“I am sometimes.”
“You know I won’t let anything happen to you,” he assured her.
She frowned at nothing in particular then looked up at him, gauging, he guessed, his ability to understand. “I’m not physically afraid. I just hate it when I’m not sure what to do next.” She put a hand over his, still resting on the handle of the mower. Hers was soft and warm. He had to talk himself out of using it to pull her into his arms. “For so long, I was afraid that I’d never see Jack or Cassie again. Then Jack found me...” She shrugged in a gesture of helplessness. “And he’s so...much, you know. He lived with our mother the longest and dealt with all that awful stuff, but look at the wonderful man he’s become.”
Ben pushed the mower toward the little shed in the corner. “I know what you mean.” He grinned. “That always annoyed me about him. He had every disadvantage, and still knew how to make it all come out right.”
“Because he gives openly.”
“I think so. And he’s fearless. I think it’s the fear that holds us back.”
“Us?” She slid the bolt on the shed’s lock and pulled the door open for him. “Are you afraid of something?”
He replaced the mower next to a collection of gardening tools and then closed and bolted the door. Corie walked along beside him toward the house. He liked the way having her next to him felt.
“I am. I’ve had every advantage, have a relatively good brain and strong body, did well in the police academy and like the work. I’ve had a few confrontations with perps, done a few takedowns, so I thought I was pretty tough. But I was shot a couple of weeks ago in a simple traffic stop.”
“The scar on your shoulder?”
“Yes. It hurt like the very devil and for a minute I couldn’t pull myself together to take action. I was scared. And that scared me even more. It was tough to realize I wasn’t the paragon of manhood I thought I was.”
She stopped walking to shake her head at him and smile. “Of course you are. You’d have to be stupid to not feel fear when you were shot.”
All right. He could live for some time on that declaration. She seemed so sincere that he was speechless for a minute. He folded his arms and looked down at her. Why he’d ever admitted to her that he’d been afraid was beyond him.
“So you think I’m a paragon of manhood?” he coaxed, a light edge to his voice.
She rolled her eyes. “I thought we were being serious. I shared my fears and you shared yours. Don’t withdraw like that.”
Surprised by her tone he cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets. He’d been chastised, but it meant their relationship had reached a deeper level than he’d realized.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was scared and I didn’t like it.”
“Fear is an honest emotion.”
“Then you shouldn’t worry that you feel it. In a way, you’ve been through even more than Jack—at least in your family life. My parents love him as though they’d given birth to him and you went to that woman who sold you for an old microwave. I’d have a hard time getting over that.”
She looked into his eyes, hers clouded with old memories. And then her expression cleared and a fragile sparkle of humor filled her eyes. “I have had a hard time. I just didn’t realize until you came to brighten my life with your accusations of criminal behavior and general bad temper—” she arched an eyebrow “—that I’ve suppressed a lot of stuff. Or maybe I’m running away from it. Not sure which.” She grew serious again. “I’m just beginning to understand that I have to deal with all my history if I’m ever going to be able to really be Jack’s sister.”
“You came through a terrible childhood with generosity intact. You’re helping Teresa care for these children. You are Jack’s sister.”
Teresa appeared on the back porch, shading her eyes from the sun. “Are you two coming? If I’m the only one driving, I’m going to have to tie a couple of the kids to the hood.”
The children spilled out of the house behind her, laughing at that suggestion.
* * *
“YOU HAVE SOREN, Carlos and Rigo,” Teresa told Ben. She stood in the doorway of Forever Christmas Eve at the La Plaza Mall in McAllen to prevent the children from going inside until she’d delivered her final instructions. “Corie, you have Rosie, Lupe, Karina and Bianca.” She looked into the children’s eager faces. “Are you all listening to me?”
“Yes,” they chorused, though they fidgeted, eager to get inside.
“All right. I want everyone’s hands in their pockets. If you see an ornament you’d like to look at, you ask the adult with you to pick it up for you. We’ll help you. Look around before you decide so that you’re sure the ornament you pick is the one you want. Okay?”
A round of vigorous nodding.
Ben quickly lost his self-confidence. It hadn’t occurred to him that the three boys would go in three different directions and each would call his name five or six times in sixty seconds. He did his best to keep track of them, but helping one necessitated taking his eyes off the other two. He knew that couldn’t be good, but all he could think to do was to caution Rigo and Soren to wait patiently while he helped Carlos with a baseball-playing Santa.
“My dad played baseball when he was a teenager,” the boy said, turning the ornament carefully in his hand. It showed Santa at bat, his bag of toys on the ground near home plate. “But he hurt his shoulder and couldn’t play anymore.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah. I bet he’d like this.” He pointed to the small button on Santa’s back. “That means music, doesn’t it?”
“Go ahead and push it.”
A slightly tinny version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” played. Carlos laughed and handed it to Ben. “I want that one.”
“Okay. You hold on to it carefully. Let’s see what the other guys are doing.”
