Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life) (11 page)

Leni checked her watch. “I told Jo I would sit with Frankie
for a couple of hours later this evening, but we could still go get lunch and
maybe a pedicure if you want to get out of here and take your mind off things
for a little while.”

Eva sipped her tea and considered that. That paralyzing fear
she’d initially felt when that first test instantly showed a positive result
threatened to take over again and her eyes filled with tears.

She brought her other knee up and swiped tears away. “God, I
fucking hate to cry.”

“Not me. I love a good, all-out blubber-fest,” Leni told her
matter-of-factly. She stood and got the roll of toilet paper off the foot of
Eva’s bed. “Jamie teases me all the time for it, but I love turning on the Hallmark
channel and curling up on the corner of the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a
box of tissues.”

She handed Eva the roll and she pulled off a long enough
piece she could dry her tears and blow her nose. “I’m afraid to go out in
public looking like this.”

Leni propped her hands on her hips and gave Eva an assessing
look. “We could order pizza and give each other pedicures here if you’d like.”

“The only nail polish I have is a bottle of black from
Halloween three years ago.”

Leni’s expression turned droll. “You’re really not making
this easy for me.”

Eva laughed. “There’s a drugstore in town,” she said,
meaning the small town a few miles from the Smiths’ property. “We could get
pedicure supplies, pizza
and
ice cream while we’re out.”

“Now you’re talkin’.” Leni put her hands on Eva’s shoulders,
looked into her eyes, completely serious. “You think you can keep it together
long enough to pop in and out of the store or do you want me to go by myself?”

Eva rolled her eyes. “I think I can handle a quick run into
town.”

“Good.” Leni hugged her tight. “Get your shoes and we’ll
go.” She didn’t let go right away, and Eva didn’t mind the extra few seconds.
“You’re going to be all right, you know that, don’t you?”

Eva sighed, skeptical even as she felt a little of the
weight of her situation lift.

“I’m glad you’re so sure.”

Oscar had been to the Rodriguez house so many times in more
than thirty years there was no way he could possibly count them. The only other
time he could remember being as nervous as he was about walking up to the front
door was the first time Diego had dragged him home after their first day of
kindergarten.

By then he’d been living with his grandmother for three
years. Before that, his only real experience with other children had been in
Sunday school, one hour a week. And even then he couldn’t recall having
interacted with the other kids unless he’d absolutely had to. He’d stuck to the
back of the room as much as possible, only answering questions or sharing
projects when the well-meaning teacher called on him.

He could clearly remember sitting on the narrow strip of
lawn at the edge of the playground, watching the other kids play when
Diego—who’d been chubby and highly energetic—ran up and told him he was sitting
in molten lava and he’d better get his ass up if he didn’t want to die.

Oscar still wasn’t sure if it had been Diego’s absolute
self-confidence that Oscar would get up and play along or Oscar’s sheer awe for
the fact that Diego had said the word “ass” out loud, but he’d jumped up and
followed him to safety. They’d been saving each other from lava and other
dangers from that day forward.

On the way home they’d discovered they walked the same path
to and from school, and when Diego asked Oscar if he wanted to meet his mom and
dad, he’d liked the sound of that. His stomach had been a riot of knots as he’d
followed Diego up the front walk with a mixture of reluctance and excitement.

Jamie and Tammy had been a couple of rambunctious toddlers
back then. Diego Sr. had been quietly intimidating in his way at first, but he
remembered thinking Brenda was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen—young
and fresh and smiling the way he sometimes imagined his own mother would look
if she was alive. She’d made him feel as if he was as welcome in her house as
one of her own right from the start.

As Oscar parked his Harley on the street in front of the
enormous Victorian house that had once been home to upward of nine people, he
felt that same mixture of fear and excitement he’d once felt as a kid. Yes,
he’d been part of their family all those years, but his relationship with Eva
had crossed an unfamiliar line.

Just as he reached the bottom of the porch steps, Tammy’s
son Louis came running out the front door and launched himself at Oscar with a
cheerful, “Uncle Ozzie!”

Oscar caught him, swung him onto his left hip and got his
bearings just in time for Scott to come flying at him a moment later. He spun
both of them around, making them laugh wildly, then stopped as Tammy came out
the door after them.

“One of these days you’re going to throw your back out, or
worse, letting them use you like playground equipment the way you do,” she
said, smiling even as she scolded him. In her eyes they’d been too big for him
to toss them around for a long time. As long as Oscar could still pick them up,
he didn’t mind it one bit.

“If they break my back I suppose I’ll have to steal them
from you and turn them into my minions.” He gave Scott a perfectly serious
look. “They can clean my house and fetch my meals.” He turned and made a
playfully evil face at Louis. “Wash my feet when they start to stink.”

