by Camy Tang
“Retrieve the pans?” Mimi asked. “How?”
“How many people in your parents’ house right now?” he asked Mimi.
“Mom, Dad—no, he might be gone because Mom is going loco. And my four brothers.”
“Ages?” He felt like a commando.
“Sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, and twenty-eight.”
Hmm, a bit more formidable than he had expected. “Give me the layout of the house and where the pans might be.”
Mimi got a sheet of scratch paper and drew a diagram, putting a star next to the kitchen drawers where the pans would probably be.
“What are you planning?” Jenn asked.
“War,” he said with a grin.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jenn felt like Charlie’s Angels.
In honor of the rescue mission, the five cousins and Edward dressed all in black. Trish had showed up with a fire engine red tube of lipstick, which she made all the girls put on, and sunglasses for everyone, which would obscure their faces but not hamper their aim.
They were armed to the teeth. Each one carried a SuperSoaker water gun or water cannon. In fact, Edward had two weapons, including a smaller water gun he’d tucked into his waistband.
They met at Jenn’s house and crammed into her SUV. On the way to Aunty Aikiko’s house, Edward reviewed the plan with them all.
“Mimi, you’re first wave, since you’ll need to unlock the front door. You said Ryden would probably be in the living room?”
She nodded. “His computer is there. He’s always on Facebook at this time of day.”
“He’ll give an early warning to the others.” Edward grinned. “Good. It’ll make it a more interesting fight. Jenn, you’re second wave. Head straight into that kitchen to find the pans. Trish, back her up to shoot anyone who tries to stop her. Lex and Venus, you’re with me. Once Mimi takes out Ryden, the other boys will come down the stairs to figure out what’s going on. We’ll have to be ready to take them down.”
“Yessir!” Lex said. Her grin was a bit feral.
They parked a few feet away from the house, just out of visual range of the second floor windows. They darted toward the front door, and Mimi shouldered her water cannon in order to slide her house key into the lock. The door unbolted easily. She pushed against it.
It stuck.
Her eyes were frantic. “It’s the weather. It makes the wood warp.”
Edward positioned himself and whispered to them all, “On three. Ready? One, two, three!” He shouldered the door open.
It crashed open with a bang! and they rushed inside.
Just their luck, Rick was walking down the stairs as the door flew open. He took one look at them and flipped around, running back upstairs, shouting to his brothers.
In the living room to the left of the door, Ryden sprang up from his chair at the computer and whirled toward them. “What? Mimi?” He saw the water guns. “Oh, no you don’t!” He darted toward them, and Mimi shot him with a blast of water from the water cannon.
“Go! Go! Go!” Edward took the stairs two at a time, Lex and Venus behind him. Trish helped Mimi soak her youngest brother while Jenn ran into the kitchen. She yanked open the drawer.
Nothing.
Where would they be? “Mimi!” Jenn whirled in the kitchen. She started pulling open drawers and cabinets.
“Oven!” Mimi shouted from the living room. “Oh, you’ll pay for that—”
Suddenly, Aunty Aikiko’s shrieking from upstairs sliced through the air. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Jenn opened the oven door. Nothing inside but some rusty racks.
She pulled on the broiler, but it stuck. She tugged again, straining against it. It groaned open.
There! One of her pans. With a gigantic black spot in the middle. Aunty had burned something in her new pan!
Jenn tucked the pan into the satchel she carried and kept searching. Thumps and bumps rattled the ceiling as the battle waged upstairs.
Mimi and Trish rushed into the kitchen. “Hurry! The boys are forcing Edward, Lex, and Venus down the stairs!”
“Where’s Ryden?”
“He ran out the front door, the coward.”
Mimi pulled open some cabinets. “Here are two of the pans.”
Jenn found the fourth one under the sink. “We’ve got them all. Let’s go!”
They hustled out of the kitchen, slipping a little on the water in the tiled foyer. “Retreat!” Jenn roared up the stairs, where her cousins and Edward were pelting and being pelted by water.
They raced out of the house. Jenn activated the car unlock by remote as they ran, and they scrambled inside, followed by their male cousins.
“Go!” Trish screamed as they clambered inside.
Jenn turned the key even as she slammed the door shut. The engine gunned to life.
