His cousin Sean’s voice sounded clipped and a little harassed. Rico smiled. “Catch you at a bad time, Sean?”
A huff of resignation came before Sean King said, “No. Just recovering from my latest heart attack. Mel had another false alarm.”
In spite of everything going on, Rico had to grin. Sean King had, since marrying Melinda Stanford, become a changed man. Wasn’t so long ago that Sean himself would have laughed at the image of himself as devoted husband and father-to-be. Now, though, he was the prototypical family man. And since Melinda’s due date was only a week or two away, he never let his wife out of his sight. Every sigh she made sent Sean into a tailspin, and watching his anxiety escalate over the last several months had been very entertaining. While Melinda was sailing through her pregnancy, it was about to kill Sean.
“I swear,” Sean said under his breath, “sometimes I think Mel’s doing it on purpose. I’m sitting here watching the game and she lets out this little whimper-slash-groan. I jumped up so fast I knocked my beer over and dumped a whole bowl of popcorn on the floor. The dog loves me.”
Rico laughed. “If it’s this bad before she goes into labor, how will you survive the real thing?”
“Once it actually happens I’ll be fine,” Sean argued. “It’s this waiting and waiting that’s making me nuts. And between you and me, I think Mel’s doing this stuff just to watch me jump.”
She probably was. Melinda was great, but she did love keeping her husband on his toes. “I’m sure she’s as nervous as you are.”
“Who’s nervous?” Sean replied. “I’m not nervous. I’m just hyperprepared.” He grumbled something under his breath then added, “Right now, she’s eating ice cream and laughing at me.”
In the background, Rico could hear Melinda’s laughter and the excited barking of their dog, Herman. Soon they would have their child and be even happier than they were already. Hard not to be jealous of that.
“You’re a lucky man,” Rico told him.
“Yeah, and she never lets me forget it,” Sean said, laughing. “So what’s going on?”
Secrets were impossible to keep inside the King family. So naturally Rico’s brothers and cousins all knew about his marriage to Teresa—and the fact that the divorce had never gone through. Hell, with a lot of the Kings now living across Europe, Rico had had unpaid “detectives” keeping their eyes open looking for Teresa so that Rico could finally end what was still lying between them.
The King family was tight. And since Sean had led the King Construction project to build this hotel and Rico’s home—then stayed on Tesoro when he married Melinda—the two cousins had grown even closer. They’d spent many nights having a drink together, talking about work and family and what Rico would do if he ever caught up to Teresa Coretti King.
Now that he finally had, Rico had to talk to his cousin about this. He took a breath and said simply, “She’s back.”
“She?”
“Teresa.”
There was a long pause and Rico knew his cousin was as dumbstruck as he’d been just a couple of hours ago. Idly, he picked up a pen off the desktop and flipped it between his fingers.
“Are you kidding me?” Sean’s voice ratcheted up a notch or two before he stopped and talked to Melinda. “Rico’s wife showed up. Yeah, I’m finding out.” When he came back, he asked, “She just showed up at the hotel?”