Pilar appeared, wearing an apron. “Hi, Rick, can I get you something to eat?” she said, just as though three and a half months had not elapsed since he left Maya crying in her driveway.
“Er...where’s Maya?” Rick scanned the interior of the truck as best he could from his vantage point. The back corners were hidden. Maya could be in there.
“California.”
No, he couldn’t have heard right. The ironic twist to Pilar’s mouth made him think she was telling the truth, though. “What?”
“California.”
“I guess I heard you right. Is she visiting a friend there? Family member?”
“No.” Pilar shook her head. “She moved there.”
“What?”
“Rick, I’m afraid something has happened to your hearing since you left. You better get it checked.” Pilar said this with a smile.
“I don’t understand.”
She set her elbows on the counter and stared down at him with her intelligent warm eyes framed in smile lines. “She moved there. As I recall, you were the one who suggested she open a shop in California.”
“Who’s taking care of her food truck here? Her business here?”
Pilar straightened. She pointed at herself with pink-polished fingertips. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
Mama could always make him smile no matter how shitty he felt. “Mind if I help you finish here? We can get caught up.”
“Si.” Pilar nodded.
Rick realized she was going to open the door and trotted around to meet her at the stairs. Pilar pulled him into a hug as soon as he stepped inside. He found her affection amazing after he’d hurt her daughter. Did she like him for himself instead of just in relation to Maya? Somehow he had formed an easy friendship during those magical summer days. He wanted to hold onto her a bit longer, but he wasn’t there yet. He had to make her his proper mama first.
Working shoulder-to-head, they made short work of the cleanup. Once they finished, Rick did the driving, making a stop at the town center. He eased into one of the diagonal parking spots on Main Street.
“What are you doing?”
“I noticed there was a memorial for Lobster Cove fishermen lost at sea. I checked it out one time after using the library. I saw an Eduardo Cruz listed on the plaque. I thought it would be nice to pay our respects. Okay?”
Pilar smiled, tears in her eyes but a smile on her lips. “Si.”
They stood together in a companionable quiet before the black marble statue of the fisherman who perpetually looked out to sea. In front of the statue, a marble slab showed the names of the many men—and some women—who perished. Pilar made the sign of the cross.
“Thank you,” she said.
His instincts were right with her. His initial feelings toward Maya had been right, too. Where he ran into trouble was with his suspicious mind.
Rick drove Pilar to the Sea Crest Inn. The sun was dipping below the treeline, but the unseasonably warm day allowed them to sit outdoors. The inn’s small lookout area above a rock cliff leading down to the harbor was inviting. He’d like to stay here with Maya. He wanted to go a lot of places with Maya.
After a waitress delivered their drinks, he said, “Did you move back into your house?”
“Yes.”
“Good for you.”
Pilar took a sip of hot chocolate laced with bourbon, topped with whipped cream. “We planned on having me live there in the winter anyway. I earn enough at Love Caters All not to have to rent it out at all any more, so it looks like you’re going to end up being the only customer who ever stayed in our home.” Pilar looked out at the water. Seagulls wheeled around a fishing boat, their cries blended into a lonely single cry far below. Before he could ask why she hadn’t rented it more last summer after he left, Pilar continued. “I miss my girls, though.”
He knew how Pilar felt—like having your chest in a vice. “What happened to the log cabin?”
Pilar smiled. “Thankfully, we will no longer be needing its services.” She proceeded to explain Maya’s restaurant partnership in Berkeley with Hugh Yates, ending with, “You really hurt her feelings, you know.”
“I do know.” Rick hung his head. “I’m afraid I have a blind spot. I’m really sorry.”
“You need to tell her. Not me.” Mama took another sip of her drink. A couple of small brown birds landed on the patio. They pecked at invisible crumbs. “You know, Maya has always worked hard. Her few luxuries, like her clothes, she works equally hard to find in thrift shops. It’s important to her, maybe too important, to look like the wealthy women of the area. It hurt her to see me working as a housekeeper for them. So maybe she has some misplaced pride, but she deserves a little luxury. She always helped me with her younger sisters. Too much. She would send money home from cooking school, no matter what, even if she could only manage five dollars.”
