California Royale (20 page)

He trembled beneath her hands. His voice was a low rasp. “Latin men are macho,
querida
. We don’t like to cry in front of our women.” He shifted, struggling for control as if he were forcing himself to lift an impossible weight.

Suddenly Shea understood why he’d left her alone with Amanda. Tenderness and relief sleeted through her, and she caught a sob in her throat.

“You left because you didn’t want me to see you cry? Oh, Alejandro. It doesn’t embarrass me. I don’t think you’re less of a man if you cry in front of me. You cried once when we were making love, remember?”

“A few tears from happiness. This … is different. And this morning I had … so many things to say to you. They were for you alone, so I walked away. The girl, is she …”

“She’s asleep in a room here at the main house. She’s fine.” Shea hesitated. “I’m going to help her somehow. I’ll have to talk to the authorities and see what can be done.”

“
Si
. We’ll help her,
querida
.” His deep voice was suddenly tinged with anger. “The way I would have helped you weeks ago, if you’d trusted me.”

Shea stroked his back for a second, then murmured, “I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life.”

He made a disdaining sound. “That’s a hell of an accolade. You don’t trust me enough, but it’ll have to do, eh?” Before she could answer, he continued hoarsely, “I would have listened. I would have
cared
. And things between us would have been so much simpler, if you’d told me that you’d been abused as a kid.”

Shea knotted her hands in his shirt and pressed her
forehead against his taut, unyielding back. “It’s not the kind of story a woman enjoys telling her lover.”

“I’m your friend as well as your lover. I have to know everything—what makes you uncomfortable, what scares you, what still has power over you.”

She struggled for a moment, trying desperately to tear down the walls inside her, her hands clenching harder and her face contorted with pain. “Be my friend,” Shea managed to say finally. “And don’t ask me to talk about things that might disgust you.”

He shifted as a shudder went through him. “If you don’t talk, it will always be between us.”

“Only if you concentrate on it.”

“You’re shutting me out. I can’t stand that.”

She began to cry. “No, no. I’m letting you
in
. Just as much as I possibly can. Don’t you understand? There’s still a part of me that feels dirty and ashamed. It’s so ugly that I don’t want to share it with anyone.”

“Palomino,” he whispered wretchedly. “There’s nothing ugly about you. Come here.” He angled his body and raised one arm, beckoning to her without turning around.

Shea slipped quickly to the front of him and buried her face against his chest. She shook with sobs as he put both arms around her in an embrace so possessive and tight that he seemed to be pulling her inside his soul. “Don’t leave me,” she begged.

His arms wound her even closer to him. “I couldn’t,” he whispered against her hair. “God help me, no matter what you refuse to tell me, I couldn’t leave you. You ought to know that.” His voice nearly broke. “You
ought
to, but you don’t.”

“Some day, Alejandro … some day I’ll tell you everything.”

He rested his cheek against her hair and said sadly, “That
some day
could ruin me,
querida
.”

A few days later, when he handed her the deed to Estate Mendocino, Shea tore the document up and handed it back to him. He swore colorfully for a full ten seconds.

“You still feel sorry for me,” she told him frankly. “You want to make up for every bad thing that ever happened to me. But you don’t have to, Alejandro. I’ve never been happier than I am right now.”

His mouth thinned and he looked exasperated. “You insult me, Palomino. Giving you the estate makes me feel as if I’ve done something to change what happened in your childhood. It makes me feel less angry. So, there! I have a selfish motive. If you want to make me happy, accept my gift.”

Shea rubbed her forehead and pondered his logic. “
Hombre
, you’re more confusing than the L.A. freeway during rush hour.” She studied his determined expression. “We’ll be partners,” she said finally. “Have your attorney draw up the papers that way.”

“You’ve always wanted full control over the fat farm. You know how it operates, you love it, you can run it
with your eyes closed. It belongs to you in spirit already. Why won’t you take it as a present?”

“I don’t need to feel so protected anymore, Alejandro. I know that you won’t sell the estate or do anything to harm it. I trust you. Let’s be partners, fifty-fifty.” She paused, thinking of the income involved. “I’ll be rich!”

