Wedding Survivor (16 page)

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that tomorrow, there will be a flurry of pictures and sound bites and speculation that the on-again, off-again affair is over, and Olivia and Vince will be incensed that their private lives have come under such a public microscope, and then they will laugh about it and conveniently forget it ever happened."

"I don't know, Eli," Marnie said morosely. "I think this time it's for real."

"Wanna bet?" he asked.

"Yeah, I do," she said. "Remember—I was
there
!'

"All right. When I get back, we'll pay a little visit to the lovebirds. If they aren't together, you win, and you get to name your prize. If they are together, I win, and I get to name my prize."

Marnie smiled. "What's your prize?"

Eli laughed so low that Marnie's skin tingled. "If I told you my prize now, that would ruin the fun, wouldn't it?"

Was
he flirting
with her? Hey, she didn't mind a little phone flirting with a hunk like Eli, and smiled broadly, stretched out, so that she was lying on her stomach on the floor of her room. "I don't mind telling my prize up front. You want to hear it?" she asked in a voice as husky as she could make it.

There was silence on the other end. "I'd rather you surprise me."

Actually, that was an excellent idea, as Marnie didn't have the slightest idea what her prize was. "Oh, I'll surprise you, all right," she said in her sexy voice.

"I just bet you will." He chuckled. "In the meantime, why don't you surprise me by not letting Olivia get too carried away with the flower thing?"

Wow. Talk about taking the zing right out of the conversation. "Hello? Did you hear anything I said?"

"Yeah, I heard every word. I just want you to try and talk some sense into her tomorrow. You know, maybe something like a
thousand
flowers instead of ten thousand. Or maybe an enchilada bar instead of lobster and sushi."

"You sound like you don't think I tried, Eli. You sound like I'm just jumping right in and encouraging her."

"Well it's like we say in Texas, Marnie—you took to her like a bear to a honey tree."

"That's not a Texas saying! That's a saying everywhere!"

"You get my point."

"Oh yeah, I get your point, I'm never at a loss about your point. Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, it's hard to talk Olivia Dagwood out of
anything
?"

"Oh hell, I know it is," he said cheerfully.

"Then cut me a little slack, will you?"

"I'd like to. The only problem is we don't have a lot of time. We need to have the wedding of the century wrapped up pretty quick."

"I'm not sure there is going to be a wedding of the century, and even if there is, I probably won't be involved once you talk to Vince."

"Vince won't remember anything about it. Trust me. I'll be back in a day or two. When I get in, we'll go patch it up. Okay?"

"Whatever," she muttered.

"Hey coppertop," Eli said, kindly, "don't worry. You gotta believe me on this one—it's all gonna come out in the wash."

She smiled at his attempt to reassure her, but she wasn't so easily swayed.

"More important, how's Bingo?" Eli asked.

"Bingo is great," Marnie said, grinning now. "He wants to give you a dog bone for saving him."

"Well I'm glad to hear it. I'm sort of partial to big ol' gangly mutts. Okay, I'll talk to you later. And listen—next time your new cell phone rings, pick it up, will you?"

"Okay," she said, and a little voice in the back of her mind shouted at Marnie to ask him to call tomorrow, but she said, 'Talk to you soon," and hung up.

She was really beginning to like this guy. He had a crusty exterior that could really piss her off at times, but underneath that crust, the man had a big heart.

For some reason, the image of Eli the cowboy flashed into her head. Wildflowers in hand, he was standing on a wooden porch, at the door of a woman.

A TV was blaring in the convenience store where Eli stopped the next morning for a cup of coffee. He was standing at the donut case when a word caught his attention, and that word was
breakup
.

He spied the TV behind the clerk and walked over, putting his coffee and donut on the counter. It was a local morning talk show by the look of it—two talking heads with giant coffee cups were smiling and talking about the spectacular breakup of Olivia Dagwood and Vince Vittorio. Apparently, one of the more enterprising paparazzi had been carrying a handheld minicam and caught Olivia's dramatic exit from Zax. And there, sitting in the booth across from Vince, was one wide-eyed, slack-jawed Marnie Banks.

Damn.

Eli paid for his coffee and his donut and walked outside, looked up at the blue California sky, and sighed.

He went on to his first appointment in a tony office building outside San Diego, in Coronado. He was shown to a richly appointed conference room paneled in oak and with a view of the ocean, where six Japanese businessmen in dark suits were waiting to meet with a representative of Thrillseekers Anonymous.

