.
Received word that Father Yosef wants to meet TODAY after Poetry Club. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. 2:05 PM
Tried calling, but got your voice mail. Father Yosef will meet us in the library at 4:30. Didn’t want you to be surprised when you arrived. 3:12 PM
Poetry Club is starting. Hope you’re okay and I see you at 4:30. 3:29 PM
Father Yosef should be here any minute. No need for you to come now as it’d be worse for you to walk in late. 4:28 PM
6:13 PM shone on the top of his cell screen.
Damn! He smacked the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
No doubt the difficult meeting with her family priest—the one Jeremy had promised to attend in a show of unity—had finished a while ago. Even worse, she hadn’t called or texted to let him know how it had gone.
How
in the hell did everything with them keep getting so screwed up? His attempt at doing a good deed for the firm had wound up making him disappoint Rosa.
She had stood by his side last night at the firm’s holiday party. Not that he couldn’t have gone on his own, but being with her had given him a sense of calm reassurance, as it typically did. He should have been there today, doing his best to help her fight to keep the job she loved.
She had every right to be pissed at him for his no-show.
Frustrated with himself and the situation, Jeremy started his car and peeled out of the parking garage.
As soon as he reached a red light, he listened to her two messages. The first, left shortly after her initial text, repeated the typed message alerting him of the meeting with Father Yosef. By the second voice mail, apparently left as the students arrived because he could hear a couple of the boys in the background, her voice sounded concerned.
Or was that doubt?
Ah man, no telling what she’d been thinking thanks to his incommunicado status.
Hopefully Rosa had noticed his voice message after Poetry Club though based on her last text, it didn’t appear so. That meant she’d gone into her meeting with Father Yosef wondering if Jeremy had completely blown her off.
At the next red light, he tried calling, anxious to speak with her. It went straight to voice mail. Either her phone was off or she was avoiding him. Neither option bode well for him.
Evening post-work traffic heading out of the city made the drive to the suburbs miserably slow. By the time he turned onto Rosa’s street well over an hour later, he’d passed frustrated and moved on to full-blown aggravation.
He pulled up in front of her house, noting the black Corolla parked in the driveway. Lilí was home for school break.
Disappointment blew through him, and his spirits sank to his toes.
If Lilí was back, Rosa wouldn’t need him to stay with her anymore. His temporary roommate status would be revoked. Without him being any closer to convincing her that she could depend on him for the long haul.
Jeremy hurried up the front walk, lowering his head against the bitter winter wind. He searched his key ring for the Fernandez house key, but at the last moment opted to knock instead. With Lilí here, the dynamics changed; it didn’t feel right walking in unannounced.
Hunched against the cold, Jeremy waited for someone to answer.
When the door opened, Lilí’s gamine features, framed by her pixie haircut, peeked out from behind it. She smiled a greeting, but he couldn’t help noticing the dark shadows around her hazel-green eyes.
“Hey, Jer.” She beckoned him inside, closing the door behind him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“It’s good to see you.” He wrapped her in a brotherly hug. “I hadn’t heard when you were coming. The drive up go well?”
“Yeah, same boring trip up I-57. I meant to call Rosa yesterday, but I’ve been helping one of my dorm residents with something personal, probably a little beyond regular RA duties. Anyway, between that and finals, I wasn’t thinking about much else.”
“Everything okay?” He held her at arm’s length, noting the absence of her usual mischievous spark.
Lilí dragged a hand through her short hair, leaving her wispy spikes askew. A weighty sigh escaped her as she shook her head. “Not really, but you have your own problems to deal with.”
She backed into the living room, eyeing him as he unbuttoned his winter coat and hung it, along with his scarf, on the rack near the door.
“I’m not sure what’s been going on down here,” Lilí said, “but when I picked up Rosa at Queen of Peace, she had this pinched look on her face. The kind she makes when she’s trying not to cry. And when I asked where you were, she gave me an evil eye Tía Dolores would be proud of. We got home and Rosa went straight to her room.”
Lilí jerked a thumb toward the stairwell a few feet away in the foyer.
“Did she say anything about Father Yosef?” he asked, edging his way toward the bottom step.
“Nope. But I saw him pulling out of the school parking lot as I was turning in.”
“Has she eaten anything? Maybe asked for some mint ginger tea or warm rice water?”
“Mint what?”
“The anti-nausea drinks I’ve been brewing for her?”
Lilí did a double take, her brows diving down in a deep frown. “Do I look like a Starbucks barista to you?”
Great. Apparently whatever she’d been dealing with hadn’t diminished her smart-ass attitude. Sounded like he’d be giving some cooking lessons in the near future. Dolores would hunt him down if he left without showing Lilí how to make the remedies the girls’ madrina had taught him.
