Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper (28 page)

There was just something she recognized about them. More than their builds and coloring, it was in the way they held themselves. Hard. Intimidating.

“Your friends all live here,” she whispered and then asked louder, “How many houses do you own on this street?”

“Four.”

Katie nodded as she turned off the car and sat with Chuito in spirit, like she’d sat with him at Hal’s almost every night for the past three months. “Thank you for helping me, Chuito.”

“Yeah, we’ll see how thankful you are when school starts. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.” She nodded as she looked around her. It was a nice street. The house was big, pink, and beautiful. Katie loved the color pink. It was a good sign, and she repeated in Spanish again, “Yo puedo hacer esto.”

“You’ll have help.” Chuito sounded confident about it.

Katie took a deep breath and covered her face with her hand. “I don’t think so.”

“I do.” Chuito almost sounded amused by her emotional crisis. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

“He hasn’t said a word to me in three months. Now I’m moving in with his aunt. You don’t think that’ll be a little pushy?”

“He’s Boricua. He likes pushy.”

“This isn’t about him. It’s about me. I want to do this. I would want to do this without him. It doesn’t matter if he’s not interested anymore. Yo puedo hacer esto.”

“You can do it,” Chuito agreed. “I wouldn’t have moved you in with my mother if you couldn’t handle it. Trust me, that takes a certain strength of will.”

Katie turned around and looked behind her, seeing that all the men in the driveway across the street had stopped playing basketball. There were kids in the grass. They had been playing chase, but even the little ones were curious.

“Your friends are looking at me.”

“I’m sure.” Chuito laughed. “Practice your Spanish. Tell them not to look too hard. It’ll be bad for their health.”

She would have said something sharp and sarcastic if the front door to the big pink house hadn’t opened. A woman walked out, wearing white shorts that looked very pressed and perfect against her tanned skin. She had on a bright blue top that clung to her in all the right places, though it wasn’t demeaning.

She actually looked like one of the most put-together, elegant women Katie had ever met in her life. Like a runway model or a movie star. Oddly enough, she sort of reminded Katie of Jules Wellings. With that crisp, perfect air to her. The way her dark hair fell past her shoulders in perfect waves. She was one of those women who probably woke up looking gorgeous.

“Do you have a sister?” Katie asked as the woman walked toward the car.

“No.” Chuito sounded annoyed.

“I’m at the wrong house.”

“No, you’re not. That’s Sofia.”

“How old was she when she had you?” Katie asked quickly.

“Sixteen.”

“Oh my God,” she said and then smiled when Sofia actually opened the door. “¡Hola!”

“Hi.” Sofia gave her a wide smile, making her eyes glow. They were the same light shade as Marcos’s were and every bit as stunning on her. “Why are you sitting in the car, chica?”

“I’m, uh—” Katie was completely thrown off as she turned to the passenger seat, half expecting Chuito to be sitting beside her. “I got lost. Chuito gave me directions. We were just finishing up. He’s on speaker.”

“Hi, chico.” Sofia’s voice was warm and loving. “She’s so pretty. You didn’t tell me. And she’s got big—”

“Ay Dios mio, Ma!” Chuito shouted. “No, you promised.”

“What? She likes to hear that. All women like to hear that,” Sofia argued with an invisible Chuito. “If you’d listen to me about these things, then you’d have a woman and give me
nietos
.” Sofia turned to Katie. “He’s rich and handsome. I should have nietos by now, right?”

“I have to go, Katie,” Chuito said rather than answer her. “Good luck.”

The phone clicked off.

Sofia stood back and threw up her hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Anyway, come. Let’s go in.” Sofia stepped back and opened the door. “Are you tired? Such a long drive. Too bad you couldn’t fly.”

“Well, I needed my car.” Katie stepped out and brushed at her skirt, feeling very plain next to Chuito’s mother. “It’s nice to meet you, Sofia. Thank you so much for letting me rent the apartment.”

“Rent?” Sofia gasped. “Is he making you pay? No.” She waved her hand as if she had answered her own question. Then she wrapped her arms around Katie like they were the oldest of friends and kissed her cheek. “It’s nice to meet you too.” She pulled back and wiped at the lipstick she left on Katie’s cheek. “Don’t call me Sofia. Tía is better.”

