“Thank you again.”
Nydia smiled. “There’s no need to thank me. As friends we do what we can to help each other out.”
Lamar applied the slightest pressure on her fingers. “Is that what you want, Nydia?
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you just want to be friends, or could we possibly become more?”
Nydia carefully pondered her response. She, who usually blurted out whatever came to mind, knew whatever she said would change her and her association with Lamar. He was someone who’d managed to penetrate the wall she’d erected so she would not become involved in a romantic relationship. She was now in what she thought of as her business mode. Doing the payroll for the three restaurateurs was time-consuming, and she was also singly focused on becoming an innkeeper in a new state where she would be more than a thousand miles away from her family. She now thought of Tonya, Hannah, and Jasmine as her older sisters in her newly formed family. And she had to ask herself if she was ready to become involved with a man with a ready-made family, because she had never envisioned herself as a stepmother—and especially to a preteen girl with all of the angst that went along with maturing into a woman.
She knew the instant she’d seen Lamar’s image in the video intercom that he hadn’t been that altruistic in coming to her rescue, but had an ulterior motive—and that was he was interested in her the way a man was in a woman. Nydia was grateful, flattered, and most of all deeply affected by his coming to her rescue. She’d had two relationships, and once they ended she took a long, hard look at herself and what she had given up in order to make them work.
Tough-girl, fast-talking Nydia Stephanie Santiago had permitted men to use her for their own selfish needs; she knew and refused to acknowledge it until it was too late. And if Jasmine, and expressly Tonya, who regarded her as a daughter, hadn’t told her get rid of Danny, she probably would have continued to see him.
She saw something in the eyes of the man who had shown her nothing but confidence since their initial meeting and wondered if he was going through what she felt—indecision and perhaps a hint of fear. A hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth as she winked at him. Lamar was everything she’d want in a man with whom to have a relationship, and she did not want to pass up the opportunity to date someone who was honest and mature enough to say what he felt and wanted.
“We can becomemucho más que amigos,” she said, mixing English and Spanish.
Lamar kissed her fingers again. “We’d better get out of this car before I do something that would ruin both our reputations.”
Nydia pressed her forehead to his. “And what’s that?” she teased. Lamar put his mouth to her ear and whispered what he would like to do to her. She gasped. “That is so kinky!”
He pulled back. “You think nerds can’t get kinky?”
She laughed until tears filled her eyes, turning them into pools of green and gold. Nydia was still laughing when Lamar got out and came around to help her out of the SUV. And for the first time in a very long time she felt as if she did not have a care in the world as they walked, holding hands, along Bourbon Street, passing strings of bars offering lethal concoctions with names that made her afraid to take a sip. Blues, rock, and jazz could be heard from open doorways as locals and tourists jockeyed for space along the crowded street.
Lamar pointed to the lacy balconies on the buildings above the sidewalks. “They’re usually so crowded from the weight of drinking revelers during Mardi Gas that it’s a miracle they haven’t collapsed to the streets below.”
“Do you attend Mardi Gras?” she asked him.
“Not anymore. There was a time when I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Did you go every year?”
“I did until I left for college. I went the first time when I was sixteen and drank myself into a stupor. When I got home my father raised so much hell that I swore I’d never drink again until I was legal.”
“Did you keep that vow?”
Lamar nodded. “My father was very easygoing, but if you riled him up he was like a tiger ready to pounce. He knew I wanted to go away to college and said if he even suspected I was drinking then I would have to live at home and attend a local school. And as long as I lived under his roof I’d do whatever he said or get out.”
She grimaced. “Ouch!”
“Dad was once a drill sergeant in the Corps, so he saw himself as a badass with everyone except my mother and sister. After he put in for his discharge he used his military benefits to attend college and became an orthodontist.”
“So that’s why you have such beautiful teeth.”
Lamar pulled Nydia to his chest when a man came toward them weaving unsteadily as he tried drinking from a go-cup. “The first time my braces were removed I refused to wear the retainer so they shifted, so I had to endure them a second time. That’s when I learned to wear the retainer every night for almost two years.”
“I noticed Kendra has braces.”
“She has teeth like mine. My dad died two years before Kendra was born, so she never got to meet her grandfather.”
“What about her maternal grandparents?”
“That’s a long story, Nydia.”
“Is it something too personal to disclose?”
