Starting right now.
Chapter 15
Okay, so inviting Alejandro home with her may not have been the brightest idea. Anamaría bit her lip as she slowed for the red light at the intersection of Flagler and Kennedy. Ahead on the left, Station 3 had its bay doors up, the engine parked inside. Not a soul in sight. Good for them; it looked like they were having a quiet moment during their shift.
Those times were golden for training, workouts, Ping-Pong matches, or relaxing. The latter of which she did not envision happening once Alejandro stepped foot inside her town house.
She slanted a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.
Eyes closed, right arm crooked across his forehead, he reclined beside her in the front passenger seat. Before leaving Miranda’s he had pushed the seat as far back as it would go, assuring her his leg would be fine for the short trip to her place in Stock Island.
“Headache?” she asked softly, relieved he’d taken her suggestion to at least lie back and stretch out his leg on their short drive.
“Slight. Hoping you’ve got some naproxen at your place.” His left eye peeked open at his request.
“If you ask nicely.”
A corner of his mouth quirked. Then he closed his eye again and resumed his napping impersonation.
The driver stopped in the right lane waved to get Anamaría’s attention. She waved back, recognizing an old high school friend, now married with a kindergartener and first grader whose classes Anamaría had visited for a fire safety talk.
Suzy had been a year ahead of Alejandro and Anamaría. She had graduated, split up with her boyfriend, Jerry, and headed off to the University of Florida. Four years later, degree in hand, she came home, started working for the bank, and reconnected with her high school sweetheart.
A wedding and two kids later, the former Key West High Key Club president sat in a maroon minivan with a child’s booster seat in the back, grinning and waving, looking pleased with her life. While Anamaría sat next to the only man she had ever loved, stuck between keeping him at arm’s length in an act of self-preservation and feeling out this new whatever they might have as adults.
The light changed to green, and Suzy pulled away with another wiggle of her fingers and a peppy smile. Anamaría eased her foot from the brake to the gas pedal, continuing down Flagler. Her mind meandered over ideas, memories, what-ifs, and what might still bes. While Alejandro dozed beside her, she made the short drive out of Key West, over Cow Key Channel into Stock Island. Each mile closer to her house, her jitters kicked up a notch.
Sooner than she was ready, she made the right turn into the small subdivision where her town house was located. The U-shaped road started and ended on Maloney Avenue, with twenty raised, two-story pale-pink-siding town houses connected in pairs. Two buildings down on the left awaited Anamaría’s proudest purchase of her life. The day she had signed the papers and been handed the keys to her own piece of property was the day she truly felt like she’d become an adult.
She parked in her spot directly in front of her town house, with its wooden steps and white railing leading to the first floor porch where potted ferns greeted visitors. As she gazed at her home, she couldn’t help but recall the places she and Alejandro had talked about buying when they finally moved in together. Old Town, Midtown, up the Keys . . . as long as it was just the two of them, it hadn’t mattered.
Wishful, adolescent dreams spun from sugar. Easily dissolved and forgotten.
Or so she told herself.
“This you?” Alejandro raised his seat backrest to sit up. Rubbing at his eyes, he ducked to peer at her town house through the front windshield.
A large palm tree played sentinel in the tiny yard between her building and the one to its right. The arcing fronds rustled in the humid breeze, casting dancing shadows on the concrete sidewalk and patch of grass. Several short plantain trees marched down the center of the grassy area between the two units to the backyard where a sprawling geiger tree, its large dark green leaves and deep orange flowers clustered on the ends of its branches, held court.
“Yep, it’s all mine,” she answered.
“I like it. The neighborhood has a welcoming feel.”
“Thanks. It also has a mortgage feel but seeing that deduction from my bank account each month actually makes me proud. And, when you’re done hobbling up the stairs”—she stepped out of her vehicle, then grabbed their backpacks and his crutches from the back seat—“I bet you’ll be thankful you came home to your parents’ place to recuperate instead of hiring someone to help in your Atlanta town house.”
Actually, she’d give him halfway up the steps before his first curse.
With both their backpacks flung over one of her shoulders, she followed behind him, ready to catch him should he lose his balance. Added bonus, the view of his butt in his faded black cargo shorts.
By the time he made it to her front porch, the island humidity and heat, along with the exertion of traversing the stairs relying on his right leg alone, had left their mark. A sheen of sweat coated his face and a dark circle plastered his button-down to his back between his shoulder blades. He swiped at his forehead with the back of a hand and muttered the next in a line of shits, damns, and carajos.
Anamaría unclipped her keys from the notch on her bag as she moved toward the front door.
“Here, let me get out of your way.” Alejandro edged backward to give her more space. His right crutch banged against the clay pot filled with bright pink geraniums.
“Shit, sorry!” he muttered, adjusting to his left only to smack a pot of orange Gerbera daisies with his other crutch.
“Carajo, I didn’t mean to . . .” He shuffled awkwardly on his right foot, his head swiveling from side to side in search of a place to set his crutches safely down between the smattering of potted plants scattered around her entry and along the base of the white wooden porch railing. In his unwieldy search, he wound up losing his balance and pitching forward.
“Oh, cra—!” Anamaría grunted, bumping her forehead against his shoulder.
Her keys plunked onto the wooden floorboards as her arms slipped around his midsection to stop him from landing face first among her potted garden. His forearm smacked the doorframe in his own attempt to catch himself, but momentum careened him forward and she wound up sandwiched between her front door and him, her face squashed against his chest. A button on his shirt poked her cheek. Her nose pressed into the skin exposed by the vee of his shirt.
“Ay, we have got to stop winding up like this on front porches,” she muttered, her voice muffled.
Alejandro laughed, the sound rumbling from his chest into her ear. The faint smell of his cologne mixed with his body heat and suddenly all she could think about was nuzzling him with her nose. Kissing her way up his chest and neck to his lips. Letting her hands roam the curves and dips of his broad chest and back.
But despite her raging hormones where he was concerned, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to mess up their friendly truce by adding sex to the mix. Did she?
No.
Yes.
No?
Hell, maybe.
“I swear I am a lot more coordinated than these annoying crutches make me appear,” he groused.
“Well, the jury’s still deliberating that one, based on the evidence of your free fall in the rainforest, not to mention this is the second time I’ve rescued you from falling,” she teased, relying on humor to mask the uncertainty plaguing her.