Burn for Me: A Rancho Del Cielo Romance

by Dee Tenorio

  Finally, it was her turn to blanch. He took a few steps closer and leaned against the island counter, placing himself directly in her personal space. Let her look me in the eye and tell me what she really thinks of me. “Do you think I’d let them hurt her?”

  “I think you close your eyes to things you don’t want to see.” She lifted her chin to meet his gaze steadily. Steely and completely unwilling to cower because he might not like what she said.

  And damn if he didn’t like it. Penelope all grown up. Determined to stand her ground. Absolutely irresistible.

  Something about her could take him from pissed to aching hard in half a second. Something he decided right then he had to get to the bottom of. He straightened away from the island, watching her eyes widen as he came within inches of her. “Maybe I’m not as blind as I used to be.”

  She shivered, a fine quiver that reverberated through him. Not one of fear or revulsion. No, he knew that kind of shiver. Part of him even vaguely remembered it from his dreams. Arousal. Her eyes turned smoky, deep, and those soft pink lips opened just the tiniest bit, a breath escaping. He heard it. Felt it. Which was the moment he realized he was going to kiss her.

  Of course, by then, he was already doing it. Tasting those pink lips, breathing in her gasp, sliding deep into her mouth. At first she was still, but then he felt her moan against his tongue, her hands grasping the open sides of his coat so tight they pulled at his neck. She strained upward, sliding her body against his. In a heartbeat she was devouring him just as much as he ate at her. Lips, tongues, teeth, it wasn’t a kiss so much as it was an explosion.

  “No!”

  Raul found himself shoved backward, Penelope’s hair slipping from his fingers as he reached for his bearings and found them completely scattered.

  “We can’t,” she said, catching her breath faster than he did.

  “What?” The only other word in his mind was why but he had enough wits not to ask that.

  Pen wrapped her arms around herself, tight, lifting her fingers to her lips as if they were sore. Or maybe they stung, like his.

  He had to clench his own hands into fists not to reach for her again and make them sting like hell.

  The movement wasn’t lost on her. A curtain slammed down in her gaze, locking him out completely. “No, Raul. I’m not doing this again.”

  “This is different.” They weren’t drunk. They knew exactly what they were doing, who they were with. Who they wanted.

  “No, it’s not.” She wasn’t cold, but she was sure. “I’m not going back to being that girl everyone pitied because she was infatuated with a dream. I’m not going to get Chloe’s hopes up because I can’t control myself. She’s already paying for my inability to think around you. It’s not happening again.”

  Chloe. Upstairs, oblivious to whatever the hell it was that had just happened.

  “You should go,” she added hoarsely.

  “This isn’t over, Pen.”

  “Yes, it is. It has to be. You just keep your distance and I’ll keep mine. It’ll be fine.”

  “Fine,” he repeated. For a smart woman, she didn’t have a fucking clue sometimes.

  “Yes, fine,” she said, going prissy on him. “Because I’ve already had to pull my life together once after you left. I refuse to put myself in a position where I have to do it again. I have Chloe to think about.” Implying he didn’t. Softer, but no less resolved, “You’re a risk I can’t afford.”

  Wouldn’t afford. Raul wanted to say something to her, but he wasn’t sure he knew what to say. He wasn’t going to fucking beg, that was for damn sure. “We’re going to my parents on Sunday afternoon. All of us. Be ready by noon.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he stalked out of the room, out of the house and into the cool outside air. He was halfway across town, truck windows open and temper slowly starting to abate, when he admitted to himself she was right to push him away. To stop his damn inability to ignore an impulse. Things were getting out of hand quick, and sex was the last thing they needed. Least of all in the kitchen, with a kid possibly showing up at any second. She was right, damn it.

  But, he thought, remembering the feel of her—the taste and the impact of her on his senses—there was no way their attraction was going to just go away. Long before he’d started dreaming about her, Penelope Gibson had been Temptation personified.

  Trouble was, he’d never been much good at resisting temptation.

