Another mystery: why Mami had come in, shouting that excruciating childhood nickname, when she had to have seen Janice’s car in the drive. She was acting like she’d been surprised to find Janice there, but she’d also shown up twelve minutes after Janice. Just exactly the number of minutes it took for Anna Lucia, or her interfering jerk of a father, to notice Janice’s car from their house diagonally across the street, call Mami, and for Mami to drive over to Miguel’s house.
It figured. By rights, Miguel should learn to accept Mami’s inquisitiveness and just tell her when he had guests coming over. It would certainly suit Mami if he did. But he’d learned plenty about strategy from the woman herself—and gotten a refresher course during the months he’d stayed with her after her hip surgery—and he wasn’t going to let her nosiness override his privacy.
Which was easier said than done, with Mami and Janice cozied up on the couch together, laughing about he didn’t want to know what, and Miguel retreating into the bathroom to find aloe to smear on his burned finger.
Chapter Three
“Because we couldn’t get him to stop singing that song, when he was learning to spell his name,” Miguel’s mother explained. “We taught him M - I - G - U - E - L to that tune, just to help him learn, you know?”
“R - O - S - A - S,” Janice sang to the Mickey Mouse Club theme song.
“Si, exactamente,” Dr. Rosas said.
Janice laughed. She had an instant mental image of a young Miguel, messy dark hair and earnest eyes, leaning up against his mami and singing his name while she tried to get him to put on his shoes. It was enough to cause one big internal bullfrog to leap into a shallow pond, splashing cool water in a shivery-shock across her chest. What a cutie he would have been.
Dr. Rosas lowered her head and raised her brows, studying Janice’s reaction. She didn’t say anything, though Janice didn’t trust the pursed-lip smile she gave. It seemed entirely too knowing. “My Micky, he’s always been big on learning. He studies all the time.”
“For his B.A., I know,” Janice agreed.
Miguel had been attending night and weekend college classes practically as long as she’d known him. She wasn’t clear on the factors that had led him directly from high school to work, bypassing higher ed—it seemed like his brothers had all gone to university at eighteen, based on what Janice had picked up in passing over the years—but she knew he was determined to finish his degree, and often put classwork ahead of other non-work activities.
“You went to college, I bet. A smart girl like you?”
Janice tried to put on her professional mask. “I did. I got a general business degree, just like Miguel’s working on.” No need to mention everything that process had entailed. Janice didn’t ever talk about that, no matter the charm offensive Dr. Rosas was laying on for her. Her mama had worked every kind of offensive, charm and otherwise, over the college issue, and Janice knew well how to deflect.
“And then you went to Lanigan?”
Janice smiled. Dr. Rosas wasn’t trying at all to hide her curiosity. Well, Janice knew that game as well as she knew hopscotch.
“I worked a few other places first, but ended up there a few years ago, haven’t looked back. Doesn’t Miguel talk about all of us at work? He ought to be sounding you out on all these office politics—well, warehouse politics—get your perspective on some of the cat-herding he has to do. You have to know how to deal with their petty boy squabbles, you raising five sons and all.”
“And each one a bigger gallito than the last.”
Janice snorted then, relaxed now that the conversation wasn’t highlighting her. “Let me guess, Miguel is the baby?”
“And had the biggest strut of them all, si.”
That cute image of little Miguel trying to tie his shoes suddenly reasserted itself, this time with the tyke, shod, dancing around singing his name song while his big brothers growled irritably. Something in Dr. Rosas’s expression told Janice she wasn’t far off the mark, when it came to imagining toddler Miguel.
The tadpoles in her spine wondered why she had any interest in getting the image right.
Mentally banishing them to the swamp, she was smack in the middle of getting Dr. Rosas to tell tales on Miguel when the man himself emerged from the hallway, brushing his hands down his strong thighs. He had a sparkly pink flower bandaid on his index finger, and Janice suppressed her snigger of derision. Almost.
