A Lone Star Christmas (Texas Justice Book 3) Page 8

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember your mother? You were about the same age, were you not, when she died?”

  Well, he hadn’t expected that one. Serves you right, Highwater, for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong in personal crap.

  “Different,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to remember her.”

  It was a moment before she said softly, “I am sorry. That you and your brothers and sister did not have the kind of mother you should have.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. He’d always known it was general knowledge, what his mother had done to herself. “We were better off. We did all right. Dad saw to that.”

  “Indeed he did. You did a lot better than just all right.”

  And before he could read too much into her words, or the look she gave him as she spoke them, Marcos was back, clutching his pack with his school clothes trailing out of it as if he’d just hastily stuffed them into it.

  “I’m starved, Mom!”

  She smiled at her son. “Then we must see about dinner. I need to stop back by the restaurant, so you can have something there.”

  “Sean can come, right? He’s hungry too.”

  Damn. He hadn’t expected that one, either. “That’s okay, Marcos,” he said hastily.

  “I don’t think Sean likes the food there, Marcos.”

  Sean blinked. “What? I love Valencia’s food.”

  “See, Mom! Let’s go.”

  “You never come in,” she said.

  She’d…noticed? “I…usually have someone pick up takeout.”

  Suddenly her eyes widened. “I’m so sorry, Sean. I didn’t think. Of course you don’t want to go there. Not after…what happened right there.”

  He couldn’t quite believe that in this instance, he hadn’t even thought about that, the fact that his father had been killed practically in front of the place.

  “I didn’t…that’s not…” He shut his mouth, gave his head a sharp shake.

  “Come on,” Marcos urged, clearly not understanding or caring about the adult discussion. Sean understood; at that age if he was hungry that was all that mattered.

  “You would be most, most welcome,” Elena said, the sincerity of it unquestionable, “but we will understand if you would rather not.”

  He did what he rarely did in his life, made a snap decision. “Give me fifteen minutes to clean up and I’ll be over.”

  She gave him a smile that warmed him to the core. “Ah, the joy of being male and needing only fifteen minutes to look gorgeous. We will see you there, then.”

  She was gone before he could react, before he could even process what she’d said. Gorgeous? She thought he was—no, of course she meant it took her more than fifteen minutes to become gorgeous. Didn’t she? Which he’d argue with her, since he thought she was always gorgeous. No, he wouldn’t argue, not really. He wasn’t sure he could, with her. But he would surely tell her she didn’t need any minutes. Any at all.

  He was still a little stunned. He was really going to Valencia’s? After all this time avoiding it? No, be honest, avoiding her. And while it did have something to do with his father’s death, it had just as much to do with her. Which obviously had never occurred to her. But why would it? He was just the scared kid who’d come upon her at the scene, who’d stared at his father’s blood all over her, and stood in shocked silence as his world shattered around him. He’d never—

  “You okay, Bro?”

  He snapped out of the haze to look at Shane. “Oh. Yeah. Fine.”

  “Class over?” He nodded, still a little distracted. “I hear Mrs. Valencia dropped him off.”

  Nothing, but nothing happened in this building that got by his brother. “Yeah, she did.”

  “She used to freak me out, back in high school,” Shane said frankly. “I always felt like I wasn’t dressed up enough to be in her presence.”

  Sean managed a wry chuckle. “I can understand that. I never had her as a teacher, but her daughter makes me feel the same way.” Except I tangle it all up with dreams about undressing her.

  “She’s a beautiful woman,” Shane said, as if he were doing nothing more than observing the weather, “but she does have that same…regal sort of air.”

  “Exactly.”

  And as he thought about what he’d let himself in for with that rare impulsive decision, he could only see himself as that awkward kid in the presence of the queen.

  Chapter Twelve

  “He’s here!”

  Marcos’s shout echoed through the restaurant and Elena winced. But she couldn’t find it in herself to chastise the boy for breaking one of the main rules, not to disturb the diners. He’d been watching the doors anxiously, as if afraid Sean might change his mind. And he’d been chattering excitedly ever since they’d left the police station, and every other sentence seemed to be Sean this or Sean that. He seemed to her almost a normal boy excited about a normal thing, and she was so grateful for that she would forgive much.

  Of course, Sean would likely say that for Marcos, this was abnormal. Because he understood so well. And bothered to explain it to her, in a way that helped her understand, too.

  “You may go get him,” she told her son, “if you do it quietly.”

  A few moments later Marcos returned, Sean at his heels. Not that he had any choice; the boy had grabbed his arm and was clearly pulling hard. But he stopped once they were through the swinging doors and into the back hallway.

  “Now you may finish the table,” she said to her son, and he scampered off without complaint, another sign of his excitement. She finished signing the order form on the clipboard she held, capped her preferred fountain pen, and set them aside.

  “I hope you do not mind,” she said to Sean. “We have a family room in back where we eat when we are here so as not to disturb our patrons.”

  He looked oddly thoughtful, and she wondered if she had overstepped, inviting him to join them at the family table. But then he said, “I’d have thought it would be good, for them to see the family here eating the same food they’re being served.”

