in. From across the room, behind a computer screen, and beneath a purple baseball cap, Hope peered back. He didn’t like her cloistered behind the desk, but she’d patiently explained that the new location of her desk was good feng shui, and he was lucky she didn’t paint her bedroom door red. “Hi, baby.”
“Hi, Dad.”
A ribbon of melancholy twirled around his heart. He missed the days when she’d called him Daddy. She still did occasionally, but only when she was trying to get something from him. Like a puppy, God forbid. “What’s up? Homework?”
She shook her head. “Already done. I’m just surfing.”
A quick jolt of concern struck, but he repressed it. Tomás wanted to give his daughter his trust and the benefit of the doubt. Hope had common sense. “Any interesting sites?” He approached the desk as casually as he could.
In a few keystrokes and button pushes, Hope had the computer off. “No. Just…nothing.”
He raised one eyebrow.
Hope sighed. “I’m not going in chat rooms, if that’s what you’re thinking. Those people are all creeps and idiots.” She smiled, deepening the dimples in her cheeks.
Tomás’s heart swelled. He chuckled at his daughter and tugged the ponytail pulled through the back of her cap, then took a seat on her bed. Why did he feel so nervous? “Have a few minutes to talk to your old dad?”
Hope kicked back, planting her heels on the edge of the desk. “You’re not old, newsflash. But go ahead.”
“You know I’ve been trying to plan your quinceañera, but I haven’t been doing a very good job.”
Hope twisted her mouth to the side, her tone turning almost plaintive. “It’s okay, Dad. I don’t need to have one.”
“Nonsense. You’ll have one. But I’ve hired someone to help us plan it. Help you. I think you’ll like her.”
He watched Hope’s eyes widen before a line—worry? annoyance?—creased her forehead. As quickly as it had come, it disappeared. All of a sudden, her expression went bland. “Okay. Who is she?”
“Just okay?”
She bit her bottom lip a moment, thinking. “Oh, I meant, thank you.”
Tomás sighed, hanging his head for a moment. “I wasn’t looking for gratitude, baby, although I appreciate it. I’m asking—what do you think about that? About having help? And she’s an event planner from Santa Fe.”
Hope shrugged, picking at the remains of the sparkle polish that looked so out of place on her stubby little fingernails. “Oh. It’s fine. Why?”
“I…don’t know.” He waited, but Hope didn’t volunteer further comments. “Okay. So, we’re going to have her over for dinner next Wednesday, so the two of you can meet. So we can start to plan this thing.” He paused for comments that never materialized. Weren’t teenage girls supposed to jabber? You wouldn’t know it from his enigmatic daughter. “You have anything going that night I don’t know about?”
“Nope. Nothing important.” Hope offered a placid smile. “What should we have?”
A low-grade sense of dismay settled in Tomás’s gut, and he didn’t know why. It wasn’t Hope—she was cooperative enough. Then again…maybe that was it. He felt as if she never really talked to him anymore, as if he didn’t know how she truly felt, or what went through that fertile mind of hers. “I’ll worry about the menu. You just be here at six next Wednesday. Deal?”
“Deal.” She giggled.
Tomás watched her a moment, loving her with an intensity that nearly suffocated him, and at the same time feeling as though he hardly knew her at all. But, for no reason. She’d always been a good, obedient daughter. No changes there. Somehow, though, he felt…a distance. And a powerlessness to change it. “Is everything okay?”
She shrugged again. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You’d tell me if something wasn’t okay?”
“Dad!” she moaned. “You’re bugging me. Stop being weird.”
With a tired, put-upon chuckle, Tomás stood. “Bueno. Okay. I’m leaving. God forbid a father should try to have a little conversation with his best girl.”
“I’m immune to your parental guilt trips.”
He turned back and grinned. “Dinner Wednesday at six.”
“I heard you the first hundred times, Dad.” She rolled her eyes and saluted. “Be there or be square.”
He stood and crossed to the door, then turned and studied her for a moment, his back braced against the doorjamb. “I love you, baby.”
Hope dropped her feet to the floor and clicked a few buttons on her keyboard before flashing him a quick smile. “Love you, too, Dad.”
“Don’t stay up late.”
“What do I look like, a vampire?” She bared her teeth.
A perfectly normal exchange, Tomás told himself as he left the room, his soft chuckle feeling a little choked off by the lump in his throat.
Perfectly normal.
So why did he feel so disconnected?
Chapter Four
Rule number one for leaving a good impression with a man: Don’t assume he’s gay within the first ten minutes of your introduction, and if for some ridiculous reason you do, for God’s sake, don’t voice your thoughts.
Sheesh, what a colossal mess she’d created for herself. There wasn’t anything on earth wrong with being gay in her opinion, but experience taught her that straight guys didn’t appreciate being mistaken for gay guys. That’s all. And she’d done it, unabashedly, to probably the hottest man she’d encountered in months. Ugh.
It had been nearly a week, and still Erica couldn’t get past the embarrassing exchange with Tomás. She’d replayed it over and over in her mind all week, cringing inside each time she heard him say, “I’m…not gay. Not even a little bit.”
And now she had to face him again.
A fresh fist of humiliation punched Erica’s middle as she guided her Honda Accord over the rolling hills and twisting curves of the Northern New Mexico back roads en route to Tomás’s house. Soft flamenco-guitar instrumentals drifted out of her stereo speakers, and the scents of sage and May sunshine wafted in through her open window. The scenery in this area was beautiful, but try as she might, she couldn’t concentrate on it. Instead, two distracting questions ran incessantly through her mind: One, how could she have been such a flipping idiot? And two—though she’d never admit having pondered this question—if Tomás was, as he claimed, a healthy, red-blooded heterosexual male, why had he assured her she’d never have to worry about him hitting on her?
Did he find her so unattractive?
Was she the polar opposite of “his type”?
Make no mistake, she knew it was fickle of her to even wonder. She herself claimed to have no interest in a relationship and to never date colleagues or clients. And she didn’t. She really didn’t. But that wasn’t the point. She was human, and female, and when a drop-dead gorgeous, come-to-papa man flat out stated that he had No Interest in Her Whatsoever, well sorry, but give a woman and her stillbruisable ego a chance to wonder why.
The simplest and most palatable answer would be that Tomás was already involved with someone, but Erica just hadn’t gotten that sense from their first encounter. After all, he’d hired her to plan Hope’s party. Had there been an available girlfriend, logic said the woman likely would’ve planned the quinceañera herself. So, no girlfriend, and yet zip, zero, nada attraction. Yeah, she was fickle to the core, but still. She couldn’t