Page 93 of Ruthless Rustanovs

But still, it wasn’t a great way to start the day, because by the time he picked me up from my apartment, I was already feeling dumber than one would want to feel before she met her boyfriend’s family.

First of all, Marco was a cop—a really cool cop with adorable dimples and a way of making everyone he encountered from the homeless on the street to the women at our shelter feel completely at ease—but a cop nonetheless.

And I knew there was a chance he and/or his close-knit family would smell it on me, no matter how much air freshener I sprayed over the situation.

Second of all, I couldn’t help but feel like I was sabotaging myself.

Again. Like purposefully setting myself up for another relationship fail.

This thing between Marco and me was still fairly young—we’d only been dating for about six months.

But it had been going pretty well. And meeting a guy’s parents is definitely a conversation starter about the future.

If things went well that night, I imagined we’d be having all sorts of discussions I’d never had before with anyone.

About where we were now. About where we could be in the future.

Lately, I’d even been feeling not so weird about the fact that his last girlfriend was my current boss.

Sam had left Marco a little broken when she’d not only dumped him, but married a Russian hockey player a few weeks later.

However she’d given us her full blessing.

There was seriously nothing standing in the way of us taking our relationship to the next level.

Nothing except the spliff I smoked just an hour before Marco was due to pick me up.

And as we drove toward his parents’ house, bad thoughts started twisting around in my head.

Marco liked me. I knew he liked me well enough—mostly because Marco liked everyone.

He was just that kind of affable guy. But I’d had a feeling from the beginning that he was using me to rebel against the part of him that wanted to settle down with a nice, traditionally pretty girl like Sam.

And when he invited me to his parents’ home for Thanksgiving to meet his family, I had a gut feeling—an instinct you might call it—that this wasn’t going to end well.

I thought the weed would help. Get me nice and relaxed, but instead it made me even more convinced our relationship was on the verge of falling apart, even though we were technically on the verge of completing a significant milestone.

In fact, I had a lovely job with a boss I adored straight out of college. A cute and funny boyfriend who was taking me to meet his family for Thanksgiving. But my former foster kid pessimism just wouldn’t let me go.

They’re going to try to be nice, but they’ll end up hating me, I couldn’t help thinking as Marco came around to my side of the car to open the door. Just like the Perezes did.

But wasn’t it a little racist to think Marco’s family would reject me?

It wasn’t like all Hispanic families were the same.

And from what I’d gleaned, Marco’s family wasn’t anything like the Perezes.

The Gutierrezes weren’t pretending to be a happy family, they really were happy.

They’d raised five wonderful kids, one who was a pillar of the community.

And Marco’s sister, Daniella, still continued to provide Ruth’s House with occasional pro bono legal services, even after Sam and Marco broke up.

There was no reason for the pool of dread in my stomach, making it so I barely spoke on the way to Irvington.

His family won’t hate me. They won’t make Marco hate me, I chanted inside my head.

All the way until we pulled up to the curb in front of his parents’ modest red brick two-story.

We parked right behind a Tesla, which looked very out of place among the economy cars lining the block.

“Did Daniella trade in her Prius?” I asked Marco.

Marco grinned. “Nope, looks like Berger decided to rent one for his visit. That’s what he drives in Portland.”

“Oh, your brother owns a Tesla?” I said by way of small talk. I knew Berger was some kind of engineer, but I hadn’t known he made enough to not only afford a top of the line Tesla, but rent one everywhere he goes.

“Yeah,” Marco mumbled. “Leave it to him to find a place that rents Teslas in Indiana.”

Except it wasn’t a rental. Marco’s youngest sister, Cat, answered the door, practically jumping up and down. “Did you see the car Berger got me for my birthday?” she demanded, before Marco could so much as introduce me. “I love being nouveau riche!” she cheered.

Marco just smiled, his dimples flashing as he called over her shoulder. “Already spreading the wealth around, Little Bro?”

Before “Little Bro” could answer, Maria shoved her daughter aside to squeal in Spanish, “And he bought us a house in Oak Park. Oak Park! Us, the Gutierrezes, in that nice neighborhood where I used to clean house. Right down the street from Sam and that hockey player. Can you believe it?” She covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head frantically, obviously in a state of complete shock.

