Names I Call My Sister

by Mary Castillo

  Shaking her head, Dori asked Sela, “Don’t you think we’re a little too old for those games?”

  Sela pressed her chin into her shoulder. “Since you’re the oldest—”

  “You’re going to compete for El Tigre?” Grammy asked, her head whipping from side to side.

  A witchy smile curved on Sela’s face, her eyes sparkling with the dare. “How else do you want to pass the time?”

  Dori ran her tongue over the top of her teeth, her heart kicking up at the challenge. But then she reminded herself that she was a respected officer, not a seventeen-year-old chafing under the responsibilities her family had placed on her.

  Still, she took another look and her body temperature spiked. He stood with one elbow propped on the bar, dressed in a black suit that was cut perfectly to fit broad shoulders and long legs. Black hair fell in loose waves to curl at his shoulders. She could almost feel that hair fisted in her hands.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, hurrying away from the table, not really sure where she had planned to go.

  She hadn’t meant to look, but her eyes ate up the man with intense eyes the color of espresso. His straight nose ended in a sharp point, and those lips had just the right amount of plumpness to make a woman shiver when he kissed her. Grammy was right. He was un tigre, with the way he seemed to stand in wait, ready to pounce with all of his might, or slither under the cover of the crowd until his hot breath touched the delicate skin behind a woman’s ear.

  “Dori?”

  She thought she’d imagined that voice saying her name. But when she saw Pete, the shock made her skin flash red hot. A high-pitched squeal whined in her ears.

  He smiled easily, revealing tiny lines that hadn’t been in the corners of his eyes when she’d left for Denver. His black hair spiked off the top of his head, and the gray suit accentuated his sleek, swimmer’s body.

  “Okay there, we got it over with,” he said suddenly, and then turned around to walk away.

  Then he pivoted back with an almost desperate laughter in his eyes. He’d always made her laugh, but not now.

  “Hey,” he said uncertainly. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like that, I—”

  He reached for her, and she knew if she’d been in complete command of herself, she would never have flinched away.

  “Dori…” He said her name like it was an apology.

  “I’m sorry, I—” She would kill Sela for not telling her. She sucked in her breath and bore down on her fluttering nerves. “Hi, Pete.”

  His smile wobbled precariously. “Hey there, Pi—” He caught himself before calling her Piglet, the nickname he had given her when they were dating. “I have no idea what to say next.”

  “I think it’s, ‘How are you?’” she suggested.

  “Right, so then, how the hell are you?”

  “I’m great.”

  “Heard you’re now with San Diego PD.”

  “I am. How’s the leg?”

  “I got your card.”

  She had debated about sending it when she heard that he’d been knifed, trying to break up a jail fight. She had, but only signed her name.

  “Since when did you start drinking piña coladas?” she asked, noticing the gaudy cocktail in his hand.

  “I’m here with my, uh, fiancée.” He held up the glass. “This is hers.”

  It looked like the kind of drink a college coed who just got her fake ID would order. But to order a piña colada in the Crown Room at the Hotel Del…could there be anything tackier than that? Yeah, Dori imagined, probably her dress.

  Truth was, if she had known Pete would be here with a date—no, even worse, a fiancée—she would’ve shot herself with Grammy’s pistol when she’d had the chance.

  “See you around,” she said, pivoting back toward her table.

  Grammy’s and Sela’s eyes swung around guiltily when they saw her coming.

  “You bitches,” she hissed at them. The heads of their table guests swiveled up in shock.

  “Mind your own business,” Grammy told them, and then jerked her thumb at Sela. “She was supposed to tell you.”

  Sela reeled back. “No I wasn’t! You said you would tell her when she picked you up.”

  “I forgot! You should’ve reminded me.”

  Dori’s hand trembled when she reached for her water glass. “You both suck.”

  “I will not be spoken to like that from the likes of you,” Grammy said.

  “Dori, I’m sorry,” Sela said. “We wanted to tell you but we didn’t know how or when.”