His insides heaved. Maya must have confided in her mother about how he interpreted her tastes in expensive clothes. “No, I didn’t know.” He felt lower than a floor mat. Talk about jumping to the wrong conclusions.
“You still have a chance, though.”
Her words eased the rough seas inside him. “What makes you say so?”
“A woman knows. Maya is in love with you.”
The vice around his chest eased. He should not get hopeful now, though. Pilar had a soft spot for him. She might just want him to give the relationship another shot. He could understand that. He had missed their friendship too. “What about you, Pilar?”
“What about me?”
“What do you do for yourself now that you don’t have to take care of the girls?”
He expected her to argue or—something. Instead, she said, “I may have a gentleman caller.”
So that was it. Pilar worked and had a social life. No wonder she looked more vibrant than ever. Rick grinned. “Good for you!” He tapped his drink against her cup.
“So, now it’s your turn, Rick. You need to go find Maya. When you do, send me an email telling me how all my girls are doing.” She smiled. “That is, if Doc is letting you use a computer these days.”
“You got it, Pilar.” Pilar was an example of how to live. Take a chance when it counts.
****
Berkeley. Ground zero for the slow-food movement. Maya had done it, accepted Hugh Yates’ offer, packed up her fears along with her clothes, and moved to California in late July. The San Francisco Bay Area was very different from New York, but she was careful. To help herself get over her fears, she took a self-defense class to learn survival techniques for life in a big city.
Lobster Cove tugged at Maya’s heartstrings, but Berkeley stimulated her creativity. She drew on all the things she learned in school. Berkeley had so many wonderful restaurants because of all the fresh ingredients available to chefs as well to the ethnic diversity of the area. Touching the produce displayed in open cases on the street filled Maya’s head with ideas as did the area’s natural vibrancy. So many smells, from restaurants to incense to bay water. The sidewalks bustled with rushing students, tourists lingered before shop windows, locals dined at sidewalk tables. Even in October, the weather was lovely. They called it Indian summer here. She called it heaven.
Maya had enough time when she was in the planning stages with Hugh to enjoy the amazing environment. Once they opened ShellShocked, she was practically a shut-in. The restaurant offered twenty-five indoor tables with five more available for the patio when the weather was fine, which was almost always. Hugh had the place beautifully redecorated. The design achieved a modern feel while it still retained cultural touch points like vibrant colors, sombreros, and a desert-scene mural with an abstract suggestion of a saguaro cactus.
The restaurant resided on a street off-off Shattuck, but it was an up-and-coming shoulder neighborhood. Students trickled down there at night. Hugh had all the right connections, so all the right news outlets announced the grand opening. From day one, they filled the tables four times over between lunch a
nd dinner, netting ten grand a day, of which her portion was two. She could send money home to Mama, but Mama insisted on working at the truck. Maya understood her pride. To support her mother’s newfound confidence, she offered Mama a partner’s share in the income rather than just an hourly wage.
With Mama supported by the food truck business, Maya saved as much as she could from her generous earnings. Between the availability of fresh seafood, organic produce, ethnic spices and herbs, Berkeley was the Mecca of haute cuisine. ShellShocked was one of its most popular temples. The neighborhood drew San Francisco-based high-tech workers as well. There was even a van running the hipsters from San Francisco to Berkeley on weekend nights.
It was one of these customers who let the cat out of the bag. He laughed and held up the San Francisco newspaper. He shook the paper at his friends while pointing at Rick Nordan’s picture. “It’s the new Where’s Fredo? Except now instead of, ‘Where in the world is Fredo?’ it’s where in the world is Rick?” The customer’s audience guffawed and slapped their thighs.
