A Lone Star Christmas (Texas Justice Book 3) Page 6

He blinked. “Oh?”

  “If you will show me how, I will set this timer.”

  “I…all right. But why?”

  “So that I can say it is my doing, not yours. I do not wish this to affect your…connection with him.”

  He studied her silently for a moment. “You’ve decided to let me teach him to defend himself.”

  She was not surprised he had guessed. He was, after all, a very good detective. “If you are still willing, and we can reach an agreement on compensation.” She held up a hand when he began to protest. “This discussion is for after our meal. Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am—Elena.”

  “Let me take your coat.”

  The moment the words left her lips the thought of taking other items of clothing from him flooded her mind, and she felt a rush of heat that astonished her. Thankfully he wasn’t looking at her as he shrugged off the western tailored jacket and by the time she took it from him and hung it on the rack near the door, she was back under control. She hoped.

  *

  Sean wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Some variation on the food at Valencia’s, he supposed, since she managed the place. But he was pretty sure this simple roasted chicken was not on the menu. Then again, at his first bite and the delicious zing of whatever spices had been used, maybe it should be.

  “There is cilantro in the rice,” Maria said as he scooped some out onto his plate. She sat, he’d noticed, at the head of the table, with Marcos opposite her, while he and Elena faced each other on the sides. It was all he could do not to stare at her. Those dark, silky strands of hair, loose around her face, made his fingers itch. And when his mind ramped up into imagining it in its usual tightly pulled back, classic style, and him tugging it free, he had to look away in order to focus on what her mother had said. And told himself he’d better keep his eyes to himself if he wanted to get through this without doing something irretrievably stupid.

  “Great.” He gave the older woman a smile. “I don’t have the ‘hate it’ gene.”

  “What’s that mean?” Marcos asked.

  Sean hesitated, but when Maria nodded at him he said, “Some people think whether you like cilantro or not is genetic. In your DNA.”

  The boy looked down at the large helping of rice on his own plate. “People don’t like it?”

  “Some. Crazy, huh? But it may not be their fault. It tastes different to them than it does to us.”

  The boy frowned. Glanced at his grandmother, then back to Sean. “Is that like abuela liking those nasty round, sprout things?”

  Sean gave an exaggerated shudder. “Brussels sprouts? Yeah, kind of like that. You know why they smell so much when you cook ’em?”

  Wide-eyed, Marcos shook his head. “Why?”

  Sean whispered in that same, non-secretive way he had when they’d talked about the boy being on his best behavior. “It’s a warning. So you can run and hide.”

  Marcos burst out laughing.

  “I’ll thank you not to prejudice the boy any further,” Maria said, but she was smothering a laugh of her own as she did, so he didn’t take it quite seriously. He risked a sideways glance at Elena. She was staring at him. Had he made her angry? She didn’t look angry. More…amazed. Her gaze shifted to her mother, who said nothing but nodded. Some silent, maybe female, maybe familial communication he supposed. Like around the Highwater table, when he and Sage used to share a glance over Shane and Slater’s sniping.

  There was more chatter over the meal, with Marcos regularly giving him hopeful looks he guessed were related to the lessons he seemed to seriously want. Which got him thinking, even as the boy’s grandmother plied him with questions about everything from his work to Texas history—on which she pronounced his knowledge adequate.

  “Of course it is,” Elena said at this last. “Consider who his father was.” She immediately looked as if she regretted the words. “I’m sorry, it must be painful to speak of him.”

  Sean looked at her, finally. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “It was, for a long time. But now it’s nice to know he’s not forgotten.”

  “How did he die?” Marcos asked.

  So the boy didn’t know the details. Before he could speak, Elena answered. “It was a car accident.”

  He heard the slight emphasis she put on the last word. As if she were declaring she refused to believe or traffic in the rumors. And when she looked from her son to him, the understanding he saw in her eyes told him he’d been right.

  “My dad was killed in a war,” Marcos said.

  “I know,” Sean said softly.

  “They gave him a medal,” Marcos said, staring at his plate.

  “Not much help when you want your dad, is it?”

  “No.”

  “It is very hard—is it not, Sean—when your father is a hero, but he’s gone?” Elena asked softly.

  He wanted to look at her but he kept his gaze on Marcos. “Very. I don’t know if it’s harder if it happens when you’re older, like I was, or when you are very young, like you were.”

  Marcos lifted his gaze then to Sean’s face. And said, very seriously, “Maybe it’s just…different.”

  “You know,” Sean said, his voice low, gentle, “I think you’re right. It’s just different.”

  Something flashed in the boy’s dark eyes, something that looked like gratitude that he’d understood.

  “But I gotta say,” Sean drawled, leaning back in his chair now, “that it’s a pain when your big brother is a hero, too. Come on, viral videos? How much does a guy have to live up to?”

  Marcos looked startled, but then he laughed. “You mean Chief Shane?”

  “Exactly.”

  Marcos hesitated, then his words came in a rush. “I like you better. He scares me.”

  “Scares me sometimes, too,” Sean admitted. “But in a good way. Makes me try to be better.” Not that I’ll ever live up to his standard.