  Chapter Five

  “You doing okay, doc?”

  Penelope looked up from the chart she was filling out to see her eighteen-year-old patient watching her with those too-keen eyes. Ellen Crisp had been in and out of Penelope’s monthly free clinic for the last year, always pretty much for the same thing. “Sure, I’m fine.”

  “So how come you haven’t gotten on my case yet?”

  Penelope finished her note, tapping her pen an extra time or two before clicking it and letting the file pages flip through her fingers. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll pay attention to what I don’t say this time around.”

  “Really? ’Cause I had the feeling you just weren’t paying any attention.”

  “Being that I’m writing you a prescription to clear up that case of chlamydia you’ve got, I’m pretty sure I was paying attention.”

  Ellen flipped her dark hair over her shoulder, the sound of it hitting her paper gown reminding Pen of rice on a drum. Ellen was a pretty girl, a fact she was a little too aware of, given that each time she’d come in for a free pregnancy test, she’d gone out with a prescription for some kind of mild STD. “Damn, I thought it was just a bladder infection.”

  “One of these days it might not be something I can fix with antibiotics.” She wasn’t supposed to preach to her patients, but the ones she saw over and over again, like Ellen, got under her skin. Kids who thought they were invincible, thought nothing bad could ever happen to them. Ellen had plenty of things not go right, but she was almost determined to stick to her path of dangerous sexual freedom.

  “There’s the doc I know and love.” The girl smiled. “And I do listen to you. I’ve been using the condoms.”

  Penelope raised her eyebrow.

  “I ran out.”

  Penelope still had to work not to wince at the girl’s utter lack of sense of self-preservation. “Have you considered buying some?”

  Ellen’s gaze dropped, her shoulders coming up near her ears. “No.”

  Everything in Penelope ached to reach out, take the girl’s shoulders…and shake. Force her somehow to understand the risk she put herself into by not protecting herself.

  Instead she reached out with the slip. Because if she did what she wanted to, Ellen would stop coming in for help. And what would happen to her then? “Take that. And get a bigger stack of condoms on your way out, okay?”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Penelope nodded, started out of the room when Ellen stopped her again.

  “The only reason I asked, though, was because you look kinda…freaked out about something.”

  Penelope froze. “Freaked out?”

  “Yeah, for a second there, I thought I was dying or something.”

  “Not at the moment, no.” What else was she supposed to say?

  Ellen’s lips twisted. “Yeah, I got that. But you can’t blame me for wondering. You keep biting your lip and shaking your head. And you keep spacing out. It took you five whole minutes to remember what you were going to write in my chart.”

  “It wasn’t fi—” Penelope followed Ellen’s pointed gaze at the clock over the door. Just as she said, it was far too late in the day.

  “And did you even notice that you’ve got two different-colored socks on?”

  Penelope looked down in horror. Except…both her socks were white.

  Ellen looked too pleased with herself. “That was just way too easy.”

  “If you can be this smart with me, why can’t you be that smart about protecting yourself sexually?”

  The smi
rk slipped but came back with a flash. “’Cause you’re not a six-foot-four football player.”

  And that was why Ellen would never think too hard about what Penelope had to say. “Just promise me you’ll be more careful, Ellen.”

  “I promise, Doc. No glove, no love.” Exactly as she promised the last time she’d been in. And the time before that. How many times more would it be before Ellen caught something no one could cure?

  Penelope left the room, heading straight to her office. She leaned against the door, taking a calming breath and wishing it had any effect at all. Unfortunately, Ellen was right. She was distracted. She was a complete mess and nothing was going to make it any better.

  Raul kissed me.

  That thought kept trying to run happily through her head, like a kid with its first balloon. Just like every other time, though, she crushed the thought without mercy. Chloe. She had to keep her daughter foremost in her mind. Especially since in a little less than twenty-four hours she’d have to walk with her child into the last place she ever wanted to go.

