CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FIVE DAYS LATER, Rafael sat with his family around his mother’s Christmas tree, watching as everyone opened presents. Carolina’s two girls were squealing in delight over their gifts from Santa, while Miguel’s son was using his lightsaber to battle imaginary galactic forces of evil. Even Diego was getting into the spirit, fiddling with the MP3 player Rafael had bought him and loaded with his favorite songs.
And Rafael had never been more miserable in his whole damn life. Even the five years he’d spent in prison hadn’t been this bad. At least then he’d had an ending in sight. A timetable he could mark off as each awful day passed.
Being without Vivian wasn’t like that. Every day was an empty ache, one that had him going stir-crazy before the first week was up. And the knowledge that this was forever—that he would never be with her again—was nearly unbearable.
What had he done? The question haunted Rafael as it had every morning since he’d walked out of Vivian’s apartment, working itself insidiously into his brain until it was all he could think about, all he could focus on.
When Vivian had told him that she loved him, he should have dropped down on his knees and thanked God for her. He should have at least wrapped his arms around her and told her that he felt the same way, that nothing else mattered but the two of them.
But he’d been stupid and had let his damn pride get in the way. Had let his fear of being hurt again stand between him and the only woman he’d ever loved. Was it possible for him to be a bigger pendejo?
It had messed with his head when she’d told him her mother knew about his rape conviction. All he could think about was the months and years Lillian Wentworth would look down her nose at him, thinking he was scum. Would work insidiously on Vivian, trying to get her to change her mind about him. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have enough strikes against him without the conviction.
But he’d forgotten something in all that. Forgotten that Vivian was the most steadfast person he’d ever met. She rarely faltered; she stood up for the things she believed in. If she loved him, of course she would stand up for him, too. She already had when she’d kicked her mother out. Had continued to do so when—after everything that had happened between them—she’d rushed a dismissal motion through the court so that Diego could be a free man by Christmas.
And what had Rafael done besides cower behind his misconceptions and fears? How had he showed her that he loved her, too? He hadn’t. He’d been too busy worrying about the past to work on the future. As far as mistakes went, his was a doozy.
“Come on, Rafa. If you’re going to be this miserable, you should just go get the girl.” Michaela beaned him in the head with a bright red box. “You haven’t opened one present, haven’t done anything but mope. Man up and go tell your woman you screwed the pooch.”
“How do you know he’s the one who screwed up?” Miguel demanded. “She could have—”
“She didn’t. Vivian’s good people,” Michaela said.
Great. What kind of idiot was he that his baby sister had figured out in one evening what he hadn’t been able to get his mind around in three weeks? “She’s right. I screwed up.”
“So go fix it.” His father smacked him on the back of the head. “You think love is all about fairy tales? Everyone screws up at one time or another. It’s what you do about it afterward that makes all the difference.”
His mother leaned over and planted a big kiss on her husband’s mouth. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, mi novio.” She raised an eyebrow at Rafael. “Why are you still here?”
“I’m not.” He sprang up and headed for the door.
“Yo, bro.”
“What?” he asked Gabriel, impatient to be on his way.
“Just a suggestion, but you might change out of the Santa Claus pj’s before you go running after the love of your life.”
* * *
VIVIAN SAT ON THE COUCH, staring at her lonely little Christmas tree and feeling absolutely miserable. Her leg still throbbed, she was coming down with a cold and she was alone on Christmas. Could she get any more pathetic?
Oh, yeah, and the man she loved had walked away from her five days ago, without a backward glance. Nope, she officially won the Most Pathetic award of the year.
She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, could barely function. The only bright spots had been getting Diego’s charges dropped and watching Richard get indicted for attempted murder in her shooting and conspiracy to commit murder after the fact in Esme’s death. It turned out her boss had done a lot more than simply assign the wrong attorney to the job. As first Greg and then Nacho had broken, the whole story had come tumbling out.
Thomas had killed Esme in a PCP-fueled rage. When he’d woken up covered in blood, he’d enlisted his father’s help, who had then worked to keep his son out of the investigation’s spotlight. He’d paid Detective Turner to find a suspect that would roll over, and had had Thomas cough up the names of local thugs they could use to do their dirty work. He must have had a stroke when Rafael had called him for help with Diego’s case, but he hadn’t been able to say no. It would have looked strange if he’d refused to help one of the kids at the center he’d dedicated so much time to.
The press was having a field day, and Richard had been ruined. It almost made worthwhile Vivian’s awful days as the focus of all that media scrutiny. Almost.
Slumping down on the sofa, she nursed her mug of eggnog and tried to convince herself that she was quite happy watching football games and eating a turkey sandwich.
