Her worst enemy is the one man she can't resist.
Maria Martinez thought it was a dream come true when Ritchie Perez - a sweet and sexy guy she met volunteering at a soup kitchen - took her delinquent little brother Joey under his wing. But her drea...
How much trouble could a thirteen-year-old boy get into? That was the question on Maria's mind as she left the school, Joey in tow.
"Three days suspension? Fighting in the hallways?" She knew her voice was shrill. She couldn't help it. "I had to leave work this afternoon, which means I not only don't get paid, I don't get any tips."
Joey looked up at her, his lower lip curled defiantly. "Those guys started it."
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"I don't care who started it. Somebody always starts it. Next time somebody starts it, you walk away, do you hear me?"
He shrugged, scraping the toe of his sneaker against the cement while she searched through her purse for her keys. She glanced over at Joey and sighed.
"And stop scraping your foot like that. Do you know how much I paid for those shoes?"
Joey just gave her a look like he hated her, and got in the car.
She wasn't getting through. He was tuning her out. And she was deathly afraid that no matter what she did, he was headed down the same path as Tito. Tito had just turned eighteen when he was arrested. A few months younger, and he would have been in the juvenile justice system. Instead, he'd been tried as an adult, and was serving a mandatory sentence on a drug charge. He'd sworn he hadn't been involved, that he had been picked up just because he was in the building when the drug bust went down. The lawyer their mother had hired said it helped that Tito wasn't actually a member of the gang, although he'd been on the fringes and was headed that direction. The lawyer had thought he could get him off with probation. But some hotshot young prosecutor from the State Attorney's office had had other ideas. She pressed her hand to her forehead.
She'd take Joey back to the restaurant with her. She'd already missed the lunch rush, but hopefully there would be some business from the early dinner crowd before her shift ended. It was Wednesday, so they'd spend the evening at St. Theresa's. But what would she do with him the rest of the week? Thursday, Friday, and Monday. There was no way she could miss that many shifts. She doubted her boss would want her dragging her thirteen-year-old brother along to work with her three days in a row. And she sure didn't want to lose this job. But leaving Joey at home on his own was out of the question. He'd be out the door and on a bus, headed back to the old neighborhood and looking for trouble five minutes after she left.
She was still trying to figure it out as she was serving food at St. Theresa's that evening. When one of the regulars shuffled up, she was barely able to conjure up a smile.
She jumped when she felt a strong hand close over hers.
"You look about a million miles away from here tonight." It was Ritchie.
Maria pulled her hand back, startled by the little tremor that had shot up her arm in tiny shock waves when he touched her.
"It's nothing," she said. The last thing she wanted to do was start spilling out all her troubles to the guy she'd been having secret fantasies about when she couldn't sleep.
