Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The first day the public was allowed into the village, Alex stayed in his booth, his back to the aisle and his head down. Even with all the noise and people standing behind him trying to see what he was working on, he was able to make decent progress on a pair of boot tops.
He’d shoved a pair of headphones on and cranked up Muse, but the music didn’t block out all the buzz. It did, however, create a white noise that seemed to actually enhance his creative groove.
It wasn’t until he felt a light touch on his shoulder that he looked up and realized five hours had flown by. He turned to smile up at who he assumed was Greer, only to spot a woman holding a picnic basket. Someone he hadn’t seen in way too long.
“Mamá.” He jumped out his chair and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off the ground in his pure pleasure. She still smelled of Mexican chocolate and chalk dust.
She awkwardly patted his back with one hand, her only option since he had her arms pinned to her sides. “My guapo Alejandro. Mijo, I have missed you so much.”
Over his mamá’s shoulder he spotted a dark-haired, scowl-wearing teenager. Backwards baseball cap, purple jersey, and lowrider jeans completed the kid’s rebellious look. Nicolás.
Alex kissed his mamá on the cheek and gently placed her back on her feet. When he reached out to Nicolás, the kid shuffled away, chin up and palm out. “I don’t go for none of that girl crap, güey.”
The last time Alex had set eyes on Nicolás, he’d still been up for piggyback rides and cheap popsicles.
“Nicolás Emilio Rafael,” their mamá scolded, “greet your brother.”
The kid grudgingly held out a hand for a knuckle bump.
“I brought tamales. Your favorite. Can you have lunch?” All smiles, his mamá held up a picnic basket Alex recognized from years ago. And as wonderful as it was to see her now, the lines around her eyes and mouth stabbed at him. She’d aged since he’d last seen her.
That’s when it hit him. His mamá and his baby brother were here. In Texas instead of Georgia. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting you, of course.” She patted him on the cheek the same way he’d seen her touch his father a million times before his death.
“No, why are you in Texas?”
Hugging the basket to her chest, she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Lunch first. Talk after.”
“Give me a sec.” Alex locked up his leather in a set of metal drawers. “We can eat outside.”
He led his mamá and a shambling Nicolás down the aisle toward the doors. They were five feet from escaping all the noise and commotion when Greer popped out of another artist’s booth and smiled at him in that way she had. The smile that hit him mid-chest and rippled out to all his other body parts.
“Alex, I’ve been…” She glanced at the two people with him, looked back at him. Just that quickly, her gaze swung back to Nicolás. Dammit. She knew. “I…ah…”
“Alejandro, don’t be rude,” his mamá said. “Introduce us to your friend.”
He did as she asked, and Nicolás looked Greer up and down with speculation.
Alex popped him lightly on the ear. “Mi senora.”
“Que pedo.” Nicolás’s dark eyes narrowed, saying he wasn’t as indifferent as his words.
With a shaky smile that made it clear his mamá was uneasy, worried about answering his earlier question, she turned to Greer. “We are having lunch. Would you like to join us?”
“Tamales,” he said.
Her eyes brightened. “I am so in.”
They wandered outside, but the picnic tables Greer had moved in were all occupied. Alex’s mamá spotted the oak tree and flatbed trailer. “Maybe we could sit there?”
Alex and Greer carefully avoided looking at each other. “Perfect shady spot,” Greer agreed a little too brightly.
A few minutes later, the three adults were sitting on the end of the trailer while Nicolás was perched on the wheel well, staring into the distance as though ignoring them would make them all go away.
Alex’s mamá took her time unwrapping the food and laying it out as though the placement was the most important thing in the world.
“So—” she slid a glance at Greer, no doubt scoping out her hips and calculating whether or not they were sufficient to birth a Villanueva baby, “—how do you know my Alejandro?”
Greer gestured toward the barn. “I’m involved with the artisan village.”
That was the understatement of the year. Alex chimed in, “She owns this land and the barn. This whole thing was her idea and she’s running a huge competition to discover the most talented artists.”
That squared his mamá’s shoulders. “You have seen my Alejandro’s work, no? He is very talented.”
A small smile quivered around Greer’s lips as her attention slid toward the spot they’d made love and back to his mamá’s face. “I completely agree.”
“Then he should win.”
