Sherryl Woods - Swan Point

“Not a doubt in my mind.”

“Either you’re sick of pizza or you’re a very brave man.”

Gabe laughed. “Probably a little of both with some curiosity thrown in.”

“Curiosity?”

He nodded. “I find myself wanting to meet the woman who can fill this house with such incredible aromas and yet make grown men cower. That’s an impressive combination. It’ll be interesting to discover if you two are anything alike.”

Just then the very woman in question, diminutive in size but with the regal bearing of a matriarch used to respect, came out of the kitchen.

“I thought I heard voices,” she said, regarding Gabe speculatively. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Mother, I’d like you to meet Gabe Franklin,” Adelia said.

Mrs. Cruz’s eyes narrowed. “I believe my son has mentioned you.”

“Uh-oh,” Adelia murmured under her breath.

“He probably has,” Gabe said easily. “Elliott and I had dinner just the other night.”

Mrs. Cruz’s eyes lit with amusement at his interpretation of the encounter. “I hardly think my son’s choice of a dinner companion would have stuck in my mind. I believe it was his comment that we needed to keep an eye on you around Adelia. Do we?”

“Mother!” Adelia said, blushing furiously. She turned to him. “I warned you. There’s still time to make a run for it.”

“Not a chance,” he replied. Since Mrs. Cruz didn’t seem to harbor any particular biases toward him, Gabe figured he’d passed some sort of test with Elliott, if not yet with her. He was eager to see how the evening might play out. He couldn’t help it. Challenges always caught his interest.

“Gabe is here to check out the work I want to have done on the house,” Adelia explained quickly. “I’ve invited him to join us for dinner.”

“If it’s not an imposition,” Gabe told the older woman, drawing on manners he’d picked up from watching the way civilized people behaved, rather than any examples that had been set in his home.

“It’s not an imposition at all,” Mrs. Cruz said. “I have a large family. I cook accordingly. There’s always more than enough for company. Dinner will be ready in a half hour, if that will give you time to look around at the renovations my daughter has in mind.”

“Absolutely,” Gabe said, relieved to have passed the initial screening at least.

Somehow, though, he wouldn’t be one bit surprised to find Elliott and heaven knew how many other members of the Cruz family joining them at the table.

* * *

Adelia took one look at her mother’s face and decided that giving Gabe a personal tour to go over her notes would be preferable to the cross-examination she was likely to receive if she joined her mother in the kitchen, even long enough to apologize for bringing home a last-minute guest. She realized there was a certain irony in the fact that she was more intimidated by the thought of answering her mother’s penetrating questions than Gabe was. Of course, she’d had experience that he didn’t share.

“Let’s start outside,” she suggested to Gabe. “I think I saw a ladder in the shed, if you want to check out the roof. Mother, you don’t need my help, do you?”

Her mother gave her a knowing look. “Of course not. The girls are helping. It’s time they learned their way around a kitchen. I left Selena stirring the sauce for the enchiladas. Knowing how distracted she gets by those text messages she receives every couple of minutes, I’d better check on it before it burns.”

Adelia frowned. “She’s not supposed to be using her cell phone these days.”

Her mother looked startled. “I see. She didn’t mention that.”

“I’d better go in there and deal with this,” Adelia said.

Her mother waved her off. “I can handle it.”

“Thanks,” Adelia said, relieved not to have to force yet another confrontation with her daughter or get caught in her mother’s crosshairs.

Adelia avoided Gabe’s gaze as she led the way to the backyard. When she finally risked a glance, she found his eyes sparkling with barely concealed mirth.

“When did I become the lesser of two evils?” he asked.

“In the past five minutes,” she said, not even trying to pretend he hadn’t hit the target with his observation. “If I’d had any idea she and Elliott had been chatting about you and me, you wouldn’t have gotten within a hundred yards of this place while she was here. I don’t need the aggravation.”

A smile spread across his face. “You’re scared of your mother,” he taunted.

“Terrified,” Adelia admitted, seeing little reason to deny it. “Why do you find that so amusing?”

“Because you’re a pretty formidable presence in your own right.”

“Formidable? Me?” she said, laughing. “Hardly. As you just heard, not even my own daughter takes my rules seriously.”

“Maybe you need to see yourself from where I’m standing,” Gabe said, his expression turning serious. “Seems to me you could hold your own with anybody, even Selena. She’s just testing the limits.”

Adelia wished she could see herself that way. After years of Ernesto’s criticism and neglect, she had a very low opinion of her own worth. She was determined to get past that, but she wasn’t there yet.

“So, what is it about your mother that intimidates you?” Gabe asked.

Adelia gave the question a moment’s thought before responding. “She has some very rigid and old-fashioned ideas about the role of women, the sanctity of marriage and in general about the relationships between men and women. I’ve been a disappointment.”

He looked skeptical. “I didn’t hear even a hint of judgment in her voice, just concern.”

“You haven’t had the practice I’ve had at reading between the lines,” Adelia told him. “It’s ironic really, because on many levels, I don’t even disagree with her.”

“So you’re an old-fashioned woman at heart?”

She considered the label. It actually fit better than she’d realized. She might chafe at it, but she’d done nothing in her life that would indicate she’d broken that particular mold. Until very recently she hadn’t even been sure she wanted to. It was only lately that she’d come to appreciate the value of independence and self-sufficiency.

“In some ways, I suppose I am old-fashioned,” she said. “I liked being a stay-at-home mom and wife. I thought marriage vows meant forever.” She shrugged. “I’ve just come to accept that some marriages can’t be saved.”

She shuddered at the memory of the day she’d broken the news of her intention to divorce Ernesto. “You have no idea how much courage it took for me to tell my devoutly Catholic mother that I was leaving my husband. That brought on a huge family intervention that entailed quite a bit of yelling and a host of recriminations about how I’d failed the test as a dutiful wife.”

Gabe regarded her with surprise. “She disapproved, even under the circumstances?”

“At first I was too humiliated to admit the reason, so she vehemently disapproved. When I was finally persuaded to tell her everything, it took some adjustment on her part, but she actually turned out to be surprisingly supportive.”

“And the rest of the family?”

“Elliott and his wife have been incredible,” she said. “The others, not so much.” She held up a hand. “Could we drop this? It’s more than you ever really wanted or needed to know about my personal life, I’m sure.”

Gabe looked as if he wanted to argue about that, but he nodded and gestured toward the shed. “The ladder’s in there? Is it locked?”

“No, it’s open.”

She took a deep breath and fought for composure while he got the extension ladder and put it against the side of the house. No sooner had he started up to the roof, than Tomas spotted him and came running across the yard.