On top of that, add the Sears Tower level of worry he’d face once he was home, wondering if Rosa was feeling sick, with Lilí incapable of helping her.
“Look, I’m gonna head up to check on your sister,” he told Lilí. “Can you stick around the house for a bit so we can go over a few things?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Lilí pulled her cell from her back jeans pocket and checked the screen. “I told this student I’d be available if she needed to talk.”
“Great, I’ll be back down in a bit.” He started up the stairs, coming to a halt when Lilí called his name.
He looked over his shoulder to find her at the bottom of the stairs.
Maybe it was the lighting in the foyer, but the shadows under her eyes looked more pronounced all of a sudden. Her usually impish grin was more a twisted frown as she stared up at him.
“Don’t upset her,” Lilí warned, hands on her hips. “If you do, you’ll have to answer to me.”
It was almost comical, Lilí thinking she could scare him off.
In the past, he would have hit her with a smart-ass comment of his own. Knowing she’d answer with a throaty laugh.
Now, he was afraid he’d already broken that promise, having upset Rosa one too many times.
He only hoped he could convince her to give him another chance. Taking the stairs by twos, he hurried to her room.
“Está bien,” Rosa answered when he knocked.
Since she’d answered in Spanish, he figured she thought he was her sister.
“It’s Jeremy,” he clarified. “Still okay to come in?”
There was a pause, a brief second during which his heart skipped because he thought she might say no.
Her door-muffled “yes” had him turning the knob before she changed her mind.
He entered to find her sitting on top of her bed, legs stretched out, her back against the headboard. Her poetry journal, like a security blanket, rested on her lap.
Dressed in black leggings and a loose-fitting light purple sweater, with her black-stockinged feet and hair up in a ponytail, she looked like a young college coed, home for the holidays along with Lilí.
Her somber expression stopped him a few feet into the room. He took in her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. Noticed the tissue box tilted on its side, lodged between her hip and a round orange throw pillow. The pen wobbled in her hand, and he rushed over to sit on the edge of her bed.
“Rosa, I am so sorry I missed the meeting with Father Yosef. Did you get my voice message?”
She nodded, a tear escaping to trail down her right cheek. She swiped it away, only to have another slip down the other side.
His gut clenched at the sorrow swimming in her brown eyes.
“I stopped at Taylor & Millward thinking I’d just have a conversation with Mark Henderson. Three and a half hours later, I’m elbow deep in the firm’s computer system. Digging for clues that might lead to how they were hacked. Time got away—”
Rosa pressed her fingertips to his lips, silencing him.
“Can we . . . would you mind if we didn’t talk for a few minutes?”
He shook his head. His mind zeroing in on the warm, gentle pressure of her fingers. His heart torn by the sadness on her face
“Maybe we could just sit here together?”
Surprise at her unexpected request robbed him of his voice so he answered with a jerky nod.
Rosa put her journal and pen on the nightstand, then pushed aside the throw pillows and tissue box and scooted over to make room for him beside her.
Jeremy toed off his brown oxfords and joined her.
The mattress dipped under his weight, Rosa’s right hip and thigh pressing against his left side. He figured she’d slide farther away. Instead, she twisted to lay her head on the front of his shoulder.
Instinctively his arms wrapped around her. The need to comfort her, soothe the feelings he’d hurt, overwhelmed him. His fingers combed through the ends of her ponytail and he dropped a kiss on top of her head. She burrowed closer.
The next thing he knew, they were both skooching down until they lay side by side, Rosa’s head on his chest, one of her legs crooked over his. He tightened his hold on her, relishing the sensation of her soft curves molding against his body.
She traced a circle around one of his shirt buttons, dragged her finger down to the next one, leaving a trail of heat that he swore seared his skin. His pulse picked up speed, sending blood low in his body.
“Your heartbeat is fast,” Rosa murmured, pressing her open palm to his chest.
“Yeah, well, you do that to me.”
He felt her soft chuckle, her chest vibrating against his. The weight of her full breasts teased him with the need to touch them, taste them as he had their one night together.
As difficult as it was though, he had to rein in his desire for her. He couldn’t risk making another misstep with her.
Then Rosa leaned across him to press a kiss over his heart.
Jeremy reacted without thinking, rolling with her on the bed until she lay on her back. Propped up on his elbows, his lower body lay flush with hers, thighs to thighs, hips pressed to hips. His fast heartbeat no longer the only indication of how she affected him. Aroused him.
She cupped his face, gently caressed his cheeks, sliding her hands behind his head to pull him down for a kiss.
Their lips nipped, nothing more than a gentle brush back and forth. But it wasn’t enough. He tasted her lips with a light flick of his tongue and she opened for him.
Her Perfect Affair Page 25
