A Steal of a Deal (13 page)

There, in the packed-dirt front yard of the orphanage, are Max and about two-dozen kids. But it’s not the random assortment of humans that’s surprising. It’s what the humans are doing that knocks my socks off.

Xheng Xhi sidles up to me again. “Miss Andie?”

“Mm-hm.” My thumb throbs.

“American football good, right?”

Oh, buddy, you asked the wrong girl.
I give him a wishy-washy shrug and nod toward the good-looking guy in the cluster of kids. “Go ask Max. I’m sure he’ll teach you too.” That’s when weird gets even weirder. After the two men talk—with words and hands—for about five minutes, they part ways and divide the kids into two groups.

One of the groups, under the direction of our chatty Kashmiri guide, launches into a bizarre game of football. Yeah, you got it. Quarterback, passes, huddles, and tackles in yak country . . . sorta. Let’s put it this way. The NFL wouldn’t recognize this. Xheng Xhi’s version of the All-American game consists of a pass—by Xheng Xhi himself— followed by a free-for-all to see who knocks everyone else out of the way to come up with the pigskin. No touchdowns.

Go figure.

The other bunch is lined up behind Pied Piper Max as he tries to turn a lanky Kashmiri boy into—get this—the next Tiger Woods. Yep. Golf club, little wood thingy stuck in the dry dirt, and white, dimpled ball.

Glory comes outside and gets a load of Max and company. “Oh, good grief!” She turns and heads back the way she came.

Where’d all her interest in helping Max go?

I shiver in the cooling winds but can’t stop watching. Why?

I don’t know. I could leave; I could also go join them, but I don’t. I just watch . . . and enjoy. There’s something way charming and totally cool about the big, strong American playing with a bunch of Kashmiri kids.

Just don’t tell him I think that. I’m not ready to face the consequences.

When the football bonks one of the girls, I run over to help. “Is she okay?”

Max, now sitting cross-legged in the dust, the sobbing child in his arms, looks up. “I think so.”

I sit at his side, then smooth a lock of blue-black hair off her cheek. “It hit her head.”

He nods, checks her eyes. “I don’t think it had a whole lot of oomph behind it. The boy who threw it is even smaller than her.”

“Anything I can do?”

Max’s warm smile gives me goose bumps. “I think you’ve done it already.”

I glance down, notice the deep, dark eyes glued to my hair. The goose bumps fly south. “Great! The carrot-top strikes again.”

But when the child reaches out, I lower my head and let her run gentle fingers through my work-wild locks—last time they faced a brush was hours before my frustrating efforts in carpentry. She grins, scampers out of Max’s lap, and runs to her friends, chattering every step of the way.

“Get ready!” Max says, mischief on his face.

“Attack of the Curious Kashmiri?”

He laughs. “You betcha, Red. Here they come.”

What can I say? He organizes the small army, and one grubby paw after another checks out my hair. Ah . . . yes. The glamorous life of a TV personality.

But they have no consideration for my ego; I don’t prove all that interesting. As soon as they realize there’s nothing to the hair but the different color, they drag Mr. Magnificent back to play. And he proves himself . . . well, pretty magnificent.

He again divides the kids into two teams, and starts a new football game. The non-jock in me fights it kicking and screaming, but I follow the game. When the little girl who got hit by the ball catches a pass, I cheer for all I’m worth.

“That’s it!” Max yells. “Run! Yeah, yeah! That’s it!”

The kids answer with a chorus of “Yah, yahs.” And then she’s tackled.

A little boy now lobs the ball, the players scatter. One makes a catch, then runs to Max, who’s standing in what he’s termed the end zone. The little guy crashes into Max’s long legs, drops the ball, and wails in dismay, his eyes huge and dark and heartbroken. Max throws up his arms in the universal—well, even I know what it means—sign for success.

“Touchdown!”

His excitement infects the little guy, who picks up the ball again and starts a victory wriggle. After a couple more “touchdowns,” a bell inside the orphanage clangs out, and the kids hurry off. In the silence, I head over to Max, who’s dropped the football in favor of gently swinging his golf club inches away from the hard white ball.

As I walk, the stark reality of the world his little playmates live in hits me again, especially in contrast to the relative frivolity of sports. I shake my head and chuckle. “I still can’t believe you really insisted on carting that stuff all the way out here.”

