Lucky 13 (Deadlines & Diamonds) (3 page)

“He asked me to meet him for lunch.”

Curses in Spanish
coat
ed the air around them. She stomped her foot and continued to lay her tongue to south-of-the-border profanity as
she paced. Breath raced from her lungs. S
weat
beaded on her forehead. Ricky worried about her when she let her temper spike. She circled the counter and took a long draw on a glass of water.

Still
breathing hard
, but calmer, she came to stand in front of him
, hands on thin
hips
. “You don’t have to take his crap,
Enrique
. My crap, you take. His, you don’t.”

Theoretically, she wasn’
t saying anything
new. She’d been offering him the same mantra for years.
Hear
ing the advice and putting it into practice were two different things.

Just then the bell dinged
,
announcing a visitor. Ricky didn’t have to turn around to see who’d come in, Mama’s grunt and sharp pointed finger, said it all.

“
Kitchen
, now,” she told
Eddie
then turned on her heel, marching through the swingi
ng doors
. 

Eddie
glared as he walked past him and into the back. Ricky didn’t stick around to hear the hushed, heated difference of opinion about to erupt. He went to the very back corner of the d
iner and sli
d
o
nto the bench that was
Eddie
’s favorite.

Ricky slid his finger over the aged Formica and smiled when he found the rough patch where he’d had to buff out his initials. He’d been eight.
Eddie
had
been twenty…
and furious!

“Long time, no see, handsome.”

Ricky smiled and glanced up into the face
belonging
to the husky, made-for-sex voice. “Hey, how you been?”

“Good.”
Teresa Sanchez had been his first kiss, his first girlfriend. Hell, she’d been his first at a lot of things. The neighborhood had them married before they’d hit puberty.

Things changed.

“I’m real good.”
She wiped her palms on the tiny white apron
covering
her
shorty-
shorts.
“
You heard I got divorced.”

“I
did hear something like
that.” He
pretended to care
. “Congratulations?”

“He was a
ningún buen hijo de
tu
puta
madre
.
” She shrugged.
“
We’re better off without him.”

Ricky couldn’t agree more. The guy had
always been a “no good sonofabitch”, but Teresa made her choice. He
suspected now
, looking back,
that she’d done it on purpose. She must have known Ricky hadn’t seen her in his future. All he could see was baseball diamonds and dollar signs. He didn’t have time for an overemotional girl with attachment issues.

She held her arm
s wide. “Get on up here and give me a proper hello.”

He slid out
to give her a hug. She grabbed on tight, giggling like an obsessed child.
“It’s been too damn long, Ricky.” She whipped the rag off her shoulder and smacked him with it. “You too good for us now?”

“Never.”

“Get us a couple of waters, Teresa.”
Eddie
’s eyes
spark
ed with the disgust in his tone. “Then will you check on Mama? She’s in the kitchen.”

“What’d you do this time,
Eddie
?”

Eddie
rolled his eyes and snorted his dismissal.

Ricky waited until Teresa pushed through the swinging doors before
glaring
at his brother. “I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”

“We got other things to talk about.”
Eddie
rapped his knuckles against the table to bring Ricky’s attention back from the kitchen doors. “You still got problems keeping your mind on the task at hand.”

“And you still got problems being an ass.”

Eddie
tipped his head like he had water in his ears and was trying to clear it out. “What’d you
just
say to me?”

Ricky leaned forward, linking his knuckles to keep from pummeling his older, out-of-shape brother. “You beckoned. I came. Now what do you want?”

“You need to pull your weight.” Dark eyes bored into Ricky.

“What, you want money?”

“No, asshole.”
Eddie
closed the distance until they were
face to face
across the table. “We don’t want your money. Mama raised us to work hard for our money. Just because you get to
play
to get a paycheck doesn’t mean I want the handout. And Mama does just fine without your help.”

Ricky didn’t bother to tell his brother he had been supplementing Mama’s income for as long as he’d been making money. Nor did he rise to his brother’s baiting.

