And she felt utterly overwhelmed and ambushed. The noise, the laughter, the aroma of the cooking food, the vines climbing the walls—it was all too familiar, too dear, but also not hers.
She hadn’t been with her family like this for three years. She’d missed christenings, weddings, birthdays. And all of a sudden Leandro had thrown her into the middle of his grandmother’s birthday and all the grief, the memories, the sadness of missing out, of being an outsider when she’d grown up with all this love and warmth came rushing up at her.
She needed air. She needed silence. She needed to think, to get a grip.
Leandro was talking to one of his brothers nearby, and Claudia leaned toward the brother’s heavily pregnant wife, hoping she’d remembered the woman’s name right.
“Betty, could you tell me where the ladies’ is?” Claudia asked.
“Go back the way you came, but turn left just before you step into the dining room,” Betty supplied readily.
Claudia smiled her thanks and struck out for the door. She was stopped twice by Leandro’s cousins, all of whom seemed to know that she worked on Ocean Boulevard and who wanted to tell her how much they loved the show.
She filed away the fact that Leandro had obviously been talking about her with his family, made what she hoped were coherent responses to their comments, and dove for the door again.
The door closing behind her cut the ambient sound in half, and she fought the sudden sting of tears as she made her way to the bathroom.
Shutting herself in a cubicle, she leaned against the door and willed herself not to cry. She hadn’t been prepared, that was all it was. She told herself the same thing over and over, but she couldn’t stop the wellspring of grief bubbling up. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she clamped her jaws shut.
She would not cry.
Yes, she missed her family. Perhaps more than she’d ever admitted to herself. Yes, she felt lost, very alone, very isolated without them, and the last twenty minutes had brought that home to her. But life was full of tough decisions, and she’d made hers, and missing out had been the price she paid for removing herself from her mother’s orbit.
Gradually the emotion filling her chest subsided, and she unclenched her fists from around her handbag. Exiting the cubicle, she washed her hands and checked her hair. She looked absolutely normal, completely unaffected, she was pleased to see. Tweaking the scarf at her neck so that the knot sat more to one side, she headed back out to join the Mandalors.
It wasn’t until she stepped through the door and spotted Leandro that the full import of what he’d done—and what it meant—came home to her. She’d known that he cared, of course. The intense looks. The thoughtfulness. The tender caresses, the warmth. He wanted a relationship with her. He wanted to turn their sex-only fling into something much more substantial.
And she was going to have to break up with him.
A leaden weight settled in her belly at the thought. The past three weeks had been so good, so rich, so right. But she was about to come up against the wall of Leandro’s expectations—and there was no way she could meet them.
“I got you some punch,” he said when she’d made her way back to his side.
“Thanks.”
She took a sip of something cold and tart and delicious. She could feel him watching her.
“You okay? Not too freaked out?” he asked.
His expression was sheepish when she glanced up at him.
“Would it matter?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it like this, but I wanted you to be here, and I figured you wouldn’t have come if I’d asked you up front.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” she said. “And you know why—this isn’t part of the agreement, Leandro.”
He frowned. “We have an agreement?”
“Yeah, we do, and you know it.” She could feel her voice rising, and she pushed her emotions back down. For starters, this was not the place to end things with him. And she was already feeling emotional. It was silly to tempt fate.
“Look, I just wanted you to meet my family. They’re important to me,” he said.
He left the rest of his sentence unspoken—that she was important to him, too, but he didn’t need to say it. Suddenly she was filled with a great sadness. If she were a different woman. If she’d had a different life. But she wasn’t, she hadn’t.
“There you are. Alexandra wants to show you her woogie,” Leandro’s sister-in-law, Betty, said from behind them.
Leandro looked frustrated for a split second, but he quickly hid it. They both knew this was not the time or place to talk.
“First of all, I want to know what a woogie is,” he said as Betty led forward a dark-haired little girl with long curly hair. Claudia guessed she was about three years old.