“Ah-hah, and then you’ll buy mauve jogging suits trimmed in mink. You’ll get a poodle and put bows in its hair. Who knows what else? I take the whole offer back!”

Smiling for the first time in several days, she tossed a poker chip at him. They faced each other across a patio table in the courtyard of his ranch house, playing cards and sharing swigs from a bottle of wine. She wore a silky white robe and he wore cut-off jeans. The day was fading into a brilliant orange sunset.

“I don’t want mink or a poodle,” Shea told him. “I want to buy an apartment building.”

“Hmmm. So you want to be a landlord.”

“I want to be a slumlord.” When he gave her an astonished look, she added, “I want to buy something in Los Angeles and fix it up just for low income families. You know, give them a decent place to live for modest rent.”

He thought for a moment, frowning. “Palomino, you’re biting off more than you can chew. Why not contribute to some good charities. Instead?”

“I want to do something more personal.”

“Bake brownies for the group home, then.”

“Alejandro! I never expected a cold comment like that from
you
.”

Duke was wearing his reading glasses. He pulled them down to the tip of nose and looked at her over the wire rims. “I don’t like cities,” he said bluntly. “Too dangerous. I’d prefer that you not make regular trips to a run-down part of L.A. to visit an apartment building.”

“So that’s your worry. I’ll hire a good manager to handle everything—it’s not as if I’d be involved in the day-to-day problems. Besides, I grew up in that area. I know how to take care of myself.”

Duke studied her for a moment, thinking how incredibly beautiful she was, how classy. She had suffered so much as a child, yet survived to become this wise, compassionate person. She was a great lady in the gallant, old-fashioned sense of the words. In some ways she still thought of herself as poor and unattractive, and that was a problem. She couldn’t believe that her sleek blond elegance would draw attention and trouble in a slum neighborhood.

“You don’t understand,
querida
,” he said in a soft somber voice. His eyes burned into her. “If someone hurt you, I’d kill him.”

Shea stared at him for a moment, speechless. He was serious, and his vow had nothing to do with some macho code of honor, but rather with the simple fact that he loved her more than anything or anyone in the world.

“Hombre,”
she murmured, and gave him a teary, adoring look. “We’ll talk about this later. I don’t think you can change my mind.”

Duke tossed his cards down. Frustration rose inside him, giving birth to the anger that stayed just beneath the surface now. “Buying the damned apartment building is a shield,” he told her. “You can’t dissolve your past by doing good deeds.”

“It’s one way,” she protested softly, her voice strained.

“One way to bury memories that you ought to share with me.”

Shea stiffened with misery. The light-hearted mood they had cultivated so carefully all day was fading with the sunset. “It’s a simple thing, Alejandro. Don’t analyze it. I want to help people.”

“Help yourself, first. Help me by talking.”

“There are times when I think you’re the most stub-bom, impatient man I’ve ever known.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “What are you afraid of? That I’ll be shocked by what you tell me? That I would blame you for a situation you couldn’t control? That I want to learn more so that I can torture you with it?”

Swiftly, with a violence she didn’t know she possessed, Shea slung a hand out and whipped their playing cards from the table. They fluttered in bright disarray to the courtyard’s rust-red tiles. She stood, trembling, and glared down at him through furious tears. “Give me some peace!” she pleaded in Spanish. “You have no way of knowing what you’ll feel, and neither do I! No more talk right now! When you can come to me without demands and anger, I’ll be waiting!” Her taut expression crumpled in a look of abject sorrow as she swung around on one bare heel and went into the house.

Seconds later he heard a door shut heavily, and judged by the sound that she had secluded herself in the study near his bedroom. Duke grabbed the wine bottle they had shared moments earlier, threw it across the courtyard, and watched with narrowed eyes as it smashed into glittering pieces.

They took Amanda on a shopping spree at Giorgio’s Beverly Hills boutique, then had lunch at a streetside cafe near the UCLA campus. When they settled once again in the Cadillac Duke had rented at the Los Angeles airport, they rode through Beverly Hills’ palm-lined streets in silence.

“I cried the first time I came here,” Shea finally admitted.

Amanda nodded fervently. “If the Greesons kick me out, I’m coming back to Mendocino.”