  Dori sighed. She was at her brother’s wedding alone, with no hot date, much less a fiancé. Meanwhile, Pete, who had left her in a fit of jealousy, sat a few tables away with some bimbo who drank piña fucking coladas, and no one in her family had warned her.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw El Tigre turn his back to the room, his movements sleek and fluid. She wondered if he’d catch her looking in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar.

  Dori continued her survey of the ballroom and saw Pete, his back turned to her and blocking the view of piña colada chick. Her whole body broke out in sweat. There were five hundred guests; it would be easy never to come face-to-face with Pete again.

  And yet she craved another encounter. But this time to show him up; to make him see what he’d lost. It was immature and pathetic, but it was the truth.

  Her old recklessness broke loose from its tightly cinched leash. Her heart pounded with fury, lust, and old aches that she’d fought so hard to hide from.

  Wicked laughter came from Grammy Cena.

  “She’s gonna take you on, girl,” Grammy crowed to Sela with approval. “She’s not an Orihuela for nothin’.”

  Chapter 3

  Sela stiffened in her seat. She’d been wrong to piss her sister off. Dori was a dangerous, bloodthirsty competitor when angry.

  “Wait,” she called as Dori prepared to launch her attack on El Tigre at the bar.

  “Oh, now you’re scared, aren’t you?” Grammy laughed, not helping her at all.

  “Ten minutes each,” Dori said, calling the terms. “Two turns.”

  Grammy slammed her hand on the table. “I decide who gets El Tigre.”

  “How?” Sela and Dori both asked.

  “I’ll judge based on the first kiss after the dancing begins. So make it good.”

  “Only the winner leaves the ballroom,” Dori decided.

  “Then I go first,” Sela said. She stood up, running both hands down the sides of her dress as Dori narrowed her eyes. Sela knew it was mean, but in this game she had to psyche out her opponent. “If I were you, I’d start looking for a backup plan before Pete hits the dance floor.”

  She had once read that Marilyn Monroe could walk down the street unnoticed. But at the snap of a finger she could emanate this glow that called every man to her. Summoning Marilyn’s spirit now, she worked that floor like it was the cat-walk.

  She hadn’t had this much fun in months. Music had taken up all of her free time, save for a few casual afternoons with her last ex. She really shouldn’t have wasted her time, and just used a vibrator instead.

  Power surged through her veins and her heart pumped up until she imagined waves of heat coming off her skin. She met the appreciative smile of a man whose wife was chatting with her neighbor. But Sela’s smile hardened when she caught the glare from a friend of her mother’s.

  Her therapist had warned her about her need for attention; how it clouded her judgment and stole her power away. But Sela knew that if her parents and Robbie had included her in the wedding, if they’d put her on the inside track instead of firmly keeping her on the outs, she would’ve gone for El Tigre anyway.

  She arrived at the bar with two people between them. The bartender asked what she wanted, and she asked for a Diet Coke, letting her eyes briefly meet El Tigre’s in the mirror and then quickly glancing away as if it had been an accident. But the slight thrust of her chest, the ever-so-slight lean in his dire
ction, beckoned him to approach.

  She hadn’t even counted to five when he asked, “May I pay for your drink?”

  She turned and lifted her foot to the brass rail. With a practiced nudge, the skirt of her dress “accidentally” inched up to reveal a firm, pale thigh.

  “I think this is an open bar, but thank you.” Testing him, she aimed her green eyes right into his dark, almost black ones.

  A lesser man would’ve stammered and not known what to say. But El Tigre relaxed his elbow on the bar.

  “May I have a drink with you?” he asked.

  “I’m taking it outside. It’s kind of hot in here.”

  “They’re serving dinner.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” she said, dropping her gaze down to the bar. “For dinner.”

  She could tell he was wondering if he should go with her. She bit her lip, holding her breath.

  He cleared his throat. “Eric.” He offered her his hand.