Louis wiggled free with a head-splitting, “
Ew!”
and
Scott said, “I know how to make cereal,” as he took Oscar’s riding glasses off
his head and put them on.

“Holy cow, you look just like Uncle Ozzie,” Tammy told Scott
when he grinned at her, the glasses barely balanced on his small nose. “What
are you doing here on a Tuesday afternoon?” she asked Oscar. “No work today?”

“I was hoping to find both of your parents home.”

Jamie had mentioned they were off work for the week and
planned to stay home instead of travel the way they usually did in summer.

“You’re in luck,” she said with a smile. “But you’d better
hurry. Mom just fed us all a big lunch and Dad was starting to eye his favorite
nap spot on the couch.” She narrowed her eyes. “Everything all right?”

Good question. “Either way, I’m sure you’ll hear all about
it soon enough.”

“Hmm, mysterious as ever,” she said with a mildly amused
smirk. She gave Scott a light, playful swat on his bottom. “Give Oscar his
glasses and a kiss goodbye.”

Scott put the glasses back on Oscar’s head and kissed his
cheek.

“Be good for your mom,” Oscar told him as he set Scott on
his feet.

“Always,” Scott said with a shrug, and headed for Tammy’s
SUV in the driveway.

Oscar smiled at Tammy, who rolled her eyes, fully aware of
how hilarious her kids were. He picked Louis up and gave him a quick hug. “You
too.”

Louis just giggled evilly and made a mad dash for the car
after his brother.

“You be good too,” he told Tammy, giving her a kiss on the
cheek and a hug.

“Whatever it is you’re here to talk to them about, good
luck,” she said, giving him another scrutinizing look before she walked away to
help the boys with their seatbelts.

He watched her go—not at all surprised that she’d picked up
on the somewhat serious reason for his visit—waiting until they were driving
down the street before he turned and found Brenda standing in the doorway.

“Well hello there,” she said as she came out the screen door.

“Hey, Mom.” Christ, would she still let him call her that
once he told her he’d been secretly seeing her youngest child? “You and Pop
have a few minutes for me?”

She went up on the balls of her feet to hug him as he
stepped up onto the porch.

“Always,” she told him, smiling. “Come on in. I think my
husband is still upright.”

“Tammy warned me you tried to induce a coma with lunch.” He
closed the door behind himself and Diego Sr. appeared in the front foyer. “Hey,
Pop,” he said, and they shook hands the way they always did.

“There’s plenty left if you’re hungry,” Brenda said, leading
the way through the hall to the big kitchen at the back of the house.

There was no way Oscar could think about putting a bite of
food in his stomach.

He cleared his dry throat. “I ate before I came over. Thank
you anyway.”

“Something to drink then?” she asked, going to the cupboard
for a glass.

“Just water please.” He realized his hands were shaking as
he pulled out a chair and, after waiting for Diego to sit, slowly lowered himself
into it.

“What brings you by?” Diego asked, getting right down to
business, which was fine with Oscar. The sooner he got what he needed to say
out in the open, the better.

“I need to tell you about Eva and me,” he started.

Brenda stopped in the middle of pouring him a glass of water
from a pitcher, set it on the counter and turned to face him. Diego went eerily
still.

“We’ve been…” He swallowed hard, nervous. Unfortunately,
there was no other way out than through. “We’ve been seeing each other.”

Brenda’s eyebrows went up. Diego laced his fingers together.

“Seeing each other,” Eva’s loving, protective father
repeated. His expression had become the kind of unreadable that was
frightening—the way an attack dog that didn’t bark before it chased you down and
mauled your ass half to death was frightening.

“It started the weekend of Jamie’s wedding.”

Brenda’s eyes went wide. “That was almost three months ago.”

“We wanted to take some time, figure out what was really
going on between us before we told anyone.”

She didn’t say anything to that, just looked at her husband,
who was staring at Oscar as if he’d never seen him before.

“I’m in love with her,” he continued. “We’re in love. With
each other.” He was rambling like an idiot, but it was a huge relief to finally
tell them. “We—”

Diego’s hands slammed onto the tabletop. His face had gone
deep red. “Are you telling me you’re fucking my daughter?” he asked, his voice
terribly calm.

“Diego,” Brenda admonished quietly.

Oscar’s temper sparked. “I just told you that I love her.”

“I let you in my house since you were a child,” Diego
continued, his accent thick the way it got when he was angry. He rose to his
feet, palms still on the table, and leaned toward Oscar. “You come here as if
you were my own son all of these years, and this is how you repay me? By taking
advantage of my little girl?”

