“Seven,” Miguel corrected.
Janice smiled. "Yeah? And how long have you been in dance?"
"My whole entire life."
“Do you ever do gymnastics?"
“Mostly just camps. Not every week like dance."
“And all that studio time and all those camp instructors and your mom and your dad and everyone, they won't send you to competition?”
Anna Lucia flung her arms out to the side in outrage. "I know, isn't it unfair? I'm so good at dancing. They should let me try it at least."
“Do other kids in your classes compete?”
"No, but I'm the best one."
“She is the best one," Miguel put in. "She always gets the solos at her recitals."
“That don’t mean you should jump into trophy-hunting, kid."
“How come?” Anna Lucia was getting the idea that Janice was not as on her side as she’d hoped.
Janice crouched back down, because it was better to get hard news face-to-face. "Anna Lucia, there’s so much to competing. Not even just that it’s pretty expensive, but you have to respect that part of it. I missed a lot of school, and it was really hard to keep my grades up. Really, really hard. And I didn’t get to spend much time with my friends, because I had so much studio time and so much travel. It got pretty lonely. I was good, like you. I even got a college scholarship for dance. But even though I was that good, there were a lot of times I didn’t win, or even place. It’s a tough circuit, and it was hard on my body, and mostly, I was just so alone all the time. I know it’s not easy to wait, but give it a few years, okay, and think hard about if all that work is worth it to you.”
The poor kid totally deflated. Janice felt rotten, but Miguel was giving her the fond, tender look that accompanied his happy-catchy-humming voice when he was being a sweetheart.
“I’ll tell you another secret, though, if you want,” Janice near-whispered into Anna Lucia’s ear. She shot Miguel a wink. His eyes got all crinkly in response.
The girl nodded, a little glumly, but she was of the irrepressible pink princess type, and wouldn’t be down for long.
Janice leaned in even further. “I know how to make a French braid crown.”
She had to sit back to absorb the hug that came flying her way.
Chapter Ten
They sent him to find a comb. And then they sent him to find one of Anna Lucia’s larger hair bands, which they grudgingly accepted even though it was green and she was wearing mostly pink and blue. And then they needed a brush, but he didn’t own a brush, so he had to fend off dual disbelieving looks.
“My hair is short.”
Janice rolled her eyes. “Your hair is thick. Buy a brush.”
Miguel leaned into the wall between the kitchen and living room, watching them bend towards each other. Janice was cross-legged on the sofa, Anna Lucia cross-legged on the coffee table in front of her. He smiled at the sweet sight of their conspiring together. “Sure thing. Want me to go right now?”
“Tío! No way, be serious. It’s night time.”
“I know. Janice and I were about to have our dinner, then you came over.”
“Grandmami said to.” Anna Lucia shrugged like it was totally normal. Not that it wasn’t. Anna Lucia was in and out of his house all the time, and it wouldn’t strike her as all that odd to be sent over, even though Miguel had a date. Mami, clearly, knew the difference, but that wasn’t Anna Lucia’s fault.
“Why’d your grandmami send you over, Toots?” Janice asked, fingers busy with a complicated-looking parting of Anna Lucia’s long brown hair.
“My name’s not Toots, it’s Anna Lucia.”
“I know that. I call everyone ‘Toots.’”
Miguel grinned. Anna Lucia was going to rake Janice over the coals. She was inordinately proud of her name, and Miguel could get her to lecture him for five entire minutes by shortening it to “Annie” or “A.L.”
“Why?”
Janice took one of Anna Lucia’s hands and wrapped it around a hunk of hair. “Hold that. I just do. I call Miguel ‘Toots’ all the time, and everyone at work, and the gym. Everywhere.”
That really was everywhere for Janice, Miguel thought. All those battlements she erected pretty much locked her away from human interaction. That was one of the puzzle pieces he’d discovered, fairly early on in the ‘figuring Janice out’ process, and it was definitely one of her vulnerabilities. Nice of Anna Lucia to attack it for him. Maybe she wasn’t such an intrusion after all. First she unearthed Janice’s astounding secret dance past, and now she was refusing to be yet another nameless, and therefore controllable, member of the ranks of Janice’s conquered foes.
