Читать книгу Hot Latin Docs Collection - Tina Beckett, Amalie Berlin - Страница 15

CHAPTER FIVE

“I REPEAT, YOU are an angel.”

“Sí, mija,” the forty-something bartender replied drily. “That’s my name.”

“But you actually do nice things, too,” Saoirse added, before ducking underneath the bar’s closable in-and-out flap to get to Ángel’s side. “Like letting innocent young ladies such as myself hide behind the bar until they can sneak out the back.” She tacked on an eyelashes flutter for good measure.

“Who’s sneaking where?” Santi sidled up to the bar, visibly enjoying the fact he’d caught his “fiancée” in midescape. He put on his caveman voice. “C’mon over here, woman. We’ve got a wedding to plan!”

Was it wrong that Saoirse found the combo of a commanding voice and an überfit Marine body demanding her presence sexy?

Yes! And a thousand times yes, on so many levels, yes, yes, yes.

Even though... She pursed her lips as she eyed Santi from the safety of the other side of the bar. How easy would it be to order a cave-girl outfit?

“You’re getting married?” Ángel’s eyes were wide with disbelief. And not the good kind. He was looking at Santi as if he’d just made the worst decision in the universe.

“Hey!” Saoirse demanded. “What’s so revolting about someone wanting to marry me?”

“Ah! So you do want to marry me now.” Santi gave her a satisfied smirk.

“Both of you are crazy.” Ángel shook his head and started muttering in Spanish. “Muy loco. Here.” He quickly poured out two shots of tequila and pushed them across the counter. “You take these. Go have a talk in the garden about babies and mortgages and diapers and phone calls right when you’re in the middle of dominoes with the guys and the divorce you never saw coming and visiting your kids when, and only when, their mami deems you worthy, and then you tell me if you’re still on.” He fixed both of them with a disappointed smile before shooing Saoirse out from behind the bar while twirling his index finger by his head. “Loco. Totalmente!”

The pair of them walked toward the patio in silence, Santi holding their shots and Saoirse using both hands to transport her supersize margarita, wondering, just for a moment, how gauche it would be if she were to take a sweet and sour slug of it right now. Her mind was whirling with its own cocktail of horror, panic and, surprisingly, sadness at Ángel’s words. Santi hadn’t even begun the ridiculous fake-marriage adventure and already it was being kiboshed with a gritty dose of embittered ex-husband? If he wouldn’t marry her for pretend, who would ever marry her for real?

When they sat down, they solemnly clinked glasses and threw back the tangy tequila, letting it shudder down their spines as it took effect.

Santi gave Saoirse the most sober look she thought she’d ever seen him wear.

“Well,” he began somberly, “I guess we know who’s not up for being best man.”

Laughter didn’t even begin to cover Saoirse’s response to the tension-cutting comment. It was an all-body-encompassing giggle, snort, companionable watering-eyes laugh-until-the-tears-started-falling-out response.

When she finally had the wherewithal to wipe her eyes and stop laughing she met Santi’s inquisitive gaze and realized they were at a crossroads.

“All right, Murph, it’s time to get real.” Santi took a long draft of ice water as if it were some sort of strongman tonic. Like Mr. Muscles needed it. “Are we going to do this thing?”

“Look...um...” Saoirse opted to draw designs in the water rings her margarita had left on the table in lieu of looking at Santi. “Don’t you even want to know the story?”

Santi shrugged. “I trust you, but if it would make you feel better...”

“Ha! I know you, you sly old dog. Very clever. Trying to wheedle the truth out of me by pretending not to care.” It was a weak dodge but, wow, did she hate talking about herself. Even if she’d been the one to offer.

“Of course I care—but if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. That’s all I’m saying.” And he looked like he meant it. Saoirse felt her heart swell with gratitude. And a little bit of something else she thought she’d better shove right back wherever it had come from.

“I feel like I owe it to you.” That much was true. If he was going to just casually enter into a state of wedded bliss with her, he might as well know why.

“Fair enough.”

Santi signaled to the waitress to bring them a menu before refocusing on Saoirse, who was giving him her best you’re-joking-with-me-aren’t-you face.

“What?” he protested. “If we’re going to be here awhile, I might as well fortify myself. Have you tried the carnitas? Ron makes them.” He kissed his fingertips in appreciation. “Muy delicioso.”

“Want them at the wedding reception?” Saoirse joked.

