Shaken: An Interracial Second Chance Romance (L.A. Nights Book 3)

by Sylvie Fox

  “That house is for Mama and Delores. I lived there before we got married, and after we separated. Living here had been…” She fought for words that didn’t implicate her, make her feel guilty, show her for the selfish American she’d become. “I like being close to work,” she said. Avoiding traffic was always an acceptable justification.

  He leaned forward, stretching across the table, sweeping her hair behind her ear. All the fight went out of her. Even Cam looked like he wasn’t up for the battle. “You don’t have to make excuses for me. What do you need me to sign?”

  Thank God in heaven above. This was going to be easier than she’d thought. She pushed the papers back toward him. “I need you to sign this.” She put her finger on a signature line highlighted with fluorescent ink. Flipped to another page, showed him the other.

  Cameron had never been the kind of man to sign now, read later. Taking long pulls of coffee, he read. Without him having to ask, she refilled his cup, stirred in cream.

  He ate the cookies in two bites. His eyes were intense when he looked up at her. “You want me to sign away any right to this place?”

  Gathering her thoughts in English, she spoke quickly. “I don’t want you to be on the hook for the loan. You already are for Mama’s house. The bank won’t lend me money if you don’t sign away something they call dower and a…quitclaim deed.” She heard herself mispronounce that word, quitclaim. She’d been practicing it and still she’d gotten in wrong. She was ready to shuffle through the papers and show him what she meant, when a meaty hand came down on all of them, stopping her fidgeting.

  “We’re married.” He said it with such finality she wondered if he’d been in the same marriage as she.

  “We’re separated, Cam.” He’d been the one who’d mentioned divorce. She’d been the one hamstrung by the Catholic Church. Well, no more of that. Maybe she’d never take communion again, but the world would continue to spin. Hell was a long way away.

  “So this is it, isn’t it?”

  Yesenia had envisioned this discussion in a coffee shop, or at the front desk of the Hollywood division, maybe even in the little brick public library where they’d met to sign tax returns last year. Somewhere he didn’t dare show the full force of his anger.

  “Before…before last night I was going to call you.”

  Cam sat up straight and crossed his arms. Five years ago, she would have backed down. Even three years ago, she would have let his unblinking cop stare keep her silent. No longer. “Say it, Jessie,” he dared her.

  She matched his height and posture, leaning forward. “I was planning to ask you for a divorce.”

  “You still want that divorce?” he asked, like one early morning session of mind-blowing sex would change her mind. But the shaking of the ground had hardened her resolve. Life could end any minute. She wanted to start living hers.

  Setting aside the eternal damnation of her soul, she nodded. “Yes.”

  Cameron’s utter quiet unnerved her. But she fought to use the best reporter tool she’d ever learned: silence. If she wasn’t compelled to fill it, the other person would have to. She was ready to refute anything he had to say. It had taken her weeks to get armed, but her arsenal was ready.

  His mouth opened then shut when the shrieking of the phone pierced that silence. There were only two people with her land line phone number. One of them was sitting right at the table, no phone in sight.

  “Your mother?” Cameron raised an eyebrow.

  Suddenly animated, Yesenia pushed away from the table and grabbed for the receiver. The phone’s shriek merged with her mother’s wail when she picked up the old-fashioned receiver from the kitchen wall.

  “¿Por que no llamaste?” her mother whined into the phone. In a single sentence Yesenia was transformed from self-assured adult to a little girl.

  She wasn’t going to tell Mama the real reason she hadn’t called. That she’d forgotten everything the moment Cam had kissed her. Making her excuses she said, “Lo siento. It was near dawn, Mama.”

  “I had to hear about my own daughter’s welfare from the TV!” It would take a year of apologies for her mother to forgive her the sin of not calling after an earthquake. Mama’s fear of losing her daughter in the same way she lost her husband had probably turned her hair white.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said uselessly.

  “After what happened to your father, you could have called anytime. Day or night. It wasn’t like I was sleeping anyway. You could have died! Died!”