Rigo was torn between an ice-skating penguin and a moose with a Christmas wreath hooked on one of its antlers. One boy with an ornament and another down to two choices. Ben was feeling relieved, thinking he might do a creditable job at this chaperone thing, after all. Until Rigo saw that Carlos’s Santa played music and changed his mind.
Carlos took him to the musical ornaments and Rigo reconsidered. Ben looked around in sudden concern, realizing Soren wasn’t in sight.
Reminding Rigo to call him if he found something he wanted to look at more closely, Ben went to the end of their aisle and turned to check all the others. He saw Corie valiantly hovering over the excited little girls as they examined angel ornaments. She glanced up to wave at him before Karina claimed her attention.
In the next aisle Teresa rolled a protesting Roberto back and forth in a stroller while the children she kept tabs on sat on the floor looking at each other’s choices. Tonio handed his to Teresa and pointed to a Power Rangers display on the top shelf.
No Soren.
A resounding crash momentarily silenced the children. Ben closed his eyes for an instant; certain he knew who had caused what sounded like the shattering of glass and the drunken notes of a broken music box.
He heard Teresa’s quiet but heartfelt, “Oh, no!” and saw Corie’s head pop around the aisle. Ben headed in the direction of the crash along with a clerk. Standing in the middle of the farthest aisle behind a low, decorative picket fence intended to protect the delicate merchandise, Soren looked down at a cherry-wood music box, split open on the floor. The fractured tune continued to play. Soren glanced up at Ben, his eyes filled with guilt and embarrassment.
“You were supposed to call Ben if you wanted to look at something,” Rosie said in her superior, conscience-of-the-world mode. Teresa, Corie and the rest of the children had converged on the scene.
Soren was too upset to defend himself. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his voice strained. “I... I...”
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“He couldn’t call Ben,” Carlos intervened. “It was supposed to be a present for him.”
“For me?” Ben was completely taken aback.
Soren’s face crumpled. “Yeah,” he said.
Teresa began to dig in her purse. She glanced apologetically at the clerk, who was doing her best to keep smiling. “We’ll pay for it, of course...”
The clerk picked up the broken box, holding the split wood together and examining the damage. “Maybe I can fix it...”
“We’ll be getting more things,” Ben said to her, putting a hand to Soren’s shoulder and pulling the boy toward him. “Just add it to our bill.” He turned to Teresa. “All right if we guys take a bathroom break? We’ll be right back.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
Carlos put his Santa ornament on the counter and gathered his brothers to follow Ben and Soren.
Ben spotted the restroom sign and Soren ran ahead. Carlos fell into step beside Ben and his brothers. “Don’t be mad,” he implored on behalf of his friend. “Soren had his own money and everything. He showed me the box when you were helping Rigo.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Yeah. He wanted it to be a surprise. He likes you.” Carlos grinned up at him. “He really misses his dad. We miss ours, too, but ours is still alive and he’s gonna come back. Soren’s is gone forever.”
“Thanks for telling me.” Ben put an arm around Carlos’s shoulder, touched to the core by what these children had to bear. And that Soren wanted to buy him a present. “He’s lucky to have a good friend like you.”
“I’m hungry,” Carlos said, putting an end to the heavy conversation.
No one said another word about the broken valet box. After the bathroom stop, it took another hour to finalize ornament choices. Corie pointed out a Victorian couple wearing skates to Soren. The woman was wearing a muff. He smiled. “I like that,” he said.
Roberto had a death grip on a plush Santa doll. All the Santiago boys had made their selections. The Flores girls had chosen fairies and princesses. Rosie held a red-robed angel.
Corie showed her the cone under the angel’s robe that made it suitable for the top of a tree. “She’s beautiful,” Corie said. “But she’s a tree topper.”
“I know. It’s gonna go on our tree when my dad picks me up.”
Corie opened her mouth to suggest a more conventional ornament, sure that when they got it home and found it hard to hang in the middle of the tree, Rosie would be upset.
“Ben said it was okay,” Rosie told her. She seemed to think that should be the end of the discussion.
“All right.”
While the clerk wrapped everything in tissue, the children wandered away to look at the mechanical elves in the store window. Corie and Teresa followed. Ben waited to pay and realized, when the clerk wrapped the broken box, that Soren remained at his side.
“I’m sorry I broke it,” the boy said. “I should have been more careful.”
“It’s okay. My dad’s a carpenter and I grew up learning how to fix things. I can make it good as new.”
“But the music thingy is broken.”
Ben smiled down at him. “I’ll just sing when I open it. What did it play?”
Soren’s frown turned to a fragile smile. “That Christmas song about the bird in the tree and the turtles. I don’t know what it’s called.”
Ben thought hard. “You mean the partridge in the pear tree and two turtle doves?”
“That’s it! There’s a lot of tricky stuff in it.”
“Yeah. It’s a great song.”
“After you fix the box, you have to give it back to me so I can wrap it.”
“Deal.”
When everything had been wrapped and placed in individual bags with handles, the clerk reached for the credit card Ben held out to her.
