Exposing Alix (17 page)

Alix appreciated the distraction and found she enjoyed
Maria’s company immensely. The younger woman had a sharp, biting sense of humor
that she turned on her family and herself with equal measure. Once the men went
into the backyard, the children came into the house, and Maria disappeared
every few minutes to find some new way to entertain Felicity and keep her out
of trouble. It wasn’t hard to see she doted on her rambunctious toddler.

Maria waited until Rosalia had left the room again before
she spoke. She gestured toward the window. “That. It’s always been like that.
Ever since I can remember.”

Alix studied them again—the way Ryker held his head
and looked directly between the other men, the angle of their bodies away from
him, the cold set to his lips. “He’s not that way with you,” she said.

Ryker was the only one in the family Maria seemed
unwilling, or unable, to satirize. Alix appreciated the way she directed the
conversation away from him every time Rosalia tried to subtly—or not so
subtly—probe about the nature of his relationship with Alix.

Maria took a sip of her wine, the deep red of the cabernet
matching the color of her lips. “We’ve always had a special bond.” She gave a
wry smile. “Or maybe he was so busy fighting with everyone else he didn’t have
the energy left to fight with me.”

“Why?” Alix felt guilty asking, but she was hungry to find
out more, to understand what Ryker had been through. “Why all the fighting?”

Maria shrugged. “You’d have to ask him that. I suppose it
was hard, figuring out his place in the family. We were so much younger than he
was, and so different. He didn’t want to follow Papa’s rules, and I don’t think
he ever forgave Mama for getting married. Rosalia was too much like Mama, and
the boys were young and desperate for attention. They drove him crazy. I was
just me, too busy screwing up my own life to cause him any trouble.”

Alix picked up a bright red-and-yellow-striped cloth
napkin from a stack and began to fold it. “You have a beautiful daughter, and
you’re managing to raise her on your own while attending nursing school. That
doesn’t sound like screwing up to me.”

“I got pregnant when I was nineteen, with a boy I haven’t seen
since. Ryker was the only one who didn’t give me hell about it. He just told me
if I ever needed anything, I should come to him. And when I had nowhere else to
go, he was there.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Alix folded another
napkin. She was struck by an unexpected wave of emotion. Memories of her
arrival at the hospital after she’d lost her own baby assaulted her. She
remembered the anguish, the fear, and then the incredible relief when Gunther
had said he was on his way. “I…” She had to stop and clear her throat. “I guess
that must have been pretty important. To have someone say that, I mean.”

Maria gave her an assessing look. “It was. It’s hard to
explain how frightening it is when you see that double line on the pregnancy
test.”

Alix nodded involuntarily, and then turned her eyes back
to the napkins. They took turns folding and adding their napkins to the stack.

“So, I guess you must have needed a change?” Maria nodded
sideways at Alix’s outfit.

Alix’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “I suppose I should
have thanked you for the clothes.”

Maria laughed. “No problem. I have to admit, I was a bit
surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of his other, er”—she
stumbled over the words—“friends, wearing my skirts. You must be very
close.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Alix darted a look at
Rosalia, who had begun lighting candles on the table in the next room, and
lowered her voice. She wasn’t sure what Ryker wanted the others to think about
her or why he’d brought her, but she had the sense he wouldn’t want to lie to
Maria. “We’re just friends. He was desperate for company tonight, and I
happened to be the first human being he could find to drag with him. No
offense, but I wouldn’t read more into it than that.”

“Hmm.” Maria eyed her shrewdly. “You’ll forgive me if I
don’t entirely agree. I know my brother a little. There’s more between you than
just friends.”

Alix drew back. “What makes you say that?”

“Am I wrong?”

Alix slid her hand across the crisp broadcloth, smoothing
out a wrinkle as she did. “We’re about as different as two people can be,” she
said, staring at the woven threads under her fingers.

“But you’re interested. How could you not be?”

“He’s out of my league. I’m sure that’s painfully obvious
to everyone here.”

Maria chuckled. “Don’t let appearances fool you. It’s a
funny business, being a movie star. He’s had to change a lot, just to keep
sane. But I suspect you’re more alike than you think, deep down.”

