Page 15 of Zorro

“Don’t you have children to wrangle, Dani?” he shot back, grinning as he reached for the basting brush. “Or a husband to lecture about putting the forks in the wrong drawer?”

Daniela Martinez-Vargas just laughed, one hand on her hip, the other expertly balancing a pitcher of agua fresca. “They’re inside with Papá. He’s teaching them how to play dominoes and curse in Spanish.”

Zorro shook his head, lips twitching. “So, we’re just leaning into generational chaos now?”

“Obviously.”

A low chuckle came from the lawn chair closest to the fire pit. “Leave the boy alone, Dani. He’s got that I-need-to-feed-everyone-to-forget-my-feelings look again.” His brother-in-law, Dani’s husband, said, never missing a beat.

Zorro clenched his jaw.

Yeah. That was about right.

The sizzle of meat and the crackle of flame couldn’t drown out the words still echoing in his skull. Don’t touch me. No matter how many jokes he cracked, how many ribs he grilled, nothing dulled the sharp edge of that moment. She’d walked away from him, shaken, distressed and hadn’t looked back.

No amount of smart-mouth, shit-talk, or brotherhood banter could cover the hollow in his chest where she'd left something raw and unfinished.

Don’t touch me.

Hell, that was exactly what every red-blooded guy wanted to hear from the woman who’d once kissed him like she meant it. He hadn’t imagined that. Couldn’t have. Not the way her mouth lingered on his, not the taste of her breath, or the tremble that passed through her fingers when they brushed his jaw.

But the rest? The waking? The silence?

That was where doubt crept in.

He gripped the tongs tighter, his eyes fixed on the fire. He didn’t know where she was. No contact, no follow-up, nothing but questions aching to be answered. Maybe she’d convinced herself it didn’t happen, or worse, maybe she’d regretted it.

But she’d dodged his probing in the hospital, eyes sharp and evasive, and that alone made him wonder if maybe he hadn’t imagined it after all. Maybe it had happened. Maybe that kiss wasn’t mercy or madness, but real. A moment she couldn’t take back, no matter how badly she wanted to pretend it had never happened.

His jaw flexed again.

He exhaled hard, the scent of grilled citrus and garlic punching up into the night air. His body remembered the shape of her, the heat of her breath, the impossibility of her mouth on his. His hand twitched, the tongs dipping low into the coals before he caught himself.

No. Not here.

Not now.

He flipped the meat cleanly, forced a breath through his nose, and locked the ache down.

The fire hissed. Laughter bubbled across the yard.

But inside him, she lingered, in that damn space between memory and fantasy, and he didn’t know how to let her go.

Zorro turned to roll his eyes. “Tío Marco. You’re not even blood.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” he said, raising a beer in salute. “Besides, Mamá warhammer already called you out earlier when you nearly sliced your thumb trying to chop cilantro like it owed you money.”

“She exaggerates.”

“She was holding your hand under the faucet, mijo.”

Zorro’s mother, Claire Martinez, appeared at his elbow just in time to take over the slicing. Sharp blue eyes and quiet steel. She kissed his cheek and murmured, “Go sit down. Your brother just pulled up.”

That gave him pause.

His gaze shifted toward the driveway where a lean, wiry figure stepped out of a beat-up Tacoma, his younger brother, Javi. Wearing a Padres cap backward, his dark hair curling down his neck, and a smirk that had been his signature since high school, Javi gave Zorro a two-fingered salute as he walked through the gate.

“You let him back in the state?” Zorro muttered under his breath.