“Are you complimenting my boyish good looks?”
She rolled her eyes. Janice knew good and well he was in his mid-thirties. Maybe early thirties, depending on where that line was drawn. Technically old enough to have any number of teenager daughters, but then again, so was Janice. Difference was, Miguel actually did have one, and Janice didn’t.
“Hang on. She is your only daughter, right?”
“Do you see any other kids around here?”
“Well, Toots, I don’t see Sophie, either.”
“She’s up in Denton, I told you.”
“And I’m real proud of her, but I’m still curious how I never met her before.”
Miguel closed the picture of Sophie so fast Janice’s suspicions rose like quills on a porcupine’s back.
“For that matter,” she added, “I’m curious how I never heard of her before.”
“Ella no es un secreto.” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t talk about her at work all the time.”
Janice snorted.
“Okay, okay. I don’t talk about her much at all.” He glanced back at the now-dark screen and said, “She grew up mostly in Dallas, with her mom. And her stepdad.”
Janice hid her wince at his subdued tone, but her hackles were more risen than her heart was empathetic. “You maybe want to go back to the beginning with this story?”
To his credit, Miguel only rubbed his forehead for a minute before nodding and shifting the chair to face her fully. “I was in high school. Obviously. I mean, we both were, Alicia and I. She was sixteen and I was fifteen and we were dating a little.”
A little. Hell if Janice would call impregnation ‘a little’ dating, not at that age. Her thoughts clearly showed on her face, or maybe this wasn’t the first time Miguel’d told this same story over the years. All eighteen of them.
“We weren’t mad in love, not even the kid version of mad in love. It wasn’t Romeo and Juliet or nothing. But we didn’t date other people, and we saw each other a lot, in all the same classes, and lived on the same block. My brothers Pablo and Max both were in the same school, they’d drive us home if we got to the parking lot before them. They thought it was funny to take off without us, but if she and I were together we didn’t mind walking home so much. We were latchkey kids, all of us. And my oldest brother, that’s Rick, he was twenty-three by then. Four big brothers, you know? Plenty of sex talk, not a lot of safe sex talk, you understand?”
Janice could picture it. Not as easily as she’d pictured the cute toddler version of this brotherhood earlier, but he made sense.
Still.
A dad at fifteen?
Not that people didn’t get pregnant more than occasionally in her little country high school. Where Janice’d grown up, someone showing off a new pickup truck counted as major weekend excitement, so, yeah. Kids had sex. Kids had kids. And if they didn’t have them at sixteen, they did at nineteen, or twenty-two. Her ten-year high school reunion, Janice’s classmates could practically figure out which ones had stayed in town and which had moved to a city just by surveying to see who had elementary-age children.
So she was no stranger to the concept. And not in the least inclined to judge. But if frankly pissed her off, that she’d known Miguel for half a decade without knowing that he had a teenage daughter from the day they met.
And Janice’s defenses must have been more down than she thought, or Miguel was better at reading her than she counted on, because next thing she knew, Miguel was answering the very question Janice hadn’t yet voiced.
“Sophie no es un secreto, pero...cuando estoy contigo no soy un padre. Cuando estoy contigo, yo soy un hombre.”
Well, send her to hell in six handbaskets. Rudimentary as her Spanish was, Janice got the point. Being around her made Miguel feel not like a father, but like a man.
And the tadpoles were aswim down all her limbs again.
Chapter Six
Miguel pasted his tongue to the roof of his mouth, not willing to say more on the subject of his manhood. About Sophie, sure. He was a proud father, no matter how little he got to see his girl. It helped that Alicia often said how fully her own person Sophie was—and he’d seen it, too, that their daughter didn’t look to anyone for clues of how she herself could be. Independent and smart and responsible and amazing, so fully herself from day one, it seemed. No one ever had to teach Sophie anything. No one ever had to guide her or push her to explore her world and her capabilities; she just did it all on her own. Alicia and her husband and Miguel all were constantly asking Sophie where in heaven she came from. She always said, “I’m a mermaid and I came from the sea,” because that’s the answer she gave when she was four and none of her parents ever got tired of it.
