by Ruth Wind
"I'm okay," she repeated.
He thought for a moment, and leaned against the door. "Saint Molly, will you let me give back just this one thing? Por favor?"
Silence. Then the door opened, and she stood there looking small and impossibly frail in an oversize robe, her hair loose on her shoulders, her face ravaged and unbeautiful in grief. Her eyes burned an unholy color of silver in the midst of the red of weeping, and Alejandro did exactly what came to him: he moved forward, closed the door to prevent the heat and damp of the steam from leaving the room and enfolded her in his arms. He held her tightly, without hesitation, putting a hand on her head to encourage her to lie it in the cradle of his shoulder. She was stiff for a moment, resisting, then something broke free and she gripped him, buried her face, and he felt her shoulders shake. "It's been four years," she moaned. "How can it still hurt like this, all at once, so I can't breathe?"
"It does, that's all." His balance was precarious, and he braced himself against the door, stroking her hair, stroking, stroking.
"He's not coming back. Not ever."
"No," he said quietly. The shower ran and ran, and the steam was so thick in the room that his face was wet in moments. "But he was here. He lived. In these rooms, no?" He rubbed his cheek on her hair, not out of longing, but out of need to comfort. "He wore this shirt. He loved you, and you loved him."
She nodded, and more tears fell, a river of them, but these were somehow richer, less stricken.
"You will not forget him, Saint Molly. And now I will know him, too, by knowing you. Any man you loved so well must have been very fine."
"He was." The words came out strangled, but he felt the difference in her. Moving gently, he settled her on the toilet and reached for the washcloth. He ran cold water on it and started to kneel before the assorted pains in him stopped that action.
Instead, he bent, putting one hand on her shoulder to brace himself a little, and used the other to blot her hot, swollen face. She closed her eyes with a sigh and let him press the cold cloth to her eyelids. "Thank you."
"If my kiss made that come, I am sorry, Molly."
She raised her face, put a hand to his wrist. "It was just that it made me remember. It wasn't you."
And with a fierceness that surprised him, he suddenly wanted to kiss her with all the passion that lived in him. Wanted to tangle with her in a way that bruised and healed them both. It swelled in him, swift and biting, this lust, and shocked him enough that he stepped back. "The water will be cold," he said, and put the washcloth in her hand.
* * *
After her shower, Molly fell into bed and slept for nearly four hours. It was the sleep of the dead, and she felt cleansed when she awakened. Her mind was sharp and clear as she dressed and drank some of Alejandro's extraordinary coffee. "You really will have to show me how to make this," she said, standing at the sink in the sunshine.
She had brought him fresh clothing, more things that had belonged to Tim, right down to the boxer shorts. He looked troubled when she carried them out of the bedroom. "Are you sure, señora? I do not wish to cause you more pain."
"He would kill me if I let those clothes sit there when someone could get some use out of them," she said briskly, and meant it.
They did not, Molly admitted now, fit him particularly well. Alejandro was a little taller and a good twenty pounds lighter than Tim had been, so the sleeves and jeans were the smallest bit too short, and everything was baggy. He obviously knew this, too, for he plucked restlessly at the shirt collar, tried to smooth the button placket as if to make it fit better. "Don't worry about it," Molly said now. "We'll get some more clothes for you."
He scowled. "No. I cannot allow that."
"How about if I write it down, keep an account? Will that make you feel better?"
He considered. The angle of cheekbone to eyebrow to chin remained impassive, but he could not halt the movements of that wide, mobile mouth, which finally pursed into an expression of agreement. "Sí. I can make money in only a week or two. Then I can repay you."
"Fair enough."
Parked outside the hospital a little while later, Molly made a move to open the door. He stopped her. "Are you certain you wish to do this?"
She did not even hesitate. "Yes."
"Will they believe you are in love with such a man?"
"Such a man." Even in the ill-fitting clothes, he was a sight for starved women's eyes – the black-licorice hair, neatly combed away from his face to fall around his collar in thick waves, the liquid dark eyes in a face of striking angles, the sensual mouth. "Oh, yes, Alejandro. They will believe."
