“There’s some things you can’t talk about. You know that, right?”
“The part about the spousal visa.”
“Yeah, that one. You can tell him how you got to Cancun, how I found you…” She glanced over and added, “…without telling him I tried to pick you up.”
The sparkle in his eyes told her that he’d known that was her initial intention. That interaction could have gone so differently if…
Let it go. Don’t think about it.
“You can talk about Keith, Brazil, how I went down to get you once the visa was in place. All the normal aspects of my job, which he knows.”
He turned in his seat, studied her for a minute, and asked, “Has he ever interviewed you?”
“Here and there. Nothing in-depth. Just called and asked, on the record, about a particular player, injury, draft, trouble, like the guys playing video games in the clubhouse. This year it won’t be a problem. They’ve been banned.”
Most of the teams were doing the same. They were found to be not only a distraction from the game in play but was causing physical disabilities with fingers, hands, wrists and arms. They wanted the clubhouse to be a cheering squad, not a gaming hall.
“You have lived with players before?”
She vigorously shook her head. “No. You’re a first.”
They’d signed other men who’d had language problems or culture shock, but they’d hired someone else to shadow them. She’d been a key component in Mateo’s signing since the beginning, and Dan thought he’d feel more comfortable with her. If her boss had a devious nature, she would have thought it had to do with punishing her for what she’d done, showing her just how wrong she’d been to hitch her wagon to this shooting star. But he didn’t, so she was unsure…
“First Cuban or first live-in situation?”
“Both.”
He looked surprised but pleased.
“Your father knows this. That you’re living with me?”
“That’s what prompted his call. He’d heard through his grapevine that I am.”
“He will be upset?”
“Why would he be?”
Her parents had stopped worrying about her after the debacle with Steve. There’d been no need. She’d avoided relationships like the plague.
“Will he give me a warning, like Mac did?”
What?
“What did Mac say?”
“That I shouldn’t violate you.”
She’d never given that a thought. Mateo wasn’t like that. She’d never felt anything but safe in his company. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word. It was one of the reasons she’d gone ahead with the scheme.
“Why would he think you’d do that?”
Then the underlying meaning of that flashed.
“How does he even know? Did you—”
“I said nothing. Dan told him.”
What the fuck?
How many people was he going to share the news with? She was going to have to talk to him, and it wouldn’t be pretty if he intended to spread it further.
Mateo said generously, “Mac said it was a need to know.”
She didn’t see that at all. It wouldn’t change Mac’s game plan, wouldn’t have any bearing on Mateo’s contract or playing time. Did he want Mac to keep an eye on things? On Mateo’s behavior?
He must have read the anger that was simmering.
“They are worried about you. I appreciate their concern.”
She didn’t. This was her business, even if it was a misguided mistake and it was up to her to figure things out.
She reiterated what she’d said earlier. “I don’t want my family knowing. There’s nothing between us and I don’t want them thinking there is.”
Her father wouldn’t be surprised but he’d think she’d lost her mind. Her mother would have some kind of sage advice for her. Probably try to talk her into making it real, but there was no way she was walking on steppingstones marked, married, separated, married, divorced, back together.
“There’s actually a marriage certificate between us, but I’ll keep my lips sealed if that’s what you want.”
The song by the Go-Go’s started playing in her head. If this got out, people would talk. Problem was it wouldn’t be a careless lie, and she’d look like a complete idiot.
When she glanced over, Mateo’s face in shadow, she amended that. What woman wouldn’t fall for his good looks and his toned body? And when did she ever give a damn what people said? It had more to do with feeling the fool because of a man again. It had happened once, and she refused to let history repeat itself.
When she pulled up to the updated cape, which was nestled in a conclave of six other similar houses, small in comparison to some of the stately mansions that had sprung up over the last dozen years, something clicked in her chest. She was home. The look of pure bliss on Mateo’s face had to mirror her own. He scrambled out, inhaled the salty sea air. The gulls squawked in the frigid blue sky, and waves lapped against the stone retaining wall.
All irritation evaporated the instant she stepped out of the car, the water the first thing her eyes were always drawn to.
His voice was animated when he asked, “You grew up here?”
She took in the green space that surrounded the house, the blue ocean just beyond that always connected her to her roots. For as much turbulence as she felt over the years with the ins and outs of her parents’ marriage, walks along the beach, sitting quietly out on the deck quieted her mind and made all things right. Her mother’s grandparents had lived here and when they passed, Ida and Bob had purchased it from the estate right after they got married. It had become as much Bob’s as Ida’s, and when she left for that brief stint as someone else’s wife, she never thought about telling him to move. With her stone pottery barn on the premises, she never left for
