Beautiful Stranger (16 page)

“And you don't like him much, do you?”

“I don't know him well enough to like him or dislike him,” she said. “I mean, we talk cordially once in a while. But he's just not part of my life. We were at odds so much about morality when I was younger that it's very hard to have a civil conversation now.”

“Morality?” It made him think of sex, of bellies slick with sweat, and he shifted a little. “Were you a loose woman?” he asked with a grin.

“Not that kind of morality,” she said, and he wondered if it was sidestepping the question. “The morality of having that much money and not doing more with it.”

“That's a do-gooder mentality, sister. Doesn't do anyone any good.”

She lifted one shoulder. “That's what he's always said.”

“And you don't agree with him.”

“No.” The word was distinct. “I don't.”

“What would you have him do? Build homes for the poor?”

“It's not up to me to tell him. Once my trust passed into my hands, I started doing it my way, and it seriously annoyed him.”

A stab of something bothersome hit him—a vision of officer's wives doing a fund-raiser for the local hospital or library or whatever, their hair coiffed and their perfume expensive as they passed out pencils in a bad neighborhood. “Philanthropy?”

She didn't look at him, only smiled. “Something like that.”

“I've gotta tell you, princess, you're not doing a damned bit of good.” He thought of the coats the church used to give away every fall, thought of his humiliation
as his mother dragged him over there to try on corduroy smelling of cigars and down vests leaking feathers, and the lipsticked mothers from other places, other neighborhoods giving him that pained and pitying look. “All they do is laugh at you.”

“I'm a big girl,” she said. Serenely. As if she already knew about the laughter.

Darkly he clenched the steering wheel. That summed it all up, didn't it? He'd been the kid getting the jacket, and she'd been the one giving it away. Not exactly level ground. “How rich are you, anyway? A millionaire?”

Dancing eyes met his. “You really don't want to know, Robert.”

He slanted her a look. “How much?”

“That's a very rude question, Mr. Martinez. What if I asked you how much you're worth?”

“I'd tell you. I have mutual funds and assets myself, you know. Jake taught me a lot about investing when we were in the army.”

“That's excellent. Most people don't bother.”

He wanted to straighten, preen a little under her praise, then scowled at how neatly she'd changed the direction of the conversation, reflecting it back to him. “You gonna tell me or not?”

“No,” she said. “I'm not. You'll just use it against me.”

He probably would. “Ten million,” he guessed.

“Robert, do you know who my father is?”

He frowned. “No.” He ran through lists of millionaires in his head and didn't come up with one named Pierce. “Should I?”

“A lot of people do. Especially if they're in the stock market world. He's one of the richest men in America. He is a billionaire.”

He choked on that. Maybe she was right. He didn't want to know what she was worth. Closing his mouth, he focused on the road and tried to ignore Marissa Pierce, heiress and siren, and just drove.

T
hey made it over Raton Pass without incident and hit Albuquerque in the late afternoon. The snow that had been spitting around them all day had just begun to fall in earnest—big thick flakes drifting down from a windless sky—and Marissa expected Robert to find a room before he dealt with the problem of Mario. He did not.

As they hit the city limits, winding through traffic that was moving thick and sluggishly along the highway, Marissa watched a change come over him. A lightless mask come down over his features, thinning his mouth, narrowing his eyes. His hands were tight on the steering wheel as the truck left the interstate and headed into a world that did not appear, at least to her eyes, that threatening. It certainly didn't look like the “barrio” of her imagination—and staring out the window, she had to wonder what exactly she'd imagined it to look like. High-rise tenements, she supposed, the images of old, Midwestern and eastern cities.

This was the West. This barrio was filled with blocks of single-dwelling houses, with front porches and small yards that were often fenced in chain link. On garages, she spied graffiti in a dozen styles, puffy letters and stylized gang marks, but she also saw colorful murals of Southwest scenes, a Native American woman with a basket, a mariachi guitar player in black and silver, a mountain scene.

As they drove deeper into the blocks, she saw more evidence of hopelessness—yards gone to dirt and weeds, porches piled with old mattresses and other detritus, lots littered with dead cars. Graffiti marred even the murals that were painted—she realized suddenly—in a defensive move.

Even here, though, there were holdouts—a house with freshly painted window casings, a garden of bright tulips, a yard neat as a pin. A perfectly maintained car, housed neatly under a carport.

There were a lot of dogs, behind fences and tied with ropes to the front post. A trio of them trotted athletically down one side street, their fur wet as if they'd been in a ditch or river.

Robert pulled up in front of a shabby adobe house. The stucco was cracking along the side wall, and there was not a single blade of anything alive in the yard. A giant tumbleweed had blown into a corner and shivered in the wind, its prongs collecting shards of paper. “This is my sister's house,” Robert said. “I won't be long, so you can come in or stay out here.”

“Do you have a preference?”

Flat eyes met hers. “It's up to you.”

