She’s married, for Christ’s sake, he told himself sharply, and appropriately rebuked, he glanced back at her desk. “So, uh, are these your kids?”
“No,” she replied. “Those pictures came with the frames. I figure I’ll find something to stick in their places someday.”
When he blinked at her in surprised bewilderment, she laughed. “I’m kidding. Of course those are my kids. This is Max.” Santoro lifted one of the photos of the boy and handed it to him. “He’ll be eight in December.”
“He’s cute.”
“And this is mi cariño, my daughter, Emerita. We call her Eme for short.” Her smile grew soft, nearly wistful as she showed him the girl. “She’s four.” Slipping the photo from his hand, she laughed. “Well, hey, I’m sure you didn’t come out here just so to see pictures of my kids. What can I do for you?”
Because he had no real reason to be there, he looked around. “Uh,” he said. “Actually I just thought I’d swing by, say hello. See if you needed any help with anything.”
She raised her brow. “Not unless you know anything about running a STE/ICE engine diagnostic on an M-923 five-ton cargo truck.”
“Uh,” Andrew said again and she laughed.
“Come on.” Slapping the back her hand against his stomach, she turned and walked away. “You can keep me company.”
He stood to the side, watching with undisguised fascination as Santoro shoved back the tilt hood on a huge, six-wheeled transport vehicle, stepped up onto the ledge of the front bumper and leaned purposefully into the maw of the engine compartment.
“So how did you wind up working on engines?” he asked, taking the tanker trailer into account because he was hard-pressed not to check out her ass, given her position.
“My dad taught me,” she said, connecting cables from a hand-held testing unit to engine components beneath the hood. “And I used to work with the New York City Transit Department as a track equipment maintainer, a heavy duty mechanic. That was how I met Antonio.”
“He’s your husband.” Now Andrew had no trouble tearing his eyes guiltily away from her ass.
Santoro nodded. “He’s a firefighter. Ladder fifty-eight, South Bronx. I met him my first week on the job. He asked me out a week after that. A month later, we were married.”
“Wow,” Andrew said. “That was…fast.”
“Yeah.” She studied her hand-held console for a moment, frowned, then fiddled with some of the gauges and knobs. Turning, she set the console and cables on a nearby workbench then wiped her hands on a towel again. “So are you ever going to really tell me where you learned to play pool?”
“I did tell you. Last night in the rec room.”
“Yeah, yeah, the North Pole. I mean it. Where’d you learn?”
“Not the North Pole,” he corrected. “North Pole. It’s this little town just outside of Fairbanks. That’s where I grew up. My dad taught me. He’s an airline pilot and was gone a lot while I was growing up. Shooting pool was one of the few things we ever really did together. Beth called it our male bonding time.”
“Beth,” Santoro said quietly. “She’s the one in the picture, right? Your sister.”
He nodded. “Again, I’m really sorry about the way I acted yesterday.”
“It’s alright.”
“I was an asshole.”
“Yeah, you were,” she said, smiling. “But I told you, it’s okay.”
“Thanks,” he said. “And thank you, too, for saving my life the other night. I’ve been meaning to say that.”
“My pleasure,” she replied, offering her fist to him, that little knuckle tap she’d apparently offer only to her friends.
He returned the gesture, noticing for the first time that although she’d extended her left hand, her ring finger—where her wedding band should have been—was bare. Must not want to catch it on anything while she’s working.
“I ought to get back to the compound,” he said. “Out of your way.”
“You’re not in my way. I kind of like having you here, talking to you.”
He smiled. Me, too, he wanted to say, this little voice in his mind immediately shot down by a sharper, sterner one: She’s married. Get your head out of your ass.
So instead, he said, “Thanks, Santoro.”
“Dani,” she said and he blinked at her, curious. “My name. It’s Dani. You don’t have to call me Santoro. Makes you sound like one of the guys or something.”
He raised his brow. “I am a guy.”
She laughed. “Yeah, but you’re not one of the guys. You know.” She nodded to indicate the barracks.
He smiled again. “Fair enough. Thanks, Dani.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, then motioned with her hand. “Come on. I’ve got two more trucks just like this waiting over there.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She’s married.
Andrew kept telling himself this, over and over, even as he took the stairs up to his room in the barracks two at a stride, whistling all the while.
“My squad’s got KP, kitchen duty tonight,” Dani had told him as they’d left the garage together earlier. “Why don’t you help us? We’re making enchilada casserole and I’m heading it up. I could use another pair of hands.”
“Sounds good,” he’d replied.
Dani Santoro is married, he told himself in his room. Didn’t you learn your lesson with Lila about messing around with a married woman?
He let himself into his room, fished his wallet from his back pocket and tossed it onto the dresser. After a moment’s reconsideration, he picked it up again, flipped idly through the billfold and pulled out the letter from his father.
The paper felt old and crisp in his hands as he unfolded it, smoothing the wrinkles out of the sheet from where he’d crumpled it the day before. He didn’t read, just held it, looking at it, the interlocking whorls and loops of Eric’s slanted handwriting. It was enough to quell that simmering eagerness he’d felt since leaving the garaging, the anticipation of seeing Dani again, the excited enjoyment at the time they’d shared that morning.
She’s married, he told himself, firmly this time.
In the letter, Eric had invited Andrew out for dinner, pleading for the chance to explain himself, his reasons for the divorce, in person.
I’ve found someone else, someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.
He’d asked Andrew to meet him for dinner at the Pagoda Chinese Restaurant in North Pole. Besides the finished portion of their basement, in which Eric and Andrew had played pool, the restaurant was one of the few places Andrew associated with his father from his childhood. It had been a sort of tradition for Eric to take Andrew and Beth to Pagoda for dim sum dinners whenever he’d been in between the flights that had kept him away from home for weeks and sometimes months at a time. Because of this, even though Andrew had been angry with his father about the divorce, he’d reluctantly agreed to meet there, a sort of emotionally neutral ground, if nothing else.
It had been three years since Andrew had last seen Lila Meyer at that point, so he’d been stunned, surprised and more than a little bewildered to find her standing in the restaurant foyer upon his arrival.
“Hello, Andrew,” she’d said, smiling as if she’d been expecting him, as if stumbling upon her young former lover, whose heart she’d pretty much ripped out, stomped on, pissed on, then handed back, was something pleasant and anticipated.