slipped from her throat. “I don’t care about the fire or the food. That’s the least of my worries. I’m such a mess. I can’t seem to control my emotions. I start crying at the drop of a hat. My life is in chaos and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to set it right.”
“I know how you feel,” Ryan said, tipping her chin up and capturing her gaze with his.
“Yeah, I guess you do.”
He grabbed her hand and gave her fingers a squeeze. “Why don’t we sit down on the sofa and relax. I’ll call for a pizza and we’ll get to work. You can make pozole for me again some other night.”
He gently helped her to her feet and led her over to the sofa, then returned to the kitchen to order the pizza. Ryan found a beer in the refrigerator and brought her a glass of orange juice. Then he settled on the sofa beside her, his arm draped over the back. “So, where do we start?”
“Well, since I know pretty much everything about you, we should start with me.”
“How do you know about me?” he asked after taking a sip of his beer.
“I did a pretty extensive investigation before I came to see you at the drilling site. A bachelor’s and master’s degree from Texas A and M, dean’s list, graduated cum laude, bought your first well with money you made in the stock market, built your business into a multimillion—”
“All right, all right,” Ryan said. “Let’s start with your family.”
“My papi, Diego, came from Mexico when he was fifteen. He worked picking vegetables in California until he found a job in a factory. He got his high school diploma going to night classes. He lived the American dream, working his way up, saving his pennies, until he and my mother bought a small electronics factory in El Paso. Now it’s huge and he makes components for the auto industry. I think you’ll have a lot in common.”
“And your mother?”
Jennifer slid down to the end of the couch and stretched her feet out in front of her, leaning back onto a throw pillow. “Mamá. She’ll be a little tougher. Her name is Carmen and she’s the glue that holds our family together. She’s lived in this country nearly all her life and she has very high expectations for her children. We all must go to college, find a good job and marry a nice Catholic.”
“Well, that will be a problem then,” Ryan said. “I’m not a very good Catholic. I haven’t been to church in ages, although I used to be an altar boy. That should count for something shouldn’t it?”
“It doesn’t make a difference since we really aren’t getting married,” Jennifer said with a smile.
He slipped her sandals off her feet and tucked her bare toes beneath his thigh. “Brothers and sisters?”
“Four. Joe is nineteen, Maria will be fifteen on Saturday, Linda is ten and Teresa is eight.”
“And Jennifer?”
“I’m twenty five,” she said. “I went to U of T in El Paso and got a degree in accounting.”
“Accounting,” he said. “Kind of an odd background for a private investigator, isn’t it?”
She sat up. “Now, there’s another problem we need to discuss. You see, my parents don’t know I’m a P.I. They think I’m an accountant for the office. I don’t think they’d approve, they wouldn’t find it respectable enough. So if the subject of my career comes up, which I’m sure it will, don’t tell them the truth.”
“I can vouch that you’re a good P.I.,” Ryan said. “Look how you tried to help Lucy. You couldn’t do something so important as an accountant, could you?”
“I guess not. It’s just that I’ve spent my life trying not to disappoint my parents and yet trying to live my own life. You don’t know the pressure of being the oldest child, the perfect little girl. I turned into a rebel at an early age.”
“You couldn’t have been that bad,” Ryan said, “to turn out so well.”
Jennifer gave him a grudging smile. “As a child, I was a tomboy. Always with tangled hair and skinned knees. In high school, I wore short skirts and ran with a fast crowd. In college, I partied a little too much. And look at me now. I was supposed to remain a virgin until I got married. Breaking that little rule will become quite obvious in another month.”
“What about the baby? How do you plan to tell them about that?” Ryan asked.
Jennifer groaned, then closed her eyes and flopped back on the pillow. “I don’t know. I was just going to wing it. Wait for the right moment and then tell them the whole thing all at once. I figured with Maria’s quinceañera and all the guests, there wouldn’t be a chance to interrogate me—or you.” She drew a shaky breath. “It’s probably going to get a little tense when we tell them about the baby and there will probably be a lot of accusations leveled at you.” Jennifer sat up and looked at him. “You can back out if you want. I’ll understand.”
He idly rubbed her leg, his palm sliding from her ankle along her calf and back again. Delicious sensations skittered over her skin at his touch. Though they barely knew each other, the action seemed perfectly natural. After all, he was her fiancé—at least for the next few months.
Still, it felt good to have a man pay attention to her. She’d been so lonely these past months, dealing with her pregnancy all by herself, wondering if she could handle so many changes on her own, frightened of what the future held. She felt safer when Ryan was near.
For the rest of the evening, they traded details of their lives and made up a few memories of their own—the night they met, their first kiss, the special spot where Ryan asked her to marry him, the first time they heard the baby’s heartbeat. And when they’d exhausted every subject and eaten the last piece of pizza, Jennifer walked Ryan to the door.
He bent closer and brushed a kiss on her cheek and then promised to be ready by noon on Friday. After she closed the door behind him, Jennifer reached up and touched her cheek, finding it still warm from the contact. She closed her eyes and sighed. Though it had been a nice kiss, she couldn’t help but wish that he’d kissed her like he had the previous day, his lips warm on hers, her face cupped between his palms.
For the first time since she’d thought of this preposterous plan, she actually believed it might work. With Ryan’s help, she felt as if she could accomplish anything. And it was clear he was a kind and charming man. How could her parents not fall in love with him? She already—
Jennifer sucked in a sharp breath and pushed the words from her brain. Yes, he was a wonderful man, the sort of man she might imagine spending her life with. But when she’d decided to have this baby, she’d also decided to raise it alone. She had her career and her own life and she’d worked hard at independence. She wasn’t about to give that all up now just because some guy had been nice to her.
“This will work,” she murmured. “I’ll tell my parents, I’ll come back to Odessa, we’ll break up and I’ll never see him again.”
But the thought of Ryan Madison disappearing from her life caused a sharp pang of regret. Was she really doing the right thing, using him like this? And would she be able to put him in the past and get on with her life as if she’d never known him?
CHAPTER
