Beautiful Stranger (6 page)

“Oh, it's beautiful! I was right.” Marissa stood up to admire her properly. The soft fabric draped lightly around the swell of belly, and swirled around her calves. “That color is perfect for you. It makes your skin look so warm.”

“I like it.” She twirled around. “Feels good—like
Ginger Rogers or something.” She looked at Robert. “You like it, Uncle?”

He whistled, low and long. “Very pretty. Guess you womenfolk know stuff we guys don't.”

“Duh.” Crystal sobered as she looked at Marissa. “Thank you, Ms. Pierce. It was really nice of you.”

“Don't mention it.”

Robert chuckled. “Yeah, Crystal, she got the pleasure of seeing me with my beautiful hair down.”

A ripple of recognition moved on Crystal's face. Uhoh, Marissa thought.

“All the women like his hair,” Crystal said. “They all like him. But he doesn't like any of them back.”

“And we all cry in our beer every night over it, too, I can tell you,” Marissa said lightly. “I understand that every Thursday night, there's a special pagan dance in the woods where the single women throw herbs on a fire and sing special chants to capture his heart.” She tsked, spreading her hands. “So far, he's proven immune to everyone but you.”

Crystal knew she was being appeased, but she gave Marissa a rueful grin anyway. Rolling her eyes, she said, “Thanks again, all right? I'm gonna take a shower now. I have a date with Mr. Perfect, you know.”

Marissa laughed. “All right. See you Monday.”

“You're good,” Robert said when the door closed. “Didn't miss a beat.”

She turned. “I've been teaching for a while. You learn.”

“Maybe.” He shook his head. “Not everybody does.”

“Well, thanks.” She picked up the glass and drank down most of it at a gulp, only realizing when she stopped drinking that it was absolutely fabulous. “Oh,
my gosh!” She held the glass up to the light. “That's fantastic! I'll have to get her recipe.”

“The secret is simple syrup instead of sugar.” He shifted, foot to foot, as if he were impatient, and she started to move away, when he said, “You know, that's a very nice dress.”

Marissa instantly found her hand fluttering up to cover the flesh the scoop neck revealed, remembering for the first time that she wasn't draped in four yards of cloth, but a simple, straight, sleeveless sundress. Lazily and plainly, he let his gaze slide down her body, touching shoulders, breasts, legs.

And Marissa found herself standing straighter, thinking of the collarbone that showed beneath her flesh, of the dip of her waist. She grinned. “Thank you.” She put down her glass. “And thank you for the limeade. I'll get out of your way.”

He walked with her, out on the porch, but somehow, when they landed on the porch, he was standing in front of her. She looked up at him, ready to say something polite, but their eyes sort of slammed together or something, and she forgot what she wanted to say.

He was close. Close enough that she could see a trail of tiny, teardrop scars below his left eye, close enough she saw there was variation in the color of his eyes after all. What looked like unbroken black from a distance was really a very subtle gradation of cocoas. A few sun lines had settled into the corners of his eyes, and he appeared to have no beard at all, or else he'd shaved very, very closely.

The teasing humor of a few moments ago was gone, and he regarded her gravely, his lower lip tucked under his upper. In the warm day, she suddenly felt that magnetic field crackling vividly between them again. Wind
caught a long lock of his hair and it blew across his face, and she wanted to raise a hand to brush it away. He still didn't break that stillness, only looked down at her with fierce intent, as if he wanted to use X-ray vision to see into her head.

Finally she said, “What?”

His eyes slipped, touched her mouth. Her heart skittered, and for a long, long moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She had enough time to imagine what it might be like—how his wide mouth might taste, what his tongue would feel like, sliding against her lips—before he stepped sideways, almost as if he were avoiding a collision. “Thanks again,” he said roughly, and went around her and went inside.

 

When she got home, Marissa called her sister. Victoria picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Gorram,” she said in their private language. “I was dreaming about you.”

“What was I doing?”

“I'm not sure,” she said, and Marissa heard her rustling pillows. “Something to do with electricity.” She yawned. “Blue. It was blue.”

She wasn't surprised. Their connection seemed heightened in sleep—as children, they'd often dreamed each other's dreams. Now they seemed to dream each other's thoughts, at least now and then. “It's electromagnetic attraction. That man again.”