“Fine. You don’t want my money.”

Glasses of water landed hard on the tabletop, droplets splashing out on
Eddie
’s arm. Teresa smiled at his snarled disgust. “Can I get you something?”

Eddie
waved a hand. “
Just
some privacy.”

Teresa took his attitude in stride, flipping him off before walking away.

“Look,
Eddie
, just cut to the chase and tell me what the hell your problem is this time.”

“You need to pull your weight.”

Why did Ricky feel so tired all of a sudden? “Yeah, you said that.”

“DJ went off to school.”

“
So, your son went off to college.
What’s that got to do with me?”

“You’re in the off season.”

“I’m done
playing
for a few months, yeah.” Like a photo coming into focus, Ricky began to see the picture clear as day. “So?”

“So…
you see that truck out there?”
Eddie
pointed out the giant pane of glass to the white box truck parked out front. “Santiago and Son
s
. There’s an
‘
s
’
at the end I feel like you’d rather forget exists. You own half that company.”

“You want my half?” Ricky sat back in the booth and held up his hands. “You want my half, you can have it.”

The vein in
Eddie
’s temple
pulsed
. “You think I can’t buy you out?”

Ricky chuckled, relieved. “Buy me out? Hell, I’ll give it to you.”

Red definitely didn’t look good on his brother. “I don’t want your damn charity.”

A couple patrons on the other side of diner glanced over at
Eddie
’s raised voice. He looked back and smiled, waved. He cleared his throat.

“I can’t do it all myself.” His lips pursed, turning white against the red pallor caused by his anger. “With DJ gone, I can’t do it by myself.”

Ricky choked on a laugh. “
That’s
the most pathetic attempt at asking for help I’ve ever heard.”

Eddie
snorted, then
chuckl
ed
. It’d been a long time since Ricky had heard it, and judging by the look on
Eddie
’s face, it’d been a while for him, too.
“Yeah, I’m askin’ for your help. Please.”

“I’ve got some time. You have to give me plenty of notice and you are not allowed to be a dick.” Ricky stuck out his hand. “Turn into a dick and I walk. End of
story
.”

His soft murmured, “Thank you,” shocked the hell out of Ricky. Their palms met, sealing their agreement.

“You’re welcome.” Ricky leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “Now let’s eat. I’m starving.”

3

“Kingman?” Ricky
groaned and slapped his hand against the steering wheel. He glared up at the Bluetooth mic like his brother would see his annoyance.
“What do you mean we’re going to Kingman? When?”

“In the morning.”

“As in
tomorrow
morning? Oh, hell, no. One of our conditions was that you had to give me notice
.
You agreed.
”

“I
am
!” A deep, frustrated breath whistled through the phone. “I only got the contract this afternoon. It’s an entire house.
No packing, just moving. Huge profit.”

Ricky eased his
SUV
into the garage and closed the door. His brother didn’t say anything. Ricky didn’t either. Just strolled into his house and dumped his gym bag in the laundry room. Damn, he needed a maid. He didn’t suck too bad at the cleaning the house thing, but laundry
? H
e sucked big time.

“You gonna help me or not?”

“Yeah.” He opened the fridge and sniffed the milk. The stench nearly
brought
him to his knees. “What time?”

“I’ll pick you up at five.”

“In the morning?”
His
voice cracked.

“Yep. See you then.”

The line went dead and Ricky dumped the white curdled
chunks
down the drain, turning on the garbage disposal for good measure.

He seriously needed a maid!

***

The next morning the low grumble of a diesel engine and annoying
ahooga!
announced Ricky’s day had started. He grabbed a couple granola bars and bottles of water
, shoving his stash in a backpack,
and headed out the front door.

Eddie
waved from the driver’s seat. His smile seemed genuine. As Ricky climbed into the passenger seat,
Eddie
shifted the truck into reverse and backed down the driveway. Ricky worried a
little about his pavers, but
shook
it
off, deciding it wasn’t worth getting into
it just before a long road trip. Because
Eddie
would only argue that Ricky had plenty of money to fix them.

