“We keep in touch with a network of lawyers willing to take immigration cases pro bono,” Eva explained, ignoring his outburst as she pulled a sheet of paper out of a manila envelope. “I know these three are no longer accepting cases”—she scratched off three names before sliding the page across the table—“but one of the others should be willing to help. In addition, here at the drop-in center we offer a complementary service if you’re struggling to get face-time with your lawyer. Some of them may only be able to offer to appear in court for you, in which case we can help review and prepare all the documentation you’ll need for the proceedings.”
“So I phone one of these lawyers, but I can still come back here?”
Eva nodded. “I’m in regular contact with each of them. They all speak Spanish, and after you’ve made the initial call, they’ll be in touch with me to let me know how much or how little we’ll need to support you here at the center.” She reached into one of the dented metal desk’s rickety drawers and produced a crookedly printed pamphlet. “We also have a weekly women’s group here at the church, on Tuesday evenings. It’s very friendly and informal. Quite a few of our members have been where you are, and it’s a great place to get advice and support.”
Virginia took the pamphlet gingerly, as though it might crumble between her fingers. She unfolded it, refolded it, and burst into tears.
Rio shot to his feet but Eva beat him, rounding the desk at lightning speed to draw the taller woman into a hug.
“You don’t have to go through this alone,” Eva murmured. “I’ll be here for you whenever you need me.”
Virginia stepped back, visibly embarrassed by her burst of emotion. Rio snatched up a tissue from the box on the desk and handed it to her, unable to stop himself from putting a comforting arm around the woman’s shoulders. She was painfully thin.
Eva produced her business card, which bore the Skyline logo. “My cell number is on the bottom. Give me a call as soon as you’ve spoken to the lawyers on the list and we’ll take it from there.”
Virginia rose from her seat, her chin held high as she patted Rio’s hand. “Thank you both. I really am grateful.”
“We’ll speak again soon,” Eva assured her. Virginia left the trailer with the straight back of someone who refused to be cowed, no matter what life threw at her.
“That was a tough one,” Eva muttered as she resumed her seat.
Rio dropped into the chair Virginia had just vacated. “They can’t really deport her son, can they? He’s only eighteen.”
She shrugged. “He’s in the country illegally. She’s going to have a difficult time making a case for him to be allowed to stay.”
“But he’ll be killed if he goes back to Honduras.”
“Probably.”
He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Then how can they send him?”
Eva’s small smile was her most enigmatic yet. “Exactly.”
He exhaled heavily, leaning back in the creaking metal chair. “I guess I didn’t realize how insulated I’ve been from all this stuff. I mean, back home you occasionally hear about people leaving to try to cross the border, but life in Chile is completely different to Honduras, El Salvador, those kinds of places.” He shook his head. “Then again, maybe my upbringing was more sheltered than I thought.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sheltered?”
He nodded. “I’m very lucky.”
She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “Maybe the press gets it wrong, but what I read of your background didn’t sound particularly sheltered.”
“What did you read?”
“That your father died in a mining accident.”
“True. And the settlement money was enough for us to move out of our tiny house in the village and into a really nice apartment in Antofagasta. We didn’t even have an indoor toilet in the village, but in town we got a TV, a microwave, lots of stuff.”
She studied her thumbnail. “So the story about your cleats, is that true?”
He inclined his head, absorbing the realization that she’d read up on him. He knew exactly which article she meant, but he asked, “Which story?”
“I read something about you not having enough money to buy soccer cleats, and the village clubbing together to buy them for your youth league tryout.” She avoided his gaze, taking an intense interest in her manicure.
He shook his head, endeared by her shyness. His life had been an open book for so long, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone cared about his privacy. “These tabloids get it all wrong. Our neighbors in the apartment block got together to buy the cleats. We were long gone from the village by then.”
“Okay, but—”
“I’m serious. The people who came to see you today have real problems. Yeah, maybe we were poor when I was very young, but I signed my first professional contract when I was seventeen and never thought about money again.” He propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I just watched you solve major issues. People losing their jobs, declaring bankruptcy, trying to keep their family members in the country. You changed people’s lives this morning. It was incredible.”
She gathered up the papers and brochures scattered across the desk and shuffled them into a manila folder. “That’s nice of you to say, but all I do is put people in touch with the people who can really help them.”
“Is that why you want to become a lawyer, so you can be that person?”
“Yes.” She paused, then continued tidying the edges of the papers without looking up. “My mom was deported when I was twelve.”
Rio watched the brisk movement of her fingers, her swift, efficient motion as she needlessly reshuffled the pages.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“It’s fine,” she replied with the kind of certainty that implied it was anything but.
He pried the folder from her fingers and set it on a corner of the desk. She hesitated, and then met his gaze for the first time in ten minutes.