  It wasn’t that Raul’s family wasn’t nice. Most of them were great. His mother, though… Penelope suppressed a shudder and walked to her desk to check messages. Four, from the two women who had been trying to call her since last night.

  Miranda and Trisha had both started calling about an hour after Raul had left Penelope’s house, no doubt because someone from town had been in the pizza parlor. Or had seen him leaving her house twice in a week, and that was enough to start a forest fire of speculation. After the disaster in the kitchen, she hadn’t been up to talking to anyone, least of all her best friends. Friends who knew just as well as she did how weak she was when it came to a particular overwhelming firefighter. They’d started on her cell phone next. She let them go to her voice mail. Now she stared at the white message slips Cara left on her desk.

  When I get my hands on you…Call Me! from Miranda.

  So how was it? from Trisha.

  The other two were from her mother. No message, just a box checked that she’d like a returned call. Soooo not doing that one yet. She hadn’t spoken to her mother directly since informing her that Chloe would be coming with her to the office after school for a few weeks. It hadn’t been a pleasant call. Mostly because Lorna could smell blood in the water like a shark and she’d known something was going on. Not telling her that Raul knew about Chloe hadn’t been a difficult decision. Keeping Lorna from grilling it out of her was the hard part. So, as she’d done with her friends, she’d ignored those calls, too.

  Nope, when it came to ignoring reality, Scarlet O’Hara had nothing on Pen.

  She sank into her chair, longing for it to be a deep bathtub filled with hot, hot water and all kind of frou-frou-smelling bath salts and bubbles up to her chin. That would be absolute heaven right now. Instead, it was a serviceable office chair with rolling casters that did nothing for the headache or the bad memories prodding her mind.

  It’s good you never told him. Seven years, and still those stilted English words sounded in her head like a gong. Ophelia Montenga had said them at Danny’s fourth birthday party. Julia had invited all the kids from Danny’s kindergarten class and, though nervous that Raul might be there—he wasn’t—Penelope had taken Chloe. Ophie had shown up an hour later, silent as a ghost by Penelope’s side while the kids played a wild game of musical chairs.

  She’d always thought Ophie was the kind of Mom everyone wished they had. Laughing and playful, clearly dedicated to her kids. And God knew her children never stopped talking about her—always in a bragging way. My mom made me this… My mom taught me that. My mom, my mom, my mom. As a kid Pen had seethed with morbid jealousy. Who wouldn’t, given Lorna Gibson’s high standards on what a proper young girl did and did not do. What she wore, who she spoke to, how she presented herself. Life with Lorna, especially after her father’s death, was like an endless upper-crust boot camp without commendation or reward. Those illusions had died a startling death that day, though.

  “For the best,” Ophelia had added with a stoic nod, watching Chloe giggle herself silly at having made it to a chair on time. The memories all had a slowed quality to them. Crystal clear, every sound preserved until they rang, but watching Chloe run and laugh and clap while her grandmother said the most horrible words Penelope ever heard was a strange kind of nightmare she couldn’t seem to wipe from her mind.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pen had managed to choke out. Not convincingly, either, considering Ophie’s smug nod.

  “You think I don’t see my son on her face?” The older woman’s tone was acid. “It’s better this way. If he knew, he’d only ruin his life, trying to make her fit where she doesn’t belong. Better for both of them.”

  Penelope turned back to her daughter, all her happiness in the day sapped. Shock kept her locked in place, unable to believe it was really happening. That someone had finally seen what she saw everyday. Except Ophie was anything but pleased about it.

  “She’s happy this way. She’d never be happy with the truth. She’d never belong in our family. You will never belong.”

  That much, she’d known for a long time. Of the ten Montenga siblings, not a single one had married outside their race, something that until that moment, Pen had attributed to happenstance. Clearly, it wasn’t. But Chloe was innocent, she wanted to say. So young and wonderful. Content in a way Penelope herself had never known. How could anyone hold that against her? But the only word that wedged free of her choking throat was “Why?”