“No one’ll kick you out,” Duke assured her. “Pretty soon you’ll feel right at home.”

“Good,” Amanda noted. “It’d be nice to feel at home somewhere.”

Her mother hadn’t protested at all when they’d suggested that Amanda move into a foster home. Amanda hadn’t been terribly hurt by her mother’s reaction; it was typical. Arranging the move with the state juvenile authorities had been relatively simple.

When they reached their destination, a gardener opened a massive, wrought-iron gate and waved them through. “Double hell,” Amanda said fearfully when she saw the 20-room, Tudor-style mansion surrounded by formal gardens. “I’ll get lost going to the bathroom.”

Amanda and her belongings were quickly installed in an upstairs bedroom. The Greesons had five other foster children, ranging in age from seven to fifteen, three girls and two boys. The hearty crew took Amanda on a tour of the house, and when Shea and Duke left, Amanda was learning to play backgammon.

Shea sat close to the passenger window and stared out silently as Duke drove away.

“Sad?” he asked.

“I’ll miss her. But sad? No. I’m excited that she’s going to have the same opportunities I had.” She hesitated a moment. “I want to show you something this afternoon. In downtown L.A.”

“Where?”

“Just follow my directions,
hombre
, and don’t ask questions.”

“Kidnapped,” he muttered.

• • •

He figured out her scheme when he realized that she was heading them toward a run-down section of the city. Duke’s mood turned black, but he said nothing. The summer sun seemed to be roasting Los Angeles under a covering of brown smog. The streets were treeless and gray, as if the life had been drained out of them. Trash littered the sidewalks, and the storefront windows were covered with bars.

“The exterior scenes for
Hill Street Blues
were filmed nearby,” Shea said pleasantly.

Duke scowled. “A great recommendation.”

“I suppose you know why I wanted to come here.”

“To look at an apartment building. Dammit, Shea—”

“Just keep an open mind.”

The building’s simple angular design marked its age at about thirty years. The exterior was white concrete block, but neighborhood graffiti artists had decorated the lower level with a variety of slogans, some of them obscene. The building stood three stories tall. It was. centered on a small lot where a few tufts of grass and scraggly box shrubs struggled to survive.

Duke parked on the street next to a crumbling walkway that led to the building’s front doors. A dark-haired boy, probably no more than ten years old, walked up immediately and pointed to the rental car. “Mister, you give me five bucks. I make sure no one rips you off.” His voice was heavily accented, and Duke answered him in Spanish.

“Here’s five bucks,
muchacho
, and there’ll be five more if the radio and hubcaps are still here when I get back.”

“
Sí
.”

Shea winced a little and avoided looking at Duke. He took her arm in a tight grip and they started up the walkway. She could almost feel his thoughts churning angrily.

They found the resident manager’s apartment on the bottom floor. When Shea knocked, a tall skeletal old man came to the door. The wad of tobacco stopped moving in his cheek as he gave the two of them a startled once over. Duke suddenly wished that he’d worn jeans and a T-shirt instead of a sport jacket, golf shirt, and crisp tan slacks. Shea looked like rainbow sherbet in a raw-silk jacket, peach-colored slacks, and a pink silk top. They were both out of place.

“Yeah?” the man grunted.

“I’m Shea Somerton. The owner was supposed to tell you that I’d be here today.”

“Yeah. What d’ya wanna know?”

“How many apartments are rented?”

“Fifteen. I got fifteen others vacant. They need to be fixed up ’fore anybody’ll rent ’em. Second floor’s all empty. Part of the third, too. Doors are unlocked in the vacant apartments.”

“We’ll just walk around the place, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. I don’t give a damn.”

“Thank you,” Shea said politely. The man shut the door without answering.

Duke grimaced. “Son of a … Let’s get out of this rat hole,
querida
.”

“You promised to keep an open mind.”

He looked at her for a moment, then beyond her to a narrow hallway with its dirty walls and stained floors. “If you want to look around, let’s look,” he said. “My mind’s closing fast.”

“I want to see the second story.” They walked to a staircase at the back of the hallway. Duke angled in front of her and started up. “You don’t have to run defense for me, Alejandro.”