Chapter 14
Fitz
“Oh my god. It’s the best thing I’ve ever smelled in my entire life.”
Tessa closes her eyes and tips her head back in ecstasy. This is the most relaxed and the least annoyed she’s been since I found her in the dirt. If I’d known a tamale could calm the savage beast, I’d have brought her here first.
What I do know is if she keeps making those little sighing sounds, I’m going lose my fucking mind. Despite what I said, so help me I will carry her someplace with a bed so she can make those noises for me.
She sighs again and tips her head against my arm. I know her rapture isn’t about me, so I fight the urge to pull her in closer. “Seriously, I need to eat whatever that is as soon as possible. It smells like meat, and I want it. What is it?” she asks.
I can’t help but chuckle. “Maria's carne asada tamales. She learned to make them as a kid in El Salvador, then she came here. Husband worked as a picker on a farm nearby, and she cooked lunch for all the workers. Cranking out hundreds of these per day, making all the salsas, agua fresca, and guacamole. People started asking her to make extra so they could take plates home after work. Locals started paying her to cook for them, and eventually, she ran out of kitchen space. Now she runs this little spot, and it’s jam-packed from the second it opens until closing time. There isn't a person three towns over who wouldn’t stand in line for an hour for a tamale.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame them. If her food tastes as good as it smells, she could come to LA. She’d probably get written up by a food influencer, and she’d have a franchise in a matter of weeks.”
Her eyes dance at that prospect like she’s about to save Maria from her fate in our small town. I study the menu board even though I know it by heart. Anything to keep me from running my mouth when there’s no upside.
“What’s up? You’re scowling,” Tessa says, bumping my hip with hers. With her bum ankle, it throws her off balance, and I have to catch her to keep her from toppling. That leaves me with my arms around her and my face close to hers.
Too close for my own good. I feel her breath on my skin, and when her eyes search my face, it’s almost like she’s caressing me with the tip of her finger. I stifle a shudder. When she’s steady, I move away.
“Still scowling,” she says.
I shake my head, not wanting to start on a rant.
“What? Talk to me,” she insists.
“Fine. I just don’t get you people from LA. Why can’t there be a banger tamale place here? Why does that automatically mean Maria should pick up and bring it to LA, where there are probably already a hundred good places to eat? Why can’t she do her thing here and have that be enough?”
Her eyes widen, and her mouth gapes like I’ve slapped her. I immediately feel guilty for sharing my pet peeve. “Forget it. My issue. Never mind.”
“I-I’m sorry. I never really thought of it that way.” Her forehead creases, and she seems upset, which was not my intention. The brash, lawyerly facade disappears, and she looks lost.
“It’s not your fault. Everyone thinks that way.” I want to kick myself for making her upset.
The creases disappear at least. She hobbles up from the bench to stand in front of me and looks up so our eyes meet. I prepare myself for some smart girl lecture about food culture or whatever. The woman seems to have an answer for everything.
“I don’t want to be ‘everyone.’ Thank you for giving me some perspective.”
It’s not what I’m expecting, not at all.
“Sure. No problem,” I grumble.
“And thank you for taking me to the clinic.” Tessa stands on the tiptoes of her one good leg and kisses me on the cheek.
She almost topples over again like a fawn trying to learn to walk and forgetting she doesn’t know how.
I grab her elbow and help her over to the one empty table on the patio and tell her not to worry about the menu.
Meanwhile, my cheek feels like she’s seared it with a torch from one kiss.
I start to reconsider my commitment to one-and-done. Maybe we could be two-and-done.
“Trust me on this. I’ll order us a few things, and I promise you'll be happy.”
“Big stakes, cowboy. Okay, I’m going to trust you.”
“Cowboy?”
“You tell me. You wear the hat. You ride the horse. Looks like a cowboy to me.” She raises her eyebrows at me, and her blue eyes pin me like lasers. It's probably part of what makes her a good lawyer.
I roll my eyes, but I don’t hate the nickname. “Whatever.”
We’re at the front of the line, so I order my usual. They know exactly what that means, and I add a couple of extra sauces onto the plate so Tessa has options. In under a minute, the tamales are on a platter, which I take out to the table.
“This one has corn and cheese. I know it sounds boring, but it's like street corn with elote seasoning. Fucking delicious.”
I point at the next one. “This one is basic carnitas, but Maria raises the animals humanely, and I swear it makes for better meat. The other one is chicken, pasture-raised, and this one has a mole sauce that’s the kind of nirvana people write poems about.”
When I look up, Tessa is grinning at me like a little kid who’s been given frosted donuts for breakfast by a devious uncle while her parents are out of town. It’s a smile worth all of the pain-in-the-ass aspects of this woman.
“So in brief, you like it here.” The smile turns to laughter.