“Wait.” Soren put a fistful of crumpled bills on the counter. “I want to pay for the box.”
The clerk looked at Ben. Knowing it was important to Soren—and humbled by that knowledge—he nodded. She took the crumpled money, removed the price of the box from the bill and rang in the purchase separately.
Once the transactions were complete, the children returned to the counter to take their bags. They glowed with the excitement of possession. Ben felt as though he’d secured world peace or something equally monumental.
“Shall I go put all the bags in the car,” Corie asked, “so nothing gets lost or forgotten?”
The children resisted for a moment before handing over their purchases. Corie took off with the armload.
Ben pointed to the sandwich shop at the end of the mall. “Meet us at Burger Boy,” he called after her.
The boys, instructed not to run, marched ahead as fast as they could, while the Flores sisters skipped along hand in hand. Rosie followed sedately, left out. If she minded, she didn’t show it. Ben’s heart broke a little.
“Is Rosie’s dad coming back?” Ben asked Teresa as she pushed Roberto’s stroller.
“He called to say he got a job driving a cab,” Teresa said. “He’s saving his money.”
“To come and get her?” Ben didn’t like the sound of this guy.
“I hope so. When I asked him, we were disconnected. Not sure if it was iffy phone service or iffy parenting. But sometimes people come through when you least expect them to.”
As a cop, he knew they just as often didn’t. But he was going to think positively for Rosie’s sake.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’M COOKING,” BEN announced that evening at Corie’s. “PB and J or peanut butter on toast.”
Corie groaned emphatically. “Nothing for me.” After stuffing herself at lunch with chili-cheese fries, then helping Teresa and the children bake Christmas cookies, she was sure she wouldn’t be hungry until January.
He stood in the middle of her kitchen in T-shirt and jeans. She stared at him in amused disbelief. “You had a double burger, fries and onion rings at the mall and then you sampled the kids’ Christmas cookies all afternoon.”
“What’s your point?”
“You should be stuffed.”
“I mowed a lawn. I wrangled wild children. I’ve had to deal with you all day. I’ve worked it off.”
“Ha, ha. You’re lucky I always try to be less argumentative around the children. But, no thanks to dinner. And peanut butter’s hardly dinner, anyway.”
“Well.” He put the jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread on the table and turned to take a plate from the cupboard. “We Cordon Bleu-deprived types do what we have to do.” He smiled charmingly at her. “Unless you’d like to make me a fried-egg sandwich?”
She smiled, tempted. She’d love to linger with him in her cozy lamp-lit living room, talking about all the fun the children had had today—and her, too. But she didn’t know what her next step was so retreat seemed simpler. “No. I’m going to bed early and read. Good night.” She walked away.
“Some friend you are,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “Good night.”
She closed her bedroom door behind her, turned on the bedside lamp and reached under her pillow for her sleep shirt. Only then did she notice the small gift bag in the middle of her bed. It was decorated with a polar bear on skates and had a matching gift card attached. It read, “Something special just for you. Ben”
Pulling a thick wad of tissue out of the bag, she unwrapped it to reveal a large, sparkly star with several smaller stars dangling from it. The brilliance of it made her smile. When she pressed the button in the center, it played “O, Little Town of Bethlehem.”
She smiled to herself, remembering that Ben had left their noisy group at lunch, excusing himself to get batteries for his flashlight. He must have bought the ornament and put it on her bed when she’d run out to her truc
k to get her forgotten cell phone.
Guilt assailed her. She should go back out there and make him a fried-egg sandwich. But thinking this nice, inexplicable truce between them could last any longer than his visit to Querida was a pipe dream.
She did yank open her door. “Ben?” she shouted.
“Yeah?” he called back from the kitchen.
“Thank you for the ornament!”
“You’re welcome!”
“And...thanks for this afternoon. The kids had a great time.”
“Sure.”
“And, Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I did, too.”
“Good.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
She closed her door and turned back to the dresser, thinking that had been an unsatisfying conversation. She’d thanked him, but talking to him without looking into his face diminished the challenge and the pleasure. She hadn’t gotten to see his taunting expression, the exasperated roll of his eyes, the often cryptic twist of his lips.
Sighing, she reached for the book on top of her dresser and turned toward the bed. She was interrupted by a knock on the door. She backtracked to open it wide, happy the conversation wasn’t terminated.
“Yes?” she asked.
Without answering her, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He looked down into her face, all that the earlier contact had lacked because he hadn’t been within sight, now filling her with all his nearness had come to mean. His eyes were bright with passion, his arm firmly possessive, the free hand that brushed the hair out of her eyes warm and slightly rough with calluses.
He kissed her long and lingeringly. Yes, she thought absently as her senses were bombarded with so many impressions she couldn’t untangle them. It was better to deal with him face-to-face.
The overall impact of his mouth on hers was both liberating and deliciously confining, filled with tension and still euphoric, a little alarming in its intensity and yet leaving her wanting more. Yes, she thought again, her breath coming in gasps as he raised his head. It was even better to have him within reach.
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