Page 67 of Boss Me

The hum of a sewing machine cut off, and a man with sparse gray hair and a neat goatee stood from a table at the back of the shop. He lifted his glasses to the top of his head and squinted at us. “Lito!” He bowed his back until it creaked then shuffled toward us.

He hugged Cooper and stepped back to lower his glasses and peer at Cooper’s shirt. Shaking his head, he clucked his tongue. He said something in Spanish, and I caught the words camisa fea. He’d called the shirt ugly. Cooper responded briefly in Spanish and then switched to slow English.

“Tío, this is my friend, Ben.”

“Buenos dias,” I said and stuck out my hand.

Ignoring my hand, Cooper’s uncle hugged me. “José María, but you can call me tío.”

He stepped back and looked me up and down from my golf shirt to my Bermuda shorts. “You two need clothes.”

I’d come with a full suitcase of tropic-appropriate apparel. “No, I—”

Cooper’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder. “Yes, please, tío. Casual wear.”

“Something for Sunday?”

“No, thank you, we—”

“Sí, sí. You will come to your tía’s for dinner.”

Cooper winced, but he didn’t protest, either. Sunday dinner with his family? His family?

José María bustled around the shop, pulling items from hangers. He handed half to me and half to Cooper, then he shoved us toward two cubicles at the side of the store. The curtain snapped shut behind me.

“Put it on, then come out,” José María said.

I stepped out of my shorts into a pair of loose-fitting, buff linen pants. I stripped off my polo and buttoned up a brick-red guayabera. I glanced in the small mirror. Although I normally wore blacks and grays, the red looked good against my skin, and the pants felt cool and light, even in the unairconditioned store.

I slipped through the curtain and stepped out. José María nodded his approval. “Turn,” he barked.

I turned and felt him grab the fabric at my ass. “I will take it in a little here. It would be a shame to hide this…what do the young people say in English? Booty?”

I grinned at him over my shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Ah,” he said, his gaze flicking past me. “One moment.”

Cooper stepped out of his dressing room. Like me, he wore linen pants and a guayabera, a sky-blue one that matched his eyes. There was no excess fabric around his hips; the pants looked like they’d been made for him, skimming his narrow hips and muscular thighs and breaking right at his ankle, not pooling at the bottom the way mine did.

“I see you still carry my size,” he said.

Boy, did he ever. My eyes roamed over Cooper’s broad shoulders and tapered waist.

“Don’t be silly. When I heard you were here, I made these for you, Lito.”

Cooper’s cheeks went red, but he smiled. “Gracias, tío.”

José María pinned my pants, and I returned to the dressing room to change into the next outfit, which was similar, but the shirt was a pale oyster pink. José María pinned those, too. The final selection was a pair of slim-fitting stone-gray slacks, a French blue dress shirt, and a seersucker blazer.

While José María pinned the pants, Cooper emerged in breathtakingly tight khaki slacks, a blue-check dress shirt, and a navy linen blazer with a jaunty red-patterned pocket square. “Tío, I don’t know about these pants… I think you made them for one of my cousins.”

“No,” I sighed.

“No,” José María said at the same time. “Those are perfect. Turn.”

Cooper turned, and I had to bite my tongue to keep it from lolling out of my mouth like a wolf’s in an old cartoon. The pants squeezed and defined his ass, and if José María hadn’t been there, I’d have let my hands follow the curves my gaze traced. Fuck me.

José María chuckled through his mouthful of pins. “See? Perfect. Ben approves.”

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