Beautiful Stranger (4 page)

“I could try.” She laughed throatily. “I mean, gosh, what's the worst that could happen? Not like I haven't had a broken heart once or twice in my life.”

“Haven't we all.” They walked along the sidewalk, silent for a long moment. “On second thought, Marissa, stay away from him. He's just…” She lifted a shoulder.

“He's just what?”

“Wrong for you, that's all.”

Marissa's antenna rippled. She narrowed her eyes and said, “Would you mind being a little more specific?”

Ramona didn't answer for a moment. She was a diplomat at heart, a doctor whose patients worshipped the ground she walked on. “Look, don't take this wrong—”

“Oh, I know where that always leads.”

Ramona stopped. “You probably do. And I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Marissa, but you're clueless on this level. You think it doesn't matter that you're worth however many zillions it is now, but it does. You don't know anything about life the way he and Crystal had to live it. You don't even know about ordinary people's lives.”

Stung, Marissa crossed her arms and looked at the last gilding on the edge of the world, a brilliant gold zigzag edging the tops of the mountains. “And how much do you know about it, Ramona? More than I do?”

A puzzled expression crossed her face. “Well, no, probably not, but—”

“But,” Marissa added gently, “you might be less inclined to judge?”

Ramona winced. “Ouch.” She raised her big, compassionate eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm the one being judgmental.”

“It's all right. I'm used to it.” She relented a little, rolling her eyes. “Let's not talk about it anymore.”

“Labels,” Ramona said with a sigh. “What a pain. We all get stuck with them. Red Dog is the sexiest, baddest, saddest. I was the brainy busty one.”

“Richest, fattest, smartest.”

Ramona laughed. “Ha! We could have duked it out for smartest.”

Marissa laughed. “Thank heavens. I couldn't stand being the richest, the fattest
and
the smartest.”

C
rystal didn't like white people all that much. Back in Albuquerque, there never had been that many in her life, really, only the ones on TV and at school, but here, it seemed like nearly everybody was white. It made her feel lost, kind of, like she was in a foreign country and didn't know the language.

She had to admit the old lady was pretty nice, and she was married to a Mexican who still talked as if he hadn't been gone too long, and that made it easier to believe the lady was really that nice. She gave Crystal some Kool-Aid, and her house smelled like houses in Albuquerque, of onions and chili, which was for the Mexican husband, of course, but it still made it easier.

After a while, the house filled up so much that Crystal got kind of panicky, afraid all of them would want to make polite conversation with her. But Mrs. Chacon seemed to know the exact minute Crystal wanted to burst into tears, and took her into a room at the back of the
house where there was a bed and a VCR. She had a ton of movies, too. “Your uncle said you like movies. Feel free to watch whatever you want, all right? And maybe you can have a nap. I'll save you some supper—don't worry about that.”

It almost made Crystal cry. That was what she hated about being pregnant. She cried over everything, as if she had an underground well in her belly and it over-flowed every day.

She looked through all the movies, and there were some pretty good ones, she had to admit. All the
Nightmare
movies, which she liked because they made her real life—no matter how bad it was on a given day—look pretty good since nobody was stalking her; and some goofy old movies such as
Gone with the Wind,
which Crystal had watched and didn't get at all. She thought Scarlett was a total bitch and deserved to lose a good guy like Rhett. There were also a couple of her absolute, tip-top favorites, such as
Ferris Bueller's Day Off,
which she'd seen at least a hundred times, and
Last of the Mohicans,
which made her cry and cry and cry, every single time. She didn't know if she wanted to do that right now. To get the full effect, it was best if she was all alone and could make all kinds of noise without anybody hearing what an idiot she was about movies.

There was no
Titanic,
which might actually have been too creepy for words. But there was one of the
Romeo and Juliet
with guns, the new one, with Claire Danes. Crystal put her hand on it, daring herself to look at it. But in the end, she just couldn't. Not without Mario.

For one minute, that hot feeling came into her throat—not tears, but something that burned a lot more—and she wanted to touch him, talk to him,
so bad
that she almost couldn't breathe. But that didn't do her or the baby or even Mario any good.

The only safe movie after that was
Ferris Bueller,
and she stuck it in the VCR and kicked back on the bed. In minutes she was sound asleep.

 

It wasn't as bad as Marissa expected, back at Louise's house. The rooms were bursting with Louise's three sons, their spouses and the grandchildren, who now totaled five with the birth of Anna and Tyler's second baby. Anna beamed tonight, looking like the ultimate Madonna as she nursed her black-haired boy, and she only smiled deliriously when people teased her about her three children, wondering if she planned on more. Tyler came to her defense. “We love babies. We're going to have twenty.”

