by Lea Santos
Madeira’s eyes widened. “You went through a biker phase?”
“Yup.”
She inclined her head toward Grace, conceding the point. “Okay, perhaps Lurch, Mongrel, and Rat were…errors in judgment. But, mistakes or not, we learn from all our experiences. They still shape us.”
Maddee had a point. Grace would give her that. She’d never let another woman fix a Harley on her carpeting, thanks to Rat and her cronies, that was for damn sure. She blinked up at Madeira. “But don’t you think if I want to show the world I’ve changed—”
“No.” Madeira clasped Grace’s uninjured hand between both of hers. “Listen to me. You don’t have to run from your past just to have a better future. All you have to do is make the decision to live differently. Whether that happens slowly or because of some kind of life-changing epiphany doesn’t matter.”
Grace repositioned her head on the pillow and studied her. “How do you know all this?”
A mischievous grin lit on Maddee’s face. “Show me the other tattoo and I’ll tell you.”
“No deal.”
She sucked one cheek back in playful regret. “Ah, well. Can’t blame a woman for trying.”
Grace rolled her eyes, regretting it immediately when the wave of dizziness hit. If she thought she could reach, she’d hang her good leg off the gurney so her foot touched the floor. It had always worked for bed spins, if she remembered correctly.
“And to answer your question, I know because despite what you may think, there is more to me than meets the eye.” Madeira looked mildly reproachful. “I have my share of deep thoughts, too.”
“More than your fair share tonight, apparently.”
They both laughed, drifted off, then the air between them stilled again. Grace’s gaze fell on Maddee’s strong, solid-looking hands. She reached out tentatively and touched the back of one lightly, making the gesture appear almost accidental. It felt hot and deceptively soft.
God, she wanted Madeira.
But Grace knew, if she had her once, she’d want her forever, and Madeira wasn’t a forever kind of woman. She’d said so herself and, if anything, Madeira seemed like an honest person. Regret stabbed at Grace.
She could never have Madeira temporarily.
Not if she planned on being happy once it ended.
A woman couldn’t be expected to survive with just a little bit of Madeira.
Mama, what should I do?
“Gracie?”
She jumped, startled to hear the nickname spoken immediately after she’d cast up a plea to Mama. Remembering that two people called her that, she swallowed. “Yeah?”
“Don’t get the tattoos removed.”
She sighed.
“They make you who you are. You don’t have anything to prove to the world. Plus, removing them doesn’t mean they were never there.”
“I know.”
Madeira shrugged. “I like them.”
“You like them,” she repeated, in a skeptical tone.
“Yes.”
“Can I just ask…do you also like velvet Elvis paintings?”
Madeira laughed in that rich full way of hers that reached right down inside Grace and scrambled her sanity. She listened to her and drifted into a languid kind of ultra-cared-for warmth. Madeira’s words made Grace feel special, tattoos and all. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Really?”
Now, why had she gone and promised that? She sighed. Because Madeira was Madeira, and Gracie was all kinds of too-far-gone on her. “Yeah, really.”
Both of Madeira’s brows rose. “You know, these drugs make you really easy to get along with.” She maintained a serious expression, but her eyes glittered with mirth. “I wonder if we can buy them in bulk.”
Grace feigned offense and took a halfhearted, drunken swing at her, but all she could focus on was the one little word Madeira had used so casually.
We.
Grace experienced that wonderful team feeling again, the “Madeira and Grace against the world” sensation, and it emboldened her. She garnered her nerve to ask the question that had nagged at her for almost twenty-four hours. “Hey. Last night…”
Something in Grace’s tone seemed to alert Madeira to the conversational shift. She tensed. “Yes?”
Grace sniffed, as if it were just a meaningless question. “When you were leaving…why did you blow me a kiss and tell me to sleep with the angels?”
“Oh, that.” Madeira’s body relaxed, but she cast a bashful gaze down at the gurney, thick, black lashes shadowing her eyes. “It was silly. Forget it.”
