Falling for Her Read online

  FALLING FOR HER

  THE FALCON CLUB, BOOK TWO

  AMY STEPHENS

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle, WA 2015

  COPYRIGHT 2015 AMY STEPHENS

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

  No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

  Inquiries about additional permissions

  should be directed to: [email protected]

  Cover Design by Chelsea Barnes

  Edited by Marisa Chenery

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  PRINT ISBN: 978-1-5137-0135-6

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-5137-0156-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: [to be assigned]

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More Great Reads from Booktrope

  Chapter One

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, little man? Don’t you know it’s cold out here?” I bent down and scuffed the top of my little brother, Diego’s, head. He was squatted, playing with a couple toy cars in the mound of dirt that was just outside the front door of our apartment.

  When he stood, I noticed the pants he wore stopped a couple inches shy of his ankles and his feet were bare. His long-sleeve t-shirt was two or three sizes too big for him, obviously a hand-me-down from our brother, Ricardo, or Ricky as we liked to call him.

  Miami typically didn’t feel the extreme temperatures the rest of the country felt during the winter months, but for the last few days the nights had been unseasonably cooler, and we’d all been forced to wear several layers of clothing just to stay comfortable.

  When you’re a kid, you tend not to feel the cold like you do when you’re older, as was the case for Diego. He could’ve probably still been outside playing for another hour or two and not paid the least bit of attention to the dip in temperature. He was lost in his own little world with his cars and trucks as he guided them along the makeshift roads he’d built by scraping his plastic shovel over the dirt.

  “Jaime, I missed you,” Diego cried out and wrapped his arms around my leg. He was five years old and starved for attention.

  “I missed you, too,” I told him and pressed my hand against his back.

  He was latched on to my leg as though he hadn’t seen me in weeks, even though I’d only been out of the house since early that morning. When he finally let go and looked up at me, I saw his nose was red and raw underneath like he’d used something--no doubt his shirt sleeve--to wipe where it had been running. Despite the runny nose, it hadn’t stopped him from having fun and from getting his clothes all soiled in the dirt.

  “Come on,” I told him.” Let’s get you inside and all cleaned up. Momma will be home soon.”

  Back when the new property owners had taken over the complex, they’d tried to spruce up the appearance of things by adding a fresh coat of paint to the outside of all the buildings and by planting small flower gardens next to the front doors of each unit. With so many kids living there, and most of them playing outside from daylight until dark, the gardens hadn’t survived for even a couple months. Eventually, they’d all turned into patches of weeds or makeshift dirt piles, such as the one Diego had been playing in.

  It was just as well the owners save their money. It didn’t matter how hard they tried to make the place look better, the tenants who lived there were low-income and struggled to make ends meet. Most of them didn’t even own a vehicle and resorted to walking or using public transportation to get to the places they needed to go. They were just thankful to have a roof over their heads, as well as hot water and a place for their families to sleep at night. They couldn’t care less about a bed of flowers to make the place look better. Just remembering to water them was one more thing for them to worry about, and they already had enough on their plates to deal with without having to worry about some stupid flowers that were just going to die anyway.

  For anyone coming to visit for the first time, Miami is breathtaking and a site to behold with all of its palm trees, mile-high hotels, and gorgeous sandy beaches, but it’s just like any other big city. Outside the business and upscale residential areas, the poor still needed a place to call home. And a tiny two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Dade County was home to the Garcia family.

  All seven of us.

  My name is Jaime Garcia.

  Being the oldest of five kids, I’m considered the man of our household, although I’m working more and not home as often as I used to be. Ricky and Isabel, now in high school, have stepped up and now take on more responsibilities to help with the younger two, Eliana and Diego. Our mom, Lorena, is proud that her children all look out for one another and get along instead of arguing and bickering like most siblings.

  My mother is an honest, hard-working woman, struggling to provide for our family by working two minimum-wage jobs. I often wondered, though, if she’d stopped having kids after the first two or three of us if we wouldn’t be in a better position now, thus making it easier on her, both mentally and physically.

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love my brothers and sisters, and my momma does her damnedest to make sure we don’t go without, but I know it’s rough on her being a single parent, working two jobs, and still barely making it from week to week. Our lifestyle isn’t at all uncommon but, just for once, I’d like to catch a break.