But the truth Miguel was reluctant to examine more was, when he’d met Janice, and immediately liked Janice, Sophie was thirteen. And he’d had thirteen years of women giving him a certain look if he talked about his daughter. A look that said he was irresponsible and bad and more trouble than he was worth, a guy who became a father so young and let the mother do the vast majority of the job. Never mind the negotiations that had gone in to Alicia and Sophie moving to Dallas, and never mind Miguel driving up there every other Friday night for years. Never mind child support and skipping college so he could earn and taking out life insurance the day he turned eighteen so he could make sure she was always taken care of. Never mind that Sophie phoned him—with Alicia and the stepdad just down the hall, but she phoned Miguel—to complain about her French teacher and talk through the decision between softball and track. Never mind that he was the one to teach her to jump hurdles in the first place.
So maybe he’d been too cautious with Janice. Maybe he made a crappy decision, avoiding mention of Sophie and justifying that it was just until he and Janice knew each other better. Then when Janice proved such a hard nut to crack, he kept not mentioning his daughter, and that was definitely crappy on his part.
But Janice was still a little narrow-eyed at him, her nose twitching in that dead giveaway that she was trying her damnedest to kill her jitters, and Miguel had to unstick his tongue some. “I ought to have made a point of telling you about her.”
“Years ago.”
“Si, si, years ago.”
Janice’s shoulders flexed and rolled.
“And I ought to have brought her by Lanigan.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Like I said, she lives in Dallas. Has since she was two. Mostly I go up there to visit, and when I bring her back down—we share holidays and I get a summer month—well, you met Mami. Sophie’s her primera nieta. Between Mami and all the cousins, and those little girls pretty much worship her, I can barely get time with her myself.”
Janice was drumming her slim fingers on the tabletop now, so Miguel allowed himself to relax a little. The more Janice moved, the happier she was.
And that just got him wondering, like so often before, how much she would move in bed. Constantly, he figured. There was nothing passive about Janice. She was aggressive all the way, right down to those jeans she was wearing. No changing into something fresh for Miguel, not his Janice. He’d bet hard money he knew exactly her thought process on that one: Miguel wasn’t going to make her all flustered, and to prove it, she wouldn’t even change out of her work clothes.
Except she was flustered, and she’d put on a new shirt, and then Miguel was envisioning her getting ready that afternoon, stripping out of the utilitarian t-shirt and pacing her bedroom in just her bra. Maybe she hadn’t spent much time picking out the pretty blouse that outlined her distinct but compact breasts, but in Miguel’s all-too-happy imagination, she was practically vibrating in jeans and bra, full of unaccustomed anxiety about looking nice for him.
On second thought, Miguel was suddenly curious about what he could do to ensure that Janice didn’t move in bed at all. Not that she’d be passive about it. Aggressively still, that’s what he wanted to see from her.
His rod was liking the aggressive idea, but not the still one.
Miguel swallowed, and found himself turning his back fully on his computer. He wasn’t such an idiot he didn’t know the lewd thoughts were a mental-emotional trick his body was playing on him, to further separate him from Sophie and get him back on track with Janice.
But, demanding rod or not, maybe his body had good instincts sometimes.
Janice reached out and pulled her placemat across the table, lining it up square with his. With one pink-bandaid-clad finger, Miguel slid the tray of empanadas closer to her, taking one once she’d served herself. She dug in, and Miguel grinned.
His empanadas were perfecto. No matter what Mami said about them.
“Toots!” Janice was grinning back at him. “Damn. Why have you never made these for me before?”
He liberated the rest of the pastry from her hand.
“Hey.” She feinted but he parried.
“You want my empanadas, you call me by name.”
