Holiday Home Run - Priscilla Oliveras Page 0,36

a modest, single story stucco house. Theirs was painted the same welcoming soft peach as the privacy wall, with dark gray hurricane shutters bookending the windows. Alejandro and his younger brother, Ernesto, had lived here their entire lives. Until their father, in a fit of anger Anamaría felt certain he’d never meant, threatened to ban Alejandro from their home if he chose to turn his back on running the restaurant that was their familia’s legacy.

Despite the threat, Alejandro had boarded that plane to Spain. Off to seek fame and fortune on his own terms. Without his father’s blessing. Without her.

The humid breeze snagged a few errant strands of hair from her ponytail, blowing them across her cheek. Anamaría tucked them behind her ear and shook off the anxious tremors threatening her painstakingly erected wall of indifference. She paused in front of the wide wooden door nestled in the privacy wall’s alcove. Overhead, the sprawling bougainvillea with its deep green leaves and bright fuchsia flower petals climbed the inside walls and slight overhang in a colorful canopy offering shade to those who entered. But the plants’ sharp thorns were as prickly and painful as the memories of Alejandro she’d buried deep in a pirate’s treasure chest, rarely allowing herself to unearth.

If she was honest with herself, she’d admit that the sweat dotting her upper lip had more to do with seeing Alejandro again after all these years, and less to do with the island climate she’d endured her whole life.

All she had to do here was put on her game face. Channel her I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude that challenged any sexist, chauvinistic firefighters at work to question her abilities when it came to saving their asses. Treat this like another routine 911 call. Alejandro, another random patient she might need to load in the back of her …or, bueno, his mom’s sedan… for the short drive to the emergency room at Florida Keys Hospital if need be.

So what if instead of her firefighter gear she wore exercise clothes having come directly from a private workout with a middle-aged woman staying at the Casa Marina Resort. Her sundress from church was in the car, a balled up, wrinkled mess inside her gym bag. No way was she wasting twenty minutes driving to her place in Stock Island just outside of Key West and back to freshen up. Not for him.

She refused to allow herself to care whether or not she looked her best for the man who had walked away from her so easily.

Straightening her spine, Anamaría reached for the weathered metal door handle.

Her plan was simple. Get in and out quickly. Keep chit chat to a minimum. Remain professional and focused on her task—not the man—while she checked Alejandro’s vitals and the pin sites of the external fixator keeping his surgically aligned tibia shaft in place while his compound fracture healed.

No doubt Alejandro had come back kicking and screaming. Metaphorically speaking anyway. That had been the general consensus during the conversation she’d tried to tune out around the table at her familia’s mandatory weekly dinner the other night.

Nothing short of desperation and the need for assistance with his daily care—with a heavy dose of maternal insistence, no doubt—could have finally brought the prodigal Miranda son home.

Anamaría figured he wanted to be back in Key West about as much as she wanted him here.

That would be … not at all. As in zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

If luck was on her side, her visit now would be a quick “all’s well” checkup. Then she’d be on her way, Señora Miranda’s fears for her oldest’s well-being calmed. Intent on maintaining her distance until he left again.

Because he would leave again. Everyone knew that.

Only this time, when Alejandro Miranda boarded his flight to wherever his photography skills took him, he would not be taking her heart with him.

After having decided almost two years ago to quit waffling and just do it—her younger brother’s wise, if Nike-themed advice—she was finally intent on making her own true career dreams a reality. Thanks to her brother Luis’s fiancé’s mentorship as a social media influencer, AM Fitness had started getting more buzz, accruing more Instagram followers, and, most recently, the potential offer of representation by a talent agent.

There was absolutely no time for distractions or strolls down a memory lane riddled with what-might-have-been potholes.

Alejandro Miranda was her past.

Anamaría’s eyes were focused on the future.

All she had to do was get through this one awkward meeting. Then they could go their separate