She knew he was only kidding, or was he? “Go on.”
He stood and stretched, yawning again, then walked over to nudge Zeb awake.
“What? What?” Zeb flustered. “Are you done with yer story already?” he asked Helen.
She and Rafe laughed companionably as Zeb shuffled outside. With still another yawn, Rafe sat on the bed and began to unlace his boots while she threw a quilt over Hector and made sure he wasn’t too close to the fire.
When she turned back to Rafe, he’d already removed his boots and socks and was starting on his shirt.
“So, finish with your family. You were down to Luisa.”
He pulled a face at her. “Eduardo is next. He’s, oh, about twenty-six. Eddie keeps changing jobs. Last I heard he was a firefighter. Before that, he drove a truck, worked for the post office, was a disc jockey, and dozens of other things. Even a — you won’t believe this! — male centerfold.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “He’s trying to find himself.”
“Is he married?”
“Nope, but he’s been engaged to the same girl for some time. Her parents don’t consider him very stable. He’s not.”
“Does he live at home?”
He shook his head. “He and my youngest brother, Ramon, who’s twenty, share an apartment in Long Beach. Ramon, when he’s not being a rabble rouser, attends UCLA.”
She decided to save her questions about the rabble rousing for later. “You left two out.”
“I didn’t think you’d notice,” he groaned. He was down to his T-shirt, which he quickly pulled over his head. He stood, about to unbutton his pants. “Helen, Helen, Helen,” he admonished, “I hope you’re not thinking of watching me get naked. After yesterday’s near disaster, I’m not sure I could take any more temptation.”
Disaster? He considers our making love a disaster? She cringed, ducking her head so he wouldn’t see the hurt.
Rafe came up behind her and pinched her bottom, whispering against her ear, “Just teasing, Prissy.”
When she looked back over her shoulder, he was already in bed with the quilt up to his waist.
“Finish,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted. “Jacinta is twenty-three, a nurse. J. C. thinks she knows everything. Really. She’s the world’s biggest know-it-all. Worse than me. She graduated from nursing school last year, and she plans to go to graduate school soon.” His brow furrowed. “She might have already started by now. Wonder if she got the money.”
Rafe’s reminder of their return to the future jarred her. To her surprise, Helen realized that she hadn’t thought about going home in a long time. How could that be?
“And the last one is Carmen. I skipped her out of order… deliberately.” Rafe’s voice softened when he said her name. “Carmen is twenty-two. She has the most beautiful smile in the world. I ought to know. It cost me eight thousand dollars in orthodontic bills.”
Helen could tell that Rafe was especially close to this sister, despite his griping.
“Carmen is a dancer. As long as I can remember, practically from the crib, Carmen’s been dancing. All kinds of dancing, but the worst was the tap dancing. Lord, oh, Lord! I threatened hundreds of time to hide those damn tap shoes. She would tap from the kitchen table to the refrigerator. She would tap to the bathroom. She would tap while taking out the garbage. Sometimes I still hearing that tap-tap-tapping in my dreams.”
She couldn’t help giggling at that image. “So, is Carmen the one who taught you to dip?”
He jiggled his eyebrows at her. “Nah, that was Barbie Bimbolini. She taught me to dip, and a few other things.”
“Liar,” she hooted. “Geez, couldn’t you be more original than Bimbolini?”
He crinkled his nose at her. “Anyhow, Carmen doesn’t tap dance much anymore. She’s into modern dance, and she just made the L.A. Dance Company. She’s touring Europe right now. Of course, she needed five thousand dollars for extra expenses, and guess who she came running to?”
“Oh, Rafe, your family sounds wonderful!”
“Huh?” Her compliment stunned him. “You must be nuts. I just told you the good stuff. They’re a bunch of screwball, loud, interfering, demanding leeches. We had a motto in our house: take a breath, you lose a turn. Take my word for it, you wouldn’t like them. Nope, you definitely wouldn’t like them.”