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She moved to the refrigerator and peered inside, seemingly intent on its well-stocked contents, but Ben had seen the white lines of tension that had appeared around her mouth in spite of her smile and accepting words. As for there being no hard feelings, the look that had come into those expressive Mexican eyes was as close to panic as Ben Calder had ever seen.
“Are those crickets, Mama?” Tina asked, snuggling back between her mother’s open knees as they sat on the porch steps of the little guest house and listened to the sounds of a desert night.
“I think so.” Maria continued her rhythmic brushing of the little girl’s hair, the repetitive motion soothing to them both.
“They sound awfully loud for crickets. They aren’t so loud in Phoenix.”
“They get drowned out by the sirens.” Juanita Romero’s voice creaked through the darkness, drier even than the creaking of the rocking chair she kept in motion with an occasional nudge of her walking stick against the wooden floorboards.
Trisha, Maria’s oldest daughter, looked up at the night sky, her head tilted so far back her long hair touched the step behind her. “And there’s a lot more stars up here, did you notice that, Mama?”
“I think you might be right.” Maria’s eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. She wanted crickets for her children. She wanted stars. They had to stay, there must be a way.
“Mama, not so hard! You’re hurting me,” Tina tried to pull her head away from Maria’s unintentional increase in pressure.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” Sighing, Maria resumed the gentle movement. Of course Mr. Calder was right, she admitted to herself. She knew she was stepping over the line to bring everyone up here and foist them on him. But what choice had she had? She was still haunted by that look on Veronica’s face that horrible morning last week. The cool evening around her faded, replaced by the interior of her Phoenix apartment, as Maria remembered.
“He’s gone.” Veronica had wearily leaned her head back against the top of the sofa, her dark hair fanning out to cover the worn spot in the avocado tweed. The baby she held in her arms listlessly nuzzled her breast, too hot to suckle.
“Tucson isn’t exactly the ends of the earth, you know.” Maria had tried her best to keep her tone low and soothing, both for her sister’s sake and not to disturb the fussy infant, quieted for the first time that morning.
“He won’t be back.” Veronica’s voice was as flat as her dark eyes. “I’m surprised he hasn’t bolted sooner. This family doesn’t have the best luck keeping men around.”
Maria’s lips turned up in a mirthless smile of agreement.
“He said the job’s just for the summer, but I know he’ll keep right on going.” Veronica shifted, trying to pull her blouse away from her sweat-sticky back. The movement caused the baby to let out a wail of protest and Veronica froze, then carefully leaned back against the sofa again. Both women let out a sigh of relief when the baby began to nurse. “Roberto loves you,” Maria insisted. “And you both agreed that he couldn’t pass up this job. You’ll need that money for his tuition this fall.”
God, she looks so tired, Maria thought as she watched her sister, pale and gaunt, run a finger along the rhythmically moving cheek of her infant daughter. The pregnancy had been very hard on her, and it hadn’t helped that she’d worked right up to the day she delivered, long shifts on her feet at the family’s restaurant. Maria still winced, remembering the sight of her sister’s swollen ankles.
She wished she could offer her some reassurance. Roberto did love her. But their first year of marriage had been difficult, marrying so soon after graduation and getting pregnant almost immediately. When Roberto’s uncle had offered him a summer job in Tucson at wages too good to turn down, he’d jumped at it.
For her sister’s sake, Maria had to believe he’d be back, in spite of the way his phone calls had suddenly stopped and Veronica’s letters went unanswered. Although, as Veronica had said, there’d hardly been a man in the family so far who’d stuck around. Was Roberto, barely twenty years old, going to be more responsible and mature than the rest?
“You know Linda’s losing her apartment?” Veronica asked.
Maria nodded at the mention of their older sister. “Mama told me they’re turning her building into condos. I said she could stay here while she’s looking for a new place but I don’t know where we’re going to put David. I hate to put him in the same room with the girls. It’d be hell trying to get three kids to sleep at night.”
“And he’s so hyper. He’s been giving Linda fits. Ever since his dad took off, it’s been one thing after another.”
They listened in silence while the swamp cooler growled ineffectively at the heat. Maria watched the water leaking around the edges of the old machine run down the wallpaper and drip into the pan on the floor, a faint round rust stain on the vinyl marking the exact spot for it.
“I guess I should get going. I told Mama I’d be home for lunch.” But Veronica made no move to rise.
