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“Piper?” she squeaked with enthusiasm. “I love her!”
Alvaro cinched his eyebrows together. “I thought he hated Piper?”
“No, no. Aquí no se odia.” Mateo, Leo’s father, who was usually quiet unless he had something profound to say—in this case, an adamant declaration that the Diaz family weren’t the hating kind—finally spoke up. Although Mateo looked slightly menacing and both his jobs, butcher and boxing instructor, involved cutting or punching things, out of everyone in Leo’s family, his father was the teddy bear. His laugh boomed like thunder, and he often cried over touching commercials on the TV. “Mari, Varo, let the poor boy speak, will you?”
“Gracias.” Leo sighed and massaged his temples. “No tengo novia, y Piper is definitely not my girlfriend.”
“¿Por qué no?” Abuelita’s eyebrows were raised in a way that said she might smack Leo with the nearest utensil or shoe if he didn’t answer correctly. He wouldn’t put it past her to whack him in the back of the head with the ear of elote on her plate.
“Porque… no le caigo para nada bien,” Leo answered carefully. ‘Dislike’ didn’t quite cover Piper’s true feelings considering she had blatantly said she hated him, but he didn’t want his family to dive too deep into the details.
“Maybe you should be nicer,” his mother declared with a slap of her palm on the table. “She drove you here. You should be grateful.” Lucia gestured to the table between them topped with a half-carved turkey as if to say it’s Thanksgiving, after all.
“She only did that because you and her aunt planned the whole thing. If I asked, she would have said no.” Leo was glad that he had gotten most of his food down while the attention was on his brothers, or he would never have gotten to eat. As it was, his mother and his grandmother began to list off all the things he should be doing to gain Piper’s affections, and he was now the one with the headache. He sat quietly and let them ramble on as his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. In the most discreet way possible, he pulled it free and glanced down at a new text message from Piper. He’d changed her name in his phone out of some weird compulsion after the last few days of back-and-forth texts.
Princesa 5:22 PM
It’s still there. I will never forgive you.
He made sure no one was looking when he sent a quick response back.
Leo 5:23 PM
I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
He grinned down at the lie he had sent and followed it up with another text.
Leo 5:23 PM
I think my abuelita is onto me. Did you do something to me?
Princesa 5:24 PM
I did many things to you. You’re going to have to be more specific.
The chortle that came out of Leo’s mouth was a mistake, a grave error he realized immediately when it interrupted whatever conversation his mother and grandmother were having. Once again, all eyes were on him.
“Who are you texting?” Marcos leaned over his shoulder to try to sneak a peek at his phone.
Leo quickly locked it. “No one.”
“Princesa?” Marcos teased. Leo cursed himself for not having faster reflexes. “I’m gonna assume that’s Piper.”
“Leonardo Rafael Diaz, ¿que les he dicho de celulares en la mesa?” Leo’s mother pointed at him, and he quickly pocketed his phone with a glare at his brother for drawing attention to him. She had full-named him, so she meant business.
“Wait, hold on.” Harper leaned over the table to look at Leo. “This is Piper Hartrick, right? As in Walker and Talia’s niece? Colin Hartrick’s sister?”
Intrigued, Leo peered around Marcos to speak with his sister-in-law. “You know her brother?”
“I know of him. I met him a total of one time when I walked in on him and my sister, Scarlett, doing things.” Her voice was low, like she was sharing a secret.
“I assume those were adult things.” Leo chuckled. Given what he knew of Colin’s exploits and Piper’s other brother—thanks to Piper’s fifteen-minute rant on the second leg of the trip about how Carter wouldn’t be joining her family for Thanksgiving—the Hartricks seemed to be a clusterfuck when it came to their love lives.
“She was depressed for a solid year after they graduated high school because of him.” The tone said that Harper was not Colin’s biggest fan, and for some reason, Leo felt oddly defensive of the guy he didn’t even know.
“I mean, people can change, though, right?” Leo argued. “Piper said he just got an internship at a cancer research lab, and he was the top of his class at Johns Hopkins. He knows an extreme amount about sunflower seeds. Maybe he’s not so bad anymore?” He didn’t know what the sunflower seed bit had to do with anything, but he couldn’t imagine it worked against his argument.
“Their aunt and uncle are good people,” Leo’s mother agreed. “So were their parents. It’s a shame what happened to them.”