“A guy’s entitled to a break after working all day.”

“Yeah, but football? Golf?
Here
?” I take another look at the barren landscape. “I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

He shrugs, wiggles like Tiger Woods, and fusses around with his shiny steel club. “Why not here? Kids need to play.”

“You’re right, of course. But there’s something so gut-wrenching about their lives. Golf . . . football”—I shake my head—“it’s almost obscene.”

The club connects with the ball with an earsplitting CRACK! There’s no sound pollution here at cloud level.

He glares when the ball seems to go astray. “What happened with the truce?”

“I didn’t break it.”

“What about calling me obscene?”

“I didn’t call you obscene, Max. Sorry if it sounded like that. I’m seeing the silliness of sports as obscene. I can’t help it, especially when I contrast them to the reality of these kids’ lives.”

He crosses his hands on the handle of his steel club, leans forward, and stares. “Just because I want to, have helped, and will help even more, do I also have to become a Kashmiri quake victim? I’m blessed with American citizenship and get to go back to Louisville. Besides, those kids had fun today for a change. That means something.”

I sigh. “You do have a point. It’s just that the contrast really hits hard. It makes everything I’ve known seem so trivial.” I shoot him a glance. “I’ve been struggling with that.”

He lets the club drop, and looks off in the direction of his lost ball. “I’d agree with you if I didn’t know you, Aunt Weeby, and Miss Mona better. True, American lives are cushy compared to life in other parts of the world, but it’s not our fault where we’re born. God plants us there for a reason.”

I pick up the club—hey! The thing’s heavy—but I don’t let it distract me. “Okay. And that reason may be to recognize how much more we have than we need, and then go share with those who don’t have a thing. I understand all that. Still . . .”

Max curves a finger under my chin.
Oooooh!
A shimmy of energy rushes through me. I’ll never get used to how his touch makes me feel. I shiver, and not from the chilly Himalayan breeze.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing here?” he asks.

Get a grip, woman!
“So far. I do have to wonder about Miss Mona’s determination to film sapphire mines that haven’t belched up more than an odd stone or two since the 1930s.”

“Indulge her. She’s got a great heart, and she does so much for so many.”

The woman with the great heart saunters out of the orphanage with Aunt Weeby, both smiling and chattering as always. “She’s why we’re here in the first place. You do know she’s financed the whole series of trips out here, don’t you?”

His brows arch. “For everyone at the church?”

“Everyone who signed up—about fifteen.”

“Wow!”

I watch the best friends argue, laugh, and then argue some more. Love for them warms me—as it always does. “She’s a pretty wow woman.”

Then another wow woman—different kind of wow—walks up.

“There you are, Max!” Glory says. “I’ve been looking for you. Did you forget you promised to teach me to putt?”

Now she wants to putt? After she “good griefed” not twenty minutes ago? I drop the club. It lands on Max’s toe— accidentally. Really.

“Yeow!” He glares.

That’s when my hate for the game of golf really takes shape. The thought of Max spending hours with his arms around the pretty brunette, pretending to teach her to golf, is more than my green-eyed-monster can take. Hey! I’ve watched the TV shows and movies, you know. It’s a Hollywood cliché. I know what happens next.

Petty? Yes.

Human? That too.

Christian? Not so much—I’m imperfect.

I hustle off, unwilling to watch, irritated, but well aware of my need for prayer.

What does this say about me?

That I want Max’s attention. That I don’t want him to touch Glory the way he touched my chin and made me quiver in response.

Aaaargh!
No way. I don’t want to go there. Oh, I know what’s going on. But I really,
really
don’t want to deal with it. Not right now.

I’m going to have to go there sooner or later. But I want time and space to face my fears and my feelings for Max.

As I head toward Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona, I cast a glance over my shoulder. Max takes Glory’s hand and curves her fingers around the golf club’s grip. A wince zings right through me.

Okay. It’s true, and it’s real. And I’m not going to get to choose when I face some things. I like Max—too much—even if he is a jock and not a gemologist. Glory’s too pretty for my liking, and she’s done nothing wrong, other than just plain
be
. So I shouldn’t be so irritated with her, but I’m jealous, and I am. Irritated, that is. By Glory and how pretty she is. By how much she seems to like Max.

