“Don’t mind if I do,” Rafe said, “and after that, I’m takin’ Dad for a drink. You want to join us?”
She shook her head. “You two go ahead. I’m beat. I’m going to warm up some tamales and then hit the sack.”
“Homemade tamales?”
“There’s no other kind.” She smiled.
Lilia was a pretty woman. Not beautiful, but pleasantly pretty with an attractive curvy figure. Her olive skin and dark eyes provided a nice contrast to the pastel hues she always wore. She was thirty-five now. Thirty-five and still happy to be keeping house for Jack.
Rafe said a silent prayer of thanks for her. She could easily go out on her own and find better paying work than answering phones for Jake McCourt. He and Tom had made it abundantly clear that she owed no debt to either them or their father. Yet still she stayed in the trailer park, making sure Jack was fed and his home clean.
After a dinner of Lilia’s delicious tamales, Rafe dragged his father out of the house to the Bullfrog for a beer. Jack was still a nice-looking man, and there was no reason he shouldn’t get out when he could. Rafe worried about him, how he’d never seemed to quite get over his wife’s death. The wistful looks he got when her name was mentioned, or when he looked at Lilia, no doubt imagining Finola in her place. How he rarely left the trailer.
“Come on, old man,” he said to his father as he parked in back of the bar. “Time to have a little fun.”
* * *
Not a bad little place, really. So it was a trailer park. The children running around for the most part looked clean and well-fed. What had she been thinking? That trailer trash didn’t take care of their children? Some of the men and women sitting outside were overweight, but all classes had overweight people. And yes, some of them were sitting on plastic lawn furniture. So what? It was inexpensive seating from Walmart. Big deal.
Which one was Rafe’s? No way to know, really. They all looked alike. Cracker boxes painted different shades of gray and green. Nope, there was a beige one. Some of them needed exterior work, but quite a few of them were amazingly well kept. How had she been so wrong about people? She’d always assumed lower income people took no pride in their appearances or their homes.
Rafe certainly did. He took pride in his work and in himself. He even spoke better than a lot of the educated people she knew. Truth be told, he hadn’t been out of her mind since she’d first laid eyes on him. He was always there, niggling at her. The sweet memory of their kisses, their lovemaking.
Her heart quickened. What was she saying? She was not falling love with the man. She hardly knew him. He was way too young. She was no cougar. And even though she now knew he was much more than she’d first thought, they still had nothing in common.
Nothing at all.
Except dynamite chemistry in the bedroom. They couldn’t build a relationship on that.
She sighed. Quickly she texted Amber and arranged to meet her at the Bullfrog for a drink. She wanted to drown her sorrows.
She drove back into town, parked her car, and headed into the bar. Amber had arrived and already ordered their first round. A cosmo for her and a dry martini for Angie. She was laughing with a new bartender.
A new bartender who looked oddly like Rafe.
Angie walked toward them and saw it couldn’t possibly be Rafe. His hair was much shorter and had a little wave to it. It brushed his broad shoulders. The skin color, eye
s, and facial characteristics were dead on, though.
“Hey there,” Amber said. “Meet Tom, the new bartender. And you’ll never guess whose brother he is.”
“Rafe Grayhawk’s,” Angie returned.
Tom let out a laugh. “Yeah, the resemblance is pretty uncanny. So you’re Angie.”
“Born and bred.” She held out her hand. He had a firm handshake like his brother. Funny, her skin didn’t tingle at the touch. He was every bit as handsome as Rafe.
What was going on?
“Thanks for getting the drinks,” she said to Amber. “Next round’s on me.” The next round would be Amber’s last. Her friend never drank more than two cosmopolitans. Said she’d had some bad times with alcohol in her past. Someday Angie’d get the scoop on that.
But not today. Today was for her to confide in her friend about Rafe.
Course she could hardly do that with his brother standing right there. She sighed and turned to look down the counter at the rest of the bar.
Her heart sped up.
Rafe.