Anchored Hearts

by Priscilla Oliveras

  Touching her was delight and torture, leading him to pull away before he did something foolish. Something he couldn’t take back that would ruin the tentative relationship they had started rebuilding.

  Anamaría’s inquisitive eyes peered up at him intently. Assessing him like one of her patients on a call.

  “I know he gets to you,” she said softly.

  “Whatever. It is what it is,” he lied.

  “You can’t fool me.”

  He frowned.

  “Or scare me with that mean scowl.”

  “Is that so?”

  She tipped her chin up with confidence. “Uh-huh.”

  The flash of white as she grinned drew his gaze to her wide mouth. His blood pulsed with the desire to kiss her.

  “Your dad’s not always an easy person to love,” she said. “He’s demanding and set in his ways.”

  “Try hardheaded. Intractable. Inflexible.” He stopped. Hiked a brow. “Should I go on?”

  She tipped her head and lifted a shoulder toward it. “If it makes you feel better.”

  “This . . .” Gently, he grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Being with you. Remembering the good times here, instead of the battles I fought with him. That makes me feel better.”

  It would be so easy to dip down and press his lips to hers. See if she still preferred the same cherry ChapStick.

  “It can’t be easy taking his rejection, when what you want is his acceptance,” she murmured.

  Coño, how could she see what he felt for his father, yet not know what lay in his heart when it came to her?

  Unable to answer the great conundrum of his life, Alejandro lowered his forehead to hers. Seeking some kind of connection with her. Desperate to soak up her empathy and understanding. Unable to avoid the distressing reality that he couldn’t offer her what she deserved in a partner.

  His father had just confirmed that ugly reality.

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

  “The others—”

  “Sara took Brandon back to his hotel. Your mom’s behind the hostess counter helping the new girl. She said your abuela’s watching Lulu, so you won’t be home alone if you need anything.”

  He grimaced. Spending time with his niece was usually a treat, but after the confrontation with his dad, he needed to decompress. Not put on a happy face for sweet, impressionable Lulu.

  “Or you could come hang out at my place for a bit.” Anamaria’s fingers flexed on his waist, and he caught the flash of surprise in her hazel eyes. As if her invite had slipped out unintentionally. Yet she didn’t take it back. “We can, um, use my Apple TV to view your photographs on a big screen. Maybe go ahead and decide on our favorites, while you elevate your leg.”

  Her place.

  Those two simple words tempted him like a siren’s call luring a ship captain to wreck and ruin against the jagged ocean reef.

  He thought about the hangouts and hideaways they’d found as teens when they wanted the privacy they couldn’t find living with their parents. Back when they had talked about getting a place together someday.

  Did he want to see the space she’d made her own? Where she ate and slept and watched the romantic comedies she used to love and read her favorite books and lounged in comfy pajamas . . . or out of them.

  Hell yeah.

  Stepping back, she hooked a hand on one of his crutch bars. “What do you say? My place?”

  It wasn’t a coy offer. There was no sexual innuendo in her invitation. But fuck if his blood didn’t thrum through his veins, his body going hard like she’d invited him over to share a private party for two.

  “I’m in.”

  Her smile widened at his answer. She tapped her hand on his crutch bar, then started backpedaling toward the main dining room and the side back entrance.

  Someone stepped into the hallway just as the clouds must have shifted outside, sending a bright stream of sunlight through the glass door. Alejandro squinted, momentarily blinded.

  “Come on, let’s go—Oh! Excuse me! I didn’t mean to bump into—Papi!” Anamaría’s cry had Alejandro blinking to clear the spots from his eyes.

  Dread swooped over him like a black crow warning of bad luck when he realized that it was, indeed, her father. Shit, this place was like a messed-up familia reunion reality TV show. Who the hell else was going to pop up next? Her mom?

  The very real possibility of that happening had his lunch threatening to make a gross reappearance.

  “Anamaría. Alejandro.” Her father’s tone managed to convey both interest and warning.

