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maldecir cuando vine. ”
    But Miguel proved he was, indeed, polite, at least long enough to not voice his thoughts while he gave Mami a kiss on the cheek and saw her to the street. Anna Lucia was in her front yard, dancing one of her spinning-ballerina dances, clearly looking out for her abuela’s arrival.
    Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, Mami hustled across the street, already telling Anna Lucia how pretty her hair looked and asking what had happened at recess that day.
    Miguel locked the thumb lock. And the deadbolt. And latched the door chain.
    Janice was sitting on the sofa still. Her toe was tapping a mile a minute.
    Miguel smiled.
    Janice was practically never, ever still. Over the years, he’d found her tell spots. Sometimes it was the tapping toe. Sometimes she drummed her fingers on the nearest surface. In meetings, she tended to swivel a few degrees left and right in her chair, though her supreme core control allowed her to do it and never move her head and shoulders from wherever they were focused. Sometimes—and this was his favorite—if she had to be utterly sedate and polite, say at a client meeting, her cute little nose would twitch.
    Her nose wasn’t twitching now. Her whole self was thrumming with the need to go back into battle. Miguel was armed and ready.
    “Come to the table. Everything’s done.” Well, almost. He’d preheated the grill while Mami was grilling Janice, and all he had to do was throw the steak on it while they enjoyed his empanadas.
    He took Janice’s hand and pulled her easily up to him. Best to get her moving again, get her out of the zone where she’d talked with his mother. He couldn’t think of a less romantic interruption. But he’d recover the mood; he tugged her through his bedroom onto the back deck, where his grill was. And he didn’t miss her eyes lingering on his neatly made bed, either, no matter that he was balancing a dish full of marinated meat as he guided her along.
    Miguel positioned Janice so his body blocked access to the door, but she could still see his bed through the window. He’d learned some lessons over the years, one of them being about the power of suggestion. And having Janice where her gaze was going to fall on the sleep pants he’d left tossed casually on the foot of his bed was just the suggestion he wanted. His stripping, his being in bed, her doing much the same.
    Let her squirm now, he thought, forking the steak in place over the hot grill. It sizzled immediately, the flames leaping up to sear the flesh. Enticing smoky scents filled the air around them, and Janice was bouncing on her toes again, eyes darting around the small deck area and out to the dark yard beyond.
    Yeah. She was exactly where he wanted her.
    “Miguel?”
    And calling him by name, never mind the slip that he’d let slide earlier. “Janice?”
    She cleared her throat. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the deck rail to better enjoy every micro-movement of her fidgeting. Dios, she was lovely. In the dusky light, her eyes and hair were the same enchanting brown, though in the sun, he knew, strands of gold wove through her hair. He always thought of ice cream bars: a hard outer shell, but crack through it, and a man would melt for the sweet cream inside.
    A quick jab to his bicep got him focused on Janice’s words again. “Eh?”
    “You sound like your mami.” She eyeballed him, challenging, knowing just how well he was inclined to take that comment. “I asked, who’s Sophie?”
    And it wasn’t like he’d change the answer, or withhold the answer. It barely occurred to him that Janice wouldn’t know about Sophie.
    It wasn’t until Janice went completely, eerily still that Miguel considered the impact of his rolling-off-his-tongue words: “Mi hija.”

     

Chapter Five
     
    It probably was just two seconds , the time it took Janice to replay his words, translate them to be sure, and play them again. She was no more ruffled