“This is a woogie,” Alexandra said, holding up a scrap of old blanket.
“Oh, you mean a wuggie,” Leandro said, crouching down so that Alexandra wouldn’t have to crane her neck to see him. “That’s what we used to call them when I was little. You know, your dad used to have a wuggie. He took it everywhere.”
Betty snorted her amusement. “Something he neglected to tell me. No wonder he’s so keen to stop her from carrying the damn thing around.”
“Cried when it got washed accidentally, too,” Leandro said.
Claudia suspected he was slandering his brother shamelessly, and despite herself she laughed. Betty looked from one to the other of them.
“Is he pulling my leg?” she asked Claudia.
“Yep,” Claudia readily confirmed.
“Where’s your sense of loyalty?” Leandro asked her.
“Where’s yours, calling Dom a big sook? Lucky he didn’t hear you,” Betty said.
“Feel free to tell him if you want,” Leandro suggested.
Betty slapped his arm.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, but she laughed.
Turning to Claudia, she indicated Leandro with her thumb. “You’ll have to tell me how you know he’s lying. I never know when he’s pulling my leg or not.”
“It’s the eyes. He was laughing on the inside,” Claudia said.
“Hmph,” Betty said, rocking back on her heels to study Leandro narrowly. “Better watch out, Leo—I’m on to you now.”
Dom joined them, and as the conversation moved on to the rose garden the family had arranged to have planted for their grandmother’s birthday, Alexandra tugged on the leg of Leandro’s jeans.
“Want to go up,” Alexandra said, arms held over her head imperatively. “Please, Uncle Leo.”
Without breaking his conversation with his brother, Leandro ducked down to scoop up his niece and place her on his shoulders. Claudia couldn’t help but note his ease with the little girl, or the care with which he handled her. A gentle giant in every sense of the word. Despite all her deeply held beliefs about herself and children, she felt a definite twinge from her ovaries. What was it about big, masculine men and little kids? It was like catnip for female hormones, and even she was not immune. Shaking off the stupid moment, she tuned back into the conversation.
The sun moved across the sky, and before long she was holding a plate and standing in line with the rest of the family, waiting to help herself to the buffet laid out along one side of the courtyard. Leandro stood behind her, talking to one of his uncles, and she automatically plucked his plate from his hand when it became clear he was too absorbed to focus on serving himself. Making sure she gave him plenty of the spit-roasted meat, she loaded his plate up with salads and topped the lot with some fresh pita rounds. Leandro patted her backside in thanks, and Claudia became aware of the sensation that she was being watched. Glancing around, she locked eyes with Leandro’s mother. The older woman smiled warmly, and Claudia frowned. She felt like such a fraud, being here with Leandro. Not only did he think they had a future, but his family did, too. And they were all wrong.
Filling her own plate, she joined Leandro
at a trestle table and got sucked into a raucous, laughter-filled discussion about the latest World Cup soccer match. She surprised several of Leandro’s male cousins with her wide ranging knowledge of the players and stats, and Leandro sat smiling at her goofily as if she were a prize poodle he’d brought along to do tricks. Ignoring the fact that his approval, ridiculous as it was, made her hum with pleasure, she concentrated on the flavors of the meal in front of her.
They were the flavors of her childhood, familiar and beloved—tender slices of roast lamb, spicy dolmades, salty taramasalata, olives, feta cheese and crispy calamari with fresh lemon juice and pepper. As the meal wore on, and the laughs kept coming, Claudia forgot about the difficult conversation she was yet to have with Leandro. She forgot about feeling like a fraud, about being there under false pretenses.
She laughed, she teased Leandro and his cousins and was teased in return, she gossiped about Hollywood stars with the women, and promised to do her level best to increase the quota of shirtless scenes on Ocean Boulevard to make their daytime viewing a little spicier. When the tables were pushed to one side and the bazoukis brought out, she clapped along with everyone else and even allowed herself to be drawn into the dancing. She knew the steps-of course she knew the steps—and she was soon regretting her high heels. Seeing her dilemma, Leandro dropped to his knees and undid the delicate buckles on her sandals, and everyone howled with approval.