  And another thing that’s often bothered me. I’m not sure if any of us have the same father, since there’s never been a man in our lives. Not that it really matters anymore, because we’ve fared to the best of our abilities, but I’ve often wondered if there were more underlying reasons Momma never chose to list our fathers’ names on any of our birth certificates. Given our financial struggles and way of living for all these years, could it be she didn’t know who our fathers were? Was it possible she’d been “selling herself” to random men throughout the years in exchange for money when times had gotten so tough she hadn’t been able to provide for us?

  I could never come right out and ask her, but I could see it as a possibility. Momma wasn’t young anymore, but there were men who didn’t care about a woman’s appearance. They were only interested in what they could do for them. When a person is desperate for money to take care of their family, well, they’d do whatever it took so they didn’t go without.

  I learned at an early age what the word eviction meant. Momma, God love her. She tried. For our sakes, she did the best she could.

  Food would start
getting scarce around the house, and buttered toast would be the only thing we’d have to eat for days at a time. Sadly, the only hot, balanced meal we’d get came from the school cafeteria. To make matters even worse--as if that were possible—it wouldn’t be long before we’d start packing our things to move somewhere else, some place a little bit smaller and not so safe for a family. Just when we’d get settled in, Momma would find out she was pregnant. It happened every time.

  So, now you can see why I might have felt she’d been doing “things” for money. Was this the only option she had left to take care of us? I really hated thinking that she’d have done such a thing, but adding another mouth to feed wasn’t the smartest thing to do when we were already struggling to take care of what we had. She’s my momma, and I loved her regardless if that’s what she’d really done. We’d somehow made it to this point, safe and sound, and that was all that mattered.

  It wasn’t long after our grandmother, Mama Camila, had suffered a stroke and came to live with us all the way from Columbia, that Diego was born. I hoped and prayed there would be no more. We couldn’t keep adding members to the household. We just couldn’t. It helped that Mama Camila could sit with us while Momma worked, but there simply wasn’t much she was able to do otherwise.

  Mama Camila’s husband, my mother’s father, had been dead for many years, so when my mother would speak of my grandfather, she referred to a man who lived in Columbia and not Papa Garcia. Although I don’t remember much being so young and just two years old, she and I had accompanied this gentleman to the United States. When he decided to go back to Columbia after a few short weeks, he’d ended up leaving us behind, saying the States was a better place for her to raise me.

  According to her, this grandfather of mine was a wealthy, prominent businessman back in Columbia, and he was able to do things that the average Columbian citizen wasn’t able to do. In all honesty, I believed my mother got pregnant with me by his son, who’d already had a family of his own. By sending us out of the country, it was his way of keeping my mother and me out of harm’s way from his son’s wife and any drama that may have unfolded if her pregnancy had ever been discovered. Picking up on bits and pieces of conversation, this was the only conclusion I’d been able to reach after all these years, and it sounded believable. We’ve never been back to Columbia since, but I knew my mother kept in touch with this “grandfather.”

  It’d been difficult growing up without a father, especially now that I’d gotten older and taken on the father figure role for my siblings, but that wasn’t uncommon. In fact, there were many fatherless families living in our same neighborhood. All of us carried my mother’s maiden name of Garcia, and I loved Diego, Ricardo, Isabel, and Eliana regardless of who fathered us. Having a father, whether their own birth fathers or just someone else playing the role, could be such an influential part of their young lives.

  The last mention of the grandfather was when we were at risk of losing our apartment a few years ago right after Diego was born. She hadn’t been able to return to work like she’d planned because of some complications and, once again, we’d gotten in pretty bad shape financially. Momma had sought him out, and he’d sent enough funds for us to pull through our hardship. I hated this and felt bad that I couldn’t do more for my family, but at the time, I was just sixteen and still in high school. My mother was prideful, and I knew she’d only contacted him as a last resort. In fact, the only other time she’d openly mentioned him was when Mama Camila had become ill, and he’d made arrangements for her to come live with us as soon as she’d been well enough to travel from Columbia. He may have been my grandfather by title, but I knew nothing more about him, or his son, who’d most likely fathered me. Even now, they were mysteries to me, and the chances of me finding out the truth behind both men were slim to none.

  We made do in the little apartment we lived in now, but I hated seeing my family live like this. Ricky and I slept on a pull-out sofa in the living room, while Diego shared one of the bedrooms with Momma. The girls and Mama Camila slept in the other one. We were good people, but merely a product of our environment. For any of us to actually make something of ourselves was almost certain not to happen. There were so many Hispanics and Latinos living in south Florida, it didn’t matter if we were educated or bilingual. None of us had any more of an advantage over the other, and we were all willing to work for a little bit of nothing, often being paid in cash “under the table,” just so we could make do.

