by Zoe Chant
Of course he did. These two men so unexpectedly, and so wonderfully, back in her life were quite a pair. She was choking up again. What a stupid time and place for that!
She pushed her laptop open again, to have something to do, then Rigo said in that mild tone, “Here’s an idea. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be wanting some lunch before too long—it’s already nearly one o’clock. If you want to make a run to get that hat, I can watch, then maybe we can turn about, and we can think about some lunch?”
And that’s the way the day went.
She found herself a new sunhat, and over lunch they talked about Alejo again. More about his childhood here, anecdotes she remembered, and ones their son had recounted to Rigo. Many of them the sort of thing boys hid from their mothers, mostly not to worry them.
In Alejo’s case, it was definitely nothing worse. “He hated wanton destruction,” Godiva said. “Though he loved fireworks on the Fourth, he never went through a phase of throwing cherry bombs to destroy things, or tossing rocks through windows.”
Rigo grinned. “He and his buddy Lance saw themselves as some kind of Avengers, from the comic book. Alejo didn’t know it yet, and Lance had been raised to know, so he didn’t think about it, but they got their strength and speed from their shifter heritage, so though they weren’t the biggest boys in their environment, nobody could beat them. He told me they liked roaming around swooping on bullies, then vanishing. He never said, but I think at age twelve and thirteen they both had to deal with severe disappointment that this was not the age of capes and masks.”
Godiva burst out laughing. “You’re absolutely right. When he was small, I remember he tied his bath towel around his shoulders when he jumped around the apartment.”
The rest of the afternoon sped by as they switched rapidly from one subject to another, until the street began to show the long shadows of late afternoon. Godiva’s stomach was beginning to remind her to look for dinner about the time Rigo took out his phone, then exclaimed, “Alejo is awake, and wants to know if it’s time to switch shifts.”
“Okay,” she said. “How about I go across the street and make one more check, then I’ll get Alejo and come back? I need to stretch my legs.”
“Sure,” Rigo said—as by now she knew he would. Because she had suggested it.
She left and crossed the street. After she found the box empty again (which was odd, surely the test letter had to have gotten here by today!) she walked out into the melding shadows of impending sunset, her emotions like a big, wobbly balloon roughly the size of Texas trying to crowd around her heart.
She knew exactly what this feeling it was. She was grappling with a major shift in perspective.
For years—decades—one thing she’d held firmly onto was her victimhood. She had been abandoned before her son was born, and then that son vanished, leaving her with nothing but the sense of having been wronged.
Rigo never made any reference to a sense of wrongness on his part. That didn’t mean she couldn’t see it. The most unsettling part was the realization that all this easy talk, the funny anecdotes, were all meant to prevent her from feeling what she was feeling now: remorse. Sorrow, even, for what he’d missed. What both of them had missed.
He had taken responsibility for it all. But she had to admit her part, for she had worked strenuously during those years not to be found.
For the first time, she was considering what it must have been like for Rigo to miss the birth of his child. For those seventeen years he hadn’t known if the child was a boy or girl. He had no part in the choosing of the child’s name. He was not there for the first tooth, the first step, the first words—which never included Dad. There was no Dad in his son’s early life, except for scathing references to one of those Bad Dads that the boy knew shadowed the lives of many kids around him, once he got old enough to ask questions.
The fact that Rigo accepted all the blame somehow made her realization worse, because she knew that she could have tried to find him when Alejo had been young. But she hadn’t made the least effort. Quite the opposite, because her anger had distorted him into something he wasn’t.
Her walk didn’t steady her mind. She was fighting against that clogged throat and the sting in her eyes when she reached the B&B.
Alejo waited inside, as handsome as his father as he lounged with his father’s grace in the little lobby, chatting with the desk person. He turned to her, his own version of his father’s easy grin lighting up the room. “Mom! Ready for a sitrep!”
“It’s all a big nothing,” she said gruffly, moving toward the stairway.
He began to follow.
She turned to wave him off. “I just want to chuck this laptop in my room. I’ll be back in thirty seconds.”
“I’ll come with you,” Alejo said. “I want to see if your room is as nice as mine is.”
She could not say no to him. So she led the way, breathing deeply to defeat that sting in her eyes as he said, “Is Dad ready for dinner? I have some suggestions.”
“I’d like to hear them.” Godiva keyed the room open.
Alejo followed her in, running his eyes along the elegant crown molding and the framed Aubrey Beardsley prints on the wall behind the bed. “Nice! Mine has Gustav Klimt prints, and Dad’s is in shades of blue with prints from Erté.”
Godiva pulled the laptop out of her bag and laid it on the desk. When she turned, Alejo was looking across the room at her, his face serious. “Mom, I just wanted to say, because I know Dad won’t. If—if it matters. There’s never been any other woman in his life.”
Damn, there was the sting again. Godiva crossed her arms tightly as she said, “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“He’d tell you right out if you did. Here’s the thing he probably won’t tell you, but I think you ought to know. Shifters mate for life. I’m not laying this on you as a guilt-trip. I think you’ve seen that he’s living a good life. It’s just a life without any woman in it, because there is no other woman but you.”