Miguel shot her a look.
Janice stopped suppressing. “Oh, Toots,” she laughed. “I have got to snoop in your medicine cabinet later on.”
“I only keep them around for Anna Lucia.”
“Unless you get an ouchie of your own,” Janice nodded, pretending complete understanding.
“Poor baby, que pasó?” Dr. Rosas stood and took Miguel by the hand, pulling him over to the lamplight where they’d been sitting. She shoved her son onto the sofa beside Janice and held his hand under the light twisting it to and fro with no apparent thought to the wrist or arm or shoulder it was connected to.
Miguel pulled back, which only got him a brisk slap to the forearm. “It’s just a little burn, Mami.”
“I’ll decide if it’s little or not. You put aloe on it?”
“Yeah. No es nada. I promise.”
They bickered a little more, but Janice wasn’t noting it particularly. The frogs had gone hoppity again with Miguel’s twisting and turning to get away from his mami’s scrutiny. And she had a sneaking suspicion they weren’t bouncing around inside her just cause Miguel’s body, his heat and his scent, were invading her personal space. He was obviously embarrassed by the maternal fussing, but his voice was gentler than she practically ever heard it. It had this little catch in it, kind of a hum that was fond and teasing both, that didn’t exactly show up other times he was talking.
Of course, most of the time they hung out, it was at work, and he was giving orders to the crews. Or shooting the shit with them, which was a whole other layer of macho that had to happen. Janice’d heard Miguel’s voice in all kinds of tones, from polite to pissed off, but she’d never heard this kind of tender tolerance in it before.
Except maybe when he was telling her to show up for a date at his house.
Janice started to stand up, then. No reason she had to be trapped on the sofa just cause Miguel’d gone and gotten his hand extra-crispy. She’d have escaped to the kitchen area or something, except right as she engaged her core to stand, Miguel’s mami yanked his hand closer to the lamp shade, and he flailed out with his other hand to keep his balance. Which meant he’d grabbed her thigh.
And she and the friggin frogs flopped right back down.
He wasn’t even looking at her, or at his non-injured hand, which had taken to downright stroking her. Incremental back and forth caresses along the outside hem of her jeans, but Janice was strong. She spent half her non-work, non-sleeping hours being deliberately active. At the gym, out for a run or a ride, dancing.
So no forefinger sliding centimeter by centimeter along her IT band had the power to make her squirm.
Chapter Four
Miguel never figured he’d be so grateful for Anna Lucia’s stash of bandaids. The kid was seven and colonized her world with aggressive abandon. Her house, Mami’s house, her Uncle Max’s house, Miguel’s house—they all stood ready to welcome their princesa whenever she should deign to descend upon them. Juice boxes, the good kind of goldfish crackers, sparkly art supplies, and Disney board games awaited her at each residence. For all Miguel knew, his two brothers in San Antonio also kept a stash of paper dolls and butterfly barrettes for Anna Lucia.
All the brothers had daughters, but Anna Lucia was the youngest, and the undisputed ruler of them all.
And her bright pink bandaids made Janice laugh.
And, best of all, Mami’s fussing had somehow landed him with a handful of Janice’s slim, firm thigh. Her muscles jumped beneath his palm, but she didn’t otherwise stir. It made him t
hink of her using that force of will, later, naked, thirty feet down the hall. In his bed.
“Mami,” he said firmly. “Stop. My hand’s fine.” He extricated himself and Mami settled herself on the opposite sofa. Miguel sat back, and Janice finally squirmed a little, but he didn’t stop palming her leg.
“Did you come over for something, Mami?”
“Eh, Micky? No. Well, I wanted Sophie’s address. I have a care package I’m making for her.”
“You don’t have it?”
Mami reached up to fiddle with her hearing aids, a sure sign of evasion if Miguel had ever seen one. “Eh?”