  Like her father had died. Guilt took away her breath. With a few words, she and Mama were at the crux of their disconnection. Yesenia hadn’t saved her father’s life. Her mother had never forgiven her. She’d never forgiven herself. So she gave her mother the only thing she could sacrifice, herself.

  “I’ll be over in an hour, Mama.”

  “Thank the Lord above. I need to see you in person to make sure you’re okay.”

  She hung the phone in her cradle and turned back to her husband.

  “I really appreciated your help yesterday—”

  “Why don’t you take a shower? Get dressed.”

  “About the papers.”

  “We’ll discuss it later.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going to Mama’s.”

  “You need a ride.”

  “I can drive myself. I learned when I was sixteen. I’m okay now, Cameron. I was a little shaken up, but—”

  “With what car?” he challenged.

  She ran to the living room window, scanning up and down the street. No Jeep. Had it been towed? What in the hell? Cameron’s approach had been nearly silent. “It’s at the TV station,” he said from directly behind her. “I drove you home this morning.”

  Right. “Can you take me to my car?”

  “You’re not going back into that underground garage right now. Not until an engineer checks out the structural impact of the quake.”

  “So?”

  “You need to get ready so you’re not late for lunch.”

  She wanted to finish their discussion on the condo, the divorce, the end of their relationship, but her mother waited. If she wasn’t at Mama’s house in an hour, the phone would ring again and Mama wouldn’t be so forgiving the second time around.

  She pulled clothes out of her closet and took them to the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

  Yesenia was adjusting her skirt, making sure the hem fell below her knees, when Cameron called up that he was ready to go when she was. Buttoning her cardigan more than halfway, she descended the stairs, her grip on the iron railing a little looser this time.

  Dressed, he stood at the bottom of the steps. He looked down at her stockinged feet.

  “Your shoes.”

  Yesenia looked longingly at the shearling boots propped haphazardly near the door before trudging upstairs for hard-soled flats that would save her some maternal criticism. Creature comfort and mothers did not go together. Back downstairs, she transferred her makeup, keys and wallet from the designer purse to an inconspicuous canvas tote.

  Cam was in either the living room or kitchen, but the front door stood open. She locked her door and joined her husband. A neighbor carrying groceries gave wide berth. He’d taken up a post on the front steps. His arms were crossed, biceps flexed. Mirrored aviators shielded his eyes. She rolled her own. Why did he have to do “cop” twenty-four hours a day?

  Yesenia stumbled when her heart gave a knock and her stomach fluttered. She tried to cover her reaction to him by pretending to drop her keys. Before she could take another step, Cam’s hand gripped her arm, steadying her. In less than a second, he’d scooped up her keys and dropped them in her purse.

  He was saving her, again. She hadn’t always needed the hero. But she’d always wanted the man. She’d had too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

  Pushing the thoughts of their failed marriage out of her head, Yesenia let him
walk her to his car. Again, no directions were necessary. He’d gone to Mama’s house nearly weekly for years. Turning her gaze away from Cam, she watched the scenery change from mature trees and upscale cars she’d gotten used to in her new neighborhood to the barren landscape of south Los Angeles.

  The absence of foliage, the presence of discarded couches hadn’t registered on her radar as marks of poverty until years after she’d been in the country. It had taken a long time to understand why movie stars didn’t live in her South L.A. neighborhood.

  At first, as a naïve child, she’d only seen the similarities. They had green lawns, blue skies, and perfect weather, just like Beverly Hills. She’d traveled the long boulevards from school to therapy on the bus, unable to see the difference between here and there. But by high school, she got it.

  Those other neighborhoods north of Wilshire weren’t bombarded with constant sirens, the relentless whomp-whomp of helicopter rotors, or the pop-pop-pop of gun fire that sounded nothing like the movies. Drive-by shootings and gang warfare completely bypassed white L.A.

  “She got bars?” he asked as they pulled up to the single story, gray stuccoed bungalow on Alsace, well south of Wilshire Boulevard. Her mother’s house nearly kissed the Santa Monica freeway.