As the sun began its slow slide toward the horizon, the sweet trays appeared with the traditional honey-sweet baklava, loukamades, custards, chocolate-covered almonds and more. She drank strong Greek coffee, listened as Leandro’s mother read the coffee grounds and prophesied good luck in love in her future, and entertained Betty’s young son while Betty cleaned up Alexandra’s honey-smeared face and dress.
But mostly Claudia watched Leandro. She had a hard time keeping her eyes off him at the best of times, and seeing him in his element only made him more charismatic. It wasn’t because he was the tallest man there, although a few of his cousins rivaled him for height. It was everything about him—his laugh, deep and contagious, the mischievous sparkle in his eye, the careless grace of his big body. Slowly she realized she wasn’t the only one drawn to him. His cousins applied to him to resolve disputes, his brothers and sisters deferred to him, his mother gazed at him with adoring eyes. He was like the unofficial king of the family, and they all wanted to bask in his reflected glory.
She was sitting to one side, her sandals lying beside her chair, when Leandro’s mother joined her. Suddenly all the ease of the last few hours evaporated and she braced herself for the typical Greek mother’s interrogation.
“Are you having a nice time, Claudia?” Alethea Mandalor asked.
“I’m having a great time. Everyone’s been very welcoming,” she said.
Leandro’s laugh rang across the courtyard, drawing both their gazes.
“It is hard not to smile when Leandro smiles,” Alethea said.
“He’s very charming,” Claudia agreed.
This seemed to please Alethea.
“I wanted to talk to you, Claudia,” Alethea said, turning to regard her with eyes that were uncannily like Leandro’s.
Here we go, Claudia thought.
“Okay,” she said. She’d give the woman two minutes, then she was making a bolt for the bathroom.
“There is a woman on your show—a gray-haired actress,” Alethea surprised her by saying.
Claudia frowned, having trouble switching gears mentally. This wasn’t quite the opening gambit she’d been expecting. “There are a couple of older women characters. Do you mean the actress who plays Leona, or Priscilla?” she asked.
“Priscilla—that’s her name.” Alethea leaned toward Claudia confidingly. “Do you think her haircut would suit me, Claudia?”
Claudia blinked as Alethea tugged the pins loose from her bun and shook out her hair. It fell to just below her shoulders in a thick curtain.
Leandro’s mother wanted beauty advice. Claudia almost laughed she was so relieved.
“My husband, he loves it like this, but I want something shorter, more stylish. I saw that actress the other day as I was switching channels, and I wondered…”Alethea elaborated.
Claudia smiled to herself. One by one, all of Leandro’s female relatives had confessed they watched both Ocean Boulevard and Heartlands, taping one while they watched the other. They’d all begged her not to tell Leandro, not wanting him to think they were disloyal. And now, Mrs. Mandalor was admitting in a roundabout way that she, too, followed the fortunes of the Ocean Boulevard characters.
“It’s much shorter than what you have now,” Claudia said, tilting her head to one side and seriously assessing Leandro’s mother’s face.
She guessed Alethea was in her late fifties-early sixties, and she had the kind of strong facial structure that had aged well.
“You’ve got the cheekbones to pull it off. And a nice high forehead. I think it would really suit you,” Claudia said.
“Thank you!” Alethea said, touching Claudia’s arm gratefully. “The rest of the family—they’re used to me looking a certain way. This face, this hair is what they think of when they think of Alethea Mandalor. But it’s time for a change, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to make an appointment tomorrow.”
“You know, if you’d like, I could ask Priscilla’s stylist to take a look at you,” Claudia heard herself saying.