Godiva’s heart constricted. Technically, this stuff about mates bonding for life wasn’t news. Rigo had told her that very first night, but somehow she’d taken that as something all the other shifters out there had.
That Doris and Jen and Bird had. Not her.
Alejo said, “He doesn’t want to lay any guilt trips on you either, but even though I never got to know you as an adult, from what I remember, I think you’d rather have it straight.” He frowned. “And I really want to know why I didn’t get to know you as an adult. With that thought, I’m off to the post office for my first tour of duty. I only wish we’d thought of that years ago, but . . .”
“I know. We misinterpreted the silence from both sides,” Godiva said.
Alejo’s grin flickered. “Lance said he’d come down in a week or so and take a shift or two. Right now he’s in the middle of a huge case, bringing down a crooked CEO. Means all hands on deck, as this CEO has an army of equally crooked lawyers on tap. Courtroom drama. I respect him for it, but I never could have hacked that life.” With that, Alejo lifted his hand in a wave and left.
Godiva looked down at her laptop and did her yoga breathing to settle her insides, which seemed to have turned to jelly.
Then she remembered Rigo sitting patiently at that Starbucks, waiting on her.
The least she could do is get a move on.
She had herself well in hand when she got there. Alejo wasn’t there. Rigo looked up from his phone with that smile that she knew was only for her, as he said, “Alejo just texted me about sixteen addresses for great food, and all within these four blocks.”
“I take it he’s not going to set up shop in here?”
“He’s in his van in the parking lot. He says he has a perfect view of the lobby through the glass door, and he can kick back and work on some carving while he waits. He doesn’t want to make a mess of wood shavings in the Starbucks.”
“What’s he making?”
“He’s repairing a wooden repl
ica of a sailing ship he found in someone’s garage, with a pile of old lampshades and other junk. It’s a beautiful piece of work, but got kind of beat up in someone’s attic for ages. Requires a lot of finicky carving, just the kind of thing he likes to do while listening to books on tape.”
The normalcy of the conversation helped Godiva get a grip on her emotions as they walked out. Rigo kept talking about Alejo’s projects as they strolled down the street to the first of the restaurants on the list, so they could look at the menu posted in the window.
They ended up with choice #3, an Italian place whose specialty was recipes from Tuscany. Over chilled Pappa al Pomodoro they talked about everything and nothing, pleasant as the conversation went—and superficial—as she kept hearing Alejo’s voice whispering in her head, mate for life.
She was only beginning to understand what that meant.
First, the inescapable fact that Rigo was leaving the decisions about this self-appointed mission of hers entirely up to her. Maybe all shifters weren’t alike. She had no experience here, despite her eighty-plus years. But she had relearned this much all over again: though, he, like her, grew up dirt poor, he was far more noble than any of the legendary knights of old. He blamed himself for what had happened between them so long ago. Judged, juried, and it remained only for her to deliver the sentence, after all these years.
He would not oppress her by asking for mercy.
It was late when they left the restaurant, and walked back hand in hand. By now it seemed natural, even necessary to walk holding hands. And when they got to the B&B, outside her room, and she said, “Do you want to come in?” his lips parted, then he said voicelessly, “Yes.”
He walked in.
She shut the door behind him.
Here was her room, and there was the bed. She turned away from that, and sat carefully on the pretty chair in the corner, while he remained standing.
“I have something to confess,” she said, having thought out that much.
He raised a hand. “If it’s about your, ah, past, I always assumed you’d seek happiness however you could find it. As you deserve.”
“I did,” she said. “Whatever I might have deserved or didn’t deserve, I did try to forget you in other men’s arms. It never worked. Ever. Perfectly nice guys, but I could never let myself sleep with them. I mean literally sleep. I couldn’t wake up next to someone who wasn’t you. Mad as I was, I finally decided I was broken for life, and so I gave up the whole idea of love. And so here I am, as old as the hills and twice as wrinkled, but I feel like a kid again. I don’t even know where to start.”
“I do,” he said in Spanish, as he held out his arms. “Sé por dónde empezar, mi amada.” I know where to begin, my beloved.
It was the Spanish of their youth, in his familiar voice—an intimate voice.
She had always thought Spanish one of the most beautiful languages on Earth, and in his voice it was liquid gold pouring through her as he closed his arms gently around her, speaking all the while, until at last she lifted her face to his kiss.
The first one was short, tentative. Each of them was mutely asking the other, is it all right?
The answer was yes.
The second kiss was long, so long it left her gasping for breath, her entire body trembling. On fire.
She looked up at him. “The last time you touched me, I was not even twenty,” she said tightly. “My skin is like paper. Old paper. Saggy paper. My voice, which was never a siren’s, is now a parrot’s squawk.”
“You are beautiful. Every part of you,” he whispered, tracing the line of her brows, then, delicately, the contours of her face. “This is you. Every laugh line. Every triumph, every sorrow, it’s all here, your story, everything you lived while I wasn’t there at your side.”