  I’d taken on several of these cash-paid jobs after graduating high school a few years ago, but nothing had panned out to be anything more than just random jobs here and there when the work was needed. My latest job included working with a maintenance supervisor at one of the popular chain hotels. I helped with the landscaping and responded to basic service calls if the hotel guests reported any issues with their rooms. It was work and that was all I could say about it. After the first couple weeks, I’d been added to the payroll, but that did nothing but guarantee employment. Some weeks I worked twenty hours, others I’d work more. There was no use in complaining about it, though. Hotels were on every street corner there, and if a person didn’t like one job, they could always move on to the next one down the road. They were all the same, and it didn’t matter if someone earned a hundred dollars one week but only fifty the next. The challenge was seeing how far they could make the work last.

  A few days ago, I’d just gotten off of the tram and was walking home when a shiny new Ford Mustang came pulling up alongside me. I’d glanced over at it from the corner of my eye, but with gangs being a problem there, I was hesitant to really take a good look at it. Drive-by shootings weren’t uncommon, and I just didn’t want to put myself in a difficult situation should it just be someone trying to cause trouble. I increased my pace, but the car continued to roll along next to me.

  “Hey, bro,” someone from inside the car yelled to me. I started to take off running, but figured it was no use. “Dude, don’t you hear me?”

  The light at the intersection changed to red, and I had no choice but to stop. I took my chances and looked toward the driver.

  “Hey, man!” I called out when I recognized it was Javier, an old friend from high school. “Nice wheels you got there.”

  “Hop in, I’ll take you for a spin.”

  I didn’t even have a chance to fasten my seatbelt before Javier had pressed the accelerator, and we sped down the road as soon as the light had changed to green.

  “Man, listen to the sound of that engine. This is the bomb.”

  I was instantly jealous of Javier, and he continued to increase the car’s speed, hoping to impress me more. How in the world had he been able to afford a car as nice as this? I just prayed to God it wasn’t stolen and that the cops wouldn’t soon be pursuing us in a high-speed chase. Leave it to Javier to try a stunt such as that.

  Growing up, Javier had been raised by his grandmother. His mother and father had been heavily into drugs and had never been a part of his life. He had turned out to be okay in my book, but it had been a while since I’d last seen him.

  “You like, huh?” he boasted.

  “This is sweet, dude,” I told him as I ran my hand over the dash, checking out all of the car’s features.

  “All mine, baby. She’s all mine.”

  “Come on, man. How’d you score something like this?” I honestly doubted he’d tell me, because if he was into something illegal, he sure as heck wouldn’t want a lot of people knowing his secrets, myself included. God, I just hoped he’d gotten this car the honest way.

  “Ways, man. I got my ways.”

  There it was. It was the only vague answer he’d give me, but I knew by the tone of his response I need not pry any further. The smirk on his face said it all; I didn’t want to push my luck, especially since this was the first time I’d seen him in a long time.

  We rode around for a little more before he turned around to take me home.

  “You still living over on Duval Ave?”
he asked.

  “Yeah, man, I’m still hanging out there.”

  “When you gonna get your own place? You know chicks dig a man who lives on his own and has his own wheels.”

  He just wasn’t going to let it go about having his own transportation. I realized he was proud of his car, but it didn’t mean I had to agree or endorse how he’d gotten it. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t own a vehicle.

  “One day, dude. One day.”

  If he only knew! Right now, owning a car was the least of my worries. As long as my family had a roof over their heads and food to eat, we were doing okay in my book. Living in public housing wasn’t my idea of “living the life,” and it sure as hell wasn’t some place I’d want to bring a date, but it was what it was until I could do better. As for a car, well, what good was a nice car if you still lived in the poorest part of town? Don’t get me wrong, I was impressed with his ride, however he’d obtained it, but I’d much rather know I’d bought it the legal way.

  “Take care,” I said as I closed the car door behind me. He hadn’t bothered to pull into the complex, but had stopped at the front entrance.

  Javier lowered the passenger window before pulling away. “If you need something, man, look me up. I got your back.”

  I caught the wink in his eye and knew he was serious about helping me out. Javier had some connections somewhere, and he was prepared to share them with me.

  He pulled away, leaving a trail of dust behind him, and all I could hear were his words over and over in my mind. If you need something, man, look me up. I got your back.

  Surely there had to be more to this life. Obviously, Javier had discovered it, but I didn’t want to do anything that would put me or my family in harm’s way. My family meant too much to me to do anything illegal.

  Chapter Two