Except, like him, Anna Lucia was distracted by the hypnotic rhythm of Janice’s braiding fingers. That had to be why she just nodded—a very little nod, since her captured head wouldn’t allow much movement—and said, “That’s fair.”
“Exactly right, Toots. It’s all about equality. If I call everyone the same, no one gets upset about special treatment.” Janice gave Miguel a look that wasn’t nearly as playful as he’d have liked. “No one can act superior. Besides, it’s good for Texas men to get called honey-pie names. Makes them sometimes think twice about calling women ‘sweetie’ and ‘hon’ all the darn time.”
“They always call me ‘angel,’ even though I always tell them my whole name,” Anna Lucia said, slowly twirling the end of the ponytail she held. “Like, my coach and my uncles and them.”
Now both of them were shooting Miguel disdainful looks. He crossed his arms over his chest. Only the fact that he couldn’t wait to hear how his brother Joe was going to react to this new princesa feminista side of his daughter kept his lips sealed as Janice and Anna Lucia clearly judged him and found him wanting. “Anna Lucia,” he said, slowly and clearly, “Miss Janice asked you why Grandmami sent you over, and you haven’t answered her.”
“For dessert!” she answered promptly, ire over his pet names forgotten.
“Hold still,” Janice said, turning Anna Lucia’s head to face her again.
“We haven’t even had dinner yet,” Miguel pointed out.
“I know, I can smell it cooking.”
He glanced back at the kitchen, sighing. “Explain,” he ordered, before moving to turn down the sauce and drain the pasta.
“Grandmami wants to know if you need any dessert to feed Miss Janice.”
“I don’t eat dessert.”
Anna Lucia’s surely incredulous reply to Janice’s statement was lost to Miguel as he found a serving bowl and reset the dining table to accommodate the change in menu. By the time he returned to the living room, there was a braid snaking down across Anna Lucia’s forehead, and Janice was winding the rest of her hair into a bun at the top of Anna Lucia’s head.
“Tío, Miss Janice doesn’t eat sugar but Mom made extra sugar cookies and they even have sprinkles and Grandmami said to bring some over so I did but Miss Janice won’t eat them so do you want some or should I eat them all myself?”
Miguel raised his brows at his niece. “You brought them over?” She’d swanned in, showing off her report card, which was now discarded by the front door. But she hadn’t held anything else.
“Oh!” Anna Lucia jumped a little. “I left them outside.”
Janice laughed. “Hold on, almost done here, then you can go get them.”
“It’s okay, angel, you can just take them back home again. I have dessert for Miss Janice already.”
“But, Tío, she doesn’t eat sugar. And don’t call me ‘angel.’”
“Yeah, Toots, don’t call her ‘angel.’ And I don’t eat sugar.”
Great. Janice had totally conquered Anna Lucia, and possibly vice-versa.
“I know she doesn’t,” he told his niece. “I got sugar-free ice cream for us.”
Janice was wrapping the snake of braid around the bun and securing it with the green hair band. He had to admit it looked really cute, and
way fancier than Anna Lucia’s hair normally looked. No wonder she’d been so easily defeated by Janice.
“What flavor?” Janice asked. “And I don’t suppose you have any hair spray?”
He actually rolled his eyes. “No hair spray, no. And vanilla bean, of course.”
“Is it Blue Bell?” Anna Lucia asked, as suspicious as her new amiga. Joe was going to love tucking his daughter in at bedtime.
“Por supresto! I may be guilty of being a Texan man, angel girl, but that doesn’t make me a fool.”
“Don’t call me ‘angel girl,’ Tío.”
He knelt beside her. “But you look like an angel with that fancy hair, Anna Lucia. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. Let’s go see.” Holding out his arms, he let her launch herself at him, and followed her imperiously pointing arm towards the mirror in his bathroom.
