Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  Tony and Dalia’s mom went on talking in a casual, breezy way about the storm and what it had done to various people and places. There didn’t seem to be much point in rehashing all this now; it wasn’t like there was anything new to relate. But it did give Dalia an opportunity to get in a few good looks at Tony—the first she’d had in years.

  Dark brown eyes. Black crescent eyebrows. Squarish face with a full jaw and a chin like a superhero. Every feature in his face was ridiculously strong, but his expression was open and friendly.

  He had the thickest, glossiest, springiest hair she’d ever seen on a human being—longish at the top, velvety short at the back and sides. The artistic sideburns were new. So was the sculpted Van Dyke beard, perfectly formed in graceful curves and points.

  He laughed at something her mom said. He always laughed like that, head thrown back, eyes shut, mouth wide open to show all his strong white beautiful teeth. Dalia knew all Tony’s expressions. The tilted-head, furrowed-brow combo. The unbelievably tender smile. The going-in-for-a-kiss stare.

  Whatever reservations her mother might have had about Tony when he and Dalia first got together in high school, she sure was charmed by him now. It was freaking Dalia out—but at the same time it was kind of inevitable. Tony charmed everyone. Everyone loved him. How could they not? Look at that smile, those eyes, that rapt attentive expression. It looked so real. Almost real enough to fool Dalia.

  Tony took a long look at the wreckage, then pulled up a stool and took a seat. “Well, Mrs. Ramirez, looks like we’re going to be doing a ground-up rebuild.”

  “Oh, I know it. I ought to be more broken up about it than I am, but to be honest I’m kind of glad for the excuse. I’ve never really liked the layout of this kitchen, and it’s too small. Now I can start fresh.”

  “I’m happy to hear you say that! I’ve got some ideas for a new floor plan for the southeast wing of the house. I realize we’re limited by the footprint of the original, like we can’t go knocking down stone walls, but there’s a lot we can do within those limits.”

  Alex spoke up. “The main structure was built when? Eighteen-fifties?”

  “That’s right,” Dalia’s mom said. “Before that, the family lived in the old cabin, which later got incorporated into the bunkhouse. The good news is, the stone portion of the house is still in great shape.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Tony. “Those German stonemasons really knew their stuff.”

  “Yes, they did. The old kitchen used to be in a detached building off the south corner. It got incorporated into the house around the turn of the century, along with a new dining room. Then in the seventies my in-laws added the new kitchen addition and converted the old kitchen into a master suite. That’s why that side of the house has such a cobbled-together look. And obviously the new construction wasn’t as sturdy as the original structure.”

  Tony stroked his new beard thoughtfully. “I don’t know what your budget is, but have you considered doing the rebuild in stone?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d rather go with wood siding again than have new stonework that doesn’t match the old.”

  “No, I don’t blame you. But the stonemason we work with is very good, and very experienced at matching old stonework. I can send you some pictures of his work. Just something to think about.”

  Dalia’s suspicion levels rose. Why was Tony trying to upsell her mother?

  “How much damage did the storm do to the master suite?” Tony asked.

  “Not much. The kitchen bore the brunt. There’s some water damage on the closet wall, but nothing structural.”

  Tony gazed into the kitchen. “What if... What if we added a walk-in pantry along the back wall of the dining room, with access from the kitchen, and then a built-in dining room hutch in front of that? You’d have to sacrifice some square footage in the dining room, but we could gain some of it back with a bay window. That would add some visual interest to the facade, as well as helping with the transition between the old stonework and the new, if you decide to go that route. Plus with the pantry and hutch there, you’d get to recess your entry to the master bedroom with a little hallway, instead of having it open directly onto the dining room, which I’ve always thought was a little awkward, no offense.”

  “Oh, none taken!” Dalia’s mom said. “I’ve always thought the same thing.”

  “Then from the bay window, we extend that front exterior wall even with the rest of the facade. Same thing with the side wall—just bring it back in line with the master suite. That’ll add significant square footage to the kitchen. Then we’ll extend the porch around that end so it wraps around on three sides. What do you think?”

  Dalia seethed. The nerve of him! Who did he think he was, with his bay windows and his recessed entries? How could he be so disrespectful of the old floor plan? So what if the master bedroom opened directly onto the dining room? It had been that way for forty years. If it was good enough for her grandparents, it was good enough to keep.

  Her mother practically squealed in delight. “It’s perfect! I love it!”

  Dalia suppressed a groan. Way to negotiate, Mom.

  Tony didn’t stop there. Why should he? He proposed other improvements—a reconfiguration of the master bath and closet, a new laundry room, even an outdoor grill and entertainment area in the space between the back wings of the house. And all the while her mom kept nodding rapidly and saying, “Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. I can see that.”

  And Dalia didn’t know how to stop it.

  There would have been no problem if she’d been on her own. She’d have shut down Tony’s sales spiel fast enough to rattle his teeth. But she wasn’t the one in charge of the interview. She didn’t know how to break in without making her mother look like a silly, gullible woman who couldn’t be trusted to handle her own affairs.