“No, I—” Grace touched Maddee’s hand again, letting her fingers rest against the warm, brown skin this time. “I liked it. I just wondered…what made you say it?”
Madeira studied her curiously then shrugged. “It’s what my mother used to say to us before bed every night from the doorway of our room after she’d tucked us in. In Spanish, of course.”
Shock rattled through Grace’s insides before she stilled. “Are you serious?”
“Ah…yes. Why?”
“My mom said the same thing,” she whispered, her voice shaky. “In English.”
Their eyes met, and Grace could see from Madeira’s stunned expression that she’d caught the implication, too.
One of DoDo’s signs.
But the insight came much too soon, she feared, when Madeira straightened, backed up a step, and sank into the chair.
Gracie’s heart began to thud with regret and she wanted to snatch back the question, pretend she’d never paid attention to the words. Madeira was shutting down for reasons Grace couldn’t pinpoint, but she imagined it had something to do with pressure she didn’t want to feel.
Signs.
Fate.
Connection.
Before Grace could ask what was wrong, before she had a chance to try to regain some of the tenuous intimacy they’d so carefully built, the curtain swept aside and the nurse bustled in with her tetanus shot and suture tray.
Just that quickly, the fragile new bond between Grace and Madeira snapped.
Chapter Thirteen
El mundo es de los audaces.
Faint heart never won fair lady.
There were different kinds of silences, Grace realized, during the ride home from the hospital. Not all of them golden. The comfortable silence of family or old friends, where nothing is said because no words are needed—that was golden. The silence of exhaustion, where words are too much trouble and you don’t much care? She’d rank that a bronze. The very worst silence, however, had to be the tense, uncomfortable sort, stuffed to bursting with all that is left unsaid.
No gold whatsoever there. Not even tarnished tin.
Grace glowered at herself in the darkness of the car. What idiocy had compelled her to bring up last night, just when things seemed to be going so well? Drugs? They’d almost worn off now, but honestly the thumping of her heart troubled her more than the throbbing in her stitched and bandaged hand. Madeira drove in silence—good or bad, Grace couldn’t tell. But Maddee didn’t look at her, she didn’t joke around, and she didn’t flirt. As far as signs were concerned, considering this was Madeira Pacias, none of those were good ones. So they both continued ignoring each other, because if Grace glanced over now, Maddee would read the neediness on her face in a red-hot minute. Frankly, Grace would rather Maddee think she was angry.
Grace counted the seconds through two songs, using the “one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand” method just to pass the time, but when a third song aired, she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. Madeira simply drove, but Grace could sense the silence was getting to her, too.
“Gracie, I—” Madeira started, just as Grace said, “Look, about what I asked you—”
They both stopped. Damn. If only she’d waited. Grace took a measured breath, then pasted a brave smile on her face and turned to her. “You first.”
“No. Go ahead.”
Grace steeled herself, wishing like
hell she had a beverage with which to wash down another painkiller. Her buzz had worn off at precisely the wrong moment, judging by her tongue’s reluctance to cooperate. “I just want to make sure you know that I realize”—she shrugged—“well, just because our mothers used the same sappy phrase to tuck us in at night…I know it doesn’t mean anything.”
Despite the fact their mothers spoke different languages and came from different cultures in different countries.
Despite the fact that the tuck-in phrase was unusual.
Despite the fact that Grace’s life kept intersecting with Madeira’s in mysterious ways.
Totally beside the point.
Yeah, right. She wouldn’t contradict herself by mentioning how implausible that “coincidence” sounded. Right then, she simply wanted to get back to the place where they felt comfortable with each other, whatever that took.
For a moment, Madeira said nothing. When she did speak, her tone was low and strangely calm. “You don’t think so?”
“Of course not,” Grace said in a soothing tone, managing to sound like she actually believed it. “Don’t worry. It was a coincidence.”
Madeira did a double take. “Pretty strange one, though. Don’t you think?”