"And all men could see why I would find passion for such a woman," he said lightly, but the words touched her. "Come, then. I wish to see my niece."
Leaning on a cane she'd brought to him from the hospital, he rounded the car and took her hand, raising his eyebrows a little as he did so. "For courage."
And oddly, it did lend her courage to have her hand firmly clasped in his as they walked, a promise of kept secrets.
The halls were quiet as they entered – it was just past nine, and there had evidently been no more new emergencies through the night. Molly had timed their arrival so that they would not miss Cathy, her supervisor, and she found her at the nurses' station, one hand in her already mussed hair as she scribbled notes on an insurance form.
"Cathy," Molly said quietly.
The woman looked up, blinking, and then blinked again as she took in the fact that Molly was not alone.
"This is Alejandro Sosa," Molly said. "He is the uncle of the little girl Wiley brought in last night." She took a breath, and as if he felt her nervousness, Alejandro tightened his fingers around hers. "He is also my fiancé."
Clearly, Cathy could not take it in. "Fiancé? As in getting married to?"
"Yes." On the spur of the moment, she made up a story. "I – we – had planned to go through proper channels, but circumstances have forced us to move up the date."
Cathy looked from Molly to Alejandro, then stood up and held out her hand. "I'm so happy to meet you."
"Thank you."
"Keep it under your hat for a little while, huh?" Molly asked. "I'm going to see my brother after we are finished here. I'd rather he heard the news from me."
Cathy raised her eyebrows. "That should go over well."
"Oh, yeah." Molly shrugged. "I think we need to see Josefina now. Have any of the tests come back?"
Cathy rounded the desk to accompany them, and as they walked down the hall to the little girl's room, she said, "The labs will take a few days, but based on the X rays, it's undoubtedly TB."
No surprise, but Molly squeezed Alejandro's hand, sparing a look at him. His mouth was set in a line.
Outside the room, Cathy provided them with face masks. "Standard procedure," she explained to Alejandro.
He nodded and tied the mask around his face. Cathy pushed open the door, and Alejandro winked at Molly. "Do I look like a desperado?"
She grinned. "Dangerous."
Josefina turned her head as they came in, and when she saw who it was, she cried out in almost painful recognition, "Tío!"
Alejandro was across the room and hugging her before Molly could blink. Until now, the connection between these two had been purely academic, a fact without substance. Now, the girl wept in sobbing hiccups, and Alejandro hugged her gently, kissing her head, murmuring to her in Spanish. The words were unclear to Molly, but the gist was clear, Everything is okay.
It took a few minutes but at last Alejandro settled his niece on the pillows, tugged the blankets over her and parked his hand on her forehead. "You are very sick, hija. Did they tell you?"
"Molly told me." The child pointed to her and Molly went around to the other side of the bed, taking her hand. "Last night."
"Right." Their eyes met. "We talked."
"Tío," she said, and spoke quickly, excitedly, in Spanish. Alejandro stopped her after a moment, saying, "We must speak English, so our Mo
lly can hear, too." He looked at Molly. "She told me she spent her money well. Made it last for three meals, and she found a way to get a blanket so she would not be cold at night." With a gentle smile, he turned to Josefina and added, "I am very proud of you."
Cathy waved at Molly, and exited. Molly let go of a sigh of relief. "So far, so good."
Alejandro glanced over his shoulder. "Keep watch while I tell Josefina what we're going to do."
* * *
They went shopping at a brightly lit department store when they left the hospital. Alejandro was conscious of the money he was spending, and chose only two pairs of jeans that fit him, and three shirts, all long-sleeved. One had snaps on the pointed pockets, but Molly's amused expression made him hesitate. "Is this not right?"
"If you want it to be. Only old men wear those shirts now, though."
"Ah." He grinned and gestured toward the rack. "Then you choose for me. Proper American clothes."
