Free Team Tomás (The Saints Team #2) by Ally Adams Page B

jacket off and
held it out for me to put on. I slipped my arms in and he took my hand, smiling
at how his jacket drowned me.
    “Isn’t this magic?” I said,
feeling the cold sand between my toes and the light spray of the ocean on my
face.
    “I come here often at night,” he
said. “Everyone is down the other end with the bars and lights, but here is so
quiet.”
    “By yourself?” I asked. I wasn’t
sure if that was good or a sad thing.
    He nodded. “I like the time out.”
    “Tell me, Tomás,” I started.
    “Yes, Al... iss,” he looked at me
with a hint of a smile.
    “Why can’t you be free at home?”
    “Ah.” He pulled me in closer
again. “I can now I guess. But that’s a fairly new thing.” He hesitated,
putting his words together. “You see, my father cleared out one day... when I
was twelve, just left.” He did a vanish-into-thin-air motion with his hands. “My
mother, God bless her, was left with five of us under twelve. I was the eldest,
then I had twin sisters a year younger, a brother who was nine then, and
Valentina—Tina—is the baby, you met her… she was eight when my father left. So
I guess we all stepped up and grew up a bit, but I feel like I’ve helped raise
a family,” he shrugged. “Now, everyone has finished school, my contract has
bought my mother a good house and she won’t have to work again and I am free.”
    I nodded and looked at him with
new admiration.
    “If I go home, I am pulled into
all the family stuff and while that is great, I just want to be me for a
while.”
    “I get it,” I said. “You’ve had so
much responsibility from such a young age.”
    “They are my family, it’s what you
do,” he said, and shrugged; Tomás wasn’t good at taking compliments.
     “But you were a boy,” I said.
    “I was the man of the house when
my father left.”
    “You are such a good person, Tomás.
Your father was irresponsible, but clearly you didn’t get that trait,” I teased
him. “You deserve some time off for good behavior.”
    He grinned. “That’s one way of
looking at it. Let’s sit,” he suggested and dropped to the sand, suit and all.
He raised his arms for me and lowered me between his legs, wrapping his arms
around me. Nothing else existed in the universe in that moment; it was perfect.
We sat that way in silence for a little while until Tomás broke it.
    “I have something for you,” he
said and reached into the outside pocket of his jacket that I was wearing. He
pulled out a little black velvet pouch and gave it to me.
    “What’s this?” I asked looking
from the pouch to him. The words of the models at the bar came back to me... he
gives good gifts . Was this going to be my first and only date with Tomás
and this was a pay-off?
    “Open it,” he insisted.
    I pulled open the black cord on
the small pouch and pulled out a beautiful Pandora bracelet in silver with half
a dozen mosaic blue and green ball charms. I knew it would have been expensive—far
too expensive to give a girl on a first date.
    “Wow, it’s beautiful,” I sighed,
admiring it. “I love it, but I can’t accept it,” I slipped it back into the
black velvet pouch. “It was good of you to think of me.”
    Tomás frowned, a look of confusion
on his face.
    “Why can’t you accept it,
Al...iss? It’s for you.”
    “I know, but why?” I slipped it
back into his jacket pocket.
    He shrugged. “I thought you would
like it. Don’t girls always like jewelry?”
    I turned so I could see his face.
“I like you, Tomás. I don’t want anything from you,” I said, and studied him.
    He looked bewildered. His eyes
narrowed. “Oh, I understand, you think it means something? It doesn’t have to
mean anything, it’s just a gift.” He shrugged.
    I realized where he was going now;
he assumed I was scared that I would have to ‘put out’ in return. Wow, this guy
really traded in favors.
    I shook my head. “No. What I think
is that you don’t realize that not everyone wants