by Fran Baker
She cooled her heels for what seemed an eternity, though in reality she only waited about fifteen minutes before the door to Rafe’s private office opened. He emerged in the company of a man, portly and mustached, who sounded terribly grateful that Rafe had agreed to represent him in traffic court.
Jeannie’s heartbeat sped up at the sight of Rafe, who hadn’t seen her yet. Wearing a sedate gray suit, a striped shirt, and a retro necktie that pulled it all together, he looked sensational. His dark head was bent at a listening angle; his blue eyes were crinkled at the corners; his silver earring seemed totally in keeping with the flavor of his surroundings.
Fiddling nervously with one of the gold hoops in her own ears, she waited for him to finish his conversation with his client. The butterflies in her stomach had a heyday as the two men shook hands in farewell, and she decided that she’d made a terrible mistake showing up unannounced like this. He might reject her idea out of hand. Might laugh in her face. He might even kick—
“I’d be glad to sign a promissory note for my fee.” The client’s statement snapped Jeannie out of her worried daze.
Rafe dropped his hand and gave a dismissive shrug. “If a man’s handshake is no good, neither is his signature.”
After the door closed behind the departing client, the secretary announced, “There’s someone else to see you, Mr. Martinez.”
Rafe’s eyes blazed like blue neon when he looked in Jeannie’s direction. “What are you doing here?”
She stood, resisting the nervous urge to smooth her bleached denim skirt. “We need to talk.”
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he remarked caustically.
“It’s never too late where Tony’s concerned,” she returned calmly.
When he didn’t immediately dispute her declaration, she bent down to pick up her purse, treating him to a glimpse of smooth white thigh. And when she straightened, her breasts thrust proudly against the red cotton tank top she’d tucked into her skirt.
Desire flared deep in Rafe’s belly as she started toward him. She had that same walk—head high, shoulders squared. She looked so comfortable in her own skin that it made a man want to crawl inside her and never come out. But her betrayal still burned inside Rafe, laying waste to passion and leaving resentment in its wake.
Jeannie came to a halt within an arm’s reach of him. A torrent of love and regret spilled through her as she looked up into his familiar, handsome face and met his challenging stare. His cold reception might have intimidated a lesser woman, but this woman had come too far to back down now.
“May we talk in private?” she asked politely.
“By all means,” he agreed with a trace of mockery.
Rafe told his secretary to hold his calls before grudgingly ushering Jeannie into his office and closing the door. Setting one hip and thigh on the edge of his black marble desktop, he crossed his arms over that muscular chest and said cuttingly, “So, talk.”
Jeannie’s temper skyrocketed. How dare he be so rude as to fail to even offer her a chair? Not that she would have taken it. She was too nervous to sit. But he wasn’t the only one who’d been manipulated by Big Tom. And this was their son’s future she’d come to discuss.
On that thought she swallowed her anger and spoke in a civil tone. “I got your letter this morning.”
His eyes were as expressionless as flat blue stones. “I assume I’ll be hearing from your attorney soon.”
“No.”
“Oh?”
“I’m not going to fight you on this.”
He raised a skeptical brow—this was Big Tom’s daughter he was dealing with, after all. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
“I don’t want to hurt Tony.” She answered so emphatically, he had to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Did he ask about me?”
“Yes.”
His cynical guise crumbled, and a spasm of hope crossed his face. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were a friend of Big Tom’s.” She saw he was about to voice an objection and rushed to stall him. “I thought you should spend some time together, get acquainted with each other, before we break the news that you’re his father.”
He tried her idea on for size and found it suited him fine. “Where? When?”
“The lawyer in you is beginning to show.” Despite her exasperated tone, the glimmer in her gray eyes told him she was only teasing.
“Everybody’s got their faults,” he replied with dry aplomb.
They shared a smile, the first in eleven years, and it felt wonderful on both sides.
“I take it you have a plan for getting the two of us together?” he prompted then.
She nodded, remembering the agenda his secretary had reeled off. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll try to make this fast.”
He shook his head and reached behind him to press the buzzer on the intercom. “Nothing is more important to me than deciding the future of our son.”
Our son. Her heart swelled at his declaration, for she’d despaired of ever hearing it.
When instructed to cancel his lunch for today and reschedule it for tomorrow, his secretary asked, “And what should I tell Mr. Quinones if he wants to know why the change in plans?”
Rafe’s eyes met Jeannie’s with a promise that made her entire body pulse. “Tell him I’ve got some family business to take care of.”
Six
“Do you realize this is the first time we’ve ever gone anywhere together in broad daylight?”
Jeannie felt a sharp stab of pain at Rafe’s pointed question. Their fragile truce was broken, through no fault of hers. Perturbed, she set her iced tea down and wondered how she’d gotten herself into this predicament.
They had left his law office and walked around the corner to a small Mexican restaurant that he frequently patronized. The proprietors, a middle-aged couple who were not only clients but also ardent political supporters of his, had greeted them effusively and given them a corner table where they could talk in private. The waitress had taken their orders, then left them to their own devices.
