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“My point exactly,” Winnie said over the sound of Robbie’s sneakered feet pounding down the hall, turning to smile for the lad as he burst into the room.
The light in the studio had nearly faded beyond usefulness when Aidan heard Flo’s heels clack-clacking behind him, followed by, “So what’s up with Winnie makin’ pizza in my kitchen with Robbie and some kid I don’ know from Adam?”
“About damn time you returned,” he groused, half to her, half to the painting as he wiped his brush on a rag. “And that’s Jacob. Who I know you’ve met before, because I have.”
“They all start to look the same after a while,” Flo said, the clacking—and her perfume—getting closer. “The red over here,” she said, flapping her hand at the right side of the painting. “It’s out of whack with the rest of it.”
“And you’re forgettin’ our agreement.” Aidan detested having people around while he was working, commenting on a piece that wasn’t finished yet. He had a hard enough time taking criticism after he’d wrestled the bloody things into submission—at which point it was moot, anyway—but editorial remarks while the work was in progress were absolutely verboten. Even June, who had actually let a filmmaker hang around her studio for a week—a thought that gave Aidan heartburn—had respected that Aidan did not work by committee. His housekeeper, however, had yet to evolve that far.
In fact, she shrugged and said, “An’ how is it that the woman you were ready to ship to another planet yesterday is cooking your dinner and watching your kid today?”
“Her car died. I said I’d fix it but the part won’t be in until tomorrow.”
“An’ that’s reason enough to leave her alone with Robbie? You trust her that much, that fast?”
“Yes.” Aidan frowned at the painting. “You really think there’s too much red?”
“Are you kidding? It looks like you slaughtered a pig in here. And I don’ know what you’re thinking, boss, but it don’ take no crystal ball to predict there’s gonna be broken hearts in your future. Or did you miss the way she was looking at Robbie?”
Of course he hadn’t missed it, that combination of amazement and regret that made his grilled cheese curdle in his stomach. And he didn’t know why he trusted her, why he was willing to take that risk. But the thought had come…if she had the courage to give herself this one day, what skin was it off his nose to do the same? To share with her what she’d so generously given to him and June?
“So how’s Tess?” he now said, getting up and turning his back on the painting. “Due pretty soon, isn’t she?”
“Two weeks. I helped her get the baby’s room set up, she was hoping maybe Rico’d get leave by now so he’d be here when the baby comes, but now it’s not looking good for him to get home before sometime in the spring. Amazing, with cell phones and computers and everything, how he can call home almost anytime he wants, all the way from Iraq. Not like when my Jorge was in ‘Nam, it’d be weeks, sometimes, between letters—”
“Does Robbie ever talk to you about June?”
Flo shut her open mouth. Opened it again to say, “I tried to goose him into talking about her—in the beginning, you know, even though it was hard for me, too—but he wouldn’t bite. I finally figured when he wanted to talk, he would. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Aidan said, staring distractedly at the painting. “Maybe you could make a salad to go with the pizza?”
“Yeah, boss,” Flo said in a funny voice. “I’ll go do that.”
Aidan frowned after her, thinking, What the hell…?
There’s not a woman alive, Winnie thought as she oversaw two pairs of little hands as they liberally sprinkled black olives and sliced peppers over the sauce-drenched pizza crust, who would’ve missed Flo’s you’re-encroaching-on-my-territory vibes. Although whether they were due to Winnie’s being with Robbie or being in Flo’s kitchen, she couldn’t say. Probably a bit of both.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Winnie now said as the woman went behind them with much sighing and eye-rolling and jewelry-jangling, scraping off cutting boards and wiping up flour and putting things back in the refrigerator. “We were gonna clean up our mess as soon as the pizza went in the oven.”
“It’s no bother, it’s my job,” Flo said, somehow managing to not look directly at her while keeping an eye on her at the same time.
Honestly.
“Is it ready?” Robbie said, radiating pride, and Winnie’s heart turned over in her chest.