“Really?” The word was guarded.

“It's nothing. It's not like we're dating or anything. He's just very sexy.”

“Available?”

“Mmm. Not really.” She knew she was soft-pedaling it and her sister knew it, too. Because of their intense
connection, they'd made a pact in their teens to keep love lives totally private, an area where they didn't have to feel shadowed. It was hard, at times, but it was also necessary.

“Too bad.”

“It is, kind of.”

Victoria yawned. “Morrag,” she said, their word for good night, as Gorram was good morning. Most of the language they'd made up as toddlers was gone, but a few code words remained.

“Morrag,” she said and hung up, feeling better. Robert had unnerved her today. Or she'd unnerved herself. Restlessly she opened the fridge, scanned the contents with a frown and realized what she was doing.

Closing the door, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. In an article on weight loss, she'd read that people, especially women, had programmed themselves to ignore their true impulses in order to please society, and often mistook a myriad number of emotions and impulses for hunger. The recommendation had been to stop and feel, take a minute to pay attention to the body and the emotions.

What was she really feeling? Physically, there was a restlessness crawling in her legs and up her spine. She wanted to run or scream or jump up and down. Her emotions buzzed and flitted, scurrying around each other like worried birds. Even her thoughts—usually the clearest thing—were whirling.

She inhaled slowly. What did she really want? An image of Robert, peering down at her as if he might kiss her, flitted over her vision. Then his hands, scarred and beautiful, and his teeth, white and straight, flashing against his lips.

Marissa chuckled. Well, that was pretty clear. Sex. She wanted to have sex with Robert.

Duh, as Crystal would say.

That was step one—figuring out the want. Step two was figuring out the reality. She couldn't really allow herself to indulge that wish. For one thing, he was obviously ambivalent.

No, that was his feelings, not hers. Why couldn't
she
indulge?

Reason number one: Crystal, who might be wounded and feel used. Good one, but it didn't feel authentic. It sounded like the Wizard's voice in Oz, booming out the obvious answer.

Sex with Robert. She let the visuals fill her—that hair touching her, his mouth and hers. Oh, yeah. She had a sudden vision of licking his throat and realized the urge was quite a bit stronger than she'd realized.

And then she tried to imagine herself getting to the naked part. Him, lean and strong and sculpted. Her—oh, yuck—white as a fish and soft and squishy. An exaggerated picture of her flesh spilling sideways from her bones appeared with evil intensity, and Marissa gritted her teeth.

Oh, no. Not even her imagination was allowed to steal her accomplishment. Her eyes snapped open and she marched into her bedroom, kicking off her shoes, then reached for the zipper on her dress. She pulled it over her head and tossed it aside, unhooked her bra and skimmed off her panties and threw them all on the bed. Tossing her head, squaring her shoulders, she marched to the long mirror she'd purchased when she'd hit the sixty-pound-loss mark, a celebration.

It was an antique, an oval floor mirror framed in
cherry. She stepped into the reflection, naked, and dared her imagination to make a mockery of her.

But there were other eyes looking with her, eyes of all those kids who chanted nasty names, all the men who'd tried not to look at her body even if they liked her, all the selves she'd been when she gazed in sorrow at the blob of herself over the years.

You were always beautiful.

The words came to her in Robert's voice, the very words he'd said that day in her classroom, and they gave her courage to see what was really in the mirror—not what
could
be or
should
be or
had
been. Just what was there now.

A collarbone, first of all, graceful and almost fragile looking. Arms that had toned up pretty well the past three months. Although they'd never be model slim, they were quite acceptable even in a sleeveless dress.

Breasts—A+. It had been a great concern that her breasts would be flabby, lifeless, when she lost so much, but they weren't. She hadn't actually lost there as much as the rest of her, which she understood was unusual. But at her heaviest, her breasts looked small; now in comparison to the rest of her, they were quite pretty. Happily she moved on.

Waist, better but not tiny. B. Belly…well, only a C. Maybe even a C–. It wasn't anywhere close to flat, and in fact, that was a target area for the next few months, now that her arms were looking so much better.

Hips, good enough. Thighs—well, kind of sturdy, but not bad.

She stepped back, narrowing her eyes, and turned from side to side, seeing herself, liking most of it, not blurring her eyes over what she didn't like.

