had been a coward. Leaving home only to try and prove his mettle on an anonymous battlefield where failure wouldn’t feel so personal. But it had. Every life lost had sucked his soul a little bit drier, leaving it little more than an arid wasteland. And now he was supposed to just wander over to the bodega with a sack of sandwiches and make everything all right again?
A surge of frustration washed through him.
“What was I supposed to do, Murph? There’s no guide for kids whose parents are shot right in front of them. My kid brother almost died. And all he had was me—the poor second to my older brothers who did the best they could in the circumstances. Looking after us, making good on their full-ride scholarships to medical school while keeping the family business running as well. They don’t write those kind of guides, mija. I did the best I could.”
Saoirse stared at him slack-jawed.
“That may have come out a bit more aggressively than I’d intended.” It didn’t sound like an apology. But it was one. The best he could do, all things considered.
She shook her head, her fingers steepling in front of her lips. Whether it was to keep words in or out he couldn’t tell.
Her fingers parted.
“So, what you’re really saying is that your brothers are the only ones in the world who would understand?”
He nodded. Maybe it was a simpleton’s view, but that’s what his heart was telling him. Saoirse could offer compassion and that, of course, was invaluable...but his brothers had understanding. They’d lived through what he’d lived through and for the first few years after their parents had died the shared experience had been an insoluble glue.
“Well, then...” she nodded at the huge paper bag the waitress was carrying in their direction “...I guess you’d better get going.”
* * *
He heard them before he saw them. The unmistakable laughter. The playful mocking. A sharp chiding for a near miss with a catering-sized can of jalapenos, chased up by a call to throw an extra case of pinto beans to “the ugly one.”
Egalitarian brother love.
In the Valentino household? They were all “the ugly one.”
“Hé!” he called out a few yards away from the back storeroom where they kept their stock.
The banter continued unabated. They obviously hadn’t heard him.
Santi repeated the call, too loudly this time, and all the hustle and bustle of stocktaking clattered to an abrupt halt.
His brothers stood as if in an artist’s tableau—all caught in the midst of an everyday action—the expressions on their faces unreadable. He held up the unmistakable delivery bag from Mad Ron’s.
What exactly do you say to the people you loved most when you’d walked out on them fifteen years earlier?
“Helibanas? They’re still hot.”
Alejandro stepped out from the shadows of the doorway, a flat of canned tomatillos in his hands, his expression unreadable.
Flaca loco, they’d called him.
Alejandro wasn’t skinny now. He looked tall, athletic...muscular. The opposite of everything those idiot gangbangers had reduced him to with their bullets.
“Hé, gordos!” Alejandro flicked his head toward Santi. “The ugly one finally decided to show.”
And with that, he threw the flat of tomatillos toward his brother as if it were weightless. “What are you waiting for, bro? Get counting.”
“HOT SAUCE, PLEASE.” Saoirse stuck out a hand.
“Someone’s getting a taste for Latino spices.” Santi laughed, pushing the bottle of fiery hot sauce across the breakfast bar counter.
“I don’t know what they put in this stuff, but it’s great!” She gleefully applied splash after splash of the green sauce to her enchiladas.
“I know. Our bodega is one of the only places to stock it. We can hardly keep it in stock.”
“Listen to you!” Saoirse teased through a mouthful of burn-your-lips-off enchiladas. “‘Our bodega.’ ‘We can hardly keep it in stock.’ When am I going to meet these mythical shopkeeping surgeons anyhow?”
Santiago bristled.
“I’m not stopping you from doing anything.”
Saoirse pulled away from the counter where they’d been wolfishly attacking their after-shift meals and gave him a wary look. One that said, Qué paso, hombre? And what’s with the arm’s-length business?
He’d felt it.
She’d felt it.
But joining up the two parts of his life that meant the most to him was proving tougher than he’d thought.
“Valentino,” she finally began, “of all the people in your life, you can count me as number one cheerleader in the thank heavens Santi’s made friends with his brothers’ club!”
“And why is that exactly? Enjoying having the place to yourself now that I’ve got more responsibilities?”
“Whoa!” Saoirse pushed her plate away and looked at him as if he’d sprouted horns. “Who put grumpy sauce on his chimichurris?”
“No one!” he bit back, confirming that someone had, in fact, put not only grumpy sauce but defensive sauce and a splash of get-off-my-back sauce into the mix, as well.
She gave him a gentle smile and a look of infinite tenderness he most assuredly didn’t deserve. “C’mon, you big macho man. Tell your...” she hesitated for a fraction of a second “...friend, Murphy, all about it.”
He opened his mouth to reply and found he couldn’t. Her choice of words was exactly the problem. Or, more accurately, just the one.
Friend.
Was that how she really saw their—whatever it was?
Sure, it hadn’t been a conventional start to a relationship. The order had been all wrong and the proposal hadn’t been a proposal, it had been...a proposition. But so much had changed in the weeks since she’d come into his life, including the way he saw her.
Much more than a friend.
Which was exactly why he didn’t want her meeting his brothers yet. She deserved more than being introduced as a green-card fiancée. Much more.
And until he found some way to pull off the jokey veneer he used to keep the mood between them light and tell her how he really felt? That he loved her? He couldn’t—wouldn’t—introduce her to his brothers. She was precious to him. And the last thing he was going to do was give his brothers even the slightest reason