And by how Max seems to revel in her crush.

There you have it, in all its ugly high-def clarity.

So since I have nothing better to do with myself, I join the group heading back to the farmhouse. I may as well prepare the script for the show Miss Mona wants us to film. The sooner we’re done, the better. While half of me wants to stay in Kashmir and help the sweet, sad children, the other half of me wants to hurry home, where I don’t need to see Glory laughing up at Max every single, solitary day. I can hunker down at Aunt Weeby’s house and only see him at work. How mature of me, don’t you think?

Oh, ick.

800

“. . . The rich, velvety blue and exceptional clarity of Kashmiri sapphires—”

“Cut!” I stomp past Glory, who’s holding her camera as close to Max as possible and still film, to where her irritating subject is standing in front of a hole in a rock—an old mine shaft. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

His chiseled jaw juts out and he narrows his blue eyes. “What do you mean? Sapphires are blue, the Kashmiri ones are always described as velvety, and the greater the clarity, the more valuable a gemstone.”

I make a cross with my hands. “Cut! Cut, cut, cut! That’s not right, Max.” I turn to Glory. “Okay. Let’s start again. I have to fix this part now.”

Glory backs up, her expression not the happiest I’ve ever seen. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I say once she refocuses, “as I’m sure you’ve learned by now, gemstones with greater clarity are generally the more valuable ones. Kashmiri sapphires are just a little different.”

Max’s expression takes a turn toward the intrigued.

Good. Maybe we can turn his blooper to a bonus for the viewers.

I continue. “The stones from Kashmir’s Old Mine get their legendary velvety texture from a slight haziness that, under magnification, is seen as many fine particles oriented in three directions in the basal plane. The actual composition of these particles hasn’t yet been determined, but most experts agree they’re made up of exsolved rutile.”

Max brings palms together, closes his eyes, and lays his head on the back of one hand to mimic a snooze. “Boh-ring,” he mouths.

Glory shrugs.

I have a point to make. “Many of you have bought rutile quartz stones from us in the past. You know: those crystal-clear pieces of quartz with gold needles running through them. Gorgeous, remember?”

My cohost nods and, with his right hand, makes the universal get-on-with-it sign. I try again. “The really cool thing about these stones is that the rutile of Kashmir sapphires differs from that of Burmese or Sri Lankan stones because the crystals are so tiny, and they show up in snowflake patterns. The very fine size makes the light scatter in a super-subtle way, and this is what creates the velvet glow of Kashmir sapphire.”

Max steps up in front of the camera. “If these rutiles— whatever they are—are so fine, then do they really affect the clarity?”

My cheeks heat up. “Well, if I have to be absolutely technically precise, then I have to say they don’t affect it much, just enough to create that unique velvet quality that’s not evident in any other sapphire.”

He arches a brow. “So I wasn’t wrong to say their clarity counts.”

“I suppose.” My teeth begin their familiar Max-induced itch. “If one goes by that particular criteria, then you weren’t completely wrong in that most technical way.”

His smile gets smug.

My teeth itch some more. “
But
that microscopic velvet haze has to be present, or the value goes way down.” I wave at Glory. “That’s enough for now. I’ll take a look at the footage after lunch. We can decide then what to cut and what we might want to redo.”

Once I flee the wicked embrace of all the audio widgets and wires needed for filming, I head back to the tent we’ve set up as S.T.U.D. Central.

The last thing I want is more Mr. Magnificent smugness— he really is no dummy.

Our hostess in Soomjam packed us a meal before we left, and my stomach has decided to make its noisy presence known at just the perfect, ego-rescuing moment. As I duck under the tent flap, I cast a glance over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the animated chat Max and Glory are having as they approach.

Fine.
I have better things to do. “Hey, Aunt Weeby! What do you think of the mines?”

She sniffs. “Not much. That’s why I came back to the tent to nap. Why, there’s hardly anything to look at out here. There’s mountains, dirt, some scruffy shrubs . . . not even one single, solitary yak! I reckon your show’s bound to be one great big ol’ sleeping pill. Maybe you and Mona here oughta sell it as better and cheaper’n that there Ambien and Lunesta stuff.”