“It’s ready.”
The pizza in the oven, Winnie sent boys and dog off to play while it was baking, then grabbed a sponge to clean the one spot the housekeeper had somehow missed. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but it was getting late and the boys were hungry—”
“And jus’ what do you think you’re doing?”
Winnie blinked. “Making supper?”
“Don’ you play that game with me,” Flo said, jabbing a long-nailed finger in Winnie’s direction. “Why are you making Robbie fall for you, when you know you’re only gonna leave an’ break his heart?”
When Winnie found her voice again, she said, “What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been here exactly one afternoon! I hardly think—”
“Then maybe you should think more. Especially before you act.”
Winnie folded her arms over her whumping heart. “It wasn’t like I planned on being here today! In fact, I was all set to leave this morning, only then my stupid truck broke down, so I came up here for a freakin’ phone book because there isn’t one in the house and where else was I supposed to go? Only Aidan said he didn’t know where it was—”
“It’s right there!” Flo said, exasperated, pointing to something that sure looked like a phone book, right underneath the telephone on the wall next to the fridge. “Where it’s been ever since I came to work here!”
“I’m only tellin’ you what he said,” Winnie said, thinking, Men, honest to God. “Anyway,” she continued while she was on her roll, “so then he took it on himself to play mechanic, which resulted in him taking me into Santa Fe, only nobody there had the part I needed. Then we picked Robbie up from school because apparently Aidan had no idea it was a short day and you weren’t around, and the kid wanted me to come to lunch and I would’ve backed out but Aidan said it was okay, okay? Not me. So once I was here I offered to watch the kids so Aidan could get some work done since he’d already lost half a day on account of that damn part, and then it got late so I went ahead and made supper because it seemed the logical thing to do. So if that makes me some kind of, I don’t know, manipulative hussy or something, well, ex-cuse me for living!”
Florita looked at her for several seconds, burst out laughing, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, it’s jus’ that I worry ‘bout them, you know? An’ I see you worming your way into this family, making pizza in my kitchen, an’ I think, this chick, she doesn’t have any family of her own—”
“And you think I’m trying to find an instant family here?” When Flo shrugged, Winnie sighed, figuring this rat terrier of a housekeeper was the least of her worries. “Trust me, nothing could be further from my mind. All I was doing was making supper. And then tomorrow Aidan will fix my truck and I’ll be outta everybody’s hair for good.”
Flo gave her a speculative look, then turned to the meatlocker-size refrigerator to get out salad fixings. “You made the pizza from scratch?”
If that was Flo’s attempt at being conciliatory, Winnie supposed she could climb down off her high horse for a minute or two. “I found flour and yeast and that pizza stone under the cabinet, so I made up a crust dough earlier. It was either that or meat loaf for fifty.”
Winnie saw the woman’s glittery mouth twitch as she dumped lettuce, tomatoes and a cucumber on the counter. “You should be married.”
“I’ll put it on my list. But this is your business how?”
“You’re in my kitchen,” she said, pulling several leaves off a head of romaine, “I get to ask the questions. Besides, it’s boring as hell up here, I got nothin’ else to do.”
Grabbing the cucumber and peeler, Winnie went to the sink to strip it. “What can I say, it just hasn’t happened for me yet.”
“Some pendejo dumped you?” she heard behind her.
“More than one, actually,” Winnie said, getting the gist.
“Pretty girl like you, I’m surprised the men aren’t lined up for miles.”
“I live in a town smaller than this one, Flo,” Winnie said, thinking, Pretty? “There’s not enough available men to line up for twenty feet, let alone miles. And half of those…” She shuddered.
“So you should move.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I couldn’t before now. And anyway, it’s not that easy to pull up roots that deep. Especially when you haven’t had two seconds to think about what comes next.” Winnie handed the now naked cucumber to Flo, then glanced outside just as the last rays of sunset gilded the landscape. “It’s really beautiful up here. Closest thing we’ve got to mountains back home is the occasional dead armadillo by the side of the road.”
