When in Rio (16 page)

“
Sí
. It is a good family. Nice people. Are you, then, the boy that Marisa visited so often in Houston? The boy
Fernanda
so despaired of ever proposing to her daughter?”

Jack
blushed
.

I felt slightly faint.

Arthur Johnson’s eyes widened perceptibly, but he didn’t dare face down his wife directly. Few men would—she was quite intimidating. He took a less direct route.

“More wine, my dear? Mr. Benedict is here with one of his employees, after all. Perhaps such a personal topic…” He trailed off delicately as he finished topping off the wine in his wife’s glass. She was clearly not to be put off. Jack, however, saved her the trouble of investigating further.

“That would be me, ma’am. Of course it was quite a long time ago.” He smiled in such a way that anyone who didn’t know him would assume he was simply engaging in fond reminiscence. I heard the truth in his voice, however. Like a lot of men from Houston, he only had a noticeably Texan accent when he was angry, drunk or selling something—and he was definitely not drunk or trying to sell anything right now. “She was a lovely girl but I haven’t seen her in years, I’m really just in touch with her brother. Of course she did get married some time ago. And Mario tells me she’s working for the
universidade
now? He sent a picture of his son with his two nephews a few weeks ago, actually, Marisa’s boys. They were all visiting at the
Coelhos
’ ranch. The two nephews are just old enough to start riding horses.”

I recalled the picture from his computer desktop of three little boys on horseback. One, a dark-haired, dark-eyed youth of about ten, was leaning comfortably back in the saddle and looking at the camera with a devilish smile. The other two were younger identical twins of perhaps seven or eight. Sandy-haired and squinting in the sun, they looked ill at ease on their mounts. Which would make sense, I supposed, if they were just learning how to ride.

“Those could have been
your
sons,” Lourdes pointed out shamelessly. I thought she might actually be doing it to try to get another blush from Jack, but he was better prepared this time, although by now he was nearly drawling.

“Not likely, as Marisa wouldn’t have me, ma’am. Whether or not she told her mama, I
did
ask—and she declined. Something about my selling out to the corporate machine. And that, I think, is as much as I’m prepared to expose about myself this evening.” He smiled that artificial, very charming smile again, but there was a hint of steel underneath it. He was suddenly one hundred percent in command of the situation and was broadcasting that in a way he hadn’t done all week. At least not outside the bedroom.

His commanding behavior was affecting me predictably, even though it wasn’t directed my way. Evidently it had some effect on Lourdes too, because she nodded gracefully and began discussing the dessert selection as though nothing untoward had just happened.

I tried to look bland and unconcerned, although my mind was racing from one extreme to the other. I told myself it was years ago, before he went to London from the sound of it, and he was obviously past it. Lourdes just liked to play strange mind games with good-looking men.

But who was this Marisa person, and where did she live—so I could go and let the air out of her tires? I could only assume Jack would enlighten me about the whole thing later. I wondered if enlightenment would come before or after the don’t-date-your-boss lecture from the
Johnstons
, which I was now certain would come at some point before the evening was through. Because Lourdes obviously knew everything—well, not
everything
, but quite enough—and seemed to have taken the stance that Jack was out to despoil and then desert me.

I had spent at least some time nearly every weekend in graduate school at the
Johnstons
’ large, comfortable home in Austin. Only on the weekends when I wasn’t off trudging through the desert, slogging through the mud or braving the frozen tundra to collect data for Arthur, of course. It was a house made for entertaining, and the couple loved to fill it with their friends and students. When I became one of Arthur’s research assistants I naturally jumped to the top of the A-list, and was soon a regular fixture at their place, along with a handful of other equally geeky and eager would-be academics.

But more importantly, I think, the
Johnstons
just liked me, and I liked them. They reminded me quite a bit of my own parents, for one thing, so spending time there was something of a remedy for the homesickness I hadn’t quite outgrown. For a time, I think they had hopes that their son Thomas, who was about my age, would take an interest in me.

