When in Rio (2 page)

Chapter Two

The real trouble didn’t start until we got to the baggage claim at
Galeão
International on Saturday morning, after an overnight flight on which I surprised myself by sleeping for almost eight of the twelve hours.

After all the other bags had come and gone, and after Jack had engaged in several minutes of increasingly heated conversation with the uniformed gentleman who seemed to preside over the luggage conveyors, we had been sent to a little office off the baggage-claim area. There, a lovely young woman with a superior sneer that completely spoiled the effect of her loveliness informed us that our luggage had remained in São Paulo when the plane stopped there. No, she didn’t know when our bags could be sent to the hotel. No, she had no helpful suggestions for what we could do in the meantime. Her attitude clearly said that if our bags were stranded, we had probably done something, somehow, to deserve it.

I was startled to see Jack as close to angry as I’d ever seen him over this exchange with the unpleasant airport employee. Instead of raising his voice when he got mad, he got quieter and quieter, which not coincidentally raised every tiny hair along my spine. If
submissives
had
Spidey
senses, he would certainly set mine tingling…but who was I kidding? He set
everything
tingling.

We had checked one bag apiece, carrying on smaller wheeled bags and laptop cases. A week, we had both clearly thought, called for more than one small carry-on wheelie’s worth of wardrobe. So now, having given up at the airport, we ventured toward the famous Copacabana Palace Hotel with scarcely a change of clothes.

As it turned out, Jack didn’t intend to wait for our bags to arrive, but meant to take matters firmly into his own hands. My favorite.

“We need lunch anyway. We don’t have to check in for the conference until tomorrow morning, but tonight there’s a cocktail party sort of thing one of the vendors is throwing. Heavy hors d’oeuvres. So what we need to do now is check out the terrain in here, get some food and then go get some clothes for tonight. We’ll eat downstairs and then the concierge can give us some ideas to narrow down the shopping. What do you have with you? Details, Kate, let’s figure this thing out.”

“Sir, yes Sir!” I said perkily, resisting the urge to salute. Jack just grinned, a look I didn’t remember ever seeing on him. Nearly as difficult to resist as his eyes.
So blue.
“I don’t have much. Most of my clothes are in my other bag. The one here is just bath stuff, plus most of my
jammies
and
undies
…um…and some shorts and a t-shirt. You know, so just in case the big bag got lost, I would have something to change into.”

Smooth, Katie. Sophisticated. Not only did you just talk about your lingerie with your boss, but you impressed the man with your intimate boudoir vocabulary by referring to it as
jammies
and
undies
.
“Oh, and some of my shoes. They’re in there too.”

“That sounds pretty practical. And it’s pretty close to what I have too.” He was briskly removing things from his laptop case, setting up the computer on the large desk in his suite, which happened to be just down the hall from mine but was about three times the size and boasted an even more fantastic ocean view. “Bathing suit?”

“No, that was in the big suitcase. But I don’t think I’ll really be needing—”

“Kate. This is Rio. You
will
need a bathing suit.”

* * * * *

Lunch, after the twelve-hour flight and the luggage fiasco, turned out to be utterly amazing. Not local cuisine. Jack wasn’t interested in the buffet available in the hotel’s less-formal restaurant. He said he wanted to be brought something, even if it was only a meal and not our missing bags. So instead, it was the “real” restaurant, which served some of the best Italian food I’d ever eaten.

While we sat afterward, bemoaning the amount we’d consumed, a waiter approached on little cat feet, bearing a list of store names and addresses from the concierge. A beautiful young waiter, tall and slender, with eyes only for Jack, which made me feel oddly jealous even though I knew Jack wasn’t gay.

Jack, poor thing, was stuck in his trousers and polo until he bought some shorts, as he hadn’t brought a change of just-in-case clothes. At least I was able to change into something more suited to wandering the beach town. It only took a few minutes to do so and then we were off down the street the hotel backed up to, the
Avenida
Nossa
Senhora
de Copacabana, following the map the concierge had thoughtfully marked for us.

