You Had Me at Hola(73)

“La nena de las telenovelas americanas,” Abuelita Bibi clarified. “Jasmita?”

“Jasmine.” Ashton corrected her before he could stop himself. The last thing he needed was his family making up nicknames for her.

“Sí.” Abuelita Bibi gave him a look like, ?Eres estúpido? “?Pues? ?La mujer?”

Ashton heaved a sigh. “We’re just . . .” The word friends turned to ashes on his tongue. “No sé.”

He had no idea. In all likelihood, Jasmine would never want to speak to him again. Regret hung like a lead weight around his neck, but it was an emotion he didn’t have the bandwidth to indulge.

Abuelito Gus wiggled his eyebrows. “Ella es muy hermosa.”

It was on the tip of Ashton’s tongue to extol her other virtues. Yes, Jasmine was beautiful, but she was also so much more than—

Ashton sighed. They were trying to change the subject and get him to come clean on the truth about his tryst with Jasmine, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet. The wounds were too fresh, hastily bandaged so he could get through the current crisis. But sometime soon, he’d have to poke at them, and then he’d become fully aware of everything he’d sacrificed. He’d been fooling himself, thinking he could make room for her in his life.

You’re fooling yourself if you think you can live without her, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind, but Ashton slapped it away. He should have stuck to his policy.

Just in case he needed the reminder, he’d received a text that evening from a number with a Miami area code that read Leave me out of this in Spanish.

It could only be from Yadiel’s mother.

Thoroughly exasperated, Ashton blurted out, “Am I the only one who remembers what happened before?”

Yadiel leaped off an armchair and crashed to the floor with a resounding thud that rattled everything on the coffee table. “What happened before?”

Carajo. Yadiel didn’t know about the attempted breakin. How could Ashton have been so careless? The weight of all these secrets was going to bury him.

Ashton wiped a hand over his face and said, again, “Mijo, this is an apartment. People live downstairs.”

Yadiel ignored him and bounced to his feet. “Papi, quiero visitar tu trabajo.”

This conversation was going off the rails. Just the thought of bringing his son to the studio now, when it was swarming with photographers and reporters and who knew what else, was enough to make him sweat. “No, mi amor. I’m sorry, but it’s not a good time for you to visit.”

“?Por qué no?” Ignacio cut in. “Everyone knows about us now. Why can’t we visit the set?”

Ashton nearly choked. “We?”

“Sí, let’s all go.” Abuelita Bibi looked up from her knitting with an excited smile.

Yadiel cheered while Ashton panicked at the image of his worlds colliding. What would the cast and crew think? And, co?o, what if they met Jasmine? His father would absolutely try to meddle.

Not to mention the potential for exposing them to the public, to the press, to . . . anyone with nefarious purposes.

“Espérate,” he began, but Ignacio got up and patted him on the shoulder.

“We’ll come tomorrow, okay?” Then he leaned in and said in a low voice, “The person you’re worried about is back in jail.”

The person—did he mean the stalker? “How do you know?”

Ignacio shrugged and gave him a crooked smile. “I check with my friends at the policía every month.”

Some of the tightness in Ashton’s chest eased. Of course Ignacio hadn’t forgotten what had happened. He’d been there that night. While Ashton had grabbed Yadiel out of his crib and called the police, his father had run outside with a baseball bat to chase the intruder away. What’s more, Ignacio had also been the one to file all the reports and follow up with the Miami PD while Ashton made immediate plans to sell the house and move Yadiel to Puerto Rico. Without his father’s help, Ashton never would’ve gotten through the experience.

Looking around at their smiling faces, at Yadiel high-fiving Abuelita Bibi, at Ignacio and Abuelito Gus discussing what they were going to wear to the studio, Ashton couldn’t deny them this. Even though it scared him.

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll ask the producers.”

God help him.





Chapter 33


Some small part of Jasmine hoped Ashton would have reached out while she slept, to offer an explanation, an apology, something. Instead, she got radio silence.

Oh, she had plenty of texts and voice mails, but not a single one from Ashton.

Everything about her . . . fling? Affair? She didn’t even know what to call it. But everything about her time with Ashton had been different from all her other relationships.

Except this part. The part where she ended up alone. Again. Shit had hit the fan, and he’d bounced. Left her hanging. Ghosted her.

Okay, so he was probably dealing with some shit over on his end. After everything he’d told her, she could understand why he’d gone to extreme lengths to protect his child. It was admirable, if misguided. No one could work in the public eye and expect complete privacy. She knew that all too well. Especially since the news about Ashton’s son had unleashed renewed interest in Jasmine and her love life.