  Tony was on a roll. He was talking with great enthusiasm about exposing the old stone in the dining room wall when Alex came back and nearly got clobbered by one of his brother’s sweeping arm movements. Alex ducked just in time.

  “Oops, sorry,” Tony said.

  Alex just said, “No problem, my bad. I’ve got all the measurements I need to draw some preliminary plans.”

  His bad? How was it his bad? How was it his responsibility to avoid being clobbered, and not Tony’s responsibility to watch where he swung his gigantic arms?

  Why did people like Tony always get away with hurting others?

  Because someone is always there to enable him, that’s why.

  Well, he wouldn’t get away with it this time. Dalia would see to that. Not today, not in front of her mother, but somehow she would catch him in his own tangled web and put him in his place.

  She got up and walked over to the side porch. Out in the orchard, the chickens foraged contentedly in the shade of their completely undamaged-by-the-storm coop.

  A hollow clomping of boots sounded along the porch floorboards behind her—slow, deliberate, long-legged steps. Her heart raced, and her stomach flipped. What was the matter with her? How could he still make her react this way after all these years, when she knew better?

  But it wasn’t Tony. It was Alex, and only Alex, who joined her at the porch rail. She found that she had been holding her breath and let it out slowly. From relief, or disappointment?

  “Have you been out to check that old bunkhouse since the storm?” Alex asked. “I saw it as we drove up. Looks like it took a beating, too. Windows are broken, and the front door got ripped clean off the hinges.”

  “Oh, that’s the least of our concerns right now,” said Dalia. She couldn’t handle another project being added to the rebuild.

  “Do you want us to take a look? The damage might not be that bad. A little work now might save further expense and trouble down the line.”

  “No. Bunkhouse repairs are not in the budget.”

&nb
sp; She had no authority to say such a thing, but she didn’t care. She was not going to let Tony tack any more jobs onto what already promised to be a monstrous bid. She’d see the bunkhouse turned into a tack barn first.

  Alex looked longingly in the direction of the bunkhouse. “Too bad. Such a nice old building. Be a shame for it to fall into ruin.”

  “Yeah, well, a lot of things are a shame, but they happen, anyway.”

  Alex smiled and shrugged in an embarrassed sort of way, like he was apologizing for something. Dalia walked away. She didn’t want to hear him make excuses for his brother, and she sure didn’t want his pity.

  She’d almost reached what had been the front wall of the kitchen when Tony came around the corner, and suddenly they were facing each other across the remains of the old porch swing.

  They both froze. Tony’s smile stiffened, then faded away.

  How many hours had the two of them logged in that swing? Talking, making out, rocking quietly together. Her head on his chest, or his in her lap. Was he remembering, too? How could he not be?

  He crouched down and started randomly moving bits of wreckage around. He had his head bowed now, but she could see a dark flush rising up his neck. Huh. So he did have some vestige of a sense of shame.

  In his nervous and pointless shuffling of debris, he lifted a piece of black roofing paper from a section of siding. Underneath lay a board with letters carved into it by a childish hand.

  Tony loves Dalia.

  The sight of it gave her actual physical pain. It was like something had reached inside her chest cavity and squeezed.

  Tony didn’t look up or say anything. He laid the roofing paper gently back over the board, like he was covering something dead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TONY GOT INTO Alex’s truck and shut the door. All the final goodbyes—his own voice, his brother’s and Mrs. Ramirez’s—rang in his ears, and his last leftover smile was straining his facial muscles to the snapping point.

  His hands shook.

  He knew it would be rough going to Dalia’s childhood home, dealing with her mom, acting like he was okay with it. Just going to La Escarpa once a year for the FFF was hard, and that was with music and games and plenty of other people around. But then suddenly there was Dalia herself, in the flesh, and because the earth did not open up and swallow him whole, he had to smile and talk and make it through.

  Now reaction was setting in, like a post-adrenaline crash. He thought he might throw up.

  Alex opened the driver’s-side door. Just a few more seconds and they’d be driving away.

  Then Mrs. Ramirez called out, “Wait!”

  Oh, come on, now. Seriously?

  He heard Alex walking back toward the house, but he stayed put, like a prey animal holding still in the grass. He stared at his clenched fists on his knees and waited...and remembered.

  It was Dalia’s scent that first clued him in. He’d recognized her shape at first sight, sure, but she’d been backlit by the morning sun, just a tall, slim silhouette, and he didn’t trust his eyes. Then he caught a whiff of that juniper berry body lotion, and he knew. His gut clenched and his knees nearly buckled. It was amazing he’d managed to stay on his feet at all.

  She had on a racerback tank and boot-cut jeans. No jewelry, no detectable makeup. She always dressed so simply compared with other women, like she didn’t need a lot of ornamentation. Elegant, that’s what she was. Like a diamond on black velvet. A full moon in a clear sky. A single rose.

  Tony’s time with her was a memory of pure joy. All kinds of wonderful things had seemed possible then. It was like there’d been a shadow over the world before, but he hadn’t known it until she’d pulled it back, and suddenly everything was bright with colors he never knew existed—or like one of those dreams where he could fly, only this time it was real. The future was this rich, full, shining, glorious thing. Dalia loved him, and they would be together forever.

