Flirting with Disaster (17 page)

“Maybe for just a minute,” she said, hauling a beer out of the barrel. When she turned back, Dave was smiling, a broad, brilliant smile that made her heart lurch.

Suddenly she didn’t feel the least bit tired after all.

A couple of hours and a couple of beers later, Dave wondered why in the world he’d wanted to sleep in the first place. The music was loud. The beer was good. The game was better. And when the refs made a bad call Dave got to learn a whole bunch of Spanish expletives he’d never heard before. Outside of his family, he’d had very little social life lately, and he was surprised at how good it felt just to relax with a bunch of people who were hell-bent on nothing more than having a good time.

And sitting next to Lisa wasn’t half-bad, either.

Ever since he’d seen her come out of that bathroom earlier wearing his shirt, he hadn’t been able to think about much else. Now they were sitting on a sofa populated by a couple more people than it was really designed for, which had shoved him and Lisa right up next to each other. Knee to knee. Thigh to thigh. Hip to hip.

She’d pulled her dirty jeans back on, which was all she had, but that didn’t matter to him in the least. Not one woman since Carla’s death, no matter how sexy she dressed, how beautiful she smelled, how clear she’d been about her intentions to move to the bedroom, had affected him the way Lisa did right now. All he could think about was touching her anywhere he could get away with in polite company, then leading her back upstairs to move his hands into places polite company would never allow.

The final two minutes of the game ticked off, and with every second that passed Dave grew more restless. Pretty soon they were going back up to that room. Did he really want to draw a line down the center of that bed?

In the last seconds of the game, the local Cowboys fans let loose with a barrage of cheers that the Cowboys themselves probably heard all the way back in Dallas.

Manuel, who’d been sitting in a chair beside the sofa, leaned over and spoke to Dave and Lisa: “A victory. Time to celebrate!”

Before Dave could do a lot of pondering on what that might mean, everyone was getting up and he found himself being dragged into the middle of a group of men moving into the other room to the table full of alcohol bottles. Lisa was likewise being herded along with the women to a spot about ten feet away beside a table. On it sat a bowl of lime slices and a saltshaker. This family was so nuts that squirrels had to be circling the house, so God only knew what was coming next.

“What’s going on?” he asked Manuel.

“Tequila shots,” Manuel said with a big grin. “Lozano style.”

To Dave’s utter amazement, a woman grabbed a lime out of the bowl, then gyrated forward in time to the music. She tilted her head to the left, simultaneously squeezing a slice of lime over the side of her neck. Another woman picked up the saltshaker and sprinkled it over the spot where the lime juice was. Then all the women turned in unison and zeroed in on a man standing next to Dave. The wedding ring he wore said he was probably the first woman’s husband, or at least Dave hoped he was. The man’s grin grew bigger with every second that passed.

Manuel grabbed a shot glass from the table, filled it with tequila, and handed it to the man. With a big, provocative smile, he started walking toward the woman. She smiled back at him, making little “come on over here” signs of invitation with her fingertips. When he reached her, he dipped his head and licked the salt and lime off her neck. Then he put the shot glass to his lips, downed the tequila, dropped the glass to the floor, and kissed his wife long and hard amid an explosion of rowdy whistles and cheers.

Dave just stood there, gaping at the spectacle.
Animal
House,
Mexican style.

He glanced at Lisa, and she was wearing one of those “what in the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” looks. His sentiments exactly.

Another woman limed and salted herself, and the group enticed her partner to step forward. He licked, drank, and kissed. The crowd went wild.

Then, as that couple stepped aside, a woman moved up behind Lisa and squeezed a lime slice over her neck. Lisa spun around, brushing her hand against her neck, shaking her head wildly. The women laughed. A second or two passed during which Dave actually wondered what these people had in mind.

Then Manuel held out a shot of tequila in front of Dave.

He glanced back at Lisa. The moment their eyes met, she stopped all the neck brushing and stood frozen in place. The women around her giggled. One grabbed another lime slice and dribbled it over the curve between Lisa’s neck and shoulder to replace what she’d swept away, the open collar of his shirt leaving plenty of bare skin for the lime juice to slither over. The woman followed with a sprinkle of salt.

Through it all, Lisa didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. All she did was stand there, motionless, speechless, watching Dave watching her, as if she couldn’t believe that he would even consider doing anything as outrageous as this.

He couldn’t believe it, either.

Just being around Lisa set him on fire, which meant that right about now he ought to be running for a fire extinguisher. Instead, all he wanted to do was crank up the heat.

He took the shot glass and started toward her.

He moved slowly, deliberately, his gaze never leaving hers, her green eyes widening more with every step he took. The noise level around him shot completely off the scale with the crowd egging him on, tossing out provocative comments, as if this were the best entertainment they’d had in ages.

Finally he stopped in front of her, standing so close that he could see the rise and fall of her chest with every breath she took. Glancing down, he saw a drop of lime juice slither down her neck onto her collarbone, dragging a few granules of salt along with it.

As he leaned in, her eyes drifted closed. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and when he caught that single droplet of lime juice with the tip of his tongue every muscle in her body seemed to contract. He moved upward to the hollow between her neck and shoulder, found the salty spot, closed his mouth over it with a soft, sucking motion of his lips and tongue. Beneath the rough texture of the salt, her skin felt satin smooth.

With one last sweep of his tongue, he rose again, put the shot glass to his lips, and downed its contents in a single swallow. He dropped the glass, tucked his hand around the back of Lisa’s neck, tilted her face up, and kissed her.

The moment he dropped his lips against hers, he sensed her surprise, but only a second elapsed before she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. The tequila tasted like fire, but her mouth seemed hotter still.