“Qué?” This time the glint of humor was missing in his eyes. “You want the whole white wedding thing after...after...?”

“What? You mean after getting utterly humiliated in front of everyone I’d ever met in my entire life because my fiancé couldn’t take it that it turned out I can’t have children?”

There was probably a less embittered way to describe the moment when all of her marital dreams had gone up in smoke, but right now she couldn’t think of one.

The waitress appeared as Santi’s jaw was still dropping. Saoirse tersely ordered two plates of carnitas and a bucket of tortilla chips. Extra-salty. She waved her hand before the waitress had turned away and doubled the order. She loved those things and if Santi was going to bail on her now, she might as well eat her body weight in tortillas before heading back to Ireland. It wouldn’t matter if she was the size of a whale because nuns’ habits were extra accommodating and from the looks of things a life of solitary confinement behind a thick stone wall was the only thing on offer.

Santi was looking absolutely mortified and she had half a mind to get up and leave. But when she’d come so far in so few months only to give up at the final—albeit very, very monumentally tall—hurdle? No way.

“You’re all right, Santi. Don’t you worry. I don’t want the whole white wedding with lollipop-colored bridesmaids, if that’s what’s keeping you so slack-jawed,” Saoirse said.

“No,” he responded quickly. “I just can’t believe a man who truly loved a woman would walk out on her like that. For such a ridiculous reason.”

“I guess he wanted children a whole lot more than he wanted me,” she said without self-pity “I never realized how much I wanted them until I found out I couldn’t. Come to think of it, if you want children of your own, this whole thing would be really stupid for you.”

“Why?”

“Uh—the age thing?”

“I’ll be virile in my nineties, chica,” Santi countered with a sly fox grin.

“You wish. C’mon. It’s important. Have you thought about having children?”

“I’ve never really thought about it.”

* * *

It was a semitruthful response. Of course he’d love children. One day. But the checklist of things he needed to set right was a long one. And until he felt all the i’s had been dotted and t’s crossed? It was for the best he wasn’t adding babies into the mix. Babies and the women who had them generally wanted a real wedding. A real marriage. Like his parents had shared. He knew he’d probably idealized the memories a bit by now but...

He swore silently. Those days were gone. Artifice was a good starting point for him.

Saoirse propped her chin in her cupped hand and stared at him. Hard. “And you are absolutely sure it doesn’t bother you that if we do this thing, you’ll be off the proverbial market for the next couple of years while I wait to get my green card?”

A lot of things bothered him. Spending time with Saoirse wasn’t one of them.

“Why do you want to live here so badly?” It was easier to bounce questions off her than answer her probing questions.

“Because it’s the total opposite of everything I know,” she answered, her face lighting up as if she’d found her true place in the world. “I know I haven’t been in Miami for long, but I feel like I belong here.” She smiled as the waitress slipped a basket of warm tortilla chips onto the table. After munching through a handful, she leaned forward, elbows perched on the picnic table, body alive with whatever it was she was formulating in that overactive brain of hers.

Whoever won her heart in the end, he realized, would be winning pure gold. Would he really be able to do this and not get attached? Not...wonder?

He tuned in to what she was saying, realizing that simply staring at her lips was very likely a failure in the fiancé department.

“Back home, everyone knew everything about me so making decisions, doing anything at all—my job, my hair, my clothes—and choices weren’t an option. It was as though my life had already been written in stone, you know?”

Santi nodded his head, but he didn’t. Until his parents had been killed everything had been about choices, opportunities. His parents had moved their world straight into the heart of the oyster that was meant to hold all the pearls. It had been up to him and his brothers to reach out and grab the right one. And when their lives had been so brutally ended?

Everything he’d thought a childhood should have been had been swept under an inky-black darkness that had all but suffocated him. So, sure. There were decisions. But the pearls had all been yanked well out of reach.

It was why getting used to anything...getting attached to anyone...always came with painful ramifications.

But this was Saoirse’s story. He wanted to listen attentively and understand, for her. Everything about this moment seemed preserved in a special soundproof bubble wrapped around the garden table they’d chosen in a quiet corner—a bit of added protection against the hurt she’d endured at another’s selfish decision.

“So, anyway,” Saoirse continued, after another fortifying swig of margarita, “Tom—that’s his name. Feel free to hate it if you like, I do. Anyway, he had been my boyfriend since school days. Off and on, like. You know how relationships are when you’re young.”

