She did her best to make her way through, picking up clothes as she went. Were they clean? Were they dirty? Who could tell? She tossed an armful into the hall to wash later, then went back for the mountain of clothes on top of his dresser.
That’s when she noticed the work pants. Three pairs, tags still on, an expensive brand.
She picked them up, the heavy fabric rough in her hands. Where had he gotten the money for these?
“What are you doing in here?”
She spun at Javier’s voice behind her, holding in her flinch of surprise. It was her house, he was under her guidance—she had every right to be in his room.
“Looking for you.” Her fingers tightened on the pants. Should she ask him about them?
No, not now. She didn’t want to fight this morning. They’d save their fight for this afternoon when they met with the school guidance counselor.
“What do you want?” As sullen and slouchy as ever. Their mother would have been appalled by his attitude.
Sometimes Pilar was almost grateful her parents couldn’t see what a mess she was making of things. “Do you want some eggs?”
His dark hair fell into his face, hiding his brown eyes. “I guess.” He shrugged, as if the flatness of his tone hadn’t already told her how little he cared.
“I can cook up some machaca too.”
“Whatever.”
On that sparkling note, he turned and left.
She caught up with him in the kitchen, where he was chugging a tall glass of orange juice.
Four eggs into the pan. And some machaca as well. She hummed along to the radio as she watched them cook. This had been their mother’s favorite song. Pilar remembered singing along to the corrido with her in this very kitchen, her mother’s voice filling the room—
The music cut off with a smack.
“What the—”
Javier’s palm was on the off button, a grimace on his face. “I can’t listen to that shit this early in the morning. And where were you last night?”
“I had a late meeting with Benedict.” She would not blush. She would not blush…
“You weren’t here when I got home,” he whined, “and I didn’t have any dinner.”
“I didn’t see you when I got home. And you never texted me back.”
He flopped into a chair. “I went to bed. Hungry.”
She remembered Benedict’s irritation at Javier not feeding himself, felt an echo of it clench her own jaw. “And you couldn’t fix something for yourself? It’s all on me?”
“I didn’t feel like it.”
That was the problem. Javier never felt like doing anything anymore. “You’re old enough to make your own dinner,” she snapped. “What will you do at school when the cafeteria is closed?”
“Unggghh. God, don’t start on that.”
Panic mixed in with her irritation and began to eat at her stomach. She dished out the eggs onto a plate, resisting the urge to smack him across the face with the spatula. “Have you heard back from any schools yet?” She slid the plate in front of him, flattening her voice into something closer to chipper. “They should be sending out letters soon.”
“No, and I don’t want to talk about it.” He scooped up the eggs with his tortilla, shoveled his mouth full of food, and chewed noisily.
“Okay.” Don’t push too hard. He’ll just shut down. “We can talk about it at our meeting with Ms. Ramirez today. Don’t forget.”
“I know,” he mumbled. “I’ll be there, okay?”
As if her concern for him was oh so burdensome.
She slapped the spatula onto the counter. “Will you? Because some nights you don’t come home and don’t bother to tell me. What are you doing then?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s none of your business.”
“The hell it isn’t. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing!” He shoved his plate away and snapped to his feet. “I said don’t worry about it. And stop asking about stupid college. That’s all I ever get from you—you busting my balls.”
Her worries about his future, her sacrifices to ensure that future was bright—that was busting his balls? “I pinched and scrimped and starved to build your college fund.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to go.” He crossed his arms, looking like a toddler about to start screaming.
No. He had to go to college. He wasn’t letting all of them—her, their parents—down like that. “So I saved all that money for nothing?”
“I never asked you to save that money.”
She put the heels of her hands to her eyes, rubbed hard. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Do with me?” He threw his arms wide. “Do you even hear yourself? I’m not some stupid project at work,” he snarled.
He stomped out, slamming the door hard. There was a crash from the hallway, the sharp chime of breaking glass echoing in the silence.
Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. That was probably the family portrait that had fallen—the last one taken of all four of them.
She sat at the kitchen table, folded her arms, and rested her head in the comforting darkness she’d created there.
The creak of the front door opening had her raising her head. Javier slumped back into the kitchen.
“Forgot my backpack,” he mumbled.
“Oh.” She sniffled and wiped her nose. “Well, go get it. Don’t want to be late for school.”
Avoidance, aversion, sweeping it all away to deal with later, although later never came—she couldn’t keep dealing with him this way. But she was so tired of trying to reach him, and nothing else was working.
He waited, his fists clenched by his sides. “I’m sorry about the picture.” Defiant, as if daring her to reject his apology. But at least he’d apologized. “I’ll go clean it up.”
She blinked. The offer was almost as shocking as his apology. “Thanks,” she said, her voice weak.
He shuffled to the broom closet, returned with the broom, and soon enough the sounds of cleanup came from the hallway.
She tried to eat her cold eggs and to pretend that things weren’t very, very wrong between them.