  “I think you are fine just as you are,” Maria said firmly.

  “Better than fine,” Elena added quietly. “Much better.”

  Sean was at a total loss for anything to say. He had no idea how to react to this unexpected praise. And suddenly he was staring down at his plate much like Marcos had been, half-afraid he might be blushing.

  Chapter Nine

  “Let me go ahead with changing the system.” Elena turned to look at Sean as he came into the kitchen. Carrying dishes and silverware from the table, she noticed, to be placed into the dishwasher. He saw her glance, and grinned. “I’m pretty much housebroken.”

  “You are a gracious guest,” she corrected. “And I need to thank you yet again. That is the most outgoing and talkative Marcos has been in a very long time.”

  “I think it was the Brussels sprouts.”

  She couldn’t help herself, she laughed. “I hate them, too,” she whispered. “Aiyee, the smell!”

  He laughed too, and she thought not for the first time what a lovely thing it was, both his laugh and the sparkle in his eyes when he did.

  “What you said to him about his father, and telling him he was right…”

  “He’s a smart kid. Different, but smart enough to know he’s different. He’ll have to make his own peace with that, like I did, but he will. He just needs that base, that core, of knowing you love him and will stand by him no matter what.”

  She set down the glass she had been holding.

  “You are not only gracious, you are a kind and wise soul, Sean Highwater.”

  Not to mention attractive, and far, far more than “rather” sexy.

  And that he was clearly embarrassed by such praise, that it made him shyly look away, only added to his charm. For her, anyway. The fingers of the hand that had been holding the glass curled as she resisted the urge to reach up and cup his cheek. It was difficult. She wanted…no, yearned to touch him, for a sort of contact that would take this out of the realm of helpfulness and kindness.

  And that she was having such thoughts, thoughts she had not had
since the day two uniformed personnel, one of them a chaplain, had arrived at the door, rattled her more than she could deal with right now. Silly woman, she chastised herself. He could have any woman his own age that he wanted.

  And perhaps he does.

  That thought, much belated, gave her back the control she’d nearly lost.

  “Why should you go ahead with the timer?” she said quickly.

  He looked up, and his expression was relieved. If he’d known what she’d been thinking, he would look even more so.

  “I mean let Marcos know it’s me. It will make him think, weigh, decide how much he really wants these lessons. Maybe it was just a thing of that moment.”

  “I do not think so, since he has not stopped talking about it since that day, but I see your point.” She gave him a slight smile. “And it is a growing-up thing, having to make such decisions.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. But you’re wrong, you know.”

  “It happens,” he said wryly. “But about what?”

  “You would be a most excellent parent.”

  He gave her an intent look she couldn’t interpret. Then, his voice low, he said, “Maybe I’ll find out someday.”

  “Surely there are many women who would line up for the opportunity to help you find out. Perhaps an important one in your life right now.”

  She very carefully made it not a question. But he answered it as if it had been. “No. No one. And if there’s a line, I’m oblivious.” His mouth quirked wryly. “But then, I’ve been accused of that before.”

  “Just because you do not think of the things others obsess upon does not make you oblivious.”

  He blinked. Drew back slightly. Smiled, slowly, a different kind of smile than she’d seen from him before, the kind that made her think of the sun slowly rising over the hills. He lowered his gaze again, as if he were pleased, but too shy to let it show. And she found that charming as well.

  Oh, yes, Elena, you are well on your way to being charmed. Foolish woman that you are.

  “Thank you,” he said, as if he were not used to people saying such things. Then he lifted his gaze to her again. “Same goes for Marcos.” She tilted her head slightly as she looked at him quizzically. “Do you ever find yourself upset with him for not paying attention?”

  This time it was she who blinked and stared. “Often.”

  “I used to live there,” he said with a grimace. “Until my dad figured it out. That it wasn’t that I wasn’t paying attention, it was that I was so focused on something else, some puzzle or something, that it took me a moment to surface, to come back to reality and the present. And I think it might be the same for Marcos.”

  “But so often he is not doing anything at all,” she said. She wanted desperately to understand her son, for she felt she could not help him become all he could be unless she did. Could the key be here, in this most unexpected man?

  “I know it seems that way. But I bet he is. Like I do. It’s just…it’s in my head.”

  “You mean…lost in thought?”

  “Not exactly.” He stood up, not quite abruptly. “Can we…go outside for a minute?”

  “Of course.” She smiled as she rose. “It’s a clear night, and I always like to take time to look at the stars.”

  “You do?” He sounded more startled than she would have expected.

  “I do. I love them. And I am trying to teach Marcos how to recognize the constellations.”

  He gave her an oddly intense look as he held the door for her as they stepped out onto the patio. She looked up, as always, and smiled at the familiar, beloved patterns of light. Then she looked at Sean, only to find him watching her with that same intensity. But he didn’t speak, and she had to understand, for Marcos’s sake.