Hot tequila. Hot kiss. Hot woman.
Damn,
this was good.

He slid his arm around her back and pulled her right up next to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, as he continued to kiss her with an enthusiasm that made the crowd go wild. He had the fleeting thought that if his family could have seen him, they would have known for sure that he’d slipped right off the deep end. Dave, the ultimate conformist. Nice, normal, dependable Dave, who wouldn’t even think of pulling a stunt best left to drunk frat boys.

Maybe that was why it felt so good to do it.

When he finally pulled away and looked down at Lisa, her eyes were dazed and heavy-lidded, seemingly unable to tear themselves away from his. After another round of applause, the family’s attention turned to the next woman, who doused herself with lime juice and salt and moved forward. Lisa snapped out of her daze and moved aside. Dave moved right along with her, and the action shifted away from them onto the next couple. Then Lisa looked back at him.

It had been a long time since he’d felt a woman’s touch and an even longer time since the heat of a woman’s body had warmed his own, and he knew for a fact that he’d never had a woman look up at him with the desire he saw in Lisa’s eyes right now.

He slid his hand along her neck, leaned over, and put his lips next to her ear. “Let’s go back to our room.”

She turned her head, her cheek grazing his, and he felt her breath against the side of his neck. “I can take the stairs two at a time. Can you?”

Dave nearly jumped out of his skin. Hell, yes, he could, with her slung over his shoulder if he had to.

But just as they had turned to leave, the music suddenly stopped. Dave turned back, surprised to see all the motion in the room come to a halt. The sudden silence, after the raucous music all evening, was almost painful. Glancing around, he saw the old woman rise from her rocking chair. She turned and gave a roundhouse stare to all the people present. As if she’d spoken a command out loud, everyone set their glasses down and scurried toward the parlor, many of them dragging chairs along with them.

“What’s going on?” Dave asked Manuel.

“It is ten o’clock.”

“That’s significant?”

“Twelve years ago, my father died at ten o’clock on El Dia de los Muertos. My mother believes that is a sign. She believes he gathers our dead relatives at that hour and returns with them to visit. We must prepare to greet them.”

Oh, no. No way. Dave had no intention of greeting anyone, dead or alive, because he’d just made an appointment with Lisa he was going to keep. “Maybe we’ll just go back up to our room—”

“No! You must stay! This is what everyone is waiting for!”

Dave shot a glance at Lisa. Her cheeks were still flushed, and she was looking at him in a way that said the minute they stepped back into their room clothes were coming off at the speed of light.

“It’s a family thing,” Dave said. “And close friends. We don’t want to interrupt.”

“No interruption,” Manuel said. “Come. I will tell you about it.”

To Dave’s dismay, Manuel swept them both into the parlor and right up to the altar, where the perfumey smell of the flowers and the candles about knocked Dave over backward. Manuel pointed to one of the photographs.

“My great-uncle Sergio. He died in the Spanish-American War.” He pointed to a grainy photo of a young woman. “My great-grandmother Antonia. She died of rheumatic fever at age twenty-nine. And this is my father, Benecio. He was killed in a train accident near Cuernavaca.”

Manuel continued through his family tree, which had more branches than a hundred-year-old oak. Unfortunately, their host’s generosity pretty much obligated them to stand there and listen until their host chose to shut up.

“One candle is lit for every relative who has died,” Manuel went on. “If a candle is not lit for a person, his soul must light a finger to guide him back.”

Sounds painful. By all means, keep those candles lit. Can
we go now?

Lisa was standing beside Dave, and all at once he felt her palm against his shoulder. She slid it slowly downward until it rested at the small of his back, and something inside him liquefied at her touch. All this talk about dead people was going in one ear and out the other. He couldn’t smell the flowers or candles anymore. He could scarcely hear Manuel’s voice. He was having a tough time even making his eyes comprehend the photographs the man was so lovingly pointing out. All he knew was that Lisa was touching him, and he was overcome with the compulsion to touch her back.

“I told you about our family,” Manuel said, after what seemed like an hour. “Now tell me about yours. Is there someone you wish to remember?”

“What?” Dave said.

“A relative who has died.”

Dave froze, staring at Manuel. In contrast to the tumultuous noise level of only a moment ago, the room was eerily quiet. He glanced back at the altar, and for the first time he actually looked at the photographs there, at each one individually. There were dozens of them, old and new—men, women, a few children. These people had been here once. Now they were gone.

The dead.

A blurry, out-of-focus image of Carla swept through Dave’s mind. Suddenly he became aware that not a single Lozano was speaking and that everyone’s attention was focused squarely on him.

He shook his head. “No. No one.”

“Do you have a photograph? You may put it with these on the altar—”

“No,” he said sharply. “I don’t have any photographs.”

That was a lie. He still carried Carla’s photo in his wallet. But since the moment he’d heard the news of her death he hadn’t looked at it. Not once. And he wasn’t about to start now.

Manuel looked confused for a moment. Then a knowing expression came over his face. “You have lost someone not long ago.”

Statement, not question. Christ, he didn’t need this. Not now. He didn’t need Manuel’s intuition kicking in, he didn’t need his far-flung theories about the afterlife, and he sure didn’t need that look on Lisa’s face that said she was listening as raptly as everyone else. The silence. Damn it, he wished every Lozano on the premises would go back to blowing the roof off.

“No,” he told Manuel. “I haven’t.”

“It is difficult to hide, señor. Your eyes tell everything.”

Manuel continued to stare at him, waiting. Then Lisa touched his arm.

“Carla?”

Dave turned, astonished that she’d spoken Carla’s name. For a moment, all he could do was stand there, staring with disbelief.

“Who is Carla?” Manuel asked.