She eyed him, but not as mean-narrow-eyed as before, and then looked at the still-loaded serving tray. Miguel leaned forward enough to make it clear she’d have to go through him to get to the food. Not that he’d object to her going through him. Or trying to, anyway. Because if it meant tackling her to the ground, he’d be more than pleased to play out this name game with her. It wasn’t just that he loved to watch her lips shape the syllables of his name. Janice used her infernal nickname on everyone, turning each interaction interchangeable, faceless. He refused to be faceless to her.
“Maybe I don’t want your empanadas.”
He snorted. She’d barely taken her eyes off them. At least, he was pretty sure she’d barely taken her eyes off them, since he was barely taking his own eyes off her mouth. She’d licked her lips, and if she did it again, he didn’t want to miss it.
“Fine. I want your empanadas. But I consider it exceedingly rude to invite me over and let your mami call me skinny and then not feed me.” She crossed her arms, so Miguel had to stop looking at her mouth. Janice’s high little breasts got even higher whenever she crossed her arms.
“I told you how to get it back.”
“Stop calling you Toots.”
“Not just that. I want you to call me by name.” And since his eyes were traversing the delectable landscape between her high breasts and her moist lips, Miguel didn’t miss how his tone, or his words, or her lust for his empanadas, or all of it together made her swallow hard.
“You want me to call you by name.” It was more a statement than a question, and Miguel watched her arm muscles tense and flex. He had her defenses on the run. She was practically begging him to breach her defenses, and the empanada was his weapon of choice.
He just nodded, and took a bite of his own pastry.
Which must have been a tactical mistake, because suddenly Janice was plucking her food out of his hand and saying, “Right then, Mickey Mouse, whatever you say,” before taking a giant bite.
This time he kept the ungentlemanly phrase in just his head, but from the light dancing in Janice’s eyes, she knew exactly what he was thinking. If she weren’t so fucking compelling, all happy and proud of her jest and enjoying his food, Miguel might have gotten stupid and petulant. But the laughter she was almost holding back kept him from saying something unkind about his mother or otherwise triggering her negative judgment of him.
“You’re never going to say that at work.”
She swallowed and contemplated another bite before answering. “You said I could call you Toots at work.”
“Querida, at work you can call me Toots or Miguel or Rosas or just unleash one of those wolf whistles of yours.” Janice’s wolf whistles pierced the entire warehouse when she deployed them, which is why she deployed them; sometimes she just really needed to get everyone’s attention. “But whatever else you do, don’t ever call me Mickey Mouse.”
“Tell me one thing about that, though.”
“About what?”
“When you were a little kid and singing the Mickey Mouse song all the time.”
He sat back and crossed his own arms. Because revisiting his past had already gone so great for him. “Fine. What.”
“When you were a little kid? Running around singing Disney songs and irritating your big brothers?”
Miguel tilted up one corner of his mouth. His big brothers never tired of telling him what a maldito parásito he’d been. Culos. “What about it?”
“Did you ever have those shoes little kids always like, with the lights in them?”
“Why would you want to know that?”
Janice shrugged and leaned around him for another empanada. She smelled like soap and something green. Maybe it was from the flowers she brought him.
“Fine. Yeah. I had light-up shoes. They were my favorite.”
“Did they have Mickey Mouse on them?”
“What? No. Of course not. They were Spiderman.”
Janice burst into laughter and she had dancing eyes again and Miguel suddenly really wanted to identify what that green smell of hers was. He flared his nostrils and leaned towards her, intent on filling his lungs with the scent of Janice.
Instead he picked up on something a hell of a lot more acrid in the air. “Mierda, la carne!” He went flying for the back door.
Chapter Seven
Biting her lip not to guffaw at her image of little Miguel in his light-up Spidey shoes, it took Janice a second to catch the gist of what was happening. Of course, the smell of charred-to-a-crisp beef was a big clue.
She got up and wandered to the back deck, pausing to look at the still freshly made bed on the way. It looked like the kind of bed a person would sink into. Like a body pushed to the point of exhaustion by a grueling workout, or by...other things, would just melt right into its comforting embrace.
