Wanted: Devil Dogs MC (21 page)

Isabel sinks into one of the mismatched chairs in the charming rustic kitchen and puts her head in her hands, wondering when exactly it was that everything had become so complicated. It is at times like this she misses her mother most. In the past, she would have speed-dialed her mom and she would have given Isabel the best advice. She would have made it seem as if everything was going to be all right, as if everything could be fixed. Caroline Bishop’s emotional openness had balanced her daughter’s emotional retardedness and now that she is gone, Isabel is a little like a boat without a sail, just drifting around without really knowing where she is going or what she is doing.

“When did you become such an idiot?” Isabel asks the question into her hands, her fingers muffling the words.

“When you fell in love.” Rosa’s response makes Isabel jump.

She hadn’t even heard the older woman come in. For a large lady she is remarkably spry. She sighs, taking a seat next to Isabel and placing her hand on her shoulder, patting it rhythmically.

“Well, love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Rosa.” Isabel smiles at the other woman, shaking her head.

Rosa doesn’t pass comment on this particular kernel of wisdom on Isabel’s part. Instead she taps her fingers on the table, creating a drumbeat that seems to be encouraging Isabel off to sleep, which is a feat in itself.

“He seem like a nice boy.” Rosa shrugs as if to say ‘what?’ when Isabel gives her a dry look.

“He
is
a nice boy, Rosa. He’s a very nice boy.” Isabel rubs her temples, wondering how she can get out of this conversation without actually sprinting for freedom.

“And this nice boy, he like you, yes?” Rosa pokes Isabel in the shoulder when she doesn’t respond immediately.

“Ouch! All right, Rosa! Yes, yes he does, though I don’t deserve him to.” Isabel shakes her head at the irony of it. The one you want disappears into the night without giving you any reason to think he’ll ever be back again; he doesn’t even say the four-letter word you would give anything to hear. The one who wants you chases you over three states to turn up at your door and declare his undying love for you.

“Why you say that, Isabel?” Rosa frowns, her eyes creasing in the corners at the action.

“Because it’s the truth.” Isabel sighs as she lays her head against the kitchen table. “He’s a great guy, Rosa. He’s a great guy and a great friend. And anyone woman in her right mind would be in love with him and would want to be with him. He’s every mother’s dream for her daughter! Hell, even my mom would have been overjoyed if I’d introduced him as my boyfriend!”

“But you don’t love him, not like that.” Rosa’s voice tells Isabel she already knows the answer to that particular question.

Isabel shakes her head, still keeping her head on the table, the cool wood going some way to ease her burgeoning headache. “What if Mike’s right, Rosa?” She asks the question quietly, a little afraid that the tears will find their way out of her tightly shut eyes. “What if he never comes back?”

Rosa doesn’t ask which ‘he’ Isabel is talking about; there’s no need. They both know who it is. Rosa sighs deeply. “Isabel, let me tell you a story.”

Isabel shakes her head. She knows Rosa means well and that she just wants to help, but right now the last thing she wants is a moralistic tale about how her life is passing her by and she shouldn’t be waiting for a man that is never going to come back. “Rosa, I’m really tired. Maybe another time -”

But the older woman cuts her off. “Isabel, I try again and again to tell you this story. Every time you say you no want to hear it. Well, this time, I don’t care. I going to tell story and you going to listen.”

The serious tone of voice makes Isabel sit up and blink at Rosa, who looks like she’s about to blow. “All right, Rosa. It’s fine. Tell me your story.” Isabel makes calming gestures with her hands, wondering if she’s ever seen the other woman so mad.

“Bene.”
Good.
Rosa nods, satisfied that Isabel is paying attention to what she has to tell her. “When I was in Italy, I was so happy.” She smiles as she begins her story, the memories of her homeland flooding back. “I was young and beautiful.” Her eyes twinkle but her mouth purses as she catches Isabel’s expression. “What? I was skinny like you then.” She pats her matronly hips as if she is remembering a time when they didn’t take up quite so much room.

“I’m not surprised, Rosa.” Isabel doesn’t even have to lie. Despite the fact that the older woman clearly has an impressive girth, her full face is still more than pretty. It wasn’t hard to imagine what she must have looked like thirty years before.

“Hmmff.” Rosa makes a suspicious noise, as if she doesn’t quite believe Isabel, but she continues on regardless. “Anyway, in my town there were many men who want to marry me. But I no like any.” She shakes her head, her eyes getting that faraway look in them again. “Until one day, a man came to our town. Mario.” She sighs deeply, lost in her memories and Isabel listens in fascination. “He was from Roma, the big city. He had so many stories and used to talk to me about what it was like there, how one day he would take me there and show me everything.” She shakes her head.

“You fell in love with him.” Isabel can tell that just from the look on Rosa’s face.

Rosa nods. “It was like this.” She snaps her fingers. “I see him, he see me and that was all.” She shrugs and Isabel nods, understanding exactly what the other woman is saying. “But my father, he no approve. This man, my father say, he is trouble.” Rosa sighs again.

“What kind of trouble? Why didn’t your father like him?” Isabel clenches her hands tight, leaning towards Rosa, enveloped in the story.

“He was, how you say? He was a man not suitable for a girl like me. My father, he say I too innocent, that I do not understand what a man like him wants.” Isabel watches as Rosa’s eyes fill up with a hurt she must have been carrying around for more than half her life. “I no understand what my father mean, until one night, I follow Mario and watch. He meet with another man and the other man give him a gun.” Rosa shakes her head as if she were trying to get that memory out of her mind. “In Italy, back then, only two kinds of people have gun.” She ticks off fingers on her hand. “Police and
Mafioso
.” She looks pointedly at Isabel.