Santi nodded affirmatively but again found he couldn’t really say. His teenaged years had been far from footloose and fancy-free. He forced himself to tune back in.

“...and then when everyone coupled up or left for the bright lights of Dublin, we started seeing each other again. He became a policeman and I became a nurse in the hospital up in the next town along because our village was only tiny. All our friends were getting married and so we decided to get married.”

“A mutual decision?”

“Sort of, I guess. I mean, he got down on one knee and everything, but it all felt as if he was going through some sort of pantomime version of what a man who was in a relationship at a certain age was meant to do when he proposed to his girl.”

“Weren’t you in love with him?” Santi felt his brows crowd together. This was hardly the portrait of a bewitched bride.

“Of course I was! At least, I thought I was.” She twisted her lips as she considered the question. “I was as in love with him as much as a girl who’s only known one boy her entire life could be. We met when I pushed him off the swings at school.” Her eyes took on a faraway look as she gave a mirthless laugh. “He was the same boy I had my first kiss with and saw my first film alongside and just about everything else in the first department.”

She waved off Santi’s sympathetic murmurs. The proverbial floodgates were open now and there was no stopping this story. Not that he wanted her to stop. They’d spent over eighty working hours together over the past week and he hadn’t even perfected saying her first name, let alone learned much about her other than that she had an unquenchable passion for race car driving.

“So, to turn a long story into a short one—because I’m guessing you don’t want to hear every revolting detail of my childhood romance...”

He nodded. The more she told him, the more protective he was feeling about her. And not in a big-brother way.

“Our big plan was always to come over to America. Maybe that’s the only thing we had in common. A desire to flatten our vowels and strive for more in the land of opportunity!”

“I thought you said this was the short version.” Santi grinned, grabbing a handful of chips.

“Right you are.” She nodded. “Instead of getting married straight away, we lived together and all, but our lives were dedicated to scrimping and saving and preparing for the Great American Adventure.” She held her hands up and made a little ta-da trumpet sound.

This had been a long-term relationship. Would the recovery take as long as the relationship itself? Santi filed the information away.

“When exactly did you come over?”

“Tom came over first. About a year ago.”

Ah! A chink. He stopped the swarm of judgments forming. This wasn’t a moment to rub your hands together in glee because all had not been as it seemed.

“He got his green card through a relative already living in Boston. I suggested we get the fiancée visa thing right away, but practical Tom said no—we wouldn’t have enough money while he was in the academy and I couldn’t work straight away, so we should wait until we were married properly. I came out and visited him, but he was super busy all the time and nurse’s wages don’t go far, so I spent a lot of time in the library where I discovered I could come over on a student visa and not bother about the whole fiancée thing. I was tired of my life being in a holding pattern, you know?”

Santi didn’t think he was meant to answer, but gave her a decisive nod. He did know. Caring for Alejandro after his lifesaving transplant surgery hadn’t been a hardship, but to teenaged Santiago? It had felt like being chained to a life he’d never signed up for. Joining the Marines had seemed the only way to loosen the noose of hard-core responsibility he and his brothers had been forced to accept.

“So to make this really long story even pithier, I started raking around and eventually found a specialist NICU training course that would sponsor me. Taking it would put me well above the other NICU nurses if we ever decided to go back home to Ireland.”

Santi tried not to wince each time she said “we” or “home.” As she continued, the basket of tortillas became more and more interesting to him. If she were to see the look in his eyes, she would see glimpses of the green-eyed monster.

“This was all before Tom flew back for his summer holidays and our wedding. Then, as part of the health check for the visas, I found out I couldn’t have children.” Her voice went flat as she continued, as if giving the words their intended punch would make them impossible to say. “A month later I was standing in a stupid white dress all by my lonesome with a huge fruitcake no one wanted to eat.” She plastered on a bright smile. “So I switched courses, joined the paramedic training course, chopped off my hair and moved to Miami because it’s about as different from Boston as you can get. I wasn’t going to give up all my dreams just because I’d chosen badly in the fiancé department. Now my visa’s set to run out when my training ends and the only way I can stay without leaving is to get married. Happy?”