She flipped through the multicolored cottons on their hangers, using that brisk, decisive gesture women employed. Clack, clack, clack as the colors or patterns were dismissed. She pulled one out, a dark shade of blue, and held it up to him, then rejected it. Clack. Clack, clack. Another, this one of some soft fabric he didn't know how to name, in a shade of deep turquoise. She held it up and smiled. "They'll really swoon over you in this."
They? he wondered, smiling as she narrowed her eyes. Or her? He put on the shirt in the men's room before they left, and was pleased at the sudden deepening of the silver in her eyes.
All day, he had been trying to keep his thoughts away from the kiss that had lingered on his nerves for hours afterward, away from the way she had felt in his arms when she wept for her lost husband – ah, so deep a love she'd found! – away from that swift, fierce wish to make love to her.
She did not make it easy. He liked the feel of her hand in his, small and strong. He liked her throaty laughter and the flash of her eyes. As they moved toward the car to go to see her brother, he liked the way her breasts bounced slightly beneath her shirt.
And he was shamed by his desire. What did he have to offer her? In his own country, he had been modestly successful, enough that he had been considering the possibility of marriage when his sister died.
Here, he had nothing. Less than nothing – no home, no family ties, no money or way of procuring it legally. On this bright October day, those facts stung his pride, but also reminded him that he could not allow himself the indulgence of desire.
It was wrong for another reason. She was not ready for a man yet. Not any man who was not her husband. Though he sometimes saw appreciation in her pale eyes, her heart belonged still to her lost husband.
One day Alejandro would repay her extraordinary kindness. He vowed it to himself, a sacred promise. In the meantime, he would do what he could to ease her worry over the trouble she might face over this situation.
As they drove through a settled town neighborhood of small, well-tended houses, her nervousness increased. He saw it in the way she tightened her hands on the steering wheel, leaning forward as if by peering through the windshield hard enough she would be able to tell the future.
"You are worried about your brother, no?"
She glanced at him. "Yes."
"Tell me what I should know of him."
"Josh is a good man," she said. "But we lost our parents in a car accident when he was sixteen, and it affected him badly. He wants to make sure nothing bad ever happens again, and he thinks he can make that happen by controlling everything."
Alejandro nodded. "I see."
"That's not all of it." She took a breath. "Don't ask me where this came from, but he sees it as his sacred duty to scour the country free of 'aliens'." She pulled the car up in front of a tiny yellow house with an even smaller square of lawn. Everything about the place was almost painfully meticulous, from the swept walk to the garden hoses rolled up on a caddy. "If he even suspects that we're not really in love, he'll make it his personal quest to deport you."
He frowned. "Is this wise, then, Molly?"
She turned off the engine, staring at the house for a long moment. "No. It really isn't. But it's the only chance you have."
A wave of gratitude washed over him, and he bent close, putting a hand on her face. "He will never doubt, not for one moment, that I am in love with you."
"There he is," she whispered urgently. "Kiss me like you really mean it."
That he could do. He closed the small space between them and cupped her chin, lifting her face to his, and kissed her. In this, he could use his desire. And in his desire, he was not so careful, so restrained as he'd been last night. He coaxed her lips apart with his tongue, and felt a burst of heat when their tongues touched, danced, circled. Her hands came around his neck, her fingers sliding into his hair, and then she tilted her head, as if in genuine heat, to urge him closer. Alejandro met the deepening with a shock of pleasure. Their tongues touched, tip to tip, then skittered away, and came back again to slide together, slide apart, meet again.
He felt his breath come more quickly, felt the small, eager leaps of his sex as it wakened, and he told himself it was enough, this kiss looked good enough for her brother.
But she showed no sign of wishing to stop, and Alejandro let himself go entirely, swirling, tasting, plucking. He suckled her lower lip for a brief second and heard her cry out in surprise and pleasure, so he did it again, putting his tongue into it. She softened in reaction, and one breast pressed lightly into his chest.
A rap at the car door made them break apart, but neither turned immediately toward the sound. She gazed up at him, her silvery eyes almost too bright to look upon. With his thumb, he brushed moisture from her lip, still holding her gaze.
