by Annie O'Neil
“Have I?” his eyebrows shot up. “I don’t get brood—”
She cut him off with a cluck of her tongue. “Don’t even bother. You’re just lucky I took pity on you and made sweet love to you all afternoon to keep your mind off your troubles.” She sat back with a satisfied grin, all the while rat-a-tat-tatting her I-know-I’m-right fingers along the edge of the wooden tabletop.
“First of all, young lady, I think you’ll find it was me who made the first move.” Santiago drew himself up to what he hoped was his most impressive height.
“First of all nothing.” Saoirse shook her head with a quick no-you-don’t finger wag that would’ve sent any child running to the naughty corner of their own volition.
Damn. It was a crying shame this woman wouldn’t be a mother. Any offspring of hers would be about as well behaved as they came, too terrified to contest the finger wag.
“There’s a reason I haven’t been to see them yet.” Santi felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. Feeble, he knew. But it was his truth and he was going to own it. He wanted to be ready to see them.
“In my book? The best time to do something like this is when you’re least prepared. That way you’re expecting very little...” Saoirse collapsed her spine into a curve then sprang back upright “...and your bounce-back factor will be high.”
“My bounce-back factor?”
“Yes. You’ll be needing that if things don’t go well.”
“So you’re already banking on failure?” He bristled.
She snorted. “Santiago Valentino, I’ve never heard such balderdash in all my days. You are the strongest, most capable, failure-free zone of a human I’ve ever had the honor to work with.”
He shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for basking in undeserved compliments. “It’s not that simple.”
“You are, of course, completely free to share and explain why trotting down the road and telling your brothers you’re back in town is so difficult, but in my culture...” she paused for effect, the hint of a twinkle in her eyes “...we harbor our secrets close to our chests unless the whole village knows about it anyway, in which case there’s not much point in discussing what’s already a done deal. The point being, I fled for something everyone knew about. There was no need to spell it all out for folk. Public humiliation does that to a girl, but I’m getting the feeling you’re the only one who knows why you left.”
“I left a note.”
“Someone’s sounding a bit defensive.” She snorted.
“I could have just left! No note—nothing.”
“Really? Is that what you could have done?” Saoirse looked at him as if he’d just told the biggest honking lie of the lot. But she hadn’t known him then. Rebel without a cause didn’t even begin to cover it. The motorcycle was all that remained of his bad-boy image he’d fine-tuned to teenage perfection.
“You don’t know what kind of man—kid—I was back then.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I wasn’t a big fan of who I was becoming, this restless, confused mess.”
“Not so much of a mess you didn’t recognize what was happening. And not so much of a mess you didn’t man up and do something about it. Besides,” she added with a grin, “you did leave a note.”
“It wasn’t a back-in-five sort of job!” He snapped. “Sorry, I just—”
“Are we feeling a bit touchy because someone is actually going to go and do this thing?”
“Very.”
Jangling nerves were getting the better of him and that’s not how he wanted this to go. He’d joined the military to gain better control over himself—his emotions, his goals, his future. And here he was, messing it all up again.
Maybe that was the irony. When he’d been on duty in the world’s cruelest war zones, the main lesson he’d come away with? You couldn’t control life—you could only control how you responded to it. He should have had a reminder tattooed on his forearm: Be the man you know you can be.
“Tell me about the note,” Saoirse said softly.
“It was...it was sort of like a guide to life from fifteen to eighteen. My area of expertise.” He appreciated Saoirse’s laugh. To describe it now sounded so juvenile, but that’s what he had been. Countless miles from adulthood.
“And what was all this wise advice you were offering your brother?”
“It was reams—well, not exactly reams but it was vital information for a thirteen-year-old. The coolest place to hang out. Which locker bay to get assigned when he was a senior in high school, which streets to steer clear of because of the gangs, although he pretty much knew that already. Never to take Mr. Prunte’s science class because the man was a much better baseball coach than he was science teacher.” He watched as Saoirse’s eyes grew wider and wider. “I wasn’t going to leave Alejandro completely hanging.”
“What did you do? Tuck it under his pillow?”
Her words, meant to be jokey, struck him like daggers. Reminders that he had been a coward. Leaving home only to try and prove his mettle on an anonymous battlefield where failure wouldn’t feel so personal. But it had. Every life lost had sucked his soul a little bit drier, leaving it little more than an arid wasteland. And now he was supposed to just wander over to the bodega with a sack of sandwiches and make everything all right again?
A surge of frustration washed through him.
“What was I supposed to do, Murph? There’s no guide for kids whose parents are shot right in front of them. My kid brother almost died. And all he had was me—the poor second to my older brothers who did the best they could in the circumstances. Looking after us, making good on their full-ride scholarships to medical school while keeping the family business running as well. They don’t write those kind of guides, mija. I did the best I could.”
Saoirse stared at him slack-jawed.
“That may have come out a bit more aggressively than I’d intended.” It didn’t sound like an apology. But it was one. The best he could do, all things considered.
