Yours to Keep (34 page)

Chapter 30

“Too long,” James said, and Ethan retied his tie for the third time.

“This is overkill,” he told his brother and Theo, also for the third time.

It was Friday afternoon now. James had joined with Theo yesterday in urging patience and preparation, which in turn had necessitated some shopping.

“You tried it your way last time, and look how it ended up,” James said. “You have to do it right this time.”

Ethan examined the tie knot in the mirror. He held up the two ends and measured the length of the tie against the waistband of his slacks. He was done. There was nothing left to fuss over. “What if she doesn’t like the ring?”

“The ring’s awesome. She’s gonna love it,” Theo said.

Once Ethan had narrowed the ring choices down to two, he’d let Theo pick between them.

“Getting down on one knee is going to ruin my pants,” Ethan said crossly.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” James said. “This is possibly the biggest moment of your life—”

“—second biggest,” Theo said. “Or third, if you count proposing to Mom. And I guess we won’t really know who ranks higher until—”

“I should go,” Ethan said, before Theo could quiz him about whether getting engaged or having a baby was a more important life experience.

Afterward, he was unable to remember a single moment of his drive to Hawthorne, except for trying to parallel park between a beat-up navy Ford Focus covered with Red Sox stickers and a downright derelict Dodge pickup. In his haste and discombobulation, he might have left a dent in the bumper of the Ford Focus. He didn’t stop to check.

He rang Ana’s doorbell, and Cara came to the door. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you!”

She looked like hell, bits of hair pulled free from her braids and puffing out in jagged bits, her skin gray, pockets under her bloodshot eyes. But Ana was wrong. They might have each been on a different side of the white girl–black girl divide, but they looked way more
alike than different, and he wanted to give her a hug, because she was Ana’s sister. Instead, he patted her arm and asked, “How’s Marco?”

“He’s going to be okay. Thanks to you. You definitely saved his life.” She grabbed him in a bear hug, then jumped back. “Sorry,” she said self-consciously. Her English was far more heavily accented than Ana’s.

He laughed. “I’m really glad he’s okay.”

“I’m on my way back to the hospital with a bunch of his stuff as soon as my ride gets here. You look very nice,” she said, as if finally noticing that he was wearing a suit, and giving him a quizzical sidelong glance that he ignored. “Come in.”

“Is Ana here?”

“She is. Come upstairs.” He followed her up the stairs. The walls were painted a dingy beige, nicked and dinged, the stairs badly in need of refinishing.

Cara spoke over her shoulder. “They said he could come home by early next week.”

“That’s terrific.”

“Thanks to you.”

Ana was curled up on the well-worn couch next to a girl who looked about ten—her niece, Ethan guessed. Ricky sat in the armchair under an aging, tattered poster of the former Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez. They all looked up when Cara and Ethan came into the room. “Oh!” Ana said, her surprise echoing her sister’s. She got up quickly and turned off the TV. “What are you—”

He had to do it before he lost his nerve. He knelt swiftly on the stained carpet.

Ana’s eyes got huge in her face. They swung quickly from Ethan to Ricky.

Ethan looked at Ricky, too. His face was impassive, but Ethan thought he saw the twitch of a smile.

“Ana Travares.” Ethan’s heart pounded, his breath short. “I should have done this right the first time.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out the velvet ring box. He opened it and took out the ring. “Things got so complicated so fast that I lost track of the most important thing. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?”

She was crying, her shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her face. Cara brought her a box of tissues, and she used eight of them before she could talk. Even then, the first few sounds out of her mouth weren’t real words. When she finally put a sentence together, she
asked, “How do I know you’re for real this time?”

It hadn’t occurred to him that she might doubt him. He knew how he felt about her, but he hadn’t thought about convincing her that his feelings were real, that, after all their false starts and missed chances, this time was forever.

He opened his mouth to start, to try, when behind him he heard Ricky say, “He was always for real.” He said it very quietly, so quietly that for a moment Ethan wasn’t sure that Ana had heard him. But she turned to listen, and Ricky went on, “It was my fault. Ernie told him if he didn’t leave you alone we’d hurt his son.”