“What? Why’s that funny?” I ask.
“I've just never seen somebody so delighted over a plate of food before.”
“Really?” I ask. “Then you haven't been eating with the right people, or you haven't been eating the right food.” I point at the plate. I want her to try everything before I dig in.
Tessa picks up a fork and stabs a chunk of the mole and pops it into her mouth.
Immediately, her face dissolves into a mask of pleasure that brings back every fond memory of her lying beneath me.
A part of me wants to sweep the food right off the table and see if the real thing lives up to the memory.
But I have self-control, so no.
I pick up a fork and take a bite of the chicken, dipping it in a healthy coating of salsa.
It’s so damned good. I watch her take careful bites from our shared tamales, dip them in sauce, and pop them into her mouth.
Each time, she closes her eyes as she chews and shakes her head like she can’t believe food could taste this good.
“Man, that’s amazing. I’ve had a full change of heart. Not only should Maria stay here but I will not tell a soul from LA about her, so no one with weaker morals than me tries to poach her.”
“Such a quick convert to the ways of the town. You may have a future here, Duchess.”
“I hope so.” She wipes her mouth delicately with a napkin and leans back.
The sun hits her face and lights her up in a way I normally only appreciate in a landscape.
Yellows become gold. Browns shed a kaleidoscope of shades.
Only now, I see it reflected in the rose of her lips, the pink of her cheeks, the highlights in her hair.
It doesn’t take long before we’ve demolished most of the plate of food, and I glance up at Tessa. She’s sitting ramrod straight, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. There’s a determined glint in her eye that wasn’t there before.
“Look, I read the lawsuit, cover to cover. It has no teeth. It’s barely more than a nuisance suit.”
“I know that.”
“Oh, you do? So why file a suit you can’t win?”
“To get your attention. Because what I really want is to buy your land so I can have access to your aquifer, and your grandparents or whoever’s been controlling it all these years refuses to sell. They refuse to even answer my emails.”
She holds up a hand. “Gonna stop you right there. My grandparents don’t have email.”
“Okay, well, don’t know who I’ve been sending those to, but I’ve been writing letters too. No response.”
“So maybe that’s evidence no one wants to sell you their land.”
I laugh. “Is that how it works in your world? If someone disagrees with you, you leave it at that? Somehow, I doubt that’s how you win huge legal cases.”
“No, obviously that’s not how I win huge cases.” She breaks eye contact and takes some lip balm from her bag and applies it, then rubs her lips together afterward. Seems like she’s trying to distract me from the conversation. It’s working.
I start to wipe a small smudge of dirt from her cheek, but somehow leaving it there softens her. Makes her prettier. Even coated in grime and dust, walking around with a leaf tangled in her hair, she’s the best thing I’ve laid eyes on.
“Have you considered that a bunch of neighbors suing each other isn’t the best way to get water? The laws here are outdated. They reward the biggest water consumers and squeeze smaller ranchers.”
“This isn’t new information, Duchess, but I’m not in a position to sue the Tomahawk company, even if they’re the real reason my fields could go fallow in six months or less.”
“If anyone is, you are, owning half the property around here,” she grumbles. It gets my attention.
“How do you know that?”
She shrugs. “People talk.”
“People shouldn’t.”
But they do. I’m still not sure how she went from not knowing I lived next door an hour ago to knowing how much land I own, but that’s beside the point. “Anyhow, if your big plan now is to stonewall me and then ignore me like your grandparents did, I might as well put you in touch with my lawyer.”
“That’s not my plan.” Her words are so quiet, I barely hear them.
“Okay, so what’s the plan, Duchess?”
She looks at the sky for long enough that I start to become convinced that’s her answer. Then she lowers her gaze and pins me with those pale eyes. “I’m pregnant.”
My first instinct is to look at her stomach, which is flat, from what I can see. Just like it was when I saw her naked a few weeks ago. My brain can’t compute this. She’s obviously messing with me. Talking nonsense. Trying to distract me.
“You’re…” I can’t even say the words because I’m so confused.
“Pregnant.” Her pale blues are so unyielding, and all I can do is blink at her.
Then the pieces begin to fall into place. How she was weird at the urgent care place when the nurse asked if she was pregnant. How we met just over a month ago, and things can happen in that much time. How I could even be the father…but…
I swallow hard and feel my heart start thudding in my chest. My skin feels clammy.
She nods. “Yes, it’s yours. I’m seven weeks along.”
Now the clamminess turns to all-out sweat. It’s not just my skin that feels hot. My entire body is on fire. My eyes blaze, and my voice comes out low and harsh when I finally speak. “How could you be so irresponsible?”
Tessa lets out a long, slow breath and shakes her head. “Wow. You really are an ass.”