I do.” Joanna joined him at the table and sat across from him with her blue eyes trained on his face. “I take it you didn’t have much when you were growing up.”
“I had next to nothing. My parents were migrant farmworkers, chasing the next job. After my father died, my mother moved from California to Texas. She worked as a fruit picker during the season and hired out as a domestic the rest of the time.” And a midwife at night, something he didn’t care to discuss.
“What happened to your father?”
Rio didn’t like dredging up the past, but he’d left himself wide open to her questions. “An industrial accident involving some kind of machinery. I don’t know many details.”
“I’m sorry.” She sounded as if she truly was.
“Don’t be. I don’t remember him. I was too young when it happened.”
She rested her cheek on one palm. “So what made you decide to become a doctor?”
A long story, but he’d try for a condensed version. “My mother worked for a retired colonel. He knew I had an interest in medicine, so he took me under his wing since he didn’t have any kids.”
Joanna leaned forward. “Did he put you through medical school?”
That, and hell on earth. “Yeah, but first he put me into boarding school when I turned sixteen. I hated it. They made me cut my hair, robbed me of my heritage so I’d fit in. I’ve worn my hair long ever since.”
“Your culture’s very important to you, isn’t it?”
“Some aspects, yes, some not.” Especially those that defied logic.
“But you believe in your…What did you call it?”
“My onen. Mayan mythology. The sun god is a jaguar. It also foretells the arrival of foreigners.”
“Foreigners?”
“Yeah. I think my mother chose that for me since I was born in the States. But she swore it came to her in a dream. I have a hard time believing it.”
He’d never put much stock in dreams before he’d met Joanna Blake, before she had begun to disturb his own dreams. Surreal dreams. Sexual dreams.
Maybe his mother had been right to give him the onen. Joanna had come into his life, foreign to him, with a deeply engrained love for her child and a strong conviction in her work ethic. The consummate mother. A woman who deserved a considerate man to attend to her needs. Some of those needs Rio would have no problem tending, others he wasn’t so sure.
Suddenly he wondered if this was the woman his mother had told him about, the stranger who would change his life for the better. A nice thing to consider, if he really believed in all that mystical stuff. Maybe he was just too jaded to believe in forever-after or love. He sure as hell didn’t intend to settle down, conform to what society considered fitting—a marriage license and the average two kids.
Joanna remained silent with her elbows propped on the table, palms forming a resting place for her cheeks. She stared off into space as if she’d left him mentally, if not physically. He had a good idea where her thoughts had taken her.
“You’re thinking about your son,” he stated.
Joanna looked up, startled. “As a matter of fact, I was.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
She straightened and fidgeted with a corner of the cloth place mat. “Two days ago, when I told my mom I was moving.”
“I bet it’s tough on him, being without you.”
She smiled a sad mother’s smile. “It is. Tough on us both. But he’s a strong little boy. He’s had to be.”
Rio wanted to know more about her, what made her tick. What made her sad other than the absence of her son. “Tough divorce?”
“In some ways, yes. Especially on Joseph, not that he had a great relationship with his father.”
“So his father’s totally out of the picture?”
“Very much so. I don’t even know where he is. Not that I want to know.”
Sorry bastard. “Does Joseph ask about him?”
“Sometimes, but like you, he was too young to remember much about his dad. Joseph’s the best thing that came out of my marriage. He’s always been my strength.”
The unshed tears glistening in Joanna’s blue eyes caused something deep inside Rio to hurt for her, made him want to take away that pain he saw all too clearly, even though she tried to hide it with a weak smile.
“Call him now, Joanna.”
She looked surprised and thankful. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“I’d like that. But I insist on paying you for the—”
“Forget it. Just call your son.” He nodded toward the phone hanging on the wall.
She quickly rose from the chair and strode to the phone. Rio thought he should probably leave, give her some privacy, but for some reason he stayed, maybe to provide some comfort if she needed it. He doubted she’d ask, though, or easily accept his consolation.
“Joseph, it’s Mommy.” Her face immediately brightened. “You’re playing with your train? I’m so glad you like it, sweetie. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more Christmas presents, but maybe next year.”
A long pause suspended the conversation until Joanna finally said, “I’ll have to see about that bike. But you have to have training wheels until you learn to ride it.”
Rio watched Joanna from the corner of his eye while he cleared the plates from the table. She twisted the cord round and round her finger, swiped at her face now and then, raised her chin and covered her mouth on occasion. He could tell she was trying hard not to cry. If only he could do something to rid her of those tears, at least temporarily. Get her mind off her troubles. Maybe he could.
After she hung up, he held out his hand to her. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
She blinked then stared. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Surely you don’t mean that hot tub.”
“Nope. I want to show you my favorite place.”
Joanna stared with wide-eyed wonder at a room that held every indoor form of recreation imaginable, including a freestanding basketball goal on one end. A pool table sat in the middle; electronic pinball games lined the paneled walls. The only thing that even hinted at adulthood was a bar that resembled something out of a saloon, complete with a mirrored background, shelves full of liquor and inverted glasses of every shape and size dangling from a row of holders above the counter.
“This
