Yours to Keep: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance Page 9

  “Walt.”

  He crossed to the kitchen sink, looked out the window at the peeling back of another triple-decker like theirs. He leaned on his hands. He’d been working out in his friend Ernie’s apartment for the past year or so, and there was a new heft to his shoulders. Those shoulders were rigid now; she knew that he was working hard to hold his temper, or some emotion, in check. “I could have killed him,” he said to the window.

  He might have, too, if he’d known where to find Walt. She’d refused to tell him anything, even Walt’s last name.

  “I never want to see you hurt like that again.”

  She could feel the fight going out of her. “He’s just some guy I work for, Ricky.”

  “Good.” His eyes stayed on her, worried, quizzical, even as he backed out of the room and toward the boys’ bedroom to catch some sleep before his shift at the Sleekers factory.

  When he was gone, she sat down at the round drop-leaf table, folded her arms, and rested her head there.

  This was her life. No matter what her brother said, no matter how tempting it was to sink back into letting him make decisions for her, she had to live it.

  She couldn’t run away from it forever.

  Chapter 10

  Ethan stomped up the basement stairs, his heart already pounding with anticipation. His blood sang as he braced himself for an eyeful of Ana. He was going to do whatever it took to get her alone. No more she-works-for-me, no more onion goggles, no more lost moments—only him and Ana.

  She and Theo weren’t in the kitchen. He could hear them in the—in the bathroom?

  He went down the hall to the small downstairs bathroom. Most of the contents of the medicine cabinet sat on the edge of the sink, and Ana and Theo chattered at each other in Spanish. Ana held a hairbrush, and she stood in front of the mirror, slowly drawing the brush through the long, heavy strands of her hair. “Me cepillo,” Ana told Theo. “No digas ‘me cepillo el pelo,’ ” she warned him. “Es redundante.” The strands of hair left the brush and trickled back onto her shoulders. Ethan’s fingers itched. He wanted to gather her hair in his hands, spill it over her naked shoulders. He wanted to grab it, yank it, pin her—

  She turned and saw him. “Hola.” She let the brush drop to her side. “We were just—”

  He cut in. “You’re really good at your job, aren’t you?”

  She smiled.

  Theo looked from his father to Ana. “I gotta run upstairs for something.”

  Ethan felt a surge of fellowship and gratitude as his son pushed past him in the doorway. Theo’s footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  This was it. “Have dinner with me Saturday night.”

  She looked shocked, and a little afraid. She set the hairbrush down on the sink counter and took a step back. “I don’t know.”

  Well, that was better than no. He tried to channel James, not the lewd, crude, disgusting part of James but the part that went after what he wanted and assumed he’d get it. “Nope. Wrong answer. Say yes.”

  One side of her mouth lifted. “Why would you want to go out with someone like me?”

  Someone like me. It caught him off guard. Was that how she saw herself? Outside the realm of women who could be liked and coveted and lusted after?

  She seemed to realize it was an impossible question. “Why do you want to go out with me?”

  The reasons he wanted to be with her filled him like a balloon inflating in his chest, but it was surprisingly difficult to put them into words. He didn’t want to be corny, and he didn’t want to scare the hell out of her. And how to explain, without insulting her, that her lack of polish, the realness of her, was part of her allure? Or that one reason he wanted to have dinner with her was that he wanted to delve into the choking, overwhelming, physical need that she’d wrestled out of him?

  She waited. Patiently. She wore a thin blue sweater that clung to her curves. The tiniest edge of blue lace peeked over the neckline of the sweater—maybe her bra, maybe a camisole. He wanted to take the three steps that separated them and put his lips to that edge of lace. He wanted to push down the sweater and take her breasts in his hands. He wanted to drown in her mouth. He wanted to bury himself in her.

  Her eyes were on his face. Her face softened. She took a step toward him, the first time she’d voluntarily narrowed the distance between them.

