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“I think it’s wonderful how much you cared about her. How much you still care about her.” Rosie touched his arm, then just as quickly withdrew. He wished the touch had lasted longer. Wished it had been more than just a touch.
When Ari was tiny, he’d already been afraid to leave her home alone with their mom. Even without the drugs, his mother had never quite known how to be the kind of mom Rosie was with Jorge. Though Nadine had done her best, she never knew the right thing to say or do or when to give hugs. Which was all the more reason why he shouldn’t have joined the army and left Ari alone when she was eight. But they’d needed the money, and he figured signing up was the best way to get it. Working at a fast-food joint certainly wasn’t going to cut it.
But with time, his memory had worn down some of the hard edges and smoothed out the bad parts. “We didn’t have cable,” he told Rosie. “Just this old black-and-white TV with rabbit ears. So we watched old movies and TV shows and reruns like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, even The Little Rascals.”
“And your mom loved old Westerns, didn’t she?”
“I take it that means Ari told you where my middle name came from?”
Rosie’s eyes twinkled as she confirmed his assumption. “I like your middle name. Gideon Randolph Jones. I love that it was inspired by the old Western star Randolph Scott. Those old shows were different, weren’t they? The kids played jump rope and used hula hoops and pogo sticks instead of iPad and PlayStation devices.”
He nodded. “It was a simpler time.”
Was that really true? There’d been nothing simple about carrying his mom to bed when she was on the nod from junk. But he didn’t want to think about that, not here with Rosie and the boys playing outside.
“Ari was an inquisitive little girl,” he told Rosie. “As she got older and I realized I didn’t know the answers to her questions, we would go to the library to figure out whatever we wanted to know. That’s how we learned about history and science, and so many games. If she heard about one at school, we’d learn it on the weekend.”
“I love that you did that for her.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard.”
She touched his cheek then, made him look at her. When he finally let his eyes meet hers, she said, “It might not have been hard, but most sixteen-year-old boys wouldn’t have bothered. You were very sweet to Ari. And she knows that.”
He swallowed. He’d done so many things wrong when it came to his sister, it was nearly impossible to acknowledge the things he’d done right.
“When we were in foster care, she used to talk about you all the time,” Rosie told him. “I always wished I had a brother like you.”
But he didn’t want to be her brother. Not in the least. “Do you have any sisters?”
She shook her head. “I was an only child. I was born here, but my parents’ family were in Mexico. My dad was a tree trimmer, and my mom was a cleaning lady, so we didn’t have a lot of money. But they always sent home what they could.”
“How’d you lose them?”
“A car accident when I was eleven.”
“I’m sorry.” His heart broke for the eleven-year-old girl she’d been. “Why didn’t you go to your family in Mexico?”
“I knew how badly my parents wanted me to be an American. That’s why they came here, to make sure I was born here. That’s why they sacrificed so much. So I never told anyone about my relatives in Mexico, in case the authorities wanted to send me back. Besides, I didn’t know them. California was my home.” She was matter of fact about her story, but he knew how much it must have hurt. That it likely still did. “I missed my parents so much. But I found Ari and Chi. And then I had Jorge.” She smiled. “And now with the Mavericks, I have a huge family.”
He couldn’t keep his gaze from her gorgeous mouth, her lush lips. He could feel his breath rising and falling in his chest, he could feel his heart beat. And he could feel the warmth of her skin. Her scent was sweet and heady, like the champagne they’d toasted with at the wedding.
“Gideon,” she whispered with those kissable lips.
He wanted to touch her, wanted to brush his fingertips over the smoothness of her skin. And then her lips parted, and she was so close, so very, very close. It would be so easy. God, he wanted to kiss her. Wanted just one taste.
A taste to last a lifetime.
“Mom, Gideon!” Jorge called. “Look at the cool things we’re doing with the string!”
Gideon started and stepped back. He hadn’t simply been about to kiss Rosie.
He’d been about to devour her.
“Gideon.” Her eyes were the deepest chocolate, melting him.
He was breathing hard, as though he’d been running around the block. “I’ll ask the boys what kind of pizza they want. They can go with me to pick it up.”
He backed toward the door, because if he didn’t, he’d give in to that look in her eyes, the temptation of her lips, of her kiss.