His brother took a sip of his coffee.
“Check out the sunrise.”

Ricky looked toward the ea
st and took in the expanse
of pink and yellow. “Beautiful.”

“I get to see it almost every day.”

“How wonderful for you.”

Eddie
snorted. “Get
up on the wrong side of the bed?
”

“I shouldn’t have gotten up on
any
side of the bed yet.” He sighed and opened a bottle of water. “It’s the freakin’ butt-crack of dawn.”

Eddie
’s
guffaw
bounced around the cab of the truck. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

***

“My room’s all packed up.” Matt walked into Shayne’s bedroom, twirling a
nearly finished
roll of packing tape on his finger. “We’re almost out of boxes.”

“It’s a good thing we’re almost done.” Sh
e shoved the last of their movie collection
into a box. “Tape her up.”

The ripping stretch of the tape made Shayne jump. Every time she looked in the mirror
,
she expected to see an exposed nerve staring back at her.
Boxing up and leaving the home where she’d found true happiness was a
specialized
form of torture. She had nobody to blame but herself. That’s what made the situation even worse.

Up until this point
,
she’d
managed to stay strong for Matt, keeping her emotion
s in check, hiding how she felt, holding it together until she could cry
herself to sleep every night. Her kid wasn’t stupid
, though. N
or was he clueless. H
e knew what this move meant
and he’d done his best to make it easy on her
.
He seemed honestly excited
about the
prospects of relocating
.
That made one of them.

As she watched him tape up
yet
another box, he brushed the hair off his forehead
with the back of his h
and, leaving an adorable smudge
. He bent over and, with a grin, pushed the box over to the stack by the front door. He turned and gave her a thumbs up.

“Love you, Mom!”

He hustled down the hall, jumping to tap the arch
with his fingertips
.
Heaven help her, she would
even miss cleaning h
is fingerprints off the ceiling.

She let her eyes wander around the living room. Man, t
his old place held so many memories. The darkened spot on the carpet where Matt dropped a bowl of Spaghetti-O’s. The chipped tile in the middle of the countertop where she’d dropped the hot jar
when Grammy taught her how to make homemade jam. Shayne
noticed the b
right walls with the dimmed spots
where photos had been removed. She could still see every smiling
face. Her heart swelled with ang
uished love.

A tear splashed on
to her thigh
. She cleared her throat,
wiped at her nose
and blinked
.
A lot.
She would not allow herself to break down. Not now. If she lost it now, she’d never regain her composure.

She heard the thundering of footsteps from down the hall and the rumble of the diesel engine
outside
in unison. Another arch slap and Matt grinned.

“They’re here!”
 

A soft squeak of brakes sounded before the engine quieted. Matt ran over to th
e
front door and whipped it open. It whacked the wall, bouncing back about halfway.

Shayne plastered a fake smile on her face and strolled over to the door just in time to hear Matt say, “Holy shit!”

“Matt!”

He jerked his head toward her
, offered a quick, “Sorry,”
over his shoulder,
then took off on a dead run toward the truck.

Her
disapproval
at her son’s burst of profanity
drained,
li
ke the blood out of her face
,
when Enrique Santiago stepped
out of the moving van. S
he muttered a, “Holy shit,” of her own.

Ricky smiled at Matt and held out his hand in greeting. The two talked for a second. Matt waved his arm for Ricky to follow him and they cros
sed the grass. “Mom! Ricky’
s here to help us move.”

Shayne didn’t try to hide her frown. “Really?”

“Don’t try to make me sound noble, kid.”
Ricky ruffled Matt’s hair.
He flashed her a smile, all white teeth
and sexy charm
. She saw his next move in his dark eyes and stood frozen as he stepped forward. She held her breath. His arms went around her, cuddling her against the hard planes of his chest.

