Page 53 of It's Going to Be a Chrome Christmas
She nodded, dragging him back towards the Ferrari. “Yeah.”
Chapter
Ten
“Where are we going?”
It was finally October. Cayden and Trixie were in her Firebird on his second to last weekend furlough. He had this weekend, next week, next weekend, plus three days, and then he was free. Freedom was so close, he couldtasteit. He was walking on pins and needles, afraid to do anything remotely out of line. Mrs. Wynn had laughed at him the other day when she’d found Cayden scrubbing the kitchen floor. “I asked you to sweep it, dear. You didn’t have to wax it too.”
After work today, Trixie announced that she had a surprise for him. Cayden was thrilled and excited, but also nervous. He knew she knew his radius, and he was sure she wouldn’t risk his parole by taking him out of it, but the further they got from Romero’s the worse his nerves got.
“Relax.” She reached for his hand. “I told Peggy and Greg where we were going and it’s miles still within your radius. You’re fine.”
He nodded stiffly. “Good. But you still haven’t toldmewhere we’re going.”
Rather than having him take his duffel up to her apartment that morning, she’d handed him the keys to her Firebird and told him to put his duffeland hersuitcasein the car. Trixie had been tightlipped about their destination though, and it was killing him.
His eyes narrowed when they turned down a residential street. They were in the outskirts of the city limits where many family homes were. There was the occasional mom-and-pop business, but it was mostly residential housing. Why would Trixie bring him here?
They pulled into a cul-de-sac street. She turned into the driveway of a two-story single-family house with stone sides, a gray roof, and a chimney. It had a smaller front lawn than the others on the row. Trixie reached up and pressed a button attached to her visor that he’d missed upon getting into the car. His eyebrows scrunched; that was new. The garage door opened for her to admit her entry.
She parked and got out. Cayden was slower to follow. He didn’t understand why they were here. There weren’t any other cars in the garage or the drive. Who lived here? He trusted her, but damn, he hoped she’d gotten permission for them to be here.
Trixie popped the trunk to pull out her suitcase and his duffel. His obvious confusion only seemed to amuse her. She offered up no explanations. Just gave him his duffel and told him to “Come on.”
The garage had two standard doors. One led into the house and the other into a fenced backyard. She pressed a button on the wall as she entered the house to close the garage’s electric door.
The lights were on in the kitchen. She tossed her keys into a bowl on the kitchen bar. Cayden stiffly closed the door behind him. The kitchen on his left was decent sized with a large family dining room table on his right.
Trixie walked forward to turn on the living room lights too. She flipped a switch, and a fire lit in the fireplace. “Okay, so master bedroom is on the first floor.” She pointed over her shoulder to an open doorway. “There’s a full bath in there, too. Otherwise, there’s a half bath behind you. Right door is the bathroom, the left is a linen closet. So,” she pointed, “kitchen, living room, and through that door,” she indicated to her right, “is like a den/TV room. I’m thinking of redecorating it though. It was the only room down here I didn’t get to. Upstairs,” she pointed to her far right, “is two more bedrooms with a full bath between them. Those doors there,” she pointed to the double French doors on her left, “lead out to the back patio. I dropped off groceries yesterday and have steaks marinating. I figured we could grill up some steak and potatoes for dinner.” She smiled expectantly at him. “So, what do you think?”
Cayden fought to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m not sure. Where are we? Whose house is this?”
Her smile faltered slightly. “It’s mine.”
Cayden blinked. Had he heard her correctly? “Yours? I thought you lived at Romero’s?”
“I do,” she said quickly. “I don’t come here often, but technically I own it.” Her expression turned sheepish. “I let it go a bit, but a couple of weeks ago I started coming by after work at night to clean and fix it up. I had to hire a maintenance guy because I couldn’t get the water heater to work at first. And then I paid a couple of teens down the street to fix up the lawn. They did a pretty good job too. I bought new furniture. I couldn’t…” She made a face. “I never really liked the old stuff much, anyway.” She pointed to the couch on her right. “I was going to take you shopping, but I figured it was better to not throw too much at you right off the bat. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, and now I can see I did just that, so I’m going to shut up now.”
She bit her lip as if to enforce she was going to stop talking.
It was actually the realization that she was as nervous as he was that snapped him out of his confusion. “I have questions.” She nodded, understanding, but didn’t speak. “First, why do you live at Romero’s if you own a house?”
Trixie looked slightly embarrassed. “I inherited it fromAbuelo.” This was her grandfather’s house? Meaning, it was the house she’d found her grandfather’s body in. No wonder she didn’t come here often. For the first time, Cayden noticed the family pictures lining the mantel above the fireplace and the living room wall above the couch. “I’d already been living in the apartment at Romero’s when he passed.Mihermanossigned everything over to me, the shop, his cars, his house… I tried to buy them out, tried to offer them shares, but they didn’t want anything. Said they had their own lives, and of course, AJ was already incarcerated.” She winced. “Anyway, I kept the house in case they wanted to do anything with it. I didn’t have the heart to sell it, but I also didn’t want to live here. At least, not alone.”
His eyes snapped back at her. “Are you planning on living here now? Not alone,” he added pointedly.
She still wouldn’t look at him. “Um, I was hoping… I mean, only if you want to. I just… I thought it’d be nice after your term was up if you had someplace to live.”
Cayden crossed the room to her. Her cheeks were flushed in his new favorite shade of red. He waited. He wasn’t going to force her to meet his eyes this time. She had to do it on her own. It took several minutes, but finally she glanced up at him. He asked her two simple words with a whole lot of meaning behind them: “With you?”
Her cheeks brightened even more, and she nodded.
Cayden cupped her face. “Beatriz Romero, it would be my absolute pleasure to live here with you.”
Relief seemed to flow off of her, and she sagged. “Yeah?”
He smiled. “Yeah.” Cayden dipped his head to claim her lips. Her eyes were clouded over with contentment when he raised his head. “Now, how about you show me this grill? I’m starving.”