I was
their
type, but not, it seemed, Tom’s type. He had disappointed them in that, as in so much else, including his insistence on going straight to business school out of college. He spurned all pursuits he deemed frivolous, including the study of languages for any purpose other than doing business in them, the reading of novels in any language, the persistent belief in global warming and just about anything else his parents held dear. I could only hope that he had mellowed somewhat in the subsequent years.

I tried to remember what I knew about where Tom was now. He had finished his MBA about the time I was finishing my masters, and I knew he then went on to earn a law degree, but as for details following that I hadn’t a clue. I suddenly felt slightly guilty for not asking Dr. Johnston about his family, but I wasn’t about to bring up Tom with his mother in her current mood.

Lourdes was a strange sort to be a mother hen, but she was fiercely protective of both her own and Arthur’s favorite students. She had always taken us to task for eating poorly, staying out too late…and the girls, in particular, she harangued about our more foolish relationship choices, if we were foolish enough to let her know about them. But even I, secretive as I tended to be, had asked Lourdes for advice on that score once or twice, because she so clearly knew things about men that the rest of us didn’t. Her advice, which I had ignored the first time and taken the second, consisted of telling me to dump the idiots and look after myself instead.

Even better than she knew men, she knew
herself
, a trait I lacked. It was something I came to realize I needed to work on. And thereafter—after I had dumped the second idiot in question—Lourdes viewed me with much greater approval, and I fell into the circle of extra protection she seemed to afford those she liked best.

It was protection I thought I could do without at the moment, although it touched me that even now, years later, she would still be so willing to fend off a potential wolf on my behalf. A part of me wondered just what she would say if I were to ask advice about this particular situation? Because Jack was clearly no idiot, and she seemed to have accepted that. In fact, they seemed to be making small talk now, and Lourdes was eyeing him thoughtfully over the last bites of her orange flan. Arthur had asked me for details about Jack’s presentation, which he hoped to sit in on the next time, and I was giving him a synopsis while trying to tune back in to what Jack was saying as well.

I realized Jack was speaking in Portuguese again. I’d forgotten it was one of the many language Lourdes spoke, or at least understood. He spoke with a cadence, slow and mellifluous, almost as though he were reciting poetry. As it turned out, he was indeed reciting poetry. By the time he finished, Lourdes was resting her chin against her hand, smiling openly, enamored.

Jack realized all three of us were watching him and cleared his throat softly, a bit embarrassed.

“It’s the, um, ‘Song of Exile’. By
Antônio
Gonçalves
Dias, the national poet of Brazil. He was in Lisbon and homesick for his native country. He said—I only know it in Portuguese, it’s hard to translate off the cuff—he said that in Brazil, ‘Our skies have more stars, our meadows many more blooms, our forests have more life and our life has much more love’. And that he prayed to return here, of course.”

“It was beautiful,” Lourdes said, shaking her head. He had wooed her, it seemed, despite her firm intentions to resist wooing. Presumably this would not have worked as well had she not understood Portuguese. On the other hand, if poetry was all it took, she was going to be weak on the fronts of not only Portuguese and English, but also Spanish, Italian, French and even Latin, since she spoke and read all those languages and dabbled in a few more besides. But she was nobody to trifle with, in any language. I was impressed that Jack had managed to sway her opinion.

As we were gathering our things to leave and agreeing that the dinner had been lovely and saying we should make plans to meet again before the week was out and so forth, Lourdes commented to Jack that she’d liked his first poem better. He just smiled and nodded, saying he was glad she’d enjoyed it, and he’d meant every word. And then he took my hand very firmly in his, with a calm air of possessiveness that stunned me.

“My dear, perhaps I’ll walk ahead with Katherine,” Arthur began, as we headed down the
Avenida
, intending to return directly to the hotel. He sounded a bit anxious—and a bit rehearsed too. “We had that little something to discuss.”

