“I am entrusting you with one of our jewels.” A father’s love dripped from Arturo’s words and his grip tightened. “Our Catalina is special. She shines brighter than a diamond under the spotlight. Sí, her emotions are quick-fire, often hotter than my vieja’s homemade salsa, pero they come from a good heart.”
“Believe me, I know. I’ve seen her in action,” Patricio answered.
Catalina was all heart. In this business, if she wasn’t careful, that could be a detriment to her.
But she was also savvy and talented and sexy as hell. The first two were key traits that, if given proper guidance, could help her go far. The last . . . bueno, the last he would try like hell to ignore.
His relationship with Catalina would remain all business. Nothing more.
“Your daughter has talent and drive and a will to be the best that may rival my own. And that’s saying something.”
Arturo’s raspy chuckle had Patricio allowing himself a faint grin.
“Buena suerte. You’re going to need it with our Catalina,” the old man warned.
“Ay, viejo, stop before you scare him off.” Berta swatted at her husband as she pushed off the worn sofa to stand between him and Patricio.
Arturo leaned closer. His nearly black eyes squinted with intensity, his humor from moments ago now gone. “Ten cuidado con ella, ¿me oyes?”
Oh yes, Patricio heard the older man loud and clear.
Be careful with her.
So many expectations and meanings and potential disappointments were wrapped up in that one sentence.
On Patricio’s drive back to his rental home, Arturo’s warning replayed in his head like an old vinyl album with the record player needle caught on a scratch: Ten cuidado con ella. Be careful with her. Ten cuidado con ella. Be careful with her.
He’d gone to Casa Capuleta intent on reassuring her parents, foolishly thinking that, by doing so, he’d feel less guilty about his ruse of working with her to buy him more time to finally break through this creative block. Unfortunately, while he had received her parents’ blessing, the strings it came with meant that any sense of relief continued to elude him.
Instead, the disquiet inside him he hadn’t been able to silence in ages only droned louder.
Chapter Five
“How’s everyone feeling?”
At her older sister’s question, Catalina paused with her brick-red lipstick hovering over her lower lip. She cut her gaze to Mariana’s reflection in the mirror mounted above the long vanity shelf that took up an entire wall in their tiny, cramped dressing room backstage at the AT&T Center.
Pandemonium ensued around them, pretty much summing up how the other girls were feeling less than an hour before they would hit the stage as the opening act of Galán’s tour kick-off concert.
A few padded chairs down at the vanity, already dressed in her black charro like the rest of them, Blanca held a small brown paper bag over her nose and mouth. The paper made a crunching sound as it retracted and expanded with each breath she sucked in, then blew out. The worrier in the bunch was in hyper-freak-out mode.
Between the enormity of tonight’s show and Cat’s imminent departure following it, Blanca had been an emotional tumbleweed lately. Guilt over leaving her sister behind jabbed like the tip of Blanca’s violin bow in the center of Cat’s chest.
Over in a corner, heads bent together, the twins engaged in a whispered conversation. One of Violeta’s hands kept up a steady it’s-gonna-be-okay pat-pat-pat on Sabrina’s back.
The teens gathered in a tight circle around their instruments. Nina wasn’t a performer—yet—but their newest foster sister was finally showing interest in being part of their group, tagging along for moral support. Poor Teresita, at thirteen the youngest but also wickedly talented on the guitar, nibbled her thumbnail to the quick. Fabiola gripped her violin’s neck, in danger of crushing the poor instrument if she squeezed any tighter. And Claudia, at sixteen the oldest and thus the leader of the younger girls, struggled to keep her game face on, creating an almost comical smile-grimace combination.
Cat shot Mariana an “are you kidding me” scowl. How the hell did it look like they were feeling moments before performing in front of their largest audience?
Scared.
Nervous.
Out of their league.
Thrumming with anticipation and ready to kick ass.
Okay, so those last two were mostly Cat. Even Violeta, normally a close second to Cat when it came to feistiness, was a bit ashen. Though she was bravely putting on a good act for her twin.
But give Mariana a few minutes and she could pep talk the girls’ preperformance nerves into a hum of excitement. Cat’s oldest hermana gave a pregame talk better than Popovich, the legendary head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, who played in this very building. And that was saying something.
They were less than an hour away from stepping onto the stage at the AT&T Center. The freaking AT&T Center. Where mariachi greats and international pop stars and the Spurs held court.
And for tonight . . . so, too, did Mariachi Las Nubes.
“Who are the Battle of the Mariachi Band champions?” Mariana cried, arms raised.
Silence met her question.
In the mirror, Cat arched one of her artfully threaded brows.
Mariana wrinkled her nose at her, then clapped her hands in a rapid one-two. “Oye, I asked, who are the Battle of the Mariachi Bands champions?”
Cat pushed her chair away from the vanity and rose, turning to face the room. “We are.”
One by one the others repeated the refrain as they slowly gathered to form a hand-holding circle.
“Exactly. We earned this. All of us,” Mariana said, chin high, confidence bolstering her words. Like she did before every Las Nubes performance, she launched into her pep talk, knowing exactly what to say to calm her sisters’ nerves while energizing their spirits.
Minutes later, as they brought their circle in for a big group hug, someone knocked on their dressing room door.
A female stagehand, wearing an earpiece with a bendable microphone that hugged her left cheek, poked her head inside. “Excuse me, ladies, I have a delivery for Blanca.”
“For me?” Blanca’s eyes lit with pleasure as the stagehand entered carrying a large bouquet of roses in a glass vase.
The sisters mobbed Blanca amid a string of excited cries.
“Who are they from?”
“Is there a card?”
“¡Ay, qué romántico!”
“Maybe they’re from a secret admirer!”
“Ooh, there’s a note!” Teresita pointed at a small pink envelope among the red roses and baby’s breath.
Hugging the vase against her torso with one hand, Blanca snatched the envelope with the other before anyone else could. She pressed it to her chest, a pink corner peeking out from under the curve between her thumb and pointer finger, a stark contrast to the black wool of her short charro jacket. Guilt widened her eyes. She shuffled backward until she bumped against a metal folding chair in front of the vanity.
“¿Qué te pasa, chica?” Cat asked.
“N-n-nothing’s wrong?” Blanca answered, her voice climbing octaves with each word. “These are probably, um, probably from the teachers at school. They’ve been, um, really excited for me. For us.”