I would have been completely confused if the sea of family members hadn’t parted at that moment to reveal a man even I recognized as Go Gutierrez, the robotics wunderkind.

He’d recently made the covers of several tech magazines.

Not only because of what still shone through as solidly good looks underneath a huge black beard and hipsteriffic glasses, but also because his company, GoBotics, had just been acquired by a huge multinational technology outfit, which had pretty much made him a billionaire overnight.

I stood there staring in a state of shock, as somewhere in the distance, Marco introduced me to all of his family members. Go was by far the tallest member of his family, leaner than Marco, but not skinny, and dressed in a simple grey hoodie that he wore like a suit.

He stared right back down at me, though he seemed to be speaking to Marco, when he said, “You didn’t say you would be bringing a girl with you.”

“No, I didn’t,” Marco answered, his tone even friendlier than usual.

It was the same tone I’d heard him use with some of the angry guys who showed up at the shelter, the ones who just might be convinced—by the right cop, of course—to walk away without the need for any paperwork or physical “assistance.

“Sorry, I should have mentioned it when you sent around the Thanksgiving plan.”

“There’s plenty of food for everyone,” their mother Maria assured all of us in some other part of the room.

“We’ll have to speak in English for her comfort,” Go pointed out.

“I speak a little Spanish,” I told him, wondering why I was finding it so hard to look away. “You don’t have to speak English if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine, Nyla,” Daniella assured me. “Berger stop. Let’s just get dinner on the table please.”

“She smells like weed,” Go said, as if his sister hadn’t even spoken. He finally broke from our stare off to look over at Marco. “You’re a police officer. Why are you dating someone who smells like weed?”

“Okay, okay,” their father said into the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Dinner will be on the table in a few minutes. Marco why don’t you show Nyla your old room?”

“Why didn’t you tell me your brother was Go Gutierrez?” I demanded on a hiss, as soon as Marco and I were upstairs in his room and out of earshot.

Marco shrugged and flashed those adorable dimples of his. “He’s still just my little brother, Berger, to me.”

Then he kissed me, sweet and warm and nice. Reminding me of how lucky I was, because maybe I did smell like weed, but Marco acted like he didn’t care.

“Do me a favor, okay?” he asked, fingering my turtleneck after he was finished kissing me. “Just humor Berger for the rest of dinner, and maybe keep this turtleneck on. My parents aren’t huge fans of tattoos and they’re already dealing with… all of this.”

He indicated my face with a wave of his hand, and I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

While I know he’s right about it probably being off-putting to his more conservative parents, I didn’t love the look that flashed across his face as he said it.

And I can’t help but wonder if one of the conversations we’ll be having in the months to come will include a follow-up to a casual question he’d asked a few weeks back about whether or not I’d ever thought about “taking all that out.”

But before I could respond, his little sister, Cat, called up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready, Marco! You better not be up there doing anything with your girlfriend. We’re a nice, Catholic family!”

They are a nice Catholic family. That much is made immediately clear to me over dinner.

Despite their insane income jump, the Gutierrezes seemed like any other down-to-earth family on Thanksgiving.

Sitting around their modest dining room table, they all appeared to have great fun telling me stories about Marco’s pre-cop adventures in high school and college.

Generally going out of their way to help me know him and make me feel welcome.

Well, at least his sisters and parents tried to make me feel welcome.

I could feel Go’s eyes on me throughout the entire of the meal.

Coolly analyzing me in a way that made me feel…

weird. Wrong. Like his icy gaze was burning me up from the inside.

To the point that I had to take off my turtleneck in what felt like a fit of fever.

I knew I’d made a mistake as soon Marco’s hand settled on the back of my neck, reminding me with the seeming caress that he’d asked me to keep the tattoo on my neck covered. Oops.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m a little hot. Must be the wine.”

Marco just smiled tightly. Only to freeze when his mother squinted and asked, “What’s that on your shirt, dear?”