by Holley Trent
The Demigod’s Legacy
Masters of Maria Book 1
Holley Trent
Avon, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2017 by Holley Trent.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by
Crimson Romance™
an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020. U.S.A.
www.crimsonromance.com
ISBN 10: 1-5072-0312-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-5072-0312-5
eISBN 10: 1-5072-0313-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-5072-0313-2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © Natalia Lukiyanova/123RF, ©Period Images.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More from This Author
Also Available
For Olu, because of underwear with cartoon characters and other stories I’m not allowed to retell.
chapter ONE
As December Farmer braced herself in a New Mexican town she didn’t know and on the front stoop at an address she’d gone to incredible lengths to get, she swore.
She’d been doing that for five minutes—raising her hand to depress the doorbell, only to mutter, “Rat bastard,” or similar pejoratives before dropping her hand.
Shame knocked her courage back again and again and she’d needed the better part of three months to muster up what little bit of fortitude she had. Desperation had finally prompted her to make the drive up from Tucson. Hand-me-downs and a sofa bed weren’t enough for her daughter anymore. She needed more things—more space, more clothes, more money.
December raised her hand to the doorbell once more and, on a sigh, dropped it.
“Why is this so damn hard?”
She already knew the answer. She was turning into the beggar she’d never wanted to be.
In the almost ten years since she and her sister, Alicia, had been forced out of their parents’ home, she’d never begged for anything from anyone. When she couldn’t get a job, she’d found things to sell, and Alicia had always done the same.
They’d gotten by, but getting by had been so much easier before December had a baby by a frequent customer at the bar where she still worked.
She’d waited five years for Tito to return to Tucson. She’d given him her number and hadn’t thought to get his in return, because she’d never had to with any other man. When he didn’t call, she’d passed messages through his friends, but still didn’t hear a peep from him.
The time for discretion had passed. Tito couldn’t possibly ignore her if she was standing right on his doorstep. She’d tracked him down like a dog that hadn’t been microchipped, and she planned to let him know he was a dog, too. She simply hadn’t decided yet if she’d do that before or after she introduced him to his daughter.
She glanced over her shoulder at her little coupe parked at the curb. Cruz was in the backseat with her head against the window. The child had waged an admirable battle to stay awake but had finally succumbed to the combination of heat, boredom, and Benadryl. Her sinuses didn’t like New Mexico any more than December liked why they had to be there.
“Keep sleepin’, baby. We’re going home soon.”
She took a deep breath, brought her fist up to the weatherworn green door, and told herself to knock hard—that banging on the wood would be cathartic.
“Shit.” She pounded her thigh instead, took a step back, and paced.
She’d never been the confrontational sort. Alicia, older by four years, had always been the more aggressive of the two of them. They’d both had to finish growing up quickly, but Alicia had kept December safe after their parents told them to leave—after their parents had chosen to believe the lies of an outsider over their children’s pleas. They’d given up their parenting responsibilities too readily, but December wasn’t going to let Tito shirk his any longer.
Cruz wasn’t going to suffer the way December had.
She picked her fist up again, straightened her spine, and took a deep breath.
“You’re gonna do right by her. I swear, you will.” She banged on the door hard before she could change her mind, and then she paced while she waited.
Be home. After all this, please be home.
She’d taken the day off to make the eight-hour drive to Maria. She needed to be back at the bar earning tips to buy Cruz school supplies for the rapidly-impending start of kindergarten, not wasting gas driving through the desert again. Already, she’d burned so much money and energy tracking him down. Calling the number she’d found for him online ended with unceasing ringing every single time. After twenty or so attempts, she’d decided that he may have been like her—having a home phone number because a cable plan provided one in a package, but no actual phone plugged in. Left with the decision to either call him at work or show up in person, she picked the latter. The Internet had told her he’d become a sheriff’s deputy. Her sister had told her not to call him at work because that was creepy.
“As if stalking him is better,” December muttered.
She’d followed their mutual friend Sean Foye home following his last trip to Tucson. That was how she learned about the small town of Maria. She’d returned a week later to ask around. Apparently, Tito was something of an institution in the small town. Big man, big personality. She hadn’t even needed to say his last name. They all knew him and where he lived.
They didn’t know him the way she did, though.
Once more, she knocked. “Come on out, you good-for-nothing hustler.” She didn’t care anymore if she was loud. If his neighbors heard, he would be the one ashamed, not her. She was sick of being ashamed.
She knocked harder, alternating between knuckles and the fleshy heel of her palm.