She exhaled sharply, and color rose in her face. She shook her head, as if to clear it. “You threatened him? You threatened
Theo
?”

“¿Hablas in serio?”
Cara asked, almost at the same moment.

Ricky nodded. He looked thoroughly cowed.

Ana flew at Ricky.
“¡Boca de trapo!”
she cried, pummeling him with her fists.

Ricky caught her wrists and gently disengaged her, holding her at arm’s length.
“Lo siento mucho de verdad, hermanita,”
he said, his voice low, shamed.
“Perdóname. Por favor. Perdóname.”
Ethan thought he might have tears in his eyes.

“How could you?” Ana growled, shaking her wrists to free herself from her brother’s grasp.

Ricky released her and turned away, and Ethan knew he’d been right about the tears. Ethan realized how hard this was for him, admitting what he’d done in front of his sisters and his niece. It occurred to him that he might someday like Ricky.

“Ana. He was doing what he thought was best for you. He was trying to take care of you.” Ethan stood up—he’d been on one knee all that time—and tried to catch her arm, to draw her to him, but she shook free of him, too.

Her hair was in her face, her eyes wild. “You guys are total Neanderthals! I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I have done a brilliant job of taking care of myself. You are the ones who have screwed it up beyond all recognition! So stop! Stop, both of you! I hate you both! Especially you!” she cried, now throwing herself at Ethan, pounding his chest as she yelled “You should have told me!” over and over until he brought his mouth down on hers, and she held his face in her hands, patting his cheeks and his hair as if she could barely believe he was real. She was kissing him the way she kissed when he was inside her, deep and
wet and open, and he had to wrench himself away from her, because they were surrounded by her family, including a very shell-shocked-looking niece.

“I told him he couldn’t tell you,” Ricky said.

She looked as if she was about to spit on him. “No more. Do you understand? No more trying to take care of me. No more!” She turned on Ethan. “You either!”

“Well, I can’t promise I won’t take care of you. But I’ll try not to screw it up beyond all recognition.” Ethan recalled himself to his purpose. “I do need you to take care of me, though. And Theo. Theo needs you to take care of him. He helped me pick this out.” He held out the ring.

Ana looked down at the ring in his hand. It was a white-gold braid studded with small diamonds, the perfect ring, lovely and sparkling. It glittered in the dim yellow light of her living room, and she wanted to reach for it, to claim it, to claim him.

She startled herself by bursting into tears. “Everything’s so screwed up!” she wailed.

He held out his arms, and she allowed him to enfold her. She sagged against him and sighed at his warmth, at the pleasure of letting go. Ricky and Cara backed out of the room, gesturing to Leta to follow them.

“Tell me what’s so screwed up,” Ethan whispered against her hair, when her crying had calmed a little.

She rested her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder. “It’s a mess.” She wasn’t even sure where to start. “Ricky lost his job. There was a raid. On payday, and he’d just bought a car for the new business. So he took my savings for rent. And now I’m off the school’s tutor-referral list because of Ed and his stupid CORI, so I don’t know what that’s going to mean for the tutoring business. Which might be moot, anyway, because when I thought you didn’t want to be with me—” She was crying again.

“I never didn’t want to be with you.” He rubbed her back with both hands. “I thought you didn’t want to be with me.”

“I got scared. I thought you were scared, and I got scared, because this”—she gestured toward the room, the apartment, her life—“is not for the faint of heart. But I forgot. Nothing faint about your heart.” She laughed, thinking of the first time she saw him, in the doorway of Ed Branch’s office. “You’re here. The only
yanqui
on earth who could stare down my
brother.”

“It helps that he thinks I saved Marco’s life,” Ethan admitted.

“See, and you won’t even take credit for being brave, because you think it’s what people do. Rescuing damsels in distress and saving lives and bearding lions in their dens.”

“It
is
what people do,” Ethan said. “Like you get up every morning and make this life work for you despite the fact that no one helps you with anything and everything is twice as hard as it is for other people. And you never complain. And—”

A buttery gold warmth was growing in her stomach as he spoke, his awe and devotion evident in his voice.