“Do you know, Arturo, I prefer you to walk with
me
.” Lourdes offered her husband a winning smile, not only an echo of her past beauty but a force to be reckoned with then and there. “I think Mr. Benedict will take Katherine down to the beach now, to walk in the moonlight and recite poetry to her, instead of to an old woman.
Buenas
noches
, Mr. Benedict, Katherine.” And with that, she swept her husband away, brooking no argument, leaving me somewhat speechless there in the middle of the sidewalk with Jack.

Arthur just shrugged and waved at me over his shoulder, but then turned away and angled his head down, the better to hear whatever his captivating wife was telling him. They were quickly lost in the crowd and I turned back to see Jack standing at ease, his free hand in his pocket, his patented smug smile on his face.

“I was expecting them to try to rescue me from your clutches and instead you’re given permission to take me to the beach and recite poetry to me in the moonlight?” I asked, marveling at the way he’d played the situation.

“What can I say? I’m good with people.” He pulled me along and across the street, over one block to the beach, where we took our shoes off and headed down closer to the water’s edge.

“What was the poem she liked better?” I asked idly, after we’d walked for a few minutes, skimming the tide line. “She looked positively enthralled.”

“I can really only say it in Portuguese,” he said coyly.

“Well, Lourdes did say you were supposed to bring me here and recite poetry in the moonlight. So I should probably hear something. She may expect me to report back in the morning.”

“Seriously?”

“At this point, I wouldn’t put it past her. I’m really sorry about all that in there, by the way.”

“They were just looking out for you. You must have been one hell of a research assistant. Ah, who am I kidding? Of course you were one hell of a research assistant. Arthur’s chomping at the bit to get you back. And I can only assume he’s not the only one. Kate, why didn’t you stay and keep working on—”

“Are you just stalling? Do you not know any poetry in English?” I had snapped without meaning to and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry, just…I heard it from the professor all through dinner, so can we table that topic for now? I really don’t know why anymore, anyway, so my answers aren’t likely to be very good.”

“Fair enough. Do you really want to hear the poem?” I nodded, and he screwed up his face in concentration. “It’s actually by the guy who wrote the lyrics to ‘Girl from
Ipanema
’. It’s a sonnet though, about fidelity. Or…faithfulness, I guess. Saying ‘fidelity’ makes it sound like it’s about not cheating. I really can’t translate the whole thing very well. I’m going to have to leave some things out.

“To my love I shall be…attentive above all and always with passion…so that even in the face of the greatest enchantment, my thoughts…only become more enchanted by my love. I want to live it in each…something I can’t translate…each moment, and praising it I will sing my song, share my laughter and shed my tears, when she is worried or when she is…not happy, or, um…content. So that…something about how if I were dying, I could say to myself about this love, may it not live forever, because it is a flame, but let it be endless for as long as it lasts. That’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“That’s…” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “I can tell it’s beautiful. You were right about translating it, but—”

“I did warn you,” he said with an easy laugh. “I’m not the one with the language skills here. I have people to do that for me.”

“It was beautiful. So…that’s what won Lourdes over?”

“I guess so. A little poetry goes a long way.”

Chapter Fifteen

We walked somewhat aimlessly along the shore, which was not nearly as deserted as one was led to believe from movies, even at this time of night. There was a bonfire there, not too far from the hotel, and a party of some sort. We skirted it and kept going, seeking darkness and never really finding it.

“So,” Jack said finally. “I am having the
best
week. Have I told you that? I really didn’t expect this week to turn out like this.”

“Me either. It’s fun though.”

“You sound a little sad, Kate. Fun’s not supposed to be sad.”

I smiled and wrapped my arm a little farther around his, leaning my head briefly on his shoulder as we walked. “I’m not sad. I just can’t help thinking about going back. It’ll all be over and it’s been…fun. And not what I expected.”

Jack was silent for a minute then surprised me utterly by asking, “When you say it’ll all be over, you mean the Rio part, right? Because it almost sounds like you think the whole
thing
will be over—and that’s not what I want. I don’t think it’s what you want either.”