Her tears spilled over. “Don’t tell him.”
“But everyone knows about me. It’s so freeing not to have to pretend.”
She was shaking now. Her teeth chattered. “Don’t tell him!”
“All right. But that leaves only me to help. Which isn’t saying a whole lot.”
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, Lexi.” Erik smiled gently and traced a thumb across her cheek. “There isn’t anything anybody can do. Except maybe cry with me?”
Air hit her lungs then and gave life to the sobs.
Her brother—the one who had nothing in common with her but a last name—pulled her into his arms.
M
m.” Bobby Grey closed his eyes and chewed, lost in a state of pure bliss. “Mm.”
Across the table from him, Rosie nodded vigorously. “Mm.” She swallowed a tasty bite of an enchilada. “Papi, this is the best ever. You’ve got to put it on the menu.”
Her father’s grin stretched until his cheeks nearly enfolded his eyes. He
leaned back in his chair, fingers laced together atop his ample midsection.
“Mm,” she murmured again. “Exquisite. Featherlight tortilla. Luscious, creamy white sauce. A hint of garlic. Tasty baby shrimp. Scrumptious buttery scallops that melt in your mouth.”
Bobby wiped a napkin across his face. “Esteban, my man, thank you. Is this one of your own creations?”
“No.” His grin remained fixed.
Rosie chuckled. “Tell him whose it is.”
He held his sides and laughed loudly.
They sat at his restaurant in Old Town, a tourist hot spot. Mexico resonated everywhere in red-tile roofs, museums, menus, and shop wares. Bougainvillea, lush colorful flowers, and wide-leafed subtropical plants grew high and low wherever the eye could see.
Esteban had been a successful proprietor for years. His Casa del Gusto encompassed half a block. It had several dining rooms, two patios, a festive ambience, and a reputation for great food.
Rosie smiled at him. They were on the back patio, and the early evening sun peeked out from behind rain clouds. It lit his face, making him appear years younger. “Well, Papi?”
“Okay, okay.” He nodded. “Bobby, I have a new cook.”
Rosie hooted. “Esteban Delgado, stop acting like a coward!”
“Rosita, please. This is a sacred moment.” He patted his chest. “Yes, it is true, Bobby. I have a new cook. Her name is Helen, and she created this magnificent dish.”
Rosie leaned across the table. “And she’s his sweetheart.”
Bobby smiled.
“Rosita!”
“Well, if you’re not going to say it, I will.”
“I will say it.”
“When? Next year?”
Bobby said, “Does she know it?”
“Now that’s a good question.”
Esteban frowned. “You two are not funny. Of course she knows it. We do not have to broadcast our business. We are not like your TV news friend.”
“He is not my friend.”
Bobby said, “Kind of quick with the denial there. The guilty ones always do that.”
A mean retort nearly jumped off her tongue. She clamped her mouth shut.
“You were going to say something?” He grinned.
“He is not a friend. How many times do I have to say it?”
“Until you convince yourself, I guess.”
She kept her face passive, but inside the anger simmered. It wasn’t Bobby’s fault that he hit too close to the truth. The fact that Erik Beaumont had sidled up alongside her heart was her own fault.
Good grief, the guy wasn’t even likable.
Bobby said, “You know, Rosie, what you did yesterday could be considered ‘friend’ activity.”
“Or just friendly. As in kind. As in community angel.”
“So what happened up there at the Hacienda Hideaway yesterday?”
She’d put off the question from him and her dad for the past hour. The cop in her had not been able to disentangle her emotions from the visit. Not a good situation.
“Rosita?” Esteban leaned across the table, no trace of a grin on his face.
“I guess I’m not sure what happened.” That about summed things up. “It was . . . It was a heart-wrenching event, especially for the grandparents. Such a high and such a low. They gained a granddaughter, but lost a son all over again.” She gave them an overview of what happened.
“Whew.” Bobby let out a low whistle. “Imagine learning you have a relative via someone you figured was long dead.”
Her father said, “You are a good girl. I am proud you helped this family.”
“Thanks, Papi. I’d like to be a fly on the wall so I could watch how things play out.” She bit her tongue. She shouldn’t have said that.
“Why not call them?” Bobby asked. “I think you’ve earned the right to do that much.”