  “I can tell you all kinds of true things, and they really are true, about how much I admire the way you do your job and how funny you are, how smart, how creative. But there’s this other element to it.…”

  She was listening, watching him. Not running away, not shutting him out.

  “I think about you all the time. Kissing you. Touching you. Having you.”

  A little flicker of surprise moved over her features, and he watched for signs that he’d gone too far. All he saw, though, was the slight softening of her lower lip, the widening of her eyes, a reflection of his heat, and it was crazy the way it bounced back and forth between them, escalating until he had to look away. If she dropped her eyes, she’d see that kissing and touching was only the beginning of what he wanted, planned, ached to do to her.

  When he looked back, she didn’t seem alarmed or terrified, only thoughtful. “I have to warn you,” she said. “My brother isn’t going to like it.”

  It wasn’t precisely a yes, but it spread warmth and anticipation through his chest. It definitely wasn’t a no. “Will he come beat me up?” he joked.

  She frowned. “No. But it might be a good idea if I don’t mention it to him and if I meet you somewhere instead of having you pick me up.”

  That sounded an awful lot like a yes. The warmth sparked into excitement. He’d deal with the brother later if he had to. “That’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

  She looked uncertain again. “One date can’t hurt anything, I don’t think.”

  One date. That was a good start, right? If he were James, he’d celebrate that victory and worry about the next step afterward. “Nope. One date can’t hurt anything.”

  She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “Pick me up at the train station at seven.”

  Elation swept through him. He let himself smile but held in check his urge to dance around the tiny bathroom. “You got it.”

  “¡Madre mia!” Cara surveyed the room she, Ana, and Leta shared.

  “I know,” Ana said. It was Saturday afternoon. The bunk beds were piled with Ana’s clothes. More were strewn over the third bed and on the floor. Ana wore jeans and a bra. Her hair was twisted up on her head to get it out of the way. She’d tried on everything she owned, and she hadn’t found one thing that was right.

  “You have a date,” Cara stated flatly.

  “No!” She didn’t mean to lie; it had popped out.

  But Cara wasn’t stupid. “With that white boy you work for!”

  Ana turned a pleading expression on her sister. “Don’t tell Ricky I’m going out with him.”

  Cara sat heavily on top of the clothes on the bed.

  “Get off my clothes!” Ana said.

  Cara stood up again. She put her hands on her hips, glared at Ana. “Es una mala idea.”

  “It’s one date!” Ana hadn’t thought it was a good idea, either, but that was different from Cara trying to stop her. Cara’s opposition made her want to dig in her own heels.

  “Ricky’s going to kill you.”

  “He doesn’t have to know.”

  “If he finds out I knew and didn’t tell him, he’ll kill me.”

  Ana crossed to the bed. She retrieved a teal blouse with ruffles beside both plackets, slid it over her shoulders, and began buttoning it from the bottom up. “He’s not going to kill anyone.” She left the top two buttons undone.

  “Except maybe your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend!”

  Cara shook her head in disgust. She turned and strode out of the room, swinging the door shut behind her.

  Ana sank down on the twin bed. She spotted h
erself in the mirror on the back of the door, ruffles from breastbone to waistline. Maybe the outfit would have been okay for a tutoring session, but it was way more professional white woman than sexy invitation. Not that she was sure she wanted to be issuing that particular invitation anyway—but the thing was, she was going on this date, wasn’t she? She might as well enjoy herself, and him, while she could, since there was little chance she’d be going out with him again. As soon as she told him the truth—the whole truth—he’d be out of there so fast it would make Walt look poky. And she was going to tell him—had to tell him or get out and leave him the hell alone. Soon.

  The doorknob turned. Ana caught her breath as the door swung open. If it was Ricky, she was screwed. But it was Cara, with something draped over her arm. Ana reached for it. It was Cara’s favorite date sweater—black cashmere, off the shoulder, clingy, sweetheart neckline.

  “Really?” Ana ran her hand happily over the sweater’s softness.

  “Try it on. It might be too big.”

