“You’re going to eat,” he answered bossily.
My first reaction was to rebel because he was ordering me around, but I squelched it. He was my boss now, so I needed to do what he wanted for a while. As my stomach growled, I knew I’d really have no problem with that particular command.
Chapter Two
Eva
“This place is a dive,” Trace grumbled as he dug into a massive pile of Mexican food that was overflowing a decorative paper plate.
I stopped shoveling food into my face long enough to look at him. I’d practically attacked my burrito the moment it had been placed in front of me, and hadn’t come up for air since. Looking around at the flamboyant walls of the small restaurant, I had to admit that Trace Walker stood out like a sore thumb. He’d asked me where I wanted to eat, and I’d directed him back to my neighborhood, an area that didn’t have the finest of restaurants and was located in one of the most crime-ridden areas in the city. I couldn’t help smiling as I looked at the gorgeous man across from me in a custom suit, seated at a rickety table covered in a well-used plastic table cloth.
He didn’t belong here.
But I did.
“It’s the best Mexican food in the city.” The restaurant was family owned, and the food was fantastic. What did it matter that there was no fine china or fancy furnishings?
I watched as he practically inhaled the daily special, a look of appreciation on his face.
He nodded. “It’s good. How did you ever find this place?”
I shrugged. “I live right around the corner.”
Trace frowned, putting his fork down on his nearly-empty plate. “In this neighborhood? It’s dangerous, especially at night.”
I wouldn’t know the difference between a good neighborhood and a bad one. This was home to me. “It’s not so bad.” I knew I sounded defensive, but it irked me that he was being uppity about a neighborhood I’d lived in for years.
“You’re coming home with me. Your job starts now.” He gave me a look that said he wouldn’t change his mind.
I sighed. “Might as well. I’m being evicted anyway.” My situation was dire, and I didn’t like telling a man like Trace Walker what a loser I was, but it was the truth.
His expression was stormy as he picked up his fork and started eating again. “I’ll call a mover to get your stuff.”
“No need. I can just swing by and pick up my things. I don’t own much.” It was an understatement, but I tried to be nonchalant. Everything I had could fit in a backpack. I lived in a studio apartment, and it was sparsely furnished with things I’d been able to get for free. What clothing I had fit into my tattered backpack.
“Jesus! Who cares for you, Eva? Where are your parents? How long have you been on your own?”
“Nobody cares for me. I’m an adult, and I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen. My father was a Mexican born farm worker who died when I was fourteen years old, and my mother remarried and moved away when I was seventeen. She’s dead now.”
I didn’t want to think about my parents, my family. I still missed my father, even though he’d been gone for nearly a decade. My mother was a different story. I’d hated her and the feelings were mutual before she’d died. I had plenty of reasons to harbor resentment and anger toward my mother. Making me and my father feel like dirt on her shoes was just one of them.
Trace placed his fork on his now-empty plate. “So you’re Mexican?”
“Half,” I corrected. “My mother was Caucasian American. I was born here.”
To be honest, we’d traveled a lot within the U.S. up until my father had died. He went where there was work on the farms, and my mother and I had gone with him. Mom had constantly complained about the dirty, squalid life my dad provided, but he’d always worked long, hard hours out in the fields to keep us fed.
Sometimes I wondered why my mother had married my father. My childhood had been nothing but listening to her criticizing him for their poverty. Nevertheless, my father had never stopped trying to please her.
Unfortunately, he’d never made her happy, even when he’d died trying to keep our family intact. She’d been bitter about my existence keeping her trapped in the same place until the day she’d left to seek out a different kind of life, leaving me—and apparently all of those bad memories—behind.
My father had loved me; my mother had hated me.
Maybe I’d made peace with the fact that I wasn’t responsible for my mother’s unhappiness. But occasionally her bitter words still haunted me.
“Why were you left on your own when your mother remarried?”