Yours to Keep
Authors: Serena Bell
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Women, #Multicultural & Interracial, #Erotica, #General
Yours to Keep
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2013 by Serena Bell
Excerpt from
Slow Summer Burn
by Elisabeth Barrett copyright © 2013 Elisabeth
Barrett. Excerpt from
Trying to Score
by Toni Aleo copyright © 2012 Toni Aleo.
Excerpt from
After the Kiss
by Lauren Layne copyright © 2013 by Lauren Layne.
All Rights Reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, LLC, New York.
L
OVESWEPT
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-345-54973-0
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi
Cover photograph: Gavin O’Neill/
ImageBrief.com
v3.1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Excerpt from Elisabeth Barrett’s:
Slow Summer Burn
Excerpt from Toni Aleo’s:
Trying to Score
Excerpt from Lauren Layne’s:
After the Kiss
Chapter 1
Ana Travares had let down her guard. She’d stopped hearing her brother’s voice in her head, warning her not to say too much. Telling her not to make friends too easily. Reminding her that she—that they—didn’t have the luxury of trusting other people. Ever.
At some point, she’d let her shoulders drop from their usual spot around her ears and started to believe that maybe, just maybe, nothing too terrible would happen, as long as she kept her nose clean and didn’t break any rules.
She’d enjoyed living like a normal person. She’d lost that sense of peering around the next corner, anticipating the next challenge. And it had been a relief, like taking full breaths for the first time after wearing a too-tight dress.
Only now she thought it might not have been worth it, because the adrenaline of sudden danger packed such a vicious punch: nausea, trembling hands, tight throat. She spoke nearly flawless English, but authority figures could make her forget every word.
All Ed Branch, the high school’s new academic-support specialist, had said was “We have a new lawyer,” but that had been enough to make her sick.
“The new lawyer’s a dot-the-
i
’s and cross-the-
t
’s type,” Ed said. He sat behind his tidy desk, tipping his chair back. “Wants a CORI from everyone who breathes near the high school. You know what a CORI is, right?” He raised his eyebrows. “Criminal Offender Record Information. It’s a criminal-background check.”
She nodded, shifting in the hard seat he’d offered her. Her anxiety felt visible.
“Next thing, he’ll be asking people who drive through the school zone to do background checks, too. Can you see it? Stopping drivers at the crosswalk, handing pens and CORIs through the window?” He laughed. “The point is we’re not singling you out. Everyone who has anything to do with kids has to complete one. You have to, if you want to stay on the Recommended Tutors list.”
That list was her lifeline to work in Beacon. She got half her income from tutoring, and nearly all her tutoring clients through the school. Beacon wasn’t the only town with students who needed tutoring, but it was one of the few towns left in Massachusetts that still
had a vibrant foreign-language program, one of the few towns where most parents had enough money and time to hire tutors, and the only town of that sort she could get to without a car. She needed Ed’s referrals.
“You have to do a criminal-background check just to keep my name on that list?”
“Yep. Crazy, if you ask me. We’re going to spend more time chasing people down to get these things—”
Ed bent his head, and she watched him ransack a file drawer. He slid a sheet of paper over the walnut desk. “I’ll need to see some form of government-issued ID, too.”
It didn’t look like much, that piece of paper. It had the high school’s letterhead on it and a series of blank lines, but those lines demanded information that she couldn’t provide. Name—she could do that. Address—yes, she had one of those. Last three addresses—she could dredge those up, with some difficulty, because although they’d moved frequently, they’d stayed in Hawthorne, a small city just outside Boston’s magnetic field. But Social Security number?
This would be so easy for most people. Whip out a driver’s license. Jot down an SSN. Smile, move on.
Not easy for her. Not at all.
Sometimes she wished like hell that her brother hadn’t been so careful with her, that he’d let her fake her way, as many undocumented immigrants did. Then she could calmly reach for that piece of paper and write someone else’s Social Security number on it.
“Is there a problem, sweetheart?”
Her mind raced. If she could stall the process, maybe Ed would forget. Or the forms would get lost. “Do you need it now?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? It’ll just take a minute.”
None of this would be happening if Ed’s predecessor were still in charge of coordinating the school’s tutoring programs. Louisa Grieg had been an easy-to-please, befuddled old biddy. Ana desperately missed her now.
Leave,
a voice in Ana’s head shouted.
Just get up and leave.
She made herself think of her niece and nephews. Her tutoring money paid for vital groceries like milk and cereal, and school supplies, clothes. There was no margin of error in her household, no room for screwups.
Idiota,
she scolded herself.
Her brother had been right. No matter how careful you were, no matter how cautious, there were surprises. Traps.
