Rafael leaned back in his chair. “Your father was very kind to me when I was an obnoxious kid who pestered him with silly questions. Maybe he would only smile at me as he walked out of the arena, but he always noticed me, and it meant the world. I wouldn’t have become a matador if not for him. He remembered me when I got out of prison. I should have thanked him for his kindness more often.”
“Don’t look at me,” Fox interjected. “I’m just a leftover kid from his last marriage.”
“I like you, Fox,” Maggie assured him. “We’ll have to wait until the will is read on Thursday, but if you don’t like whatever arrangements Father made for you, I want you to think about coming to live with me.”
He gaped at her. “You’re not a real sister. Why would you want me around?”
“You’ve grown on me.” She considered telling him about Arizona, but it would hurt Rafael, so she bit her tongue, and she was relieved when Fox got up to carry their plates into the house.
“Where were you when I was sixteen?” Rafael asked, his smile teasing.
“I don’t know. How old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-eight in November.”
“I’m twenty-six, and wouldn’t have been much help to you when I was fourteen.”
Had they met then, he would have walked right by her, and she would have given a dark, handsome youth a wide berth.
He reached for her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
Fox leaned out the front door. “Perry tried to seduce me last night. Could you do something about her?”
“Was Connie going to watch?” Rafael asked.
“No, she looked horrified. I thought I could pretend it didn’t happen, but I keep thinking about it. The next guy they proposition might not walk away.”
“I knew it,” Maggie sighed. “There’s simply no end of problems here.”
Rafael’s smile grew wide. “When you’re needed so badly, you ought to stay.”
She’d done all right with him, but the whole Aragon family was something else entirely and far too great a challenge for any one person to meet. “I don’t have an extra lifetime to devote to it.” She remained comfortably seated on his lap, as though they had nothing better to do other than to enjoy the afternoon together, until she recalled the photo albums.
She sat up. “I didn’t have time to look at all the family albums. Are you interested in seeing them too?”
He took her hand to help her stand and then stood. “I’d rather look around the ranch. Maybe I could learn how to shoe a horse if Fox did. I’ll see you later.”
She gave him a quick kiss and went inside to get an album and brought it outside where the light was soft and warm. She hoped to find at least one photo where Augustín was smiling, but if he ever had, it hadn’t been documented there.
The next morning, Santos pounded on Maggie’s door. It was only a few minutes before she and Rafael had planned to wake, but a troubled mind had interrupted her sleep so often, she was slow to respond. “I’m coming.”
“Why don’t we let him stay in here with us?” Rafael asked. “Then we might get more sleep.”
“Don’t suggest it.” Her short nightgown was transparent, and she pulled Rafael’s black T-shirt over her head and smoothed it down before opening the door. Santos looked near tears. What disaster had befallen them now? “What’s wrong?”
“Cirilda just called me. Grandmother moved up the time of the funeral to seven this morning so we’d miss it. Cirilda swears her mother woke her with barely enough time to get there herself or she’d have called us. They’re back at the hotel for the reception. All of our father’s friends were there at seven o’clock, so while Carmen was supposedly too grief-stricken to leave her bed, she must have been undoing everything Cirilda and I had arranged for today.”
“Son of a bitch!” Rafael cried.
Maggie reached for Santos’s arm and pulled him into her room. “I can understand why she dislikes me, but why would she want to leave you and Fox out of our father’s funeral?”
“I’m a bastard, remember, and Fox isn’t her blood. I hope she chokes on her own spit before the day’s over.”
Rafael left the bed to pull on his jeans. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll help.”
“I’m too mad to think,” Santos swore.
“Well, I’m not,” Maggie offered. “Let’s get dressed and crash the reception. We can walk in as though we were expected, and the guests won’t know the difference. While we’re there, I’ll have a quiet chat with Grandma Carmen. We’ll have the funeral you planned for eleven with as much of the public as we can invite into the basilica. We won’t need a coffin for a memorial service, and don’t they have mass every hour anyway?”