“Kids work in unsafe conditions there. Families need their income—”
“I’ve read about this, Cruz, but can we change the subject? There’s nothing we can do right this second.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Why should we give a flying fuck about little kids being subjected to inhumane treatment a world away?”
“That’s not what I—” She decided then and there to add child labor laws to her taboo polite mealtime conversation, along with religion and politics. “I do give a flying fuck,” she told him mildly. She didn’t like that word, but had used it in and out of context more times in the last twenty-four hours than she’d done in her life. “But not here. And not now. I’d just like to enjoy my breakfast and start the day with something uplifting.”
“We could hold hands and read the Bible together.”
“What’s wrong with you this morning? Do you want to discuss the hideous plight of those Chinese children? Fine. Give me facts, and numbers, and a solution. I have no idea what the hell you want from me, Cruz.”
His expression was shuttered. “I imagine American-Chinese food and Chinese-Chinese food are vastly different.”
Fine. If he was going to be impossible, she’d play along. “Let’s make China a taboo subject, all right? I love Italian food. Preferably while sitting at a café on St. Mark’s Square, pretending not to feed the pigeons.”
“Never been there. Tell me about it.”
They talked about food, and Europe, and the repairs to the house, but the conversation was strained, and Mia had no idea why. He’d been fine before she passed out from climax overload in the early hours this morning. What had happened between two o’clock and nine?
Mia was so relieved when the doorbell rang that she practically catapulted off the high stool. “That’s Marcel. I’ll go and get him started.”
“Make sure the bastard’s sober,” Cruz cautioned. She heard him but didn’t bother to respond as she went to the back door. Blush had hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. Her immediate staff in the San Francisco office was upwards of five hundred people. She didn’t need advice from her handyman about the freaking gardener.
• • •
Latour brought his wife, Daisy, and their little boy, Charlie. Mia found busywork upstairs for Daisy, and sent Latour to get started trimming the trees on the graveyard side of the house. By the time she went back to the kitchen, Cruz was gone, leaving the dirty dishes in the sink for her to wash.
She had a list of projects she should be doing, but she felt lazy and out of sorts. Cruz’s fault for starting her day on a weird note.
Sipping at an ice-filled glass of cold tea, Mia watched the little boy through the kitchen window as he wandered around the scrubby back lawn. The child seemed fascinated by the water.
About to go outside to warn him to stay away from the edge—and the ever-present alligator—she saw Cruz stride across the lawn.
He stood talking to the child for a few minutes, then crouched down behind him. Picking up something from the ground, the man handed it to the child, then guided his arm. It took Mia a few seconds to realize that Cruz was teaching Charlie how to skip stones over the water.
The first couple of stones didn’t go far, but Cruz kept talking and helping the child take aim at just the right angle. Eventually the stones skipped across the olive-green waters of the bayou. Mia smiled as she heard Charlie’s triumphant yell through the open window.
She couldn’t see Cruz’s face, but he ruffled the child’s shaggy hair and kept skimming stones. Mia stood in the kitchen for a good half hour watching them.
Cruz was good with children. A surprise. He seemed too contained, too serious a man, to bother with kids. Maybe it was just women he had a problem with.
Still, a man who had that kind of patience, and a willingness to spend time with a lonely kid, couldn’t be all bad.
Maybe he just had a problem with her.
Chapter Seven
She didn’t want to talk about China. So she did have something resembling a conscience after all. Not much of one, though; she’d seemed more annoyed than appalled at the news of the factory fire. Presumably the kids were expendable and the factory could be rebuilt with little loss of end product.
No biggie.
Fuckit. He’d run out of excuses.
Cruz couldn’t kill her now, with people wandering about the property and going in and out of the house. Latour had brought his wife with him. A rail-thin woman with downcast eyes and nails bitten to the quick, whom he recognized as the waitress from the diner the other day.
Mia hid her surprise at the gardener bringing his family and cheerfully put her to work cleaning upstairs. Latour’s son—six? eight years old?—was a little shadow clinging to his mother’s side.