As Oscar parked his Harley on the street in front of the enormous Victorian house that had once been home to upward of nine people, he felt that same mixture of fear and excitement he’d once felt as a kid. Yes, he’d been part of their family all those years, but his relationship with Eva had crossed an unfamiliar line.
Just as he reached the bottom of the porch steps, Tammy’s son Louis came running out the front door and launched himself at Oscar with a cheerful, “Uncle Ozzie!”
Oscar caught him, swung him onto his left hip and got his bearings just in time for Scott to come flying at him a moment later. He spun both of them around, making them laugh wildly, then stopped as Tammy came out the door after them.
“One of these days you’re going to throw your back out, or worse, letting them use you like playground equipment the way you do,” she said, smiling even as she scolded him. In her eyes they’d been too big for him to toss them around for a long time. As long as Oscar could still pick them up, he didn’t mind it one bit.
“If they break my back I suppose I’ll have to steal them from you and turn them into my minions.” He gave Scott a perfectly serious look. “They can clean my house and fetch my meals.” He turned and made a playfully evil face at Louis. “Wash my feet when they start to stink.”
Louis wiggled free with a head-splitting, “Ew!” and Scott said, “I know how to make cereal,” as he took Oscar’s riding glasses off his head and put them on.
“Holy cow, you look just like Uncle Ozzie,” Tammy told Scott when he grinned at her, the glasses barely balanced on his small nose. “What are you doing here on a Tuesday afternoon?” she asked Oscar. “No work today?”
“I was hoping to find both of your parents home.”
Jamie had mentioned they were off work for the week and planned to stay home instead of travel the way they usually did in summer.
“You’re in luck,” she said with a smile. “But you’d better hurry. Mom just fed us all a big lunch and Dad was starting to eye his favorite nap spot on the couch.” She narrowed her eyes. “Everything all right?”
Good question. “Either way, I’m sure you’ll hear all about it soon enough.”
“Hmm, mysterious as ever,” she said with a mildly amused smirk. She gave Scott a light, playful swat on his bottom. “Give Oscar his glasses and a kiss goodbye.”
Scott put the glasses back on Oscar’s head and kissed his cheek.
“Be good for your mom,” Oscar told him as he set Scott on his feet.
“Always,” Scott said with a shrug, and headed for Tammy’s SUV in the driveway.
Oscar smiled at Tammy, who rolled her eyes, fully aware of how hilarious her kids were. He picked Louis up and gave him a quick hug. “You too.”
Louis just giggled evilly and made a mad dash for the car after his brother.
“You be good too,” he told Tammy, giving her a kiss on the cheek and a hug.
“Whatever it is you’re here to talk to them about, good luck,” she said, giving him another scrutinizing look before she walked away to help the boys with their seatbelts.
He watched her go—not at all surprised that she’d picked up on the somewhat serious reason for his visit—waiting until they were driving down the street before he turned and found Brenda standing in the doorway.
“Well hello there,” she said as she came out the screen door.
“Hey, Mom.” Christ, would she still let him call her that once he told her he’d been secretly seeing her youngest child? “You and Pop have a few minutes for me?”
She went up on the balls of her feet to hug him as he stepped up onto the porch.
“Always,” she told him, smiling. “Come on in. I think my husband is still upright.”
“Tammy warned me you tried to induce a coma with lunch.” He closed the door behind himself and Diego Sr. appeared in the front foyer. “Hey, Pop,” he said, and they shook hands the way they always did.
“There’s plenty left if you’re hungry,” Brenda said, leading the way through the hall to the big kitchen at the back of the house.
There was no way Oscar could think about putting a bite of food in his stomach.
He cleared his dry throat. “I ate before I came over. Thank you anyway.”
“Something to drink then?” she asked, going to the cupboard for a glass.
“Just water please.” He realized his hands were shaking as he pulled out a chair and, after waiting for Diego to sit, slowly lowered himself into it.
“What brings you by?” Diego asked, getting right down to business, which was fine with Oscar. The sooner he got what he needed to say out in the open, the better.
“I need to tell you about Eva and me,” he started.
Brenda stopped in the middle of pouring him a glass of water from a pitcher, set it on the counter and turned to face him. Diego went eerily still.
“We’ve been…” He swallowed hard, nervous. Unfortunately, there was no other way out than through. “We’ve been seeing each other.”
Brenda’s eyebrows went up. Diego laced his fingers together.
“Seeing each other,” Eva’s loving, protective father repeated. His expression had become the kind of unreadable that was frightening—the way an attack dog that didn’t bark before it chased you down and mauled your ass half to death was frightening.
“It started the weekend of Jamie’s wedding.”
Brenda’s eyes went wide. “That was almost three months ago.”
“We wanted to take some time, figure out what was really going on between us before we told anyone.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just looked at her husband, who was staring at Oscar as if he’d never seen him before.
“I’m in love with her,” he continued. “We’re in love. With each other.” He was rambling like an idiot, but it was a huge relief to finally tell them. “We—”
Diego’s hands slammed onto the tabletop. His face had gone deep red. “Are you telling me you’re fucking my daughter?” he asked, his voice terribly calm.