  She realized he had just been considering, in a very Sean way, what she’d said. And had made a very valid observation. And she smiled at him even as she laughed inwardly at herself; he of course would not be thinking in such a way.

  “We do, on occasion, for that very reason. But I have a feeling Marcos is going to be more vocal than he usually is, since he has not stopped talking since we left you.”

  “Is that…bad?”

  He looked concerned, and Elena had reached out to touch his arm before she thought. She nearly jerked her hand back, such was the little electric shock that went through her. But he went very still, and she wondered if he had an aversion to being touched.

  Or touched by her.

  “No, no,” she said hastily, drawing back. “It’s wonderful. He is so happy, unlike I have seen in so very long. I cannot thank you enough.”

  “I wish,” Sean said with an upward quirk of his mouth, “that you’d just consider me thanked and stop worrying about it. It’s not a big deal.”

  That he thought what he was doing for Marcos nothing special spoke volumes about what kind of man he was.

  “It is to me,” she said quietly, just as Marcos darted out of the room this side of the kitchen.

  “The table is done,” he announced.

  “Good,” Sean said to the boy with a grin, “because it smells so darned good in here my stomach’s about to eat itself.”

  Marcos laughed, such a genuine, happy, little boy laugh that her heart did a tiny leap in her chest.

  “Then we must feed it,” she said briskly, and led the way into the family dining room, where an array of whatever they had the most of lay steaming on plates.

  “Whoa. Bigger than I expected,” Sean said, looking at the table that would seat at least a dozen.

  “And yet not big enough for my entire family,” she said, rather wryly. He said nothing, but once more got that l
ook on his face. And this time she asked. “What did that make you think of?”

  He looked a little caught off guard. But that half-smile she liked so much curved one corner of his mouth as he looked at the table set for three. “That our table at home is growing. Shane and Lily, and Slater with Joey. We have a Sunday dinner thing, and it used to be just the four of us, but now…”

  She looked at him consideringly. “And how does that make you feel?”

  He looked up at her then. “I wouldn’t trade how happy they are now for anything.” He said it rather fiercely. And as they sat down, she remembered what his brother had told her.

  “I understand you were the peacemaker, between your two older brothers.” He blinked, clearly startled. “I encountered him when I arrived this evening.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged, as she was coming to learn he often did when confronted with something he’d done that he thought “not a big deal.” She heard a faint sound that, from his sheepish look, she guessed might have been his stomach growling.

  “Eat,” she instructed, although Marcos had already begun, the food finally slowing his chatter.

  Sean dived into the meal before them with relish, first going straight for the queso. And she noticed he wrapped fajitas in a tortilla with the ease of familiarity. At the first bite he let out a sigh of pleasure that gave her pleasure in turn. She liked a man who enjoyed his food. She liked a man who enjoyed her kind of food even more.

  Face it, woman, you like this man.

  “So you chose your role as a peacekeeper early in life, with your brothers,” she began again after they’d eaten a bit.

  “I just wanted them to stop fighting. It scared Sage, and it bothered…Kane.” She didn’t miss the hesitation before he said the name of that brother, the name that didn’t fit the Highwater pattern, and now seemed so ominously appropriate, as if someone had known when he was born what was to come.

  “Yet you are the one who tried to stop it.”

  “It scared me, too,” he admitted, easily enough that she admired him for it. “So I tried. Didn’t succeed much, but I tried.”

  “There are too few peacemakers in this world, Sean. You do so now as much as you did then. Do not undervalue it.”

  She meant it, deeply. She truly believed that most people lived in peace and calm because there were brave souls who stood between them and chaos. Souls like Enrique. And in a different way, Sean. Perhaps that was the simplest explanation for why she liked him; he was what she was drawn to, a man who took on the task most others would like to pretend didn’t have to be done.

  He scooped up and swallowed a bite of rice, seeming to savor the flavor, before saying, neutrally, “You still miss him.”

  His words brought her sharply out of what could have been a plunge into that maelstrom of emotion that, while not enveloping her constantly anymore, had never gone away. She doubted it ever would. But she was startled enough by his perceptiveness that she was able to fend it off. She shouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t get to be where he was without being able to read people.

  “I will always miss him,” she said, and left it at that.

  “The way it should be, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “The level of pain as a measure of what they meant to you?”

  She stared at him. “You are a very perceptive man.”

  Again the shrug. She recalled again what his brother, Slater, had said. Sean’s been a genius with puzzles since he was four. And police cases are just another sort of puzzle.

  “Tell me,” she said curiously, “are people like…puzzles to you?”

  He considered her question thoughtfully. She wondered now if she’d been wrong that his decision to come here tonight had been on impulse, since it seemed he did nothing, even answer a question, without pondering it.

  “People are…different to me. Different from me. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to figure them out, because they made no sense to me. I didn’t understand for a long time that I was the odd one.”

  “You’re not odd,” she said, surprising herself with how fiercely it came out. He looked a little startled at it himself. But the smile that curved his mouth then was the sweetest, most aching thing she’d ever seen.