  Ophie’s lips twisted at one side, her gaze firmly on the child she was rejecting. “There is no room in my family for pinche gavachos, Güera. I didn’t care when you chased after him, because you never mattered. He never tried to bring you home. He knew better than to bring his trash to my door. But you…you need telling. Or you wouldn’t have brought her here.”

  “I—”

  “She will never be accepted,” Ophelia snapped, though her voice was little more than a hiss. “Never. Remember that the next time you think to push your bastard in with my grandchildren, puta.”

  Penelope had made apologies to Julia, taken her baby and run. Julia had given her mother a long glance and accepted the lie graciously, but Penelope had often wondered how much Julia might have put together. For a long time afterward, she’d get a guilty flush to her pretty face whenever Penelope crossed her path. There’d been no separating Danny and Chloe, though, so the two of them just silently seemed to agree the incident had never happened and gotten on with their lives. A life that, for Penelope, meant appreciating her own mother a hell of a lot more.

  Lorna might be a lot of things—snobbish, difficult, aggravating and judgmental—but she was no bigot. She was honest, even if painfully so. Loyal and true. Chloe would see that one day. Probably a day very far away. Penelope just hoped she wouldn’t have to see it because she was hurt by Ophelia too.

  Hopes that were dwindling with each hour closer she came to Sunday at noon.

  It could go so badly. Where Ophelia led, her children invariably followed. Not one of them ever did much to stop their mother’s willful prejudice. They smoothed uncomfortable waters. Gave subtle excuses to people who were unsure if she’d insulted them by ignoring them. They covered rather than dealt with the source of the problem, enabling Ophie’s issues year after year. It wasn’t much of a question what would happen when Ophelia made her opinion known. If she refused Chloe, all the others would reject her too. Chloe could lose so much more than a grandmother, and there was nothing Penelope could do to stop it.

  Fear had her biting her lip again.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” Lorna’s less-than-dulcet tones sounded from the doorway, which Penelope hadn’t even heard open. “Stop chewing your lip. You’ll draw blood one of these days.”

  “Mother.” Penelope straightened in her chair without thought. As if her spine had long ago been trained to perfection in Lorna’s presence. “What are
you doing here?”

  Lorna stepped in and closed the office door firmly. Nearing sixty, Lorna Gibson moved with strength of purpose in every motion. As usual, she wore a perfectly starched white blouse over a smooth blue skirt. No embellishments other than her wedding set on her left hand, her serviceable black pumps adding an extra inch or two over Penelope’s height. Her hair had begun graying in her forties and now only showed a few hints of the dark chestnut shade Penelope saw in the mirror every day. Still thick, Lorna’s hair was rolled around the sides of her head to gather into a bun at the base of her skull. The same as it was every day. Elegant. Precise.

  Penelope allowed herself a second to wonder if Lorna’s hair was anything like her own spine—completely incapable of changing shape.

  Lorna placed her purse and light coat on one of the client chairs in front of Penelope’s desk and stood there, hands clasped in front of her, as if waiting for Penelope to do something. Other than sweat, that is.

  “Mother?” she prompted again, when Lorna’s eagle gaze felt like it was about to break the skin.

  “I’m waiting for you to explain your rudeness. I figured that waiting at home was not going to give me any answers. I assumed waiting here might hasten the situation.”

  She knew better than to gurgle in front of her mother. “I wasn’t being rude—”

  “You haven’t returned a call all week. And now I’m hearing that you’re spending time with that Montenga person again. I may not be the most emotionally discerning person in the world, but I do know when I’m being avoided. I expect an explanation.”

  That Montenga person. Well, at least he’d been upgraded from “that ridiculous obsession of yours”. “His name is Raul.”

  “I’m well aware of his name. I want to know what’s going on.”

  Prevaricating would take more energy than Penelope really wanted to expend. And really, Lorna would find out eventually. Everyone would. Holding in a sigh, Penelope opened her top drawer and pulled out the manila envelope with the test results. Silently, she handed it to her mother.