When the knock sounded at her door, she ignored it at first. But whoever was there was persistent, and finally she dragged herself across the room and wrenched the door open, only to come face-to-face with Rafael.
He looked as upset as she felt.
“Merry Christmas,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Merry Christmas.”
When he didn’t say anything else, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” She stepped back, let him in.
“How’s your leg?” he asked as he trailed her to the sofa.
“It hurts, but it’s better than it was.”
“I’m really sorry—”
“Please tell me you didn’t come here to talk about me being shot.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.” She gestured to her cup on the coffee table. “Do you want some eggnog?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She sank onto the sofa. “So what do you want?”
“You.” He deliberately echoed her answer to his question of the week before.
“I’m sorry?” Her eyes darted to his.
“You’re not the one who needs to apologize.”
He paused for a minute. “I blew it, Vivian. I’m sorry. I screwed everything up. I was just scared and it gave me the excuse to turn away from you.”
“What did you possibly have to be scared of?”
“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Vivian, and was afraid to ask for. Everything I ever needed and didn’t know how to ask for. So when you came into my life and made me fall in love with you, I kept looking for excuses to get out. I kept looking for a reason for us to fail. You had too much money, your world was too different from mine, I didn’t want to get between you and your family.
“But they were all excuses, ways for me to put distance between us because I didn’t trust my feelings—or yours.”
“Why?” The word burst from her. “Love is rare—why would you want to just throw it away?”
“What happened with Jacquelyn screwed me up. Made me think that caring about someone made me vulnerable. Made me weak.” He looked away. “I spent five years in prison for something I didn’t do because I trusted a woman. I lost my freedom, lost who I was, almost lost my family because I was too embarrassed to reach out for them. I was worried about making the same mistake again.”
“You thought I would do that to you.”
“No, of course not. Not rationally. But letting my guard down, trusting anyone, isn’t easy.
“But you changed all that. You made me feel alive for the first time in fifteen years. You made me understand that I could love someone and not lose who I’d become. Most of all, you taught me what it means to love another person so much that her happiness is more important than my own.”
He looked her straight in the eye and said, in the dark, gruff voice she had come to adore, “I love you, Vivian, more than I can ever tell you. You’ve given me love and support and friendship and passion, and rolled it all up into one incredible package. I can’t promise I’ll never hurt you again, but I promise that I’ll never walk away from you. I’ll never again let my issues get in the way of what I feel for you.”
Vivian watched him for long seconds, this brave, compassionate man who knew more about the ugly side of life than she ever would. If he was willing to take a risk, willing to love her, then how could she do anything else?
“I love you, Rafael. Sometimes I think I was born to love you.”
“Good, because I know I was born to love you.” He leaned forward until his lips just brushed hers.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him in for a deeper kiss. “Just remember that after we’ve been married for thirty years.”
“You want to marry me?”
“Well, of course I do.” The shock on his face had her backtracking nervously. “Well, I mean only if that’s what you want—”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a marriage proposal. What happened to pledges of undying love?”
“You want me to propose to you?”
“Well, you are the one who brought it up.” When she didn’t say anything, he grinned. “I’m waiting.”
“What, you mean now?”
“There’s no time like the present.”
“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “So will you marry me?
“Now that’s pathetic, especially for a lawyer who’s supposed to have a way with words.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“Something more romantic.”
“All right. I love you. Will you marry me?”
He gave a long-suffering sigh, though he was clearly enjoying himself. “I guess if I want something done well, I have to do it myself.”
“I guess,” she answered with a grin, captivated by this new, playful part of his personality.
“Well, if I were going to propose…” He reached over and grabbed Vivian’s hands, pulling her against him. “From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were trouble. Too rich, too smart, too beautiful—and you were headed right for me. But never could I have imagined where we would end up. Vivian, I love you. I love everything about you.” He smiled ruefully. “Well, everything except your damn money.”
“Rafael…”
“The way you smile gets to me. It melts me. And the way you argue for what you believe in. The way you’re not afraid to stand up. The way you take the world’s problems on your shoulders and still manage to laugh. And love.”
He brought her hand to his mouth, placed a lingering kiss in the center of her palm and watched as her eyes went dark and hazy. “I love the way you look at me…and Diego. I love how you always see the big picture and the little details. I love that you’re as tough as I am, yet infinitely softer.
“I just love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Tears were shimmering on her lashes, her breath catching in her throat when he asked, “Will you marry me, Vivian?”
“Yes!” She threw her arms around him and squeezed so tightly that for a second he couldn’t tell where she left off and he began. “Yes, yes, yes!”
When she finally let him go, she said, “You know, you’re the best Christmas present I ever got.”
“Just wait till next year. I’ll be a rich man.”
“You already are—you have me, don’t you?”
“That I do. Thank God.”