Marriage, Bravo Style!. Christine Rimmer

heart was getting a workout. Now, it did a happy dance. Rogan was staying with Caleb, so he would most likely be there for dinner tomorrow.

      Another chance to see him. She grinned like an idiot. Why shouldn’t she grin? No one was watching. “Love to,” she said.

      “You’re so easy,” Caleb teased.

      “Well, I do like your wife a lot. And I’m willing to put up with you.”

      “I was afraid you maybe had a date with Antonio.”

      “Uh, no. Antonio and I have decided to…move on.”

      Caleb was a salesman by nature and by trade, the top producer at BravoCorp, the family company. He usually knew just the right thing to say. This situation was no exception. He went directly to the assumption that it must have been Elena who had done the dumping. “Poor guy. I hope you let him down easy.”

      “I think he’s going to survive the breakup,” she said wryly.

      Gently, her brother asked, “And you?”

      “Antonio? Never heard of him.”

      “That’s the spirit.”

      “So about tomorrow night. Will it just be the three of us?” To her brother, she was giving nothing away. Not at this point, anyway. She would trust Caleb with her life. But this attraction to Rogan, well, it was too new to go broadcasting it to the whole family.

      Caleb told her what she’d been longing to hear. “Rogan will be here, too. He’s staying with us. You know, your dad’s potential buyer? He says he met you today.”

      “Oh, yes. Rogan,” she replied in a purposely neutral tone. Did he say anything about me? she longed to ask. But she didn’t. “I liked him.”

      “He liked you, too. He says you’re charming. And gorgeous.”

      Her pulse sped up again and her heart seemed to expand inside her chest, a sensation that somehow contained equal parts pain and pleasure. “Those Irish. Always with the flattery.”

      “Well, you are charming and gorgeous.”

      “I love absolute loyalty in a brother.”

      “I told him he was allowed to ask you out. But he’d better treat you right or he’d be dealing with me.”

      She groaned. “Oh, God. Caleb, you didn’t.”

      He laughed. “Okay, I didn’t. I only thought it.”

      She let out a relieved breath. “All right,” she muttered grudgingly. “You get to live. What time tomorrow night?”

      “Seven?”

      “See you then.” She hung up in a very cool and collected manner.

      And then she let out a whoop of excitement, jumped to her feet and set off at a wild run around the condo, from her office, to her bedroom, back down the hall, around the living room, dining room and kitchen area. She stopped at the counter by the sink, got down a glass, went to the water cooler and poured herself a drink, which she drained in one gulp, plunking the glass down hard when it was empty.

      “Yes!” she shouted, loud and proud, not even caring that she was acting more like a preteen at a Jonas Brothers concert than a grown woman with a real job and a home of her own.

      Rogan Murdoch thought she was charming and gorgeous.

      And she would be seeing him tomorrow night—and Sunday, as well.

      But first, there was lunch with her mother Saturday afternoon.

      A year ago, Luz Cabrera had sold the beautiful Spanish-style house that Javier had built for the family. She’d moved into a smaller place near the office where she worked as a Realtor.

      “What do I need with all this space?” she’d asked when she’d put the family home on the market. “It echoes of the life we knew, all of us, our family, together. That life is over. It’s time I moved on.”

      They had lunch at the new house, out on the patio in the shade of a Mexican live oak. The house backed onto a golf course, so the view was of rolling greens and winding golf paths.

      After the meal, they sat for a while, drinking iced tea, enjoying the welcome breeze.

      Luz gathered her long dark hair off her neck and twisted it into a knot at the back of her head with a sigh. Elena studied her profile. Luz was fifty-two but looked younger. The last few years of heartache had aged her, though. The line of her jaw wasn’t as firm as it had been. Her hair was still dark and vibrant as ever. But then, she had a great hairdresser who was genius with color.

      Luz said, “I talked to your father last night. He wanted to tell me that he plans to sell the business to Caleb’s friend.”

      Elena reached across the table and touched her mother’s slim hand. “Does that upset you?”

      Luz’s dark brows drew together as she considered the question. Then she shook her head. “It’s like the house, I think. Time to let it go.” She eased her hand from under Elena’s and clasped Elena’s fingers. A quick, warm squeeze. “I think there is peace between us, at last.”

      “You and Dad?”

      “Uh-huh. Did you know he went to counseling?”

      That was a surprise. “No. He told you that?”

      Luz nodded. “He said he had been wondering who he really was in all the trouble.”

      Elena didn’t get that. “What do you mean, who he was?”

      “A wronged husband—or a dangerous and violent man.”

      Elena jumped to her dad’s defense. “Papi’s not dangerous. And he’s kind, a good man. You know he is.”

      “M’hija.” Her mother’s voice was so gentle. “He hit me the day he found out. Only once, but hard enough to draw blood.”

      “I remember.” At the time, she’d been so furious with her mother, she hadn’t really stopped to consider that her father had actually struck her mom. She hadn’t let herself admit how wrong that was. “He shouldn’t have done that,” she muttered, feeling a little ashamed of herself. And then she bit her lip and said no more. Anything else she said right then would probably be out of line.

      Luz continued, “And he went after Davis with a gun. Remember that?”

      Javier had fired that gun, too. The shot had grazed Aleta Bravo’s arm when she jumped in front of her husband to protect him.

      Elena bit her lip again. “Aleta forgave Dad for that. She understood what he was going through.”

      “But, m’hija, he needed to forgive himself. He needed to…understand himself better. He needed to face the wrongs he’d done, to make amends, so he could move on. We all need to do that when we hurt other people.”

      Elena wasn’t sure what she felt at that moment. Anger, certainly. Yes, her father had done wrong. But her mom was no innocent in the whole thing.

      Plus, Elena had become accustomed to the idea that her parents were finished. Yet now, the way her mother was talking, she was starting to wonder if there might be hope for their marriage, after all.

      It had hurt so much to let hope go. She didn’t know if she could bear to start hoping again. It was very confusing.

      She asked, “So has Dad made amends to you, then?”

      “Yes. He apologized to me, for hitting me. And for the more distant past, for the way he drove me away when we were young, for the part he played all those years ago in our early troubles. I accepted his apology. And also he’s been to see Aleta, to make amends with her face-to-face. And with Davis, too.”

      Elena saw red. “Dad owes nothing to that man.”

      “Javier