“Diego,” Brenda admonished quietly.
Oscar’s temper sparked. “I just told you that I love her.”
“I let you in my house since you were a child,” Diego continued, his accent thick the way it got when he was angry. He rose to his feet, palms still on the table, and leaned toward Oscar. “You come here as if you were my own son all of these years, and this is how you repay me? By taking advantage of my little girl?”
Oscar rose to his feet as well, sickened by the look of disgust on Diego’s face. “As you well know, there is no blood between Eva and me, and I mean no disrespect toward you or Mom.”
“No,” Diego bellowed, punching his arm out and pointing his finger in Brenda’s direction so fast she flinched, shocked and surprised. “She is not your mother,” that finger stabbed into his own chest, “and I am not your Pop,” he sneered, his face so red it was nearly purple with rage.
“That’s enough,” Brenda said, stepping close and laying a hand on his shoulder. Oscar could see she was just as surprised as he was by the way Diego was reacting.
Oscar took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm, but Jesus, he had not been expecting this. Eva had been spot-on when she’d said Diego was going to lose his mind when he found out about them—she’d just pegged the wrong Diego.
“All right then, Mr. Rodriguez,” he said pointedly. “I came here to respectfully tell you that I’m in love with your daughter, and that I want to marry her if she’ll have me.”
Diego’s lips peeled back from his clenched teeth and he rattled off a rapid-fire string of Spanish in a viciously low tone. Oscar’s stomach began to roil violently because he understood every single angry word. Clearly.
“Diego, please,” Brenda shouted over him, shocking her husband into silence.
He cut off mid-sentence and turned to gape at her, wild-eyed.
She softened and laid her hand on his shoulder again. “Before you say anything else you can
’t take back, just walk away and take a minute to clear your head.”
“You’re all right with this?” he asked, his tone both disgusted and incredulous.
“You and I can talk about this another time.” She lowered her hand. “Please.”
“I’ll go,” Oscar said, finding his voice even though all the air seemed to have been sucked out of his lungs and he was so angry he was shaking from head to toe. “I’m sorry I upset you, and I am…so sorry you feel this way,” he said, and left the kitchen as quickly as he could.
He forced himself not to slam out the front door, took the stairs down the porch two at a time and practically ran down the front walk. He’d rocked his bike upright, lifted the kickstand and had just jammed the key into the ignition when Brenda came jogging down the walk after him, calling his name.
Oscar lowered the bike to resting, swung his leg over and sat heavily on the seat. His heart felt as sick as his stomach and he was unnervingly close to losing it.
“I won’t make excuses for my husband’s reaction,” she said as she reached him. “I never would have expected that from him. He has always considered you one of the family the same way I do. You have to know that.”
“Which I suppose is why he reacted that way,” Oscar answered heavily.
“Maybe,” she said with a sigh, glancing over her shoulder at the house. “Give it a little time. I think once he’s had time to process what you just told us, he’ll see things differently.”
He met Brenda’s worried gaze. “If he doesn’t, I can’t be the wrench in the machine that is this family.” He looked down the street, took a moment to collect himself, looked back. “Which is a problem, because I can’t live without her anymore either.”
She stepped close and took one of his hands in hers. “Diego and I are a team, but we do not see eye to eye on this. I can’t say that I’m not shocked, because you completely blindsided both of us with this news, but I’m not unhappy about it either.”
She smiled and Oscar got a glimpse of how beautiful Eva was going to be at her mother’s age, with her happy life showing in the small lines around her pretty eyes.
A small sliver of hope worked its way into his heart.
“Why didn’t she come with you?” she asked. “He might have taken this better if he’d heard this from her. Or, if he didn’t, she would at least be able to talk him down.”
She was right. In hindsight Oscar could see that coming without her was a terrible decision. Diego Sr. would deny it with his last breath, but there was no mistaking the fact that Eva was forever going to be his little girl, and his favorite.
He sighed heavily. “She doesn’t know I’m here. She’s probably going to kill me for talking to you on my own, and maybe she’ll be right, but I had this stupid, romantic idea about asking the two of you for her hand in marriage.”
“It was a gorgeous idea, Oscar.” She laid her hand on his cheek, her eyes full of warm emotion. “I think he’ll come around and see it that way as well. Give him time.”
Oscar wondered if Eva would consider marrying him without her father’s approval, and then dismissed the thought as quickly as it had appeared. Earning the wrath of the only father figure he’d ever known was more than he could deal with at the moment. He couldn’t consider the possibility that he might lose Eva as well.
“I’ll talk to him,” she promised.
“Thank you.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek and she hugged him tight. “I’m going to go get my ass handed to me by your daughter now.”
“You can handle whatever Eva throws your way,” she told him, stepping away from the bike so he could straddle the seat again. “I’ve seen you do it many times over the years. You don’t let her get away with behaving like a spoiled brat,” she said with a huge amount of affection. “I’m sure it’s one of the many things she loves about you.”