“Tía,” Katie repeated and then looked ahead, thinking. “Aunt?”

“
Sí, muy bien
. They said you were smart.” Sofia opened the back door.

“They said?”

“Ay, this is all you have?” Sofia asked rather than explain. “To move here?”

“I have more in the trunk. I don’t need much.”

“Dios mío, if I had to move, it’d take ten moving trucks.” Sofia turned and yelled across the street, “Don’t just stand there. Come help!”

“I can carry it,” Katie argued.

“What, why?” Sofia looked horrified. “They’re just standing there staring.”

Sofia turned back and yelled in Spanish, and Katie only caught half of what she was saying. She was still a little too rattled to make her brain work properly.

“Why would a snake bite them?” Katie asked curiously.

“If they keep staring at your
tetas
a snake
will
bite them.” Sofia looked pointedly at the two men walking across the street when she spoke, obviously making sure they heard her before she gestured to the car. “Move it into the apartment in the back.”

“¿Qué?” One of the men gaped at Sofia. “In back, but—”

“No arguing.” Sofia hit his bare chest to make her point. “Luis.” She gestured to the other man. “And Neto.” She turned back to Katie and smiled. “This is Katie. She’s moving into the place out back. She’s a teacher. And Chuito’s friend. We’re supposed to be on good behavior.”

They both exchanged confused glances.

Katie decided to break the ice by sticking out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Luis.”

Luis shook her hand as he tilted his head and studied her uncertainly. “Nice to meet you too.”

She shook Neto’s hand next, noticing that both men had a snake tattoo on their arms. “Thank you, Neto, for helping.”

“In the place out back?” Neto repeated. “That’s where we’re taking this stuff?”

“Sí,” Sofia announced before Katie could. “Chica, give them your keys. They’ll put the car in the garage when they’re done.”

“Oh, okay.” Katie leaned into her car and grabbed her phone off the front seat. She put it in her purse.

“Ay, Luis, I already told you!”

Katie turned around to see Sofia hit the back of Luis’s head.

“He needs to find his own woman. Desperately.” Sofia rolled her eyes at Katie and then gestured to Luis. “Give them to him. Make him useful.”

Katie handed Luis the keys. “Thank you.”

Luis nodded. “Sure.”

“Be careful with her stuff,” Sofia warned. “Don’t be tossing it around.”

“Where are we gonna put it all?”

“Figure it out.” Sofia linked her arm through Katie’s and forced her to walk back to the house. “It’ll be nice to have a woman around. So many muchachos around here. This place is drowning in them.”

“I see,” Katie agreed, as she turned around and watched Luis and Neto start unloading the car. She’d never seen a woman handle a whole pack of men like that. Well, she knew one woman who could. “You remind me of my friend Jules Wellings.”

Sofia grinned as she opened the front door. “Chu says the same thing. I need to meet her. She sounds interesting.”

“You’d probably hate each other,” Katie mumbled as she walked in.

“Chu says that too.” Sofia held up her hands, gesturing to the inside of her house. “
Mi casa es tu casa
.”

“It’s beautiful,” Katie whispered as she looked around at this house that was probably worth a million dollars in Miami, where the cost of living was so expensive. It had high vaulted ceilings and beautiful furniture. It was warm, light, and airy. There were pictures on all the walls. Colorful masks. Paintings of island scenery that were breathtaking. Nothing was plain or unnoticeable. Every corner was bursting with life. “It suits you perfectly.”

“Chu bought it for me,” Sofia said proudly.

“He must love you very much,” Katie whispered as she thought about the tiny apartment above Jules Wellings’s office where Chuito lived.

“He does.” Sofia didn’t sound totally confident. “But he has reasons to be unhappy.”

“I know.” Katie looked to the main wall in the living room, seeing all the pictures over the couch. The young faces of Chuito, Marcos, and a smaller boy, built so differently from them, slimmer, and more angular when the two teenagers in the pictures were already thick with muscles and hard with guarded gazes. “I’m sorry about your son and sister.”

“If I’m sad about it, they’ll keep blaming themselves,” Sofia whispered as she looked at the pictures over the couch. “So we’re not sad in this house. We’re happy. For Juan and Camila I make sure everyone is happy here. They don’t want Chu and Marc to blame themselves. I know they don’t.”