Chapter Eleven
Ears still clanging from the shrieks of delight, and torso unaccountably hoppy again after the seven big hugs Anna Lucia had bestowed before dancing her way back across the street to her own house, Janice got lost in her thoughts as she and sweet-family-man Miguel finally sat down to dinner.
Which was just a prelude to the sex, she reminded herself. Then she could go home and her fingers could stop twitching in muscle memory of the thousand times she’d put fancy braids in her own girlhood hair. Her scalp could stop tingling like her mama was firmly inserting bobby pins to keep every flyaway strand in place throughout a long long day of recital or competition.
Abruptly excusing herself, Janice shut herself in Miguel’s bathroom and washed her face. She knew there was no pancake makeup on it. She knew her eyelashes were mascara-free. She knew there was no hair spray residue ensuring that she looked like the perfect little doll her mama had loved to brag on.
But it helped her, all the same, to run soap and water over her cheeks and forehead, and to scratch her fingers through her clean, loose hair.
“Come on, Toots, pull yourself into the present,” she told herself, and had to smile. Wouldn’t Miguel be amused to know that she used the nickname when she talked to her reflection?
With that, she was able to return to the table with a semblance of sanity about herself. Miguel stood when she approached, which tickled her. She considered crossing the street to compliment his mami on his good manners.
But not until after the sex. Janice had decided for sure she wanted to have the sex. After all, Miguel was the handsomest guy she knew, with his dark hair and darker eyes, eyebrows which said so much to her just by how much they were furrowed or narrowed or arched like they were, right there beside her, as he scooted his chair in next to hers. At some point over the years they’d known each other, his eyes had developed smile lines, which only made his expressive face more knowable. Janice loved that she could decipher his handsome face.
And he was hot. Literally hot, or maybe it was the way the tadpoles were racing up and down her bloodstream, but she was still feeling the radiance along every part of herself that brushed him. Due to his very welcome positioning of their chairs close together, that brushing-together action was intensifying by the moment. Miguel managed to put an arm across the back of Janice’s chair as he served her pasta, and she managed to nestle her shoulder blade against his chest as she took her first bite.
“You like?” he asked, when she turned to him, still chewing. She could only widen her eyes and nod in response, because she was busy helping herself to another forkful of the perfectly al dente penne delicately flavored with a spicy tomato and black bean sauce.
Miguel brushed a hand over her shoulder. “It’s another of my secret recipes.”
“I helped you make it.”
“Ah, but you missed the final steps, doing Anna Lucia’s crown.”
Janice’s fingers twitched briefly, but she forced them to stillness. “You did something tricky right there at the end, did ya?”
“Oh, sweet Janice, I have all kinds of secret tricks.”
The frogs were in her throat again. No other way Janice could explain her short breath and croaked, inarticulate reply. Miguel was leaning in to her, or maybe she was leaning in to him, and delicious though the dinner was, she wasn’t in the least inclined to take another bite. Janice set the fork down and let her hand continue its trajectory, coming to rest on Miguel’s thigh.
Keeping her gaze down, she could just see her hand there. His quads flexed, and she didn’t entirely mean to follow their length a little higher. It was just easier to see her hand that way. So she had a good view of the way her fingers dug into his adductor muscles when his lips brushed against her neck.
She gasped a little. Which was ridiculous, because of course he was going to kiss her neck. They were going to have hot hot sex any minute now, and that would involve a lot of kissing. A lot of touching. Her hands would get to touch every muscle in his thigh, should they so wish.
There was absolutely no reason to get jumpy about the merest warm breath passing from his lips to her skin.
“So your niece is super cute,” she said, grabbing up her fork again and leaning forward for another bite. “I get why you’re always talking about her.”
Miguel’s hand stopped tracing her scapula. He’d lifted his head when she’d gasped, but hadn’t scooted out of Janice’s personal space. His voice was calm as a pond at midday when he said, “Do I talk about her so much?”
“You do. Didn't you know that?”
“I suppose I've mentioned her before, si.”
Janice nodded emphatically. "Probably a few times per month. Way more than you ever mentioned Sophie, that's for sure."
