The Senator's Hispanic Bride (3 page)

“Help me? Thank you. That’s…” He stopped again and looked around himself at them.

Orlando leaned close to him and clapped his hand down on Michael’s other shoulder. “Here’s how it works. You’re marrying our cousin, and that means that you’re going to be one of us. You’re going to be our primo, our cousin, but you’re coming from the outside, so there are some rules.”

Michael focused intently on Orlando’s dark eyes. “Rules?”

“You’re our primo now, so no one messes with you. They mess with you, they mess with all of us. We always have each other’s backs. Always. You got that?” Orlando said with a serious tone.

Michael had been on sports teams in college and he knew about brotherhoods. This felt like a brotherhood, but not like one he had ever been a part of before. “I think I got it,” Michael answered with a smile.

“We’re always going to look out for you,” Pablo said with a genuine tone.

The men all nodded in agreement. Orlando, who was the oldest of all of them, looked directly into Michael’s eyes. “But primo, we’re going to warn you right now, you better never do anything to hurt Isabella.”

Michael shook his head. “No, of course not. I’d never do anything to hurt her!”

Then men around him laughed and smiled. “That’s good, cousin!” Reynaldo said, tossing back a shot of rum and laughing softly. “You better keep to that word, Michael.”

A shout came from the table where the family was all gathered. “Boys! What are you all doing at the bar? Come back over here.” Ramon was standing at the head of the table, waving at them. They finished their shots and headed back to the table. Michael wondered if it was the rum or the nerves that were making him nauseated.

“I want to propose a toast!” Ramon said, pulling his younger daughter close to him and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “To my beautiful baby girl and my new son-in-law to be!” The family stood and lifted their glasses. Michael was guided over to stand beside Ramon, and Ramon smiled warmly at him.

“Congratulations to you both! I wish that the road that you follow will be one of happiness, deep love, honesty, prosperity and good health, all of your lives.” He raised his glass and the family toasted, then he drew them both into a hug against his broad chest. “Congratulations to you two.”

He kissed the tops of their heads and when he did, Michael felt tears sting his eyes. It had been many long years since a man had acted as a father toward him, and he hadn’t realized how much he had missed it. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the feel of it soak into him, and then he opened his eyes again and looked at the faces around him. They were filled with love and happiness, and it cocooned around him.

They sat and ate some more, and Isabella gave him tastes of all the different dishes of food on the table, explaining what each one was and how it was significant to her culture. He found it fascinating, but not as fascinating as watching the light and joy in her eyes as she told him about all of it.

When lunch was finally finished, he stood up and looked at Isabella with disappointment in his face. “I have to go to the office. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” he leaned over and kissed her, and she nodded.

“Thank you so much for all that you did in Washington and for coming with me to tell my family. That was really important to me.”

He nodded and hugged her close. “This was wonderful. I loved being here. Thank you.” He kissed her cheek and let her go, and then hugged through her family on his way out.

When he had gone, Isabella looked at the boys and scowled at them suspiciously. “What did all of you talk to him about at the bar?”

They laughed at her and surrounded her, hugging her and kissing her face. “Don’t you worry about it little Prima. We were just welcoming him to the family.”

She looked up at each of them. “You be nice to him. I love him.”

They laughed and nodded, and walked away from her. Selena came up to her and hugged her tightly. “He’s so gorgeous! You are a lucky girl.” She kissed her cheek and bounded off to help clear the table and go back up to the other staff at the front of the restaurant.

Isabella took an armful of dishes back into the prep room just off of the kitchen and found Marisol slicing fruit at the counter. She walked up to her sister and hugged her around the waist from the back, laying her head on her sister’s back.

“Mari, aren’t you happy for me? Don’t you like him?” she asked quietly.

Marisol continued to slice and chop. “I don’t trust him.”

Isabella pouted and let go of her sister, pulling a lemon meringue pie from the refrigerator and setting it on the counter. “Why not? You haven’t even met him until today.”

Marisol pushed the strawberries off of the cutting board and started slicing bananas. “That’s the first red flag right there. You’ve been dating him for three months and this is the first we see of him? Today? He was hiding. I don’t trust him.”

Isabella scowled and sliced a big piece of the pie, placing it on a plate. “He’s been busy. He told you that. I asked him to come with me to tell my family that we were engaged and he did. He’s a good man, Mari.”

Marisol sliced harder and faster. “He should have already been coming here. He should have known Mama and Papa and he should have asked for permission to marry you, not being a sneak and going behind everyone’s back. That’s not right.”

“Mari! Can’t you be a little understanding? He’s been busy! He’s running an election and he hasn’t had time to come with me to visit here. He’s going to be my husband, Mari, he’s going to be your brother! You could show a little more love!” Isabella pulled chocolate syrup from the refrigerator and proceeded to cover the lemon meringue pie in it.

Marisol gritted her teeth and then started chopping a coconut. “That’s just the thing, Isabella, here it is only three months along, and no one has met him yet and all of a sudden he wants to marry you! Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that? Aren’t you the least bit suspicious?”

Isabella shot her sister an irritated look. “Suspicious of what? He loves me and he wants to marry me!”

Marisol turned and glared at Isabella. “Suspicious that he doesn’t really love you! Suspicious that he’s using you! You’re Puerto Rican, he’s white, he’s running for office and maybe it makes him look good to be with a brown girl! Who ever heard of getting engaged after only three months? Nobody in our family knows anything about him at all and all of a sudden here he is and we are supposed to just take him in and accept him?”

Isabella had heard enough. “He loves me and he wants to be with me! Why can’t you just accept that I’m happy and leave it at that?”