A body she'd finally learned to treasure, to take care
of, to honor. If Robert ever saw it—if they ever got that far—she didn't have to be ashamed.

Was that what she wanted?

Yes. But see reason number one: she could not hurt Crystal just because she had the hots for the girl's uncle.

For that reason, she would sublimate her desire for him. She liked him a lot, liked his sense of humor, his wickedness. She often liked men with those qualities— Lance Forrest, for example, was one of her best friends. Robert could be her friend, too.

Healthy sublimation. Hmm. She had to attend a fund-raiser in Denver tonight. Maybe she'd go into town early and go shopping first. Or even better, see if her buddy Mark was free to fly her in and hang around to fly her back. He usually enjoyed it, and she paid well for the pleasure of it. Flying was one of her great joys, and there was nothing quite like a bright blue Colorado day at two thousand feet.

Happily she got dressed and went to make a call.

R
obert and Crystal had lunch at a little Mexican spot he loved—one thing about living in “Tourist Central” was the wide variety of restaurants—then headed for the animal shelter. Crystal started out cheerful and happy, but she seemed to tire as the day ran on. Outside the shelter, he peered at her in concern. “You feeling all right, babe?”

“I'm fine,” she said with annoyance, but she looked very pale to him. “Let's go find our cats.”

Inside the pound, she perked up. The felines were housed in a room with humanely sized cages—tax money here extended even to the animal shelter—and there were not a great many of them. A skinny female who'd not long ago given birth, with a lone black kitten worrying her tail, a cage full of various sizes of kittens, and a battered-looking tom who gazed at them sorrowfully. Robert stuck his fingers through the bars with the mom and baby, and the rowdy black kitten rushed over,
stood up on his back legs and gave Robert's index finger a sharp, one-two punch. Crystal, petting the mother, giggled. “He's cute.”

On the other side of her, the tom stuck a paw through the bars, snagging her sleeve, and meowed with a low, plaintive sound. “Oh, he's so sad,” she said. “What's wrong, guy? Somebody go off and leave you?”

He gave her the same sad sound, turning to put his body against the bar. His gray-striped fur was grease-stained, and one ear was nearly folded over with war wounds. Crystal bent her head close to the cage and murmured to him softly, words Robert couldn't hear.

Then she talked to the others. Touched every single one, talked to them, petted their heads or played with them through the bars. “I used to go to the pound to pet the cats when I could in Albuquerque,” she told him. “Me and…this friend of mine. We rode the bus down there, all the way, and just hung around, petting the cats. It made them happy to get the attention, and after a while, they put us to work sometimes when we showed up.”

“That's great. You could probably volunteer over here if you wanted.”

She nodded without enthusiasm.

“Who was your friend?”

“Just this guy.”

He let it go. Another tiny clue.

He wasn't surprised when she chose the battered tom as her own. He was slightly more amazed to find he personally could not leave that starved-looking mama cat and her rowdy baby. Being there had made him remember why he hated looking at the animals at the pound. He always wanted to take them all home, tend them and keep them safe. It was like the idea of war—you thought
you could do it, maybe, to protect and keep the innocents safe.

Never really turned out that way. But maybe—the thought surprised him a little, sneaking in sideways—a man could make a difference one little life at a time.

When they got home, carting in dishes and kitty litter and cat food and cats, Crystal was so alarmingly pale that Robert made her go to bed, with orders to yell for him if she needed him. He called Ramona to report Crystal's symptoms, and she was concerned but not worried. “Keep an eye on her,” she said. “If she's not better tonight, I might want to take a look at her. But this is the first warm day we've had, and maybe she just over-did it a little.”

Relieved, he settled the cats and found himself completely besotted with the small black monster, who roared through the house, exploring every nook and cranny as if they were his for the conquering. Exuberance, Robert thought, amused by its attitude. Great quality.

Lying on the living room floor, the nearly weightless body of the mama cat on his belly, he fell asleep, thinking he liked having so much life around him.

 

Crystal did not feel good at all. She didn't want her uncle frowning over her like he did, all worried and stuff, so she curled up on her bed with her new cat, who stretched out the length of her, purring and purring. He made her think of Mario, which she tried to never, ever do, and she knew that it was thinking of him that had made her feel so bad.