“The winters can be a bitch, though.”
“Can’t be any worse than gettin’ a sand facial every time you walk out your door.”
Flo almost chuckled. “Tierra Rosa’s jus’ like any other small town, it’s got its good and its bad.”
“You’re still here.”
“Like you said…deep roots.”
Winnie slid up onto a stool across from Flo, propping one booted foot on the railing at the base of the breakfast bar, her arms crossed. “I gather June was from around here, too?”
A shadow crossed the housekeeper’s features before she said, “Nearby. Next town over. Her folks’re gone now, too.” Her knife passing through a tomato in slow motion, she added, “Sometimes, I can almos’ still feel her presence.”
“Whose presence? June’s?”
“Yes. Especially as it gets closer to Los Días de Los Muertos. You know about that?”
“The Days of the Dead? Sure. Well, a little. A couple Mexican families back home observe it. I never really got it, myself.”
“You think it’s spooky, no?” Flo said with a grin. “But it’s not like that for us, it’s a celebration. We don’t go all out the way they do in Mexico, maybe, but it’s still important. We get together, we remember those who’ve gone on before, we laugh, we tell stories, we show them we haven’t forgotten them, that they still live in our memories. Our hearts. So in a way, they really do ‘come back’ to visit us, you see? It’s a time to show we’re not afraid of death, because it can’t really take our loved ones from us. Not in the way that most matters.”
“Oh. When you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. But what if…?”
Flo’s eyes lifted to hers. “What?”
“Nothing,” Winnie said, refusing to let moroseness gain a foothold. Like wondering about people who die with no family. Who celebrates their lives? Who remembers them?
“You know,” Flo was saying, “everybody loved Miss June. She could cut a person down to size with three words if they had it coming, but Dios mío, I never knew anyone with a bigger heart.” Her mouth thinned. “I know people sometimes said things. Mean things. Because Miss June was so much older than the boss. But what does love know about age?” she added with a shrug. “About friendship. ‘Cause you never saw two people who were better friends. And I know he still misses her real bad.”
“I’m sure he does,” Winnie said, thinking, Okay, cutie, time for a reality check. That she was leaving the following day. That she was smart enough not to confuse chemistry and sympathy and loneliness with anything real. “You call him ‘the boss’?”
Flo smiled. “Miss June would call him that sometimes, just to get a rise out of him. They’d be arguin’ about somethin’, an’ she get this real amused look on her face, and go ‘Whatever you say, b-boss…’”
The last words were barely out of the housekeeper’s mouth before she dissolved into embarrassed tears. Winnie immediately went to her and wrapped her in her arms, getting the strangest, strongest feeling that if June had any idea how mopey everybody was around here, she’d be hugely pissed.
And that while Winnie was here, maybe she should see what she could do about that.
Chapter Seven
Winnie Porter was a strange bird indeed, Aidan decided as he sat across from her at the dining table, its dings and gouges probably hailing from New Mexico’s territorial days.
He’d hung outside the kitchen, listening to her and Flo’s conversation probably far longer than was politic, simply because he’d been too mesmerized to do anything else. Her moods apparently dipped and swerved like a roller coaster, with every bit of the accompanying dizziness and nausea. Women were hard enough to understand when they were levelheaded; one like Winnie…
“Why was six afraid of seven?” Robbie piped up, his mouth full of fresh, aromatic, bubbly-cheesed pizza.
“I have no idea,” Winnie said, aiming a wink in Aidan’s direction, and he thought, What? “Why was six afraid of seven?”
“Because seven ate nine!” Robbie said, both he and Jacob, exploding into knee-slapping laughter, which got Annabelle to barking and spinning in circles for no apparent reason. Winnie laughed, too, just as hard, even though Aidan sincerely doubted she’d never heard the joke before. Then she launched into a series of truly terrible riddles, half of which the boys already knew—which only seemed to make them laugh harder—and the laughter and the barking crescendoed until it seemed the very room would burst.
