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Mauricio’s smile blinded him as he whooped his excitement, pulling at Richard. Once he had him over the threshold, he let him go and streaked away, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll go get my stuff!”
Watching Mauricio disappear, Richard stepped into Isabella’s home as if stepping out from under tons of rubble.
The woman closed the door behind him and guided him inside. “I’m Marta, by the way. Isabella’s mother, in case you didn’t work that out. I don’t know if Bella ever talked about me.”
She hadn’t. Isabella had never mentioned her family. When he’d tried to investigate them as part of his research into her life, there’d only been basic info until she was thirteen. Anything beyond that age had been blank until she’d married Burton. He now knew she’d later wiped out her years of marriage to him, too. But at the time he hadn’t bothered to probe the missing parts, thinking them irrelevant to his mission. But he did remember Marta was her mother’s name. She hadn’t changed her name, either.
Suddenly something else bothered him. He stopped. Marta stopped, too, her gaze questioning.
“Once your grandson puts that logical mind of his to use, he’ll realize you didn’t follow your own rule about security. You didn’t make sure I know Isabella, or if I do, that we’re on the sort of terms that make it safe to let me into your home.”
She waved his concern away. “Oh, I’m certain you know her, and well enough. And that it’s safe to invite you in.”
Warmth spread in his chest at yet another thing he’d never been exposed to. Unquestioning trust. Not even Murdock, Rafael or Isabella had trusted him so completely that quickly.
But such trust was unlikely coming from someone of Marta’s age, and one who’d grown up in a country where danger was a part of daily life to so many people.
Was she letting her guard down now that they were in the States and in a secure neighborhood? Or because she judged people by appearances and from his she judged him to be refined and civilized? If she was that trusting with strangers, she could expose them all to untold dangers.
He didn’t budge when she urged him onward, needing to make sure she didn’t make that mistake again,
either. “How did you come by that certainty? Did your daughter ever talk about me?”
“No.” She grinned. “And she’s going to hear my opinion of that omission later.” Her eyes grew serious, but remained the most genial thing he’d ever seen. “But in a long and very eventful life, I’ve learned to judge people with absolute accuracy. I’ve yet to be wrong about anyone.”
He grimaced. “You think you have an infallible danger radar? That’s even worse than having no discretion at all.”
She chuckled in response to his groan. “So you first feared I drag in anyone who comes to our door, and now you think I overestimate my judgment?” She tugged at him again, her face alight with merriment. “Don’t worry, I’m neither oblivious nor overconfident. I am a happy medium.”
He still resisted her, imagining how silly they must look, a slight woman trying to drag a behemoth more than twice her size, with him appearing the one in distress.
“What happy medium? You think I’m harmless.”
This made her giggle. “I’d sooner mistake a tiger for a kitten.” She sobered, though she continued grinning. “I think you’re extremely harmful. I know a predator when I see one, and I’ve never seen anyone I thought as lethal as you. But I’m also sure you don’t hunt the innocent or the defenseless. I have a feeling your staple diet is those who prey on them.”
His thoughts blipped, stalled. How could this woman who’d just met him read him so accurately?
She wasn’t finished. “So yes, I let you in because, beyond the personal details I don’t know, I took one look at you and knew who you are. In a disaster, and when everyone else is scared or useless, you’re the man I’d depend on to save my family.”
He gave up. On trying to predict, or even to brace himself for what the next second would bring in this Twilight Zone of a household. He also gave up any preconceptions he’d unconsciously formed about Marta since she’d come rushing after Mauricio. Once he did, he let himself see beyond her apparent simplicity to the world of wisdom, born of untold ordeals, in her gaze. This woman had seen...and survived...too much.
A kindred feeling toward her swept him almost as powerfully as the one he’d felt toward Mauricio, if different in texture.
It seemed his weakness for Isabella extended to those who shared her blood. He might have a genetic predisposition to let anyone with her DNA influence his thoughts and steer his actions.
Marta tugged him again, and this time he let her lead him inside.
As they entered a family room at the center of a home right out of a syrupy family sitcom, she said, “Mauri never opens the door, either. I don’t know why he did this time.”
He pursed his lips as he sat on a huge floral couch that jarred him with its gaiety, considering the austerity he was used to. “He probably sensed that I’m the one to defend his home against invading alien armies...before he even saw me.”
She spluttered, causing his own lips to twitch. He’d already known she wouldn’t be offended when he poked fun at her, would relish his caustic humor.
Beaming, the eyes he was learning to read held something he didn’t wish to translate. “You can joke about it, but you can actually be right. Mauri is an extremely...sensitive boy. There have been a lot of instances when he realized things he shouldn’t or felt things before they happened.”
Before he decided what to think, let alone formulate an answer, she clasped hands beneath her chin. “Now let me offer you something to drink. And you’ll stay for dinner, yes?”
“Maybe Isabella won’t want to have me.”