  Alejandro ducked his head in respect.

  “This is a nice surprise, Papi,” Anamaría said.

  Nice was not the word Alejandro would have used, but he wisely kept quiet as Anamaría stretched onto her toes to give her papi a cheek kiss.

  The Navarro patriarch might have aged in the past twelve years, his hair now more salt than pepper, but the steely gravity in his voice had not rusted over time. The tall, broad-shouldered physique he had passed along to his sons remained equally as intimidating as Alejandro remembered. The older man’s piercing eagle eyes that missed almost nothing on and off the job might have a few more lines arcing around them, but they were still sharp. The authoritative yet calm demeanor that had served him well as a Watch Commander with the city’s fire department and with a houseful of rambunctious kids like his own hadn’t changed either.

  Whereas Alejandro’s father’s booming voice could silence a room, one stern look from José Ramón Navarro put a quick halt to any misbehavior. The man exuded patience, respect, and a take-no-shit attitude with the perfect balance of compassion. The type of parent whose quiet disapproval weighed more heavily on you than the blustery outbursts Alejandro’s father preferred. Señor Navarro listened when you talked, but never refrained from telling you the hard truth.

  Right now, his stoic expression warned of the hard truth that Alejandro better not be doing anything to hurt the man’s precious Princesa again.

  “I was wondering when we would get around to seeing each other, Alejandro. Welcome home.”

  “Gracias,” Alejandro answered, feeling every bit the same inexperienced teen anxious to earn Señor Navarro’s approval that he’d been the last time the two men had seen each other.

  Anamaría’s dad shifted his gaze to his daughter. “¿Todo bien aquí?”

  “Sí, all good. Alejandro actually saved my first AllFit shoot this morning when the photographer from Miami couldn’t make it.” She twisted her torso to send Alejandro a frazzled, I-can’t-believe-this look reminiscent of the time they’d gotten caught sneaking off her papi’s boat in her backyard after curfew.

  “Happy to help,” Alejandro said.

  Her crazy-eyed look relaxed before she turned back to her dad.

  “The others wanted Cuban food, so we brought them here,” she explained. “We’re on our way out now.”

  “Muy bien.” Señor Navarro pressed his back against the wall, making room for Anamaría and Alejandro to pass by. “¿Llama a tu mamá, okay?”

  “Yes, I’ll call her this afternoon.” The adolescent moodiness his request that she touch base with her mom used to elicit when they were teens had matured into adult acceptance of the inevitable. “Although I’m sure Ale’s mom has already texted Mami and filled her in on our lunch here.”

  Señor Navarro’s laugh loosened some of the tension knotting Alejandro’s neck at running into him. As they drew even, Señor Navarro stuck out his hand to shake, his firm grip tightening enough to snare Alejandro’s attention.

  He braced himself for the condemnation, at the very least the censure, he expected from the man who was one of his father’s closest friends, not to mention for the way Alejandro had hurt the older man’s daughter.

  Instead, he found empathy on Señor Navarro’s age-lined face and in his sharp eyes.

  “Your familia has missed you, Ale.” He sandwiched Alejandro’s hand in between both of his. “I a
lways try to remember the advice my father gave me once. A man’s pride in his work is important, unless it leads to his downfall. Perhaps my papi’s words will help you, at some point.”

  “Gracias,” Alejandro replied.

  He tried to consider the lesson and how he could apply it to his life. But with his father having just thrown his offer of financial assistance back in his face, he had a hard time not applying the excessive-pride lesson to his papi. Probably not the message Señor Navarro expected him to gather from the advice.

  “Con cuidado.” Her dad’s grip tightened. He slid his gaze to his daughter, waiting by the side door, nibbling her bottom lip nervously.

  Be careful. But what Alejandro assumed the older man really meant was: Don’t hurt her.

  Señor Navarro didn’t have to worry. Alejandro would dive off another waterfall and bust up his other leg before knowingly hurting Anamaría again. If he had his way, he’d leave here after the July exhibit with the two of them amicably wishing each other well, supportive of their separate dreams. From a distance.