Maria felt the sweat that had pooled behind her knees begin to trickle down the backs of her legs. She wiped at it with her hands, then rubbed her hands against her shorts. “I’ll fix you something, if you want.” Maria knew she sounded almost as lethargic as her sister, stupefied by the heat.
“I hate Phoenix in the summer.” But Veronica seemed unable to put any emotion into the words. “It’s supposed to get up to one hundred and five today.”
The noise of Maria’s girls squabbling in their bedroom began to grow more insistent and a siren rose somewhere outside. It would be nice to be able to leave Phoenix in the summer like most of their customers did, Maria thought. With college out, their little family restaurant was nearly empty most evenings, and not only was time hanging heavy but bills were mounting. Even a quick weekend up to Flagstaff was out of the question.
Little Tina came bursting into the room, waving a doll with long blond hair, her sister in hot pursuit. “Mama, I had it first! Tell her it’s mine! It’s mine!” Maria was engulfed by crying, angry girls, the awakened baby began to wail and the siren in the background got louder and closer.
Get out! something inside Maria screamed. I’ve got to get out! The words went around and around in her brain as she fought for a gulp of cool air in the stifling apartment. I have to get my family out of here!
Maria started, brought back to the present by Tina’s impatient wiggling. She resumed her brushing, staring into the dark over her daughter’s head. That ad in the paper had been like a sign. She would have said anything, agreed to anything, to get the job. Three months out here away from the city, with nothing but sandstone and sagebrush and fresh air and hard work—it was just what they all needed, adults as well as kids. She had to find a way to make Mr. Calder see it would work out.
But Maria remembered the way he’d glared at her in the kitchen, that stubborn look of a man used to getting his own way in eyes the same gray as the sage all around. Benjamin Calder had said no. Politely, yet firmly.
Maria listened to the incredible richness of sound of the quiet country night, surrounded by her family, all safe and happy for the time being. Benjamin Calder might have said no, she told herself, but Benjamin Calder was a man. And for Maria Soldata and the women she knew, men were something to be worked around, something to ignore as much as possible—something to survive in spite of.
The sound of laughter drew Ben to the kitchen window that looked out on the guest house. He walked over, shirt pulled out of his jeans and unbuttoned to the waist, and turned slightly so he could see through the crack in the sheer white curtains.
Two of the children tumbled about on the grass at the edge of the porch, somersaulting themselves dizzy. The old woman rocked in the chair Vergie always sat in to do her knitting, just a silhouette in the evening shadows. The girl was in the porch swing, her hand keeping up a steady patting motion against the back of the baby she held to her shoulder.
His about-to-be-ex-housekeeper, Maria Soldata, who had just finished fixing him the best meal he’d eaten in two weeks, brushed the hair of one of the little girls, Tony or Tiny or something like that, spotlighted by the yellow light coming through the open door behind them. He watched her hands move. First the stroke of the brush with one hand, followed by a smoothing caress of the other hand-smoothing, stroking, smoothing, stroking.
Their voices drifted across to him, low and indistinguishable, an occasional word of Spanish spicing the sound. Family talk. Ben thought of Connor, who should be there in two more days. Family.
He reached out to flip off the light switch and stood there in the darkened kitchen. He knew that the feeling that gripped him, held him by the window, was envy.
Ben woke to the smell of bacon and fresh coffee, the aroma tantalizing his eyes open. He rolled over and looked at the clock. Five-thirty. Damn that woman, anyway! That wasn’t playing fair. How’d she know he’d been eating cold cereal for the past two weeks?
He picked his jeans off the floor, swatted them a few times to try to remove some of the dust and pulled them on. They were his last clean pair—or least dirty pair, anyway. Thankfully, he still had a couple of clean work shirts in the closet. He took one from the hanger and shrugged into it, then picked up yesterday’s from the foot of the bed. Struggling into his boots, he took the shirt down the hall to the laundry room to add it to the overflowing basket.
Except the basket wasn’t overflowing anymore. The washer hummed and the dryer purred and neatly folded stacks of clean clothes covered both surfaces. Damn that woman, anyway. How’d she know this was his last pair of clean socks?
The spotless living room, two weeks’ worth of newspapers gone from the coffee table, annoyed him even further, and when he heard the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen…that was the last straw. How’d she know how much he hated waking up to a silent, empty house?
He stomped into the kitchen and glared at Maria and the man at his table.
“Morning, boss,” Harvey Wainright, his hired hand, greeted him, happily downing a plate of eggs and hash browns.
“It won’t work,” Ben announced, ignoring Harvey.