From the pavement to the horizon, the scene was like something from an exotic postcard, although I was paying less attention to the spectacle of Rio than to the way Jack sort of guided me everywhere with his hand at the small of my back or at my elbow. It was all completely appropriate, taken moment by moment. But in addition to making me swoon at finding out that Jack had such courtly manners, the combined effect of all those appropriate little touches was inappropriately devastating on my susceptible libido.

Still, the atmosphere was undeniable. Even here, a block off the
Avenida
Atlantica
which fronted the world-famous Copacabana beach, we still caught brief glimpses of the mountains in the distance beyond the buildings. Amid layers of slate gray and green, Sugarloaf reared up starkly from its surroundings, the Christ the Redeemer statue blessing the whole scene from on high. Later in the week we were scheduled to take the cable car tour to the top of Sugarloaf and see the aerial view of it all. I found that prospect much more appealing than all the beach and water activities the Copacabana offered.

Although I’d suggested we just go our separate ways to shop, Jack wouldn’t hear of it. He stressed the high rate of crime even in the nicer parts of town in broad daylight. A petite, lone female tourist would present far too tempting a target for muggers. I wanted to take offense, but even the small amount of research I’d done about Rio said he was absolutely right. And although feminism was all very good and well, I knew I was hardly in a position to argue. I was lightly built—five foot two—had no formal self-defense training and I didn’t even speak the language. I finally conceded it would be foolish of me to insist and let Jack lead the way. He seemed perfectly comfortable doing so, even without the map.

In fairly short order I was able to find a cocktail dress that would go with some of my existing shoes. Jack steered me away from the little basic-black number I’d picked first. He pointed out, quite sensibly, that this would most likely be my one-time-only company-paid shopping spree in Rio, and it seemed a shame to waste it on a boring garment I could have easily bought back in Houston.

The dress I wound up with instead was a deep claret-colored, sleeveless-wrap style, not too heavy for the climate but with enough drape to swirl sleekly over my hips and thighs, ending in a flirt of a ruffle just above the knee. A good dress for dancing, if some madness ever possessed me one day and I decided that dancing was something I wanted to try.

“You don’t think it’s too…” I frowned at my reflection, fussing with the deep
vee
of the neckline. For a moment I’d actually forgotten who I was shopping with—not Callie or one of my other girlfriends or my sister, as usual, but my very male boss. Whom I had essentially just asked if I was showing too much cleavage.

When Jack responded, his voice calm as ever though amused and a little husky, I could feel the blush creeping over my face. Curse my pale skin! Curse the Irish ancestors whose inherited genes made it so easy for anyone to tell when I was embarrassed.

“I don’t think it’s too…whatever. It looks good. Very nice.”

I avoided his eyes, looking back into the mirror. Slowly the blush subsided but I knew he’d seen it. I tried acting cool, playing in the mirror some more, gathering up my hair and twisting the long, unruly mahogany locks into a loose ponytail with one hand. I liked the look, the way it left my neck exposed…and I suddenly realized Jack was staring. At my neck or my neckline and possibly even the region I didn’t like the mailroom guy to look at.

Dropping my hair like it was on fire, I dashed back into the dressing room and changed into my tame cargo shorts and little t-shirt, slipping my flip-flops back on. I half wished I’d kept on the businesslike slacks and blouse I’d flown in, rather than opting for my single change of just-in-case clothing.

I bought the dress and, as an impulse buy, added a hair clip with a frill of floral black-and-garnet-colored silk. I would wear my hair up tonight if I wanted to, I thought sulkily. Jack was waiting by the door after I finished paying for things and I thought I saw a hint of a smirk on his lips, but he didn’t say anything as he led me down the street. Hand once again pressed firmly to the small of my back, which I tried to think of as a sensible precaution against getting separated in the crowd.

I spotted one, two, three stores with bathing suits in the window, but wanted to avoid thinking of modeling suits the way I had just inadvertently modeled dresses in the boutique. So I stuck to the safe course of suggesting we get Jack something next, for the evening’s festivities. He nodded in the direction of a shop a bit farther down the street, one that showed menswear in the window.