She went in with him because she wanted to meet Crystal's mother, see where the girl had come from. As they slammed shut the doors to the pickup, a woman
came out on the porch, her arms crossed, her face unwelcoming. Her beauty was startling—here was a female version of Robert, an older version of Crystal. She was sensual and hard-looking at once, with heavy eyeliner and clothes that clung to her aging but dramatic figure.

Seeing Robert, she didn't smile, only raised her chin in greeting, and had not even that for Marissa. “Who's with you?” she said.

“A friend of mine.”

Obviously reluctant, she led them inside to a room faded in every sense of the word. Faded carpet, faded furniture, faded paint on the walls. It smelled heavily of cigarettes and dust. A television played in one corner, showing a game show. Marissa felt cold.

They settled uneasily and Robert asked questions, then told Marissa to stay here while he went out to talk to some neighbors. Alarmed, she gave him a beseeching look, one he ignored. Her words came back to her—
Show me what I don't know. Show me how impossible it is that I could ever fit in your world.

But maybe he thought people wouldn't talk about things if Marissa was with him.

Alicia, the sister, leaned back when Robert left, reached for a pack of cigarettes and lit a long white one, eyeing Marissa through a defensive cloud of smoke. “Are you some social worker or something?”

Marissa laughed shortly. “No. I'm a teacher.”

“Hmm.” A grunt that said nothing Marissa could decipher. “So you know my daughter?”

“Yes. She's very bright.”

“Stupid, too.” Bitterly she exhaled. “I told her and told her not to get pregnant. It ruined my life. Now she gets a taste of it.”

Marissa nodded. “It doesn't have to ruin her life. It's just a mistake. Things happen.”

The woman snorted, pulled on her blouse. “What do you think, she'll give it up for adoption? That mixed-blood baby? Who would take it? It's just gonna be another brown kid nobody cares about.”

“I don't think she wants to give it up,” Marissa said mildly.

A grunt. The woman looked at the television, evidently absorbed in some game show question, and Marissa settled back, thinking maybe that was the easiest way through this. Just watch television until he came back.

 

Rigidness lay on Robert's spine, making him stiff as he walked down the block to the house his sister had pointed out to him, where Mario had lived. Three little girls, none over five, played in the cold afternoon without shoes. As he passed, they stopped what they were doing to watch him, little tummies hanging out beneath shirts that were too short, and he had a pained image of a C.A.R.E. ad.

He knew there'd be no help there, and went instead to the house next door, one that had a handful of weary daffodils coming up in one corner. From across the street, a pack of boys in black clothes and ducktails slick with gel watched him, smoking expertly, blowing clouds of smoke from unsmiling mouths. He ignored them and knocked on the door of the little house.

The woman who answered was short and stout, maybe in her late fifties or early sixties, and she greeted him in Spanish. He started to talk, but she waved a hand holding a dish towel, dismissing him. She didn't speak English, she said, and closed the door.

It felt like a fool's errand, but he knocked on the doors at every house along the block, those boys watching flat-eyed and hard. No luck. The one or two willing to talk to a stranger remembered Mario and his mother, but no one knew where they'd gone. Disappeared. Maybe, they said, ask the lady next door.

Trudging through the cold, entering the bleak yards, seeing the defensive faces poking out of doors opened only a crack, depressed him. Each step took him a little deeper into his old world, reminded him all too clearly of another time. From within the walls of one house came the sound of a violent argument, a woman screaming epithets shrilly, and he winced involuntarily. An empty tequila bottle lay in the gutter. A pit bull, tied with a rope to a fence post, tried to take his leg off as he passed, and he heard music spilling out from within, the slightly doomed laughter of a drunken party at five in the afternoon of a weekday.

A car drove down the street slowly, an ordinary Pontiac, the radio booming out a rap song. Two men, in their early twenties, looked at him as they passed. Indian, these two, not that it mattered. Everybody here was as doomed as everyone else.

Out of luck, he paused, then approached the boys. “D'you know Mario Trujillo?” he asked.

A snicker from one. “Who wants to know?” asked another, the leader, with burly shoulders.

“Me,” he said. They were trying to be tough, but there was an advantage to growing up in a place like this. He was as tough or tougher.

“He moved away, man. Months ago.”

“Anybody know where?”

“I'd like to know,” said the one sitting. Sharply hand
some, a face like a coyote. Fresh, dark tattoo on his neck. “You find out, you let me know, eh?”

Robert had been about to ask if any of them spoke Spanish, since the old woman was his only lead. Now he met that hard-edged gaze, saw the hopelessness, the rage in that boy's eyes, and thought of Crystal, living here, facing this boy every day, and he felt sick to his stomach.

For a long moment he met those murderous eyes, letting the boy see he wasn't afraid, then he raised a chin and left them, walking across the street to his sister's house. “Come on,” he said to Marissa. “I struck out.”

She jumped up, eager to escape. “Later,” he said to Alicia.