“—you’re sexy doing it,” he said, with a sudden grin that turned the warmth to heat.

She reined in her tears. “I went to see Harry Abrams, and told him I wanted to try to get a green card anyway.”

“Theo told me.”

“And then—” She realized what he’d said. “What? How did Theo know?”

“That’s a long story, too. He ended up at the Abramses’ Thanksgiving. I guess indiscretion runs in the Abrams family.”

“Freaks!” Ana burst out. She felt his laughter under her cheek, and she started to laugh, too, a little hysterically.

Ethan wrapped his arms more firmly around her. “Okay. Let’s deal with these things one at a time. What’s first?”

“I don’t want to go back to D.R.”

“You are not going back to D.R. I won’t let you. Theo and I will each grab a leg, and they will have to take all of us, kicking and screaming. But I don’t think it’s going to come to that, because we’re going to call Harry Abrams and tell him we’re back to Plan A, in which you marry me. Assuming you say yes.” He let her go and stood back to scan her face.

Could he see her joy? It swelled in her chest, almost cutting off her breath.

Could he see how much she wanted to say yes to him? How close she was to saying it? How much she wanted him? How much she wanted to be his?

“Also assuming you say yes,” he continued, “my money is going to become your money, at which point you can pay your family’s outstanding bills and get Ricky started on his business.”

“I don’t think Ricky will—” Ana began, as an outraged voice from the hallway cried, “I can’t take your money!” Ricky appeared in the doorway, drawn up to his full height and frowning ferociously.

Ethan didn’t look concerned. He must be getting used to Ricky. “I’m not giving it to you. We’re”—he indicated himself and Ana—“loaning it to you. At, say, six percent interest. Higher than a bank loan,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “But then I happen to know you’re not likely to get a bank loan. Being illegal and all.”

Ricky jerked his head, surprised, then laughed out loud. “You’re a shark!” he said admiringly.

Ethan’s mouth quirked up at one corner. “I know an investment opportunity when I see one.” He turned back to Ana. “As for that CORI, it might be just as well that you’re going to have to take a break from tutoring for a while, because my wedding present to you is going back to school.”

Her heart beat faster at the thought of the dry-erase marker and cleaning-product smell of a college classroom, the feel of her brain stretching around a new concept. Then she thudded back to earth. “That’s too much. I can’t accept that. Even as a wedding present.”

Ethan took her hands in his. “Do you remember I told you that Trish worked like a crazy woman to put me through college? And I never got to pay her back. So, if this is how I choose to repay her, you’re not going to deny me that, are you?”

If her feelings got any bigger, she wouldn’t be able to breathe. She shook her head, willing herself not to cry again.

“Also,” he said, reaching for her, drawing her back into his arms, “you’re going to help me put Theo through college, so I’m paying it forward.”

Ricky coughed and disappeared into the hallway again. She leaned her cheek against the soft wool of Ethan’s suit jacket. He was giving off heat like a furnace; he must be roasting in his clothes. His chest was hard, and she reached her arms around to feel the taut muscles in his back. She felt a tightening between her legs, an answer.

“Now will you let me put this damn ring on your finger?” he demanded. “Should we take this from the top?” He knelt abruptly and held out his hand, the ring throwing off sparks in his palm. “Ana, you’re the bravest, smartest woman I’ve ever met.” His eyes held hers, warm and bright.

Her heart swelled. He’d come here, to this apartment full of people he’d known were hostile to him, had offered her himself and his money and the shelter of his citizenship, not only because she was pretty and spicy and brown-skinned but because she was brave and smart, the things she loved best about herself.

“You’re beautiful and funny and sexy, and you have a better grasp of English than people I’ve known who’ve been speaking it their whole lives. And you’re a better teacher than people who’ve gone to school to study how to teach.”

He saw how hard she’d worked and what she’d mastered and what it had cost her. He knew everything there was to know about her, who she really was, and he wanted to be with her anyway.

He was still talking. “When I’m around you, I feel like everything’s going to be okay. I feel like I’ve found my family. I don’t ever want to let you go. I will never let you go.” He hesitated. “But I don’t want to take you away from your family. Ever.”