He rolled his eyes just a little and leaned into Janice to pull his cell from his back pocket. She took advantage and slid aside, but thanks to the burn Miguel had to use the other hand to call up Sophie’s contact info anyway. “There, I texted it to you.”
“Eh?”
He gave Mami a narrow look that she just answered with a lifted chin and a smile.
“Gracias, bebé. I’m going over to Joe’s to see Anna Lucia’s report card. You seen it?”
“She told me all about it this afternoon. Called me at work. Tell Joe and Krissy. I know they’ve told her not to call me at work unless it’s an emergency.”
“All A’s, Micky. That’s worth an interruption, surely?”
“Si, si, I told her I was proud. But she still broke the rule, and I warned her her mom would hear about it.”
Mami sighed and stood up, all slow and achy like just after her surgery, never mind that she’d been full of energy when telling Janice the story about him and Max and the drainage ditch earlier. Still, Miguel eyed her carefully before deciding that she was totally faking to get his arm to lean on as she headed to the door.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t walking her to the door anyway. To lock up after he closed it, if nothing else.
“Janice es una buena chica, hijo. Se cortés con ella.”
"Yo soy siempre cortés,” he protested.
“No le mientas a tu madre. Te oí maldecir cuando vine.”
But Miguel proved he was, indeed, polite, at least long enough to not voice his thoughts while he gave Mami a kiss on the cheek and saw her to the street. Anna Lucia was in her front yard, dancing one of her spinning-ballerina dances, clearly looking out for her abuela’s arrival.
Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, Mami hustled across the street, already telling Anna Lucia how pretty her hair looked and asking what had happened at recess that day.
Miguel locked the thumb lock. And the deadbolt. And latched the door chain.
Janice was sitting on the sofa still. Her toe was tapping a mile a minute.
Miguel smiled.
Janice was practically never, ever still. Over the years, he’d found her tell spots. Sometimes it was the tapping toe. Sometimes she drummed her fingers on the nearest surface. In meetings, she tended to swivel a few degrees left and right in her chair, though her supreme core control allowed her to do it and never move her head and shoulders from wherever they were focused. Sometimes—and this was his favorite—if she had to be utterly sedate and polite, say at a client meeting, her cute little nose would twitch.
Her nose wasn’t twitching now. Her whole self was thrumming with the need to go back into battle. Miguel was armed and ready.
“Come to the table. Everything’s done.” Well, almost. He’d preheated the grill while Mami was grilling Janice, and all he had to do was throw the steak on it while they enjoyed his empanadas.
He took Janice’s hand and pulled her easily up to him. Best to get her moving again, get her out of the zone where she’d talked with his mother. He couldn’t think of a less romantic interruption. But he’d recover the mood; he tugged her through his bedroom onto the back deck, where his grill was. And he didn’t miss her eyes lingering on his neatly made bed, either, no matter that he was balancing a dish full of marinated meat as he guided her along.
Miguel positioned Janice so his body blocked access to the door, but she could still see his bed through the window. He’d learned some lessons over the years, one of them being about the power of suggestion. And having Janice where her gaze was going to fall on the sleep pants he’d left tossed casually on the foot of his bed was just the suggestion he wanted. His stripping, his being in bed, her doing much the same.
Let her squirm now, he thought, forking the steak in place over the hot grill. It sizzled immediately, the flames leaping up to sear the flesh. Enticing smoky scents filled the air around them, and Janice was bouncing on her toes again, eyes darting around the small deck area and out to the dark yard beyond.
Yeah. She was exactly where he wanted her.
“Miguel?”
And calling him by name, never mind the slip that he’d let slide earlier. “Janice?”
She cleared her throat. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the deck rail to better enjoy every micro-movement of her fidgeting. Dios, she was lovely. In the dusky light, her eyes and hair were the same enchanting brown, though in the sun, he knew, strands of gold wove through her hair. He always thought of ice cream bars: a hard outer shell, but crack through it, and a man would melt for the sweet cream inside.