  She took it and had a mini-orgasm right then and there. “Sela.” She then added, “The sun should be setting soon.”

  “I’ve heard it’s beautiful out there,” he murmured, his eyes taking the time to drift down to the hand she’d placed on the bar, and then back up at her. “We should go while we have the chance.”

  Dori watched Sela slink out with El Tigre’s hand riding her lower back. That little bi—

  “Okay, the time is set….” Grammy held her bifocals to her eyes and stared at her watch. “Now.”

  “She just cheated!”

  “What did you expect? She’s an Orihuela. And we don’t cheat. We—”

  “Cheat,” Dori insisted.

  “Make our own opportunities.” Grammy shook her head. “You know, you’re gonna get old before your time unless you loosen up. Mí mamá, God rest her soul, looked twenty-five when she was fifty years old.”

  Dori had never met Great Grandma Lourdes, whose black and white flapper portrait hung prominently in Grammy’s living room. But she’d heard the stories. On the Tijuana side of the border, Great Grandma Lourdes was a madam, and on the San Diego side ran a bridal shop that covered her and her husband’s bootlegging.

  Grammy dumped her water into the arrangement of delicate pink roses and then poured herself two fingers of the Herradura Anejo.

  “To my granddaughters,” she toasted, and then sipped. After a satisfied ahhh, she declared, “Now if this kills me, I’ll die a happy lady.”

  Dori pursed her lips as she flung her water into the flowers and poured herself a finger. Herradura Anejo wasn’t a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of tequila. It was an expensive, exclusive mistress that had to be admired and savored.

  The tequila washed over her tongue like liquid silk, leaving diamonds in its wake. She knew she would need another finger to fortify her determination not to turn around and see what Pete was doing. She tried looking into the polished silver flower urn, but it gave her an upside-down view of the room.

  “What did he say when you saw him?” Grammy suddenly asked.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me.”

  “He’s engaged.” She meant to keep it short but found herself adding, “To someone who drinks piña coladas at the Hotel Del before a five-course meal.”

  Grammy’s responding hmm was loaded with meaning.

  “I don’t love him anymore,” Dori thought to tell her just in case.

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “He couldn’t take it that I was first in the academy and he barely made it.”

  “Are you sure you couldn’t take him being less than you?”

  Grammy was partly right; but only a tiny part. Still, she shouldn’t have had to hold back to cushion his ego. Pete didn’t have a father who told him he had no right to be a cop because he wouldn’t be able to do the job when he got his period every month. But she did, and she had to work ten times as hard to prove to her da—no, to herself—that she couldn’t just do the job, she could be the best, with or without Midol.

  “Well,” Grammy said. “You could go over and get busy with Pete. That girl don’t stand no chance against one of mis nietas.”

  “Let her have him,” she said dismissively. “She’s probably not threatening to him.”

  “Use El Tigre to show what he’s missing,” Grammy said slyly. Dori could see how no man stood a chance when Grammy had been young. “And let yourself have some fun.”

  How come her grandmother could read through her so easily? Is that what happened when you were as old as she was? When would wisdom ever show up on her doorstep?

  “Where’s your sister?” Mom asked, appearing out of nowhere.

  Grammy pretended she was too deaf to have heard and looked up at the chandeliers.

  Dori kept her gaze steady. “She went to the ladies’ room.”

  Their mom might have been a marshmallow, but she knew her daughters well. “With who?”

  “No one.”

  Mom started to back down. “Well, someone told me that she was talking to some man and—”

  “Leave these girls alone, Brenda,” Grammy jumped in. “And you tell that no good son of mine to be a real man and stop sending you to do his dirty work.”

  Grammy thrust her chin in the air, effectively dismissing Mom from her presence. Mom stood there, her mouth agape and eyes fluttering from the lashing she’d just received. The mere idea of standing up to Dad, as Grammy had suggested, probably made her faint.