The RAV4 screeched away just as the boys reached them, their hands pounding on the windows. Jenn just barely remembered to check for any other cars before pulling into the empty street. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the boys standing in the middle of the street, trying to run after them, getting smaller and smaller.
They had done it!
“We did it! We did it!” The cousins screamed and danced in Jenn’s kitchen like little girls again. “We did it!”
Jenn pulled Edward into an exuberant hug. His arms tightened around her, and suddenly it was like those movie scenes where the action stops but the camera pans around.
All she heard was the rushing of blood in her ears. All she felt was his solid chest, his strong arms. All she smelled was his musk, with a hint of thyme and verbena.
And then suddenly the movie started playing again.
He loosened his hold on her, releasing one arm to reach into his back pocket. “This calls for a real celebration.”
“What do you mean?”
He kept his eyes on her but didn’t answer. Instead, he spoke into the phone. “Mama? I’m bringing five beautiful ladies to dinner.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
This must be what heaven is like, Jenn thought as Edward’s mother embraced her in a paella-scented hug. Mrs. Castillo was short and round, with a wide smile and wider arms.
“Welcome, welcome!” She embraced Mimi as well. Venus, Lex, and Trish couldn’t make it, but Jenn and Mimi had jumped at the chance to eat Spanish home cooking.
“You’re both too skinny! Come, we’ll fatten you up. I hope you like Spanish food.” Mrs. Castillo kept talking as she led them inside toward the kitchen. “Edward gave me so little notice, so I only made three courses, but I always make a lot of food since we have so many people. You all like Spanish food, yes?” She barely paused for an answer as they entered a gigantic kitchen boasting a huge dining table. “Here is everyone! Let me introduce them all.”
People packed the room, adults and children. It reminded Jenn of her own family gatherings, except the Castillos seemed to speak in louder voices and laugh louder and longer than her Japanese or Chinese family members.
“We all work on the vineyard and the farm,” Edward told her. “These are all my cousins and aunties and uncles. My grandparents passed away several years ago.”
“No, no, no.” The argument between one of Edward’s cousins and an uncle interrupted their conversation.
The swarthy younger man shook his finger at his slender uncle in a gesture that surprised Jenn with its seeming lack of respect. “That fertilizer is useless—”
“It was good enough for Papa—”
“It is outdated. This new one—”
The uncle made a derisive sound. “Fancy and full of filler.”
“Argue about fertilizer after dinner,” Edward’s mama ordered them, as she and several of the aunties set steaming platters of food on the table. She winked at Jenn as she passed. “The men always need something to argue about. It shows they love each other.”
Love each other? In Jenn’s experience, arguments meant a lack of love, a lack of obedience.
Amazing. Did they enjoy the arguments? Or was it something else? Maybe it was how they seemed to so easily agree to disagree. Maybe it was how, despite the fact they didn’t see eye to eye, they still seemed to hold each other in great respect.
Respect. No one in Jenn’s family respected her.
“Jenn?” Edward held out a chair for her at the overfilled table.
They all sat, and a hush settled over all of them. The oldest uncle stood. Everyone clasped hands and bowed their heads as he said grace.
It was a prayer similar to others she’d heard before, but here, surrounded by his family and some of hers, it seemed a prayer of community. It reached deep inside her in ways other prayers hadn’t before. She could almost feel God’s presence.
At the “Amen,” Edward’s hand squeezed hers gently before releasing her.
Dinner was amazing. The paella melted in her mouth. There was also a seafood noodle dish, fideua, and espencat, a mixture of roasted vegetables. The salad had an assortment of spring greens as well as some of the first vine-ripened tomatoes of the summer, juicy jewels that exploded with rich flavor in her mouth.
After dinner, Jenn and Mimi tried to help with the other women clearing and cleaning, but Edward’s mama shooed them outside, ordering her son and his cousin David to show the girls around the vineyard.
They walked through the noisy backyard, where the men were either babysitting—which seemed to involve boisterous games with the children—or sitting and relaxing with an after-dinner glass of wine. They walked along the dirt lanes that criss-crossed the property, coming to the crest of a hill that overlooked the rolling vineyards.
The low streaming rays of the sun gilded the grape vines, and the acres of rows of plants stretched into the sunset, broken only by a few lanes, a few trees, a few juniper bushes.