She tried to sleep, but something at lunch must have been bad, because she had to keep getting up to run to the bathroom. Which was why they called them the runs,
she guessed. Gross, Crystal, she told her face in the mirror as she washed her hands for the third time. A face, she had to admit, that didn't look all that good, and when she was overcome with a wave of dizzy nausea, forcing her to rest on the sink for a minute, she decided maybe she needed to tell Robert she wasn't feeling good.

She didn't want to. Her mother used to get kind of mad when Crystal was sick. Not mean mad, but annoyed, and it made Crystal feel bad. Robert wouldn't do that, but when she made her way shakily into the living room and saw him asleep on the floor with that ugly, skinny cat on his tummy, she hesitated.

But her body decided to send its own message. Before she could stop herself, Crystal threw up, like a little kid, right on the clean floor. She burst into tears.

 

Ramona met them at the clinic. Robert's hands were shaking with terror, and Ramona gently pushed him into a chair. “I'm sure it's nothing serious. Relax, huh?”

But he knew he should have paid better attention to Crystal earlier in the day. Should have seen that she was really sick. He knew she hated to be vulnerable, to ask for anything, and it was his job as the parent figure in her life to be alert and aware of such things.

Ramona checked her over with calm, swift, efficiency, asking Crystal questions that stabbed right at his worse fears: had she had any lower back pain, loose bowels, cramping? Had she done anything extraordinary today?

When Crystal denied doing anything unusual, Robert spoke up. “She moved around some furniture when I was gone.”

Ramona smiled. “That would do it. Crystal, you're in labor, honey, but we've got drugs to stop it.” The nurse
brought a syringe and Ramona nodded. “I'm going to have to keep you overnight, keep an eye on you and then you can go home, but you have to stay in bed for a couple more days.”

“Labor?” Crystal's eyes filled with tears. “Am I going to lose the baby?”

“No.” Ramona took her hand. “This is not uncommon, and the drugs will halt the labor. But you have to stay completely off your feet for the next three days, do you understand?”

A woman came to the door. “Dr. Hardy? Phone. Urgent.”

Ramona excused herself. “I'll be right back.”

Crystal looked at Robert, shame on her cheekbones. It gave him a hard, thick lump in his throat, but he managed to wink. “We'll manage, babe. Trust me. I've had to take care of smelly soldiers on a battlefield. I think I can handle one tiny girl.”

She closed her eyes, and tears leaked out from under her lids. “I was so stupid!”

“No, no.” He jumped up and came around the bed, putting his hand on her hair. “It was just a little mistake, and everything's gonna be okay.” He put his hand against her cheek, willing her to trust him to take care of her. “I'm so sorry, Crystal. I should have figured it out sooner. I'm not the greatest parent, but I hope you won't give up on me yet. I'm learning fast, eh?”

That only made her cry more, but he understood. At that moment, he wanted to strangle his sister with his bare hands, strangle his own mother for the failures that had caused all this to happen. “Why don't you try to get some sleep? I'll stay with you.”

She opened her eyes. “You can't leave the cats alone all night.”

“They'll be all right.”

“No.” Her voice was strong. “I'm the one who's going to be all right. Buster can't stay alone tonight, he'll be too sad. You can stay for a while, but you have to take care of them. They're our responsibility now.”

He chuckled. “Okay. It's a deal.” He settled down next to her, holding her hand. They kicked him out at ten, anyway, only an hour after he'd brought her in. Robert knew she was in good hands, knew Ramona meant well by sending him home to get some sleep. He went home, cleaned up the mess that had so upset Crystal—a hot thread of anger at his sister twisted through him again—checked on the cats, who were all in a heap on Crystal's bed, and fine as he'd known they would be.

He stepped outside, patting his shirt pocket, remembered he didn't smoke and took a long, deep breath of cold mountain air instead. At certain times in his life, he would have gone directly to the nearest bar and drowned his roiling emotions in serious quantities of bourbon, after which he'd have found either a fight or a woman, depending on the level of his rage.

He'd given all of that up when Jake went over the side of a mountain. He couldn't say, even now, why it had shaken him so, when his own brushes with death had done nothing, but it had. Jake had been in the middle of an epiphany about his life, and the ground just gave way beneath him. He'd nearly died.