The look she gave him—one mixed with innocence, hope, confusion and sadness—all but yanked Santi’s heart straight out of his chest. He could translate the depth of feeling to what he felt for his brothers, but the difference in their situations was vital. He’d been the one to leave them in the lurch. He’d been the Tom in the situation. Santi made a quick search for the invisible waitress, suddenly wishing he’d ordered a drink, as well. Water and iced tea weren’t cutting it anymore.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, firmly reminding himself this was Saoirse’s time. He was doing this for her.

One selfless act.

It was all he wanted to see himself do before he reentered his brothers’ lives.

If a priest walked through the door right now? He was in. If she wanted him to marry her, he would. But she would have to be sure she could accept what he had to offer: absolutely nothing.

“Do you mind if I ask about your fertility issues?”

“What, nurse-to-doctor-style?” She drew away from him as she spoke.

“Friend to friend,” he replied.

Her shoulders softened. It wasn’t an inquisition.

“In for a penny...” she halfheartedly quipped, swiping at some tears. “The doctors weren’t entirely sure. I’d always had an irregular cycle so I mentioned it to the doctor who was doing the physical. It was more precautionary than exploratory, you know? And then the tests came back.” She gave the picnic table an unhappy rap with her knuckles. “The details are a bit blurry now, partly because I burned the papers after my ex left. But apart from having an abnormally shaped uterus... Yeah, I know,” she said when he widened his eyes, “there was more. Something about not ovulating regularly and not having a massive store of eggs. I wasn’t really taking it all in with the wedding plans and sorting out my course and packing up the flat... It just—” Her voice broke ever so slightly. “The gist of it was that I’d be better off looking into adoption or having a surrogate or donor eggs—all things I knew Tom would never agree to.”

“Sounds to me like he found someone else when he was in the US and chose the coward’s way out.”

Saoirse’s eyes went wide, the clear blue clouding with a fresh film of emotion.

“What did you say?”

“Sorry—it’s not my place, I know. But from where I’m sitting, it just sounds to me like he’d found someone else, or chickened out, or—”

“Are you saying he would’ve left me, no matter what?”

Santi shredded three paper napkins in quick succession in an effort to stop himself from reaching out to Saoirse, providing the comfort he’d longed for when his mother had died in front of him. A near primal need overtook him to wipe away the tears spilling onto her cheeks, cup her soft cheek in his hand and tell her everything would be all right, but he knew it would be a lie. Most things that hurt you that badly were never all right again. He was living, breathing proof.

“Forget I said anything. If he told you it was for the infertility—” He could’ve punched himself in the head. Why did he have to open his big fat stupid mouth?

“He never said anything. I just...” Her voice faltered. “I just assumed that’s what it was.”

“It sounds like you’re better off without him either way,” Santi said, hearing the defensiveness in his own voice. Since when had he become Chief Saoirse Protector?

“Yeah.” She nodded limply. “Sounds like it.”

His heart went out to her. To find out she couldn’t have children when she’d so clearly seen being a mother in her future and then to be publicly humiliated for her body’s betrayal... No wonder she’d been devastated.

Particularly when the woman all but oozed life. She would have made an incredible mother. Vibrant, full of life, passionate. Just like his. He closed his eyes for a moment, an image of his own mother coming in and out of focus as well as memory would allow.

She’d been so brave. Picking up and leaving her homeland with her young husband after losing two babies in pregnancy owing to poor medical facilities. Wanting more for the children they hoped to have one day than their country could offer. Giving up their professional dreams for the steady income from the bodega when getting other jobs proved next to impossible. The sacrifice of it all. The selflessness.

Marrying Saoirse might be helping her, but from where he was sitting it served him every bit as much as it served her. So if they were going to do this he needed to know she was solid that this was exactly what she wanted. He wasn’t in it for love or the twentieth-anniversary parties or long-lasting honeymoon periods. He was in it to pin himself to Miami, where he had some debts to pay.

“Dulzera. Sweetheart.” Santi edged away the bowl of salsa resting between them and took her hands in his. “Does being here in Miami make you happy?”

“Very.” She answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Why?”

“I feel...” She pulled her hands out of his, tucking them under her chin as her eyes flicked up to the fairy lights and palms and evening sky above them as if waiting for the answer to float down. She sucked in a huge breath and solidly met his gaze, “Believe it or not, I finally feel like myself here.”

“You didn’t like yourself in Ireland?” He carefully dodged the use of the word “home.”