Suddenly all the little internal frogs were trying to hop her right on over to that big welcoming bed, and damn everything else. It’s not like Miguel hadn’t burnt her dinner anyway, right? So they may as well hit the sack.
Except, since when did she want to hit the sack with Miguel? Miguel who worked with her, day in and day out and day in again. If Janice let him in once—literally, figuratively, or, worst of all, both—odds were nowhere near in favor of her keeping him at arm’s length at Lanigan. Not that she saw him as the grab-her-ass-on-the-loading-dock type, but Janice was no one’s fool. She’d known Miguel for years and, okay, found his ass finer year by year, but he was never going to let up if she even once had sex with him. Being casual was not in his nature. It was all or nothing, and Janice wasn’t so sure she was casting her vote for the ‘all’ side of the ballot.
Never mind the bed and his fine ass.
Or whatever her mama might have said to her about leaping instead of looking so hard all time first.
“Hush up, Mama,” she muttered, not for the first time ever. One thing mama had been full of, and free with, was advice. Every minuscule aspect of Janice’s life, Mama had an opinion. How she should dress. Where she should go to college. What she should study. How much she should date. It wasn’t just that Mama was in the dictionary under ‘as outdated as a butter churn in a factory full of Clarifixators,’ because Janice had been taught to make allowances for that way back in her girlhood when she’d asked—well, thrown a conniption fit over—how she’d ended up with the old-fashioned name of ‘Janice Eunice’ in the first place. But Janice got just plain tired of hearing how she needed to wear lower cut tops and flouncy skirts ‘to enhance what figure you do have,’ and how she needed to stop judging everyone lacking and ‘just give the boys a chance to impress you,’ and how if she was too ornery to take the dance scholarship, she ought to at least study nursing or education ‘so all those smart college boys know you’re a caretaker at heart.’
She’d been more than ornery enough to pick her own path, though. No question she’d run into plenty of the piles of steaming bull turds her mama had predicted,
when forecasting Janice’s future as one full of men who would ‘take one look at you in those mannish work clothes and dismiss you as not worth their time, and I don’t just mean at work, I mean in bed, too.’ As if Janice needed the clarification.
But it wasn’t just stubbornness, flipping all her mama’s advice over and doing the opposite. Janice had no interest in being a butter churn. Butter churns only agitated when someone else wanted them to. She would rather agitate under her own steam, and if that meant learning to give incontrovertible orders to the warehouse guys, fine. And if it meant never engaging in some mutually naked time with Miguel, well, that was fine, too. Janice would find her physical outlets elsewhere; she didn’t need the sight of Miguel in—or out of—flannel p.j.s in that big white bed of his.
Snapping herself back to the odds-on reality of the situation, Janice stepped on the deck, only to be confronted with another sight she’d never thought to see: Miguel Rosas hopping mad. Sure, she’d seen him chew guys out before. She had seen him letting off steam on the basketball court. But she’d never seen him jaw clenched, shoulders tight, and no more than a hair’s breadth away from explosion. He was staring at the grill as if nothing had ever betrayed him more, his eyebrows set in a reproving crease.
It was frankly kind of adorable.
And why Miguel being adorably mad made Janice reconsider everything to do with agitating and hitting the sack, she just wasn’t going to contemplate. Not when she was itchy to smooth out his smoldering brow.
Janice placed a hand on his rock hard bicep. "Hey, Toots. So, I forgot to tell you I like my steak rare."
“Simpática,” he said, but he certainly wasn't laughing.
"Come on, it's kind of funny."
Miguel shrugged her arm off, and reached down to switch off the flame. Next thing Janice knew, he was flinging the meat out into the yard. She probably wouldn’t have giggled, if it had reminded her so much of her little cousins tossing cow patties to see who could hit the back fence. One of the steak strips hit the side of Miguel's garage, bouncing off into the darkness while he growled in frustration.
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