Now, with Rafe demanding an answer to his opening question and Jeannie determined not to dredge up old regrets, she sighed theatrically and said, “How quickly they forget.”
He frowned. “Forget what?”
“The county fair.”
“Ah, yes, I remember it well.” His enlightened gaze moved from her sun-kissed hair to her silvery eyes. Then a grin lifted one corner of his brooding lips. “You and Olivia were fourteen-year-old brats—”
“I was fourteen; she was thirteen.”
“But brats nonetheless.”
“Neither one of us could drive yet, so we talked you into taking us—”
“You hounded me into taking you.” Now it was his turn to correct her.
“We asked you to try and win—”
“You begged me to throw baseballs at milk bottles.”
“You won her a stuffed frog and me a teddy bear,” she reminded him softly.
“She gave the frog to Enrique, who promptly tore it to shreds.” But his voice was gently gruff.
“Tony slept with my teddy bear until he was three.”
Rafe saw the startled look in her eyes and knew that her revelation had surprised her as much as it did him.
Jeannie looked away evasively, realizing too late that she’d just told him too much.
“Be careful now, these are really hot,” the waitress warned, relieving the telling silence that had suddenly fallen between them. She set sizzling platters of chile rellenos, served with beans and rice, in front of them. Then she refilled Jeannie’s glass and brought Rafe his beer before going to wait on another customer.
“Mmmm …” Grateful for an excuse to change the subject, Jeannie picked up her fork and dug into the cheese-stuffed peppers. “These look delicious.”
Rafe ignored his food. “I wonder how Big Tom would feel about our sitting at the same table?”
He was referring to her father’s rule that the help—in this instance the Martinez family—eat in their unit of the fourplex rather than at the main house. That meant Maria either had to cook two separate meals, one for the Cranes and one for her husband and children, or she had to cart leftovers home and reheat them.
With composure she swallowed a bite, took another sip of tea, then blotted her lips with a paper napkin before she looked at him. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“Rusty always ate with you.”
“Rusty had no one to cook for him.”
His lips twisted wryly. “And Rusty’s an Anglo.”
Jeannie dropped her gaze, at a loss for words. Rafe’s fingers—long and bronzed, with wispy black hair at the base—slid up and down the bottle where condensation had made it slippery, and a thrill that had nothing to do with the spicy food rose up from her stomach.
Because her reaction annoyed her, she took it out on him, setting her fork down and demanding irritably, “Why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Throwing the past in my face.”
“It feels good.” Boldly and without apology, his blue eyes drifted down to the front of her tank top. As though he’d touched them, as if they remembered the feathery caress of his fingertips, her breasts began to bead against the soft cotton.
Resenting the fact that he still possessed the power to arouse her, she folded her arms across her chest. “So if it feels good, do it?”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “You’ve got it.”
She looked down at the table again, her stomach taking another roller-coaster ride when he skimmed a drop of moisture off the beer bottle and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
Jeannie watched, mesmerized by that lazy circling motion before she realized that Rafe was doing it on purpose. Then she balled her hands into fists on her lap and met his knowing blue eyes. Not for the world would she admit defeat.
“I thought we came here to discuss getting you and Tony together,” she said with a touch of asperity.
“We did,” he acknowledged tightly. “But before we make any plans for the future, I’ve got to catch up on the past.”
She shook her head, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“Big Tom hated me.” Rafe’s lips formed a thin, bitter line. “So what I want to know is, what did he say when you told him you were pregnant with my child?”
Jeannie groped around for an easy way to say it, but there wasn’t one. “He wanted me to have an abortion.”
From across the table she sensed his reaction. His body got tense. His face grew as chilly as the polar ice cap. She saw him push his plate aside and followed suit, her appetite vanishing in view of his anguish.
“Obviously you refused,” he said tonelessly.
“I told him it was too late, that I was too far along.”
“What did he say then?”
“That if I didn’t go to a home for unwed mothers and put my baby up for adoption, he would disown me.”
His jaw hardened at the idea of her own father emotionally blackmailing her like that. “And instead you went … where?”
“To Houston.” She heaved a sigh tinged with yesterday’s tears. “I stayed with my aunt—my mother’s younger sister—until Tony was born.”
Rafe’s throat grew tight at the thought of all it had cost her to keep his child over Big Tom’s strenuous objections. “What made him change his mind and let you come back to the ranch?” he asked her then.
“I think he finally realized he’d lost control over me, that he was going to be the loser this time around.” Jeannie’s eyes misted with maternal pride. “That, and the fact that Tony was the most beautiful baby ever born.”
“An unbiased viewpoint of course.”
She laughed. “But of course.”
“He looks like me,” he said, sobering.
“The mirror image.”
“And how did Big Tom feel about looking into my face every morning, noon, and night for ten years?” The timbre of his voice expressed a very real concern.
“I never asked him.” Jeannie chose her words with caution, not wanting to hurt him any more than she had to. “But frankly I think he saw Tony as an extension of himself. His grandson. A Crane, not a Martinez.”