Winnie’s eyes touched his, begging him to join in.
Barely able to breathe, Aidan got up from the table to refill his tea glass, at which point he realized the jollity had apparently infected his housekeeper, as well. Now this is more like it, he thought he heard her say, although it didn’t really sound like her voice, it sounded like—
He shook his head to clear it. He was knackered, was all, having not slept well in months. Which probably accounted for why the room suddenly seemed brighter than he remembered, the reds and golds and rich blues vibrant in the warm overhead light. He squinted at the fixture: Had Flo changed the bulbs to a higher wattage?
His glass refilled, Aidan returned to his seat. Winnie looked up, grinning full out, breathless, her cheeks flushed, and Thank God you’re leaving and Too bad you’re leaving collided underneath his skull like a pair of daft footballers.
“Dad! Dad! Guess what Winnie taught us?”
“Three-card monte?” Aidan said drily, and Robbie said, “Huh?” as Winnie said, “Honestly, Aidan, give me some credit,” and Robbie said, “No—chess!”
Aidan looked at Winnie. “Chess?”
“Yeah, he had that beautiful set on the shelf in his room, I asked him if he knew how to play and he said no, so I taught him. Him and Jacob,” she said with the kind of smile for Robbie’s friend that young boys had been falling in love with since God did that little hocus-pocus thing with Adam’s rib.
Aidan swallowed down the flare of annoyance, that June had ordered the Harry Potter set for Robbie for his eighth birthday with explicit instructions that Aidan teach their son how to play. That Winnie knew how to play chess.
Not to mention everyone who crossed her path.
Except Aidan, of course. Aidan was immune to being played—
“It’s so cool,” Robbie said. “Almost as cool as Mario Galaxy—Hey!” he squawked as a bit of black olive bounced off his nose. “Who did that?”
“Who did what?” Winnie said, all innocence as she took a sip of her iced tea, and Aidan opened his mouth, only to close it again, refusing to let himself feel…
Alive?
“Somebody threw an olive at me!”
“It was you!” Jacob yelled, eyes alight, pointing at Winnie. “I saw you!”
“Was not,” Winnie said, picking a pepperoni slice off her pizza and chucking it at Jacob, which set off a whole new round of giggles. Then a mushroom bounced off Aidan’s forehead and the boys roared, and from the other end of the kitchen Flo threw her hands up and muttered something in Spanish that Aidan only half heard, and when he met Winnie’s gaze she cocked her head at him, grinning, her eyes full of mischief and mayhem, and he thought, No.
But not before the sucker punch hit. With far more devastation than the mushroom. Because from somewhere deep, deep inside him, a funny, fuzzy feeling bubbled up, like inhaling helium.
Go with it, babe…
Aidan picked up the artillerized fungus. “Lose something?” he said, his gaze locked with hers.
She grinned, full of herself. Smug. Dangerous. “Consider it a gift,” she said.
Only to shriek with laughter when he threw it back.
An hour later, Aidan sneaked a glance at Winnie’s face as his truck jostled down the mountain to take Winnie and Annabelle back to the Old House, then Jacob home. Behind him, the boys squealed every time the truck hit a bump. Beside him, Winnie smiled, thinking more secret Winnie thoughts. Aidan jerked his head back around, telling himself he wasn’t interested. In her thoughts, or…anything else.
Now there’s a lie for you.
Feeling his nostrils flare, a certain swift, hot kick to his groin, Aidan shifted gears as they navigated a particularly steep part of the road. Two years ago he wouldn’t have believed it possible that the time would come when he wouldn’t miss sex. Until June got sick, and things changed, and Aidan basically put his libido in cold storage.
Then June died, and what would have been the point in taking it back out?
Not that he didn’t occasionally still think about That Side of Things, as his mother would say. But not so much about having sex—or not—as how strangely easy it had been to simply disconnect one or two crucial wires. That he hadn’t felt deprived so much as disinterested.
Until tonight.