At that, Miguel’s fingers beat a quick tattoo on her shoulder. "Yes, well, Anna Lucia is around all the time. I suppose I don't feel the need to keep her all to myself."
“Is that what it was?"
“To be frank, I think it was a lot of things. I think much of it had to do with how I wanted you to see me, like I said," and now he slid his hand down so it rested on her waist. "With you, I think of myself as a man, not as a papa.”
“But you’re both."
"I am, si. But I admit, I wanted you to think of me in, well, a masculine way. And you imagining me at ballet recitals and taking my daughter for manicures was not conducive to that."
Janet shot him a look. Smelled a bit like the north end of a southbound bull to her, but in all fairness, his version of masculinity wasn’t any more of a throwback then her mama's version of femininity was. And Janice had, mostly, learned to work around that. “Sophie’s in ballet?"
"Not anymore. But when she was younger yes. She quit around the time I met you."
"Lucky Sophie,” Janice muttered. Not that she precisely resented the young woman. But the twinge of jealousy when she heard of others who got to choose was hard to suppress.
“When did you quit competing?” Miguel asked.
“College."
“Why did you quit?"
Janice sighed. She had done it now. And she only had herself to blame, because she was the one who told the kid about the dancing to start with. Even interrogating her about Nacogdoches, Miguel might’ve been sated without this particular story.
She pushed back away from the table some. Now just their calves were touching, which felt like more than enough to Janice. Deciding the quickest way to get from the dinner table to the bed was just to go ahead and tell Miguel some part of it all, she shuffled the info in her mind, looking to convey the story without opening herself up to an outpouring of follow-up. And if her telling it meant he decided she was too selfish and reckless with her life, and changed his mind about the sex, well, she wouldn’t have wanted him then anyway.
Or that’s what a sensible gal would think. And Janice was nothing if not sensible.
Chapter Twelve
Janice was coiling inward, pulling up the drawbridge and readying the boiling oil against invaders. Or invader, singular. Miguel didn’t have any doubt but that he was the target
número uno of her defense systems, and he could see her wheels churning as she decided how to launch her story at him without collateral damage to herself. He was strongly tempted to give her an out, tell her the past was the past, kiss her again until she forgot he asked about dance or anything.
But he had a battle plan of his own, and wouldn’t be the man he’d promised himself if he backed off from it now. He was confident—fairly confident—that there would be more, physically, between them soon. If Janice approached their lovemaking as another way to put him in a manageable place, like she did with her nicknaming and other arm’s length tactics, Miguel knew he’d have infinite trouble persuading her they were in a relationship of equals. He needed to be the conqueror, at least this once, and that meant Janice needed to admit to a vulnerability.
So he went after her truth again, but phrased it differently. “Sophie quit partly cause she wasn’t a superstar like you and Anna Lucia, but also she was looking at going into high school and how demanding dance was, trying to balance that with just being a kid. Alicia and me, we didn’t want her to miss out on the being a kid part, not after we’d had to grow up so fast ourselves.”
Janice didn’t put her lovely warm hand back on his leg, but she did unfurl a tiny bit, so he kept going. Even though it meant talking more about watching Sophie be a teen, at a time when he wasn’t yet thirty and remembered all too vividly what his own life at her age had been. “Three of my brothers were married by then. Sophie used to help their daughters put on dance recitals for the family whenever she visited me. She was a really good teacher, you understand? Loved the little girls and was so patient with them. She has, well, Alicia and her husband have a couple of sons, but Sophie has no sisters. So she gravitated to her cousins and all those girly things when she was in Houston.”
Janice’s foot was tapping steadily, and Miguel wove his fingers in and out of the smooth loose strands of her hair.
“The dance was fun for her. She liked performing. But even though she chose to leave off lessons, she still has plenty of that teacher in her, and the—well, the kind of things a college girl grows into, after being a child who loves her tutus and giggling with her cousins. She dresses with flair, my Sophie, and spends her time at the mall, and does her eye makeup like she’s a cat or an alien or whatever bold thing strikes her fancy. She’s my mermaid girl.”
Ready to Roll Page 5