  “Understood,” he answered, relieved when the hard line of Señor Navarro’s lips relaxed, and he released his hold on Alejandro’s hand.

  Anamaría waved good-bye once more as she held the door open for Alejandro. Without a word, he step-swung passed her and out into the hot afternoon.

  Once they were outside, Anamaría stopped about halfway down the sand-dusted sidewalk, halting him with an insistent “Wait!”

  “What now?” he complained.

  Practically everything he’d been avoiding since his return had already happened in the couple of hours they’d spent at Miranda’s.

  “Smell that?” She sucked in an audible breath.

  He frowned. His gaze scanned the parking lot as he took a whiff of air. Onions, peppers, fried food . . . a sulfury-salty hint of the nearby ocean. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “It’s the smell of freedom from parental oversight!” she exclaimed.

  Arms spread at her sides, face tipped toward the sun with a wide smile, she took another deep breath that raised her chest, calling his attention to the swell of her breasts above the seam of her exercise bra. Head back, she exposed the smooth column of her throat. The desire to press his face to her supple skin and breathe in her scent and taste her delectable lips nearly knocked him to his knees.

  Crap, less than two minutes ago and no more than thirty feet away from here, her father had flat-out laid down the law: Hands off.

  And here Alejandro stood, already thinking about tracing his tongue along the hollow at the base of her throat, drawing a wet trail to her cleavage . . . lower.

  Burying himself inside her luscious body.

  He tried shaking off the carnal images that had only been wishful thinking when he was miles away, alone in his room or his tent or his town house. Thoughts that inevitably led to his cock responding in ways he couldn’t control. Or hide.

  “Come on!” Her cry snapped him out of his delusional state to find her sashaying toward her Pilot, her seductive hips swaying from side to side with her quick steps. “Hurry up! I feel like, if we don’t get out of here soon, my mom might show up next!”

  He laughed because he’d had a similar thought inside but hadn’t divulged it. A remnant of when they were kids, complaining about their parents, mostly their moms, having eyes and ears all over the island.

  This new place in their relationship might still be tenuous and fresh, and he’d have to figure out how to squelch his libidinous thoughts about her, but he planned on enjoying their time together for as long as he was here.

  Starting right now.

  Chapter 15

  Okay, so inviting Alejandro home with her may not have been the brightest idea. Anamaría bit her lip as she slowed for the red light at the intersection of Flagler and Kennedy. Ahead on the left, Station 3 had its bay doors up, the engine parked inside. Not a soul in sight. Good for them; it looked like they were having a quiet moment during their shift.

  Those times were golden for training, workouts, Ping-Pong matches, or relaxing. The latter of which she did not envision happening once Alejandro stepped foot inside her town house.

  She slanted a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

  Eyes closed, right arm crooked across his forehead, he reclined beside her in the front passenger seat. Before leaving Miranda’s he had pushed the seat as far back as it would go, assuring her his leg would be fine for the short trip to her place in Stock Island.

  “Headache?” she asked softly, relieved he’d taken her suggestion to at least lie back and stretch out his leg on their short drive.

  “Slight. Hoping you’ve got some naproxen at your place.” His left eye peeked open at his request.

  “If you ask nicely.”

  A corner of his mouth quirked. Then he closed his eye again and resumed his napping impersonation.

  The driver stopped in the right lane waved to get Anamaría’s attention. She waved back, recognizing an old high school friend, now married with a kindergartener and first grader whose classes Anamaría had visited for a fire safety talk.

  Suzy had been a year ahead of Alejandro and Anamaría. She had graduated, split up with her boyfriend, Jerry, and headed off to the University of Florida. Four years later, degree in hand, she came home, started working for the bank, and reconnected with her high school sweetheart.

  A wedding and two kids later, the former Key West High Key Club president sat in a maroon minivan with a child’s booster seat in the back, grinning and waving, looking pleased with her life. While Anamaría sat next to the only man she had ever loved, stuck between keeping him at arm’s length in an act of self-preservation and feeling out this new whatever they might have as adults.