“She came over from Juarez with my dad,” she explained, crossing her wrists in front of her. “I was born in El Paso about eighteen months later. They were never married, and my dad split when I was still a baby. Other than that, life was pretty normal. We lived in an apartment, my mom worked as a cleaner in a hotel, I went to school. I didn’t even know my mom was undocumented until the day she was arrested.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “What happened?”
“Similar story to Virginia’s husband. The immigration service raided the hotel where she worked. She was taken into detention and eventually deported.” She shrugged. “One morning she left for work and I never saw her again.”
“You didn’t even get to see her before they sent her away?’
She shook her head. “If I know my mom, she probably lied and told them she had no children. One of our neighbors took me in, and in retrospect the seamlessness of it suggested she knew that day might come and had a backup plan in place.”
He exhaled, noting the calm efficiency with which she delivered this traumatic story. This woman wasn’t only beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate. She was tough.
“That’s rough, Eva. Are you in touch with her now?”
“At first I got a few letters, but after a couple of years they trailed off.” She brightened. “But last year I got the money together to hire a private investigator who specializes in tracking down people who’ve been deported. A couple of months ago he said he’d gotten a promising lead, so I’m hopeful.”
“Good.” He managed a smile, although his mind spun with Eva’s revelation. He couldn’t imagine losing his mother so suddenly, not to mention spending the rest of his life wondering where she was and whether she was all right.
His chest tightened as he tried to understand what Eva had been through. He thought of his five-foot-nothing mother, her endless patience with his awful academic performance, her unwavering support when he was first scouted. He wa
s her complicated, difficult, demanding middle child, who’d always lacked the steadiness of his older brother and the intellectual firepower of his younger sister. Who would he have become if she hadn’t been there, encouraging him, understanding him, believing in him when no one else did?
He’d be a miner. Working hard, drinking harder, barely scraping by.
“That’s it for today.” Eva shoved the files in a drawer and shut it. “I’ll lock up and we’re done.”
Rio waited at the bottom of the church steps while she secured the trailer door and dropped off the keys with Father Diego. He squinted at the watery, early-spring sun as he processed everything he’d seen and heard that morning.
He thought he’d be dropping into Mass to ease his conscience. Instead he had a whole new perspective on his good fortune—and on the woman who formed an increasingly large part of it.
Eva reappeared and joined him on the front walkway.
“So.” She looked away, looked back, crossed her arms in front of her. “Did you say something about lunch?”
“Yes. Wait, what time is it?”
She glanced at her phone. “Almost two o’clock. That took longer than I expected. You must be starving.”
He was, but there was something even more pressing on his mind than his stomach. “I told Nico I’d meet him at two-thirty to train.”
Was that a flash of disappointment in her eyes? “Oh. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“I’ll reschedule.” He took out his phone and was halfway through his contacts list when she pushed down his hand. It was a fleeting touch, but it ignited his senses with such heat that he tugged on his collar to get some air against his skin.
Eva fascinated him like no other women he’d met. It was unsettling, yet so exhilarating.
“Don’t cancel with Nico on my account. I need to run some errands this afternoon, anyway. Although…” She smiled. “What’ll you give me to not tell Roland you’re training on your rest day?”
He took a step toward her, pocketing his phone. “Name your price.”
“I’m expensive.”
“I’m rich.”
The look she gave him was pure heat, molten desire swirling in the depths of her dark eyes.
He suppressed a shudder as he took another step to narrow the space between them. He had no shortage of experience with women—appearing on Chilean sports pages from the age of seventeen had done more for his sex appeal than anything he’d ever worn or said—yet everything about Eva caught him off-guard. If she’d coolly assessed him in a nightclub, or shyly approached him in a store, or called his name as she leaned over the barriers outside the stadium he would’ve known exactly how to handle her.
Instead she showed perfect restraint, occasionally pierced by flashes of attraction so scalding he was left looking for scars.
He wanted her. But he had no idea how to win her.
He was a risk-taker by nature—probably so were all professional soccer players—but his success was rooted in knowing when to take the safe option, too. When to pass instead of shoot, when to kick it out instead of fight to play on. He needed to know Eva better before he made his move, make sure the step he took was the right one. Because when he won her, he intended to keep her.
“But nowhere near rich enough to pay what you’re worth,” he added. Eva glanced away and the moment was gone, but he couldn’t bring himself to move back. He savored their closeness, the faint scent of her perfume. It might be awhile before he gave himself permission to be this near to her again.
She made the first move, turning toward her car. There were only a handful of vehicles remaining in the parking lot, and her hatchback was at the opposite side to his high-end convertible.
He noticed her looking at it. Did she think it was an ostentatious waste of money? Or did she think it was cool? Probably the former, he concluded grimly, but that was only because she hadn’t taken a ride in it yet.
One of these days he’d take her out, find an empty back road and show her what that high-performance engine was capable of. He’d leave the top down for the ride, then put it up for the lovemaking that followed.
“Tell Nico not to work you too hard.”