A quick jab to his bicep got him focused on Janice’s words again. “Eh?”
“You sound like your mami.” She eyeballed him, challenging, knowing just how well he was inclined to take that comment. “I asked, who’s Sophie?”
And it wasn’t like he’d change the answer, or withhold the answer. It barely occurred to him that Janice wouldn’t know about Sophie.
It wasn’t until Janice went completely, eerily still that Miguel considered the impact of his rolling-off-his-tongue words: “Mi hija.”
Chapter Five
It probably was just two seconds, the time it took Janice to replay his words, translate them to be sure, and play them again. She was no more ruffled than a hen at roost time when she spoke again. “Didn’t know you had a daughter, Toots.”
Known him five years. No birth announcements, no school pictures on his screen saver, no kid dropping by to visit daddy at work. Not that she’d seen.
Wasn’t like Janice spent all day trailing round behind Miguel like a motherless calf desperate for milk. He could be interacting with this Sophie any time that Janice was in the offices, or visiting with a vendor, or having lunch with friends. Janice wasn’t Miguel’s keeper.
She leaned back against his window. His bedroom window, not to be too specific about it. She was a few feet further along the porch than him, and between the light spilling out from the house and the glow of the grill, Janice had a decent enough view of Miguel, just perched there on his deck rail like a man who’d never kept a secret in his life.
“Well,” he said.
“Well?” she asked when he failed to go on with informative details.
“I have a daughter. We all do, my brothers and me. Have daughters, I mean. No boy cousins in the lot; Mami says it’s our payback and her reward for raising up five sons.”
“Right, you said about Anna Lucia before.” Anna Lucia, now, Janice knew all about her. Knew about Miguel missing happy hour because he had to go to her first-grade play. Knew she’d had the part of a cricket, and even though her entire class was crickets, she wanted to be a ladybug like the kids in one of the other classes. So Miguel’s whole family went and had to brag on how Anna Lucia was the best cricket they’d ever seen. Janice had thought it was sweet, Miguel loving on his little niece so much, and being so involved in her life.
But she had no idea what part his own daughter had in the school play.
Or, oh yeah, that he had a daughter at all.
He was kicking his heel against the deck rails, his lips pursed up in a line that took away any of that fullness she’d been damnably guilty of staring at earlier. When she wasn’t staring at the green striped p.j.s on his bed. Or wondering if he had any in red, which was her favorite color on Miguel.
“Okay, look, come inside, I’ll show you.” And without, this time, holding her hand against the possibility of her getting lost in a house with one long hallway going from front to back, Miguel ushered Janice to the only room she hadn’t seen. It was opposite his kitchen, between the bedroom and living room, and had a closet like it was meant to be a second bedroom. But the sliding closet doors were missing, and Miguel had a desk and bookshelves set up in that space. There was a futon under the window, but most of the room was taken up with a dining table, already set with two placemats and forks and knives and all that. And flowers. Not tulips, but a wildflower mix of mostly yellows and greens.
Miguel turned a couple of the dining chairs to face his computer desk. A little bit of button pressing and his laptop was awake and Miguel was double-clicking on a jpeg.
“That’s Sophie at graduation last year.”
It sure was. The girl wore a grin three times as wide as any she’d ever seen on Miguel, but otherwise they were pure reflections of each other. Her red cap and gown, of course, looked lovely on her. Red was clearly their color.
“She’s how old?” Janice asked, then remembered those manners her mama once tried to teach her. “She’s real pretty, Miguel.”
“Yeah.” And there was that tender thing in his voice again. He cleared his throat. “She’s eighteen now. She’s almost done with her first year at UNT. Studying romance languages, if you can believe it.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
“No, no, you would. It’s just I never know what to expect of her.”
Janice wasn’t sure where exactly the train was headed, but suspected they were getting off track. “Toots. How do you have an eighteen year old kid?”
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