That made him laugh. He would bet money Eva didn’t quite see it that way.
Chapter Twelve
He found Eva lying in her empty bathtub with her legs in the air, heels on the wall above the faucet, dressed in a tank top and shorts that showed off all but the highest inch or so of those pretty stems of hers. Her feet were perfectly framed in the square of setting sunlight coming through the small window on the opposite wall. Her hands were resting lightly on her belly, her strawberry-blonde hair had been braided into two pigtails and her sweet face was free of makeup.
Oscar hadn’t gone directly to her apartment after he’d left her parents’ house. He’d taken a long ride along the country roads to clear his head first, wandering well into Michigan before he turned around and headed back. Telling Jamie without her there was one thing, but telling her parents behind her back was starting to look more and more like the fuck-up of the century.
When he finally got to her place he found her main door standing open, the screen letting in the cool, fresh evening air, no light or radio or television on, making it look as if she’d just abandoned the place. As much as he wasn’t looking forward to telling her what he’d done, he’d still felt a sinking in his gut for that moment when he’d thought she wasn’t home, right before he’d heard her call to him that she was in the bathroom.
“Leni gave me a pedicure,” she told him, wiggling her toes.
He leaned on the narrow strip of wall between the bathtub nook and the door.
“I went to see your parents today.”
Her gaze shifted from her feet to his face.
“I told them about us,” he added, ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid.
She gripped the edges of the bathtub and pulled herself to sitting, then stood, putting herself at eye level with him.
“You did what?” she asked with the same scary kind of calm he’d gotten from her father earlier. “Without me?” She gave the front of his jeans a quick glance. “Do you still have your balls?”
“Barely,” he admitted.
“Fuck, Oscar.” She turned and sat, her feet still in the tub and her back toward the sink. She was quiet a full minute or so, then asked, “How did it go?”
He sat facing the opposite way, putting them shoulder to shoulder. “Your father called me an incestuous pig.”
“Shitballs,” she muttered, closing her eyes and hanging her head.
He nodded. “Pretty much.” She didn’t move away when he leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder. “Why aren’t you angry?”
She made a bitter, derisive sound. “Nothing you could say would surprise me after the day I’ve had, Oscar.” She looked at him and he saw the deep sadness in her green eyes for the first time. “So you went to my parents and they freaked the fuck out when they found out about us?” She waved one hand helplessly. “Even if it wasn’t Diego, we should have known someone was going to hate it. Why not my mother and father?”
“Just your father,” he clarified. “Your mom thinks he’ll come around but I don’t know. The things he said before she stopped him…”
He instantly regretted telling her when her face crumpled and she started to cry.
“Hey.” He angled himself toward her and pulled her close. She wrapped her arms around his waist and cried into his shoulder. “Eva, hey. Come on, sweetheart.” She was sobbing so hard he became alarmed. “We’ll get through this. I promise.”
“It doesn’t matter if he approves or not.” She moved away from him and gave her wet cheeks a fierce swipe as she stood then deftly stepped out of the tub. Oscar waited while she blew her nose with a loud honk and threw the tissue into the toilet. She turned to him, eyes wet and nose red. “I’m fucking pregnant.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. “Pregnant,” he repeated.
“As in I’m knocked up with your kid,” she said impatiently, as if he needed clarification on what the word meant.
He rose to his feet slowly, torn by the alternating desire to either shout at the top of his lungs or fall to his knees and weep, both out of pure happiness. But that warning Diego had given him in his driveway that lo
ng-ago evening came back to him.
“A baby,” he said, testing the word carefully. His baby. Their baby.
“Jesus Christ, Oscar.” She opened the door under the sink, scooped up three white sticks and shoved them into his hand. “It happened the night the condom slipped,” she told him as he looked at the positive readout on all three pregnancy tests.
His heart was beating so hard his pulse was rushing loudly through his ears. He remembered all right. Once they’d gotten their hands on each other they hadn’t been able to stop, but they’d crossed the threshold from fucking to making love that night. If he and Eva had conceived a child in that moment, it had been conceived with Oscar knowing without a doubt that he’d fallen deeply and irreversibly in love with her.
And yet…
He set them on the edge of the sink and sat down again, mostly because he wasn’t sure his legs were going to hold him up much longer. He didn’t know if he was ready for the answer, but he had to ask, “Have you decided what you want to do?”
Eva’s face went blank for a split second before it filled with rage.
“You got me knocked up and now you want to know what I’m going to do?” She was still using the scary-quiet voice. “Fuck you,” she spat and charged past him and out of the small room. “Fuck you,” she shouted a second time when he called her name.
Goddamn it. He sprinted across the living room and caught her just before she ran out the door. She screamed another string of curses as he caught her around the middle and pulled her tight to his chest.
“That’s not what I meant,” he spoke quietly near her ear, taking the blows as she hammered her fists on his forearms.
When she slammed her heel down on his foot he let her go despite the fact that he barely felt it through his riding boots. She retreated to the middle of the room between her bed and the back of her couch and faced him.
Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life) Page 10