He’d been grinning, thinking about Eva’s hair tangling from the wind, but her brisk tone snapped him out of his fantasy and back to the realization that he had a lot of work to do before he could even touch that hair.
Eva was smart, sophisticated, sexy. Fame and fortune wouldn’t be enough to woo her, not even close. He’d have to prove himself, show her how hard he worked, how seriously he treated his profession, convince her he was more than just another showboat athlete.
First he’d show her the man. Then he’d show her his heart.
He raised his hand in farewell as she started toward her car. “Thanks for letting me tag along this afternoon.”
“I’m here every Sunday. You’re always welcome to join.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Rio.”
She climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot without a second glance in his direction. He stood on the asphalt for a long time afterward, contemplating the challenge ahead.
It would be harder than any international cup final he’d played, but this was a match he couldn’t afford to lose. He’d win her. It would take time, and effort, but he’d do it, and it would be the sweetest victory of his life.
Chapter 7
“Stop fetching the ball like a Goddamn terrier! Stay in your area! For God’s sake, Rio, you’re all over the pitch like a rash!”
Rio slowed as he jogged past, looking at Roland and then Eva.
She smiled encouragingly, mentally editing the manager’s colorful language. “Roland likes your speed, but he wants you to keep to your area just a bit more.”
Rio grinned. “Tell him I can’t help it, I love to run.”
As Rio rejoined the second-half action Roland turned to her, then held up his palm. “Let me guess. He likes running?”
“It’s what he always says. Maybe it’s true.”
“I’m sure it is. No one can be that hyperactive unless they’re getting something out of it.”
She moved to step out of the manager’s sideline box when he touched her arm to stop her. When she turned Roland wore a stony expression, concern plain in his features.
“He’s going to burn himself out if he doesn’t slow down. His style—this constant motion, sprinting all over the pitch like he’s the only player on the field—it’s not efficient and it’s not sustainable. I’ve told him this over and over again, but he doesn’t listen.”
“I think he worries that he’ll lose his spot on the team if he doesn’t work hard,” she ventured carefully.
“There’s working hard, and there’s running yourself ragged.” Roland returned his attention to the pitch, signaling that this conversation was nearly over. “I need you to make sure he observes his rest days. No more of these secret training sessions on Sunday.”
Her cheeks reddened. How had he found out about those? “I’m only his interpreter, how can I stop him?”
Roland glanced at her over his shoulder, his gaze heavy with meaning. “You watch him every second of every day, that’s how.”
With a troubled sigh, Eva slunk back to her seat on the sideline. She never imagined it would be the case, but more time with Rio was, in fact, the last thing she needed.
Today marked exactly a month since his arrival, and three weeks since that deeply unholy moment when they’d stood in the church parking lot and she’d had to muster every ounce of self-control to keep from dragging his head down to hers and kissing him until she couldn’t breathe.
That afternoon she’d been sure she read matching attraction in Rio’s expression, but the days passed and the weeks piled up and he gave no indication that they were anything more than translator and client. He lived up to his Chilean-tabloid reputation for bein
g affable and outgoing, and although his English hadn’t perceptibly improved since the day he arrived he was a willing student. But that was it. No more stolen touches, no more heavy glances.
Just yesterday she gave herself a stern self-talk on the drive to a pre-match press event, deciding once and for all that Rio’s flirtatious charm was his trademark, and in no way deployed specially for her. Even if it was, it couldn’t mean anything. This was her year to stare down her fear of commitment and start on the path to permanency. Rio was a sweet guy but imagining he could be marriage material wasn’t realistic. He was rich, handsome, and had his pick of women. Sure, he’d probably be up for a fling with her, but the chances he’d be willing to convert that into something serious? Zero.
It was for the best, she reminded herself as she watched the Portuguese translator leap out of his seat to communicate instructions to one of the Brazilian players. She regularly compromised her professionalism by softening Roland’s criticisms in some ridiculous attempt to shield Rio, and what good did that do anyone? Roland was sending a message, his player wasn’t receiving it, and it was her fault.
“Buck up,” she chided herself under her breath, watching Rio spring up from a tackle that’d sent him sprawling on the grass. He didn’t need protection, and she was in no position to offer it.
Roland cursed in what she assumed was Swedish as the clock ticked down to nothing and three minutes of injury time were added onto the end of the match. The scoreboard was goalless, which was a disappointing result—by all accounts Skyline was the stronger team in this home-turf showdown with Cleveland Thunder.
But Cleveland had a new striker in Costa Rican Gonzalo Rubio, who was perhaps best known for taking down Rio in a studs-up tackle that earned him a red-card sendoff in the South American Cup’s quarter-finals. The way he’d played this match suggested he was looking for revenge, and he had repeatedly gone after Rio with force that was truly excessive considering his six-inch, fifty-pound advantage.
Crossing Hearts Page 6