  The light changed to green, and Suzy pulled away with another wiggle of her fingers and a peppy smile. Anamaría eased her foot from the brake to the gas pedal, continuing down Flagler. Her mind meandered over ideas, memories, what-ifs, and what might still bes. While Alejandro dozed beside her, she made the short drive out of Key West, over Cow Key Channel into Stock Island. Each mile closer to her house, her jitters kicked up a notch.

  Sooner than she was ready, she made the right turn into the small subdivision where her town house was located. The U-shaped road started and ended on Maloney Avenue, with twenty raised, two-story pale-pink-siding town houses connected in pairs. Two buildings down on the left awaited Anamaría’s proudest purchase of her life. The day she had signed the papers and been handed the keys to her own piece of property was the day she truly felt like she’d become an adult.

  She parked in her spot directly in front of her town house, with its wooden steps and white railing leading to the first floor porch where potted ferns greeted visitors. As she gazed at her home, she couldn’t help but recall the places she and Alejandro had talked about buying when they finally moved in together. Old Town, Midtown, up the Keys . . . as long as it was just the two of them, it hadn’t mattered.

  Wishful, adolescent dreams spun from sugar. Easily dissolved and forgotten.

  Or so she told herself.

  “This you?” Alejandro raised his seat backrest to sit up. Rubbing at his eyes, he ducked to peer at her town house through the front windshield.

  A large palm tree played sentinel in the tiny yard between her building and the one to its right. The arcing fronds rustled in the humid breeze, casting dancing shadows on the concrete sidewalk and patch of grass. Several short plantain trees marched down the center of the grassy area between the two units to the backyard where a sprawling geiger tree, its large dark green leaves and deep orange flowers clustered on the ends of its branches, held court.

  “Yep, it’s all mine,” she answered.

  “I like it. The neighborhood has a welcoming feel.”

  “Thanks. It also has a mortgage feel but seeing that deduction from my bank account each month actually makes me proud. And, when you’re done hobbling up the stairs”—she stepped out of her veh
icle, then grabbed their backpacks and his crutches from the back seat—“I bet you’ll be thankful you came home to your parents’ place to recuperate instead of hiring someone to help in your Atlanta town house.”

  Actually, she’d give him halfway up the steps before his first curse.

  With both their backpacks flung over one of her shoulders, she followed behind him, ready to catch him should he lose his balance. Added bonus, the view of his butt in his faded black cargo shorts.

  By the time he made it to her front porch, the island humidity and heat, along with the exertion of traversing the stairs relying on his right leg alone, had left their mark. A sheen of sweat coated his face and a dark circle plastered his button-down to his back between his shoulder blades. He swiped at his forehead with the back of a hand and muttered the next in a line of shits, damns, and carajos.

  Anamaría unclipped her keys from the notch on her bag as she moved toward the front door.

  “Here, let me get out of your way.” Alejandro edged backward to give her more space. His right crutch banged against the clay pot filled with bright pink geraniums.

  “Shit, sorry!” he muttered, adjusting to his left only to smack a pot of orange Gerbera daisies with his other crutch.

  “Carajo, I didn’t mean to . . .” He shuffled awkwardly on his right foot, his head swiveling from side to side in search of a place to set his crutches safely down between the smattering of potted plants scattered around her entry and along the base of the white wooden porch railing. In his unwieldy search, he wound up losing his balance and pitching forward.

  “Oh, cra—!” Anamaría grunted, bumping her forehead against his shoulder.

  Her keys plunked onto the wooden floorboards as her arms slipped around his midsection to stop him from landing face first among her potted garden. His forearm smacked the doorframe in his own attempt to catch himself, but momentum careened him forward and she wound up sandwiched between her front door and him, her face squashed against his chest. A button on his shirt poked her cheek. Her nose pressed into the skin exposed by the vee of his shirt.