  Cara was considerably shorter than Ana but weighed more—a lot more, actually, after three pregnancies and all the junk food she ate. Ana wriggled the sweater over her head. It fit perfectly.

  “It looks way better on you. He’s going to come in his pants.”

  “Cara! So crude!” But she stood in front of the mirror and admired herself happily. Sexy but not slutty, an offering of softness, hers and the sweater’s.

  Cara started tossing clothes everywhere, looking for something.

  “What?”

  “Jeans with a lower rise.” Cara’s voice was slightly muffled from digging through a pile on the floor.

  Ana found her low-rise jeans under the armchair, yanked the old ones off, slid the new ones on. She surveyed the effect, front and back. She tried to imagine what he’d think of the way she looked, felt a shimmer of heat in her lower abdomen that sank to her groin. Cara had chosen a particularly crude way to say it, but the truth was she wanted to mess with Ethan’s head. She wanted to sweep away his restraint.

  “Thong?” Cara asked, behind her.

  “Seriously?” As if she hadn’t been wishing for a sure way to get under his skin.

  “Just saying.”

  “This is outrageous enough.”

  But after Cara left the room, she dug in her top dresser drawer. It took awhile to find because it was such a little scrap of fabric, the lacy pink thong with the rhinestones that would play peekaboo with him from between the soft hem of her sweater and the waistband of her jeans.

  She grabbed cash from the Bank of Ana, also known as the ancient avocado-green freezer. She dug around and extracted a box that had once held a Costco-sized supply of veggie burgers. Now it held two burgers and a ziplock bag with $1,223 in cash. Ana had put a strip of masking tape on the box. It said, in Spanish, “Ana’s. Ask before you toss.” No one in Ana’s family was likely to purge the freezer anytime soon, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  The cash was Ana’s college fund. She had almost enough to take four courses online through Fitchburg State. It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. Slow and steady and all that. She’d been planning to save a little more then start this spring.

  Now she opened the box, pulled out her ziplock. She counted out a hundred dollars in tens—it was almost all tens, because that’s what her ESL students gave her for each session. Then she counted out a hundred more. On their first date, Walt had taken her to a crazy-expensive restaurant and they split the check. Afterward, when he suggested that they stay out and get drinks somewhere, she lied to him, told him she had to be up early the next morning. Because she had exactly two dollars left in her pocket. And that wasn’t something you could explain, that you were the last cash-based economy on earth—no credit cards, no ATM card. Maybe Walt would have offered to spot her, but she’d been too proud to go there.

  She counted out fifty more and prayed that she wouldn’t have to spend that much.

  She returned the ziplock to the box and the box to the freezer, and gently shut the door.

  Chapter 11

  She hadn’t reckoned on arriving at the train station ahead of him and standing around in her fabulously sexy outfit while Beacon’s mothers exited the Boston train with their two-point-five children and handsome Beacon husbands. That was hell, because what seemed like sexy on a date looked an awful lot like slutty when you compared it with the staid L. L. Bean outfits that were getting off the train. Why hadn’t she brought a jacket? When she got dressed, it was sixty degrees, Indian summer, and it seemed crazy enough at that moment to wear cashmere and high-heeled boots with her skinny jeans. Now it was cooling off and she felt her nipples harden against her strapless black lace bra. She resisted the urge to look down to see if they were poking out.

  She waited for him to drive up and rescue her. She held her head up and told herself that she had as much right to stand on that platform as they did. Well, almost as much.

  When the silver Audi A4 pulled into the parking lot, she knew it was going to be him, and for a moment she had a sense of fairy-tale dreaminess. Then he pulled right up beside her, got out, and opened her door for her. She slid in, the leather seat warm and supple under her thighs, and he closed the door and walked back around. He wore black slacks and a heather-gray merino V-neck over a white T-shirt. Classy.

  He slid in and shut his own door, then turned to look at her. “Wow!” His eyes took in every inch of her. “You look amazing. And you’re dressed perfectly for what I had in mind.”

  That made her grin. “And what is that?” She let her voice drop, turning it into a suggestion.

