Be Mine at Christmas(52)
Author: Brenda Novak

“No second thoughts?” Brent pressed.

Ken had a million of them. Not just about Isolde but about football. He preferred to leave the game while he was still at his best, to go out on top and with both knees functioning properly. But every once in a while, he wondered if he’d acted prematurely. Did he have another year or two left in him?

He’d watched quarterback Roger Liggett writhe on the field a year ago while the medics came running from the sidelines, only to learn Roger would never be able to play ball again. Maybe he’d let that spook him into quitting too soon.

“No second thoughts,” he lied.

CHAPTER TWO

CIERRA’S FINGERS BURNED. So did her toes. When she was first carried into the cabin, she hadn’t cared what happened to her as long as she was able to get warm. But once her body temperature began to rise, so did her ability to think. Now she realized she’d put herself in a very tenuous, and potentially dangerous, situation. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the cabin except these two men….

“Gracias, I— We can get up now. I am…better,” she said, but better was a relative term. She’d walked for hours in the cold, following the ribbon of road that was supposed to lead to the address on that paper. And she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. Arlene had said her brother would provide work but Cierra had to make her own way to Dundee. She’d done that; in the process, she’d lost the little she had left of what Charlie had given her before his death and was down to…nothing.

The men shifted and sat up, allowing her to do the same. Hoping they might recognize the address she’d been looking for, so she could beat the worse of the storm that was already starting to batter the cabin walls, she dug through her pockets for the slip of paper that’d brought her this far. But she couldn’t find it.

“Mi papel…my paper. Is gone!”

The older of the two, the man with brown hair and brown eyes, reminded Cierra of a cowboy she’d seen in a western Charlie had played for her one night. But not because of his clothes. Dressed in a sweatshirt and tattered blue jeans, he wasn’t wearing cowboy boots or a hat. It was the way his hair lifted off his forehead and fell to the side, long on top but short everywhere else, and the contours of his lean face and body that suggested he could’ve stepped right out of High Noon—at least, she thought that was the name of the film. The movies she’d seen since coming to the States were beginning to run together. Charlie had played lots of them for her. He’d said they’d help with her English, reinforce what the tutor taught her during the day. But she knew he resorted to his movie collection when he didn’t want the burden of entertaining her.

“That’s what you tried to hand me, isn’t it?” he said, and climbed off the bed as if he knew where it was and planned to get it.

Seemingly eager to reassure her, the man who remained in the bedroom smiled. “Where you from?”

Afraid to reveal the truth for fear it would result in a trip to the closest immigration office, she stuck with what she’d been telling everyone who’d given her a ride. “Las Vegas.”

“That’s pretty far from here,” he said with a whistle. “How’d you get all the way to Idaho?”

“It is a…very long story. You do not want to hear,” she added with a dismissive air meant to imply that it would only bore him.

He opened his mouth to argue, but she interrupted him with a question of her own. “You two—” she waved to indicate the man who’d left the room “—you are brothers, yes?”

“That’s right. I’m Brent. He’s Ken. What’s your name?”

With strawberry blond hair and hazel eyes, Brent wasn’t quite as handsome as his darker sibling. But since she rarely saw light-colored hair in Guatemala, she liked it a lot. “Cierra Romero.”

The man he’d called Ken returned with the corners of his mouth tugged into a frown, but the memory of the tautly muscled stomach and chest she’d touched as she warmed her hands made Cierra feel a bit jittery inside—a sensation she’d never experienced before. Perhaps it was the hunger and the cold.

“I’m sorry. I can’t find it,” he said. “It must’ve blown away when you fainted.”

But…she’d put all her faith in that note, which included a personal note for her new employer, as well as the address where she was to go.

In an effort to sustain this latest blow with some dignity, she covered her face but was simply too hungry and exhausted to stem the tears.

An uneasy silence fell as she cried. She understood that these Americans had no idea how to react to so much negative emotion. The poorest person she’d met in this country would’ve been rich as a king in her village, so she felt quite confident that these two men had never been through anything remotely similar to what she had. They’d never been unwanted visitors in a foreign country, had never slept in the street or begged ride after ride with strangers. And they certainly had no idea what it was like to go without food for days at a time. They probably thought she was crazy. Or a lowly beggar, trying to swindle them by playing on their sympathy.

But everything that had gone wrong since her parents died was her brother’s fault. If he’d kept the family in Todos Santos, where they’d been raised, they might have had a chance of subsisting off the land, like everyone else. But no… He’d believed he could get rich by moving to the city.

Instead, he’d gotten into trouble and been sent to prison.

She wasn’t her brother. So why was she humiliating herself in front of these Americans? Where was her pride? She would not represent her country or her family this way!

Wiping her cheeks, she blinked to keep more tears from spilling over her lashes and looked up at their stricken faces. “I—I apologize for interrupting your afternoon.” She formed the words as precisely as she could, and got off the bed so she could put on her soaking shoes.

The two brothers exchanged a glance that seemed to say, What do we do now? Then the older one, the one she found attractive, came toward her. “What was so important about that note?”

“Nothing. Please, do not worry. I— It was my fault.” If she hadn’t gotten lost, this never would’ve happened. The last person she’d asked for directions had said to take a right at the fork in the road, but she’d never come across a fork, and she’d been walking all day. She must have missed it and needed to go back.