Jack took more time than I thought he’d need to decide on a pair of very crisp, flax-colored linen pants, a subtly striped cream-colored shirt and a navy sports coat, also in a linen blend. No tie, but the salesman tucked a pocket square of bright red into the breast pocket as the tailor was fussing about at Jack’s ankles, pinning up cuffs.

I was floored when, after seeming to consider it for a moment, Jack frowned at the salesman, shook his head and said something that sounded like, “
A
senhora
desgasta
o
vermelho
escuro
hoje
à
noite
.
”

No. No way. No fair. He spoke Portuguese? No wonder he was the senior exec selected to come to the very cool, very costly conference in Rio. But still—
no fair
! And what had he said, anyway? Because the salesman was looking at
me
now, appraisingly I thought. And appreciatively, I sincerely hoped, as he nodded and smiled and then spoke to Jack again. He spoke, then Jack spoke, then he spoke again and then both of them laughed,
ha
ha
! Even the laugh sounded Portuguese. And then the salesman supplied a handkerchief in a lemony-creamy silk that picked up the sheen in the shirt, and Jack nodded and seemed to be making some sort of arrangement with the tailor. Presumably to have the whole thing altered and delivered to the hotel tonight, from the gestures. I wondered what sort of premium he’d have to pay for that. Probably considerably less than any premium he could have negotiated in English.

“Bathing suit for you next,” Jack said breezily as we stepped out into the street. He had changed into more casual clothing in the dressing room at the store. He’d purchased and now wore the male equivalent of my own outfit, except that his
multipocketed
shorts and t-shirt hung loosely, whereas mine were just formfitting enough for fashion. He’d replaced loafers and socks with a pair of worn leather deck shoes he’d brought along, and I couldn’t fail to notice that his legs were nicely shaped and he had a hint of tan.

I’d seen him wear casual clothes before of course, at company picnics and the like. But here, the change seemed to go deeper than just clothes. He seemed more relaxed all over all of a sudden, almost like a tourist.

“They’ll be bringing all that to the hotel later,” he explained.

“I gathered that,” I said dryly. “So. Portuguese, huh? I’m assuming there’s a story behind that?” We had already shared quite a few personal stories, actually, over the week and a half of working closely to prepare for this trip, and during those portions of the twelve-hour flight when we were both awake. None of those stories, however, suggested fluent Portuguese would figure into his background. Granted, I had never specifically asked whether he spoke it, because it had never occurred to me that he might. But I was still a little surprised that he hadn’t told me.

Jack just chuckled and had the grace to look a little sheepish. “My college roommate for about three years was Brazilian. We’re still friends actually. He’s from São Paulo.”

“Does he still live there? Could he bring us our luggage?”

“What, aren’t you having fun shopping? On the company dime?” He ducked under the awning of a little sidewalk café and snagged a table for us out of the sun, raising a hand to get the attention of the waiter inside. “I ended up spending quite a bit of time here in the summers, and after we both finished undergrad I stayed with Mario’s family for a while and we just sort of hung out, really. Bumming around the country. Gave me a chance to network with some people Mario’s dad knew, then there was an internship and eventually I started doing some field research down here. Actually, I did all the work for my thesis in the Amazon. I picked up a few things.”

“A few things? Just a mineral water, please,” I said to the waiter, who seemed to have no trouble with my English. Jack ordered a beer, to my surprise, and then looked back at me with a cocky, smug smile. He even raised one eyebrow, which he often did. It always drove me slightly nuts.

“So aren’t you having fun shopping?”

“What? Oh, of course I am. I mean it’s Rio, on the Copacabana, a company credit card. What’s not to write home about?”

“Hmm. You’re planning to write home?”

“No. I prefer to keep that air of mystery.” For a split second I carried it off with a straight face, but then a giggle broke through. “I take digital pictures of
everything
, everywhere I go in the field—or whatever this counts as—and then I do a big photo essay, a scrapbook sort of thing, and e-mail it to all my family and friends. Just the first time I visit a place or if something unusual happens. Usually it’s plants and animals, but this time I don’t have much wildlife to show yet.”