Yours to Keep (11 page)

“I work for him. I tutor his son.”

“He called. He wants you a half hour later.” Emphasis on “wants.”

“Don’t be gross, Ricky. It’s a job.”

“I’m sure it’s not the only job he wants you to do around there.”

“Ricky.”

They were in the kitchen, the dingy, fifty-year-old kitchen, with its avocado and gold
appliances, the electric range-top that worked intermittently, one burner on Thursday, another one on Friday, a bonus two functional burners one Saturday for no discernible reason.

“I don’t like the idea of you working for him,” Ricky said.

He’d like it even less if he knew how she felt about Ethan, but she wasn’t about to say that. “You don’t like the idea of me working in Beacon at all.”

“I’m dealing with the idea of you working in Beacon. It doesn’t bother me so much anymore. But working for a man? Where’s his wife? He good-looking?”

She sighed. “What’s that got to do with anything? I’m not seeing him.” It was the truth, but it felt like a lie. What the hell? What was she doing? “His wife is dead. He’s a single dad.”

Something softened in his face.

What a bundle of contradictions he was, her Ricky.

She went to him and put her arms around him. He resisted for a moment, then hugged her back. He touched her hair. “
Hermanita,
I worry. I worry all the time about you.”

“I know.”

“You’re keeping your mouth shut, right?”

She nodded, thinking of what she’d already told Ethan about herself, far more than she’d ever told an employer.

“You can’t trust anyone.”

She remembered how Ricky had coached her as a little girl.
“If anyone asks you where you’re from, you say, ‘Here.’ If anyone asks you if you’re an American, you say, ‘Yes.’ If anyone asks you about your parents, you say, ‘My brother is my guardian.’ But the most important rule of all is that you shouldn’t hang around long enough to let people ask you those kinds of questions.”

He’d taken care of her like a father, better than a father, since her actual father had abandoned them. She wouldn’t have graduated from high school if Ricky hadn’t worked three jobs to support the rest of them while she was a student.

But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was done with high school, had two jobs of her own, was bringing in more than half the household’s income now. And she wasn’t Ricky, either. Like Cara, Ricky was more Dominican than American. He would probably have gone back to D.R. by now if it weren’t for the kids. He was fifteen when they arrived here, beyond
the reach of schoolteachers, stubborn about choosing Dominican friends, unwilling to learn English. And he’d only gotten angrier and more entrenched when their father failed to join them in the United States. When their mother died. When he discovered the deceptions and screwups and began to understand the consequences.

She was different. She’d always been an American. She’d been at the top of her class in school. Her best friend had been a little blond-haired white girl, whose house she spent more time in than her own, playing Barbies and eating American meals and glomming onto the sophisticated English patterns of her friend’s highly educated parents. She couldn’t choose to live in Ricky’s world any more than he could choose to live in hers.

“He’s a good guy, Ricky.”

All the softness went out of him, and he let her go with enough emphasis that it was almost a shove.

“You cried for a month after that other
yanqui
asshole.”

“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 herself 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.