  Which wiped the smile right off his face. Color rose, slightly splotchy, in his cheeks. “Hmm. Lost my train of thought right there.”

  “You were about to tell me—”

  “Just how good you look?” he murmured, leaning slightly toward her.

  “Where we were going,” she corrected. Laughter bubbled in her chest, but she made herself give him a stern look.

  He sat up, his gaze catching briefly on the exposed tops of her breasts, and met her eyes. “Right. Where we’re going. I was thinking burgers and pool at Hawthorne Brewing?”

  She wondered if that was really what he’d been planning or whether he’d decided on the spur of the moment to suggest it to make her feel better about being too exposed for the date he had in mind. She decided that she wasn’t going to question it. She’d believe, for tonight and tonight only, that he was a fairy-tale prince and that every move he made was calculated to delight her.

  If the spell had to lift at some point, she would not let herself dwell on it.

  They sat in a corner of the brewery, in a booth with red leather benches. A faux tea candle lit the table, beside a drinks menu in a metal stand and a Heinz ketchup bottle. “How old were you when you came to the U.S.?” Ethan asked, munching on a sweet-potato fry.

  He was asking her the bad questions now, but it felt good. Right. She liked the way he looked at her, as if what she was about to say next might be the most important thing he’d ever had the pleasure of hearing. Maybe that was a trick he’d learned from taking thousands of patient histories and humoring thousands of mothers, but it was sexy.

  “We came here in 1990. I was seven.” She hesitated. “It’s kind of a boring story.”

  “I’m sure it’s not.”

  “It’s not a good date story. It’s kind of dark.”

  “Tell me anyway. I want to know more about you.” His green gaze was warm on her face.

  He thought he wanted to know more about her. Well, they’d see about that. “We came first, my mom and the three of us kids. My brother, Ricky, is the oldest. He was fifteen. My sister, Cara, was twelve. I was seven. My dad was supposed to follow in a few weeks. We came straight to Hawthorne and started school. I did okay, because I was so little, but Cara and Ricky had a really hard time.”

  “Why?” If he wasn’t totally fascinated, he was the world’s best actor.

  She salted he
r fries and ate two. “They were older, and the whole time they were trying to catch up on learning English they fell further and further behind in their actual subject work. It happens a lot with kids who emigrate as teenagers.”

  “But you did okay?” Still that intent green focus of his, trying to work something out about her. She could sit here for hours and let him look at her like that. Except that when he looked at her like that it made her want to lean close and brush her lips over his skin. It made her want to bare her throat and close her eyes and take her clothes off so that he could warm her whole body with his gaze.

  He’d said he wanted to kiss her, touch her. Have her. Could she let him?

  He made her want to toss a lifetime of caution away.

  “Ana?”

  What had he asked her? Right. “I was fine. Because I started in kindergarten and learned English fast.”

  He was almost halfway done with his hamburger and she’d taken only a bite or two. She picked it up and bit into it.

  “How long had you been here when your mom died? Oh, sorry. Finish chewing.” He took a bite of his own burger.

  “Just under two years. The first bad thing that happened was that we found out my dad wasn’t coming.”

  “Not coming at all?”

  She hated her father all over again, telling the story. “He’d met someone else. And I hate to say it, but it’s the easiest thing in the world, having a family in two countries. So many people do it, you wouldn’t believe it. And some of them go back and forth. At least my dad chose. Even if he didn’t choose us.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah, it did. Anyway, my mom kind of flipped out. First we were going to go back to D.R., then we were going to stay here, back and forth—she couldn’t make up her mind. Then she got stomach cancer, and we ended up staying here because she was too sick to travel.”

  “Jesus.” His eyes were sympathetic.

  It wasn’t quite pity, but she had to look away. “Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And then she died, and Ricky took care of us. Up until that point, he’d pretty much done nothing but watch Dominican baseball, and he’d only hang out with Dominicans and speak Spanish. But after my mom died he turned into an adult overnight.”