And that was life, wasn't it? Sometimes the ground just crumbled beneath you. Robert couldn't get rid of the rage that had been his shadow all his life, but he'd learned how to cope with it without falling into self-destruction. Sometimes he took a run, blowing off steam that way, but it was too late now, too dark in the moun
tains, and he didn't like the idea of meeting a lynx or a bear.

He stood on the steps in the cold, his hands stuck in his pockets, and finally admitted to himself that there was only one person he really wanted to talk to. He thought of her standing on his porch—only this morning?—flustered and pretty and earnest, and it made him smile. She'd risked making a fool of herself. He guessed he could do the same.

As he pulled the keys out of his pocket, he felt the rage ebb.

Interesting.

 

Marissa was slightly giddy by the time she got home. Giddy with the wild pleasure she felt in flying low over the mountains in a little plane, with the champagne served at the reception; giddy with the unheralded power she'd commanded in her new dress. Laughing a little to herself, she put some water on to boil for a cup of tea, stripped off her shoes and stockings and turned on the stereo, programming a Celtic Bagpipes CD. The music rolled out, rhythmic and sad and joyful all at once. Dancing a little as she moved through the house, she relived the evening just past.

She was dying to call Victoria and tell her what a splash she'd made tonight, but that would require confessing her weight loss, and the moment of surprise would be so great she couldn't bear to ruin it, so she contented herself with reliving it in her mind.

Luck had just been with her. She walked into a department store in downtown Denver, waltzed over to the women's department, and plucked it off the rack. Size 12. Oh, yes, she loved that part. It was even a teeny bit
too big in the shoulders, so she'd tried the ten but couldn't zip it.

Smoothing her hands down the skirt, swaying to the slightly exotic flutes and drums filling the air, she called up her most triumphant moments. Men
stared
at her. Flirted with her outrageously. Waiters rushed to fill her glass—which was how she'd ended up drinking more than her usual limit of champagne—and when she gave her little speech, every eye in the room had been on her and she hadn't thought of her body once.

The doorbell startled her. Very few of her friends ever just dropped by. Cautiously she looked through the peephole, then swung open the door. “Robert! Is everything okay?”

He blinked, slow as a cat, at her dress, then looked at her with a small frown. “It's really late. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“Is it your turn to play the oh, shucks game?”

He lifted his brows, a rueful smile turning up his mouth. “I guess it is. How about this instead? May I come in?”

“Please do.” She backed up, swung her arm to let him in, bowing a little like a game show girl. “I was making a cup of tea. Want some?”

“That would be great.” His gaze darted toward her body, flickered away, came back to the devastating neckline. “Some dress,” he said roughly. “Been to a party?”

“Thank you. It's brand-new and I spent a bloody fortune for it.” She grinned, closing and locking the door out of habit, and led him into the living room. “A princess must have princess clothes to do princessly things, you know.”

He smiled. “Are you a little tipsy, maybe?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “And enjoying it tremen
dously, so don't you dare wrinkle your nose. If you disapprove, you might as well just toodle on home.”

“Toodle?” This time it was a real grin, one that crinkled his eyes. “No way, babe. You in that dress, and tipsy to boot—I wouldn't miss this for the world.” He seemed to notice the music for the first time. “I like the music, too.”

“Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes a little. “You don't strike me as a bagpipes kind of guy.”

“I like music in general. I went to Scotland once, when I was overseas. There was this old guy with a red beard and a kilt playing the bagpipes on a very overcast, dark kind of day, and the sound just went right through me.” He paused, listening. “Really moody stuff.”

She inclined her head, delighted in spite of herself. She couldn't think of any guy she'd met in the past who wouldn't have given her that slightly pained glance over this CD. “Well, Mr. Martinez, you do delight and surprise.”

A genuine grin broke the sober angles of his face. With one hand tucked over his belly, he gave a short, formal little bow. “My honor, ma'am.”

The teakettle started whistling shrilly. Moving by him, she said, “Let's sit in the kitchen.”

He followed. “This house is great, Marissa. Arts and Craft, right?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Who did the restoration?”

“Tyler, of course. He's an expert on woodwork like this.” She pointed out the elaborately carved molding over the door. “There was a big section of this that had completely rotted out, and you can't even tell where he fit it together.”

He whistled appreciatively. “Excellent work.”