With arms braced against her sides, she couldn’t move.
Not that she would have hugged him back if she could have. She didn’t enjoy the sudden need to have him hold her forever. She certainly didn’t feel comfort,
not
from Enrique Santiago. She didn’t like the soothing stroke of his huge hands over her back. Or the light press of his
lips against her cheek.

Nope, she didn’t like a single bit of it.

Except as the solid strength of his embrace battered her every defense, she felt herself melting. S
he buried her fac
e in his chest just in time to
muffle the sobs that came bubbling up from recesses better left unexplored
.

His hold tightened, opening the flood gates. Shayne tried to choke back her emotions
, only to blubber like a fool.

“Mom?”

One of Ricky’s hands left her back and she felt
his body shift in a di
smissive gesture. H
e guided her into the house, closing the do
or softly behind them. He let her take the lead
, holding her hard because
she held onto him for dear life
.

“Let it out. It’s okay, I’m here.”

She chuckled soggily, pulling back to look
at
his handsome face. “That makes it worse.”

He really had a terrific smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She really didn’t. Not with
him
. She didn’
t know anything about him, except that he played baseball, annoyed the shit out of her brother, was sexy as sin, and made her think about white picket fences and happily ever after. Crap she didn’t need to concern herself with!

She put the width of the living room between them and rounded the kitchen island to start wiping down the countertop.
“I don’t need you.”

He jerked as though she’d slapped him.

“Sorry.” She scrubbed at an invisible stain. “That didn’t come out right. I don’t need anyone. It was real nice of you to come with the moving company, but—”

“I am the
moving company.”

Surprise made her look at him
.
“What?”

“I own it.”
He
lifted one shoulder. “Half of it, at least.” He pointed toward the front of the house. “Santiago and Sons. I’m one of the sons, my brother is the other. He does most of the work while I’m off
playing
. But yeah, I own it
.”

He sounded angry, bitter, but not at her.
She watched, barely breathing, as he began to pace the length of
the
living room. His eyes darted to the large picture window. Despite his calm, cool, and collected, things weren’t all
peachy keen in his life either
it seemed.

“I didn’t know this job would be you, Shayne.” He stopped pacing and folded his arms
. The look
he shot her
gave her a good idea of what a pinned insect felt like
. “If I had, I would have been here days ago to help you pack.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve got it.”

“You can cut the chivalrous crap, okay? Like I said, I don’t need it. I’ve been on my own for a long time and I can handle it myself.”

“But you shouldn’t have to.”

She threw the rag down on the counter, where it landed with a soggy slap.
Angry breaths punched from her lungs. She faced him and popped her hands on her hips, facing off with him.

“You know it’s been a very long time for me and you’
re hot.
I’m not gonna lie, I got an itch I’d love for you to scratch. You
want in my pants,
all you have to do is
say so. ‘Cause I gotta say, it
’d be a whole lot less annoying if you’d stop tryin’ so damn hard
to be charming
.
” She tossed him a saucy wink. “Come get me, big boy. We can use the counter. It’s clean. We’ll be quick, then we can both get on with our lives.
”

His eyes fle
w wide, his mouth dropped open
, his big body tensed.
She expected an outburst, flying curse words or sugary apologies, instead his chest expanded, deflated, his eyes closed, lips pursed. He shook his head and his
dark eyes opened to radiate
a
cold anger
that made her shiver. His fists tightened at his sides then h
e turned on his heel and stalked out the door.

***

Ricky
had never been so furious in his life.
It took every ounce of self control he possessed not to rip the door off its hinges. Shayne was a hell of a woman. Her
little diatribe told him more about her than he’d gathered in the entire time he’d known her. Which wasn’t very long, he admitted.

When he’d kissed her at the wedding, she’d said it’d been a long time. He
liked that. Honestly,
her lack of recent sexual exploitations
made him like her even more
. But the way she’d communicated her willingness to
…

Go
o
d
hell
, he should
not
be turned on right now!