“No!” Esteban shook his head vigorously. “No. You are not to get any more involved with this Beaumont family. You did your duty. You played angel. You are done with them.”
Bobby slipped a hand in front of his mouth, not fast enough to hide a grin. He always cracked up when Esteban pronounced rules for his adult daughter.
But Rosie wasn’t laughing. Her father had been the one to pick up the pieces just a few short years ago. “Papi, it’s not like that.”
“He is another Ryan Taylor.”
“Not exactly.”
Bobby raised a hand. “Excuse me. Either of you care to clue me in on what you’re talking about?”
Rosie frowned at her dad.
He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and then he started again. “It is Rosie’s story to tell. An old boyfriend. Rich and handsome. A no-good. He hurt my Rosita.”
Bobby looked at her. “That’s your bad history with guys like Erik Beaumont.”
“Yeah.” Sort of. Details aside.
She caught the look on her dad’s face and knew he would not shut up until he’d told Bobby everything. She’d rather do it her own way.
“We were in law school together. He was total WASP, through and through. Never in a million years would he ask me out. I’m sure he did it just to horrify his parents. Or win a bet with his friends. I mean, me. An unattractive, Catholic Latina. Was I an idiot, or what? Anyway, things got ugly. Real ugly. I dropped out of school. Ryan was a . . . a mean person.”
“Evil,” her dad corrected.
“Probably. Beaumont is an okay guy, not mean or evil. He’s just in a bad way.”
Bobby said, “So you open your Adopt the Hopeless Club to him.”
“Yeah. Entirely different thing than falling for him.”
The men exchanged a look and then they gazed at her. They weren’t buying into her conclusion.
“It is!”
“Explain, Rosa.” Esteban tapped a finger on the tabletop. “Your heart is your heart. You care about this TV man.”
“As a human being!” She shoved back her chair and stood. “Good grief. It’s time to go to work.” She walked around the table and kissed her father’s cheek. “Good-bye, Papi. Thank you for the great meal. Tell Helen thank you.”
Without a backward glance, she walked across the patio and down the steps to the parking lot.
Bobby caught up with her. “Delgado, you’re not unattractive.”
“Give me a break. I look like my dad. Well, not the belly, but the too-wide nose and thick coarse hair and solid build—”
“Rosie.” He grasped her elbow, halted their walk, and turned her toward him. “You are a beautiful woman. Your heart’s made of gold and you’ve got this thing going with God that permeates the air with—I don’t know how else to put it but, well, with holiness.”
The intensity of those cornflower-blue eyes held her attention, as did his words. Bobby didn’t talk that way. He wouldn’t say such a thing unless he meant it.
She smiled, warmed by his care. The ugliness that took hold whenever the subject of Ryan Taylor came up melted like butter in the sunshine.
“Ohhh!” She drew out the word in a singsong tone. “You’re talking about
inside
beautiful. Shucks, I knew that.”
“You’re really annoying too.”
“I try.”
T
hat’s enough for one day.” Lexi rubbed her hands against her pants and surveyed the dusty, cluttered room.
Rain pattered against the unadorned window, its panes black with evening.
Erik walked past and ruffled the top of her hair. “We might as well finish it, Lex, as long as we’re here.”
They were at the house. The House, capital letters. The place she’d called home for all but a few years of her life. The place her parents had sold to strangers at the drop of a hat.
The room was her studio. Or rather, it had been her studio. Located off one side of the garage, the room was a small workshop that held no interest for their dad. When she and Danny were youngsters, they claimed it for their own toy room. Eventually art supplies replaced Barbie and GI Joe.
Furnishings were sparse: one stool, tall wooden workbenches, shelves, a dorm-room-sized fridge, a piece of indoor-outdoor carpet an ugly shade of taupe. A portable heater hummed, warding off the dank night air.
Erik pulled a canvas from a group of eight-by-tens shelved upright like library books and inspected the painting on it. “Hey, it’s the Crystal Pier.”
“Mm-hmm. My pier phase.”
“It’s great. Can I buy it?”
She raised her brows.
“I’m serious.”
She never knew with him. “It’s not any good.”