Through an interpreter, Eli learned the gentlemen wanted to take a trip down the Amazon River. They were very excited about the Amazon River, and every time he said the word
Amazon
, they would all chatter at once and nod energetically. He couldn't help but be reminded of a flock of turkey buzzards.

He was trying to figure out how they wanted to take this trip down the Amazon when his phone rang.

There was an immediate chattering of Japanese, and the men started bobbing their heads at him. Eli looked at the interpreter.

"They like you answer," she said.

"That's okay," he said, waving a hand at them. "It can wait."

She translated that, and they bobbed their heads again. A few moments later, the phone rang again, and the chattering started all over again.

"They like you answer," the woman insisted.

"Okay," Eh' said, smiled sheepishly, and answered the phone.

"You know your girl is in trouble up here," Cooper said, dispensing with any greeting.

"I heard."

"Thought you might want to get back here. The press is all over the place trying to get a scoop."

"Yeah, I know," he said, and tried to imagine Marnie, in spunky good humor, holding a bunch of piranha-like reporters at bay. "I'll get back as soon as I can," he said. "I'm still working through this other deal." At that moment, two of the businessmen sitting next to him started to converse excitedly.

"Anyone speak English?" Cooper asked.

"Not a one."

"Damn," Coop said.

Eli told him he'd be in touch later, then flipped his phone shut and asked the interpreter how, exactly, the men wanted to tackle the Amazon.

"Tackle, please?" she asked.

"How do they want to go," he said, making a swimming motion. Why he made that motion, he had no idea.

The woman looked at his hands and said something to the men. There was some lively discussion between them, and then they looked at the interpreter. She turned stoically back to Eli and said, "They please no swim. They please sticks one."

Eli blinked. "Come again?"

"Sticks one." She made a gesture that escaped him.

It was going to be a long meeting.

When Eli finally left that day, he understood that the Japanese men wanted to take a rafting trip to the Amazon the week after the wedding. T. A. normally didn't like to book trips so close together, but the Japanese men had some sort of national holiday or something like it and really wanted that week or no dice.

Eli tried to explain through their interpreter that unless they were well versed on the wildlife and people of the Amazon, a raft might not be a good idea. He tried to explain piranhas and snakes and natives, but every time he thought he'd made a little headway, they would do the buzzard thing again and grin at him.

He did, however, have pictures to show them. He and Jack had done the Amazon once, and it was not exactly his favorite spot. But they didn't seem to care about anaconda snakes or giant beetles—they remained enthusiastic about it.

That meeting took a lot longer than he'd anticipated. He wouldn't make it back to L.A. until late, not with the last stop he had to make.

Eli drove to Escondido. In a neighborhood of small cottage bungalows, he pulled up at the curb of a yellow house that had green shutters and pots of bougainvillea hanging off the porch. As he got out of his truck, the front door flew open and a girl came bounding off the porch, dodging the bike and the discarded toys in her haste to reach him. "Eli!" she cried, and threw her arms around his waist.

Eli grinned and hugged her back. "How you doing, Isabella? You behaving yourself?"

"Yes," she said, turning her gap-toothed smile up to him. "Did you bring me something?"

"Maybe," he said, and with her standing on his feet, him holding her hands, he monster-walked around to the passenger side of the truck, opened the door, and took out a stuffed panda. Isabella shrieked and let go of Eh' for the bear, burying her face in the fur. "Thank you, Eli! I love it! I'm going to name it Marco."

Eli ran his head over the top of her curly black hair. "Is your mom home?"

"She's in the kitchen," Isabella said, and went racing ahead of him to show her mom her new stuffed bear.

Eli followed her in and sat with Isabella's mom, Leonore, for a while, and even stayed for dinner. Before he left, he gave Leonore an envelope full of cash. It was a little unorthodox, he knew, and illegal as hell—but he didn't want Leonore to have to declare the five grand as income on her tax return. She had it hard enough, working in a local grocery.

Eli'd been coming to Escondido every three or four months for about five years now, ever since Armando had died in the course of working a stunt Eli had designed for a movie they were filming. His death had been a crushing blow, because Eli had really loved that cheerful Mexican.

The whole thing had been a freak accident. Armando was one of his best guys, and he never had trouble on a stunt before the one that killed him. Armando was skiing down a fake mountain slope on fake snow and was to jump over an old jeep made up to look like a war vehicle. But something went horribly wrong—the jeep was in the wrong place and