Page 52 of Her Sensual Protector

Leo had to fight back a laugh.

“Yes, you did. You’ve always been so sweet.”

“Mama’s right,” his oldest sister, Therese agreed. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “And because you’re so sweet, you’re going to tell us what has you so preoccupied. Mama is bound to be worried. Is it a girl?”

The look he shot his sister promised retribution.

“Is it? Is it a girl?” his mother asked. It was her fondest wish that the last of her chicks would get married. That would be Leo.

He couldn’t lie. “Yes, Mama, it’s a girl. But, she’s someone I met while overseas. So don’t be thinking wedding bells. She’s not local.”

He watched as her mother’s face fell, and felt like all kinds of a heel. “But she lives in the States, she just works a lot overseas.”

“When can we meet her?” his mother pressed.

Ah fuck. I sure put my foot in it this time.

“That’s the problem, Mama, she’s not returning my messages.”

Martin and Luis hooted with laughter.

“Our baby brother has finally met his match,” Luis crowed.

“Leave your brother alone,” their mother admonished. “It’s okay, Mijo, she’ll call you. Of course, she’ll call you.” Her faith in him was blinding.

He looked around the table. His sisters were all nodding, his brothers were all smirking. Yep, it was a typical dinner at the Perez family table.

* * *

“So, who is the girl?” Martin asked later when they were outside on the back porch watching the myriad nieces and nephews playing on the jungle gym that their parents had set up in the backyard.

“She’s a bigwig at an international charity.”

Martin took a sip of his beer.

“So you met her while you were working overseas? Did it have anything to do with the doctor who was rescued?”

Leo was done trying to figure out how Martin always put two and two together. Martin was a detective with the Virginia Beach Police Department. He’d been a police officer for over twenty years. As a child he could put a puzzle together faster than anybody he’d known, he was the kid who figured out the plot of the movie a third of the way in. So of course he could put together the fact that when Leo was ‘out of town’ and someone like Doctor Squires had been rescued, that he and his team would have something to do with it.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Leo said to his brother.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s funny how the daughter of the good doctor manages a humongous international charity.”

Leo glared at his brother.

“Just saying.” He held up his hands.

Leo rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have a case you should be working on?”

“Sure, it’s called getting my brother married off.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be supplying Mom with great-grandchildren?”

“Bite your tongue, my daughters are still in college!”

Leo laughed and took a long sip of his Pacifico beer, then shouted at his nephew. “Derek, play nice with Lyndsey, or you have to come inside.”

“Uncle,” came the plaintive whine.