“Rodrigo is angsting about the beast again,” Fidel said as he fell into his childhood seat at the kitchen table. Rodrigo flicked his ear, and Fidel cried out in feigned agony and clamped a hand over his imaginary wound. “Fuck off!”
Mama flicked Fidel’s other ear. “No swearing at each other at the table!”
Fidel’s mouth fell open in betrayed disbelief. “You’re supposed to lecture him, not wound me. I’m your favorite!”
“You aren’t,” she said bluntly, piling food on his plate. “Your sister’s my favorite because she’s got enough good sense to give me grandbabies.”
“Well Ro isn’t giving you any grandbabies, at this rate.”
“Neither are you, even with all your catting around. You’re on your third relationship scandal this year.”
“Mama – the last one was for publicity. I never even slept with her. Fake relationship and break-up to help advance her career, remember?”
“Well, next time a pretty girl wants to ride your coattails, you tell her you need a baby to make the story believable. If she doesn’t want to raise one, tell her to give that bundle to me. And Rodrigo, you need to move on, mijo. La bestia isn’t even a good friend to you. Why would you take that trouble into your bed?”
“Quit calling him that,” Rodrigo said irritably. He hated when they called Severin a beast. Maybe Sev wasn’t used to interacting with other people, but that didn’t make him an animal.
“He’d take that trouble into his bed because love isn’t just blind, she’s an idiot,” Mayte grumbled, taking her place at the table and biting the end off a celery stick as though it had done her wrong.
Mama tsked at her. “Sour grapes, Mayte. Dax will be back in a week and he knows you have me to help. You know that man loves you.”
Mayte cut a piece off her serving of roast beef and drenched it with gravy. “If I have to push this baby out while he’s in Seattle, he’d better buy me a big fat diamond.”
“You don’t even wear the ones you own,” Mama pointed out.
“It’s the principle of the thing.” She sniffed.
They ate in silence for a few minutes because the food was too good to ignore, but there was no way his family would drop the subject of Rodrigo’s love life so early in the evening.
Eventually Mama laid aside her napkin. “I thought you’d finally admitted to yourself that a relationship with la bestia was impossible? Why are you letting yourself get your hopes up again?”
“And why do you want a man who’s such a mess?” Mayte demanded for the umpteenth time. “He’s an ass and he’s ugly as sin.”
“Well, he is kind of hot,” Fidel disagreed, “if you like rough men and don’t mind playing therapist. But is all the work worth it? I get the idea of a fixer upper, but come on. He hasn’t even looked your way, and isn’t he as good as married at this point? I thought you liked that girl.”
Rodrigo kept eating.
Mayte gasped and put down her fork. “Look at his face! Something happened!”
Now they were all staring at him, eyes narrowed. He felt his face heat under their scrutiny.
“It was nothing.”
“Oh like that’s going to fly with these two?” Fidel said, waving his fork at their mother and sister.
“You’re worse than we are, Fi,” Mayte laughed, throwing a dinner roll at him.
He caught the roll and took a bite of it. “Thanks. I wanted one of these but was afraid to reach a hand too close to the pregnant woman’s food.”
Mayte rapped his knuckles.
“I bet he’s a freak in the bedroom,” Mama mused. “He looks the type. Papa was into some weird things, but damn, he was so hot I just let it happen.”
“Mama!” Mayte winced, clapping her hands over her ears. “No one wants to hear about your sexcapades with Papa!”
“Did I ever tell you about the time he brought me to Vegas and –”
Fidel coughed. “Tell your friends, not your children!”