“But I like it. Isn’t that one way to interpret art? If it speaks to me, there must be some merit to it.”
“The tones are all wrong, and the—”
“It’s where I first kissed what’s-her-name.”
“Felicia?”
“No. This was back in high school. She was blonde and older. Actually it was the only time I kissed her.” He sighed in his dramatic fashion. “Anyway, what do you think is a fair price? Three, four hundred?”
“Erik, it’s been sitting in here since I was nineteen. You can have it.”
He began flipping through the paintings. “Maybe there’s another happy memory tucked away. I could fill my walls. The few paintings I have are nouveau crap.”
“I’ve noticed.”
He grinned over his shoulder at her. “I bet you have.”
She turned from him and gazed around the room again. Like Erik, she hunted for a happy memory.
Out of the entire house, including its big yard, pool, abundant gardens, and canyon backdrop, she adored this spot the most. It had been her hiding place. In it she felt safe from the world’s terrors, most especially teachers, homework, failure. She would get lost in her art, paint to her heart’s content, and store food and munch whenever she wanted.
The new owners would soon take possession, but Lexi had avoided going through her things. It was only at Erik’s insistence that they’d come. He figured it would be a constructive way to deal with their demented coping mechanisms. After all, he had nothing scheduled for the evening except to beat up his best friend.
They had already filled several trash bags with garbage and loaded a filing cabinet and an easel into her SUV. Although more things remained, she was finished. Saying good-bye was just too hard.
Her stomach rumbled.
“Wow, Lex. Did that come from you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Well, that’s debatable. Neither one of us is okay.”
“Do you have to keep saying that?”
“Admitting we have a problem is the first step—”
“I don’t have your problem.”
“Aha! The little girl votes for denial.”
She stuck out her tongue.
He smiled. “Denial can be a nice break from bawling.”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
He laughed long and hard. “Now I know why you’ve been so quiet your whole life. Between me, Dan, and Jen, you never had a chance to get a word in edgewise, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” A smile tugged at her lips.
“It’s good to hear from you. Finally.”
“Thanks.” Her tongue had loosened considerably during the hours spent with him. Not only did he not bite, he didn’t judge. But she was done. “Can we go now?”
“Let’s at least pack up the paintings. You can’t pitch these.”
“I have nowhere to put them. Let the new owners do whatever they want.”
“With your work? I don’t think so.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It should. Listen, I really want to hang some on my walls. Meanwhile, we can put them in the storage space in my building. So here.” He handed her a stack of canvases and pointed at a box. “I promise, we’ll eat soon. And drink.”
For a moment they stared at each other.
He made his lopsided self-deprecating grin. “Hey, let’s look on the bright side. We made it through the afternoon, right? A leopard can’t change its spots overnight. Come to think of it, it probably can’t at all. Anyway . . .”
He turned again to the shelf of paintings. She began to pack some in the box.
No, a leopard could not change its spots at all, but why would it need to? Camouflage worked so well. Just blend into the surroundings and keep attention off of yourself. That kept life bearable.
A
t the sound of the automatic garage door rattling up, Lexi and Erik paused in their work. Lexi peered through the workshop’s open door and saw their mom’s car enter. A moment later, the big door went back down and Claire emerged, looking like a teenager in blue jeans, faded green barn coat, and suede boots.
Catching sight of Lexi, she smiled. “Hi, Lexi! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Mom.”
Claire entered the room and gave her a hug. “And Erik!” She hugged him. “Hey, you two. I called both of you today and left messages.”
Lexi exchanged a glance with Erik. They’d turned off their cell phones hours ago.
“The truth is,” Erik said, “neither one of us felt like talking to anyone, so we shut off our phones. I haven’t even checked for messages. Have you, Lex?”
She cringed. How could he just come right out and say something like that to their mom? It’d hurt her feelings. “Uh—”
“I don’t blame you,” Claire said.
Huh?
She went on. “I mean, yesterday was pretty draining, wasn’t it? And things started even earlier for you two, considering you met Tuyen the night before.” She gazed around the room. “Looks like you’re all packed.”
“Mostly.”
“This is great, hon. Don’t worry about the stuff you don’t want to keep. We’ll have a cleaning crew come in to finish up. I don’t think I can work in this house anymore.”