Free San Antonio Rose by Fran Baker

“You’ve got it.”
    She looked down at the table again, her stomach taking another roller-coaster ride when he skimmed a drop of moisture off the beer bottle and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
    Jeannie watched, mesmerized by that lazy circling motion before she realized that Rafe was doing it on purpose. Then she balled her hands into fists on her lap and met his knowing blue eyes. Not for the world would she admit defeat.
    “I thought we came here to discuss getting you and Tony together,” she said with a touch of asperity.
    “We did,” he acknowledged tightly. “But before we make any plans for the future, I’ve got to catch up on the past.”
    She shook her head, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
    “Big Tom hated me.” Rafe’s lips formed a thin, bitter line. “So what I want to know is, what did he say when you told him you were pregnant with my child?”
    Jeannie groped around for an easy way to say it, but there wasn’t one. “He wanted me to have an abortion.”
    From across the table she sensed his reaction. His body got tense. His face grew as chilly as the polar ice cap. She saw him push his plate aside and followed suit, her appetite vanishing in view of his anguish.
    “Obviously you refused,” he said tonelessly.
    “I told him it was too late, that I was too far along.”
    “What did he say then?”
    “That if I didn’t go to a home for unwed mothers and put my baby up for adoption, he would disown me.”
    His jaw hardened at the idea of her own father emotionally blackmailing her like that. “And instead you went … where?”
    “To Houston.” She heaved a sigh tinged with yesterday’s tears. “I stayed with my aunt—my mother’s younger sister—until Tony was born.”
    Rafe’s throat grew tight at the thought of all it had cost her to keep his child over Big Tom’s strenuous objections. “What made him change his mind and let you come back to the ranch?” he asked her then.
    “I think he finally realized he’d lost control over me, that he was going to be the loser this time around.” Jeannie’s eyes misted with maternal pride. “That, and the fact that Tony was the most beautiful baby ever born.”
    “An unbiased viewpoint of course.”
    She laughed. “But of course.”
    “He looks like me,” he said, sobering.
    “The mirror image.”
    “And how did Big Tom feel about looking into my face every morning, noon, and night for ten years?” The timbre of his voice expressed a very real concern.
    “I never asked him.” Jeannie chose her words with caution, not wanting to hurt him any more than she had to. “But frankly I think he saw Tony as an extension of himself. His grandson. A Crane, not a Martinez.”
    “So he didn’t hold his Hispanic blood against him?”
    “If he had, I’d have been gone just like this.” She snapped her fingers, demonstrating dramatically. “He knew it too.”
    Rafe relaxed his rigid posture and reached across the table, taking her slender hand in his. He couldn’t imagine all she’d been through because of him, not even when he could see it reflected so clearly in her eyes. The hell of being estranged from her father and bearing a baby alone made his own rocky road to success seem like the highway to heaven.
    Jeannie sealed her lips together to keep from sighing with ecstasy when he turned herhand over and placed a kiss in the center of her palm. His lips were as soft as a sable brush against her sensitive skin. The warmth of his breath sent threads of heat spiraling along her arm. His words, when they came, were music to her soul.
    “That’s for giving life to my son,” he murmured.
    “
Our
son,” she stressed softly.
    “Our son,” he agreed, meeting her eyes across the table.
    The hot, oily aroma of their unfinished food wafted under their noses. Someone dropped a glass, causing a crash and a string of curses to fill the air. The door opened for new customers and closed on old ones. Spanish greetings