Before she could regret the impulsive offer, Alethea’s face lit up with such genuine gratitude that Claudia was touched to the heart.
“Oh, Claudia,” Alethea said. “I cannot tell you what that would mean to me. I would know I was in such safe hands. Priscilla always looks so elegant, so refined.”
Suddenly realizing that she’d just admitted to actually watching the show, Alethea lifted a hand to her mouth and turned wide eyes to Claudia, looking for all the world like a naughty schoolgirl.
“Don’t worry—your secret’s safe with me,” Claudia said.
A shadow fell over them, and Claudia knew before she looked up that it was Leandro.
“How’s it going over here?” he asked warily.
“Oh, relax, Leandro, I’m not grilling your friend. What do you think I am, some prehistoric cultural cliché?” Alethea said, waving her hand at him dismissively as she relinquished her chair.
Leandro stared after his mother in bemusement, then he looked down at Claudia.
“She really wasn’t giving you the third degree?” he asked.
“Nope.”
He raised his eyebrows as if to say “go figure.”
“You ready to go home?” he asked her.
“If you are,” she said.
She was surprised at her own answer. If anyone had told her when she first arrived that she’d be reluctant to go home, she’d have laughed in their face then shimmied over the nearest wall and made a run for it.
“I had a nice time,” she said to Leandro as they made their way out to the car. The sidewalk was warm beneath her bare feet despite the fact that the sun had almost set.
“Good,” he said. The gaze he shot her was cautious, assessing.
It reminded her of what she had to do now. Having held her peace all afternoon, she couldn’t bite her tongue any longer.
“Leandro, we need to talk,” she said.
“Yes, we do. But not this close to a million flapping Mandalor ears,” he said.
She nodded her agreement, and slid into his car. She grew more and more tense as they neared her house and she ran over the words she’d convinced herself she needed to say.
He helped her out of his car, and as she looked up to thank him she put her foot down on something cold and sharp. “Ow!”
She lifted her foot to find a shard from a broken soda bottle on the sidewalk and blood welling from a cut in her foot.
“Here,” Leandro said, bending down to scoop her into his arms.
Sliding a hand around his neck, she winced with pain as he stro
de up her garden path to her front door. Within seconds they were in her house and he had placed her on the kitchen counter and was examining her grubby sole.
“I don’t think there’s any glass in there still,” he said.
“No, it was just that one big piece,” she agreed.
He disappeared into the hallway then, and she heard him rummaging in her bathroom. He returned with her first aid kit, along with a washcloth. Pulling one of her kitchen chairs in front of her, he took her foot in hand again.
“It’s a bit dirty,” she apologized.
Shrugging his lack of concern, he reached across to run the washcloth under the tap, then gently wiped her foot clean.
“Not hurting?” he asked as he dabbed gently near the cut itself.
She shook her head, something inside her expanding warmly at the great care he was exerting to mend her hurt.
“I’m going to put some antiseptic on now—that bit might sting,” he said, unscrewing a small bottle from her kit.
“I’m tough,” she said, and he squeezed her ankle in response.
She hissed out a breath, however, when he dabbed the cut, jerking her leg back instinctively. He maintained his warm, firm grip on her ankle until he’d put a bandage on the cut, but the glance he gave her afterward was full of regret.
“Sorry,” he said simply.
She stared at him, getting lost in his eyes, admitting to herself a truth that had been growing inside her for weeks.
She was in love with Leandro.
So much for flings and fun and light and breezy. So much for conquering her fear and taking what she wanted and doing it her way.
“I was going to break up with you tonight,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
They stared at each other for a beat, tension crackling between them.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.
“Me, either. But it did. And I’m glad.” He slid his hand farther up her calf, his palm hot against her skin.
“What do you want from me?” she whispered, her hands gripping the edge of the counter as though her life depended on it.
“This. What we have now, and to know that we have a future,” he said. “To have the right to come home to you. To plan with you. All the usual stuff.”
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