  “But I am different,” he said.

  “The kind of different we could use more of,” she said firmly.

  She’d asked Rosalina, the Valencia hostess, for mugs of her delicious chocolate to finish the meal, thinking it better than coffee at this rather late hour. And Sean’s reaction pleased her yet again. He took a long drink and closed his eyes for a moment, savoring.

  “I haven’t had this in far too long. It’s even better than I remembered.”

  “You should come when everyone’s here.” Marcos spoke for the first time since he’d started eating; apparently the exercise had awakened a fierce appetite. “It’s crazy, everybody talking and eating and laughing.”

  Sean studied the boy for a moment before saying, “And it doesn’t give you…that feeling? Like you need to get away?”

  Marcos shook his head. “’Cuz it’s family. And I know them all. It’s easier then.”

  She watched as Sean nodded slowly, and again thoughtfully. That apparently made sense to him. Something to remember.

  Why? It’s not like he’ll be coming to big family dinners.

  She nearly gasped aloud, not at the thought, but at the pleasure the idea gave her. What was wrong with her? Especially when just moments ago they had been speaking of Enrique, and how much she missed him. And it was the truth—she knew she would ever and always miss him. But it had been her husband himself who had, before one of his deployments, broached the prophetic possibility that one of these times he might not come home. And he had made her promise that she would go on, live her life to the fullest, because it would be for both of them. And Marcos.

  “You should come for Mom’s birthday next week,” Marcos said excitedly.

  Dear God. Just what she would never wish for, Sean at a celebration of just how old she was. She could guess at what her expression looked like by the way Sean’s gaze moved quickly to Marcos.

  “I think,” Sean said, picking up his water glass, “your mom would really appreciate you telling her first before you start inviting people to things.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Marcos looked suitably chastened. But then he looked at her beseechingly. “But he can come, right, Mom?”

  “I’m sure the detective has better things to do than come to an old lady’s birthday.”

  Sean coughed violently, his sip of water apparently having gone down the wrong way. But when she looked at him he was gaping at her.

  “Old lady?” he gasped out.

  “Well,” she said, rather primly, “older than you.”

  “Five years? That’s carrying old-school a bit far, isn’t it? Never mind that you’re the most—”

  He broke off, and suddenly seemed to find his nearly empty plate the most fascinating thing in the world. And she sat there wondering exactly what he’d meant by “old-school.” Because there was only one meaning that seemed to fit: the old-school idea that while an older man and younger woman was fine, the opposite was still a curiosity.

  But that would only apply if there was a romantic relationship. And Sean Highwater was just a good, generous man helping a single mother with her son. And yet there had been something in his voice when he’d said that, before cutting himself off…

  “The most what?” she asked quietly, suddenly needing to know the answer to that more than she’d ever needed anything.

  “Everything,” he said softly, still not looking at her.

  Which told her a great deal. And yet nothing.

  But it did give her hope.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What’s it like to have brothers?”

  Sean let out a quiet breath of relief at the boy’s seemingly out of the blue question. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to meet Elena’s gaze after he’d come so close to pouring out the simpl
e fact that he’d thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen since he was eighteen.

  “It’s…great.”

  “I have cousins, but I bet it’s not the same.”

  Sean made himself focus. “No,” he agreed. “It’s different, growing up in the same house.”

  “But you said your older brothers fight.”

  “They used to. Not so much anymore. But that was inside stuff.”

  “Inside?”

  Sean nodded. “If anything bad came at any of us from outside the family, all that goes away. Then it’s us against them. That’s when I know they’ve always got my back if I need them.”

  Marcos sighed. “I wish I had brothers. No sisters, though,” the boy added, looking terrified at the very thought.

  “Sisters aren’t so bad. If they’re raised right,” he added with a grin. “Someday I’ll introduce you to my sister, and you’ll understand. Sage is the toughest cowgirl in Texas.”

  Marcos’s eyes widened. “She is?”

  “One of them, anyway. She can outwork, outride and outshoot most of the town guys and a lot of the ranch guys, too.”

  “That would be cool, a sister like that,” Marcos allowed. “Maybe I will have one someday.”

  It took everything Sean had not to look at Elena. And he had the feeling anything he might say could be taken wrong so he said nothing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her response to that. Perhaps Enrique de la Cova had taken both her loyalty and her heart to the grave with him. He could understand that. She’d loved him, greatly, he knew. Perhaps she was one of those who truly only loved once in her life. Wasn’t the fact that she never wore anything but black a declaration of that?

  It wasn’t like his parents, even though his father, too, had never remarried. He’d always figured that was more exhaustion and being gun-shy than anything else. Although as young as Sean had been—and as disconnected sometimes—he supposed his father could have had been seeing someone and he hadn’t been aware of it. He’d never really thought about it. He didn’t remember him ever bringing a woman to the ranch, and certainly never to the Sunday dinners. So in his little boy bubble, he’d probably assumed there was no one. But there could have been, and he well might never have noticed. Maybe he should ask Shane. He’d been ten years old, and being Shane much more likely to be aware. If—