“A’ight!” came a familiar, though muffled, voice from inside. “I’m coming.”
Her body went stiff and cold, and her hand froze. Breathing was out of the question.
Tito.
She hadn’t heard that voice in so long, and the sound still did unmentionable things to her. From the time he’d called her over to the bar and ordered those greasy chili fries, he’d held her in thrall. She didn’t know what about him was so intriguing, beyond the fact that he’d looked at her like she was the only person in the room, when in fact the bar had been at absolute capacity.
“Just wait. I’m coming,” he repeated.
The sorcery he had ove
r her broke then, and she could breathe once more. Rolling her eyes, she muttered, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
She paced. Folding her arms over her chest, she looked back at the car again. The best she could tell, Cruz was still asleep, and oblivious. Cruz wasn’t the lightest of sleepers, but she was medicated, and December hoped she’d remain in Dreamland until December had a better idea of how the confrontation with Tito would play out.
“Gonna do this.” She nodded with finality, and planted herself on the doormat.
No more sweet, patient December, pining away over a man she’d known in the first place was too damned old for her. He’d said he was thirty. Alicia had warned her to steer clear, but December had been “grown” at eighteen, and Tito had been so damned charming.
“They’re all charming until they roll off of you,” Alicia had said.
“I should have believed her,” December muttered as the footsteps inside the house stopped and the inner door’s lock clicked.
She forced a swallow down her tight throat, tipped up her chin, and narrowed her eyes in preparation to engage.
Try me, Tito.
He pulled open the inner door, and she stood with her mouth agape, staring at him through white-painted iron bars of the outer door, stupefied just like she’d been all those years ago.
Same Tito. A little less of him, though. He’d lost weight. Also, he’d cut his hair and had apparently become more proficient with a razor. The tan shirt he wore—not the blue chambray uniform shirt of the trucking company he used to drive for—was untucked and unbuttoned. Over his heart was a deputy badge with a nametag beneath that read “Perez.”
Tito Perez.
She’d only known his last name for a month—since she’d done a reverse search in the Town of Maria’s property tax records.
He quickly opened the outer door, and though he hadn’t budged from his side of the threshold, suddenly she felt squeezed—like she’d invited him into her space and he’d held her in one of those hugs that were experiences, and not just common embraces.
She’d always felt that way around him, though. Being held by him ranked high on her list of experiences she wanted to repeat but shouldn’t.
“December?”
Her jaw flapped, but she couldn’t shape any words. “Uh … ”
“Man, what are you doing way up here?”
“Uh … ”
“How’d you find me? I mean, I was gonna call you, but … ” Cringing, he pressed a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed. “Been tied up a little. Career change and stuff.”
She dragged her tongue across her lips and stared.
A deputy. The laid-back trucker had changed careers, and to one she never would have imagined him in. His gentleness had been part of the reason she’d fallen for him. Of course, the sexy, bedroom eyes didn’t hurt, or the way he smiled at her kind of crookedly and made her head feel like she’d had three servings of the cheap frozen margaritas they served at the bar.
He’d stop in at the bar during his then-frequent trips to Tucson, and they’d talk and talk until he absolutely had to go.
He’d always promised to come back, and he had, until that last time. Instead of leaving her with a phone number, he’d left her pregnant.
She swallowed again, pressed her moistened lips together, and then shifted her weight. Spit it out, girl. “I … needed to talk to you, and I didn’t have a good number for you.”
But you had mine.
She should have said the words instead of just thinking them, but yet again, her courage had started to flee.
“Well, come in,” he said.
Still, he didn’t budge. Whether he expected her to squeeze past him in the doorway as if she had to pay a toll with her body or if he didn’t really want her inside, she didn’t care. Alicia had told her not to enter his lair, and for a change, December was going to listen.
“No. I can’t. I … ” The urge to look back at the car was too strong, but she didn’t want to draw his attention to Cruz just yet. The last thing she wanted was for the child to wake just in time to witness her father’s utter nonchalance. Cruz deserved the sun and the moon, not mere tolerance.
December’s chin had fallen, so she tilted her face up again and somehow met his pitch-black gaze. “No. Here’s fine.”
“You came all the way to Maria to talk to me on my stoop?” He stepped outside, barefoot, and a shameful little noise squeaked out of her chest at his proximity.