She shook her head, her fingers steepling in front of her lips. Whether it was to keep words in or out he couldn’t tell.
Her fingers parted.
“So, what you’re really saying is that your brothers are the only ones in the world who would understand?”
He nodded. Maybe it was a simpleton’s view, but that’s what his heart was telling him. Saoirse could offer compassion and that, of course, was invaluable...but his brothers had understanding. They’d lived through what he’d lived through and for the first few years after their parents had died the shared experience had been an insoluble glue.
“Well, then...” she nodded at the huge paper bag the waitress was carrying in their direction “...I guess you’d better get going.”
* * *
He heard them before he saw them. The unmistakable laughter. The playful mocking. A sharp chiding for a near miss with a catering-sized can of jalapenos, chased up by a call to throw an extra case of pinto beans to “the ugly one.”
Egalitarian brother love.
In the Valentino household? They were all “the ugly one.”
“Hé!” he called out a few yards away from the back storeroom where they kept their stock.
The banter continued unabated. They obviously hadn’t heard him.
Santi repeated the call, too loudly this time, and all the hustle and bustle of stocktaking clattered to an abrupt halt.
His brothers stood as if in an artist’s tableau—all caught in the midst of an everyday action—the expressions on their faces unreadable. He held up the unmistakable delivery bag from Mad Ron’s.
What exactly do you say to the people you loved most when you’d walked out on them fifteen years earlier?
“Helibanas? They’re still hot.”
Alejandro stepped out from the shadows of the doorway, a flat o
f canned tomatillos in his hands, his expression unreadable.
Flaca loco, they’d called him.
Alejandro wasn’t skinny now. He looked tall, athletic...muscular. The opposite of everything those idiot gangbangers had reduced him to with their bullets.
“Hé, gordos!” Alejandro flicked his head toward Santi. “The ugly one finally decided to show.”
And with that, he threw the flat of tomatillos toward his brother as if it were weightless. “What are you waiting for, bro? Get counting.”
CHAPTER NINE
“HOT SAUCE, PLEASE.” Saoirse stuck out a hand.
“Someone’s getting a taste for Latino spices.” Santi laughed, pushing the bottle of fiery hot sauce across the breakfast bar counter.
“I don’t know what they put in this stuff, but it’s great!” She gleefully applied splash after splash of the green sauce to her enchiladas.
“I know. Our bodega is one of the only places to stock it. We can hardly keep it in stock.”
“Listen to you!” Saoirse teased through a mouthful of burn-your-lips-off enchiladas. “‘Our bodega.’ ‘We can hardly keep it in stock.’ When am I going to meet these mythical shopkeeping surgeons anyhow?”
Santiago bristled.
“I’m not stopping you from doing anything.”
Saoirse pulled away from the counter where they’d been wolfishly attacking their after-shift meals and gave him a wary look. One that said, Qué paso, hombre? And what’s with the arm’s-length business?
He’d felt it.
She’d felt it.
But joining up the two parts of his life that meant the most to him was proving tougher than he’d thought.
“Valentino,” she finally began, “of all the people in your life, you can count me as number one cheerleader in the thank heavens Santi’s made friends with his brothers’ club!”
“And why is that exactly? Enjoying having the place to yourself now that I’ve got more responsibilities?”
“Whoa!” Saoirse pushed her plate away and looked at him as if he’d sprouted horns. “Who put grumpy sauce on his chimichurris?”
“No one!” he bit back, confirming that someone had, in fact, put not only grumpy sauce but defensive sauce and a splash of get-off-my-back sauce into the mix, as well.
She gave him a gentle smile and a look of infinite tenderness he most assuredly didn’t deserve. “C’mon, you big macho man. Tell your...” she hesitated for a fraction of a second “...friend, Murphy, all about it.”
He opened his mouth to reply and found he couldn’t. Her choice of words was exactly the problem. Or, more accurately, just the one.
Friend.
Was that how she really saw their—whatever it was?
Sure, it hadn’t been a conventional start to a relationship. The order had been all wrong and the proposal hadn’t been a proposal, it had been...a proposition. But so much had changed in the weeks since she’d come into his life, including the way he saw her.
Much more than a friend.
Which was exactly why he didn’t want her meeting his brothers yet. She deserved more than being introduced as a green-card fiancée. Much more.
And until he found some way to pull off the jokey veneer he used to keep the mood between them light and tell her how he really felt? That he loved her? He couldn’t—wouldn’t—introduce her to his brothers. She was precious to him. And the last thing he was going to do was give his brothers even the slightest reason to think less of her than she deserved.
“This whole strong, silent type thing is making me nervous, Valentino.” She stabbed at her enchiladas, but was rearranging them now rather than eating. “What gives?”
“I thought you hated it when I talked. Last night you shushed me about a zillion times.” He forced on his jocular banter voice. It sounded strangled to him, but her shoulders shifted downward. Less nervous hunch and more feisty blonde.
