Nobody's Angel by Patricia Rice

Author:Patricia Rice [Rice, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56605-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Dolores, I know it's Saturday night!” Exasperated, Belinda set down her mother's tray and refrained from heaving the soup remains at her younger sister. “Forgive me for having a life of my own, but I have to go home to fix Jim some food, and we can't leave the little ones here alone. You have to be in by eleven. That's final.”

Dolores stuck out her lower lip in the same manner as six-year-old Ines. “I'll marry Mike and move out and then I can leave this place anytime I like. What will you do then?”

“I'll take the little ones to your love nest.” Belinda heard her sister's defiance but wanted to laugh at the naive belief that she could leave anytime she liked. Family didn't work that way. Life didn't work that way. “Don't be ridiculous, chiquita. Marriage is far, far worse than being home by eleven. You would spend all your time trying to earn enough money to pay the rent and buy groceries and make car payments, and then you'd never have time to go out on Saturday night. Consider yourself lucky.”

“Yeah, well, why doesn't Adrian do all that?” Dolores shouted, before flouncing off to primp some more for her date.

Adrian had been out of prison for a month and had yet to contribute to the family's finances. Belinda sighed and began scraping scraps into the disposal. Well, at least he'd moved Cesar back in to help with the little ones. Except now he'd sent him to Knoxville and that wasn't much help. Still, she couldn't blame Adrian. As the next eldest, she knew how hard and how long he'd worked to keep them all together with a roof over their heads, as well as fed and educated. She was having a hard time telling him that she couldn't step into his shoes.

The doorbell rang, and she let Dolores answer it. A man should be here to interview the sullen teenagers the girls were dating. Adrian used to straighten her dates out quick enough. She couldn't do the same. They looked at her as if she were a bug on a rug.

Dolores popped back into the kitchen doorway with an odd look on her face. “Maybe you'd better talk to this lady.”

Immediately alarmed, Belinda dried her hands, ran them through her hair to set it straight, and brushed down her khakis. Strangers never meant good news.

Dolores had left the woman standing on the other side of the front screen door. Instead of castigating her sister for rudeness, Belinda checked to make certain the lock was fastened. Call her a bigot, but in her experience blond, white women wearing more makeup than Tammy Faye did not call on them for sociable purposes.

The scent of cheap musk perfume and cigarette smoke engulfed Belinda as she approached. The leopard-print silk tank top screamed Wal-Mart, and her black leggings stretched far too tight over wide hips. Belinda didn't like discovering that she was not only a bigot, but a snob for thinking this creature spelled trouble with a capital T.

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