Her sister shot her a harsh glare and raised her voice. “Because I have loved you all of your life and he’s only known you three months! I want what’s best for you and I don’t think he is what’s best for you!”

“You’re just jealous!” Isabella shot back weakly.

Marisol shook her head at her, walked over to her and picked up the pie that Isabella had just doused in chocolate syrup and smothered it on her sister’s face. Isabella stood there in complete shock, her face dripping with lemon, chocolate and meringue.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” she said in a low tone, reaching for the bananas that Marisol had just cut.

She grabbed two handfuls of them and smashed them in Marisol’s face, and after that, the fight was on. Any kind of food that either one of them could get their hands on was flung at the other as they screamed and laughed, covering each other in a disgraceful mess. The food fight soon turned into a wrestling match and they both wound up on the floor in each other’s arms, laughing and crying as they tried to get the better of each other. Finally, they realized that neither one of them would win, and they gave up and Isabella laid her head in Marisol’s lap, looking up at her. They were both completely covered in food and utterly unrecognizable.

“Mari, please just be there for me and be happy for me. I need you to be my maid of honor, and I need your help. I can’t do it without you. Please?” Isabella begged her sister, holding her hand in hers.

Marisol slumped her shoulders and looked around the disastrous prep room in defeat. “Alright. I’ll help you, but I don’t like it, and I don’t like him. He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Thank you, Mari. I love you,” Isabella said with a wide indiscernible grin.

Marisol leaned down and kissed her sister’s meringue covered face. “I love you, too.”

Just then their mother walked in and her jaw fell wide open. “
What
in the name of the holy… get this mess cleaned up
right now
! Just what do you two think you’re doing! That’s a waste of food! It’s a waste of money and resources, and just
look
at the mess you have made of this prep room! Get up now and clean it!” She glared hotly at both of them and turned and stomped out of the room.

The girls burst into giggles and pulled each other up off of the floor. “This is all your fault,” Isabella said snidely to her sister.

“
My
fault? How is it my fault? You’re the one who brought him in. You started all of this!” They argued and laughed, picking up their mess and cleaning the prep room until it shone better than it had when Marisol had first entered it, then they cleaned themselves up and walked out arm in arm.

   ***

Michael arrived at his office and called Glenn in to talk with him. Glenn walked over to Michael’s desk, watching him the whole time, and sat down expectantly.

“Well? How did it go?” he asked with impatience.

Michael leaned back in his chair and smiled, thinking of the incredible lunch he had shared with Isabella and her family. “It went really well! We had a wonderful time. I asked her to marry me and she said yes!”

Glenn’s face widened with his smile, like a frog swallowing a fly. “Good! That’s very good. Let’s look at dates.”

*

The newspapers carried the story of the engagement the next day, and it caught like wildfire over the state. The stories varied from the white candidate for the Senate seat marrying a Puerto Rican woman, to lower shelf pieces touting sad news to masses of disappointed women who would not be finding favor with the gorgeous dark haired hero that they all loved.

Glenn was ecstatic. He carefully combed all of the media, reading it all while Michael had his assistant prepare an engagement party for a few hundred of the people that most needed to be there. He made a personal call to Ramon and Savannah’s restaurant, La Cocina Criolla.

Selena answered the phone and was only too happy to discover her new cousin on the other end of the line. She put him on hold and a moment later, Ramon was on the phone with him.

“Michael?” he asked happily.

“Hi, Ramon, how are you doing?” he asked pleasantly.

“Michael. You must not call me Ramon. You must call me Papa,” he said with a kind smile in his voice. Michael felt his heart skip and tears threaten to sting his eyes.

“Yes, sir. Papa. I’ll do that. Thank you. How are you doing?” he asked, genuinely interested to know.

“I’m good! I’m very blessed,” Papa said in a happy tone.

“That’s good. Listen, we’re going to have an engagement party, and I wondered if you would want to cater it? I’d love to give you the business, if you want to do it.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful!” Papa replied. “I’m so glad to hear it. Let me ask Mama what she thinks. Hold on a minute.”

There was silence and then Savannah came on the phone with Michael.

“Michael?” she asked.

“Hello, Savannah.” He caught himself right away and realized he would probably have the same conversation with her. “Mama. Uh, did… Papa… tell you about the engagement party?” he asked. It was strange to call anyone by those names, particularly people he had only met for the first time the day before, but it didn’t feel wrong.

“He did!” she said excitedly. “You listen to me, Michael, we are going to take care of you and all of your guests. This is going to be such a wonderful party! We will make it better than anything you’ve ever seen! This, I promise to you.”

Michael smiled and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure you will.”

“Michael! How many people will be coming to the party?” Mama asked happily.

“Probably about four hundred,” he answered nonchalantly.

She gasped dramatically. “Ay Dios Mio! Why so many?”

He worried that he might have given her too high a number. “Um, well, it’s everyone, you know, family, friends, business associates. People who should be there.”

“Are you going to invite all of those people to your wedding?” she asked in horror.

“Well, probably not all of them, but part of them, yes.” He answered, beginning to be concerned.

“Michael, if you invite them to the engagement party, then you have to invite them to the wedding. Are you sure you want that many?” she asked with a worried tone.

He sat up and looked at the guest list that he and Glenn had worked out. It wasn’t really one that he could or should alter. “I… uh… I guess so. Is that too many for you to cook for?”

She laughed at him. “No, m’hijo, it’s not too many. Just be sure that’s what you want to do before you send all those invitations out! We’ll cook for you no matter how many people you invite.”