Chapter Seven

In times of stress, Estrella needed the comforts of home. Home was a small house in a small town in New Mexico, where her parents and two of her siblings still lived, a place she hadn’t seen for two years but that was more real to her than Eve’s immaculate marble mausoleum or even her own threadbare apartment. Lately, the closest she’d come to finding the feel of home was at the Ventano’s cheerful, chaotic household, but Brenda wasn’t off work yet.

Besides, Estrella was determined to cope on her own.

She’d been fired. The shock had worn off after a couple of hours. Instead of taking the bus home, she’d walked into a department store and used up all of the cash in her purse on a deep-fat fryer.

Utterly ridiculous. But comforting.

Now it was dinnertime. She’d taken a long bath, put on shorts and a T-shirt and gathered her hair up in a ponytail. The oil sizzled as she squeezed another dollop of pastry into it. Watching the dough bob about and turn golden brown was as close to being in her mother’s kitchen as she was going to get, hundreds of miles away, with no easy phone contact.

There was a knock at the door. Estrella’s stomach gave a funny little spin, but she told herself it was Brenda, or one of the neighbor children, smelling the freshly made churros. She lifted the fresh batch out of the fryer and laid them on folded paper towels before answering the door, peeping through a crack with the safety chain on.

It was Jesse. With more sunflowers. Smiling and wearing long sleeves that covered his tattoos.

Estrella shut the door. She fussed with her hair, her shirt. Patted her flushed cheeks. Her heart tried to drum itself out of her chest, but she swallowed it down again and opened the door. “Hello, Jesse. How did you find me?”

“I remembered that Brenda had mentioned working on Alvarado. I went from cafe to cafe until I found her. She gave me your address.”

“You know Brenda?”

“We met, a couple of nights ago. By chance.” He extended the flowers. “To replace the ones your boss smashed.”

“That was an accident. Eve was startled by the sight of us.” Estrella accepted the flowers, widening the door so he could enter. “Come in. Um, it’s nothing fancy. Watch your head.”

He had to duck the doorframe, going into the living room. “This place looks more like you.” He turned a slow circle, studying her secondhand furniture and the few homey touches she’d added to brighten the apartment—family photos, mosaic flower pots, a woven wall hanging. “Smells good.”

“I was making churros.” She hurried into the kitchen and thrust the flowers into the stained ceramic sink. “The oil is hot. . . .”

“Go ahead. I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Please sit.” She nodded to the drop-leaf table with a pair of rickety chairs she’d painted emerald green and robin’s-egg blue. “Have you ever had churros?”

“I’m not sure. What are they?”

“Fried pastry. Very simple, just flour and water and a few other ingredients.” She piped several stripes of the dough into the oil. “When I’m homesick, I crave them.”

Jesse sat, cautiously. “You’re homesick?”

She poked at the pastries, making them swim in the bubbling oil. “I haven’t seen my family in two years, since I moved here. We don’t get to talk very often either.”

“Why not?”

So many questions, but none of them about her charade pretending to be Eve Romero. The delay was making her nervous. Or it might have been the surreal experience of having Jesse in her house, filling the rooms with his very large presence. For a fantasy man, he’d become all too real.

The oil popped, stinging her as she transferred the churros to the paper towels. “I have to be careful about contacting my family. My ex-husband has tried to use them to find me. Even threatened them. We call and send letters through a neighbor, so there’s no record of my address and phone number in their house.”

She stole a look at Jesse. He’d lost some of the old poker face, and she could see him grimly absorbing the news. “Did Brenda already tell you about that?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Of course not. Brenda wouldn’t, although she might hint, if she was convinced that Estrella wanted Jesse for more than the fantasy.

“What did she tell you? About Eve, or my job, maybe by accident?” A thought struck Estrella. Perhaps Jesse had known all along that she was not the sophisticated lady she’d pretended to be. Her faced heated, and she hurriedly bent over the fryer, adding more dough. Too many churros already, but she needed to keep busy.

“No, we talked about me. But she did tell me to try again with you. That you had your reasons for the phobia about tattoos.”

“Tony, my ex-husband, had tattoos. I used to watch his hands and arms a lot, to be ready if he was . . . in a bad mood.”

“He hurt you?” Jesse kept his tone neutral, though she could hear how doing that strained his throat.

