Charlee had insisted she could drive herself to his house so he wouldn’t have to go back and forth to pick her up then drive her all the way back, but Hector wouldn’t hear of it. Besides, he wanted to use the drive back to his house to warn her a little about his mom. He’d already cautioned his mom about Charlee not being Latina, and while she hadn’t been thrilled, she promised to keep her thoughts about preferring Latina girls for her boys to herself.

“So my mom’s a little on the . . .” He’d searched for the perfect word to describe his mom all the way to pick up Charlee, and now here she was in his truck on the way back, and he still couldn’t come up with the right term. “I don’t want to say manipulative because she doesn’t even have to be.” He wiggled his fingers in Charlee’s hand. Maybe it’d be better if he just explained it. “You see it’s always been just the three of us. My dad died when I was real young, and so basically my mom’s had to be both mother and father to us. And she did a damn good job too. The thing is the woman knows whenever it comes to me and Abel, what she wants she gets. Here’s where it gets tricky.”

Charlee lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him. “How?”

“Neither of us has ever brought a girl home. And she has these old-fashioned ideas about the kind of girls we should date.” They came to a stop, and he turned to her, a little hesitant about going on, but he did. “She’s always said we should stick with our own kind—our own culture.” Charlee’s eyes got noticeably wider. Even that made him smile, and he had to kiss her. “Don’t worry. I’ve never bought into it, and neither has my brother, but since neither of us ever intended on bringing someone home—not anytime soon anyway, we didn’t bother arguing.” He kissed her again before stepping on the accelerator again. “She’s been duly warned, I promise you.”

“Was she mad?” Charlee asked.

“No,” Hector laughed softly, squeezing her hand. “She’s not the Hispanic Archie Bunker.” Now Charlee laughed. “She just has all kinds of old-fashioned beliefs, rituals, and sayings. Like you don’t ever even playfully pretend you’re trying to stab someone like Abel and I did on occasion when we were kids because se te mete el Diablo.”

“Huh?” Charlee stared at him.

Hector rolled his eyes with a smirk. “The devil will get in your hand and make you do it for real.” Charlee’s brows pinched. “Yeah, exactly,” Hector said, nodding. “And she really believes it too. She had me and Abel believing since we were kids that if you hit your mom, se te cae la mano—your hand will fall off. I’m still not certain that’s not entirely true. But she said it so convincingly neither one of us ever dared raise our hand to her.”

Charlee nudged him. “She doesn’t sound so bad. All parents have quirks.”

“No, mine takes the cake,” Hector insisted.

“Well, my mom believes you don’t catch a cold from germs, rather from doing things like walking barefoot on the cold floor,” Charlee countered, “or going out when it’s cold just after you’ve showered.”

“Yeah, well, when she does get a cold or the flu or so much as headache, does Seven-Up cure it all?”

Charlee laughed out loud now. “No, but lemon juice works too.”

“Oh no,” Hector said. “Lemon juice is for the cancer or for an open wound. Ask my mom. Can you believe she’d squeeze lemon f**king juice into our cuts and scrapes? As if we weren’t in enough pain already.”

He loved watching Charlee laugh, so he shared a little more. “And get this one. Bathing suits for kids are a gimmick. It’s just the retailers’ way of trying to make money. I can’t even begin to tell you how many pictures she has of Abel and me in the summer, running through the sprinklers in our tighty whiteys.”

Charlee held her hand to her chest, still laughing. “But did she ever dig a hole in the backyard and fill it with water for you to swim in?”

“Yuck,” Hector said as he pulled into his driveway. “Okay, you got me there, but we do have a few pictures of Abel and me—once again in our tighty whiteys—frolicking in a storage tote or ice chest or anything we could turn into a pool because, according to my mom, they were just as good as those cheap plastic pools from Kmart.”

Glad that Charlee didn’t seem at all nervous about meeting his mom, he walked around his truck and met her by the front walkway to the tiny house he’d lived in his entire life and could hardly believe now he was moving away from.

Charlee looked positively adorable. Her long burgundy sweater, leggings, and boots weren’t nearly as provocative as yesterday’s jeans and tiny hoodie, but they were still enough to make Hector’s heart race. “Ready?”

She nodded as he took the pasta dish from her then took her hand in his free one. “Smells good,” he said, bringing the dish closer to his face.

“It’s probably the only thing I know how make aside from the typical sandwich or generic stuff you stick in the oven or microwave.”

“What is it?”

“Ranch chicken pasta,” she said, crinkling her nose. “I got the recipe from one of those ladies passing out samples at the supermarket. It was so good, and when she explained how simple it was to make, I bought the stuff, went home, and voila!”

Realizing his friends and family were going to be around today and watching closely, Hector had to remind himself he couldn’t be kissing her every time the mood struck him or he’d never take his lips off her. But damn it if he didn’t feel like kissing her again, so he moved the dish aside and leaned into her against the porch wall just before they walked in. This kiss had to tide him over for a while, so he made it count, savoring her mouth deeply and sucking on her tongue and bottom lip. Suddenly imagining what it would be like to be in her, he got a little carried away, letting a moan escape.