Anna laughed at that. “Or maybe five.”

Robert was there, of course, quiet as he always was, laconically cracking dry jokes at odd moments, always eating whatever Louise piled on his plate. Often, Marissa noticed, Robert, and Louise's husband, Alonzo, could be found together, comfortably sitting side by side, exchanging a word now and then. And of course, he and Jake went way back, to Desert Storm. They talked in a kind of grunting guy shorthand, laughing at asides no one else ever got.

But Marissa didn't have to deal much with him directly, and Louise showed no overt signs of matchmaking, so Marissa relaxed and accepted the gathering for what it appeared to be: another of Louise's rollicking, impromptu suppers.

Marissa had never experienced such joyful family dynamics, and she loved being here. Filling her plate with the promised skinned, grilled chicken breast and a
steaming pile of steamed summer squash, she settled in a corner near Ramona and tickled her baby's toes between bites.

But over and over, her gaze flitted toward Robert. Studying him covertly, she thought his face was kind of harsh, as if that difficult past Ramona hinted at had been etched into the shape of it. His mouth was stern and his eyes watchful, and he had a penetrating way of looking at people, unsmiling and direct in a way most people simply could not tolerate. He did not smile often, unless he was trying to charm someone.

Not someone. A woman. In spite of that dangerous aspect, or more likely because of it, he drew women in a way that amazed her. The first summer he'd lived in Red Creek, he'd worked in a little tourist trap near the grocery store, making tiny feather jewelry from carved rocks. Women did whatever they could to coax a smile from the wry mouth. Old women, young women, girls. All of them.

And he accepted it as his due, with a mocking little glint in his eye that might have made Marissa dislike him, if she hadn't also been able to sense the sadness behind it, the same vast longing that made Crystal stare so hard out the windows at school, as if looking for a knight on a white horse.

Dangerous, Marissa thought. She'd been doing pretty well these days at avoiding the lost men in the world, focusing instead on saving herself. And the odd kid.

Her sister, Victoria, would have charmed him instantly, Marissa thought suddenly. But not her. Not even now. She didn't have that femme fatale gene. She was exactly who she appeared to be: open, direct, honest.

Fatty, fatty, two by four,
sang a nasally child's voice in her head.
Couldn't get through the bathroom door.

Robert looked up, caught her staring and raised his chin in her direction, a simple greeting. She looked away, wincing inwardly over the fact that she had, this very afternoon, been thinking he might be slightly interested. Just for a fleeting second his mouth had turned up in a distinctly flirtatious little smile.

Standing, she pointed to Ramona's plate. “Finished with that? I'll take it in with me.”

“Thanks.”

Marissa retreated, dropping the paper plates in the trash, then heading for the sanctuary of the wide balcony attached to the back of the house, a wooden deck that overlooked a deep, long valley. At night, only the black zigzag of the mountains against the night sky could be seen. And it was a little cold, but Marissa breathed it in anyway—the stars, so bright and sharp and thick so far from the city, the utter silence of the land. She let go of a breath, relaxing.

Resting her hands lightly on the wooden rail, she looked down at them and smiled ruefully as she admired the new ring she'd had to buy when none of the old ones would stay on her fingers anymore. That had been a rich, rich moment, and she wore the antique circlet of garnets every day to remind herself how far she'd come.

Odd how those old tapes kept playing in her head anyway. She wondered, lifting her chin to drink in the crisp air, how long it would take them to go away.

The glass door slid open behind her, and Marissa turned to see Robert stepping outside. His braid fell over one shoulder. “Hi,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. “You mind if I come out with you?”

“Not at all,” Marissa said politely, though of course he was the one she had been escaping.

“I didn't have a chance to thank you for what you did for Crystal.”

“Oh, don't mention it, please. Is she better tonight?”

“I think so.” He joined her at the rail. “Bringing her here was a good idea.”

“I'm glad.” Marissa curled her fingers around the railing, willing herself not to look at him. But it didn't particularly matter—she was still very aware of him, a scent of something fertile, verdant. He was tall and lean, bigger than she had previously noticed. His cocked elbow almost touched her arm. He shifted, hands still tucked lightly into the pockets of his jeans, and said nothing.

But even in the silence, in their stillness, she could feel an electric hum between them, strong enough that she thought she'd see a faint blue light in the air between their bodies if she looked.

The silence stretched. He shifted again, and she half expected—half wanted?—him to go back inside. He didn't, though. Just kept standing there, radiating that electromagnetic field.

Finally she said, “This is such a peaceful town.”