He kissed her again.
Her body had not forgotten, oh no. Places she’d thought had turned permanently to cold ash reignited into warmth, for the body wants what it wants.
Clothes fell to the floor. (And Rigo laughed with delight, his eyes smoldering when the purple lace panties and the hotcha-red camisole flashed out.) Hands explored, tongues clashed. She relished the rustle of the sheets as they fitted themselves together, the soft hiss of his hands over her skin. The tenderness of his touch fired her nerves with all the strength of those days when that skin was taut and young, but he caressed her as if she were and so she felt young again.
She wasn’t young. There were some oofs, and a laugh or two. Then some accommodations, for her tricky knee would complain, and the hip she’d used to balance heavy trays while trotting about on high heels for so many years was as crotchety as ever, but he was patient, and they laughed together, and took it slow.
“How’s this?”
“Mmmm . . . nice.”
“And . . . how’s this?”
“Way better, oh yes.”
“ . . . and this?”
“Ahhhh! Where’d you learn that?”
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha . . .”
Chapter 14
RIGO
When Rigo could think he wondered if one could go insane from joy, but there wasn’t much time for thinking. His mate had come to him at last, and together they ignited the fire that shot them straight to the realm above mere light and air, blending them into one until they spiraled down and down into bliss.
When he came back to himself, it was to the awareness of his beloved in his arms again. He looked down at the contours of her face, softened by a lingering smile. He settled back against the pillows, watching with deep pleasure as she slid into sleep. He closed his eyes, and began to drift . . .
Until his phone bleeped. That was Alejo’s tone.
Softly, carefully so as not to disturb Godiva’s slumber, Rigo reached over to pick up his phone. He thumbed it to life, and stared down in surprise:
Dad, I’ve got him.
You’ll never guess who it is.
Chapter 15
Godiva
In most of her dreams, Godiva was ageless.
This was one of those dreams. She was back in Hidalgo, only instead of the dirty, grimy town of memory, this was a sun-drenched, pretty Hidalgo that looked a lot like the old Spanish part of Playa del Encanto. And here was Rigo, riding his favorite horse, a pinto who loved flirting her tail. Rigo looked over his shoulder at Godiva, then swung around and galloped toward her, reaching down a hand.
She stood on tiptoe, hand outstretched to meet his. He swung her up behind him, and they began to gallop, straight into the sky, which brightened and brightened as she floated slowly up toward waking. She knew it was a dream, and cried out, No, no, don’t go. She wanted to hang onto that dream forever!
Like glancing shafts of sunlight, real memory broke through the dream images: Rigo’s heart thrumming near her ear as her head lay on his chest. The drift of his hands all over her body, which under his touch had felt young again.
It was real. He was real. The dream was forgotten as she burst through its last shards.
Then she emerged at last from sleep into the brightness of a new day—and the reality of a warm body next to hers in the bed.
Welp. She’d done the deed.
Twice, in fact.
And she felt great. Okay, a little sore Down South, but otherwise? Considering how enthusiastic they’d been, her body was . . . happy.
She grinned as she opened her eyes, and turned her head. Rigo was awake, sitting up against the pillow, phone in hand. Their eyes met, and he smiled that tender smile that shot liquid fire through her all over again. Well, the smile plus his being shirtless, his hair tousled. Even the stubble on his chin was endearing—a surprise, because on anyone else she loathed that unshaven look.
“Good morning, querida,” he said softly.
“Good morning, cowboy,” she said—and sensed that he was . . . waiting? “Something’s up. Right?”
His smile deepened.
“Lay it on me,” she said as she slid out of bed.
He put aside the ph
one. “Want the news now or later?”
“News?” she said, wincing a little as she straightened up.
His smile turned to concern. “Sore?”
She could sense he was about to apologize, and waved him off. “We’ve been here before, a hundred years and a thousand wrinkles ago, if you remember. And I’ll say what I did after our first time, there’s nothing like practice. I’m just happy the warrantee hasn’t run out on this old bod. As for your news, unless something bad happened to Alejo, I want to get up close and personal with my toothbrush and a hot shower, in that order, before I deal with anything else.”
“Alejo’s fine. Go ahead—” His phone’s text alert bleeped. “Ah, there he is again. Let me see what the latest is, and you can get a full report when you’re ready.”
“Deal.”
She grabbed up some fresh clothes and went into the bathroom. There she made herself civilized in record time. When she emerged, he was frowning slightly over his phone. But he looked up, and smiled. “You look great, preciosa.”
What’s more, he meant it. I could get used to this, she thought. She still was uncertain about the whole mate bond thing. After all, it hadn’t kept him from running the first time. Though she understood why he had.
So. One day at a time.
“You could have joined me in that shower,” she said, dropping a hint as subtle as a buffalo. “Unlike that horrible tin thing back of the diner, this one is big enough for two. And there’s lots of water.”
She loved the way he lit up. “That’s a promise.” But the smile turned quizzical. “First, it’s time for the news: Alejo caught the thief, and is waiting for us now.”