Alix pictured Ryker describing how he felt about romantic
love and gave Maria a tight smile. She wasn’t sure why acknowledging the truth
suddenly seemed so sad. At least, it didn’t seem worth arguing about with
Maria. “If you say so.”

“He likes you,” Maria observed. “He looks at you
differently than he does other girls. Believe me, I’ve seen him with a lot of
women, and he doesn’t think much of them. He respects you. I can tell.”

Alix decided not to mention the fact that Maria had little
experience on which to base that conclusion; after all, she’d only seen Alix
and Ryker together for a few minutes that evening. “We’re in a similar
business,” she offered. “Maybe that’s it.”

“Maybe.” Maria looked unconvinced.

“I’m helping out on his movie,” Alix elaborated. She’d
been deliberately keeping quiet about her role on
Salva’s Revenge
because she didn’t want to lie any more than necessary. “We respect each other,
even though we don’t agree on much of anything.”

She paused, struck by what she’d said. Amazingly enough,
she had the funny feeling it was true. Ryker might think she was crazy and
lived in a fairy-tale world, but he respected her work. They couldn’t have
worked together so seamlessly if he hadn’t.

“But…?” Maria interrupted her thoughts.

Alix grabbed the stack of napkins and pushed her stool
back from the bar. “But nothing. Respect is more than I could have expected, to
be honest. I’m not planning to ask for more.”

“Hmm.” Maria turned her head deliberately toward the
window, where Ryker tipped his beer toward his lips and then lowered it again
without drinking. His gaze traveled from the men by the grill to the glass
patio door and the people inside, lingering on Alix. When he noticed them
looking at him, he raised his beer in a mock salute. Alix’s face suffused with
heat.

Maria chuckled. “Listen, I’m not going to tell you it will
be easy. Ryker’s the stubbornest man you’ll ever meet, and then some. But the
toughest shells grow around the softest fruit, right? Give him a chance. Maybe
he’ll surprise you.”

Alix tried to keep her hands
steady in her lap as she slid into the leather seat beside Ryker and clicked
her seat belt into place. The sun was setting in a glorious display of
gold-tipped clouds, but Ryker didn’t spare it a glance. He roared out of the
driveway and down the street without looking back.

Should she try to make conversation?

Alix peered at the white line around Ryker’s mouth and
decided to remain silent. He blasted through a red light and onto the freeway
in a squeal of tires.

Dinner had been long and painful. Rosalia questioned Ryker
about his relationship with Alix, his movies, and how long it had been since
he’d been to church. He repaid her questions with cynical looks and bare, three-word
sentences. Emilio sent disapproving looks at Ryker and quizzed Maria about her
classes. Hector and Eduardo seemed oblivious to the family tensions. They
chattered away about their girlfriends and Ryker’s past dates. That earned them
a cold look from Rosalia. Alix tried to smooth over the rough spots where she
could, offering stories from her years photographing weddings and hoping they
wouldn’t ask too many questions about what she was working on now. Luckily,
they seemed to assume her only connection to Ryker and his movies was Gunther.

Two hours later, Maria changed a cranky Felicity into a
pink pajama set while the older children passed out in front of the television.
Rosalia gave up her attempts to make conversation, and the room fell into
silence. Alix and Ryker helped Rosalia clear the table, and then Ryker made his
good-byes. There was a lot of hugging, though much of it looked forced, and
Emilio only glowered from the other side of the room.

Now, she could almost see the tension boiling inside of
Ryker, from the white knuckles on the gearshift to the muscle twitching in his
cheek.

Alix endured fifteen minutes of silence, determined to
force Ryker to be the first to speak.

“Sorry about that,” he finally muttered. The little
Mercedes wove in and out of the cars packing the busy road.

She held on to her door handle and swallowed hard. “Sorry
about dinner, or sorry for nearly killing me on the freeway?”

Ryker looked down at the speedometer. “Oh.” The insane
pace slowed a hair. “Sorry about dinner.”

“It was fun,” she said lightly. “Kind of like
Leave it
to Beaver
.”