“Not particularly.” She shook her head as if she were letting all the facts fall into place. “I used to have long hair, because that’s what most of the girls I went to school with had. I used to wear ridiculous shoes out to even sillier nightclubs in the next town along because that’s what everyone else did. Here? Here it takes me three seconds or less to fix my hair. I don’t even bother with makeup,” she added, as if it were the most liberating thing in the world. “And pony car racing. I did it at first to become better at driving the ambulance, what with the switch to the right side of the road and all, but... I love it.” Her eyes took on a starry quality that immediately brought a smile to his lips. “I’ve got a race tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Saoirse asked, her entire demeanor suddenly lighter.

“You let me marry you and help you stay.”

“Seriously?” There was more hope than wariness in her question this time.

“Seriously.” If this wouldn’t prove he was trying to turn over a new leaf, he didn’t know what would. “It would be my pleasure.”

“And the whole dead parents thing doesn’t have anything to do with this?”

Her hands clapped over her mouth the second she said the words and he had to admit he had to catch his breath, too.

It was all well and good when he was the one “joking” about his issues, but coming from someone else? It hurt.

He slapped on a smile. This was all part of it. The good, the bad and the taking it on the chin.

“Nope!”

So it was a lie. But it was pretty clear she could see right through it and she was still holding on so...

“But...uh...” A flush crept onto her cheeks. “Just to be clear, there would be no nooky or making out in the back of cars at the drive-in or whatever it is you Americans get up to. Separate bedrooms, for sure. And no smelly socks!”

Back on the familiar turf of wisecracks and locker-room gibes, he regrouped. He nodded emphatically. “I can handle that.”

Tempting as she was, Saoirse was laying down the guidelines. Keeping her heart safe from any more hurt. He would have to do the same. It was the only way this harebrained thing would work.

“Got it.”

“And it only has to be two years, give or take an immigration inspection, and then you’re free to run off and fall in love with whoever takes your fancy. Or I suppose if you do fall in love with someone in the meantime, then I could divorce you for being a lying cheat!” she concluded with a bit too much glee.

“What if I don’t want to be a lying cheat?” he countered, contrarian that he was, before chomping down on a tortilla chip with a self-congratulatory smirk even he knew didn’t make it all the way to his eyes. “What if I want to be as true as the blue on the American flag or the glorious Floridian skies above us?”

“That blue?” Her eyes widened.

“That blue.” He nodded. He hadn’t meant the sky or the flag this time around.

“Huh.” She pursed her lips at him, adding in a dubious twist.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, sweetheart!

Her obvious lack of belief in his ability to commit stuck, thorn sharp, and almost instantly began to fester. He grabbed his shot glass, gave it a wiggle, disappointed he’d drained it the first time around.

“Santi, this is a big ask. I’m not going to hold you to it if you wake up in the morning and want to run for the hills.”

All I want is a chance. A chance to do right by someone.

“Like I said, it’s not a problem. I’m happy to do it.”

She sat back, arms crossed, and huffed out a sigh. “Okay, fine. There’s only one way I can be sure you really mean it.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Pinky promise.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s the arbiter of whether or not you can take me at my word?”

“Yes. I need to be absolutely sure this wouldn’t be cramping your style, or ruining your life, or making your world miserable, or that I’m putting one tortilla too many in your basket. Like Amanda said, this has to be a business deal.”

Santi guffawed and put on a hokey cowboy accent. “Only if you don’t go changin’.”

“So you’ll really do it?” Her shoulders relaxed a tiny bit and that hint of hope he liked to see returned to her eyes. “Even though I’m all hyper and overexcited and ready to tattoo Miami Forever on my backside if that’s what it’ll take?”

“No, you’re good.” He took a gentle swat at her chin with a paper napkin. “Especially with salsa hanging on your face in case we need some for later.”

She nodded gravely. “I can do that for you, Santiago Valentino. Salsa on tap. Not a problem.”

They both dissolved into another round of gut-clutching laughter, only just managing to calm themselves when the waitress reappeared, arms laden with plates holding carnitas and all the essential accoutrements. Hot-sauce heaven.

Santi dug in, suddenly ravenous. Hungry not only for the food but for the next day and the next, when his life would no longer be a solo voyage. Sure, a huge part of it was make-believe, but for all the pretense, what was growing between them felt real. Two lost souls trying to find their place in the world. Maybe this time it really would be here...home.

“Right, then,” he said, after enjoying a savory mouthful of carnitas. “Guess we’d better start talking practicalities. Your place or mine?”