“Some. Mostly it was about being in control of me. When I did something he didn’t like, he might grab me, push me. Now and then I had bruises, but mainly there was a lot of yelling. He was threatened because I wanted to be more than his wife.” The old feelings of humiliation swept over her. She hated to think of how long she’d stayed, making excuses for putting up with the bad treatment. “I was sixteen when we met, eighteen when we married. You know, young and stupid in love. It wasn’t always so bad.”

Jesse had put his head down. She saw him clench and unclench his hands beneath the table. “And you feel safe here?”

She rescued the well-browned churros. “Yes, finally. We think he’s given up, and soon I may be able to have my family out to visit. Until we’re sure, I’m using an old family name from my father’s side—Ianesque.”

“But you really are Estrella?”

“Oh yes.”

“I’m glad of that. I couldn’t think of you by another name.”

There was caring in his voice. And something more. A question?

Of their future.

She caught her breath. It was too much for her to believe that he could forgive her deception so easily. “Aren’t you angry with me at all?”

His answer was measured. “That depends on why you did it.”

Estrella took her time, pretending absorption in making another batch of churros. Finally she set down the emptied pastry bag and leaned her butt against the edge of the counter, making herself look into Jesse’s eyes even though that only got her more antsy. “I did it because I wanted to know what it was like to be different from the real me. The truth is, as I’m sure you figured out, I work as Eve Romero’s maid. I do many housekeeping and personal chores for her too, but mostly I clean. I ride the bus to work every day in my maid’s uniform, and that was when I first noticed you on the road crew.”

She took a breath. “So, well, I started fantasizing about you. Then I started thinking that maybe I could make you want me, if only I was different. When Eve went out of town on business, I took off my uniform and got into her convertible.” She shrugged. “The rest of it, you already know.”

He rubbed at his forehead. The chair creaked. “Why did you think you had to be different?”

“Because it was a fantasy. One night where I could be as wild as I secretly wanted to be, after all these years of always being cautious and good.”

“Maybe I would have preferred the real you.”

Do you? she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t.

“What happens now?” Jesse asked.

“I don’t know, except . . .” Suddenly she was shy.

His eyes searched her face. “What?”

“I know you only said it to help me out with Eve, but I liked it when you called yourself my boyfriend.”

“I liked that too. But I’m not—” He frowned and wrenched the words out of himself. “I’m not your best bargain right now. Aside from my background, I don’t have money, and no real prospects except what I can earn with my hands. If you want a better life . . .”

She ached to hug him, but she didn’t dare that either, not yet. “Don’t you know that it’s not money alone that makes a better life?” He looked up at her and she quickly smiled encouragement. “Besides, I have plans of my own. I’m in night school, getting a degree. Someday I’ll have a good job, one to build on.”

“Really? What are you studying?”

“Don’t laugh,” she said, remembering that the last of the churros were still frying. She dipped her slotted spatula into the sizzling oil. They were a bit too crispy.

Aware of Jesse’s gaze, she pushed a damp tendril behind her ear. “I’m going to be a pharmacist.” She shot him a little grin. “Something about wearing a white coat and being clean and orderly appeals to the maid in me. Plus, it’s helping people.”

She rolled the hot churros in her sugar mixture and brought him three of them on a paper napkin. “Do you think that’s odd, me wanting to be a pharmacist?”

“I think it’s just fine.”

She sat and leaned her elbows on the table, licking her sticky, sugary fingers. “What about you?”

He watched with gleaming eyes. “When I still had my savings, I thought of buying a small plot of land and trying organic farming. My grandpa had a farm. I spent a summer there, once.” He picked up a churro.

“Go ahead. Try it.” She nudged his hand toward his mouth. “You could start a new savings account.”

“I already have.” He bit into a hot crispy corner of the golden-brown pastry, where it was crusted with melted sugar and cinnamon. “Mmm. Tastes familiar. Tastes like you.”

“I don’t know about that.” She leaned across the table, reaching for a kiss. A hot, sweet, melting kiss. “I’m thinking they taste more like you.”

“Sweet woman,” he said against her lips.

“Hot man.”

“Not a bad combination.”

“Could work.”

“Want to give it a try?”

“Only until we succeed.”