Page 96

Charlotte smirked as her eyes darted between the excited Paz and Alex, who was using her eyes to convey a single message: decline!

“I’d love to hear it,” she said. The prospect of a childhood story was too good to pass up.

“See!” Paz looked at her husband who was sitting next to her. “I told you.”

Alex glared at her, but Charlotte was sure it was all in good fun.

“Let me fetch you a visual.” Paz winked at her before leaping to her feet.

“I tried.” Danilo threw his hands up in surrender, but his thin lips were curved at the end. He was amused.

Charlotte’s heart soared. It was the same look Alex wore when she wanted to hide her delight.

“It’s okay,” Alex leaned in closer to Charlotte and rested her hand on her lap. “It gives her a thrill when I pretend to resist,” she joked, winking at Charlotte.

When Paz reappeared from a door behind the white grand piano on the opposite side of the room, she had a small gold frame in her hands. She couldn’t wait to deposit it in Charlotte’s hands warmed by the fire.

“Wasn’t she cute?” Paz gushed. “She’s the second from the end.”

Charlotte laughed; there was nowhere else for the rush of giddiness to go. “I didn’t know you had curly hair.” She traced the cool glass covering Alex’s image. She was one of seven kids standing in a row in front of a three-tiered birthday cake decorated with actual Barbies in quite the impressive scene. She was the only one not smiling.

“I didn’t,” Alex replied with a chuckle. “My dear mother spent an hour with a hot curling iron making a million

ringlets. The best I could do was convince her not to curl my unfortunate bangs too.”

“I do not know about Spaniard customs, but doesn’t the birthday kid traditionally stand behind the cake?” Charlotte asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“The fact that we got her back at all is pretty miraculous,” Danilo joked. “It’s too bad her mother destroyed the pictures of her grand entrance.” He set down his half-empty co ee cup, priming himself to tell the story.

“If you’re going to tell it,” Alex rolled her eyes dramatically, “you might as well start from the beginning and how I specifically said I didn’t want a party.”

“Her teens were rough, and they started from day one,”

Danilo said with a laugh. “Headstrong and unbending, just like her mother.”

The joke earned him a playful swat on the arm from Paz.

“Oh, right because you’re the picture of pacifism. Don’t let either of them fool you, Charlotte. We’re all a bunch of mules here.” She laughed.

Alex took the frame and studied the image. “So, imagine my delight when I said I didn’t want a birthday party and I come home from school for the weekend only to find a bunch of random kids and a six-year-old’s Barbie theme.”

“Random kids ,” Paz sco ed. “Those were your friends.”

“Si , Mamá , those were my friends. When I was in nursery school!” Alex protested. “I didn’t even know them, and what’s your excuse for the Barbies, huh?”

“You used to love them,” Paz replied defensively. It was obvious they’d had this same conversation a hundred times.

Scorpios never let anything go. “I thought it would be a nice

bit of nostalgia. How could I know you wo

uldn’t have a sense of humor for the next four years?”

“She got one look at those kids and the Barbie decorations all over the house and bolted,” Danilo continued undeterred. “I found her an hour later hiding in a botanical garden on the other side of the city. When I was relieved to find her safe, I was impressed she’d figured out public transportation by herself.”

“An hour after that, my mother had perpetrated that crime on my head,” Alex added, still o ended by the ‘do.

“So dramatic,” Paz laughed with an eye roll. “It was the style then and you would’ve looked much better if you’d at least pretended to have fun. Plus, it doesn’t look that di erent than the perms you started doing later.”