You Had Me at Hola(4)

Michelle grabbed Jasmine’s wrist in a tight grip, her brown eyes wide. “Ashton. Suarez,” she repeated. “Ashton Fucking Suarez . . .”

“He’s el león dorado!” Ava squealed.

Michelle flung her head back and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, adopting a dramatic tone. “And el matador!”

“El hombre seductor!”

“El duque de amor!”

“I know, I know,” Jasmine cut in. The guy had been on something like twenty different Spanish soap operas, and they’d be here all day if her cousins continued to spout his various character names.

“I think the one where he played the Golden Lion was my favorite,” Ava mused. “It was like The Godfather meets Indiana Jones.”

“I liked the one where he was an old-timey sheriff.” Michelle fanned herself. “He cut quite the dashing figure in that uniform.”

“Okay, that’s e—” Jasmine began, but Ava cut her off.

“He played a villain recently, and I liked his beard. But I thought they killed him off too soon.”

“Ava!” Michelle’s jaw dropped, aghast. “Spoilers!”

Ava shrugged, entirely unapologetic. “If you spent more time with Abuela, you’d be caught up.”

While they went back and forth about Ashton’s best roles, Jasmine mulled over this latest news. Ashton Suarez was a solid fixture in telenovelas, and even though Jasmine’s Spanish wasn’t good enough for her to follow them fully, she’d seen him on Esperanza’s TV plenty of times over the years. He was a good-looking man, even if he had a tendency to overact sometimes.

Not that Jasmine was one to talk. Her role on The Glamour Squad, a newer soap centered around a modeling agency, had required a level of melodramatics even her telenovela-loving abuela found a little ridiculous. Still, Jasmine’s back-from-the-dead trophy wife character, Cordelia, had stolen the show. Fans had loved Cordelia’s forbidden romance with Keane, the fashion photographer with a gambling addiction. For Jasmine, Cordelia would always hold a special place in her heart—the character had earned her a Daytime Emmy nom and won her the role of Carmen.

Never mind that she didn’t speak Spanish. Jasmine’s accent was perfect, even if her conversation skills left something to be desired. The last time she’d tried to gossip with her grandmother in Spanish, Esperanza had complained Jasmine was hurting her ears.

Her younger brother, Jeremy, had teased her when he found out she had to speak Spanish for the role, but he shut up real quick when Jasmine pointed out he knew even less of the language than she did. While Spanish had been Jasmine’s father’s first language, her mother, who was Puerto Rican and Filipina, knew very little Spanish or Tagalog, so English had been the main language in their home. Working on this show was going to be like a crash course in language immersion, and Jasmine sincerely hoped she was up to the challenge.

Michelle raised a hand, breaking into her thoughts. “Hold on. I’m getting an idea.”

Jasmine groaned. Michelle’s ideas were often brilliant but just as often got the three of them into trouble. Like the time they’d snuck out to a concert in New Jersey on a school night and missed the last bus back. They’d had to call their oldest cousin, Sammy, to pick them up. His silence had been expensive.

“I want to hear this idea,” said Ava.

Of course she did. Enabler. Jasmine made a face at her. “I don’t.”

But Michelle was not to be deterred when she was in possession of an idea. “Abuela’s eightieth birthday is coming up. If you could get Ashton Suarez to come to the party as your guest, Abuela would be over the moon. She’d make enough pasteles to last you the rest of your life.”

Biting her lip, Jasmine couldn’t disagree. It wouldn’t just make her grandmother’s year. It would make her whole decade.

“And if you bring him, I absolve you of party-planning duties,” Ava added.

“I didn’t realize I had any party-planning duties.”

“Of course you do. Everyone does.”

“What about Tony? He’s in London.”

Ava shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ll find something for him to do. All the cousins have to help.”

How many times had Jasmine heard those words? “Everyone has to help” had been one of the guiding forces in her life for as long as she could remember, going back to before she was born. Despite whatever fights or petty squabbles might be going on among the members, when the time called for it, the Rodriguez family banded together. And Esperanza’s birthday was going to be an event the family would be talking about for years to come.

All the more reason not to bring an unknown entity into the mix. But for her abuela, Jasmine was willing to do just about anything. Including asking her new costar for a potentially embarrassing favor.

Maybe Ava and Michelle were right. Maybe it was time to move back.

The ceiling creaked, followed by the sound of steady footsteps overhead, moving toward the stairs.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Jasmine hissed. “I haven’t even met the guy yet. He could turn out to be a total asshole.” So many guys in the entertainment industry did, after all. Like McIntyre.

“Rumor has it he’s kind of full of himself,” Ava mused. “But professional. Easy to work with.”