The rest of the morning passed without incident until she got to work. She parked the car, grabbed her purse, slammed the door… and stopped dead.
There was a bulge in the tire.
Her skin washed in clammy tension as she imagined the tire blowing, the car veering toward a concrete median as she desperately tried to stop it—
No. No, now was not the time to think about that. She was here. She’d survived. And she’d get the tire fixed.
But probably not before the meeting with Ms. Ramirez today. Maybe she could get a ride from someone. Who’d be home around that time? Lupe—she was working the night shift at the hospital this week, so she could drop Pilar off on her way to work.
There remained the problem of how to get home after, but she’d worry about it later. Along with the problem of getting a new tire. She didn’t have a spare—in a fit of stupidity, she’d decided not to buy one, figuring that if something happened, she could buy one off Ignacio. He always had tires to sell.
And now she was looking at spending hundreds for a new tire and a tow, all to save a fraction of that on a spare tire. So dumb of her. She rubbed at her forehead. No time to cry. She had to call Lupe and then get her butt behind her desk—
“You didn’t drive on that?”
She spun around to find Benedict glaring at her. “I won’t again,” she bit off, her heart jumping with surprise. “I didn’t check before I left.”
He crouched beside the tire to inspect it, his big hands running over the rubber tread, his shirt stretching tight across the expanse of his back. Her heart kept on being jumpy.
“You have to check before you leave.”
“I know that now.” Did he have to be so smug about it? Although he didn’t really sound smug. More like concerned.
He looked up from the tire, and something like pain f
lickered in his gaze. “Sorry. I just about had a heart attack seeing this tire and knowing you’d been driving on it.”
Well, that made her feel like crap, having snapped at him. “I’ll get it fixed before I drive it home.” When that would be, she wasn’t sure, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’ll have it fixed.” He stood and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, scrubbing the black marks from his hands with it.
“Wait, no— This was supposed—” She dropped her voice. “This was supposed to only be in private. Not you publicly buying me tires!”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s only a tire. Although you should replace all four of them. And get the front end aligned.”
And drop a grand into this rust bucket? No.
He held up a hand when her mouth pinched up. “I’ll take it out of your salary, okay?”
“You can’t do that.” More charity. How could she refuse his offer without looking like an ungrateful brat?
She couldn’t.
“Buy you tires?” he asked. “Or take it out of your salary?”
“Any of it. And stuff like this—” She flailed at the car. “People like you don’t mess around with cars.”
“Actually, I change all the fluids on my truck and do most of the maintenance myself. My father taught me how. It’s a good skill to have.”
She wouldn’t admit how appealing that made him. Her father had done all the maintenance and repairs on their cars. Javier had inherited her father’s skills with an engine—too bad he hadn’t bothered to check her tires before this had happened.
And now Benedict wanted to fix it.
She crossed her arms over her chest. Mostly to keep herself from saying yes to his offer. Because it sounded nice, just handing over the whole mess and letting him deal with it. Knowing Benedict, he’d have four new tires on it by lunchtime.
“I can handle it myself,” she said. God, she sounded like Javier.
“Hey.” He placed a hand on her forearm, the heat of his skin reassuring. “I know you can. But I want to help.”
She wanted to say no to that help. For once. But this time she was in a serious bind. “Well…” She nibbled on her lip and he gave her arm a small squeeze. One that said Trust me. “Okay. But only because I have to meet Javier’s guidance counselor today. And you will have the bill sent to me.”
“Fair enough.” He took his hand from her arm and picked her purse up from the asphalt. “And I’ll drive you to the meeting.”
She started to protest but caught herself. If he were taking care of the tires, what did it matter if he drove her too?
“Okay. Thanks.”
Her plan to disentangle herself from Benedict Merrill’s charity was going just swimmingly. If her plan to have a fling with him went as badly…
She was definitely leaving in three months. The fling would be over, and she’d never get another handout from him after that. Problem solved.
Her morning was spent at her desk, dealing with e-mails and filing and such. Benedict was at the stockyards, saving her from the awkwardness of having to work alongside him after discovering that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
And the knowledge that they would do something about that wanting would be rubbing between them as they tried to concentrate on business… Nope, much better that Benedict was gone.
She was deep in an expense report when he came back, climbing through receipts and credit statements as she tried to make sense of it.
He set a hip against her desk and gave her a slow, lazy smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” She smiled back.
No. Wait. They were supposed to be professional about this. But how could she resist when he looked like that?
“I’ve ordered us some lunch,” he said, his voice a pleasant rumble. “It should be here soon, so finish up.”
“Oh”—she dropped the expense report, grabbed the drawer handle—“I have a—”
“A peanut butter sandwich, I know.” His lips twitched with suppressed laughter. “Don’t you want a change?”
How did he know she ate a peanut butter sandwich every day?
Hank wheeled in a catering tray. “In your office, boss?”