“So you said.” Maria indicated the table with the coffeepot she held in her hand and left the stove to pour him a cup. “How do you want your eggs?”
Grimly, he sat down in front of the steaming cup. “Sunny-side up.”
“That’s not good for you anymore, you know. What with salmonella in the chickens these days, you need to cook your eggs more. I’ll make them over-easy.”
“I said sunny-side up.” There she went again! Completely ignoring him just like last night, as if he was of no account. “Those eggs come from my chickens and my chickens don’t have salmonella and I’ll eat them raw if I want to!” “Easy there, boss,” Harvey said, his faded eyes opening wide in surprise. “You know, I read about that salmonella thing a while back. You can’t be too careful. And Maria makes darned good over-easy.” He smiled his gap-toothed smile at Maria.
“That’s okay, Harvey. If he grows his own chickens, then I’m sure sunny-side up will be perfectly all right.”
“You don’t grow chickens. You raise chickens,” Ben mumbled into his cup, annoyed by Harvey’s good mood. Frowning, he watched Maria crack the eggs into the pan, making the melted butter sizzle.
“It wasn’t necessary to do all this, you know,” he addressed her back. “Since it’s not going to work out, I mean.”
“It wasn’t any trouble.”
“I’ll pay you for your time so far.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I insist.” He leaned forward to take his checkbook from the back pocket of his jeans.
Maria made no further protest. She slid the eggs from the pan onto the waiting plate, added a scoop of hash browns, some bacon and four pieces of buttered toast.
Ben propped the check next to the saltshaker, then began to eat in moody silence, only half listening to Harvey. His eyes strayed often to Maria as she cleaned up the kitchen.
When the clock reached six, Ben scraped back his chair and stood. “It’s time to get to work. I won’t be back to the house till noon so I guess I’ll say goodbye now. You’ll probably want to head out while it’s still cool.”
“All right. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Thanks for the meals and the laundry and all.”
Maria nodded.
“Anyway, uh, thanks.” Why did he feel as if he should apologize? The last thing he needed was a pack of kids running all over the place and a crying baby and a mean-looking old woman.
“Nice meeting you, Maria.” Harvey bobbed his grizzled head and the two men headed out the kitchen door, letting the screen door slam behind them.
“She did your laundry?” Maria could hear Harvey’s voice through the open window as they walked across the yard to the corral.
“Shut up, Harvey.”
“Real good cook.”
“Shut up, Harvey.”
“Pretty little thing, too.”
“I said shut up, Harvey.”
“Lot easier on your eyes than old Vergie, the vipertongued, rat-eyed…” Their voices faded away in the distance.
Maria finished the last of the dishes and went outside. The morning was glorious, golden and clean. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob to the guest house and turned around, surveying the red hills in the distance. Huge cottonwoods ringed the house in a circle of shade, the only sound the wind in their leaves, the clucking of chickens somewhere nearby, the faraway barking of a dog.
She pushed open the door and clapped her hands sharply together; the sound shot through the silent rooms. “Up and at ‘em!” She moved into the bedroom and began jiggling sleeping bodies, pulling back warm covers. “Up, everybody. It’s time to get to work!”
Ben swore as he bounced his pickup into the yard and came to a stop next to the green station wagon that was supposed to have been on its way back to Phoenix hours ago. He peered through the dusty windows, but the cracked vinyl seats were empty—no boxes, bags or packed suitcases. Damn, damn and double damn!
He took the porch stairs two at a time and strode through the door. His nose was immediately assaulted by the sickening-sweet smell of lemon polish, and his first step of booted foot on the throw rug sent him skidding, bucking across the mirror-smooth floor like he was riding a bull, his arms windmilling wildly for balance. He regained his footing with an ignominious grab for the coatrack, aimed a few choice words at the offending rug, then gave it a vicious kick back toward the door. It sailed effortlessly across the newly polished wooden boards to land in a wrinkled pile of woven cotton cowering against the doorjamb.
The smell of lemon wax gave way to the bite of bleach as he passed the open door to the bathroom. He smelled tomatoes as he stormed into the kitchen, bellowing for Maria. A pot of tomato soup simmered on the stove and a plate of sandwiches towered on the table, reflecting light off the clear plastic wrap protecting them. His check remained where he’d left it next to the salt.
“Maria!” he shouted again. Impatiently, Ben pulled back the curtain over the sink that looked out on the garden and the guest house.