“So he didn’t hold his Hispanic blood against him?”
“If he had, I’d have been gone just like this.” She snapped her fingers, demonstrating dramatically. “He knew it too.”
Rafe relaxed his rigid posture and reached across the table, taking her slender hand in his. He couldn’t imagine all she’d been through because of him, not even when he could see it reflected so clearly in her eyes. The hell of being estranged from her father and bearing a baby alone made his own rocky road to success seem like the highway to heaven.
Jeannie sealed her lips together to keep from sighing with ecstasy when he turned her hand over and placed a kiss in the center of her palm. His lips were as soft as a sable brush against her sensitive skin. The warmth of his breath sent threads of heat spiraling along her arm. His words, when they came, were music to her soul.
“That’s for giving life to my son,” he murmured.
“Our son,” she stressed softly.
“Our son,” he agreed, meeting her eyes across the table.
The hot, oily aroma of their unfinished food wafted under their noses. Someone dropped a glass, causing a crash and a string of curses to fill the air. The door opened for new customers and closed on old ones. Spanish greetings mingled with English good-byes, bespeaking the gradual merging of two proud cultures.
For all that Rafe and Jeannie noticed, they might have been alone in a moonlit meadow again, making plans for their future as if they really had one.
“Was there something wrong with the food?” the waitress asked, breaking the spell that had fallen over her bedazzled customers.
“No.” Jeannie pulled her hand free and glanced at the anxiously hovering girl. “Why?”
“You’ve hardly touched your lunch.”
“It’s my fault.” Rafe shouldered the blame with a smile. “I grabbed her fork hand and forced her to follow me on a stroll down memory lane.”
“Speaking of which …” Jeannie said when the waitress had cleared away their plates but left their drinks and lunch check. “Where did you all go when you left the ranch?”
“The Rio Grande Valley.”
She sipped her tea and tasted regret. “No wonder I couldn’t find you.”
“My parents picked the last of the summer vegetables, then grapefruit and oranges that winter,” he remembered aloud. “And Olivia and Enrique went to school in a tin shack that had been set up for migrant workers’ kids.”
“What did you do?” she asked around the lump that had formed in her throat at the thought of what his family had endured as a result of Big Tom’s bigotry.
His expression betrayed none of the bitterness welling inside him. “Picked tomatoes and peppers for a couple of weeks, until I had enough money to call you and tell you I was coming back for you. Then I told my parents to go get their green cards, kissed Olivia and Enrique good-bye, and headed for the nearest pay phone.”
She knew what was coming next and quickly lowered her lashes to veil her tear-filled eyes. To think that something as simple as a phone call had caused so many complications …
“After hearing you’d eloped,” he continued in a raspy voice, “I picked fruit for the rest of that season, then enrolled in law school the following semester.”
She lifted her gaze back to him, questioning something he’d mentioned earlier. “Did your parents ever get their green cards?”
“Better than that—they got their citizenship papers.”
“That’s wonderful!”
His smile held all the pride and the promise of the red, white, and blue. “My father flies the flag every day that it doesn’t rain, and my mother fixes a Fourth of July barbecue to rival the Circle C’s.
”
She was pleased for the migrant couple but more concerned with their son’s progress. “Law school is so expensive.”
He grimaced. “Tell me about it.”
“How did you manage to pay your tuition?”
“I did construction work the first two years, then clerked for a judge the third.”
She could just picture him hustling from the classroom to the job site to moot court. “When did you find time to study?”
“I burned a lot of midnight oil.”
“It must have been exhausting.”
“But worth it, in the end.”
“How were your grades?”
“Mostly A’s.” Rafe couldn’t resist boasting a bit. “And I was editor of the law review my senior year.”
Jeannie was duly impressed. “With that kind of record, I’m surprised some big law firm didn’t snap you up straight out of school.”
“I was invited to join several firms, but I was just too much of a maverick to fit their mold.”
“And?” she asked, sensing there was more.
He gave her a mirthless smile. “And I wasn’t interested in being their token minority.”
“Not even for the money?”
“I’ve done all right for myself.”
She toasted the visible signs of his success with her tea. “Here’s to tailor-made suits and silk ties.”
“Beats those hand-me-downs I lived in as a boy.” He finished his beer but kept the bottle. “Let’s go.”
“You collect empties now?” she asked as she picked up her purse.
“I need it for court,” he answered enigmatically, laying enough change atop the generous tip to cover the deposit charge.
Jeannie didn’t get a chance to pursue that because, just as she stepped outside, she stumbled over a small crack in the concrete sidewalk. Rafe caught her, the tapered strength of his fingers encircling her arm and stirring embers that were better left banked.
“My knight in shining armor,” she said with a smile.
“Surely you joust,” he returned as he released her.
They shared a laugh and started walking in the direction of his office. But that brief contact left a residue of awareness that she tried to put from her mind as diligently as she tried to match his stride.