  And then it all came crashing down.

  Alex got into the truck and put something in Tony’s lap.

  “Eggs,” he said. “A dozen and a half. Some of them are those little blue and green and pink ones that come from those Easter Egger chickens. I’ll make us some migas for breakfast tomorrow.”

  Tony turned on him. “Did you know Dalia was in town?”

  Her name felt weird in his mouth, strange and familiar at the same time. It was the first time he’d said it out loud in years.

  Alex gave him an incredulous look. “Whoa. How can you even ask me that? You think I wouldn’t’ve told you if I’d known? You think I’d let you walk into all that without a heads-up? What kind of brother do you think I am?”

  “Sorry.”

  Alex started the ignition and backed up the truck. “You okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “She looked good, huh?”

  “Are you kidding me? She looked amazing.”

  Alex shifted into Drive and looked Tony right in the eye.

  “You should tell her the truth.”

  Tony shook his head. “Nah. What’s the point? That ship has sailed—and capsized, and burned, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Nothing’ll ever change that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it doesn’t have to be about changing anything. Maybe just tell her because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “No! I’m not telling her—and don’t you do it, either.”

  “Wow. Seriously? You think you have to tell me that? You actually think I would go behind your back?”

  Tony looked out the window. “No.”

  Her hair was still long. He’d wondered a lot over the years about her hair, whether she’d cut it all off, or colored it, or started straightening it like some women did. But it looked exactly the same, flowing down her back in those deep dark natural waves. Back in elementary school she used to wear it in a single thick braid. It reached all the way to her waist.

  How many times between kindergarten and junior high had he tugged that braid? Never enough to hurt; he’d just wanted her to turn around and look at him. She was so serious, so collected, even as a kid. It made Tony clown around twice as much, trying to get her to react. A smile from her was worth more than a laugh from anyone else. But whenever she did smile, she always turned away, hiding her face like it was a secret.

  But she sure hadn’t smiled today. She’d gone full-on death glare while he was talking to her mom. It was like all those other times when he’d charmed a whole room, everybody but her, and she’d just stared at him without a hint of a smile, and he didn’t know what it meant.

  “I’m not glaring,” she’d told him, back in the early days when they’d first gotten together and had to go over every memory of their shared history up to that point. “That’s just my face. Just because I don’t wear a goofy smile all the time doesn’t mean I’m mad.”

  So which was it this time? Did she hate him? Or did he even mean enough to her for that? Maybe she didn’t have any emotion left for him. She was a citified big shot, and he was a has-been that never was. If anything, she was congratulating herself on her escape, on not getting tied down to a deadweight flash-in-the-pan like Tony.

  The truth was as plain as her handwriting on that big box at the university post office—black ink, all caps, neatly spaced. Tony’s name and address in one corner. Dalia’s address in the other, in smaller print, without her name. Like she’d taken herself right out of the situation, which he supposed she had. He knew what was in the box, as sure as if he could see through the cardboard. His letter jacket, his ring. Their ticket stubs from Iron Man 2. The silver cross he’d given her for Christmas. The buckle he’d won riding a bull at that little rodeo just after he’d turned eighteen. Every card he ever sent, every note he ever scribbled out in English class senior year, every letter he wrote her from his dorm room desk.

  It hurt. Not a sharp pain,
but a dull ache—it might fade over time but would never, never go away. He’d known all along that this day would come, that he couldn’t keep her, that he wasn’t enough. And in the end, he’d pushed her away for her own good. The whole thing was his doing. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OF COURSE THE particulars will vary, depending on the nature and extent of your rebuild, but roughly speaking, you can expect to spend three to four months on construction alone—not counting the planning, design and permit stages, which can easily double that. The process is a long one, and you’re basically in a temporary marriage with your contractors. Take steps to keep the relationship a healthy one, providing an occasional pot of coffee or breakfast bagels, or buying lunch for the crew. Friendly gestures like this will keep everyone on a good footing and the project going smoothly.

  Dalia sat back in her desk chair, stunned, staring at the article on her laptop screen. She felt like she’d been doused with ice water. Three to four months, if not twice that? Coffee and bagels? It wasn’t enough she had to endure Tony’s company for months on end; she had to make nice?

  “Really?” she’d said to her mother yesterday as Alex and Tony drove away. “Tony? That’s who you hired to do the work?”

  Her mom shrugged. “He’s good. He and his brother do beautiful work. And they’re polite, clean, wholesome people that you don’t mind having in the house.”

  Wholesome, ha! The things I could tell you... But she didn’t. She hadn’t told her family the real reason for the breakup back when it happened, and she wasn’t about to start now. She hadn’t needed Marcos or their dad going all vengeful on Tony, defending her honor. She’d simply said that she’d finally realized Tony was too selfish and immature to make the relationship work, and that it had been an error in judgment on her part to ever think otherwise. She’d been amazingly matter-of-fact about the whole thing. And they’d taken her explanation at face value.