Escalation Clause (35 page)

Adam kept his eyes trained forward. “I want my mom to be happy. And I like Coach Inez a lot. He’s…nice and pretty cool. I just…Ella is….” Rob let him keep talking. “Ella hates the thought of mom being anything but alone I guess. She is so mule headed about it. She and my dad were close, like me and mom were…are…. She doesn’t want anything replacing him…my dad I mean.”

“Speaking from the perspective of having lost someone I loved and thought I’d never get over,” Rob spoke up to the ceiling, letting Adam keep his privacy by not meeting his eyes. “I will assure you that there is no replacing him. Your dad will always be that for you and Ella. And he will always have a certain special corner of your mom’s heart that she won’t give to anyone else.”

“I know,” Adam looked over at him. “You should tell Ella this though. She’s the one being a real bitch about it. I don’t think she and mom have exchanged more than five words since…um….”

“Yeah, I heard.” Rob put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “You’re a great kid, a very mature young man. But you should tell your mom that you support this, that you think she would be happy with Rafe. Because until she gets some kind of consensus from you guys, she will go on living her life alone. She feels like she owes it to you or something.”

“Yeah.” The boy stood. “I’m gonna go check on Ella. Have a little chat.”

“Good plan.” Rob said, smiling as Brandis climbed down off his perch on the couch and tugged Gabe with him.

“Ma!” the boy yelled. “Cookie!” Gabe, ever the kid’s wingman, took up the cry, and they assaulted whoever was in the kitchen with their loud requests.

The last night of the vacation meant a table full of leftover food and booze for the group. The little boys both sustained sunburns from a day on the beach and were cranky to the point of impossible. Rob noted Ella smiling more as she sat between her mom and brother, passing around plates of cold fried chicken and potato salad. “God, how do you make this, Rob?” The girl asked, biting into a thigh piece. “It’s even more perfect three days later!” Adam reached over and snagged the last drumstick making Katie and Maddie set up a loud protest.

“It’s a secret,” he shrugged, hanging onto his son’s floppy, unhappy form.

“Here, give him to me,” Lila stood and lifted the overwrought kid to her shoulder. “Who’s got the allergy medicine?” She called out. Sara handed it to her as she passed. Jack plucked Brandis up from the floor where he had just sunk into a puddle of tears. Sara ignored it admirably, Rob noted, letting Jack handle him. The man and sobbing boy walked away from the table, leaving it decidedly calmer.

“I want to make an announcement,” Mo said, sipping a beer. She glanced first at Ella then Adam who both nodded.

“Please tell me that Rafe is coming on the next vacation. I need a real soccer coach for our beach team,” Katie piped up, around a mouthful of chicken.

Ella smacked her cousin’s arm. “I am a good coach!”

Katie stuck her tongue out at the other girl. “Yeah but….”

“Well?” Sara asked, tucking her feet up under her.

“Um, I don’t know about that but I want you all to know that I have the most amazing kids in the universe,” Mo pulled each of them close, kissed their foreheads. Adam smiled, but Ella struggled out of her mother’s embrace.

“Mom, seriously, cut it out.” She rolled her eyes at the table. “We just said we want you to be happy is all. And if you gotta be with,” she gulped but went on, “Coach Inez…Rafe…well, go for it, I guess.”

Rob watched as the girl’s eyes got bright but then shook her head as if to clear it. Mo nodded and yanked the girl close again, and this time Ella let herself be held.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rafe was hot, exhausted, and heart sick by the time his plane touched down on American soil in early January. The visit home had been fraught with the usual mix of family drama and mother-induced guilt over her lack of more grandchildren from his loins. Rafe’s sister had three kids and lived in France with her husband, but spent the bulk of the cool months with her parents at their giant villa. His brother, sister-in-law and their two kids lived a few miles down the road. He, the baby of the family, lived far away and had no wife and no kids. Several facts his mother and grandmother and three aunts would not shut up about the entire time he was there. The predictable chaos of his family’s large extended celebrations did not have their normal calming effect on him however.

The next to last night he’d spent in his boyhood home was warm, pleasant, and made him dread going back to face a Michigan winter, despite his excitement about the ramp up to the Black Jacks debut. He wandered out by the pool, smelled the sweet exotic flowers and fruits his mother had surrounding their large verandah, and dropped into a chair. His chest ached, head pounded, and he could only come up with a single reason.

“Rafael Miguel, you are whipped.”

He startled, not realizing anyone was already out there. “Leave me alone,” he muttered to his older brother.

“I will do no such thing. You have done nothing but mope around, stare at your stupid phone and sigh for two damn weeks. I know what your problem is and you had better just get over it. No woman is worth you turning into a pussy.”

A dark rage rolled through Rafe’s brain. He and his brother Santiago had never been close. As a matter of fact, there were times in his life when he hated the pompous bastard. Rafe’s rise to the top soccer ranks only to be struck down by injury had provided Santiago with plenty of mouthy outlet for unfulfilled soccer ambitions.

“What do you know? You and your wife hate each other.”

“No, we don’t. I love her, but she is a crazy bitch sometimes, like they all are.” He leaned forward, holding a large glass of red wine, his dark eyes narrowed. “I know you don’t like me brother, but I feel responsible for you, and you need to man up. Get those
cojones
I know you’ve got under there back in your firm grip.” He leaned back and sipped. “I don’t care what you think, you can’t let your cock lead you. She’s not worth it.”

