the tangy tequila, letting it shudder down their spines as it took effect.
Santi gave Saoirse the most sober look she thought she’d ever seen him wear.
“Well,” he began somberly, “I guess we know who’s not up for being best man.”
Laughter didn’t even begin to cover Saoirse’s response to the tension-cutting comment. It was an all-body-encompassing giggle, snort, companionable watering-eyes laugh-until-the-tears-started-falling-out response.
When she finally had the wherewithal to wipe her eyes and stop laughing she met Santi’s inquisitive gaze and realized they were at a crossroads.
“All right, Murph, it’s time to get real.” Santi took a long draft of ice water as if it were some sort of strongman tonic. Like Mr. Muscles needed it. “Are we going to do this thing?”
“Look...um...” Saoirse opted to draw designs in the water rings her margarita had left on the table in lieu of looking at Santi. “Don’t you even want to know the story?”
Santi shrugged. “I trust you, but if it would make you feel better...”
“Ha! I know you, you sly old dog. Very clever. Trying to wheedle the truth out of me by pretending not to care.” It was a weak dodge but, wow, did she hate talking about herself. Even if she’d been the one to offer.
“Of course I care—but if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. That’s all I’m saying.” And he looked like he meant it. Saoirse felt her heart swell with gratitude. And a little bit of something else she thought she’d better shove right back wherever it had come from.
“I feel like I owe it to you.” That much was true. If he was going to just casually enter into a state of wedded bliss with her, he might as well know why.
“Fair enough.”
Santi signaled to the waitress to bring them a menu before refocusing on Saoirse, who was giving him her best you’re-joking-with-me-aren’t-you face.
“What?” he protested. “If we’re going to be here awhile, I might as well fortify myself. Have you tried the carnitas? Ron makes them.” He kissed his fingertips in appreciation. “Muy delicioso.”
“Want them at the wedding reception?” Saoirse joked.
“Qué?” This time the glint of humor was missing in his eyes. “You want the whole white wedding thing after...after...?”
“What? You mean after getting utterly humiliated in front of everyone I’d ever met in my entire life because my fiancé couldn’t take it that it turned out I can’t have children?”
There was probably a less embittered way to describe the moment when all of her marital dreams had gone up in smoke, but right now she couldn’t think of one.
The waitress appeared as Santi’s jaw was still dropping. Saoirse tersely ordered two plates of carnitas and a bucket of tortilla chips. Extra-salty. She waved her hand before the waitress had turned away and doubled the order. She loved those things and if Santi was going to bail on her now, she might as well eat her body weight in tortillas before heading back to Ireland. It wouldn’t matter if she was the size of a whale because nuns’ habits were extra accommodating and from the looks of things a life of solitary confinement behind a thick stone wall was the only thing on offer.
Santi was looking absolutely mortified and she had half a mind to get up and leave. But when she’d come so far in so few months only to give up at the final—albeit very, very monumentally tall—hurdle? No way.
“You’re all right, Santi. Don’t you worry. I don’t want the whole white wedding with lollipop-colored bridesmaids, if that’s what’s keeping you so slack-jawed,” Saoirse said.
“No,” he responded quickly. “I just can’t believe a man who truly loved a woman would walk out on her like that. For such a ridiculous reason.”
“I guess he wanted children a whole lot more than he wanted me,” she said without self-pity “I never realized how much I wanted them until I found out I couldn’t. Come to think of it, if you want children of your own, this whole thing would be really stupid for you.”
“Why?”
“Uh—the age thing?”
“I’ll be virile in my nineties, chica,” Santi countered with a sly fox grin.
“You wish. C’mon. It’s important. Have you thought about having children?”
“I’ve never really thought about it.”
* * *
It was a semitruthful response. Of course he’d love children. One day. But the checklist of things he needed to set right was a long one. And until he felt all the i’s had been dotted and t’s crossed? It was for the best he wasn’t adding babies into the mix. Babies and the women who had them generally wanted a real wedding. A real marriage. Like his parents had shared. He knew he’d probably idealized the memories a bit by now but...
He swore silently. Those days were gone. Artifice was a good starting point for him.
Saoirse propped her chin in her cupped hand and stared at him. Hard. “And you are absolutely sure it doesn’t bother you that if we do this thing, you’ll be off the proverbial market for the next couple of years while I wait to get my green card?”
A lot of things bothered him. Spending time with Saoirse wasn’t one of them.
“Why do you want to live here so badly?” It was easier to bounce questions off her than answer her probing questions.
“Because it’s the total opposite of everything I know,” she answered, her face lighting up as if she’d found her true place in the world. “I know I haven’t been in Miami for long, but I feel like I belong here.” She smiled as the waitress slipped a basket of warm tortilla chips onto the table. After munching through a handful, she leaned forward, elbows perched on the picnic table, body alive with whatever it was she was formulating in that overactive brain of hers.
Whoever won her heart in the end, he realized, would be winning pure gold. Would he really be able to do this and not get attached? Not...wonder?
He tuned in to what she was saying, realizing that simply staring at her lips was very likely a failure in the fiancé department.
“Back home, everyone knew everything about me so making decisions, doing anything at all—my job, my hair, my clothes—and choices weren’t an option. It was as though my life had already been written in stone, you know?”
Santi nodded his head, but he didn’t. Until his parents had been killed everything had been about choices, opportunities. His parents had moved their world straight into the heart of the oyster that was meant to hold all the pearls. It had been up to him and his brothers to reach out and grab the right one. And when their lives had been so brutally ended?
Everything he’d thought a childhood should have been had been swept under an inky-black darkness that had all but suffocated him. So, sure. There were decisions. But the pearls had all been yanked well out of reach.
It was why getting used
