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His exquisite eyes widened behind his glasses, and Gina heard what she’d said. She’d just admitted her most secret fear—that losing her parents as she had, combined with those hours she and Jase had been buried beneath the earth, had broken her in some indefinable way. Obviously men sensed this and turned away from her as quickly as they could.
So … what was wrong with Teo? Why did he continue to hang around? Why did he stare at her as if he thought she was fascinating? Why did he listen to her as if he thought she had something to say?
“You think there’s something wrong with you?” he asked.
“Never mind.” She’d never told anyone that, not even Jase. She’d wanted to seem like less of a loser, but instead she only looked like more of one.
“I do mind.” Teo’s eyes flashed. “How can you think such a thing?”
“I’m not feminine or witty. I can’t carry on a conversation like the As.”
“Neither one of them has ever carried on a conversation with anyone but themselves.”
“I’ve never
had a boyfriend,” she blurted. “First dates, yes. Second?” She shook her head.
“Probably because McCord tells everyone he’ll end them.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
Teo’s lips tightened, as if he wanted to argue; then he sighed. “He was right to be worried.”
“Worried?” she echoed.
For an instant she thought Teo might kiss her and oh, how she wanted him to. To hell with the no-bopping-the-customers rule.
Suddenly he looked down and stepped back. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
He headed for his tent, leaving Gina to stare after him and wonder, yet again, what she had done.
* * *
He had to tell Gina the truth. About who he was, why he was here. Before he did something stupid like kiss her, touch her, take her. If he did that, how would he ever be able to explain who he was afterward?
Matt ducked into his tent, kicked off his boots, and crawled into his bedroll. He figured he’d lie awake, thinking of her; instead, he’d barely closed his eyes and he was dreaming.
Another tent, one of many he and his mother had shared. There Nora pored over her papers, scribbling notes, talking to herself. Matt, perhaps eight, maybe ten, lay on the cot in the corner, pretending to study math but in reality studying her as she translated Aztec to English. He did that so often that by the time she’d decided to teach him the language he already knew.
“Time for bed, mi hijo.”
His mother shut her books, put away her papers, and joined him on the cot. As she did every night, she told Matt the story she’d uncovered, the one that kept them searching long past the point when most others would have given up.
“One great army marched farther north than any other. And though the People of the Sun were the greatest warriors ever known, they met strong resistance, and they lost more of their own than ever before.”
Matt snuggled under the covers. He might hear this tale every single night, but it was always exciting. Because it was her story and had, through the constant telling of it, become theirs. He wondered if he could even sleep if he didn’t first become drowsy listening to the familiar cadence of the words.
“However,” his mother continued in the slightly hoarse voice that was a mark of the Mecates, “the Aztecs, being Aztecs, weren’t going to just turn around and go home.”
“No,” Matt said, his voice very much like hers even then. “They wouldn’t run; they’d never hide.”
She ran her hand over his overly long, tousled dark hair that was but a shade lighter than hers. “That’s right, Teo de mio. Instead, they brought forth their most powerful warrior—a sorcerer who struck fear into the hearts he would soon devour—and he mowed through the natives like a cuetlachtli.”
“A ravenous wolf!” Matt translated.
As if in answer to Nora’s tale, or perhaps Matt’s words, a distant, triumphant howl pierced the night. However, neither the youthful Teo nor the yet youthful and alive Nora reacted to the call, which made the watching, dreaming Matt stir. Where was that sound coming from?
Here or there? Then or now?