  “After some neighborhood break-ins,” Yesenia said, pushing the passenger door open before he could.

  But he was at the door before she could step a foot on the curb. “Do they have safety latches?” he asked while taking her arm and guiding her out.

  “I don’t know, Cam.”

  “But if there’s a fire—”

  “I can’t afford to retrofit them right now,” she said with finality.

  “You’re still supporting them?”

  From the moment she could work under the table, she’d supported her mom and sister. “The mortgage gets paid. Your credit is intact.” She hoped that was enough for him. She didn’t want to talk about her family. About the strain of paying mortgage, rent, a car note. About the guilt she felt because she resented having to do it all. She deflected in the best way she knew how. “Do you still send your mom money?”

  Bridget Becker was infamous for always needing something. But instead of asking like Mama, she’d always manipulated her boys into ponying up.

  “That’s different,” he said, crossing his big arms again. Yeah, sure. Cam and his brother Ryan supported their mother because it was the right thing to do. Somehow supplementing the household income of her own family was enabling.

  Bridget Becker had always treated Yesenia like she’d trapped her oldest son into a green card marriage. But she’d grown up with her own single mom and manners, so she’d always treated his mom with kid gloves. No matter, her sharp tongue always got in a lash.

  “Yeah, it’s always different with her.”

  “She always worked an honest job.”

  “Stop.” Yesenia turned toward the door. She’d hated watching her neighbors argue on the front lawn. She wasn’t about to take the bait he’d dangled and join them. “I can get a ride back,” she threw over her shoulder.

  She looked up and down the street for Dolores’ car, the Honda she’d handed down to her sister last year. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Yesenia tried not to read any meaning into that. Surely she could get a ride from Raul in his brand new Escalade if it came down to it.

  Ignoring her, he beeped the locks and was by her side at the front door.

  “Don’t mention the condo deal, okay?” A single whiff of her plans, and Mama would have her back in the house sleeping under a crucifix. After Cameron had signed the loan papers and the divorce papers, she’d planned to present it as a fait accompli; that was if she told her mother at all.

  Quelling the acid eating away at the lining of her stomach, she knocked and entered. “Mama!”

  “Estoy en la cocina,”came a shouted reply.

  She followed the smell of cooking empanadas. Her mouth watered when the scents of Hidalgo pushed away the despair that had pooled in her belly moments ago.

  “¿De qué tipo los haces?” she asked.

  “Pollo con papas—” Whatever else her mother was going to say was cut off by the sight of Cameron filling the dining room archway.

  Wiping her floured hands on an apron, her mother started in on him in Spanish.

  “En inglés, Mama,” she implored. Mama gave her a look that said she was not happy at being accosted in her own house, and turned back to stuffing the chicken and potatoes in the thin pastry.

  “Did I hear right?” Undoubtedly sensing the drama she thrived on, her sister Dolores was in the room in an instant. Yesenia didn’t think she’d ever seen Dolores move that fast. Mellow was a gross understatement where her sister was concerned. “Long time no see,” Dolores said.

  Because she’d been the youngest when they’d arrived in southern California, Dolores’ English was the best. Full of colloquial phrases Yesenia and Mama could never get quite right.

  “Are you high?” Cameron asked. Pounding in her head started in earnest. Yesenia and her mother had learned to studiously ignore the haze of marijuana smoke that always followed Dolores like dirt trailed Pigpen. With a pot dispensary on nearly every L.A. corner now, their little Dolores went prescription in hand, and got supplied weekly.

  “You gonna call the cops on me?” she asked, draping her lanky frame across two of the black lacquer dining room chairs.

  Cameron didn’t say anything more, merely shook his head.

  Ignoring the escalating pain in her temples, Yesenia jumped in to mediate. “Dori, don’t.”

  “Quizás La Migra, también,” her mother added.

  “Mamá, Cam’s never called Immigration on us. Plus you know that he’s bound by Special Order forty,” she said, seeking out and finding pain reliever on the counter of the pass through. Yesenia helped herself to water from her mother’s glass.