  Dori’s armpits were raining sweat, sitting there between her mom and Grammy. She didn’t know which one to be loyal to; her mom, who had been systemically broken down by Dad and Grammy; or Grammy, who made it perfectly clear that her loyalty was with her grandchildren.

  “I’ll go find Sela,” Dori offered. It was as neutral as she could get. Also, it would keep Dad from hounding Mom when she went back to her place beside him.

  After Mom thanked her and then made her way back to her table waaaaay on the other side of the ballroom, Grammy leaned over and said, “Go find your sister and warn her.”

  The thick salty air smoothed some of Dori’s edges as she stood at the open doorway, just breathing quietly as the ocean rippled under the smoky lavender sky.

  “Already doing damage control, huh?” Pete said beside her.

  She stiffened as if the ground had lurched beneath her feet. She hadn’t seen him follow her out. Then again, she’d had her family on her mind.

  “Excuse me?” she managed icily.

  Pete just grinned, one of the few men who had never been afraid of her. “I saw her with that guy at the bar. She didn’t even make the salad course.”

  It was one thing for her to criticize her sister, but she didn’t take it from anyone else; which was another reason why Pete had left.

  “Neither did you,” Dori pointed out, sniffing the air between them. He’d changed colognes. Had piña colada girl made him switch from the one she used to buy for him? “What do you want, Pete?”

  “To make sure you’re okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “We haven’t seen each other in five years.”

  Actually it was four years, seven months, and two weeks…which had not been enough time to make her forget the way his kisses made her toes curl, or how he loved it when she tongued his ear, or the way he felt inside her.

  “And I’m not okay,” he admitted. “It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

  His honesty had always been her undoing.

  But she was proud when she managed to tell him, “You should go back.”

  Or else she’d do something she would hate herself for. She didn’t poach on another woman’s man, even if he had once been hers.

  “What if I don’t want to?” He laughed dryly and shook his head. The back of his hand brushed hers, and the shock made her jaw clench. “How messed up is that? I love Suz, but I—”

  “Don’t,” she shot back. “Don’t you dare.”

  He was speechless, and she took the o
pportunity to escape before her pride, or her vulnerability, got them both in trouble. She wobbled on her heels as they slid on the textured walk-way, but she didn’t fall.

  Scanning the grounds over the heads of meandering couples enjoying twilight, she found Sela with El Tigre by the Windsor Cottage. She should just leave them alone, she thought, and let Sela find whatever amusement she needed to get through the night.

  And yet she wanted El Tigre, that gorgeous, dangerous creature who had a body that could make a woman forget loss and heartache. He could make a woman let go, to live for pleasure, to feel something other than anger.

  El Tigre brushed a lock of Sela’s hair behind her ear, smiling hungrily at her.

  Dori shivered, not from the air, but from that man’s raw sexuality. She narrowed her eyes and rolled her shoulders back.

  If she and Sela were still those wild Orihuela girls, then she had thirty more seconds to prove it.

  Chapter 4

  When Sela caught Dori standing there out of the corner of her eye, the smile she had for Eric collapsed.

  Noticing, Eric asked, “What’s that for?”

  “My sister,” she said.

  “Did I get you in trouble?”

  She leaned into his aura of heat. But she noticed that his nipple had beaded against his silk shirt. “Don’t I look like the kind who can make her own?”

  He laughed as if he hadn’t in a long time. Sela liked the way it made her feel. Eric just might be a keeper. He’d only touched her like a gentleman; escorting her out of the ballroom by letting his hand hover over her lower back and then lightly grasping her elbow as they walked down the steps.

  But heat simmered under the surface. She shivered as she imagined what it would be like when they finally lifted the lid.

  “May I walk you back inside?” he asked.

  “She’ll want to talk to me alone, but…” Sela glanced over at Dori, now not so sure that she wanted to play their game with Eric. He might be fun to keep around for more than one night.

  “Let’s meet inside later, okay?” she suggested, offering her hand.