Then, as if they could speak without speaking, they turned together toward the man standing outside the car in a khaki sheriff's uniform, hands on his hips.
"For the love of Mike, Molly, get out of there and stop making out like a teenager."
Molly gave Alejandro a wicked little grin over her shoulder and pushed open her door. Alejandro stepped out on the passenger side, leaning heavily on his cane. The man in uniform planted his lean but sturdy body in the path and glared at him, his gaze flickering with distaste from the top of his head to his feet. "Who is this?"
"Alejandro Sosa." She paused to let that sink in, then, "He is my fiancé." Molly joined Alejandro and slid her hand into his. "Alejandro, this is my brother, Josh."
Alejandro held out his hand, knowing it would be ignored. "How do you do?"
"What the hell is this, Molly?"
"Let's go inside, Josh. I want Lynette to meet him, too, and there's no point in your standing out here yelling at me for all the neighbors to hear."
Josh glared at Alejandro. Alejandro had seen the look before, a hundred times, a thousand. It was an expression that said the wearer knew all there was to know of his kind. In most cases, the gaze was one of distaste, and perhaps a little fear. But in Molly's brother's eyes, Alejandro glimpsed a much more dangerous emotion than distaste. It was hate.
Alejandro lifted his chin and let the pride of five hundred years of culture fill him. In him ran the blood of the Aztecs and the conquistadores, who had done as much damage as good, but had been first even on this land under their feet. What his education had given him – pride in his language and his people – could not be stolen by the evil eye of a man who was afraid.
"Please," Molly said again, more urgently.
Abruptly, Josh gave up his aggressive stance and spun toward the house. Molly looked up at Alejandro, and he glimpsed the worry in her face. He held out his hand, smiling wryly. "He will not hurt you."
"Not intentionally," Molly said bleakly, but she accepted his had and they walked to the house.
* * *
Inside, the usual chaos greeted them. Toys were strewn in no particular trail through the living room – trucks, plastic blocks, doll clothes.
Josh cursed as he made his way through
the minefield. "Lynette!" he roared, "make these kids pick up their stuff!"
Lynette came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. "Don't be such a grouch, honey!" Only then did she spy Molly and Alejandro, who hung back a little. Her eyes widened.
Molly knew she had to hit exactly the right notes in front of her friend. They had been best friends since kindergarten. For a while last night, she had even considered telling Lynette the truth, but realized in time that the confession would put Lynette in a difficult position. So, although it pained her to lie to her friend. Molly intended to convince Lynette she was besotted.
To that end, she looked up at Alejandro and smiled, and tugged his hand. "This is my best friend, Lynette, Alejandro."
Josh snorted. "They're engaged," he said in a nasty singsong.
"What?" Lynette's face was a study in bewilderment. First shock, then a sliding glance to Alejandro, which turned her expression to one of consideration, then a glance at her husband, before she looked back to Molly with amazement.
"Oh my God," she finally said, and sailed – through some uncanny mother instinct – over the toys and into Molly's arms. "How wonderful!" she screeched, her arms a vise.
Then, in one of the gestures that had made her Molly's best friend for all of life, she turned to Alejandro and hugged him, too. "Welcome to the family!" she cried. "I'm amazed, but I'm so happy for you! I think I have some champagne somewhere. Come in the kitchen and let's have a toast."
She led the way, and shooed the children out of the kitchen. "Go pick up your toys, guys, and you can come back and take a peek at your new uncle."
Both children dropped their mouths. "New uncle?"
"Yep, right there in front of you." She shooed them with her fingers. "Go pick up the toys first. Pronto, pronto." She glanced up and gave Alejandro an abashed expression. "Sorry! I wasn't making fun of you, I promise. I mean, you are Mexican, aren't you? Oh, I'm only making this worse!"
Alejandro laughed, that low, sexy sound, and shook his head. "It would be a mean man who was offended with you."
"Thank you. Sit down." She swept the children's dishes from the table.