“Yeah,” he said, and as if he'd only needed an opening he couldn't come up with himself, added, “I kept thinking I'd leave, you know. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Kept somehow waking up here again every day.”

Marissa laughed. “I know the feeling. We used to come here to go skiing when I was a child, and I only came here to spite my father. Somehow I haven't managed to go anywhere else.”

“How long have you been here?” He eased a little, leaning his elbows on the rail.

She had to think about it. “Seven years? No, eight. I
turned down Dartmouth and ran to the Rockies.” She dared to look at him. No crackling blue electricity visible, but there was a nice glissando of light on the crown of his head and his nose. “How about you?”

“Three years. Didn't intend to stay more than a few weeks, really. But that was when Jake…uh…”

“I remember,” she said to spare him. When Jake had fallen down a cliff and nearly killed himself. “Where are you from originally?”

He raised his head, met her eyes. “Albuquerque.” He said it almost like a dare.

“Is there supposed to be some meaning there? If so, I didn't catch it.”

“Are you disappointed?”

Startled in a chuckle, Marissa asked, “No, why would I be?”

A slight lift of one shoulder. “White girls always want to hear some romantic tale of the reservation.”

“Ah.” She inclined her head. “Little chip on your shoulder there. Might want to knock it off.”

His teeth showed, just for a second, in the darkness. “I swear it's true.”

“Well, my disappointment is much more basic. I think you should have a name like…oh, Johnny Blue Raven or something.”

“Ravens are black.” The smile broadened, and Marissa thought the air was definitely beginning to glow a pale blue, just right there around his head. “Where are you from?”

“A castle in Switzerland.”

He laughed. “Touché.”

Marissa liked the sound of that laughter, a little rough and hoarse, as if he didn't indulge very often. It made her wonder what it would be like to hear him laugh
really hard—or if he ever did. “It's actually true. I was born in a castle in Switzerland.” She smiled. “It was an accident—my mother was supposed to be home, but she had to see these friends.”

“I see. So did you grow up in the castle, too, princess?”

“Not that one, sadly. A much gloomier castle in up-state New York, complete with ghoulish servants and guard dogs.”

“No kidding?”

She rolled her eyes. “It was a mausoleum. My father was sure someone would snatch my sister and I if he let us out of his sight for three seconds, so we didn't even go to school—he sent tutors in to us.”

He peered at her for a long minute. “No wonder you wanted to break out.”

“Exactly.” She brushed her hair out of her face. “Now you. Where'd you break out of?”

“Hell,” he said without a single beat of hesitation.

Something told her to keep it light. “Pretty hot. I can see why you'd like the mountains.”

She'd surprised him again. His head came up, and there was an expression of measuring in his eyes. “Yeah.” He looked away again, clicking his heel on the deck, and Marissa focused on the long length of his back beneath a simple cotton shirt, a blue plaid. The fabric stretched tight across his shoulders. “Ever been to Albuquerque?” he asked.

“Once or twice. Probably not to the hell parts, though.”

He laughed and stood up, turning to face her. “Now how'm I gonna be the poor beleaguered wounded guy if you keep making these jokes?”

Marissa raised her eyebrows. “I guess you'll just have to come up with another act.”

“You're not at all who I thought you were.”

“Neither are you,” she said honestly, and somehow that was a lot more unnerving than that blue energy humming between them. “I didn't know you could laugh.”

“It's been a while.”

 

In the cool darkness, Robert did something he rarely allowed himself to do: he relaxed. Strange that he felt that freedom with this woman who was so far removed from his circle that she might as well have been a Martian, but there it was. Tonight she wore sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and she smelled a little of soap and deodorant and sweat. It all made her feel more approachable, more real.

They talked, in that aimless way of people who want to keep each other company but aren't sure of the ground yet, of Red Creek and the historical project. Nothing important. But he found himself looking—almost helplessly—over her body now and then, discovering that he liked the ordinariness of it, too full across the bottom, still pretty solid in the thighs. A homey kind of body that made him want to sidle up to her, press himself close, feel all that giving terrain against the hard angles of his own shape.

Weird. He knew it was weird for him even as he thought it, but there it was. As she laughed, he surprised himself by wanting to laugh, too. When she lifted her chin to point out a shooting star, he looked instead at the underside of her jaw and wanted to press his mouth there.

Cool it. Obviously it had been just a bit too long since
he'd indulged himself in some good old recreational sex. He hadn't felt right about it with Crystal in the house. Not surprising he was getting a little hungry. Pushing himself away from the railing, he thought about going inside before he got any more bright ideas.