Katie felt the tears roll down her face as she looked at a picture of Marcos with a woman who looked so much like Sofia, perhaps a little less vibrant, but with warm brown eyes that glowed as they looked up at Marcos, whose arm was draped over her shoulders.

Katie turned to Sofia, finding that she was a watery blur, and said again, “I’m sorry.”

“No crying.” Sofia reached up and wiped at the tears on Katie’s cheeks. “In this house, the women don’t cry.”

“Why?” Katie choked as she tried to hold back the huge sense of loss.

“’Cause we’re stronger than them,” Sofia whispered. “We let them be sad. We’re happy instead.”

“That
is
stronger,” Katie agreed.

It was so much easier to be sad. Katie couldn’t even fathom the strength it took to be happy in the face of what Sofia had lost just to make sure her son and nephew didn’t blame themselves.

“When we need to cry, we cry alone, Katie. Women should always cry alone.” Sofia sounded like she believed it. “Then we get up and make sure the world knows it can’t hurt us.”

“I’m afraid I’ve cried in front of a man before.” Katie let out a choked laugh as she remembered how hard she’d cried when she knew Marcos was leaving. “Many times.”

“We’ll work on it.” Sofia reached up and squeezed her cheeks affectionately. “And don’t worry, chica. You’re not gonna have any reason to cry in this house. This is a happy house.”

“It is,” Katie agreed, because it really was. “Thank you so much for letting me stay here.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I didn’t do it for Chu either,” Sofia said cryptically as if she needed it stated that she made her own rules. She laced her arm through Katie’s again. “Are you hungry? You must be hungry. We’ll make dinner, and you can tell me about your interview. Did it go good?”

“It did.” Katie couldn’t help but be excited about it. “They officially gave me the job.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Marcos turned off his truck in the driveway and reached over to grab the groceries he had to pick up even though he was exhausted. His aunt had texted him fourteen times making sure he didn’t forget anything.

Which was pushy, even for her.

He was swamped at work. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was buy Aunt Sofia more groceries when she could barely fit the food she had in the cabinets. Chuito said her tendency to stockpile food came from being poor for so long. She was worried the money would run out, and they’d starve again.

Marcos just thought it was a tremendous pain in his ass.

He had more than he should be able to carry, but he managed it and kicked his door shut with more force than necessary.

“Make sure no one steals my truck!” he shouted to Luis and Neto across the street. “I got to set this mierda down. I’ll be back out in a second.” They didn’t respond, and Marcos turned to them, seeing that the two of them had stopped playing ball and were just standing there, staring at them. “What?”

“You didn’t tell us you had a chica.” Luis sounded really pissed off about it too. “Is she
your chica
? ’Cause Sofia said she’s Chuito’s friend, but—”

“I don’t—” One of the bags slipped on his arm, and he cursed. “¡Carajo! Hold on! I’ll be back.”

He walked up to the door, and fought with his keys and the bags, cursing the whole time. He kicked the door open with his foot and walked in.

“Tía!” he shouted in Spanish. “Come get the fucking groceries that are going to spoil before you eat them!”

“Ay,
bendito
. So rude!” she called from the kitchen. “Bring them in here. I’m busy.”

“¿Qué?” he growled, because something sounded off in her voice. “Why are you speaking English?” he asked and then switched back to Spanish just in case. “Is someone here? What happened to Fernán? If I had to buy this shit for a date with a gringo, I’m going to—”

“Oh my God, bring the damn groceries in here,” she called back in Spanish. “There’s no gringo.”

He walked to the kitchen. “My truck’s unlocked.”

“Luis and Neto will watch it.”

“They said—”

Marcos stopped when he stepped into the kitchen. He dropped his arm in shock, and two bags slipped past his right hand and crashed to the floor.

“My eggs!” Aunt Sofia shouted as she turned from the stove.

Marcos just stood there, still holding the rest of the groceries as he stared at Katie, who was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a bag of dried black beans like she belonged there all along.

“What are you doing here?” he choked.

“I’m, uh—” Katie gestured to the bag of black beans and the silver pot next to her. “I’m sorting black beans. Apparently they package them with stray rocks in them.” Katie held up her hand as evidence, displaying a little pile of stones. “They’re really rocks. In packaged food. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Marcos couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe.