Pink Neon Dreams (27 page)

“
Te amo,
querida
,” he told her.
 
She wouldn’t
understand what he said, he thought, or realize he’d confessed he loved her.
And Daniel didn’t want her to, not yet. Too much lay ahead before he could
share his heart with her, darkness and trouble and fate.

But once he caught his breath, after they showered
one at a time and crawled into the tangled nest of covers, he held Cecily in
his arms and heard their heartbeats in tandem.
 
And he thought before sleep pulled him down into the depths maybe she
did know after all.

With any luck she might love him, too.

Time would tell.

Chapter
Fifteen

Boneless, sated, and content as a cat sunning on a
winter window ledge, Cecily let her heavy fatigue drag her into sleep.
 
Hours later, she woke with an abrupt
start.
 
Something niggled at her brain that
she couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but she knew it mattered.
 
Think,
girl, focus ‘
cause
I’m pretty sure it’s damn important
whatever it is.
 
Something Daniel
said, she thought and glanced at him.
 
In
repose, his face lost the stern look he often wore and sleep eased some of the
harsh lines the years cut into his features.
 
A wave of affection rose within and she stroked his face, her touch so
light she didn’t think he’d be aware, but his lips twitched into a small
smile.
 
Oh, wow.
Touched by his unconscious response, she smiled too and
remembered what he’d said at the height of their intimacy.
 
Te amo, querida
.
 

Oh, fuck me; I think it means
‘I love you’.
 
Although she didn’t speak Spanish, didn’t know more than a few of the
simplest words or phrases, ‘te ammo’ jangled a distant memory bell.
 
Cecily knew—hell, he’d told her—
querida
meant
something like ‘honey’ or ‘darling’, an endearment, but she hadn’t registered
any significance. Some people peppered their conversations with such terms and
she’d thought maybe it was just a Texas thing, but now she wondered.
 
She could boot up the laptop and look up the
phrase to see, but it might awaken Daniel.
 
But she knew someone who would know and so she unwound out of his
arms.
 
Cecily grabbed her phone from the
desk and slipped into the bathroom.
 
She
sat on the floor and texted Nia:
What
does
te
amo mean?

Since it was almost two in the morning, she figured
she might have to wait for a response, but her cousin answered within a few
moments:
Means ‘I love you’. Y?

Daniel said it
she texted back and Nia’s reply came back:
OMG!!

Did he love her? Cecily pondered the question and
reviewed everything between them, from the first day he strolled into Pink Neon
to waking beside him at the Holiday Inn.
 
There was no doubt the attraction between them possessed power,
something on a scale like the moon and the tide.
 
Sparks ignited into fire from the first, but it
wasn’t just physical.
 
Shared music
played through her mind and she recalled so many moments of caring, of
compassion, of connection beyond the sensual.
 
He’d touched her soul too many times to count and she loved Daniel
without any doubts.
 
But Cecily hadn’t
expected him to love her, too.
 
Burned by
a raunchy marriage, scarred by a decade of pain, she feared embracing
love.
 
Until she met Daniel, her jaded
heart scoffed at the very notion love existed.
 
She knew different, now, but tiny tendrils of fear tried to take
root.
 
What if it didn’t work? Or what if
she ended up doing time for a murder she didn’t commit? Worry something might
happen to Daniel before the situation could resolve reared up, ugly and potent.
 
But greater than either dark emotion, an
amazing burst of happiness surpassed it.

Wonder brighter than a noon sun, more vivid than the
prettiest sunset she’d ever seen banished the shadows. It began as a warm spot
somewhere around her tummy and spread to her heart.
 
From her cornrows to the bottom of her bare
feet gladness burst out with such force it overwhelmed her.
 
Basic emotion in its most raw form brought
tears, born not from sadness but from joy.
 
And she wept aloud as tears rained down her cheeks.
 
Sound burst from her mouth, giggles and sobs
combined.
 
In her celebration, she
thought the closed bathroom door would contain the noise and she never dreamed
it might wake Daniel.
 
Nor did she know
how long she’d cried when he pushed the unlocked door open and came in.

“What’s the matter,
querida?”
he
asked,
his voice so tender it
brought more tears. “I heard you crying.”

Blinded by tears, she responded to his voice by
raising her arms to him, the way a child would.
 
Without hesitation, Daniel knelt before her and enveloped her in his
arms.
 
Cecily clung to him and wept
without rhyme, restraint, or reason.
 
He
held her and crooned soft words of comfort, some in English, and others in
Spanish.
 
When she continued crying, he
carried her into the hotel room and sat on the sofa.
 
He rocked her back and forth and after a
little while, he sang to her.
 
At first
she heard nothing but the sound of his voice, but as her sobs slacked Cecily
realized he sang the Marty Robbins’ classic tune,
El Paso.
Although it wasn’t her style of music, she liked the easy
rhythm and when she quit crying altogether Daniel wiped her face with tissues.
“Tell me
what’s wrong,
querida
,
” he said in a voice husky with
concern. “Are you afraid or did I offend you? Or don’t you feel well?”

Looking up into his worried face, his dark eyes, she
wondered how she ever missed the reality of his emotions. “I’m fine, sugar,” she
said with an effort to put some normal sass into her voice. He looked upset and
very concerned. “And nothing’s wrong.”

Daniel shot her a skeptical look. “So you cried your
eyes out for nothing?”