Grace managed a half-shrug, half-nod. “Well, sure. Strange coincidences happen all the time, though, don’t they?”
“This strange?”
She cleared regret from her throat and tried to make her subtext clear. “It doesn’t have to mean anything…if we don’t want it to. Okay?”
“Oh,” Madeira said, as if Grace had finally said something she could understand. “I see where you’re coming from. Okay.” She remained silent for a moment longer, than stole a quick glance at her. “But, to be clear, you’re saying you don’t think it’s one of DoDo’s signs?”
Grace shook her head. Firmly. Decisively. Trying to convince herself as much as Madeira, it seemed. “I don’t believe in signs, remember?”
“So you keep telling me.”
Not going there. She clenched her jaw. “Anyway, that’s all I had. What were you going to say?”
Madeira didn’t answer quickly, but when she finally got around to it, that familiar mask of untouchable charm had slipped over her face, which made Grace inexplicably sad. “Nothing, Gracie. Pretty much what you said, I guess.”
“Oh.” Damn. “About it…not mattering?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Grace gulped, feeling as if she’d missed something important. “So, everything’s okay?”
Madeira smiled, her lips in a flat line, words in a strange monotone. “Fine. Everything except your hand, that is.”
Grace bit down on her lip. Good, then. Everything was back to normal, whether it felt like it or not. Grace faced forward, not feeling much relief for having unburdened herself, not really liking this “normal” state they’d gotten back to. Not much she could do about it, though. Deep inside, she harbored the sneaking suspicion that they’d let something great slip away far too easily, but Madeira was running the show at this point. The distance between them made her sad, sure, but it also protected her heart, and anything was better than getting hurt.
Especially by Maddee.
*
Madeira realized that Gracie’s hand would likely heal faster than the frozen river of polite distance that had yawned between the two of them would thaw. She still couldn’t get over the fact that their mothers used the exact same good night phrase. She hated to admit it, but when Gracie had told her that her mother said it, too, Madeira suddenly believed in DoDo’s signs. Because of that, after some internal struggle, she’d decided the time had come to risk her heart. She’d just drummed up the nerve to reveal how she felt about Gracie, once and for all, when fortuitously, they’d interrupted each other.
Thank God she’d let Gracie speak her mind first.
In the very next breath, she’d learned that expressing her feelings would’ve been a colossal mistake. The “sign” that had been an epiphany to her hadn’t meant anything to Gracie, which meant Madeira didn’t dare come clean about her feelings—not yet. No sense confessing her love when Gracie still had no use for it.
So, she’d stick with her original plan no matter how difficult. She would steel her heart and bide her time as nothing more than a friend until Gracie woke the hell up and realized she couldn’t live without Madeira. However long that took. Then, and only then, would Madeira hand over her heart. Patience had just become her middle name, like it or not, because Gracie was running the show at this point. The distance between them made her sad, sure, but it also protected her heart, and anything was better than getting hurt.
Especially by Gracie.
*
The weeks passed quickly, and soon the evening they spent at the hospital faded into memory. Grace’s hand healed nicely, with no remaining problems from the deep cut. By unspoken agreement, neither she nor Madeira ever mentioned their uncomfortable discussion from the ride home again. She took that as solid evidence she’d ventured too close to her danger zone, a mistake she wouldn’t make more than once. She didn’t want to push, so she did the only thing she could think of to banish Madeira from her mind. She launched into her search for the perfect girlfriend with a renewed vigor based more in desperation than any kind of hopeful excitement. Any woman with the basic requirements was fair game, except Layton. In addition to being perfect, Layton was really sweet and Grace considered her a friend. She didn’t want to hurt her. Though Layton asked her out on several occasions, Grace had managed to walk the line between avoiding date two and actually snubbing her. Thank God.
Instead, she dated the frustrated poet who mixed espresso drinks behind the counter at Jolt and lived in a charmingly hideous garret in Capitol Hill. She went out with a mild-mannered teacher she met in a training class who ended up being conceited to the extreme. (Boring, too.) She’d even lunched with the young plastic surgeon she’d consulted about having her tattoos removed after she’d called to cancel the procedure, thanks to Madeira’s influence.