She waved.

Outside, Marissa said, “You struck out?”

“Yeah.” He waved at the street. “Nobody knows or none of them are talking. Only one who might know only speaks Spanish.”

“I speak Spanish.”

Startled, he looked down. “You do?”

A wry grin across her pretty red mouth. “That boarding school my parents sent me to? Barcelona, remember?”

He couldn't help it; he grinned.

“You want to go back there?”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “But let's drive over there. It's only down the street, but those little bad dudes are just looking for trouble and you might be just the morsel they'd jump on.”

The old woman frowned when she opened the door to Robert again, and started rattling off something in Spanish. Marissa smiled and said something in a soft voice, respectful and calming. The woman smiled,
waved them inside, to rooms as brightly colored as the external house was dull. Bright pictures adorned the walls, and a smell of something delicious filled the air. She chattered to Marissa, ignoring Robert completely, and Marissa translated when she thought it was important. “She doesn't like to talk with those boys looking on,” she said. “They're the ones who beat up Mario, beat him bad…” She listened a little longer. “His mother was scared and left in the middle of the night, but she sent a note the next day so our friend wouldn't worry that Mario died.”

Robert said, “Where did they go?”

Marissa repeated the question, and Robert understood the answer. “Denver.”

 

By the time they emerged from the woman's house, the snow was falling in earnest, a very heavy wet snow that melted as soon as it touched the ground, at least here. Robert eyed it darkly. If it had been clear, he would have headed back to Denver tonight. Everything about this city depressed him. He'd never been happy here, not for even an hour.

“I bet Red Creek is socked in by now,” Marissa said, zipping her jacket while they waited for the truck's heater to kick in. “One of those springtime blizzards that make everything green.”

He nodded, an ache in his chest. “Wish we were there instead of here.”

There was nothing to do but find a room and hope the snow let up by morning. He drove into a better part of town, down a road with a strip of decent motels, and pulled into one of them, a faceless chain. “This all right?”

“Sure.”

He turned off the engine and took his wallet out of the glove box, suddenly aware of the long night that stretched ahead of them, of the warmth of her body next to him, the silence that seemed to give him space. Two rooms would be better. Nothing he'd said in Red Creek was any different—whatever was between them was too intense, too much. He felt it licking the base of his spine now, winding around his belly. He wanted, so badly, to just escape his thoughts, and Marissa would make it easy.

And he knew it was a big mistake, second round, but he suddenly turned and found her mouth, kissed her deep and found her not only accepting, but encouraging it, her hands coming up around his face, her fingers cold against his temple. It was just what he'd thought—a place of refuge, of peace, of escape. Sliding his hand around beneath her hair, to the warmth of her neck, he pressed his forehead against hers. “You don't have a lot of sense sometimes, you know it?”

“Go get a room, Robert. We'll think about being sensible tomorrow.”

He was a lot of things, but no one had ever called him stupid. “Be right back.”

But by the time he carried both of their bags up to the second floor, letting Marissa go in ahead of him, all he felt was numb.

“At least it's good and warm,” she said, and he had a bad moment, thinking of what she must be used to. There was nothing fancy about this place. It was comfortably clean and utilitarian, with a generic oil painting of the desert.

He dropped the bags and settled hard on the edge of the bed, suddenly winded. His head felt too heavy for his neck, and he rested his elbows on his thighs, rubbed
his face. It had been a long drive, and the end had been discouraging.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don't you lie down for a little while? I'll call for some food of some kind.”

“There's no room service, Marissa,” he said. Wearily he reached for his boots and pulled them off, falling sideways on the bed.

She chuckled, pulling open a drawer to get the phone book, which she pulled out and showed him. “Chinese? Pizza?” It was fat and heavy, and she had to put it on the desk to flip it open, ruffling through pages to find the restaurant section. “Here we go. Just about anything you could want. Hmmm. What are you in the mood for?”

“I don't care.” Putting a hand over his eyes, he felt sleep lapping at his consciousness, and told himself to at least get under the covers so he wouldn't be cold and wake up stiff, but couldn't seem to get that far. Behind his eyelids, flashes of hard boy eyes and a tequila bottle in a gutter came and went, interspersed with the smell of onions and a bit of a song in Spanish. Distantly he heard her moving around, felt the give of the bed when she settled next to him, and the cradle of the blanket falling over both of them. He managed to shift enough to pull her close, her head on his shoulder, before he fell all the way asleep.

 

She awakened by degrees. Her toes were cold and she drew them up, only then becoming aware of Robert's shoulder beneath her cheek. His arm must surely have fallen asleep, she thought, and started to move, but he stopped her. “Don't go.”

A ripple of heat moved through her body at the sound
of his voice, husky and a little raw, the wounds from his youth showing more clearly than he probably would have liked. His hands moved on her, sliding down her arms, her back, his other hand covering a breast, cupping it tenderly as if it held some magic power. And maybe it did.