He stared in dismay at the sight that greeted him. His garden had sprouted more than zucchini, it seemed. Three small children were on their knees, a growing pile of weeds beside each little figure. Veronica bent over the green beans, tying their slender tendrils to a string stretched above them. Maria had a hoe in her hands and steadily and methodically struck it into the ground around the ankle-high corn, neatly slicing the offending weeds out at the root. Ben watched her, fascinated by the smooth movement of her muscles as she swung the hoe, the strength in her long, tanned legs in their cutoff shorts, the way her bare toes dug into the dirt.
It was after one o’clock and the sun was high overhead and hot enough to have even the old lady, rocking in the shade with the baby propped against her ample stomach, wiping at her forehead. It was hard, backbreaking work he watched, yet all he heard was…happiness. High, childish voices made a nonstop background to the women’s talk, an occasional reprimand from one of them as a small hand mistook a plant for a weed, the squeals and coos of the contented baby.
And he was going to send them packing.
Another sound made itself heard, a jarring, out-of-place sound that ripped through the hot summer afternoon. It was an engine, open full throttle and roaring in protest; it was the sickening, tearing sound of a too-low undercarriage scraping over a high spot in the dirt road; it was the squeal of brakes and spraying of gravel.
Ben went out the kitchen door, not daring the slippery living room again. A sinking feeling grew in his stomach as he anticipated what he would find. He rounded the corner of the house and there, in his driveway, was a brand-new, shiny red convertible, its radio blasting out the annoying, repetitive beat of rap. Leaping from the car, not bothering to open the door, was his son, Connor Calder.
“Hey, Dad! What do you think? Isn’t she great?” Connor’s chest stuck out so far his shoulder blades almost touched in back as he preened in front of his car.
“She’s great, son.” Ben tried to swallow his dismay at his son’s day-early arrival. He saw the children appear and sidle up beside him. Their grandmother came, too, walking with heavy, slow steps, a baby in one arm and stick in the other. All were curious to see what caused the commotion. And there was Maria. They formed a warm, protective wall behind him, an insulating presence that helped absorb some of the roar and the rap and the blinding glare of the red sports car.
“Connor, I’d like you to meet Maria Soldata. She’s my housekeeper for the summer. And this is her family—they’ll be staying with her.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_c86b7c0e-90ab-5cef-a175-45d980a76832)
“Hey.” The boy’s bored, insolent greeting was accompanied by a flick of his head to move long brown bangs out of his eyes. They were the same sage gray as his father’s, Maria noticed. She wondered at the stiffness of the man beside her, and wondered even more at his sudden change of heart in letting them stay, and she wondered most of all what this boy had to do with it.
Suddenly, Connor snapped to attention. “Chaqui-i-i-ta!” he drawled. “Who’s the babe?”
Maria followed the boy’s eyes and saw that Veronica had joined the group. Barefoot, wiping her hands on her shorts, she looked young and lovely.
“Could you please turn off that music so we don’t have to shout,” Ben asked.
“Sure, man, chill out.” Connor leaned over inside the car and flipped a knob. “So who’s the hot tamale over there?”
Maria saw Ben’s fingers curl into his palm, making a fist tight enough to turn his knuckles white. He looked as if his hand itched with the need to connect with the seat of his son’s hole-filled jeans.
“This young lady is Veronica, Maria’s sister.” Ben stared pointedly at the boy. “And young ladies are to be spoken to with respect.”
“Respect. Absolutely. In fact, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven—respectfully.” Connor’s reverent gaze was fixed on Veronica.
Veronica rolled her eyes, but Maria saw the faint blush on her cheeks and the beginning of a smile she tried to suppress. Obviously, what sounded obnoxious to Maria didn’t strike her younger sister quite that way.
“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,” Ben said.
“Mom and Mike got me the wheels yesterday for my birthday.” He ran his hand lovingly along the door. “Man, it’s great having a stepdad who owns a car dealership, ain’t it? Oh, thanks for the check, too. I used it to get these mag beauties here. Great, huh?” Connor pulled his eyes from Veronica and leaned over to admire himself in one of the chrome wheels, frowning for a moment at the layer of dust it had accumulated. “Anyway, now that I’m mobile, I wanted a chance to test it out—so, here I am.”
With the self-centeredness of youth always sure of a welcome, he walked past his father and over to Veronica. “If you’re ever in the market for a car, I’ve got connections. I can get you something really sweet.” He flipped his bangs.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Veronica said dryly.
“Want to go for a spin?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got work to do.”
“Not me. I’m on vacation. Take a rain check on that ride, okay?” Connor persisted.
“We’ll see.”