While the dates ranged from mildly enjoyable to mercy-date miserable, none of these women even came close to being Grace’s perfect match. All of them were improvements over the Lurch and Rat days, but none of them were…Madeira.
Luckily, she still saw Maddee frequently. Those initial odd jobs at DoDo’s evolved into some fairly complicated remodeling projects and, as a result, Madeira seemed to be at the house all the time. DoDo had even given her a key and carte blanche to use the guest room any time she wanted. Every so often Grace awoke to find Madeira barefooted and barely dressed in the kitchen. The resulting lust generally distracted her for the full day.
Despite that, she grew so accustomed to having her around, it always struck her as odd and sort of…lonely when she came home and Maddee wasn’t there. Her work schedule varied so much, Grace never could keep her days off straight. And of course, Maddee did still have a life—not that Grace wanted to contemplate that.
Tonight’s impulse date with the cute but dim copy girl at Kinko’s had been a complete bust. She’d been all hands and no courtesy, and Grace begged off early, calling a cab to bring her home when the woman argued one minute too long about her staying. It had been ugly, and she prayed Madeira would be home—at Grace’s home—when she got there. She felt like talking to someone normal, which automatically excluded Lola and DoDo. Both of them thought her current dating frenzy was preposterous and neither had any desire to discuss what they referred to as her “denial of fate.”
Madeira, on the other hand, gobbled up every detail, and tonight more than any other, she yearned to share, to simply spend time with her.
When the taxi rolled up to the curb, Grace didn’t see Maddee’s truck. But she’d taken to parking in back of the house so she could carry her tools in through the kitchen. She toyed with having the cabbie take a quick reconnaissance spin through the alley, but dismissed the notion almost immediately because it made her feel like a stalker. She could look for oth
er signs inside—just had to be patient.
After paying the driver and letting herself in the house, her gaze immediately sought—and found—those signs. Steel-toed work boots stood neatly next to the hall tree, and the blaze orange medical bag sat in its usual spot beneath the console mirror. Grace smiled, relief flowing from her shoulders to her feet. She didn’t hear any hammering or sawing, though. Only melodramatic dialogue in Spanish emanating from the television in the living room.
She peered around the corner and found Lola, Madeira, and DoDo huddled on the sofa beneath the brightly hued log cabin quilt Grandma had stitched by hand in record time while glued to the Oliver North trial coverage on TV back in the day.
Three sets of stockinged feet perched on the edge of the coffee table, which held evidence of munched popcorn and six empty pop cans. All eyes faced unblinkingly forward.
Grace glanced at the screen and found it filled with all the righteous indignation, passion, and intrigue only a telenovela could provide. How could she have forgotten? No talking allowed in this house when Betty La Fea was on.
She decided to risk it. “Hey, guys.”
“Shhh!” in triplicate.
She rolled her eyes.
“Wait until a commercial, m’ija,” DoDo stage-whispered. “We’ve been waiting for this part all month.”
Conceding defeat, Grace folded herself into a side chair and picked up a magazine in which she had no interest. She flipped pages halfheartedly, but her amused gaze kept straying to the face of the woman she’d grown to care for, the woman her grandmother and sister cared for, too. How could a consummate player, a veritable rebel without a pause, become addicted to a damned soap opera?
A swell of affection filled her chest, and she bit back a chuckle. Madeira had no idea how much she’d transformed over the past month of hanging out with the Obregon women. She’d taken to critiquing Grace’s outfits before she went out, and she seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time with DoDo’s quilting bee. Granted, Grace didn’t believe Madeira had taken a single stitch, but she was getting damn adept at threading those needles. For a woman who wore a tool belt and wielded power tools as well as Madeira did, working thread through the eyes of those tiny quilting “betweens” was a pretty big departure from the norm. Quite an accomplishment.