“You are certainly welcome,” Wendy said, glancing up. When their eyes met, she looked down, her cheeks red as she jumped up. “Well! I think I may as well stash the food—Eve and Lily will know where to find it—and get the dishwasher loaded.”
“I’m pretty good at dishwasher loading,” he offered.
“Thanks, maybe next time? Why don’t you relax. You must have been driving for hours. Sam, did you finish your homework?”
A tiny nod.
“Practice your poem?”
Another tiny nod.
“Then you may playAnimal Crossingon your tablet—afteryour bath and I hear your poem.”
Sam ran off, Wendy bustled around the kitchen efficiently cleaning up and stashing the remaining savory pie. She looked everywhere but at Alejo until he began to wonder if he was crowding her, and so, reluctantly, he said he’d go set up his computer and get rid of the travel dust.
Wendy’s quick, relieved smile was a bit of a bump in the road, no doubt about it. But, he told himself as he retreated, he saw no actual dislike there, or distaste, or worse, fear. She just seemed to be a bit nervous.
Take it slow, he told himself. Let her get used to you.
A cool shower later, he settled on the bed, typing up a list of materials that he’d need. Tomorrow, as they said, was another day.
THREE
WENDY
Okay, this was clearly a cosmic test.
Yes. Wendy was going to think of it that way, she decided as she whizzed through the laundry room on autopilot. Further, she would pass this test. She had vowed when she got the courage to leave Bill that she was never going to think about what she looked like, ever again. Slop frosting down her boobs at the bakery? That’s what aprons were for. Discover she had the wedgie of the century when she had to talk to Sam’s teacher? If you’re checking out people’s cabooses, you get what you get.
So when the hottest man she had ever seen in her life walks into Godiva’s house and sees her in a 79-months-pregnant chicken suit, just as her jeans rip? Hey, it could happen to anybody, right?Right?
As for Alejo Tzama, whose quick smile was so ... so sweet—there really wasn’t any other word for it, if sweet could even be in the same room with smoking hot everything else. And a man who offers to help in the kitchen? AND DOES IT?
He was definitely polite. Which was to be expected from anyone related to Godiva. If it turned out there was nothing behind that smile but Judgy McJudgerson, best to find out now, right? Move back to her house, tell the guests to eat the goodies she had already cooked and frozen for days when she couldn’t cook, and hibernate in her falling-down house until Alejo Tzama headed back east. Hopefully it wouldn’t rain. And the power would stop blinking out. And as for the broken porch...
Her phone bingle-de-beeped at her, distracting her from thinking about the dismal wreckage that was her house.
She set down the load of towels she was carrying to the rooms she and Sam used when staying at Godiva’s—luckily at the frat side of the house from where Alejo Tzama was currently...
She heard the pipes whooshing, and tried hard not to picture him in the shower.
What did you even do with giddiness like this? Until today, she’d believed that Bill had thoroughly nuked those kinds of feelings, after their disaster of a marriage. And yet here she was, nearing fifty-two, for heaven’s sake, feeling twenty again, over a man who was so out of her league they might as well have been in different solar systems.
Those dark eyes, that curling dark hair, that skin the color of warm wood.
Test, she reminded herself. And smacked her phone to life.
Wendy: A bad storm ripped through Rigo’s ranch. Rigo needs to stay here to supervise the cleanup, and all the planes are either cancelled or overbooked anyway. My son Alejo might turn up. Can you point out where everything is? He shouldn’t get underfoot once he knows what’s what—he’s housebroken.
Love, Godiva.
Wendy remembered her offer to let Godiva know he’d arrived. She shoved aside the pile of towels, sat down, and finger-typed:
He arrived safely. Everything is fine here. See you when we see you!
There, that was nice and reassuring.
She left extra towels outside Alejo’s room, then returned to get going on the nighttime routine. By the time she’d gotten Sam through his bath and poem recitation practice, then set the timer forAnimal Crossing, it was late—for her. She heard the burble of the TV from the front room. She tucked Sam in, and kissed him.