“Only everyone hates each other.”

“Yeah, something like that.” He slowed another hair. Alix
decided keeping him talking could actually be an effective safety precaution. “Is
it usually that bad?”

Ryker drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Actually, that was particularly unpleasant. Sometimes, Emilio and I don’t talk
to each other at all. That seems to work better.”

“I hope I didn’t make things worse.”

He shot her a quick look and frowned. “No, no, absolutely
not. I shouldn’t have dragged you along, but I wasn’t up to doing it by myself
tonight.” He paused. “To be honest, I don’t know what I’d have done without
you.”

Alix slouched down in her seat and tried not to let a
silly smile break across her face. “No problem. It isn’t as though I had so
many other offers.”

He chuckled, and his fingers relaxed. “Still. They can be
a bit overwhelming.”

Alix nodded. “Rosalia is rather…er…efficient, isn’t she?”

Ryker snorted. “That’s putting it mildly. After Mama
passed away, Rosalia appointed herself the caretaker of the family. Luckily, I
had already moved out. Rosa has been mothering Maria to death ever since. I
don’t know how Maria swallows her tongue when Rosalia gets going. You would
think Maria’s two, the way Rosa treats her.”

“It’s better than nothing, though.”

“You sure about that?”

Alix shot him a wry smile. “No. I have no idea, really.”

He paused. “So you don’t have any family?”

“Nope. I had a grandmother, but she died when I was two.
And there was a distant cousin. She took me in for a few years, but in the end
she wasn’t really interested in raising a child.”

“That’s when they put you in a foster home?”

“Yep. First of ten, to be exact.”

“Wow.” Ryker leaned back against his seat. “Ten homes.
That’s amazing.”

“Ten is nothing. I knew kids who went through that many in
a year. But I was with relatives until I was five and pretty lucky after that.”

“I bet you were a cute little bugger. Hard to believe no
one would make it permanent.”

“I’m not sure how cute I was. When I was seven, they
placed me with a couple of pretty tough families. I started to lock myself in
my room a lot. I wasn’t exactly cuddly, if that’s what you’re imagining.”

“Tough as in…?”

“They didn’t touch me,” she said. “They just didn’t care.
At Mama Clark’s house, there were six of us foster kids. She never really got
to know any of us. At the Noskowitzes’, there was a lot of fighting. Fighting
between the grownups, fighting between them and their real kids, between the
real kids and the fosters. I tried to stay quiet and not bother anyone. Things
went downhill from there. Older kids are notoriously hard to place. I never
expected anyone to keep me.”

Ryker whistled. “And I thought it was hard adjusting to
Emilio. I can’t imagine doing that more than once, and you did it ten times?”

She shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“A lot of my buddies in junior high bounced between their
parents and foster homes,” Ryker said. “Looked like a miserable way to live. I
don’t think any of them managed to finish high school. I can’t believe you
managed to get to college, let alone finish an MFA.”

Alix muffled an embarrassed squeak and studied her hands.

“I guess in that I was lucky to have Emilio,” Ryker
continued. “Every time I tried to drop out, he kicked my butt back into school.
He even helped me get the scholarships to go to USC, though at the time it felt
like one more way to manipulate me and keep me from making a career in the
movies.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Gunther,” Alix said. She
remembered her conversation with Maria and looked at Ryker with new eyes. He
had done for Maria what Gunther had done for her. Now that she knew that, it
was impossible to see him the same way. How could he pretend to be so cold when
he was capable of so much love? “He helped me get my photography business going
and write my application for NYU. Things sort of fell into place after that. I
actually feel a little guilty now that I hardly ever see him. He’s always after
me to come visit LA, but I only get out here a couple of times a year.
Traveling is expensive, and I’m busy with the book.”

“Aren’t you lonely out there?”

She shrugged. “I’m used to being alone. To be honest, it’s
the only way I know how to live.” Emotions backed up into her chest, and she
turned from him to squint at the horizon, where the sun had begun to slip
behind the hills. “Are we headed back to the studio? I hate to bring it up, but
we only have a few weeks left before I leave, and there’s still a lot to get
done.”