Her skin was prickling for nerves or some histamine reaction, December couldn’t tell which, but the feeling made her take a step down onto the walkway and wring her hands. If she didn’t do something with her hands, she was going to touch him, and touching led to trouble. If the past were any guide, smelling him might lead to trouble. He always smelled like what she imagined, for some reason, a jungle to smell like. Earthy, but sweet. Cloying, yet somehow masculine and dangerous.
She happened to know he tasted good, too. Every nip and lick of his skin had an aphrodisiac effect. Once she started, she didn’t want to get off him. Kissing him was torment.
Shouldn’t even be thinking about kissing him.
After more than five years, even thoughts of him made her breath go shallow.
She swallowed again. Licked her lips. Closed her eyes. “I … needed you to … ”
Whatever words she was going to force off her heavy tongue were preempted by the slamming of a nearby car door. She turned in time to see the old woman at the curb.
The woman waved her walking stick and called out, “So you’re home, mijo.”
“What are you doing out here this time of day?” Tito asked.
The woman who’d called Tito “my son” walked at a slow, uneven gait, her steps aided by a hand-carved cane that appeared to have the head of some sort of wildcat carved into the handle. Upon further observation, December saw that the beast’s entire body appeared to be wrapped around the cane, its long tail twined around the shaft.
The stick looked expensive, but nothing else about the hunched, miniscule woman did. Her cotton skirt and knit top were simple enough. Her “leather” walking shoes appeared to be the off-brand sorts that some elderly people ordered from coupon circulars. Perhaps the stick had been a gift, or had been purchased in richer times—maybe at the same time she’d come into the possession of her massive, gold and brown Lincoln Town Car.
Mijo, she’d said.
December squinted as the woman walked closer.
She had wide-set eyes darker than the night sky and pale brown skin, just like Tito’s. She pressed her lips together in the same way as him, and had the same high forehead and sharp cheekbones as Tito, too.
December had a habit of paying attention to small details, because in the bar where she worked, she needed to be aware of what people had in their hands and what they were doing with the things they held. The bar had long been a watering hole for a certain kind of bikers, and although the clientele had been gentrified in the past couple of years, there were still a few holdovers who thought they could take back the territory that had never really been theirs in the first place.
Is she his mother?
That would make her Cruz’s grandmother. December scrambled to make connections between the two in her brain, but she couldn’t concentrate. The woman was too old and Cruz was too young for December to see any notable similarities.
The woman’s gaze was pinned on December’s car as she idled near the bottom of the stoop. Then she looked up and fixed her deep, dark gaze on December.
December couldn’t hold the eye contact. It was too aggressive, somehow, or felt disrespectful to continue.
The woman didn’t say anything to December. She scaled the steps, slowly, her focus fully on Tito. “Hard to catch up to you lately.”
Tito grunted. “Got off an hour ago. Sat down on the sofa to take off my shoes and fell asleep.”
“You’ll get used to the hours, in time.”
“Hope so. Whoever said the
graveyard shift was quiet lied. Went out on six different calls last night, and all for stupid shit. Need something? You’re usually out at the Foyes’ this time of day.”
Everyone in Maria knew the Foyes, just like they knew Tito. December had learned that during her snooping, too. Local opinions were decidedly mixed on the Foye clan. People had kind things to say about the women, but the men had reputations for mild misanthropy. That had sounded a lot like Sean to December. He was the most charming ass she’d ever had the pleasure of serving beer to. He was supposed to have passed on her requests for Tito to call. She wondered suddenly if he actually had.
I’ll strangle that ginger jerk if he didn’t …
“Everything all right?” Tito asked the woman who was presumably his mother.
She shifted her cane to her other hand, and hitched her purse up higher on her forearm. “Yes. The ranch is fine.”
“Yeah? How’s the … ” He pinched his lips together on whatever he’d been about to say, and looked to December, then quickly back to his mother. “The, uh … door. How’s it holding up? I haven’t been out there in a few weeks.”
The woman’s jaw grated a few beats, her gaze still locked straight ahead.
December almost wanted to excuse herself to let them have their obviously important and secret conversation in peace, but then she remembered why she was there, and that she’d been there first.
“The door is fine,” the woman said. “I met Steven as he was coming out with Belle. Nothing to report, I suppose. He was calm and heading to the sheriff’s department for his shift.”
“I’ll catch up with him later,” Tito said. “So, you’re here because … ”
“I just came to visit, mijo. A woman should see her son, and I haven’t seen mine in quite some time.”
She looked to December, again, her expression suspiciously grave. “Perhaps I picked a bad time.”
Things are about to get much worse, lady.
December spread on her “tolerant barmaid smile” and waved.