“You don’t even know anything about me, or her, or…fuck it.” He stood up and stomped into the house. But Santiago’s words wore a groove in his brain for the entire last day of his visit.

By the end of his final day, he’d played endless soccer with his nephews then collapsed into a seat by the pool and let his mother bring him food and a beer. “Such a good boy,” she patted his sweaty hair. “Bring me some more babies to love Rafael. You should live closer.”

He kissed her hand and put it to his heart. “I love you mama. But I doubt any of that is happening anytime soon.”

“What I put up with,” she tsk-tsked her way back into the kitchen where she and the house’s cook started prepping the evening meal. His sister Lucia sat, reading a magazine. When their mother had gone out of earshot, she put it down and stared at him.

“Who is she?”

Rafe choked and spluttered when the beer went down the wrong way. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said, knowing but not wanting to admit it.

Lucia smacked his shoulder. “Who is this woman you’re mooning about all this time? Rafael I can read you like a book. Talk to me.”

So he did, spilling it all including Maureen’s sad back story, the dead husband, the many years alone, ending with the god awful, embarrassing moment Ella had caught him standing naked in her kitchen.

“Ah, such a hard thing has happened to this woman. You must go carefully. More carefully than prancing around with your dick hanging out in her house for certain.”

“I know, I know.
Jesu,
if one more person tells me to ‘go slow’…,” he let the thought trail off. “It’s not going to work anyway.”

Lucia whipped off her sunglasses and glared at him, gripping his leg so hard it hurt. “Don’t you give up Rafael. I can tell you feel strongly for her.”

“No,” he downed the rest of the beer and set it down. His mother was at his side in an instant, replacing it. “Her kids hate me and she is so unbelievably stubborn Lucia. Truly. I can’t take it. I should just find….” He waved his hand. “Someone who understands me. Someone like us.”

He yelped when his sister yanked his ear, holding it in a death vise. “You are a lame ass excuse for a man, Rafael Miguel. Don’t you start acting like our asshole brother. So help me,” she shook him once then released him.

Rafe scowled at her and rubbed his sore earlobe. “I’m not like him. I’m just being realistic. I can’t be some kind of…in between for her. I want her, Lucia, so badly. I want to be with her all the time, but I’ll be damned to hell and back if I have to beg her. She will just have to deal with me as all or nothing.”

He stood, his heart pounding and his skin in a cold sweat. He had missed Maureen like crazy for the past ten days, made worse by the fact that they had not parted well. Ella had gone off the deep end after she’d caught him in her mother’s kitchen naked as they day he was born. And he had blown a gasket at the way she talked to her mother, treating her like an equal, saying things that were entirely inappropriate which he said to her in no uncertain terms—after he’d put clothes on of course.

She’d glared at him for a second then told him to “fuck off” and get out of her house. Maureen had told the girl to take her smart mouth to her room and not come up until she was told. Rafe had left, unable to process any of it, without talking to Maureen again. He’d spent the entire day trying to square his feelings for Maureen with his sudden uncertainty about fitting into her life in any significant way.

He’d had to do some serious “coach talk” to get Ella to stay on the Pioneer women’s soccer team once she’d learned he would be the coach in the spring. Beyond that, they had zero contact. And he’d had not much more than that with her mother, which nearly killed him.

“Come with me to Argentina. Please?” He begged in early December on one of their rare, mostly chaste dates grabbing her hand across the table, making her blush.

“Don’t be silly. It’s Christmas I can’t leave the kids. I mean….”

“I know.” He slumped back, defeated. “I love you, Maureen, you realize that right? I won’t let anything come between us.”

 “Rafe,” she shot him a look so full of pity it made him want to throw his plate against the wall. There had been a time in his life when he would have. He bit the inside of his cheek and kept listening. “I have to consider, I mean, Ella is…shit.” She matched his posture, sagging into her seat and meeting his stare. “Take me to your place. I need you, right now.”

“You sure about that?” He’d already started to stand. She nodded. They had urgent, angry sex before she rose from his bed and left him alone. Again.

He’d gone to Argentina determined to make it work, but after two weeks away, and hearing how he appeared to his brother—moony and acting like a pussy—he knew he had to cut it off, end it before he lost himself in the middle of some kind of unrequited love for a woman who only wanted him for sex. They hadn’t spoken for two weeks and he missed her so much his chest ached. But it was time to man up, make her think twice about pushing him away.

Part of him knew her well enough to acknowledge the whole thing would likely end with an ultimatum. Maureen would not give. It wasn’t in her. But, as far as he was concerned, she had to make the next move. His brother was right. But,
aye Dios
did that realization sting. He called her number before he boarded his plane and left a message, kept it light, breezy and noncommittal and told her he thought they should take a break for a while after they both returned from vacation. He needed time to think. And so did she. He ended the call, turned off the phone and buried it in the bottom of his backpack for good measure so he’d not be tempted to take it back. 

By the time the plane landed he was nearly jumping out of skin with a need to see her but kept a tight rein on that, deplaning and making the trudge towards the baggage claim, his feet dragging as if through wet sand. He kept one ear bud in, letting the harsh sounds of alt rock pound through his brain. When someone touched his arm he jumped and turned. Ella stood here, a huge grin on her face. He gulped, looked up and saw her just over her daughter’s shoulder. Maureen looked travel worn, sun burned and more beautiful than he’d remembered. Her face brightened when she met his eyes. The moment was surreal, painful and one he had to nip in the bud. He forced himself not to appear happy to see them.