Oscar rose to his feet as well, sickened by the look of
disgust on Diego’s face. “As you well know, there is no blood between Eva and
me, and I mean no disrespect toward you or Mom.”

“
No
,” Diego bellowed, punching his arm out and
pointing his finger in Brenda’s direction so fast she flinched, shocked and
surprised. “She is not your mother,” that finger stabbed into his own chest,
“and I am not your
Pop
,” he sneered, his face so red it was nearly
purple with rage.

“That’s enough,” Brenda said, stepping close and laying a
hand on his shoulder. Oscar could see she was just as surprised as he was by
the way Diego was reacting.

Oscar took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm, but
Jesus, he had not been expecting this. Eva had been spot-on when she’d said
Diego was going to lose his mind when he found out about them—she’d just pegged
the wrong Diego.

“All right then,
Mr. Rodriguez
,” he said pointedly.
“I came here to respectfully tell you that I’m in love with your daughter, and
that I want to marry her if she’ll have me.”

Diego’s lips peeled back from his clenched teeth and he
rattled off a rapid-fire string of Spanish in a viciously low tone. Oscar’s
stomach began to roil violently because he understood every single angry word.
Clearly.

“Diego,
please
,” Brenda shouted over him, shocking
her husband into silence.

He cut off mid-sentence and turned to gape at her,
wild-eyed.

She softened and laid her hand on his shoulder again.
“Before you say anything else you can’t take back, just walk away and take a
minute to clear your head.”

“You’re all right with this?” he asked, his tone both
disgusted and incredulous.

“You and I can talk about this another time.” She lowered
her hand. “Please.”

“I’ll go,” Oscar said, finding his voice even though all the
air seemed to have been sucked out of his lungs and he was so angry he was
shaking from head to toe. “I’m sorry I upset you, and I am…so sorry you feel
this way,” he said, and left the kitchen as quickly as he could.

He forced himself not to slam out the front door, took the
stairs down the porch two at a time and practically ran down the front walk.
He’d rocked his bike upright, lifted the kickstand and had just jammed the key
into the ignition when Brenda came jogging down the walk after him, calling his
name.

Oscar lowered the bike to resting, swung his leg over and
sat heavily on the seat. His heart felt as sick as his stomach and he was
unnervingly close to losing it.

“I won’t make excuses for my husband’s reaction,” she said
as she reached him. “I never would have expected that from him. He has always
considered you one of the family the same way I do. You have to know that.”

“Which I suppose is why he reacted that way,” Oscar answered
heavily.

“Maybe,” she said with a sigh, glancing over her shoulder at
the house. “Give it a little time. I think once he’s had time to process what
you just told us, he’ll see things differently.”

He met Brenda’s worried gaze. “If he doesn’t, I can’t be the
wrench in the machine that is this family.” He looked down the street, took a
moment to collect himself, looked back. “Which is a problem, because I can’t
live without her anymore either.”

She stepped close and took one of his hands in hers. “Diego
and I are a team, but we do not see eye to eye on this. I can’t say that I’m
not shocked, because you completely blindsided both of us with this news, but
I’m not unhappy about it either.”

She smiled and Oscar got a glimpse of how beautiful Eva was
going to be at her mother’s age, with her happy life showing in the small lines
around her pretty eyes.

A small sliver of hope worked its way into his heart.

“Why didn’t she come with you?” she asked. “He might have
taken this better if he’d heard this from her. Or, if he didn’t, she would at
least be able to talk him down.”

She was right. In hindsight Oscar could see that coming
without her was a terrible decision. Diego Sr. would deny it with his last
breath, but there was no mistaking the fact that Eva was forever going to be
his little girl, and his favorite.

He sighed heavily. “She doesn’t know I’m here. She’s
probably going to kill me for talking to you on my own, and maybe she’ll be
right, but I had this stupid, romantic idea about asking the two of you for her
hand in marriage.”

“It was a gorgeous idea, Oscar.” She laid her hand on his
cheek, her eyes full of warm emotion. “I think he’ll come around and see it
that way as well. Give him time.”

Oscar wondered if Eva would consider marrying him without
her father’s approval, and then dismissed the thought as quickly as it had
appeared. Earning the wrath of the only father figure he’d ever known was more
than he could deal with at the moment. He couldn’t consider the possibility
that he might lose Eva as well.

“I’ll talk to him,” she promised.

“Thank you.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek and she
hugged him tight. “I’m going to go get my ass handed to me by your daughter
now.”

“You can handle whatever Eva throws your way,” she told him,
stepping away from the bike so he could straddle the seat again. “I’ve seen you
do it many times over the years. You don’t let her get away with behaving like
a spoiled brat,” she said with a huge amount of affection. “I’m sure it’s one
of the many things she loves about you.”