The bottom of Maya’s stomach fell. She clutched at the air. The headline said, “Maligren Challenges GameCom Founder, Who is Nowhere to be Found.” A picture of Rick’s head was superimposed on the Fredo character on a map of the US in a mock-up of the picture puzzle.
“Hi, Maya.”
“Look! We found Rick!” one of the jokers said. The table of men laughed, but nervously this time. In unison, three heads swiveled, following the direction of the speaker’s eyes. All three young professional men were staring past her shoulder, wide-eyed.
Her heart thumped as she turned.
Rick occupied the middle of the floor in a wide-legged stance, the breadth of his shoulders emphasized by his narrow waist. There were a lot of incongruities beyond just his presence in her restaurant. He looked as imperial as ever, but there was something different about him. Despite an imposing appearance, he looked relaxed. He wore a T-shirt and jeans. He’d worn those in Lobster Cove. What was different?
Red ink poked from the bottom edge of his T-shirt. That was it. A new tattoo.
The air went out of the room. Maya’s legs wobbled. Then Rick was by her side. His strong hands settled on her waist. He guided her toward the restaurant door.
Maya recovered from shock in time to steer Rick into the kitchen. “In here.” Rick powered through the swing doors. His strong arm locked her, pressed her to his hard chest. Kitchen aromas flooded her senses. The musky green scent of cilantro, the bite of cayenne, the rich earthiness of cocoa, and the delicious constant of onions frying in hot oil competed with fresh lime, tomatoes, plantains and honey.
The line cooks spotted them. The cook lifted the pan he was using to flip a crêpe. The thin pancake folded in half and fell back into the pan, rendered useless. The sous chef stopped what he was doing to stare. One of Maya’s passing waitresses, Ellie, followed the cooks’ gazes. Her gaze rested on Maya’s arm, which clutched the muscular forearm of a strange man. Curious eyes shifted to heavy-lidded sexual assessment. No longer interested in her boss, Ellie was focused on the very hot new male in the kitchen.
Rick stopped. “Where do you want to go?”
The staff returned to work even though Maya and Rick lingered in front of the cooking line. Ellie had collected her order and gone, but the two cooks were right there. They looked down, but both of them wore a grin. Shoot. They would give her a hard time about this later.
“My office.” Maya struggled from Rick’s grip. “Follow me.” Ten quick strides later, she opened the door and tugged Rick inside. She went to the window to lower the blinds. Outside the office window, the two grinned. They both stared at the office. At Maya’s glare, they returned their attention to their tasks.
Rick’s body heat shimmered over her back. She spun around. Rick’s expression was so serious! He had some confidence though—his hands settled around her waist. His hot grip sparked fire in her veins.
No. She would not start off this conversation with her senses compromised. Maya pushed him away. She gulped air. He held her steady, deep concern etched around his eyes.
“I’m sorry to surprise you like this, Maya.”
“No you aren’t.”
A smile cracked his stern visage. “Okay, I wanted to surprise you, but this scene was more dramatic than I intended.”
“Rick, what happened? What are you doing here? How did you find me? What was the headline talking about?”
Rick let her push him away, even added another backward step. “The article,” he said with that deep rich voice of his, the one she wished she could bottle and add to a sauce, “is just journalists trying to keep the news in the headlines when they can’t milk me for comments. There’s not much interest about the story, really. It’s not like I’m dodging a subpoena, for example. But company execs in this area’s culture are akin to celebrity. Welcome to Nerd Ville.”
Rick’s little speech stopped her for a moment, distracted her from her fire-hose of questions that had gone un-answered. “But what is going on? What about all my other questions?”
Rick gave a weary smile. “Where should I start?” It was like no time had passed at all.
But time had passed. What had happened in between? “You can begin with why you left.”
Rick hung his head. “I misunderstood some things.”
“You never gave me a chance to explain.”
Rick’s mouth formed a hard downward line. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Maya shook her head. The past didn’t matter. Rick was here. This was her second chance. “It’s okay. It was more my fault than yours. I wished a thousand times things had gone differently. That I had handled things differently.”