“Yep.” Benedict pushed off from her desk. “Finish up,” he ordered her.
Maybe he just wanted to work through lunch. In which case, she had to go eat with him. It being part of her job and all that.
It was only lunch. Benedict wasn’t going to seduce her over sandwiches in his office. Not that she wanted him to. That particular fantasy needed to stay safely in her head. But again, no danger of that happening.
Right?
Only one way to find out.
She walked into Benedict’s office to find Hank gone and two heaping salads on the catering cart, each topped with a generous serving of seared ahi, so deeply pink they were closer to ruby.
How could she say no to go eat a peanut butter sandwich?
Benedict of course knew that she couldn’t. Which was why he was smirking at her right now.
“Was there something you wanted to work on over lunch?” she asked pointedly.
“Nope.” His smile deepened. “Just you and me, having a conversation. I really like talking to you, by the way.”
She plopped into a chair, took the plate he offered her. Well. She couldn’t be snippy when he said things like that. “Thank you,” she said primly.
He settled across from her, looking much easier than she felt, and tucked in to his salad. “Was Javier there when you got home?”
She frowned. She didn’t remember telling him that Javier wasn’t coming home regularly. “Of course he was.”
“Oh. Because you kept checking your text messages with a worried look on your face.”
She’d have to get better at hiding her reactions from him. Or else he might figure out what was really up with her brother.
“Nope, he was there. Safe and sound.” She shoved enough lettuce in her mouth to choke a horse. That ought to stop any more questions from him.
“How’s Javier doing?”
Like that one.
Her first instinct was to lie. To say that everything was just perfect, that he was falling right in with all her plans for him to go to college, that all the money she’d saved was going to be used for exactly what it should be. That the efforts of the past five years had not at all been in vain.
But she was also getting tired of lying. Of pretending that she was on the ball and not a complete failure at rearing a teenager.
Had it been a relief for Benedict in some way when Josh had finally gone to prison, to not have to pretend anymore that everything was fine? She didn’t know; he never spoke of Josh. At least not to her.
It seemed rather silly to be ashamed of what was happening with Javier when Josh’s situation was much, much worse.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” she admitted. “He refuses to discuss college, he’s sullen, he… some nights he doesn’t even come home.” She flipped over a piece of tuna, the pink of it jewel bright against the green lettuce. Almost too bright to be real.
Benedict didn’t say anything. Maybe he was shocked by that. Maybe he was pissed she’d been lying all this time.
Or maybe he wasn’t surprised. Maybe he’d suspected this all along.
“When Josh was having trouble…” His voice went rough. “I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked.”
God, she knew how that felt. She could sing that song word for word.
Josh had been blackout drunk—just like the driver who’d killed her parents—when he’d wrapped his Ferrari around a telephone pole, almost killing himself and his girlfriend. He’d gotten six years for drunk driving. His prison sentence had started right before her parents had died.
Benedict had been so grim in those early months it had almost frightened her. But he’d never been mean or short with her as she’d wandered through her own grief. Slowly, they’d both grown into their working relat
ionship.
Now here they were. Sharing lunch. And their worries about their younger brothers.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You couldn’t have stopped him.” Any more than she was able to stop Javier.
He stirred through his salad but didn’t take a bite. “I still feel responsible on some level. Dad was having heart problems, I’d just taken over most of his role in the company—I felt like I should have straightened out Josh too.”
“How are your parents?” She didn’t really know Mr. Merrill, but Mrs. Merrill had always been nice to her.
“Enjoying their retirement. I never thought Dad would slow down, but I guess Cambria is pretty enough for even him to notice.”
She smiled. “He knows he left the family business in good hands.”
Benedict shook his head. “Couldn’t fix what was wrong with Josh. At least not before he ended up in prison.”
She pondered what to say next, because this was tricky territory. Given what had happened to her own parents, she definitely believed Josh had gotten what he’d deserved.
But he was also Benedict’s brother.
“Josh is coming home soon, isn’t he?” she asked carefully.
He nodded. “Yeah. In six months.” He turned his water glass in circles, never picking it up. Just endlessly turning it to nowhere.
“How’s he doing?”
Benedict jerked his shoulders in a shrug, but he wasn’t a shrugging kind of guy. The carelessness of the gesture looked foreign on him. “He, uh, he didn’t want me to visit. Liliana visits him, though. She says he’s doing okay.”
If Javier said he didn’t want to see her anymore… She swallowed, the sound echoing wetly in her ears. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He released the glass and looked at her, his gaze stark. “No, it’s okay. You’re the only person outside of family to talk about Josh with me in a long time. Everyone else acts as if he’s dead. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.”
His expression made her feel raw, inside out. Who knew he’d been hiding all that for so long?
“But he’s not out of your mind.”
“No.”
So firm, so definite. She knew then that no matter what Josh had done, no matter that he’d turned Benedict away, Benedict would never stop caring.
Her Billionaire Rancher Boss Page 4