Cecily shook her head. “No, for something very
important, but I wasn’t crying because I was sad, just overwhelmed but in a
good way.”

His forehead frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re worried,” she said as her fingers stretched
to touch the concerned crease dividing his forehead.

“I am. So tell me.”

She almost hesitated but didn’t. “I understood what
you said to me, a while ago.
 
I didn’t
then, but I remembered what it meant.”

As comprehension dawned, Daniel’s expression shifted
and became more vulnerable.
 
In a very
quiet voice, almost too low to hear despite their close position, he said, “I
didn’t think you would,
querida,
or I
wouldn’t have said it.”

“Don’t you mean it?” He did and she knew it but
slivers of hurt began to prick her heart.
If he didn’t...

“I do, with all my heart,” he said. “But I didn’t
want to complicate things, not now.
 
I
thought maybe you wouldn’t believe me. Maybe it’s not the best time to fall in
love. You just got divorced after a hell of a marriage. We haven’t known each
other very long and...”

“No, we haven’t,” Cecily said.
 
“But it’s long enough to know.”

“What?”

“I love you, Daniel. I knew I did before you said it
and Nia guessed before she even met you.”

His chest moved as he drew a long breath and
released it. Back in Branson, she’d whispered she thought she did but the
certainty meant far more.
“
Dios!
Oh,
querida,”
he said in a hushed
voice.
 
Cecily thought she heard tears in
it and understood how he felt, how the knowledge bowled through you with force.
“So what do we do now?”

“We do the best we can, sugar,” she said. “And be
happy.”
 
Her head rested against his
shoulder and she lifted her left hand to touch his face.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

No way could she keep from smiling.
 
Everything else in her life might’ve gone to
hell but loving Daniel made her very happy.
 
Knowing he loved her too brought contentment and a rich joy.
 
“Sugar, I don’t think I’ve ever been
happier,” she said. “Not even with things the way they are.
 
What about you?”

“
Mi corazon,
”
Daniel said. “I’ve never had this before or felt like this about anyone.
 
You’re mine and it’s like family but more,
too.
 
I never knew loving a woman could
be so intense or strong.
 
This connection
with you, it reminds me of the way I used to feel after communion in
church.
 
I’ve got you inside of me now,
querida.
 
I’ve never been afraid of much, but the idea of anything happening
to you or losing you scares the shit out of me.
 
So, yeah, I’m happy but worried, too.”

Cecily moved her hand and he kissed it, his mouth
tender against her skin.
 
Although she grew
up too fast in a hard neighborhood and understood how fast bad things happened
to good people, knew the swiftness of danger and death, right now she didn’t
believe any of it could be possible.
 
For
these moments she savored the cocoon of their newfound affection and basked in
it.
 
Nothing could happen to her or to
Daniel because she couldn’t stand it.
 
She hadn’t been on speaking terms with God for a long time and she’d
gone far from the Baptist churches of her childhood, but Cecily decided no
deity with any heart at all could let anything awful happen.
 
They would be fine because they had to be and
she willed it so.

“You’re not going to lose me, Daniel,” she said.
“And I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“
Que sera,
sera,”
he replied and his arms around her tightened. “The future’s not ours
to see,
querida,
but I’ll do the best
I can to make it happy.”

The song he referenced floated through Cecily’s
mind, not the old Doris Day classic but the haunting version by Pink
Martini.
 
His prosaic acceptance of fate
irked her and birthed unease within.
Whatever
will be
will
be
the way I want ‘cause I won’t accept anything else.

“That’s good enough for me,” she said. “You look
tired, sugar. Let’s go back to bed.”

Daniel exhaled a long sigh. “Yeah, let’s do. We’ve still
got a long way to drive tomorrow and God knows what to face over the next few
days.”

Back in bed, snuggled up against him, Cecily asked,
“How much farther to your mama’s?”

“Six hours or so,” he said with a yawn. “I want to
get an early start if we can, maybe leave here at six or seven at the latest.”

They overslept, though.
 
Worn out from their long trek from Branson,
neither one woke until seven-thirty in the morning.
 
Cecily awakened with slow somnolence and
noticed the room wasn’t pitch dark but grey.
 
Light seeped around the edges of the drapes and she sat up, searching
for a clock.
 
Beside her, Daniel still
slept.
 
“Shit!” she said when she located
her cell phone to check the time. “Sugar, wake up!”

“What?” he asked, eyes shut.

“It’s after seven-thirty.”

“Shit!” His response echoed hers and she laughed.

“It’s not like we have to be on time, is it?” she
asked.

He managed a fleeting grin as he bailed out of bed.
“I guess not.”

Although neither dallied getting dressed, by the
time they ate a quick breakfast downstairs and packed everything back into the
truck, it was almost nine.
 
After Daniel
loaded the pickup, he climbed into the cab beside Cecily.
 
He pulled out his cell. “I need to call my
mom,” he said. “She’ll want to know what time to expect us.”

Curiosity overruled manners. “What did you tell her
about me?” she asked.

Daniel smiled. “I told her I was bringing a friend
with me because we needed to lay low for a few days.
 
I haven’t told her your name yet or even if
you’re a man or woman.
 
Mama knows not to
ask too many questions.”

“Sugar, I think you might want to mention it now,” Cecily
said. “I don’t want to shock her socks off when I kiss you in front of her.”