Rick’s mouth relaxed. “Me too. I went to Lobster Cove to find you.” His eyes were serious, a flat tan in the fluorescent light.
Stale odors trapped from kitchen smells she could never quite mask hung in the close atmosphere. But she might as well be breathing in the pine-washed ocean air of Lobster Cove. Rick was serious about her! Tension that had wound itself around her core melted all at once. The polar ice-caps around her heart fell into the swirl. “Oh, Rick. I’m so glad you’re here. But we do have some things to fill in. What happened the last three months? Why didn’t you let me know you wanted to try again before now? I really missed you.” She couldn’t keep an edge of tears from her voice.
Rick stepped forward, cradling her elbows in his warm hands as he gazed down into her eyes. “Oh, honey. I left a lot of messages…that I now know you never heard. Finally when I never heard back from you, I had to find out for sure that there was no chance, so I went to your house. Your landlord said he’d listened to the messages. He didn’t pass them on. He called me ‘Lovesick Rick.’”
The answering machine! She’d forgotten to take it when she moved. Poor Rick! “I can’t believe old Herb called you Lovesick Rick. But it would be just like him not to give me the messages. I’ll bet he told all his buddies about it. I bet they all had a big laugh.”
Rick nodded. “Yeah...he did. They did.”
“Oh, Rick, you poor thing.” Maya pressed further into his arms.
His familiar masculine scent mixed with the tight strength of his body drove the air from her lungs. Another part of their history wriggled back. Maya forced herself to push away from Rick. He released her partially, still maintaining a firm yet gentle grip on her elbows.
“Wait a minute. I’m still mad at you. I can’t believe you thought I was a gold-digger.”
His brows drew together. “That’s my baggage, Maya. I’m sorry I put it on you. Look, you know where I’m coming from on this. I know I need to work on trust. I promise you I will. Besides,” he released one of her elbows to wave at the kitchen, “it’s obviously not an issue any more, Miss Successful Restaurateur.”
His acknowledgment let the steam off her anger. “I know a thing or two about baggage.” Maya sighed. “I really missed you.” This time she let herself be hugged.
After he
released her he hung onto her hand. “I really blew it. I haven’t been able to do anything except think about you.”
“Oh, I think you’ve done rather a lot. I’ve been following the events of GameCom. You’re fighting a huge battle. By the way, is that a new tattoo?”
He pulled up his shirtsleeve to reveal a big dark red heart with LCA in the middle pierced by an arrow.
“No way!” Maya snorted in surprised laughter. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” His lips quirked while his eyes drank in her reaction.
She shook her head in a few quick bursts, narrowing her eyes. “You must have been pretty sure of yourself.”
“I needed to prove my undying love somehow, didn’t I? What time do you close down shop? I’d like to start over. Are you up for it?”
He’d like to start over. He’d like to start over. Maya’s heart beat the rhythm of Rick’s words. “Yes.” Wait. She had a business to run. “Not tonight, though. I don’t close until two a.m. I have to be back in to open for lunch tomorrow.”
They made a date for her days off, Monday and Tuesday.
Maya walked Rick out. A warning glance at her staff suppressed outright disrespect. After Rick left, Maya forced herself back to work. For the first time since she’d opened the doors of ShellShocked, time dragged. The restaurant was a lot harder to run than the food truck or even the catering gig, a lot more intense. She loved it but was always exhausted by the end of the day.
Tonight, exhaustion wasn’t a problem, though. Focus was the problem. After work, Maya practically floated home to the apartment she shared with the twins. She didn’t mention Rick’s arrival to her sisters all through the weekend. They both spent all their time in their rooms studying.
Seeing them in their school environment had been an eye-opener. Even Cara grew serious once classes started. In fact, Cara seemed sad. Maya had tried to get her to talk, to no avail. When Maya apologized about discouraging her relationship with Jason, Cara just shrugged. The walls were up. Whatever ate at her sister was off limits to Maya, which saddened Maya. Oh, what she would do for the old Cara.
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