Isabel gulps. “Mafioso. He was part of the mafia.” Isabel’s eyes widen.
No wonder Rosa can recognize trouble when she sees it,
she thinks to herself.

Rosa nods. “He tell me everything, how he became
Mafioso
, how he want to leave, buy vineyard, make wine. He want a quiet life. He want to marry me, to have a family.” Rosa gulps and Isabel sees the woman is desperately trying to hold back tears.

Isabel takes hold of her hand and squeezes it, silently communicating that she’s there for her. “So what happened?” Isabel searches Rosa’s eyes for some kind of clue as to how this story ends.

“My father, he tell me no, he tell me that I cannot marry a man like Mario. He say I have to choose. I marry Mario and I never see my family again or I do as my father say and I never see Mario again.” Rosa wipes her eyes with the back of her hands, the pain from that day still as fresh now as it was then.

Realization dawns on Isabel. “Your husband. He’s not called Mario.”

Rosa shakes her head sadly. “I couldn’t say goodbye to my family, to know I would never see my mother or my sisters again. I say goodbye to Mario.”

“What did he say? Didn’t he try to fight for you, to change your mind?” Isabel feels herself getting swept away with the tragedy of the story.

Rosa shakes her head. “He was a proud man, too proud. When I tell him I cannot marry him, that I can never see him again, he kiss me and he walk away.”

Isabel holds her breath, waiting for more, waiting for Rosa to tell how he came back for her, how he told her he loved her and he couldn’t live without her, but the older woman remains silent.

“That’s it?” Isabel doesn’t even try to keep the frustration out of her voice. “That’s it? He just left and you never saw him again?”

Rosa shrugs as if to say that she doesn’t know what it is Isabel expected. “My father, he find me a husband. We marry, it was very quick because I…I…” Rosa looks down, playing with her hands, clearly ashamed of something.

“You were pregnant.” Isabel bites her bottom lip, not wanting to even imagine the pain Rosa must have gone through, to be married off to another man while carrying the baby of the man she loved.

Rosa nods. “My husband, he knew. But he is good man. He buy us tickets to go to America. We leave before the baby was born.” Rosa holds her hands over her lower abdomen as if she can still feel her firstborn kicking up a storm inside of her.

“Did you ever try to find Mario again? Did you ever hear from him?” Isabel desperately wants there to be something she can hold onto in this story, something that will tell her Wesley will come back, that everything will work out.

Rosa just shakes her head. “If he go back to my village, my father, he never tell me.” She shrugs. “And it is better this way. I marry a wonderful man and we have beautiful family together.” Rosa looks genuine about this part, as if her family is enough to make giving up the man she loved worthwhile.

“But don’t you ever think about him, Rosa? Don’t you ever wonder what happened to him? Or if he still thinks about you?” Isabel wraps her arms around herself, cradling herself against the coldness seeping through to her bones.

“I have family now, Isabel. I have family and I have husband who I love.” Rosa gives Isabel a pointed look and Isabel responds with a similar one, telling the older woman she won’t be fobbed off with platitudes. She wants a real answer. Rosa sighs heavily again, looking up at the ceiling as if she is asking the heavenly bodies for strength. “Every day I think about him. Every day I miss him.”

Isabel flops back into her chair, emotionally drained from Rosa’s story. “So what was the message behind that? That Mike is the good, decent man that I could have a good, decent life with and Wesley is the dangerous man, the man I shouldn’t be with?”

Rosa shrugs as if to say Isabel has to take what she wants from the story.

Isabel shakes her head. “Are you always this cryptic or is it just with me?”

Rosa grins, the hurt and pain vanishing from her eyes as if they were never there at all. “We all have a different path, Isabel. But I want you to know, I understand.” She pats Isabel’s hand, maternally. “I understand what it means to be in love. I understand why you say no to Mr. Mike.” She pats Isabel’s hand again, getting to her feet. “But do you want to be alone always? Always hoping? Always waiting?” Rosa shrugs. “That is no way to live, Isabel.”

Before Isabel has a chance to respond, Rosa is gone, leaving nothing but the familiar scent of her Jasmine perfume in her wake. Isabel massages her temples, trying to work out what the hell she’s supposed to do now. She had expected Rosa to tell her that she should be with Mike, that she should forget about Wesley, but what she hadn’t expected was that the older woman had been through something so similar to her.

Rosa was speaking from experience. Isabel knows for a fact that Rosa adores her family, her children, her grandchildren, her husband. But she wonders if she would have chosen differently if she knew then what she knows now. Would she have run off with Mario and left everything behind, to hell with all the consequences?

That is a question only Rosa can answer. And it doesn’t help Isabel much at all. Mike has never been one to give up on something he wants easily. It is a trait that will make him a great doctor, but it is also one that made Isabel sure  he won’t be taking her first answer as her last one. She’d seen the way his eyes lit up when she’d told him the other man isn’t coming back. There’s no doubt in her mind he had seen that as a chance for him, an in. He had left believing he might still be able to change her mind, to talk her around to his way of thinking.

And would that be so bad? Would it be so bad to be with someone like Mike? Someone who is kind, dependable, successful, someone who cares about her, someone who isn’t a criminal, someone who isn’t running from the law or from rival biker gangs. There are worse things in the world than to be with someone who could offer stability. Immediately she hears Jamie’s voice in her head.