  “So…it is not exactly lost in thought?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. My dad called it going down the rabbit hole.” He hesitated again, as if he were unused to sharing this kind of thing. Which made it all the more special to her that he was, for Marcos’s sake. “I remember once, when I was about his age, we went to the coast and I scared the heck out of everyone by getting lost on the beach. Or so they thought.” He gave her that shy grin again. “Actually, they were lost, I never moved. I found a bottle washed up on the sand, the label was in some language I didn’t know, and I tried to search the label for a clue, maybe a city or something, but the lettering was faded out, and I saw something that looked like a Mayan temple and I wondered if the ancient Mayans had made beer because it looked like a beer bottle and how cool would it be if that’s what this was but they didn’t have glass bottles, at least not the kind with a machined pattern like this so it had to be more modern, and then I thought of how sometimes people put messages in bottles and threw them into the ocean but there was nothing in this one, so it must have just fallen off a ship or boat, maybe from wherever this was and I wondered how far away it was…”

  She knew she was staring at him, but she couldn’t help it. He’d said it all in one, long rambling sentence, and she realized he was letting her see something deeply personal, the way his mind—and perhaps her son’s—worked. How it started with something simple and, as his father had said, took off down the rabbit hole of wondering.

  He stopped, shrugged. “Next thing I knew Sage was shaking me, yelling that I was doing it again and they’d been looking for me and yelling my name for five minutes.”

  “That is…remarkable.”

  “Or weird, depending on who you ask.”

  Slowly she shook her head. “No. I suspect it is minds like that that solve the mysteries of the world.” She smiled at him. “Or the mysteries of Last Stand.”

  “Maybe Marcos will solve some of those bigger ones some day.”

  “I’m sure to many of the victims of the crimes you solve, there is nothing bigger.” Again she got that shyly pleased smile, and it pleased her in turn. Whether it was because it was just so charming, or that she had managed to bring it on she wasn’t certain. “So…when I ask Marcos what he’s thinking about, and he says ‘Things’, this is what he means? So many things, tumbling one after the other, connected and yet leading to new and unconnected things?”

  “I…think so,” he said, with an obviously embarrassed chuckle at the repetition of the word.

  Slowly she nodded. “I think—” she put a bit of emphasis on the word purposely, while smiling back at him “—I understand. And yet again I must thank you for—”

  He held up a hand and she stopped. “Please. You don’t have to thank me. In a way it’s a treat for me, to find someone else with the same…quirks.”

  “I am very sorry, Sean, if that is how you’ve been made to feel.” She meant every word of it, and let it show.

  “Not so much anymore. I’m good at what I do, and that makes a difference.”

  She liked that he wasn’t modest about his work; he’d earned the respect he had and he did not belittle it.

  When they went back inside and Marcos jumped up at Sean’s presence in the living room she knew the boy had been anxiously awaiting the results of their discussion. The discussion they hadn’t really had at all, at least not on the topic she had expected. Sean gave her a glance, with a lifted brow. She nodded.

  “Okay, buddy,” he said, crouching before where her son, so much smaller than he, sat on the couch. His tablet was in his lap, but for once she knew he hadn’t been lost in it, or he wouldn’t have known the moment they walked in. “You’ve got a decision to make.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “I do?”

  Sean nodded. “About those lessons.”

  “I want them!”

  “How much?”

  Marcos blinked. His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  Sean gestured at the game controller that sat close at hand. “The hammer’s coming down, Marcos. Time limits.”

  The boy stared at him in apparent shock. She thought about what he’d said about Marcos thinking of this as a
betrayal. It seemed true. “That’s why you’re here?” He gave her an angry glance. “’Cuz she couldn’t figure out how to do it?”

  Sometimes she did not give her son enough credit for understanding adults.

  “Here’s the deal,” Sean said quickly, before Marcos could build up a head of steam. “There are two options. You don’t give your mom a hard time about the time limits—or try to find a way around them—and we start your lessons right away. You give her flak, we don’t start at all.”

  Marcos still looked angry. Almost mutinous.

  “Or,” Sean said easily, “you could really blow up on her and the whole system gets shut down for good.” She could only classify the look her son gave both of them then as horrified. “Your mom will have a password, and can grant you extra time if, say, you do really good on something, or go a long time without hassling her about it.”

  “Big deal.”

  “There are degrees on the timer, too…it can warn you, or it can just shut down on you, whether you’re in the middle of a battle for your life or not.”

  The horror intensified.

  “I get it, Marcos. Adult decisions like this are tough. But the timer’s going on no matter what, so you might as well get something out of it you want, right? And be able to keep playing just like you have been, just not as long.”

  The horror faded a little, but the mutinous look lingered. “I thought you got it,” he muttered to Sean.

  “I do. And think about it. Think about the challenge it adds to the game. You have to not just plan what you’re going to have to do to get to where you want to be, but you have to count time now, too, how to get there before the timer goes off. It’s like a two-front battle—you against the game and the clock.” Sean grinned at him. “It makes it even more exciting. You really, really have to focus.”

  Marcos’s expression shifted, finally, to curiosity. “Did someone do this to you?”

  “Well, back in the olden days,” he said with the slightest of drawls, and she stifled a laugh at the way he said it, as if he were eighty, not thirty, “they didn’t have timers built in. So I just got unplugged and my system was locked up altogether. Then I had to wait until my dad had time to hook it up again, which usually was a week or so.”