Jesus. “That’s not Greer’s decision, Mamá. The people who live in Prophecy are the competition judges.”
Her black eyes narrowed. “Ah, a popularity contest then. You used to be very charming. Remember how you would help Senora Costanza after church on Sundays? Her bougainvillea were the most beautiful on the block.”
“Are you suggesting I should bribe people by planting their gardens?”
Her shoulder rose and fell. “Being nice never hurt anyone.” She passed out plates heaped with tamales and a simple avocado and tomato salad.
The spices and hint of lime took Alex back to Christmas Eves at his abuela’s house. For the time it took them to eat, silence reigned over the trailer. Nicolás wolfed his down then jumped over the trailer’s side.
“Mijo, where are you going?” his mamá called to Nicolás.
“For a walk.”
His mamá’s sigh was full of meaning. Apparently, Greer caught it too because she scooped up a last bite of tamale and said, “Mrs. Villanueva, thank you so much for lunch. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back inside.”
When she walked away, Alex and his mamá both contemplated Greer’s backside. For very different reasons. Finally, his mamá said, “Is she Catholic?”
Christ. “I’ve never asked.”
“Why not? It’s obvious you like her.”
As much as he’d missed his mamá, he didn’t miss having family digging around in his private business. “She’s a nice woman.”
“Very pretty too. She would make pretty babies.”
“I’m sure she will one day,” Alex responded, careful to keep his tone nonchalant because thinking about Greer’s future babies led him down the path of who would help her make those pretty babies. And he couldn’t go there today. “But that’s not why you’re here. When do you fly back to Georgia?”
“We don’t.”
“What?”
His mamá swallowed and made a show of packing up the leftovers and trash. “Nicolás and I have been back in San Antonio for six months.”
It was surprising the metal trailer frame didn’t bend under Alex’s grip.
He didn’t even try to breathe through his anger, just let it ride.
“And you didn’t think I needed to know? Why the he—” she shot him a mamá look and he swallowed the curse word on his lips, “—why would you do that? And why didn’t you tell me when I called a few days ago?
” He’d let it slip that he was in Texas, so that would’ve been the perfect time for her to return the info.
Dammit, he should’ve known something was wrong when she wasn’t upset by his whereabouts.
Now, her eyes turned soft and sad. “You might not understand this, Alejandro, but I miss my family.”
Direct shot. She had no idea how much he’d missed her and Nicolás over the years. Missed the hell out of his papá and Javi. How could she sit there and accuse him of not understanding that loss?
Because he’d never said a word about it to her. “I sent you to Georgia because you have family there.”
“Cousins of my cousins’ cousins. It’s not the same.
” She placed her hand on his forearm, and even through his shirt, he felt her pain.
Her hand was heavy on his arm, as if her body had turned to lead after being away from her home for so many years.
“I miss your tías and tíos. I want to be with the people who love me.”
“Don’t you understand it could still be dangerous? Tejanos Pintados has a very long memory.”
“We didn’t move back to the old neighborhood.”
How could she have thought for a second returning to Texas was a good idea? “San Antonio is big, but not that big. They’ll find out.”
Her face tightened, making the lines around her eyes deeper. “They already have.”
The delicious food she’d made spiraled in Alex’s stomach, turning rancid. “What have they done? Have they threatened you? Have they—”
She swept her fingers across her damp eyes and lowered her head. “They recruited Nicolás.”
Greer knew she was grinning like a lunatic possum as she directed the truck hauling a big flatbed trailer into the pasture, because her first two outbuildings were being delivered. What they might turn into, she wasn’t totally sure yet. But they were hers.
She checked the sketch in her hand then held up a palm traffic cop-style and called, “Hold. This is where I want the Sunday haus.”
The driver cut the engine and climbed down from the cab to inspect the area between two live oaks. He nodded his approval. “This’ll do.”
Of course it would. She’d planned it, hadn’t she?
With his special hydraulic trailer, it didn’t take the driver long to unload the three pieces of the traditional wooden cottage Germans and Czech immigrants had built all over the Texas hill country. Unfortunately, too many of them were falling or being torn down. A shame.
But not this one. It was a compact two-room structure with the left and right sides connected by a dogtrot, the perfect breezeway for insufferably hot Texas summers.