A string of traps led from their arrival in the United States twenty years ago, when Ana was seven, to this moment. Ana’s mother had never been a meticulous woman, and her exodus to the U.S.nited States had broken her. She’d left behind home and a beloved sister in the Dominican Republic, only to discover that her husband, who’d promised to follow her to the States, had reneged on his word.
Then Ana’s mother had gotten stomach cancer. Bedridden, she’d forgotten about, or ignored, her children’s visas. After her death, her kids had discovered the truth and, terrified, had hidden until hiding became a necessity.
Now there were no more choices. There was only Ana’s reality: live here, in the shadows, or be deported to a country that was as foreign to her, as devoid of the things she loved, as rural China.
She was hyperconscious of the sealed door to Ed Branch’s tiny, airless office. Of the narrowness of her own breathing passages, the tightness of her chest.
“Do you need a pen?” He fished one from the can on the desk and handed it to her.
She drew the deepest breath she could. “If I’m not on the Recommended Tutors list, can you still refer people to me?”
“I’m afraid not.” He gave her a sorrowful smile that had more in common with a smirk. “We can’t put our stamp of approval on anyone who hasn’t met our requirements.”
Was he suggesting that he’d cut her off from her current clients as well?
“Ana, honey—”
That was worse, somehow, than “sweetheart.”
“—all I’m asking you to do is give me your previous addresses and Social Security number, and show me some ID.” There was a sour note in his voice now, an emphasis on the phrase “Social Security number.”
He had somehow guessed the truth about her. Of course he knew she was Latina—her name proclaimed it, and she’d been told until she was sick of hearing it that she looked like this or that Latina actress, only “skinnier” or “with lighter skin” or “with straighter hair”—but she didn’t fit most people’s stereotypes of an undocumented immigrant. Because she’d moved
here so young and started school in kindergarten, she’d learned English in a matter of weeks and was as culturally American as any of her classmates. But his manner—unctuous and sneering—told her she hadn’t fooled him. He knew.
She closed her eyes, shutting out his disdain and the bare cinder-block walls. The office smelled like ozone and indoor-outdoor carpeting. “I’m sorry.” She put down the pen and stood up. “I don’t have ID with me today.”
“Ana. I can help.”
His tone had become low and deliberate, oozy and sexual.
And here they were. Where Ed had been leading her all along.
He got up and came around to her side of the desk. She stepped back, involuntarily. She could see the gray whiskers he’d missed when shaving, the flecks of chapped skin on his lower lip. He smelled like fabric softener, his breath like maple syrup.
“Let me help,” he murmured. He reached out and, before she could move, stroked her long, jet-black hair back from her face.
She shuddered. “No.” Men like Ed Branch were the reason she tied her hair in a ponytail, avoided makeup, and dressed in baggy clothes most of the time. Because the only thing worse than living in the shadows was when something low and dirty crept in there with you and made itself at home.
“We can work out this CORI problem. I’m on your side.”
She tried to draw away, but he’d woven his fingers into her ponytail. Behind his John Lennon glasses, his eyes were gray, too. The urge to yank her head away was overwhelming. “There’s no problem,” she said.
Fear had made her accent stronger, and distaste flickered across his face. “Ana,” he coaxed. The greasy sound of his voice, the too-sweet scent of him, made her dizzy. “You can tell me. Tell me the truth. What’s wrong? Why don’t you want to fill out the form?”
Because I’ve never been a fan of signing my own death warrant.
She reached up and removed her hair from his grasp. Took a deep breath. “I can fill out the form just fine. I just have to look up the old addresses. I’ll take it with me. When do you need it by?”
His mouth formed a hard line. “I know you’re illegal.”
Behind her burst of fear, she felt a sliver of satisfaction. She’d made him show his hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
“I’ll just take this home with me and fill it out. Just tell me when you need it by.”
“Ana, honey.”
She darted past him and snatched the CORI, but he grabbed her arm and backed her toward the desk, his bony hip bumping hers. “Ana, please, baby. I can make this go away.”
Bile rose in her throat as he moved his other hand to her waist.
Head pounding from the din in the high-school gymnasium, Ethan Hansen warily watched his son, Theo, and reminded himself that there were excellent reasons he’d volunteered to do this.
When the school nurse had asked if he’d create a helmet safety booth for Beacon High’s lunchtime health fair, he’d jumped at the opportunity. As a suburban pediatrician, he saw way too much head trauma. If he could remind even a few kids that helmets saved lives, he’d be doing some good. But the truth was he had an ulterior motive, too. He was here because he wanted to show Theo that he was an active, involved father. Even if Theo had no interest in the demonstration.