I Broke His Rule to Get Near Him, So the Billionaire Made Me Count novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Nochebuena
"Smooth side up," my aunt said. "Thin. Thinner. Mijo, that is not masa, that is mud."
Royce looked down at the corn husk in his hand.
He stood at the end of my mother's kitchen table on Christmas Eve, with masa to his elbows.
His borrowed apron said Navigation Elementary Cafeteria.
Twelve women sat around the table with him, aunts and cousins and one neighbor.
She had come for a single tamal and stayed for the gossip.
Every one of them had stopped to watch.
"I run a company with three hundred men," Royce said.
"You're fired," my cousin said, and the whole table shrieked.
He laughed with his head back, a real laugh, and the light over the stove caught the gray at his temples.
I stood at the other end with the pork and red chile and could not stop looking at him.
Nobody had asked him to come.
My mother had said, "Bring nothing," and then she had put a rolling pin in his hand and a hairnet on his head.
"Again," she said.
He spread the masa again.
This time it went on in a thin smooth sheet, and my aunt grunted.
"Better," she said. "Now you may fill it."
"With what?" he said.
"With what Mari gives you."
I put a spoonful of pork in the middle of his husk.
His fingers brushed mine, wet with masa, and stayed there a second.
I felt it behind my knees.
"You're doing great, honey," I said, in front of everyone.
"I'm terrified," he said.
"Good."
At the stove, my mother smiled at the steam where she thought nobody could see.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Broke His Rule to Get Near Him, So the Billionaire Made Me Count are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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