“That’s because you were talking through my show.” Saoirse swooped her fork across the top of her enchiladas, gathering up a wealth of cheese and hot sauce as she did. She circled the fork in front of her mouth, forcing his gaze onto the pair of lips he never failed to be mesmerized by. “You should never, ever talk through my show.”
“The paramedics show? Your favorite show is what we do for work all day?”
“Uh-huh.”
He smiled as she popped the cheesy blob into her mouth, eyes disappearing under her lids as she gave a satisfied groan.
He was usually the reason she made that sound. Who knew he’d be reduced to duking it out with a forkful of queso blanco to be Saoirse’s favorite thing. Then again, the queso blanco probably would’ve taken her home to meet the family by now.
“I like watching it to reassure myself that I’m better,” she said after making the most of her mouthful of cheese. “Work’s the reason I get up in the morning!”
Santi nodded, eyes quickly averting to the takeaway menus on the freezer door, the stack of phone books holding up one corner of the secondhand sofa—anywhere but on Saoirse.
He wanted to be the reason she got up in the morning. They worked together. They slept together. And he liked it. For the first time in his life he wanted more. He felt his chest grow thick with emotions he usually never let bang around his rib cage.
He pushed away from the counter, brusquely scraping the remains of his meal into the garbage can. Sure, it was his own fault she didn’t know how he felt. Didn’t make feeling them any easier.
All he had to do was say the words—those three precious words that could change his life forever—but he just wasn’t there yet. If he lost Saoirse... He swore under his breath, slamming the lid to the garbage can down as he did.
“What’s got into you?” Saoirse was eyeing him warily.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
Santi put his plate into the dishwasher, closed it with an exasperated huff and looked her square in the eye.
“I don’t think we should sleep together anymore.”
The bright, cheery expression on Saoirse’s face completely disappeared. “Okay.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say about it? Okay?”
“You’re the one who said it, not me.” She grabbed her plate, jumped off her stool and in the process of putting the scraps in the garbage can managed to lose the entire plate. She slammed the lid down, leaving the plate to languish among the debris. “And you’re the one who hasn’t been using the guest room I very specially made up for you.”
“Well, I’ll be using it now. Don’t worry about that.”
“Good.” She crossed her arms and glared at him.
“Good.” He mirrored her defensive stance.
Great. A standoff.
He smacked his forehead suddenly remembering that Ángel down at Mad Ron’s knew about their marriage plans. He’d have to tell him to stay shtum as his brothers were no strangers to the cantina.
“Now what? Forgotten to tell me you’ve also put in for a request for a change of partners while you’re at it?” Saoirse was staring at him with undisguised fury and he didn’t blame her. He was making a complete and utter hash of things.
“Murph—”
“Oh, so we’re back to Murph now, too, are we? And just when I was going to give you a certificate of approval for being able to pronounce my name.” She uncrossed then recrossed her arms, foot tapping rapidly against the wooden floor, hands balled into little fists. “May as well get to the point, Santi, and just spit out what you really want to say—the wedding’s off.”
“No!”
They both froze at the hoarse passion in his voice. “No, Saoirse. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Would you mind, then, please, telling me what the blue blazes is going t
hrough that pea-sized brain of yours because I’ve had just about as much disappointment at the altar as a girl can take. I will not be humiliated a second time. Especially if the blasted thing isn’t even meant to be real!”
Santi’s heart shot out searing rays of pain in his chest. He didn’t want to cause her pain. The total opposite, in fact. Every time her face lit up when he appeared from around a corner, or she laughed at one of his ridiculous jokes, she made the world—his world—a better place to be. But he needed to restart or reboot or wipe the slate clean or whatever the hell a man did when truth and honesty and love needed to be at the fore of everything he was feeling.
“This isn’t coming out the way I meant.”
“You think?” Saoirse bit back. “As a breakup conversation it’s going pretty well from where I’m standing.”
“Saoirse, please. I’m juggling a lot of things right now and I just want to make sure I get all of them right. If you hadn’t noticed, the whole feelings thing isn’t really my forte.”
“I could’ve told you that for nothing,” Saoirse replied, a bit of the anger slipping away from her c’mon-I-dare-you-to-just-say-it stance. “But what’s that got to do with, you know...” She flicked her thumb in the direction of her bedroom. “Not good enough for you, am I?”
“That is definitely not the problem, mija,” Santi replied, suddenly seeing the conversation from her perspective. Another knock back. Another hurdle to leap to turn the tables in her own life.
“What is it then?”
Oh, Dios. Was that a wobble in her voice?
“C’mere, you.” Santi opened his arms and gestured for her to come to him.
“I’m not budging or letting you lay your sexy hands on me until you explain what on earth is going on with you.”
“I just want to square things with my brothers. And with you...”
Her eyebrows lifted expectantly, emotion shining brightly in her eyes.
“Men can’t multitask,” he finished pathetically.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re saying if you sleep with me, you’ll be so busy being bewitched by the wonders of my good self you won’t be able to sort out your relationship with your brothers?”