  “Maybe you don’t worry so much because you’re legal,” her mother added.

  Nothing like guilt with lunch. Cameron’s marriage to her had made her legal before the post 9/11 laws had gotten crazy restrictive. But after the INS had gone defunct and Homeland Security had taken over, Yesenia could no longer sponsor her family for citizenship as she’d planned. There’d been no hurry to start the paperwork way back then. What was another month or year, she’d thought when in the early throes of blissful marriage. Then, it had been too late.

  The little Prado-Morales clan had all entered the country illegally. And now Mama and Dolores were stuck in undocumented limbo. Her own status made every conversation one of her versus them.

  She had the husband, the job, the ability to pass through immigration checkpoints without harassment. Yesenia’s status weighed on her like chain mail on a worn out medieval soldier. Buying them the house, giving Dolores the car, giving them money. None of it really absolved the guilt for more than a few months.

  She turned to Cam, ready to ask the source of the agitation between her and her family to leave, but the look of defiance in his eyes quickly changed her mind. One more argument, she didn’t need.

  Instead she pulled an apron from the nail on the wall and made herself useful. Yesenia cut up avocados, peeled tomatillos and chopped onions for the salsa. Working in concert with her mother, like they had so many times before, she pulled one pan of pastes out of the oven while her mother moved to shove another in.

  “Is he staying for lunch?” Dolores asked, floured finger pointed toward Cam.

  “I’m right here,” Cam said, helping himself to a dining room chair.

  Dolores crossed her arms for a long moment. Yesenia hid a smile. Did everyone in her life have to be so closed off and defiant at the same time? It was funny when it wasn’t aggravating. When her mother lost the staring contest with Cam, she directed Dolores to set another place at the dining room table.

  Jessie nibbled at her food. Reina would have filled her daughter’s plate ten times over if his ex ate at a normal rate. But the closer Jessie had gotten to the
weeknight anchor desk, the more she nibbled at her mother’s cooking.

  “If you’re not going to eat, talk to me,” Reina said in English. The glare she gave him let him know she’d made a big accommodation for his benefit.

  “What do you want to know, Mama?”

  “How long were you stuck?” Dolores interjected.

  He watched his wife’s tan face lose its color for a moment. Then she caught herself.

  “Two or three hours. Not too long.” Cam refrained from coughing “bullshit” into his closed fist. She’d always minimized her troubles for her family’s sake. He’d always told Jessie if they really knew the sacrifices she made for them, they’d appreciate what she did. Or at least meet her halfway, instead of relying on her to do all the heavy lifting.

  Sparked by the smell of potential misery that wasn’t her own, Dolores leaned forward. “Did you pass out?”

  “No,” Jessie snapped, uncharacteristically. “It was fine.”

  Dolores didn’t miss a beat. Ignoring Jessie’s discomfort, she leaned forward. “How did this one end up there?” Jessie’s sister thrust an accusing thumb his way.

  Flustered, Jessie didn’t answer. In the old days he would have answered for her. Told Dolores to mind her own business, cut her sister some slack. But he was biding his time. He’d been doing a lot of thinking over the last twelve hours and this time, he planned to get Reina and Dolores on his side.

  When he stopped thinking and planning and hoping, Dolores was coming back into the room, slick new iPad in hand. Unless Dolores had suddenly found gainful employment, it was an expensive toy for a perennially broke woman. That kind of gift was Raul Vega’s calling card. Cameron hoped for all their sakes, that drug-dealing pimp wasn’t back in the picture.

  Dolores tapped and swiped at the screen, oblivious to his thoughts or her sister’s discomfort. Ultimately, she pressed a small right facing arrow over a screen shot from a video.

  He watched Jessie and himself coming out of the elevator. The woman in the video was doing her best to hide her strain, but he could see it clearly now. In the wrinkles around her eyes, in the tightness pulling at her mouth. He’d been so damn bowled over by being with his Jessie, that he hadn’t recognized the tension. Under his lashes he looked from Dolores to Reina and back at Jessie.