Page 18 of Wild Texas Wind
He wanted to remind her that he had good reason to dislike storms, but he knew she remembered that day, and the terrible months that followed, just as well as he did.
“Have you always been this stubborn, and I just never noticed?” he asked, exasperated .
She winked at him. “I had to be. And you are just as stubborn, you just don’t want to admit it.”
He was, or else he wouldn’t have been able to lose the weight he had. He was determined to get her out of this place by tomorrow, no matter what he had to do.
“Did you eat today?”
Ah, no, he had forgotten to go by Hailey’s to pick up his dinner, and she was probably closed now. He hoped she didn’t take that as an insult, but he had had other things on his mind. “I’ll eat when I get home. I have some frozen dinners.” He didn’t like them, but he also had learned the importance of not missing a meal.
“Nonsense. I’ll make you something. I bought those cheese tortillas you like. Mrs. Lopez started carrying them because of you. I’ll make you a chicken taco. I have some corn, too, if you want?”
He shook his head. “Don’t go to any trouble. It will take me just a few minutes to heat something up in the microwave when I get home.”
He started to rise but she pressed her hand against his shoulder. She was strong, but not stronger than him. Still, he sat. “Mama.”
“It won’t take me long.”
“You just cleaned the kitchen.”
“I can clean it again. Sit. Tell me about your day. That’s one thing I really miss about you not living here. I don’t hear about your adventures.”
He smiled. “I don’t have all that many adventures.” Today he had, though, but he wanted to be cautious about telling his mom about Esperanza. She had been pushing him to marry for at least the past five years, really wanting him to hook up with Sofia, who owned the motel, because she loved Sofia’s mother. But Sofia had reunited with her high school crush and…well, Javi didn’t have a lot of options in town, no matter what he looked like now. The girls he’d known all his life still saw him as fat little Javi. He was fine with that, he supposed, but the more his friends kept coupling up, the lonelier he got. He had a nice house, a nice life, and he wanted to share it with someone.
“I came across the storm chasers today. One of their vans had broken down on the side of the road.”
“Well, if they’re anything like those vehicles they drove in the movie, no wonder.” She straightened from where she’d been bending into the refrigerator, and set one of her cast iron pans on the burner as she peeled a cheese “tortilla” out of the package and opened a container with shredded chicken to fill it.
“No, this is actually a storm chasing tour, and they have two pretty nice vans, but one of them busted its water pump. We had to have it towed into town, they’re staying at Sofia’s tonight.”
She added pico de gallo, then folded the tortilla in half with her spatula. “If it’s a tour, you mean, like with sightseers? The storms can’t be that bad then. They wouldn’t risk people getting hurt if it was.”
“What I’m saying is they pretty much guarantee these people are going to see a tornado,” he said. “They don’t chase storms with a low likelihood of tornados. They wouldn’t have come here without an expectation of seeing one.”
“How do they know?” She glanced over her shoulder at him.
“They’re actually meteorologists. At least, one of the sisters is.”
“Sisters?” She pivoted to look at him, and he felt his face heating, so he dropped his gaze so she couldn’t see.
Yeah, he’d walked himself right into that one. He didn’t have to tell her he’d driven the one into town, though, did he? “Yes, it’s two sisters. The older one is a meteorologist. They are both fascinated with storms and formed this tour company that they run in the spring.”
“How much older?”
Of course his mother would narrow in on that one. “I don’t know. A few years, maybe?”
“So they’re young?”
“In their thirties.”
Her eyes brightened in triumph. “Young enough.”
“For what?” he asked innocently. “They’re just passing through. They said they don’t get down this way much because we aren’t usually where the storms are happening.”
“Little do they know,” she murmured, turning back to the stove to flip the tortilla.
“Aren’t you having one?” Javi asked, hoping to change the subject.