“Not all of these vineyards are ours,” Edward said, “but most of them.”
Faint voices carried to them, and they were joined by the nephew and uncle who had been arguing earlier, again loudly discussing fertilizer. The two men nodded to the foursome before continuing down the lane, intent on their discussion.
Edward smiled after them. “My family is very opinionated, as you can see.”
“No one ever gets … mad?”
He seemed to know she was thinking about her own disagreement with her aunty. “If someone didn’t stand up for their opinion, I think we’d be more upset. It’s a shame to be too dependent on others for your decisions.”
Too dependent on others. Was that what she was? “I’m trying to be more independent.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
It seemed strange that this man would know this, after only knowing her for so short a time. He seemed to almost know her better than her own family, but that wasn’t possible, was it?
“I guess you’ve seen me at my worst the past few days,” Jenn said. “I hope that you don’t think I’m like that all the time.”
“No, I can see you’re making a bid for independence,” he said. “There are always rough spots to iron out.”
With her family, with herself. “For the first time, I feel like I have the freedom to think about myself.”
“Have you always wanted to please your family?”
“Always. I was always the good cousin.” The doormat. The people pleaser. “Now, everything I’m doing is displeasing them.” Her job. Her new business. Her new … what was it that was between them? She felt the attraction. She thought he might feel it, too, but she wasn’t sure.
“We’ve gone through a lot together in only a few days,” she ventured.
He paused. A long, horrible, excruciating pause from Jenn’s point of view, but she knew it was probably only a few seconds. Finally he said, with a smile that seemed a bit forced, “Yes, we’ve become friends pretty fast.”
She hadn’t imagined the emphasis on friend.
What did he mean, friend? What about that kiss? That mind-numbing, hot jalapeño pepper kiss???
Then again, maybe it had only been that way for her. Maybe for him, it had been only, Meh.
Suddenly, the wind blew colder than before, and the rays of the sun were dying. The day was over.
They walked back to the house, and Jenn chatted with Edward’s cousin David while Mimi talked to Edward about his birthday present, the Harley. She overheard him telling her he’d take her for a spin before they left.
She squelched her surge of jealousy, then chastised herself. She’d been almost paralyzed with fear while riding that bike. And now she was begrudging Mimi? What was wrong with her?
She was only a friend, that’s what was wrong with her. She frowned a little as she glared at Edward’s back, following him to the house.
“There you are!” Edward’s mama met them in the backyard. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you at dinner.”
“Jenn, why don’t you talk to Mama while I take Mimi for a spin on the bike?” Edward suggested.
Mrs. Castillo rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why your uncle bought that after I told him not to—”
“You worry too much, Mama.” Edward bussed his mother on the cheek and led Mimi to a small barn nearby, which had been converted into a garage.
“Edward tells me you’ve started your own business.” Mrs. Castillo sat down on a bench in the backyard, watching a few of the younger cousins playing soccer with the kids.
“I just started my catering business. I’m doing my cousin Trish’s wedding in a few weeks.”
“How exciting.” She smiled at Jenn. “You must be a good cook.”
A few weeks ago, she would have said, I’m only okay, or I’m decent. But why display false modesty? What did it accomplish? It hadn’t raised her esteem in her family’s eyes, so why bother? “I love to cook. I attended culinary school and got my degree.”
Her eyes widened. “Really? How wonderful. So young, and so driven. You remind me of my father-in-law, the man who started this winery.” She sighed. “His father—my husband’s grandfather—didn’t approve. Wanted him to raise cows. The old pasture land is down thataways.” She gestured toward the rolling foothills south of them.
“He didn’t want him to make wine?”
“He didn’t want him to be a farmer, working with crops, vulnerable to the weather—an iffy business, in his mind. He wanted him to make money, and at the time, it was in the meat industry. He had his own ideas of what he wanted his son to be.”
“Like my family.” It slipped out before she could stop herself, but Mrs. Castillo seemed perceptive to the meaning behind her soft words.
“Your family doesn’t approve of your new business?”
“That’s an understatement. The only ones happy about it are my cousins.”
Mrs. Castillo’s eyes caught and held hers with gentle firmness. “And is God leading you to form your own business?”